The White Stone: The Art of Letting Go by Esther de Waal – reflections from the well-regarded spiritual writer, on her preparing to leave the cottage in the Welsh Marches where she has lived for over fifty years and moving to sheltered accommodation in Oxford. I was disappointed, expecting more because of the reputation of her classic book on Benedictine spirituality, or perhaps I just missed it. The one bit which did something for me was her commentary on "Noli me tangere" (as said by the risen Christ on appearing to Mary Magdalene) - which she renders not as "Do not touch" but "Do not cling". "Here again is the message: letting go, refusing to cling to the past, is an essential step into living fully and happily in the present, and moving into an unknown future." (p 100)
The Apartment – classic Billy Wilder film, with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Never having seen it before, what struck me was its brutally explicit depiction of a corporation's power over its employees. We see Jack Lemmon's character first bribed then blackmailed into letting out his apartment to senior managers for their extra-marital assignations, and Shirley MacLaine's character pressured into being one of those assignations. For a comedy, a most depressing film, the only note of optimism being that these two characters do in the end rebel against the corporation and refuse to go along with their exploitation - though jobless and without any prospect of a good reference, you wonder whether they might come to regret their rebellion. At least I've learned the source of the expression "That's how it crumbles cookie-wise": at a time when men like Shirley MacLaine’s exploiter thought it smart and witty to create adverbs out of nouns or adjectives by adding “-wise” on the end, it’s what she says to him when she tells him she’s walking out.
Mission Impossible 1-6 – the whole series of films, shown on television to coincide with the cinema release of the seventh film. Like many lovers of the original sixties television show, I had found the first film hard to take when it came out (though I was very impressed with Vanessa Redgrave's character and the thrilling denouement on the TGV in the Channel Tunnel) so I never bothered with the sequels until I found myself watching number 5 (Rogue Nation) on a hotel TV channel and to my surprise found it rather good. Watching them in sequence, though, revealed to me just how long it took them to find the winning formula, with Simon Pegg’s Benji as comic relief and female characters who aren’t totally wet and just there for sexual interest. But the films are a total reversal of the television show’s formula, in which the spies always had a plan which was followed out, the thing being that we didn’t know what the plan was and only discovered it gradually. It would, I can see, have been hard to sustain that for the length of a feature film (the television show had to keep throwing in potential disruptors to the plan in order to create tension), so I understand why the film makers went to the opposite extreme, with the spies usually having no plan at all; the emblematic move, from number six, Fallout, is Tom Cruise leaping onto the runners of the bad guy’s escaping helicopter without the slightest idea of what he is going to do next. The other big difference is that in the films the spies are talking constantly, whereas in the television show they were rigidly taciturn – which was cool in the sixties and was also a structural necessity because they couldn’t talk much without revealing their plan. One thing both films and television have in common though is the constant delivery of surprises (for example, in the Burj Khalifa climbing sequence from Ghost Protocol, spoofed in Paddington). In that, they’re actually rather like the films of Buster Keaton.
Harry Potter 1-8 – another series of films with which I acquainted myself on television, again having given up after seeing the first when it came out. I thought that film, and the book, were okay but (for one brought up on a decent diet of fantasy novels and school stories) nothing special and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. Having seen the whole sequence, I still think they’re quite derivative, but I’m mightily impressed by the architecture, as well as the courage to have a mixed cast of characters growing up through adolescence – which no traditional school story (set in single-sex schools, of course) ever did. But I still prefer Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea and the cycle which followed.
50 Years of Text Games by Aaron A. Reed – a labour of love (and Kickstarter support), running from the early classics such as Super Star Trek (1974 – I and my friends wrote a version for our school computer), Adventure (aka Colossal Cave, 1976) and The Hobbit (1982) to Fallen London (2009), 80 Days (2014) and Weyrwood (2018). What really makes this book is the way the author discusses expertly just what made each game innovative and compelling (and we’re talking game design here, not technology) with long extracts to illustrate his points. I’d never before realised just how much creativity has been put into text games, especially those which have broken with the classic “parser model” (in which you enter text commands, as though you were running DOS) in ingenious and sophisticated ways. It quite makes me want to get out my quill.
Duruflé Requiem – performed by the Bach Choir and Britten Sinfonia, in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. An unexpectedly moving concert, opening with a bang: a Tallis hymn - the one which Vaughan Williams used as the theme in his Fantasia - delivering the heart-rending harmonies with full welly. Which then segued seamlessly into the Fantasia itself, without even a break for the choir to sit down (they sat down a minute or so in at a suitable lull in the music). Then a new choral work by Richard Blackford, Vision of a Garden, of which I had minimal expectations, but which again packed an unexpected punch, the text being taken from the ICU diary of a Covid patient, including (as was apparently common) the messages written by the nursing staff, the kinds of things they would say to him if he’d been conscious: “Hi Peter, my name is Sini, me and Alvin are looking after you tonight…”. When he wakes up, his mind is still foggy and he struggles to disentangle what is a real memory from what was a hallucination of his illness, and when taken outside in a wheelchair is delighted to discover that his vision of a garden, a triangular open space surrounding a granite monolith, is real. And the piece ends with the nursing staff greeting another patient: “My name is Evie, one of the critical care nurses…” And then we had the Duruflé Requiem, which was as exquisitely performed as you would expect from these musicians. I cried in the ‘In Paradisum’, the killer bit being the final line, “aeteram habeas requiem”, sinking down onto an open tonic chord, with the addition – quietly in the organ part – of the supertonic, which introduces a bend so that the chord is not quite stable. This isn’t a static depiction of paradise; it’s dynamic, which for me is the only kind of paradise I think I’d be happy to enjoy for all eternity.
Museum of London, Docklands – a really good museum housed in a former warehouse by the West India Dock, which I learned was the first to be constructed, at a time when the whole of the Docklands area was swamp. A commemorative plaque records its inaugural event, attended by the Lord Mayor of London, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and so on – in other words, this was a massively important development out of which they all expected to make a lot of money, largely (this being a dock for ships going to and from the West Indies) directly or indirectly from slavery. My nine-year-old niece had a great time there, partly because they have a kid’s trail based on the Children’s BBC television show Dodger (the adventures of The Artful Dodger and Fagin’s gang, without that boring goody-goody Oliver Twist) which is one of her favourite programmes. I watched a couple of episodes with her afterwards, and as I find often the case with CBBC it was better written, better acted and generally better made than most adult productions.
Lullabye (‘Goodnight My Angel’) by Billy Joel – sung by a supergroup consisting of The King’s Singers and Voces8. I posted this before, but I’ve been listening to it again because Polymnia (in which I sing) performed another Billy Joel (‘And So It Goes’) at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and I suggested to Jess Norton, our conductor, that we might do this one too. But next year, by which time I hope to be able to sing it without crying – because although it is a lullabye, it’s also a song about death.
The Beatbox Collective: What’s Your Sound? – one-hour show on the Edinburgh Fringe by five champion UK beatboxes. Great fun, with sound-effect-accompanied skits as well as virtuoso rhythmic displays.
Journey to the West – fascinating show by experimental Chinese theatre company (director Huang Ying) on the Edinburgh Fringe, loosely based on the much-adapted classic novel, which is a standard in Chinese opera, though this production mashed up traditional opera skills (declamation, movement) with modern theatre techniques: the equivalent of Shakespeare done by four people in T-shirts, swopping all the parts between them. My heart went out to this production, though it was probably something of a niche show, as reflected by the half-empty church auditorium. (Another production of Journey to the West on the Fringe, billed as a family show, with audience participation, probably got better audiences but would have been less interesting to me.)
Smash Hits – Grayson Perry retrospective at the National Gallery of Scotland. The Guardian Arts correspondent was very snooty about this (I suppose once you get your own Channel 4 show that dooms you as far as most critics are concerned) but I enjoyed exploring his warped but compassionate vision of people in today’s society. One thing which struck me though was the heavy dependence on contemporary cultural references, especially in his tapestries, which means they’re going to date very quickly; already some of the references to things that were big in the 1980s require explanation. But perhaps that doesn’t matter. The pieces which most moved me were not his vases, nor his tapestries, but two bronze sculptures called Our Father and Our Mother. Both the figures are laden with objects, attached to their back or their belt or hanging round their neck. The father carries a machine gun, a set of books, an iPod, and a basked containing paintings and barbed wire; the mother carries a baby, a basket of twigs, a ghetto blaster, a reliquary, a petrol can and a cooking pot. They look weighed down. It made me think of all the things (not just physical things) we carry through life, many of which we inherit got our parents.
The Sandman – audio adaptation by Dirk Maggs, following his masterly radio adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Good Omens, as well at the later books in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. This perhaps doesn’t work as well, because of the disjointed nature of the original comic book sequence which means that there’s no feeling of overall architecture to the episodes; some run as a sort of sequence, but then that story arc ends and another begins. The aural realisation, though, is tremendous and thoroughly compelling, and well suited to the fantastic nature of the stories. The writing is economical and powerful, conjuring a character, a situation, a plot twist, with just a few words. And Neil Gaiman proves to be an excellent voice artist, as the scene-setter and narrator of everything which isn’t dialogue.
A Spy Among Friends – great ITV drama based on the unmasking of intelligence officer Kim Philby as a Soviet agent and his interrogation by his former friend Nicholas Elliott. The production values are those of the BBC’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (the original Alex Guiness version, not that silly Hollywood movie), which it naturally resembles. Damian Lewis is excellent as Elliott, but even better is Anna Maxwell Martin, who in her interrogation of Elliott serves as a contrast and outside viewpoint to the male, posh culture of the secret service. I thought her character was wonderful; a shame it was entirely made up for dramatic purposes, because we could do with more people like her in the intelligence services, to say nothing of government.
Lost Words: Beyond the Page (see review) – beautifully-made adventure game (really, a visual novel with light platforming), on the subject of bereavement. The story of the young wannabe writer Izzy coming to terms with the sickness and death of her beloved gran is interwoven with the story Izzy is writing, in which the protagonist (who can be called Grace, Georgia or Robyn according to player choice) first sees her village destroyed by fire (a powerful metaphor for stroke), then in her quest to return the sacred fireflies encounters first an uncommunicative djinn in a barren desert, then an angry giantess in a cavern of molten lava, then the strange inhabitants of a cold dark underwater world, and finally a whale who rekindles her spirit and a dragon who forces her to acknowledge the inevitability of endings. So, you get it, this is something like the aspects of grief, so that the two stories mirror each other. The gameplay gimmick is that written words are important: in Izzy’s journal, they are objects you need to climb on or move to advance the narrative, and in Izzy’s story words such as Rise, Break and Repair are tools with which Grace (or Georgia or Robyn) can manipulate her environment. Good writing by Rhianna Pratchett (daughter of you-know-who) and exceptionally good voice acting make this a classic. Gaming enthusiasts may complain that there’s minimal challenge, but I don’t think that’s a problem; the challenge is in the themes and experiences described, isn’t it.
Last Day of June (see review) – another adventure game about bereavement, in which the widowed Carl struggles to change the timeline to avoid the death of his beloved wife in a car crash. The actions of six people between six and seven o’ clock in the evening on the fateful day interweave and interact: change one thing and a different outcome results. For example, the car crashed because Carl swerved to avoid a boy whose football had gone into the road. If you can get the boy to play with his kite instead, the football won’t be there. However, the car will still crash because of the boxes which have fallen off the truck of their neighbour who is moving house. It starts as a puzzle game but gradually turns into something different, because to Carl’s growing anger and frustration the crash continues to happen, despite avoiding one cause after another. The ending (including a post-title scene) is very moving and powerful, all the more so because the story is told without words, the characters expressing themselves through emotive mumbles. A unique and charming product.
I Claudius – repeat of the surprise hit television show of 1976, which I remember watching in my last year at school. (We were allowed to stay up late to watch it, because the teachers thought it would be important for our classical education – but we watched it for the sex and violence.) It’s just as powerful today as I remembered it: great performances from top actors who were then early in their careers (Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, John Hurt, Sian Phillips, Patrick Stewart), but also great writing from master-adapter Jack Pulman. What you remember is the killer dialogue (“By the way, don’t touch the figs,” and so on) which was pretty much all his invention, contemporary colloquial without feeling anachronistic, and not a single word without a purpose. On this viewing, I appreciated the skill with which he constantly reminds us of the characters and their relationships. When Claudius talks about “my brother Germanicus” , for example, despite the fact that his interlocutor surely knows that Germanicus is his brother, it is of course a form of “As you know, Bob” – but a subtle and very necessary one, given how many characters there are, ageing, remarrying and repeatedly shifting their alignment in a deeply confusing way.
2001: A Space Odyssey – a cinema revival of the classic, which made a huge impression on me when I saw it with my father on its release in 1968. It’s a film which (without prior explanation) is pretty much impossible to understand on first viewing. I still think this is absolutely appropriate: the story hinges on the idea of contact with aliens beyond our comprehension, so there need to be things in it which we just can’t understand (the monolith, the Rococo bedroom). For that reason, it became something of an obsession amongst science fiction fans in the 1970s, in those days before videos and streaming when seeing a film outside a cinema was a practical impossibility. I was fortunate enough to see it a second time when my father was working in Sri Lanka and there was a showing of it at the Colombo Film Society, introduced by Arthur C. Clarke (the co-author of the screenplay) himself, who had lent his own copy for the occasion. It had a cinema re-release in I think 1979, advertised with an endorsement by George Lucas, after Star Wars had demonstrated the cinema-goer appetite for science fiction, and I saw it repeatedly then to make the most of its limited availability. Over forty years later, like many people I have misgivings about the “man-the-tool/weapon-maker” story of human evolution which it sets up in the first part, but I’m still bowled over by its vision and its courage to be incomprehensible, to take its story-telling slowly, and to have total silence on the soundtrack when appropriate. And in the character of HAL it has the best fictional AI ever.
Apple Vision Pro trailer – impressive technology, which might actually be a gamechanger, like the iPhone was, which virtual reality headsets and Google Glass have spectacularly failed to be. It’s very expensive, but as one reviewer commented, you can see where the money has gone: not only into the digital technology but into the design of the headset to make it comfortable to wear for a long period of time – say, the length of a feature film. (The current best headsets, I gather, are such that you don’t want to wear for more than half a hour.) But the most interesting thing to me is that this is being promoted as an operating system or a “spatial computer”, not as virtual reality. In other words, they’re not selling it as an escape into another world but as a way of living more fully in this one: what’s called “augmented reality”. This seems to be a product whose design has been driven not by fantasy but by close thinking about how people might actually want to use it. It’ll be interesting to see how it comes up against actual users.
Levels of Life, by Julian Barnes (see Guardian review / interview) – a book of two halves, the second half being observations and reflections on his experience of grief after the death of his wife, the agent Pat Kavanagh, and the first – which is about three nineteenth-century balloonists – setting up the imagery which he’s going to use in the second. Both are very fine pieces of writing; his historical writing made me fall in love with history again and reminded me how much I enjoyed those of his novels that I’ve read. The grief memoir is or should be a classic of its kind, to set alongside those of C.S. Lewis and Joan Didion. Everyone’s experience is different, of course (I never, for example, found it hard to be amongst people or to see others being cheerful and carrying on as normal), but honesty and authenticity bridge any gap of difference. His gratitude to others when they note and comment on his wife’s absence struck a chord with me; for him (as for me) this has been a kindness. People in general seem to avoid mentioning the person who died, either because it reminds them of their own mortality or just because they’re worried about saying the wrong thing.
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