Culture - October

Books read:

William Golding - 'The Inheritors'
John Osborne - 'Look Back in Anger' (play)
Walter Benjamin - 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (non-fiction)
Louis-Ferdinand Celine - 'Journey to the End of the Night'
Gilles Neret - 'Salvador Dali' (non-fiction)
Leon Trotsky - 'An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe' (non-fiction)

This month I discovered a book I'm now eager to list as one of my favourites - Louis-Ferdinand Celine's 'Journey to the end of the night', an absurd and often hilarious nihilistic adventure following the gloriously ill-fortuned Bardamu as he travels from the Western Front to colonial Africa to New York and back to France. Reading it I became intricately aware of those writers - Burroughs, Kerouac, Bukowski - who had in turn been captivated and inspired by Celine's crude, riotous, free-flowing narrative and his often magical turn-of-phrase.

I also read a non-fiction book this month which struck me with its strangely modern relevance despite the decades filling up since its release. Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' is a remarkably prescient work, particularly in its commentary on the cult of celebrity, as well as the nature of cinema and film degrading the 'aura' of a given performance, something that is evident every day with everyone apparentely creating a filmed reproduction of their reality. I was particularly struck by the following phrase -

'Within major historical periods, along with changes in the overall mode of living of the human collective, there are also changes in the manner of its sense perception'.

We are facing such a sense-changing epoch right now with the 'digital renaissance' that is in its full and irreversible swing.


Films Watched:

'Blue Jasmine' (Woody Allen) (at Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton)
'A Field in England' (Ben Wheatley)
'Shrek' (Andrew Adamson & Vicky Jenson)
'Livid' (Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo).
'The Amityville Horror' (Stuart Rosenberg) (at Prince Charles Cinema, London)
'The Hills Have Eyes' (Wes Craven)
'Zero Dark Thirty' (Kathryn Bigelow)
'Le Week-end' (Roger Michell)
'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps' (Oliver Stone)
'The Prestige' (Christopher Nolan)
'Limitless' (Neil Burger)
'V/H/S' (assorted directors)


Albums Played:

John Lennon - 'Plastic Ono Band'
Anna Calvi - 'One Breath'
Brian Eno & David Byrne - 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'
Brian Eno - 'Lux'
The Orb - 'The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld'
God is an Astronaut - 'Origins'
Motorhead - 'Aftershock'
Lou Reed - 'Transformer'
Lou Reed - 'Berlin'
Paul McCartney - 'New'
Lorde - 'Pure Heroine'
James Blake - 'Overgrown'
Arcade Fire - 'Reflektor'


Gigs Attended:

Jessie J at O2 Arena, London

One of the beneficial aspects of being in a relationship is the healthy exposure to otherwise overlooked cultural experiences. So it was that I found myself inside the domic incrustation of the O2 on an October evening watching Jessie J with my girlfriend. First things first; it would be very easy for me to deride Jessie J and her music simply because of it not equating with my own preferences, but that isn't the point of this review.

The show was technically accomplished, the music itself perfectly listenable, and the capacity crowd seemed to thoroughly enjoy the whole event, as far as I could tell through the galaxy of camera phones hoisted aloft, a modern trend that is detestable yet sadly inevitable. (This though is a separate gripe and by no means limited to Jessie J's target audience, I once stood next to a middle-aged man at a Fall gig who watched the entire thing through his palm-sized screen.)

Whilst an undeniably competent performer and talented vocalist, Jessie J falls into the trap that so many celebrated vocalists (Houston, Carey, Beyonce, et al) have done over the years of wringing every vocal phrase's neck with a spiral of melismic warbling that, whilst amply demonstrating skill, never fails to strangulate any possible emotional delivery.

What really began to nauseate me about the show was the bizarre bursts of pseudo-philosophic phrases across the LED screens during the intermittent costume changes. It felt like being preached to by a Twitter-era self-help guru, with the banal proclamations of 'follow your instinct', 'love yourself', and 'we are all one'. The cringe-inducing nadir was Jessie herself offering up some bland platitude to the effect of 'we don't just live, we are alive!', which as far as philosophical statements go must be the equivalent of a soggy lettuce leaf found in the bottom of a fridge.

It was this dominant yet patronising drive to inspire and elevate that really became too much to take. At almost any opportunity Jessie seemed determined to emphasise her disbelief at playing on such a large stage; yet instead of simply demonstrating honest humility, she would pontificate on the merits of 'never letting anyone stop you from following your dreams' - spewing out this squeaky-voiced helium with which she sought to inflate her young fans with her impossible aspirationalism.

More than anything, it was this self-referential, rags-to-riches narrative of the show that took away from my simply being able to enjoy it on its own simple terms as a pop performance. The very best performers always exude the aura of belonging on that stage and nowhere else, that they were born simply to strut that stage before their audience; and yet with Jessie J I got the impression I was watching someone trying gamely but subconsciously steeling herself at any moment for the wheels to fall off, and as such one has to wonder how long her career can be sustained in so volatile and fickle a market.

Exhibitions Attended:

'Home Truths: Photography, Motherhood and Identity' at Photographer's Gallery, London