Alistair Robinson, Web Development &c » culture

Irritation in Waterstone’s

Alistair — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:30:33 +0000

I have to say to begin with that despite initial appearances this is not a grumpy old man piece. At least, it’s not exactly my intention to voice petty gripes just for the sake of voicing them.

I was in the basement of Waterstone’s at the west end of Princes Street. Three young members of staff, one female and two male, were talking loudly. The males were teasing the woman in a deliberately petty, repetitive fashion. I was quite distracted by this incessant stupid chatter, and although I was in a public place and we can’t expect the silence of a library in a high street shop, I was irritated. I think I was justified:

1. Different standards and conventions – loose codes of conduct – apply on different floors of a bookshop. We do expect a quieter, more peaceful atmosphere on floors other than the ground floor.

2. There are chairs on these floors so that you can sit and read. In general, the shop itself creates the peaceful ambience or the expectation of it.

3. I’ve been in this particular Waterstone’s many times and the basement is normally very quiet and peaceful. This is probably one reason for my frequent visits.

4. On this occasion, there was no other sound in the room, so their loudness was unnecessary, uncivil and discourteous.

5. This loudness was just one aspect of their swaggering manner, in which they showed a disregard for the customers, acting as if we were not there and as if the whole room belonged to them. This was manifest in their movements and bearing, the way they would talk across the full width of the room even if there were people in between, and so on.

In any case, I was irritated. I was trying to choose between two books based on what I could gather from their prefaces about the standard of knowledge required to read them. The unpredictable monkey-like noises of the staff – interspersed with their occasional macaw-like screeches – made it difficult to concentrate.

Transformation

But then something unexpected happened. There was suddenly a new noise: whispering, between two customers, a middle-aged man and woman, who must have just come down the stairs. That someone should think it suitable to whisper was absurd enough, given that the staff continued to dribble out their inanities for everyone to hear; but, worse than that, the whispering was loud, considerably louder than most normal speech. I don’t have proof of it, but I’d guess that if they had talked at a normal, quiet volume, I would hardly have noticed them.

If you’ve never heard loud whispering, let me tell you: it’s bloody irritating. I think this is partly because it’s so stupid, more than because of the intrinsic qualities of the sound.

Anyway, there I was, trying to read a preface to a book on mathematics, my ears buffeted by irregular waves of jungle-like cacophony coming from the staff and scoured by the rasping voiceless speech of the whisperers; and I wasn’t irritated any more. I just smiled at the wonderful absurdity of my situation.

Artists, Please Expand Your Horizons

Alistair — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0000

Two Horizons is the name of an exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art that I went to recently, but my topicality is lacking again because I notice it has just ended. No matter: I went so that you don’t have to, and I’m eager to share my thoughts – but that’s probably only because it gives me the chance to have a rant about conceptual art.

Taken from a private collection of fairly new art, it was a mixed bunch. I enjoyed a few of the pieces (but, let’s face it, good reviews are boring, so feel free to skip a few paragraphs.) Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s Man Looking out of a Window and Arch together were fascinating. The arch, really half an arch, made of heavy laquered wood, was almost the full height of the room, and was propped against the wall in the corner by a window. In the adjacent black and white photograph, Man Looking out of a Window, which also took up most of the height of the room, the titular man stands under the very same arch. This simple device, including an object from the picture in the exhibition space itself, was surprisingly interesting and almost disorientating, in a way that reminded me of the visual games of Magritte. The sheer physicality of the huge arch, in itself an attractive object, made the photograph come alive and prompted me to take on the identity of the man, who was gazing outside oblivious to the arch looming over him.

There was a sculpture made from sheets of glass by Kitty Kraus, all flat intersecting planes and sharp angles. It appealed to me in the same way that Toby Paterson‘s work does: the way it recalls both the beauty and the ugliness of everyday modernist architecture, which – by way of multi-storey car parks, pedestrian precincts, social housing and schools – became just as much a part of me as I grew up as the mossy rocks, fast-flowing streams, conifer plantations and moors of the North Ayrshire countryside.

I was very drawn to the tiny cardboard models of Manfred Pernice, but I wonder if it wasn’t their cuteness that appealed to me (cuteness and kitsch have been on my mind lately, so I’ve been guarding against their dubious attractions.) But I think it takes more than dinkiness to make something cute in the way that I mean here – the bad way that appeals to one’s base sentimental responses.

There were some other quite attractive and interesting works, including paintings and other sculptures, but what I really want to write about is the bananas. The first thing I noticed on entering the room was the smell of over-ripe bananas, and then I saw them: on a window sill, a bunch of them, quite blackened but definitely just a bunch of bananas. I didn’t have a handout guide, so at this point I didn’t know what anything was or who it was by. A young couple examining them, obviously also lacking the means to identify the works, were prompted by mirth and puzzlement to ask the staff whether they were part of the exhibition or not.

This situation is interesting in itself. Without the description supplied by the gallery’s handout (which I soon obtained) the work is not complete. It turned out to be listed as “Untitled, Bananas, urine (injected),” by Andreas Slominski. The artist wanted us to know that the bananas, apparently just normal bananas, were in fact full of urine. So part of this work is the gallery’s description of it, of the form “[title], [media],” and, following that, the question whether or not urine really has been injected into them.

The artist is playing a game, but it’s much more boring than the games of Magritte. His paintings explore philosophical questions about representation and perception. The bananas seem to me tricksy and facile. Where Magritte’s games were about human nature, Slominsky’s bananas are about the practice of showing things in a gallery. They are a work of nihilism, sabotaging their place in the exhibition by questioning our decision to go there in the first place. I suppose that it’s an intellectual game, but to me it’s not a very interesting one, and it does give me the feeling that I have been treated with contempt by the artist. I might even say that these bananas left a really nasty taste in my mouth.

The other important characteristic of this work, which it has in common with all conceptual art, is that the artist didn’t make it himself. He had a concept and a set of instructions for gallery staff on how to put it together. What is it about this, exactly, that I find so repugnant? Perhaps it is simply that such activities are self-evidently stupid and unartistic, and are especially insulting when they are lauded as important by the art establishment.

I didn’t intend here to embark on a general critique of conceptual art, but I will say this. It might be objected that every generation of artists faces hostile critics, that there have always been grumpy old men screaming “you call that art?” But I think there is a big difference between those who were indifferent or hostile to Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso and so on; and those of us who attack conceptual art. And that is because there is, objectively, a big difference in the art. Conceptual art says “what is art?” All other art says “this is art.”

UPDATE: According to Tim Cornwell in the Scotsman, the bunch of bananas is worth £15,000. You may, like me, wonder who would pay for a bunch of bananas that needs to be replaced and injected with urine every time they go bad, but apparently the value lies in the artist’s certificate.

In Praise of Argument

Alistair — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:57:00 +0000

I’m argumentative, it’s true. Is that bad? I can’t resist taking a stand, taking sides and making a case. So, in that tradition, in this post I’m going to make a case for argument itself, because I feel it’s under threat. Actually, I feel a rant coming on, rather than a reasoned argument. So be it…

I’ve got into trouble for my argumentative reactions to the statements of others. I might say “nonsense!” or “no, that’s not the way things are at all,” and then I’m criticized for my arrogance. Apparently I should have said “my humble opinion is – and you don’t have to believe it, because it’s just my humble opinion, I mean, what do I know really? and I don’t really like disagreeing with people, but I just want to say – and remember, I’m really not trying to force my opinions down your throat…etc” followed by concluding remarks such as “but that’s just my opinion, nobody is right or wrong here, it’s all just opinions, there’s no such thing as truth, I’m probably talking rubbish…”

In my more unguarded, undignified moments I might be tempted to say that I’ve fucking had it up to here with this shite. There is a timid fear of offending others, as if people are nothing but fragile victims of unwelcome outside influences with no power to fight back. That, to me, is disrespectful. There’s also a presumption that if I attack an idea you subscribe to, I am also attacking you. In response, I often say that if I didn’t respect your opinions and find you interesting, I wouldn’t bother arguing.

And since when did we stop being rational beings who could make a case for something and try to defend it, without taking disagreement personally? I am partly made up of my ideas, but they are always open to change, so they do not define me.

It is superfluous to say “I think…” or “I believe…” or “In my personal opinion…” or “IMHO” instead of just coming out with “this is how it is,” because when someone claims something to be true they are stating a personal opinion anyway, whether they say they are or not. We know that’s what they’re doing, so why should we have to hear them saying so explicitly? Is it because there is a growing suspicion of strong opinions, and an automatic accusation of arrogance? If so – and if this is a widespread reaction to argument – then it threatens the idea that human beings can know the truth. If you state something and you’re not lying, it means that you believe it to be true. The idea so prevalent now, that there is no such thing as truth, or that we cannot know it, must lead to a refusal to state opinions or argue against those of others.

There’s an important point here, one that this timid culture seems to find unpalatable. It is that if you have an opinion, and therefore believe in the truth of a particular assertion, it means that you assume that you have seen the light of the truth, and that all those who hold contrary opinions remain in darkness. In a world in which we can’t say anything is better than anything else, this kind of thing makes people uncomfortable.

But it’s also important to remember that you can hold strong opinions, really believing that everyone else is wrong, and yet not wish to somehow impose those opinions on anyone, because there is always the chance that you may be wrong. It is only absolute certainty that leads to arrogance and thence to the wish to impose those ideas on others.

How does one impose an opinion on somebody? It is by means of oppression, imperialism, authoritarian rule, violence and intimidation. The truly arrogant feel no need to justify their ideas with an argument: they force you to submit to them.

A world in which people stop standing up for what they believe in is not one I want to live in, so I for one am happy to go on making people uncomfortable.

Roger Scruton on Conceptual Art & JAR on Music

Alistair — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:18:00 +0000

Last September, I had a debate with Brian Rowan in the comments of one of my blog posts. The debate was about music: whether you can say, for example, that Stravinsky is better than James Blunt. I said yes, you can, and Brian said no, you can’t. Well, I saw this article in the American Spectator a few days ago, by Roger Scruton, an interesting thinker who has appeared on this blog twice before. It’s mainly about visual art rather than music, but I believe the argument stands for any kind of art. He says it so much better than I do. Here’s an excerpt:

Increasingly, many teachers of the humanities agree with the untutored opinion of their incoming students, that there is no such thing as a distinction between good and bad taste. But imagine someone saying the same thing about humor. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday recount one of the few recorded occasions when the young Mao Tse-tung burst into laughter: it was at the circus, when a tight-rope walker fell from the high wire to her death. Imagine a world in which people laughed only at others’ misfortunes. What would that world have in common with the world of Moliere’s Tartuffe, of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, or Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy? Nothing, save the fact of laughter. It would be a degenerate world, a world in which human kindness no longer found its endorsement in humor, in which one whole aspect of the human spirit would have become stunted and grotesque.

Imagine now a world in which people showed an interest only in Brillo boxes, in signed urinals, in crucifixes pickled in urine, or in objects similarly lifted from the debris of ordinary life and put on display with some kind of satirical intention — in other words, the increasingly standard fare of official modern art shows in Europe and America. What would such a world have in common with that of Duccio, Giotto, Velazquez, or even Cézanne? Of course, there would be the fact of putting objects on display, and the fact of our looking at them through aesthetic spectacles. But it would be a degenerate world, a world in which human aspirations no longer find their artistic expression, in which we no longer make for ourselves images of the ideal and the transcendent, but in which we study human debris in place of the human soul. It would be a world in which one whole aspect of the human spirit — the aesthetic — would have become stunted and grotesque.

(Read the full article to see this in context)

But I do have reservations. I also know that Scruton is a self-professed conservative, who sees twentieth century modernism as a destructive movement tied up with socialism, the enemy of common sense and decency (see his brilliant After Modernism). In the exerpt above it’s revealing that he says “even Cézanne.” So while Cézanne might sometimes be called the father of modernism, he escapes damnation. But only just.

UPDATE: Check out Scruton’s book on beauty, of which the quoted article was just a taster.

The Taliban Book of Rules

Alistair — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:32:00 +0000

Did anyone catch this a few months ago? The Swiss paper Die Weltwoche published the new Layeha (book of rules) for the Mujahideen, basically the Taliban code of conduct. It’s mostly mundane practicalities:

3. Mujahideen who protect new Taliban recruits must inform their commander.

6. If a Taliban fighter wants to move to another district, he is permitted to do so, but he must first acquire the permission of his group leader.

9. Taliban may not use Jihad equipment or property for personal ends.

11. Mujadideen may not sell equipment, unless the provincial commander permits him to do so.

They’re running a tight ship over there. Any army worth its salt knows how to organize itself and keep discipline. There’s even some measure of protection for those who might otherwise incur the undisciplined wrath of the Taliban rank and file:

14. If someone who works with infidels wants to cooperate with Mujahideen, he should not be killed. If he is killed, his murderer must stand before an Islamic court.

And they have mundane moral standards like anyone else:

15. A Mujahid or leader who torments an innocent person must be warned by his superiors. If he does not change his behaviour he must be thrown out of the Taliban movement.

(Although you do wonder, given what we know about them and what they’re fighting for, who exactly counts as “innocent” and who doesn’t.)

16. Mujahideen are not allowed to take young boys with no facial hair onto the battlefield or into their private quarters.

So far, so reasonable. But things get more interesting around rule 24:

24. It is forbidden to work as a teacher under the current puppet regime, because this strengthens the system of the infidels. True Muslims should apply to study with a religiously trained teacher and study in a Mosque or similar institution. Textbooks must come from the period of the Jihad or from the Taliban regime.

This shows their wish to smother secular knowledge, including the banning of standard textbooks.

25. Anyone who works as a teacher for the current puppet regime must recieve a warning. If he nevertheless refuses to give up his job, he must be beaten. If the teacher still continues to instruct contrary to the principles of Islam, the district commander or a group leader must kill him.

In other words, anyone teaching in a secular fashion, which is any teacher working for the state, should be stopped, if necessary by murder. If they are to brainwash the coming generations – or as they might see it, prevent the infiltration of the poisonous sacrilegious ideas of the degenerate Western infidels – then this is understandable.

26. Those NGOs that come to the country under the rule of the infidels must be treated as the government is treated. They have come under the guise of helping people but in fact are part of the regime. Thus we tolerate none of their activities, whether it be building of streets, bridges, clinics, schools, madrases (schools for Koran study) or other works. If a school fails to heed a warning to close, it must be burned. But all religious books must be secured beforehand.

This is strikingly alien to us, and what is shocking is the blend of reasonableness, efficiency and fundamentalism. For any of the bizarre Islamophile “socialists” out there who romanticize this kind of behaviour as legitimate resistance, make no mistake: theirs is not an enlightened anti-imperialist struggle. It is a struggle to impose a primitive inflexible dogma on the Afghan people, thereby rejecting all of the acheievements of the past 300 years: freedom of the press, freedom of expression, secular education, equality for women, and so on, the absolute minimum universal values that a socialist should be defending, I would’ve thought. But, alas, socialists have forgotten about universal values and have become trapped in the contradictions of multiculturalism and relativism. That is, there isn’t really any such thing as socialism any more. The word is used for historical and biographical reasons, not because of the continuity of principles.

Festa Del Bus: A Whistle-Stop Tour of Italy

Alistair — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 11:32:00 +0000

We just got back from our coach trip to Italy. The immersion in history, the visual spectacle and the cultural richness were stunning and moving and stimulating, and they left a lasting and important mark on my heart and mind.

First I want to say that whilst Ann came to be known as the Jackie Collins of the trip – inventing brilliantly entertaining and mischievous backstories, especially for the most enigmatic members of the coach party – I won’t touch on that side of things myself. What I will say is that the whole experience did demonstrate the truth of the maxim don’t judge a book by its cover: it was a great collection of people.

This was never really meant to be a public blog – just a handy alternative to my notebooks – but I reckon it might get a few visits from other members of the trip. So hello to you and thanks for helping to make the holiday so enjoyable. Leave a comment or send an email.

And special thanks to Suzanne and Marion, who were fantastic.

And of course to Ann, without whom (this is beginning to sound like an Oscar acceptance speech) I would probably have been my old unsociable cantankerous self. A few weeks ago I spoke to a woman about the forthcoming holiday and she said:

Oooh, I love coach trips. Last one we were laughing constantly with everybody all through the holiday.

I smiled and nodded politely while these thoughts went through my head:

I can’t think of anything worse! Why the hell would I want to do that? Do you really think that’s why I would go to Italy, to be caught up with other people who want to do different things?

But I was wrong: the fact that on this holiday we had both independent exploration and amazing experiences and time to ourselves in wonderful places; and great company: those things together actually made the trip better than we could have expected.

And also an apology to Ann: I don’t know how to break this to you in person, but the thing is…I didn’t take any photographs of gas-holders like you asked me to, although there were plenty around. Maybe you should just restrict your collection to the UK? So please accept the following photo of a particularly fine Italian gas-holder as a token of my sincere regret:

Courtesy of the Ishii Ironworks Company

Anyway, we endured a long exhausting journey through England, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, stopping at various anonymous service stations. The ferry crossing gave us a bit of variety.

Dawn over the English Channel. (Click on any photo to see it full size)

Fluelen, Switzerland

The first hotel stop was at Fluelen at the Southernmost tip of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. Check out the satellite image.

The scenery was stunning. I’m into mountains, and when it comes to mountains, the bigger the better, and these ones were big. But I would only have time for photos if I went for a walk at five in the morning, and this would also have the advantage of the excellent quality of light. So I did. The photo above is evocative of the place even though it’s just a couple of posts in the water.

A layer of mist still hung over the water and the orange sunlight was hitting only the hilltops.

Various birds were hanging around, including this handsome but grumpy (I guess he’d just woken up) great crested grebe.

The grandeur of the high mountains is particularly difficult to capture in photographs, unless you’ve got professional equipment, but here’s one anyway, with the train station in the foreground. It’s one of the highest peaks around the lake, up the valley to the south.

Pietresanta

From Fluelen we made our way down to the coast in northern Tuscany, to a place called Pietresanta (map)

This is our hotel balcony (the site of some fateful activity that very night, as some readers of this blog – you know who you are – will attest) and the view from the balcony.

Before dinner we wandered into town and found a lovely spot to enjoy some local wine and practise our Italian.

Un botiglio di vino rosso, per favore
Chianti?
No, locale

Top quality people-watching, which prompted a discussion of the relative ease with which people of various nationailities achieve style. The local policeman, in his forties I’d say, strolled around, right-hand fingers on hip, left-hand fingers on chin, a pose that would be taken as a mark of sexuality in Britain. Plus, he had a little handbag hanging from his shoulder and a very elegant gun holster. But he was confident and cool and just stylish pure and simple – the question about whether or not he was gay was irrelevant. Was the difference in the context, or did his mannerisms and carriage really have a different quality, of effortlessness and supreme serenity and cool? I suspect the latter, to be honest: it wasn’t remotely camp, which might just be an exaggerated reaction against an unstylish culture.

e=”font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;” >Pisa

So after our veal and peas we went on a nighttime trip to Pisa.

Perversely, my aim here was to get a photo of the tower of Pisa that made it look like it might be straight. In fact it has always been suggested that it might be a good idea to straighten the tower completely, thus correcting the original bad engineering. But of course that plan was dealt a mighty blow in 1983 with the release of Superman III, the repercussions of which have been felt in the halls of Italian structural engineering ever since. In the film, you may remember, Superman’s evil alter-ego straightens the tower and thereby destroys the livelihoods of hundreds of leaning-tower-souvenir peddlers. The negative connotations surrounding the straightening project have never faded.

The Field of Miracles , including the baptistry, duomo and campanile. See the satellite image.

Florence

The next day we all went to Florence, city of the Renaissance, the period when, in the 15th century, art and science suddenly flowered again after the darkness of the middle ages, during which the achievements of ancient Greece and Rome had been forgotten. In general, I appreciated what I saw on the holiday by mentally relating things to this historical framework:

1. Early ancient (Roman Republic then Empire, pagan) – 0BC plus or minus a couple of centuries
2. Late ancient (Roman Empire, Christian) – 300 to 500AD
3. Middle ages, city states (Pisa & Venice) – 1100AD to 1500AD
4. Renaissance – 1400AD to 1600AD
5. Modern stuff, unification of Italy, 20th century

Forget about the Etruscans!

Florentine rooftops there.

This sculpture, in the Piazza della Signoria is the Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna. It’s very stirring and captures movement and struggle and dynamic strength, while a few feet away the old Roman statues stand lifeless in ceremonial dress.

Above is another view of the same sculpture.

This is of course a detail of Michelangelo’s David. The fact that it’s an ostensibly religious sculpture doesn’t alter the fact that it’s a masterpiece that transcends its time and its religion, created by a humanist artist at the birth of modern humanism. Having said that, I always thought his hands were a bit too big.

This is Hercules and Cacus by Baccio Bandinelli. We shouldn’t revere these sculptures blindly: what’s interesting about this one is that it was ridiculed at the time, and felt by the populace to be mediocre in comparison with David, which stands nearby. In fact, it was meant to outdo Michelangelo’s masterpice: for political reasons the Medici family wanted to outclass the works sponsored by the republican government, whom they had just defeated. In this they failed. I guess you could say it’s unsubtle, though it’s still pretty impressive to a naive lad like me. How anyone can create (reveal?) the human form in three dimensions from a block of rock is impossible for me to grasp.

Through a maze of medieval streets you get to the Duomo, Florence’s most famous and celebrated building, and one of its oldest.

On the left is the tower of the building, the Campanile. This, and much of the rest of the building, was designed by the artist Giotto, whose statue lies down at the Uffizi, along with other stars of the Renaissance like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

This is a detail of the doors to the Baptistry (which is actually a separate building because at the time you couldn’t enter a church unless you’d been baptized). The doors are famous because they are considered to be the first works of the Renaissance: the panels are nothing like the other art of the time, in that they make use of perspective (aside from the obvious fact that they are reliefs). Below is a more common kind of representation from the time, with no perspective:

And just for handy comparison it happens to be directly opposite those golden doors.

The huge and beautiful dome (the subject of a r
ecent book, Brunelleschi’s Dome) is visible all around the surrounding hills, like from this wildflower meadow in the Boboli Gardens, out back of the Palazzo Pitti.

This is the back of the palace.

And this is the stonework, which reminds me of some cereal I used to eat when I was younger.

The thing with all these buildings is they’re so much older than those in the UK that have similar designs. The Italian cities have the originals that inspired all architects until the 20th century.

Saw lots of sexy women, but I was only allowed to take photos of one of them, shown above.

It was pretty lively in town. There was some parade going on, but I don’t know what it was.

Here’s a woman waving a flag, with the iconic Ferrari flag in the background.

Chianciano

After Florence we advanced on to the next hotel -

I forgot to mention that I got very drunk the night before and that neither of us knew if we’d put our luggage on the bus that morning and that we probably got the company banned from the hotel and that we kept everyone awake until four and that come breakfast time we were still drunk enough to withstand the hard stares of the manager without any discomfort at all

- which was further south and inland, in a place called Chianciano (map)

That’s the evening sky from the hotel. The first night was early to bed: most of us were pretty tired and we had Rome the next day. The town was very built-up with hotels, which I found frustrating: I’d been watching the surrounding countryside on the way there and I wanted to get out there and frolic amongst the cypress trees. That kind of countryside – of gently rolling hills and rich grasslands and small friendly woods – really comes alive in the evening, when the animals snap out of their dozing after the long hot day, the shadows are long and every single little feature of the landscape – every tree, every hillock and hollow, even every individual blade of grass – is sharply defined. I was yearning for it but it wasn’t to be.

That’s one thing about the trip that was less than ideal, although it was obviously inevitable: the crucial sightseeing and exploration had to be done at the deadest time of day, when the sun is high and the air is thick and the views are flat and stark and stare back at you with blinding light.

Courtesy of http://www.italytraveller.com

So I took solace by leaning out of the window, watching the swifts and listening to them scream like crazed little banshees. The swifts arrived for their summer holiday in Britain a while ago, but I’ve never seen or heard them in these numbers. Everywhere in Italy they supplied a permanent soundtrack. Anyway, when the swifts swapped shifts with the bats it was time for bed.

Courtesy of http://www.wildbirdgallery.com

Incidentally, it’s one of the fastest birds in the world, and not only that but they mate in mid-air, which is a neat trick.

Rome

Here’s an evocative photo to begin this section. It’s the arch of Septimus Severus, in the Roman Forum, seen through the foliage and blossom of an olive tree. But wait a minute! What about the railway station, where those of us not on the excursion were dropped off?

Courtesy of js@jeannot.org

One of the most open, airy, comfortable and generous public buildings I’ve ever been in, with wide walkways and benches of clean polished stone. Modernist, functional and elegant, and using reinforced concrete to do what only reinforced concrete can do (as in the Pantheon, which I’ll come to later). It’s not on the sightseers’ ticklist but hey, it beats the Trevi Fountain for me any day. Maybe I’m just weird.

Our first stop was the Colloseum, monument to the Roman thirst for blood and to the ruling class’s clever manipulation of the mob. The Marxists used to say that even in modern Britain, spectator sports were tolerated and fostered by the powers-that-be because they had the function of diffusing the angry passions of the working class, thus diverting them from revolution. It’s a different ball-game now though.

Imagine yourself as a gladiator being marched along this tunnel, wondering what awaits you in the arena.

The Roman Forum, where the it all started way back before they had an empire, is right next to the Colloseum. What is there today is ancient, but those buildings had replaced even older ones. Originally there were markets and brothels, but later on they wanted some fancy stuff, which is when they started with the law courts and temples and so on. The photo above shows the Septimus arch again, this time with a pile of rubble in the foreground. But look at the rubble! It’s fragments of marble columns from ancient monuments and temples, in a heap on the ground, demonstrating just how rich the city is in ancient treasures. And also, if you like, symbolizing the rise and fall of civilizations.

The forum contains the remains of various temples and commemorative buildings, but also more interesting ones, like the meeting place where speakers would speak to the crowds, and a kind of stock exchange, and also the famous Senate.

This is the ruin of the Temple of Castor and Pollux (those guys
!) We didn’t see half of what was there to see in the Forum, but it was nonetheless amazing.

And this is the Palatine Hill, which overlooks the Forum. It’s where the emperors and bigwigs lived in luxury. We didn’t make it up there, but apparently it’s extremely pleasant.

http://www.artchive.com

Next we made our way to the Pantheon. It’s utterly stunning to suddenly see it as you emerge from one of the narrow side-streets. But what can I say about it that hasn’t been said before or that isn’t available online (eg. here) ? It’s a serious contender for best building in the world, it’s the best preserved ancient building in Rome, a masterclass in proportion and a technological marvel.

The dome is made of concrete, which the Romans invented, but for a dome of those dimensions to support itself today it would need to be reinforced concrete, with steel rods. So I’m not sure if we know what the special mixture was, but it was pretty strong – it’s been around 1,900 years. For those who are interested in delving into the technicalities of Roman concrete, have a look at – and I’m not having you on here – www.romanconcrete.com. [Update May 6th 2007: unfortunately that website's now offline, so try http://www.djc.com/news/co/11133038.html] The oculus, the open hole in the dome, is the only source of light.

This photo shows the circle of light on the floor below.

Ann had commented on the profusion of well-dressed handsome men. I was taking a photo of the narrow street when this guy strode into shot. Not sure if he’s all that handsome, but let’s just say he is, because that gives me the excuse to include some photographs of well-dressed beautiful Italian women.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any myself, so in lieu of those I got these off the web. That’s Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale.

Though we hadn’t been intending to, we had time to see the Trevi Fountain. You wander along, wondering if you’ve been reading the map right, and then you hear the water and you know you’re almost upon it, then you round the corner to be confronted with a huge bright wall of stone sprouting sculptures and spouting water into a shimmering cool green pool (if you’re lucky that is: apparently the water had been turned off for a while earlier that day). Very impressive.

We found a nice spot just inside the Vatican city where I found some shade and took this photo. She looked so comfortable and relaxed on her own (until she saw my camera pointing at her).

St Peter’s of course, taken when we were on our way to the rendezvous in the square.

These are the columns surrounding the Piazza San Pietre, where I sought respite from the sun.

We returned to the hotel in Chianciano soon after that. After dinner we had some drinks and went down to a bar in town for a couple more, while the Italians went wild in celebration of their team’s victory in that night’s World Cup match. That was followed by a few drinks back at the hotel, largely thanks to a vodka supply courtesy of Martin and Fiona, and Val. But it wasn’t a late one that night.

Venice

Gary, the driver, told us to get a certain boat to St Mark’s Square, but it seemed obvious to go by the Grand Canal. And Ann discovered that the best boat to get was a number 1, because it was relatively slow and allowed for some good sightseeing. So we hopped on a boat and hopped off at the first stop so we could hop on the number 1, and it was well worth it. What other way to enter Venice than the Grand Canal, which snakes through the middle of the city – have a look at the amazing satellite image. We were dropped off at the left off the picture, and had to make our way to Piazza San Marco. When you zoom in you can even see the people. When you zoom out a bit you can see the whole lagoon and it strikes you just how heroic and crazy the original Venetians must have been, to build a city there. If only our society today had that kind of progressive spirit. The major work that has to be done to protect Venice has been slowed down for years by the quite powerful environmentalists of the city. Who will save Venice from sinking?

The sights along the Grand Canal are first-class. It’s otherworldly, a fantasy world or a parallel universe where the familiar things are all a wee bit different. That’s a baroque church in the photo, with some handy steps at the water’s edge for hopping on and off.

This is one of the many houses by the canal decorated with mosaics or murals.

This house has the flag of Venice flying. The design on the flag is the winged lion of St
Mark, who crops up elsewhere in the city in various forms.

At some point you notice the water opening up ahead, and you know you must be approaching the piazza. First you have this view of the Santa Maria Della Salute church on your right. Then as you leave the canal:

It’s the island San Giorgio Maggiore, with the magnificent church designed in 15something by Palladio, apparently the most influential person in the history of Western architecture. You see the style copied in every European city, every British city. The original style itself borrows heavily from, and refines, the classical style of the Romans. It’s probably my favourite view of the trip (see also the photo at the very top of this blog entry).

Disembarking at St Marks you are confronted, once you get to the piazza itself, with the Doge’s Palace, where the boss lived in the old days. It’s a magnificent Eastern-influenced gothic building, equally magnificent inside as well, though we didn’t have time for that, as we opted to go in the Basilica di San Marco instead.

This is a view from the Basilica, through one of the little arches in the balustrade on the outdoor gallery.

Here are some of the mosaics shining in the sun. Inside it was one of the most awe-inspiring places I’ve seen, its domed roof completely covered with golden mosaics and with illustrated biblical stories in Latin. The building is around a thousand years old – and feels like it – and it’s a good example of Byzantine architecture. Venice became rich by trading with the east, hence the influences. Ann was quite moved. She’s not strongly religious but her Catholic upbringing has instilled a reverence for places like this, and although I’m an atheist I like and respect churches too, because they’re open to all and they don’t expect anything from you.

Afterwards we walked around the city. It was a relief after Rome not to have to contend with the traffic. Having said that it’s easy when you know how. In general, before anyone goes to Italy there are a few things they should know:

1. Italians don’t queue, so there’s no such thing as queue-jumping
2. Pushing and shoving is not considered rude and therefore shouldn’t be taken badly – it’s expected
3. Within reason, cross a road without too much thought. Don’t wait for traffic to stop, just be confident and don’t hesitate – that way the drivers can see what you’re doing and drive around you or stop to let you past

But in Venice, part of the charm is that without all the traffic it has a very relaxed feeling, even in the middle of the day when the city’s bursting with tourists.

One of the reasons I wanted to walk around was to experience that moment when you’re walking along a wee alley and suddenly you’re on a bridge over a little canal, like this one. Later on people seemed surprised that we hadn’t been on a gondola, but it hadn’t occurred to us, because we were having such a great time anyway. But thinking about it the only time I’d want to take a gondola ride is the evening. Apart from anything else it would be more romantic.

We had a wee caraf of white wine in a very cool 30s style restaurant/cafe, from where Ann shamelessly and openly ogled a man who worked over the street, and she got rather too excited. But I wasn’t jealous for some reason. Maybe it’s because it was as if she were just admiring a statue.

Venice as seen from our departing boat. We’ll be back, no doubt about it.

Lido di Jesolo

I had thought that our hotel that night was on the Lido, but it was actually on the mainland. Very much a beach resort. Not wild and hedonistic, more easy-going, but not very memorable. The food was pretty bad (we went for a kebab later on) but the room was nice and the manager was extremely pleasant. We went for a paddle in the sea after dark and joined a few others for a drink later on.

Lake Garda

Most of the driving that day was through some very attractive mountainous landscape, first in Italy and then in Austria. The plan for the day was to drive to Lake Garda and after a couple of hours head on up to the Austrian Tyrol and our final hotel.

At Lake Garda we took the excursion, because it was supposed to include a cruise of the lake. As it happens it was just a short ride down the lake from Riva to Limone. The boat ride was against a strong and refreshing wind, and offered hazy views of the steep lakeside cliffs and mountains. The north of the lake is a deep cleft in the mountains, whereas the south, which none of us saw, is much more open.

Limone was a quaint little village overrun with tourists, but after a short walk we found what we assumed must be a private beach.

That’s an orange tree there.

The place was deserted but it wasn’t private: it’s just that everyone else was shopping. So we found a seat at the end of one of the jetties, where we could eat our lunch and dangle our feet in the water.

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There were fish in the water eating the crumbs of bruschetti that we dropped, and the water was clear and fresh.

This is the last photograph taken before the incident. We were sitting together on the jetty, watching a big ferry which had just come in. Before I could do anything a wave from the ferry’s wake crashed over us and all of our stuff. Ironically I’d been staring at it for several seconds beforehand, when it just seemed like a gentle ripple. I guess when it hit the shallow water it suddenly multiplied in size. It soaked us up to the neck, which didn’t bother me, but broke my camera, which kind of did.

Courtesy of http://www.kenyabirds.org.uk

After that happened a fantastically coloured butterfly landed on Ann’s handbag and two black kites started fishing in the bay, picking them out of the water with their talons. Two great photo-opportunities missed, but imprinted on the memory all the more for that.

The rest of the journey was very jovial. Marion and Suzanne had bought a bottle of good brandy and after that I was on beers. Great fun and very good-natured. The mountains in Austria were perhaps even more impressive than in Switzerland, and we took a road up a very steep gorge, going over the second highest bridge in Europe. I remember stopping at a little service station at the top of the valley with an amazing view of a couple of classic Alpine peaks.

I did get very drunk that night, possibly embarassingly so – there comes a point when I lose all perspective and become determined to stay up as long as is physically possible, even though I’m way past my peak. I don’t really know why. But hey, life’s too short to worry. I eat a lot, drink a lot, smoke a lot, think a lot, do many things a lot. That’s just me: greedy for life. At least, that’s my excuse.

But before that point it was really nice, because the gathering at the tables outside was larger than usual, joined as we were by a few of the hitherto more retiring members of the trip.

Italian culture is very attractive. Their list of achievements in most fields of art and science is long; their relaxed, generous, classless attitude to food suits me perfectly (not that sampling good local food was much a part of this holiday, eating in the hotels as we were); there’s a good community spirit and loutishness seems relatively rare; their sense of style is civilized, natural, proud and unaffected. Couldn’t cope with the TV mind you.

When, days before, we passed from Switzerland to Italy, Gary pointed out the difference in the tunnels. On the Italian side they were a bit ramshackle. In Switzerland, as with many things, they were clean and well-kept.

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

That’s Orson Welles’ improvised speech in The Third Man. I wouldn’t claim that “warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed” are prerequisites for creativity, or that they’re desirable at all, but he’s definitely hit on something. And it’s interesting to note the common prejudice against Italians: that they may be artistic, stylish, passionate, philosophical and inspired, but they are disorganized and inefficient. Like most prejudices it’s probably totally inaccurate. Anyway, the land that produced Leonardo, Galileo, Giotto, Michelangelo, Eustachio, Machiavelli,Fibonacci, Fallopio, Marco Polo, Vivaldi and in more recent times Garibaldi, Casanova, Marconi, Volta, Galvani, Fermi, Gramsci and Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose – read it if you dare!); and which produced inventions including – amongst many others – the condom, the barometer, the battery, electroplating, eye glasses, the nuclear reactor, the parachute, the piano, the typewriter, and of course the best coffee in the world thanks to the espresso machine; such a land needn’t worry about a bit of prejudice. And that’s without even mentioning the Romans. Interestingly, the current image of Italians is in complete opposition to the character of the Romans, who were practical, ruthlessly efficient, mostly unphilosophical and unartistic.

Philip Cunningham

That’s an egret there. Saw lots of them across Europe. They’ve recently become resident in the UK, in the far south.

Well, we reach the end of the story. It was just a short coach trip, but there’s so much we experienced, and so much that happened, that I’ve missed. I’ll have to leave that to others…

Finally, please leave a comment (see the Comments link below), or send an email to me or Ann:

alistair.robinson@gmail.com
ann.confrey@gmail.com

Veggie Pathology

Alistair — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:36:00 +0000

Is there a connection between principled vegetarianism and ghoulishness? An obscure example is the vegan grindcore band Carcass (defunct many moons ago I think). And as an obscure example perhaps it’s inadmissable. But no, I present Carcass here as the apogee of this disposition and the perfect illustration of this idea, the idea that whatever it is that leads people to become principled vegetarians has, for some at least, got something to do with a preoccupation with, or a fear of or fascination with, the macabre and the grisly and the anatomical.

I haven’t thought it through yet, but I’m fairly sure there’s at least a kernel of truth here. It’s certainly true that these vegetarians and vegans often reveal disgust at the practice of eating meat and the very mechanics of its production, and in the dark imaginings and struggles of teenagers it’s not surprising that this could morph into a kind of fixation. I have heard them use the phrase “rotting flesh” to describe meat, as if this were an argument in itself. Now this is also becoming generally widespread. More and more I see the self-disgust of meat-eaters who presume that the production of meat is inherently wrong and revolting.

Last year I went to see a very bad comedian, Danny Bhoy, a Scot, mocking the Scottish diet. He spent several minutes talking about black puddings, “scabs basically”. The very idea that blood is used as a food was being treated as odd. But Black pudding has been around for hundreds of years and throughout Europe (and probably elsewhere as far as I know), so it seems odd to single it out for criticism. Is it partly the influence of the Gothic, mainly in horror films?

The spiked crew go on about the objectification of humanity, which probably has some truth in it. We are encouraged to see people not as active autonomous subjects with world-changing potential, but as hapless suffering reluctant hunks of meat. Perhaps this is partly what is manifest in TV documentary titles such as “The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off”.

I still have my Carcass LP, Necroticism – Descanting The Insalubrious. Looking at the titles, eg. “Symposium of Sickness”, “Pedigree Butchery”, “Lavaging Expectorate of Lysergide Composition”, and the album title itself, two things are apparent:

A fondness for Latin, evocative of the world of medicine

Sensationalism, as in the use of butchery, an essentially innocent word which now has bad overtones, again maybe owing to horror fiction, and maybe also the reporting of murders in sensationalist newspapers

We also see these preoccupations reflected in contemporary art, as in the painting shown above, Three Oncologists by Ken Currie, from 2002 (Scottish National Portrait Galley).