Very Best of Wales Arts Review Volume 1

Home , Kids In Glass Houses, Le Pub, Motorcycle Emptiness, Neon Neon, Praxis Makes Perfect, Stainless Style

What is a Critic? The Evil of Violence Conversation Gary Raymond explores the nature Cerith Mathias looks at Steph Power talks of arts criticism in a letter the Wales Window of to WNO’s David addressed to the future Birmingham, Alabama Pountney Wales Arts Review

The Very Best of Wales Arts Review Volume 1

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 1 Wales Arts Contents Review

Senior Editor Gary Raymond

Managing Editor Phil Morris A Letter Addressed to the Future: Design Editor Up Front 3 What is a Critic? Dean Lewis Gary Raymond

Fiction Editor Features 5 The Birth of a Nation: DW Griffith’s Distortion of History and Its Legacy by Phil Morris John Lavin 8 The Poet and the Public Intellectual by Dylan Moore

Music Editor 11 Wales, the Artist and Society: The Legacy of Beca by Sara Rhoslyn Moore Steph Power 13 The Deep Sigh: Meditations Upon Haiku by Paul Chambers Web Editor 15 A Tribute to Dannie Abse: Goodbye, Twentieth Century Ben Glover by Adam Somerset 16 Occupy Gezi: The Cultural Impact by James Lloyd Associate Editors 21 Oh, Newport, My Lionheart: 30 years of Music and Nightlife in the Cerith Mathias City of Cider and Steel by Craig Austin Craig Austin 26 Dylan Thomas: The Industry of Tragedy and the Antithetical Mask by Gary Raymond

Laura Wainwright 30 The Landscapes of Language by Trey McCain

33 From Olympia to the Valleys: What Riot Grrrl did and didn’t do for me by Rhian E Jones All banners 37 ‘Almost like a world on its own': Wales Arts Review goes to Festival designed by Dean No.6 by John Lavin Lewis, except Dark 40 To the Detriment of Us All: The Untouched Legacy of Arthur Room by Anna Koestler and George Orwell by Gary Raymond

Metcalfe, which 43 Against the Evil of Violence – The Wales Window of Alabama by Cerith Mathias was taken from ‘The Brouhers’ by 46 Deeds Not Words by Ben Glover

Ric Bower. 49 David Pountney : Schoenberg, Verdi and Issues of ‘Faith’ by Steph Power

PDF Designer 54 In Conversation with Gruff Rhys by Sarah King Ben Glover 56 Dark Room by Anna Metcalfe

60 Halloween Special: ‘Like Water Through Fingers’ by Carly Holmes

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 2 A Letter Addressed to the Future: What is a Critic?

by Gary Raymond

n the final episode of Julian Barnes’ 1989 book, The said, then we write for similar reasons, and we write criti- History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, titled ‘The cism because it is the next step on from discursiveness; it Dream’, the protagonist finds himself in a Heaven, his is the purest form of debate, crystallised passion. every desire catered for by a dedicated celestial personal Critics are not journalists, (although they are often assistant. Perhaps predictably, the protagonist spends mistaken for journalists by artists, the public, and, often, by some time working his way through the fantasies his time actual journalists). Critics are not outsiders, they are not on earth would not or could not accommodate. He sleeps those who cannot; they are the artists, the thinkers, who with women, those whom he had known and those further trawl through the embers while the firestarters are asleep. beyond his reach. He takes the opportunity to meet his Criticism is a conversation, and the places where criticism heroes, and then to encounter history’s giants. After what is published are the dark oaky pubs, the bohemian coffee must be aeons in this timeless domain, he turns to his houses, the late night wine-singed debates around the assistant and declares that he is bored; he has done dinner tables; they are the places that host the best conver- everything he could ever have wanted to do, and much sations you have ever had, ever wanted to have, or one more besides. He has climbed every mountain and sailed day hope to. every sea. What’s next? His assistant takes him to a ‘Criticism’, that label we give the speech of the engaged heavenly cleric to answer this question. His options are artisan committed to paper, is simply an extension of the two: he can either cease to exist (he isn’t so sure of this purest connection that we, as humans, have with our pathway) or he can read every book ever written. The creative processes. When Jean Genet was locked in his people who read books, he is told, are the ones who tend French prison he began to collect small pieces of brown to last the longest in Heaven. The protagonist asks what scrap paper, on which he wrote, in pencil, the whole of Our happens after that? Well, says the cleric, once you have Lady of the Flowers, one of the greatest novels of the spent the ages reading every book ever written, then you twentieth century. He did so because of the need to do so, get to spend even longer discussing those books with the the need to be part of the eternal conversation. When a others who have lasted that long. You can take forever prison guard found the writings he burned them. Genet arguing about books, he is told. started again, and recreated the novel, knowing it would It is perhaps worth thinking of this parable whenever the never be read, never be published, and would no doubt be question that sits atop this essay makes it into a conversa- burned again. (It was published in 1951 and duly banned). tion. The consumers of literature inherit the Kingdom of What is the need to have this conversation with the page? Heaven, or at least inhabit its pubs and coffee dens. Is it obsessional? Is it insanity? Or is it the thing that keeps If art, if writing literature, is talking to yourself, then us sane? The eternal conversation, whatever, is the thing. criticism is a conversation with whomever you like; your Critics have had a hand in changing things just as the best friend, your greatest enemy, the girl you never got or artists have. Susan Sontag is as important to photography the girl you’re grateful to have ended up with. I’ve never for her 1977 book On Photography as any of the great met a writer I’ve liked whose top-of-the-list conversation photo journalists who preceded it. John Berger’s Ways of topic is their own work. We swirl around books, around Seeing changed not only the way people look at paintings, plays and paintings, in them and out of them, as writers. but altered the way art is taught in universities. Kenneth And we never write anything that impresses us more than Tynan and Harold Hobson, rival theatre critics something somebody else has written. We always want to at The Observer and Sunday Times respectively, found an write the story that another person has nabbed and nailed. unlikely union of outlook when they marked the profound Every writer fell in love with art before they wrote their first genius of Waiting for Godot for a confused and disgruntled sentence, before they decided it was literature for them. public when Beckett’s masterpiece came to London in The great critics of art and culture are almost always 1955. The reviews changed theatre, they made the world practitioners first and foremost, and all the best practition- realise that Beckett was a major figure, and Beckett, as we ers are consumers of the art of others before they are all know, changed everything. drawn to the blank page themselves. In short, we are all Tynan, who rarely wrote about his craft as a critic, did readers, be it of books or images or soundscapes, and it is once write a response to the publication of a collection of never satisfying to keep these experiences to ourselves. If essays by American critic Theodore L Shaw (author of we read to know we are not alone, as CS Lewis famously such companionable titles as War on Critics and The

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 3 Hypocrisy of Criticism). Tynan, arguably the finest theatre its current health. It is refilling its veins with some potent critic of the twentieth century, wrote, stuff. There is a rumble, the type most commonly associated with the coming of a storm; the filing cabinet rattling What counts is not their [critics’] opinion, but the art moments before the earthquake. The arts in Wales are with which it is expressed. They differ from the about to enter an unprecedented era of creative excel- novelist only in that they take as their subject- lence, a seismic movement that will provide a significant matter life rehearsed, instead of life unrehearsed. platform that is visible way beyond the borders Wales has The subtlest and best-informed of men will still be held on to so dearly for so long. It cannot happen without a bad critic if his style is bad. It is irrelevant whether criticism and criticism of the highest calibre. It cannot his opinion is ‘right or ‘wrong’: I learn more from happen without passion, intellectualism, elitism. It will not George Bernard Shaw when he is wrong than I do happen with star ratings (a fishing line designed specifical- from Clement Strong when he is right. ly to catch the smallest fish), advertorials or soft porn in the margins. Great criticism is as important as the art that And here is the weight behind the blade:- inspires it and the Critic is the writer who cannot give up the conversation. The true critic cares little for the here and now. The Wales is a country filled with talent; with serious-minded last thing he bothers about is the man who will practitioners of the arts. And the country is too small for us read him first. His real rendezvous is with posterity. all to crawl over one another doffing our caps as we pass His review is a letter addressed to the future. on Escher’s stairwell. May we have permission from who- ever is in charge to respectfully move on from Dylan In Iron in the Soul, a novel in which the main character is Thomas? May we take the opportunity to perhaps intro- an artist and critic, Sartre wrote that the business of a critic duce this great country to the outside world as a place not is ‘to know what other men have thought.’ This may seem filled with sombre preachers and drunken cherubs? We obvious, but it is true on many levels. ‘An art critic,’ he have the talent. But it can only be achieved with that critical writes, ‘is not paid to spend his time worrying about the culture as a part of it. We need to fire the canons, we need imperfect colour-sense of wild grass.’ I suppose there are to shed these puerile ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and an- many other imperfections to consider. Any art can only be nounce to the world that Welsh art – its literature, its truly valued if it is evaluated. I was asked on a radio show theatre, its painting and sculpting and circuses and music recently, ‘Isn’t everybody a critic?’ Well of course every- and cinema – it is a conversation you’ll want to join in with. body’s a critic. But not everybody is a Critic. Spinoza said that man’s duty, when surveying the world, So what is a Critic? A Critic is insatiable. A Critic is the ‘was neither to laugh nor to weep, but to understand.’ Now most generous of egoists. A Critic is elitist but welcoming is the time to nail that above the doorway. with it. A Critic takes things seriously, sometimes too-seri- A Critic is an investor into a culture. As artists we invest ously, but also has a broad sense of humour, always in the culture of Wales, not latch onto it; we are working to cocked. A Critic is just as ready to raise their arms as they build it, to brighten it, and to make other nations envious are their nose. A Critic is often yearning for that moment of of us. We are part of the global community now. Wales profundity. The Critic, after all, is doing this in the hope of may have had a difficult time in recognising this, having enlightenment, in the hope of becoming a better person. spent so long splitting its energies between introspection The same reason why anybody else experiences art. and hating the English. If I may use a personal example When New York art critic Clement Greenberg said, ‘Art to make a point: I have never felt particularly Welsh. It is criticism is about the most ungrateful form of elevated my blood, part of my ancestry, but culturally it has never writing I know of,’ he was not being self-effacing, but was been under my skin. Blame it a little on being born and displaying all of the above traits. A Critic can be ungrateful, brought up in Newport, the town treated as the child nei- abrasive, vindictive, snappy, cold, isolated, bloated, flag- ther parent wanted in the divorce. Blame it on whatever waving, attention-seeking, cruel, perverse, rabble-rousing you like. But in the last two years I have not only begun to and many other ugly things; but to be unengaged is No feel Welsh, but it is the first time I have ever recognised Man’s Land. To be ill-informed, under-informed, lazy, is the myself as having any identity outside of my personality. wilderness with no end. To play at being a Critic does The emblematic reason for this is my editorship of Wales nobody any good, least of all the player. So well-crafted Arts Review. It is culture that makes a country and Wales wrongness is worthy, whereas piffle is a waste of every- Arts Review has introduced me to mine. It has helped me body’s time. realise that Welsh art is art just like anywhere else: hu- In Wales at the moment, we are at the verge of some- man, stained with the colours of the culture it sprouts out thing. The arts are awakening. And history shows us that from. I now realise that Wales is a part of the world I trav- these things do not happen without a vibrant critical culture elled when young and continue to explore now less being a part of it. What cannot be part of the conversation young. Wales is not sombre preachers and drunken cher- is the trend for regurgitated press releases, fan bits, and (a ubs, and Tolstoy and Tennessee Williams and Beckett new word for me) ‘advertorials’ – commercial promotions and Alban Berg are as much ours as they are anyone structured and coloured to masquerade as the words of a else’s. Wales is a remarkable country; embattled always, genuinely impressed journalist. We are, of course, in an but beautiful always too. At its heart are music and poetry era of squeezed middles and pushed down tops, but these and socialism – the most important things the human are mere excuses when sterner stuff is needed. A Critic creature has ever mined from the cosmos. The eternal does not exist to help ticket sales. conversation is the thing, and you are mistaken if you Does Wales have a strong history of cultural criticism? I don’t think Wales deserves a part in it. don’t know; I’m not a historian of such things. But I do know

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 4 The Birth of a Nation: DW Griffith’s Distortion of History and its Legacy

by Phil Morris

here is very little to recommend Peter Bogdanovi- From as early as the writings of Russian formalists Sergei ch’s muddled comedy-drama Nickelodeon (1976) Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov in the nineteen-twenties, it except for a late scene in which Leo Harrigan, a has been a trope of film criticism to regard Griffith’s mastery silent-era film-maker played by Ryan O’Neal, attends the of technique and formalist innovations as qualities that can premiere of The Clansman – to be retitled weeks later be regarded as distinct from the content of his films. In as The Birth of a Nation – directed by D.W. Griffith. We see America this attitude also had its proponents, as Griffith’s the audience of 1915 sat open-mouthed in awe of the manipulation in The Birth of a Nation of the racist fears of cinematic spectacle, breaking into rounds of rapturous ap- his audience, particularly their anxieties regarding miscege- plause at Griffith’s bravura set-pieces. Gunfire from the nation, became increasingly problematic for film historians wings of the Clunes auditorium provide sound effects for and theorists as the history of the twentieth-century unfold- panoramic battle scenes. The screening is interrupted at ed. As Scott Simon observes in his The Films of D.W. one point by an actor costumed in Ku Klux Klan regalia Griffith (1993): riding a horse at full gallop over a treadmill, to the giddy delight of the audience in thrall to the narrative’s epic His sentimentalisms have also been enough to turn sweep. The film ends, and almost everyone rises to noisily many devotees into thoroughgoing formalists sa- acclaim what they have just seen. Harrigan, however, re- vouring his growing mastery in rhythmic editing and mains seated, silent and immobile. The experience has compositional style. pulverised him. He is not depressed by the racist politics of The Birth of a Nation, but by a realisation that he will Yet such attempts to assess Griffith’s filmmaking tech- never make a film that is as powerfully dramatic – or, even nique, as something to be considered as separate from his if he could, that Griffith had got there first as the originator ideology, were to misunderstand his work profoundly. Grif- of a new cinematic form. That image of a crushed, stone- fith’s innovations, deployed throughout The Birth of a Na- faced Harrigan attests to the historical significance of Grif- tion, were the means by which his racist message could be fith’s masterpiece, which helped to found Hollywood and more deeply embedded within the darker recesses of the change cinema forever. American collective unconscious. His cinematic technique Charlie Chaplin once described D.W. Griffith as ‘the was developed to serve his ideology and not simply as an teacher of us all’, and while his reputation as the ‘father of aesthetic approach to be taken unquestioningly on its own film’ is not entirely deserved – as it would be to overlook the terms. The uncomfortable truth, which must be acknowl- innovations of Georges Melies, Thomas Ince and Allan edged at the outset of any discussion of The Birth of a Dwan to name but a few rival directors – but it can be Nation, is that no artist, especially not one as crucial to his justifiably asserted that Griffith was the first director to medium as Griffith, can be thought of as having created an deploy the techniques of the close-up, montage and cross- aesthetic that functions independently of their political and cut editing to such emotive effect at the service of a feature- cultural values. Both aspects of an artist’s work develop in length narrative. In a History of Narrative Film (2004) film, symbiosis. historian David A. Cook states: The Birth of a Nation mirrors the dichotomy at the heart of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, in that it combines aesthetic beauty In the brief span of six years, between directing his with ugly politics. Like Wagner, Griffith was a nationalist first one-reeler in 1908 and The Birth of a Nation in whose ideals were rooted in bogus notions of racial purity 1914, Griffith established the narrative language of and an agrarian, pre-industrial past steeped in a chivalric cinema as we know it today, innocence. Both men were artistic innovators who were ahead of their time, yet in their work they were also looking Like Cervantes’ Don Quixote or to recover a past that never existed. For Griffith, the growing Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, The Birth of a Nation is a industrial and technological power of the twentieth-century paradigm shift in a nascent art form that is so influential it was not attributable to its ingenuity and vast natural re- comes to define the form itself, foreshadowing its possibili- sources, but to the innate qualities of its ‘folk’ – a people ties and outlining its potential scope. Griffith’s film is also, always in danger of losing its soul to progress and modernity. irredeemably, a contemptible piece of racist propaganda. *

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 5 David Wark Llewelyn Griffith, as his full name suggests, Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation is based on two Thomas was of Welsh descent. He was born in 1875 and raised on Dixon novels, The Leopard’s Spots (1902) and The a farm in Kentucky. His father, Jacob ‘Roaring Jake’ Griffith, Clansman (1905). The film was first shown as The had been a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Confederate army, Clansman in Los Angeles on February 8th 1915, but by the both wounded and decorated during the Civil War. David time the film received its east-coast premiere at the Liberty Griffith received little formal education, but, as a boy, he Theatre, New York, on March 3rd it had been retitled by was told stories of the war and the antebellum south by his Griffith himself, reportedly at Dixon’s suggestion. The film father, and devoured the popular literature of his day. We comprises two halves. The first part deals with the outbreak can attribute Griffith’s racism to the prevailing attitudes of of the Civil War and concludes with the surrender of Robert the ‘Jim Crow’ south, as embodied by his father, and his E. Lee at Appomatox Courthouse. The second part con- populist story-telling instincts to his childhood reading; but cerns the period of Reconstruction, particularly the tempo- are any traces of his ‘Welsh’ connections discernible in his rary post-war acquisition of political power by former slaves work? No reference is made to the European ancestry of and its ramifications. The film’s narrative is refracted, al- the white characters in The Birth of a Nation. It is ostensibly most entirely, through the experiences of two families who a story about American identities. Yet there are parallels are related to each other – the Stonemans from the north that can be drawn between cultural attitudes regarding the and the Camerons from the south. The outbreak of civil war past that are to be found, to in part one disrupts a happy this day, in the American family get-together and south and Wales. scuppers the chance of ro- Southerners and the mance between cousins Welsh have similarly main- Ben Cameron and Elsie tained deeply ambivalent Stoneman (played by the relationships with the nation incomparable Lilian Gish). states within which they In the second half the cous- have been historically ins are reunited in marriage subsumed. For both Wales as the family, and the na- and the Deep South the tion, finally reunites and claim of nationhood has heals. been a cultural construct – The obvious message of though in no sense invalid both Dixon’s book and Grif- for being so – that has been fith’s film adaptation is that a point of resistance the root causes of the civil against harsh political war lie not with the iniquities realities. Both peoples were of the slave trade, nor with burdened throughout the northern plans to centralise last century with a pained power within the federal sense of having lost their government, but with the birth-right to self- political machinations of ab- determination, and often olitionists and the mere seemed to revel in the self- presence of black slaves in pity of the ‘lost cause’ – one America. One of the chief that was always doomed to villains of the film is ‘radical fail but which nevertheless leader’ Congressman Aus- was prosecuted with a glori- tin Stoneman, who is clear- ous, even poetic, dash and ly based on the former spirit. There is something in House of Representatives Griffith’s evocation of a bu- leader Thaddeus Stevens. colic, agrarian antebellum In Griffith’s film, the sole south, in his depiction of a motivation for glorious-in-defeat Confed- Stoneman/Stevens in aid- eracy, and in his celebra- ing the anti-slavery cause is tion of the rebel spirit of his sexual desire for his am- southerners reasserted bitious and manipulative during Reconstruction; that ‘mulatto’ house maid – a speaks not only of a ‘southern’ view of American history, but slur on the real-life Lydia Hamilton Smith. Throughout Grif- also of how the Welsh regard their past. Of course, the fith’s film the calumny of the ‘lustful negro’ is reified and majority of southerners, and Welsh, no longer cling to such reimagined. In one devastating scene, the Cameron’s backward-looking notions of their national identities, yet youngest daughter ‘Little Sister’ is pursued through a pine there are many, in both cultures, who remain steadfast in wood by Gus, a black soldier of the occupying federal army. their sense of a historical betrayal of a former ‘folk inno- He intends to rape her but rather than submit to him, the girl cence’ stampeded by industrialisation, colonialism and the commits suicide by throwing herself from a cliff top. The centralising of power within the nation state. That is not to would-be rapist Gus is later lynched for this crime by the Ku say that there were no injustices perpetrated on the south, Klux Klan. or Wales, at different points in their histories; rather that a The climax of the film comes with another attempted rape, nurtured sense of past injustices is not a sound basis for this time of Elsie by a black Lieutenant-Governor, personal- national or cultural self-identification. ly appointed by Stoneman/Stevens. Griffith frequently and disturbingly elides black sexuality with black political power

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 6 so that the enfranchisement of former slaves is presented among others. Perhaps a tip of the hat from one master- as an inevitable precursor to miscegenation. The sexual manipulator to another? mores and political aspirations of whites, with the single Contemporary reaction to The Birth of a Nation in America exception of Stoneman/Stevens, are presented in the film was divided, to say the least. The NAACP tried to get it as ‘pure’ as the white of a Klansman’s robe. One of the final, banned because of its inflammatory stereotyping. When terrible images of the film shows black voters being terrified riots broke out in Boston, Philadelphia and other major U.S. from entering temporary election booths by mounted and cities following screenings of the film, the cities of Chicago, hooded Ku Klux Klan. It is one of the most potent depictions Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and St. Louis of fascism to be found anywhere in cinema. all refused to allow the film to open. Despite, or perhaps Which returns us to the question of whether we can, or because of the controversy, the film was a huge commercial should, separate Griffith’s formidable cinematic technique success. Its box office records would only be eclipsed by from the racist ideology of The Birth of a Nation. A close another civil war epic, with its own questionable racial analysis of the film’s text reveals that the former is always politics, Gone with the Wind (1939). While some critics, in service of the latter. In our age of computer generated such as Agee, saluted Griffith’s technical achievements and collapsing stars and fire-breath- creative ambition, there were ing dragons it is easy to forget others who rejected its crude that the greatest special effect racism. Frances Hackett, writing the cinema possesses is the in the New Republic, argued that close-up – the director’s ultimate Thomas Dixon had merely ‘dis- tool of control through which he placed his own malignity onto the can intensely focus the gaze of Negro’. A New York the audience on a single visual Globe editorial thundered that detail. Griffith pioneered the the film was an insult to the lega- close-up because he fully under- cy of George Washington. stood the power of semiotics be- The most controversial review fore the term was invented. The of the film, however, came from close-up enabled him to weave President Woodrow Wilson who, within his films a lexicography of following a White House screen- symbols, each conjuring a range ing of the film, reportedly de- of conscious and unconscious scribed the film as ‘like writing associations that produce the bi- history with lightning. And my nary extremes of fear and inno- only regret is that it is all so terri- cence, despair and hope, bly true.’ The line is possibly cynicism and idealism that are apocryphal, and a Presidential the stock-in-trade oversimplifica- aide quickly dashed off a letter to tions of the ideologue. the NAACP denying Wilson’s re- Griffith’s use of cross-cut edit- marks. Yet although we cannot ing brought a thrilling dynamism be certain as to whether the to cinema. In early filmmaking president offered such a sympa- the camera remained rather stat- thetic judgement on The Birth of ic, simply recording whatever a Nation, one of the film’s interti- was going on in front of its lens, very often in single takes. tles features a quote from Wilson’s A History of the Ameri- The cross-cut edit, as pioneered by Griffith, moved the can People, in which he wrote that during reconstruction, ‘In action along, built suspense and stirred excitement. As film the villages [of the south] the negroes were the officehold- critic James Agee observed at the time: ers, men who knew nothing of the uses of authority, except its insolences.’ To watch [Griffith’s] work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of * the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordina- tion, and first eloquence of language; the birth of an The lessons of The Birth of a Nation are sharply relevant art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man. to our current moment. Our culture is one that is becoming defined by technological advances that offer us the thrills of Yet Griffith’s cross-cut editing does not operate simply as spectacle whilst masking the ideological underpinnings of a means of pacing the film, or providing it with pulsating cultural product in a haze of unthinking wonderment. In the rhythm – it also enables him to manipulate the sympathies West we face a range of complex political and social ques- of his audience, perhaps against their better judgement. tions posed by the effects of globalisation, capitalist exploi- Take, for instance, the penultimate scene of the film in tation and mass-migration that are being defined as which the Stoneman-Cameron family is besieged inside a questions of race by lazy media organisations unable to log-cabin by a crazed gang of black federal soldiers intent respond with nuance and insight in a climate of 24-hour on murdering them. This siege, complete with swooning rolling news coverage that cannot settle in fear of losing women fearing rape, is cross cut with a cavalry charge of viewers. Griffith’s work is a warning to us all of the dangers Ku Klux Klan members racing to rescue them. These Klan of using innovative technical media as the messenger of the members are presented more like the Teutonic knights of comfy old canards of a reassuringly innocent, though entire- medieval legend than the paramilitary racist thugs history ly mythical, past. The crucial question the film poses for us knows them to be. Griffith’s cinematic innovations also now is this – Are we so different from that audience of 1915, included commissioning a full-length score to accompany do we applaud the notional progress of technological ad- his silent masterpiece – featuring the music of Wagner vance at the expense of forgetting our own histories?

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 7 The Poet and the Public Intellectual

by Dylan Moore

riting matters. But also, it mat- of and catalyst for social change. Let catalyst for the formation of Cymdeith- ters in Wales, and matters us begin by following through the ex- as yr Iaith Gymraeg, and the start of a now. Being that our country is ample of Rousseau. If we agree that period of direct-action agitation to en- in the very early stages of nation build- the French Revolution – along with the hance the status of the Welsh lan- ing, I do not think there can ever be a contemporaneous Industrial Revolu- guage. Lewis was nominated for the more important time for writers to be tion in England – ushered in European 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature not, vocal in shaping public discourse in modernity, we must agree that thinkers perhaps, for the quality of his writing creative and positive ways. were its precursors. The masses may but for the impact of his thought. However, in order to allow us to see have stormed the Bastille, but they did And the Nobel Prize, often recog- ourselves and our teacup storms with so with new ideas in their heads. Be- nised as the ultimate accolade a Writer a wide-angle lens let us begin far away fore and since, in Europe and across can receive, is particularly relevant to from Wales. Pankaj Mishra’s new book the world, revolution – and other, more my own argument. In the words of From the Ruins of Empire traces ‘The gradual, social change – is fuelled by a Alfred Nobel’s will, the Prize should be Revolt Against the West and the Re- heady cocktail of social conditions and awarded ‘in the field of literature’ for making of Asia’ not by repeating the ideology. ‘the most outstanding work in an ideal deeds of the continent’s major players First come ideas, then words, then direction.’ The Swedish Academy seek of the mid twentieth century – Gandhi deeds. Always in that order. Where to reward lasting literary merit but also and Mao – but through the writings of action precedes thought, we stand on idealisk, a particular brand of idealism the intellectuals who prefigured them. the edge of chaos and oblivion. And that ‘champions human rights on a Liang Qichao, a Chinese man who so: before the mob, Rousseau. Before grand scale’. The Prize rewards writ- visited America in the hope that it the American revolution, Paine. Long ing, but above and beyond writing, it would provide inspiration for his home- before Lenin, Marx. Long before the rewards the Writer as symbol. land to break with Confucianism, end- suffragettes, Wollstonecraft; before Most societies give rise to small ed up concluding that inequality and Gandhi and Dr King, Thoreau. The late groups of thinkers who become precur- political corruption was no blueprint for twentieth century’s civil rights liberation sors to change. Sometimes the flow of a future society. Tellingly, he referenc- struggles were not only the result of a history leaves these groups as margin- es Rousseau. softening of societal attitudes, but the al figures, condemned to the shadows. ‘No longer will I tell a tale of pretty actualisation of decades, centuries, The Welsh Outlook is a case in point. dreams,’ he wrote, ‘the Chinese people millennia of theory. You may well not have heard of it. The for now must accept authoritarian rule; In Wales, we must – whatever we magazine was formed in the home of they cannot enjoy freedom.’ It was a might think of the man or his views – David Davies, grandson of ‘Llandinam’ chilling prophecy of the Mao Zedong acknowledge the importance of Saun- the industrialist and brother of Gwen era. No wonder: Liang was an influ- ders Lewis. Like ‘public intellectuals’ in and Margaret, whose collection of 260 ence on Mao. But more encouragingly other parts of the world, Lewis doubled paintings graces the National Museum for those of us who value freedom, as writer and political activist. His twin of Wales. With a readership of just a Liang did not see authoritarianism as legacy is the struggle to keep the couple of thousand, the magazine’s the long-term goal. In a few decades, Welsh language alive and the very centrality to the development of Welsh Liang maintained, the Chinese people concept of Wales as a political entity. nationalism – taking it away from nar- should be given ‘Rousseau to read.’ Both have been normalised. In his row religious and linguistic identity pol- And Jean-Jacques Rousseau is, in 1962 radio lecture ‘Tynged yr Iaith’ – itics to engage with internationalism Western terms, the key name here. The Fate of the Language, Lewis main- and modernity – is, when viewed in the What I would like to maintain is that tained that ‘Restoring the Welsh lan- international context to which it as- the intellectual, the thinker – she or he guage in Wales is nothing less than a pired, a footnote to a bigger picture that I would call the Writer (deliberate revolution. It is only through revolution- somewhere else. Even the dates of its capitalisation) – not only plays an im- ary means that we can succeed.’ The publication – the magazine ran from portant role in society, but is an agent writer’s incendiary remarks were the 1914 to 1933 – are redolent of far more

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 8 pressing issues in Wales and a grand- was Chair of the Human Rights Foun- Williams also clearly fit the profile of er narrative elsewhere. dation, yet another indication of the forward thinking, outward looking But at other times, history comes deep connection between the Writer’s Welshmen whose primary emphasis is calling. The Writer – engaged in quiet, concern with the human condition and on the propagation and furtherance of committed intellectual activity – must the activist’s concern with the human’s ideas. Like Lewis, Russell went to pris- be ready to stand and be counted, not conditions. on because of his commitment to ide- just in print but in life. I am thinking here And it was Havel’s compatriot Milan als – he was a conscientious objector of Orwell joining the International Bri- Kundera, in The Art of the Novel (1986) in World War I; also like Lewis, he was gades, Albert Camus’ role as editor of who made a distinction between a Writ- nominated for the Nobel Prize for Liter- Combat, the French Resistance paper. er (my capitalisation) and a novelist. ature. Unlike Lewis, he won. More recently, I am thinking about the Kundera: ‘The writer has original ideas fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie and a unique voice. He can employ The 1950 prize was awarded to Rus- and Orhan Pamuk’s denunciation of any form (including that of the novel) sell ‘in recognition of his varied and Turkey’s genocide-denial. I am also and because everything he writes significant writings in which he champi- thinking of writers who through their bears the mark of his thoughts, carried ons humanitarian ideals and freedom works have undoubtedly affected the by his voice, it is part of his work.’ Into of thought’. Note again the emphasis way we think about the world. Sigmund this category, Kundera – who has long on varied ‘writings’ rather than a specif- Freud. Edward Said. Frantz Fanon. been exiled to France – places Rous- ic monolithic work of art, and again the If Wales does not have, at present, seau, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Gide, emphasis on the Writer as champion of equivalents to these kinds of writers – Camus, Malraux. On the other hand, humanity and freedom. political, prophetic, wide-ranging – ‘[t]he novelist does not attach so much But the vast majority of front-rank maybe it is because, for the moment, importance to his ideas. He is an ex- Welsh writers have been from the oth- history is happening elsewhere. Owen plorer, busy feeling his way to unveil an er side of Kundera’s divide. They have Sheers’ Resistance, considered in this unknown aspect of existence. He is not been novelists. Or, even more often, light, is an odd first novel; it imagines a fascinated not by his voice, but by a poets. In a previous essay, I made context, because a Nazi occupation of form he is after, seeking to make it his mention of Dylan Thomas’ writing the Olchon valley allows us to consider own, and it is only the forms that can shed. This rather odd tourist attraction our own types of community under meet the demands of his dreams that with its perfectly preserved pictures such pressure. It is, the novel argues, become part of his works.’ Examples and paraphernalia, discarded ‘manu- under such pressure that we find out he gives here include Fielding, Sterne, scripts’ filling the wastepaper basket who we really are. Patrick McGuin- Flaubert, Proust, Faulkner and Celine. and littering the floor, has come to form ness’ The Last Hundred Days, set in Aside from the point Kundera makes the abiding image of the writer here in Romania, has a similar thrust. Whether explicitly, I think there is also some- Wales. First, he is solitary; second, he the displacement happens through thing of importance in the fact he uses is melancholy, a tortured genius time or space, much contemporary the singular ‘work’ in relation to the searching for le mot juste, mae’r gair Welsh writing gives the impression that Writer and the plural ‘works’ when dis- cywir. Third, he is a he. Fourth – and relevant backdrops for the big socio- cussing novelists. To take the given this is my main point – he is the very political and moral questions lie else- authors, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, opposite of a public intellectual, the where. Madame Bovary, A la recherché du very idea of which has always been temps perdu, The Sound and the Fury treated with suspicion in Britain as a * and Journey to the End of the Night are whole. The Welsh Writers I have dis- each singular works of art, self-concussed – Saunders Lewis, Raymond It is no accident that the preeminent tained infinities. By contrast, the best- Williams and Bertrand Russell – are all writers of any given era are often inex- known works of the Writers mentioned widely seen as European thinkers. tricably linked with the history of the are part of a wider schema. The Out- In a previous essay I also addressed period. In the 1980s, as the world’s sider, for example, is best read – is the question of how the particular writ- geopolitical plates rubbed up against intended to be read – alongside The ers we have had in Wales who might each other along the Iron Curtain, it Myth of Sisyphus. Rousseau’s Dis- be considered ‘world-class’ is for de- was no surprise that many of the dec- course on the Origin of Inequality is bate. Dylan Thomas’ status is not so ade’s most ‘important’ writers were inseparable from On the Social Con- much as our greatest writer but as the from Central and Eastern Europe. In- tract. In short, it might be said that the most well-known. He has been cast in deed, two of those to whom I would novelist is concerned with the Work, bronze, ‘a Welshman, a drunkard and draw particular attention were born just the Writer with the Body of Work that a lover of the human race, especially of seven years and a hundred miles apart expresses an Idea. women’, the paradigmatic Welsh writ- in what was then Czechoslovakia. I believe Kundera’s is a vital distinc- er. An icon. Vaclav Havel, who died late 2011, tion, and very useful to an understand- There are numerous reasons why not was the embodiment of the public intel- ing of the Writer’s position here in so much Thomas or his writing but the lectual. A playwright, poet and essay- Wales. It may help us to understand image of Thomas and his lifestyle has ist, Havel was also a dissident who what we have had to celebrate in the become a burden to subsequent gen- became a political prisoner and then, past and what we have traditionally erations of Welsh writers to reach an when freedom came, was elected lacked. Better still, it can point a direc- international audience. As a country of President. The ultimate Writer-states- tion for the future. three million people we have already man, Havel was widely accepted at I have already discussed Saunders had our fair share of internationally home and abroad as possessing an Lewis, who very clearly fits Kundera’s famous writers, i.e. one. When Bill Clin- uncommon moral authority to rule, in criteria for a Writer. His work is clearly ton stood on a stage in Hay-on-Wye addition to his popular triumph at the underpinned by a voice and a set of and pronounced that ‘you’re lucky, you ballot box. At the time of his death he ideas. Bertrand Russell and Raymond

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 9 Welsh, to have [Dylan Thomas] as vital link to the past and a prescient about the relationship between free- your poet,’ he used the singular. glimpse of the future even when con- dom and oppression; samizdat litera- In the eyes of the world, we have had textualizing the present. ture – the hand-to-hand passing our poet; there is no longer room for What is noticeable in all of my exam- around of outlawed, sensitive material anybody else. In the same way that ples, within Wales and without, is the – shows us the power and importance you might as an educated person be time lapse involved. Whether from The of the written word. It finds contempo- able to name one Burmese politician, Communist Manifesto to the Russian rary echoes in the twittering sound- one Icelandic popstar and one Slovene Revolution or ‘Tynged yr Iaith’ to the track to the Arab Spring, events linked philosopher, around the world the like- Welsh Language Act 1993, there is through journalistic shorthand to those lihood is that an educated person could usually at least a generation’s gap be- of Prague 1968. probably name – at a push – one tween the genesis of an idea and the The first casualties of totalitarianism Welsh poet. A useful analogy here recognition of its fruition or even an are the minds that would oppose it. would be with Jamaica. The Caribbean acceptance of its validity. What seems The last decade has encouraged lots island is comparable with Wales in controversial, outrageous or revolu- of talk about winning ‘hearts and terms of both its population and its tionary at first can seem like common minds.’ Hearts are easy to deal with; disproportionate number of ‘notables’. sense decades later. dictators and terrorists, by definition, At London 2012, the world record- This is not to say writers are always are unconcerned with hearts. Minds, breaking sprint relay team demonstrat- right, or even ahead of the game; very however, are dangerous. You can ed the island’s wealth of talent. And yet often the opposite proves to be the break bodies, but some of history’s our desire for icons means Usain Bolt case. And it must surely be noted that, most inspiring stories show that you is the Jamaican sprinter. Even the very as in this case, the argument for Writer- cannot change minds quite so easily. best Welsh writers are, it has seemed, ly importance is most often put forward Writers, of course, deal in the currency forever condemned to being the Yohan by writers. But it is no accident that of the mind. Blake to Dylan Thomas’ Bolt, the Jim- dictators and oppressors first target the Dai Smith has called Wales ‘a young my Cliff to Dylan Thomas’ Bob Marley. intelligentsia. Writers represent free- country not afraid to remember what it My argument for the importance of dom; even in situations where they might yet become’. And at the end of a the Writer is concerned with the role have not been politically active in the week where Leanne Wood used her rather than the individuals who find most direct sense, the potential they first conference speech as leader of themselves cast as such through what have to undermine lies makes them the party founded by Saunders Lewis Orwell called ‘some demon whom one dangerous. to outline an idealistic vision of a Welsh can neither resist nor understand’. For If I use Orwell as a leaning post once New Deal, it would be worth remem- me, the Writer is defined not by his or more, it is because his skill was to write bering that while we will build the na- her particularities – iconic or exception- in the plainest English what many tion together – nurses, teachers, al or otherwise – but by the way in would have said in terms that ordinary carpenters, mechanics, shop assist- which through the specifics of his or people would find off-putting. ‘I write… ants, bar staff, rugby players, theatre her writing he or she connects us to the because there is some lie that I want to directors, social workers, even politi- general. The Writer, in the sense I am expose,’ he wrote, effectively ending cians – for a clear vision of where we defining him or her, is a conduit for the any future attempts to explain the im- might go, we are also going to need not spirit of the age. Somehow, through pulse any better than that. If I cite East- only novelists and poets, but Writers some means unbeknownst even to him ern Europe under communism again, it with a capital ‘W’. or herself, the Writer rides the zeitgeist is because the particularities of that like a wild pony. The Writer provides a period show us something universal

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 10 Wales, the Artist and Society: The Legacy of Beca

by Sara Rhoslyn Moore

o you think of 1977 The name ‘Rebecca’ was for the rioters, Rebekah is a spired by political issues, as as the year Welsh taken from an obscure mother symbol; the mother suppose to pictorial art. This art was revolution- verse in the Bible, with of the land -and the people was totally barbaric to the ized? You ought which Wales’ non-conform- of the land are her children. Artists, but also to the peo- to. At the National Eistedd- ist communities would have Paul Davies’ performance ple of Wales and other visi- fod that year, in Wrexham, nevertheless been extreme- /protest at the 1977 National tors. Political art teaches the the late artist Paul Davies ly familiar: Eisteddfod not only echoed viewer of the issues Wales staged a protest as a per- the theatricality of the Re- have faced or are facing. formance piece. There was And they blessed becca Riots, but also sym- The performance was a a prevailing lack of recogni- Rebekah and said bolically recalled another success. The organisers of tion for political art works in unto her, Thou art injustice with deep reso- the National Eisteddfod, the Wales and he intended to our sister, be thou nances, particularly in the Arts Council of Wales, change this. It led him to the mother of thou- Welsh-speaking communi- changed their dated view on found a group of artists who sands of millions, ty. Davis held a railway Welsh art. Now the Eistedd- became known as The BE- and let thy seed sleeper above his head in fod actually encourages art CA Group. possess the gate of the grounds of the Eistedd- of a political nature by re- The name was inspired by those which hate fod. Inscribed on the sleeper warding artists with an Ivor the ‘Merched Beca’ or ‘Bec- them. Genesis were the initials ‘WN’, a ref- Davies Award for art that ca’s Daughters’, the Rebec- 24:60 erence to the punishments conveys the spirit of activ- ca Rioters of 1839-43. given to pupils when Welsh ism in the struggle for lan- Merchaid Beca would de- One act of gate-breaking was spoken in schools in guage, culture and politics. stroy toll gates that were put by the rioters included a pro- the wake of the 1847 educa- The legacy of BECA is se- on Welsh roads by the Eng- tester acting as an old lady tion report that became cure. lish as a means of charging – a ‘mother’ who talks to her known, notoriously, as The But if this was a revolution yet more taxes on already ‘children’ – the rioters. Treachery of the Blue in Welsh art, how could we struggling farmers. This un- Something blocks the moth- Books. The same ‘WN’ ini- have not known about it be- fair taxation affected mid er’s way; she is old and can- tials were worn on a board fore? Now that we have and south Wales’ agricultur- not see well. Her children hung around the child’s learnt about this exciting, al communities in particular are concerned; nothing neck: Welsh Not. inspiring and confident Art as they were already in dire should restrict their mother. To parade these initials at Group, you may be feeling poverty at this time due to They offer to move it for her, the National Eisteddfod of inquisitive. Want to learn poor harvests. she feels the object and re- all places in Wales took more? Unfortunately but not Merchaid Beca intended to alises it’s a gate put there to courage and confidence; it surprisingly there is a lack of change this. Although they stop her. The children, of- was action certain to attract information on the Beca are referred to as Merched fended, offer to break it attention and shock both the Group. As a nation, we – Daughters, they were in down, but Rebekah has public and the Eisteddfod struggle to possess our suc- fact men dressed as wom- faith and looks to see if it officials. The Beca Group cess. Here, the BECA en, mostly farmers. In an can be opened; to her horror members Paul, Peter, Ivor Group have changed the early example of perform- it has been locked and bolt- and Tim Davies, Iwan Bala way visual art is thought of ance protest, they wore the ed to which the children in- and Peter Telfer, all re- in Wales, but what about all traditional Welsh Lady cos- sist: ‘it must be brought nowned Fine Artists in their those who didn’t or couldn’t tume, blackened their faces down, mother; you and your own right, formed as Welsh go to the Eisteddfod that with soot to maintain ano- children must be able to artists were struggling to get year, or like myself weren’t nymity and stealthily left pass’ to which she replies: their works exhibited within even born. The people of their families, riding out on ‘Off with it then my children’. the galleries of Wales. This Wales shouldn’t be living life horseback into the night. It becomes clear here that applied particularly to art in- oblivious to the rare occa-

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 11 sions where there have ac- ti as rebellious during the 60s tually been positives in our and 70s, being one of, if not history. the first in the UK to use Artists create to deliver a explosives as part of his art- message, to get it out there, work. He was the winner of at the Eisteddfod and be- the 2002 Gold Medal for yond. There is nothing clev- Fine Art at the National Ei- er in making art hard for steddfod and received an people to access. The BE- MBE in the New Years Hon- CA Group, Arts Council and ours List 2007, has exhibit- the Eisteddfod had a re- ed in over sixty solo sponsibility in making the exhibitions and his work can nation know about this. Peo- be found in collections all ple at Eisteddfodau are less over the world. Iwan Bala, in need of being made Artist, writer and philoso- aware of such issues; it’s pher, is a crucial figure in the people who do not at- the Welsh arts and cultural tend the Eisteddfodau who scene. Winner of the Owain are the most in need of Glyndwr medal in 1998 for these eye openers. Is it just his contribution to the arts in snobbery to only show Wales. He has exhibited in- themselves at Eisteddfo- ternationally along with pri- dau? To be truly political, art vate collections across the needs to take to the streets. UK, winner of the Gold Med- Wales as a nation has sense of it the best way it es leading to their own suc- al for Fine Art in 1997 and a been fighting for the survival suits you, and relate the cessful careers. founder member of The Art- of the Welsh language subjects to your own life ex- The success of the BECA ists Project. throughout its history, and perience, making it easier to Group is no surprise when Tim Davies’ work consists yet we struggle to communi- digest. This results in a looking at the members’ of film, found imagery and cate in that very language. deeper level of understand- subsequent achievements: sculpture. Winner of the Why? ing, and when you under- The late Paul Davies 2003 medal for fine art, he Throughout Wales there stand something, you gain founded the BECA Group also represented Wales in are many dialects. Slang dif- confidence. Unlike music, during the 1970s and his the 2011 Venice Biennale. fers not only between North film, or books, which all use image at the ‘Welsh Not’ And finally, Peter Telfer, a and South but from village words or tone to encourage performance is the most filmmaker based near Ma- to village; then there are a particular thought or feel- iconic image of contempo- chynlleth who runs a televi- those who through higher ing, fine art is respectful of rary Welsh art. The issues sion production company by education or via their par- its viewer. It does not tell that caused concern for the name of Pixel Foundry ents learnt the ‘proper you what to think; it merely Davies were history, identity and occasionally still takes Welsh’. Many of us drift encourages you to think, and the condition of the en- photographs. He has many through life not really know- opening the mind. Art can vironment of his land. Dav- photographs of inspirational ing about our own past, let help Wales to break down ies wanted to teach and artists such as Paul Davies alone our future as a nation. communication barriers or inspire people of the issues on Culture Colony, a web- The main reason for this is the so-called ‘cliques’ we surrounding Wales and site which is specifically for most likely to be the fact that seem to have in Wales and hoped to stimulate a move- Welsh artists or artists living there isn’t one thing the the Welsh ‘scene’. ment. In his efforts to do this in Wales. The project was whole of Wales watches, The legacy of the Beca he involved everyone from immensely influenced by listens to or reads. The Eng- Group lives on as the voice students, the unemployed, Paul Davies, and the creator lish have much influence on for Welsh art. Whether the to the disabled and children. of the website likes to think the Welsh language due to political artist of today is Davies created maps of of the site as a map of this. Could art be the an- aware of the BECA Group’s Wales in a variety of differ- Wales Davies would be swer in uniting us together? actions or not they are most ent mediums and was said proud of. I’d like to think so. definitely responsible for to have drawn a map of I will bring this essay to an The advantage of fine art created a strong and confi- Wales a day. Peter Davies, end with the inciting and is that there is no official dent climate for these art- brother of Paul, is an artist, comforting words of Tim person standing there telling ists; they have secured a lecturer, and curator, who Davies, asked about the you what to think and feel. It future for the politicisation of has worked across the current disparate state of doesn’t tell you anything; it Welsh art. Welsh artists world. He was the director of the group. They display the makes you ask questions: such as Bedwyr Williams, Cardiff Bay Art Trust and spirit of these artists and the the most importance ques- who will be representing also Head of Visual Arts and power of art:‘…spiritually tion being, what is the artist Wales at the Venice Bien- Crafts for the Arts Council of we’re still together… if the trying to say? This is instant- nale 2013, and Carwyn Wales. need arises we’ll galvanize ly thought provoking. When Evans, who won the gold Ivor Davies, is associated together again. The spirit of we look at art we think in the medal at the National Ei- with a stimulating variety of Beca lasts fundamentally as language we speak so there steddfod 2012, have defi- styles but is most recog- a political conscience which is no intimidation for the nitely got the BECA Group nized as a history painter. can be easily stirred.’ viewer; art lets you make to thank for the opportuni- Davies could be described

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 12 The Deep Sigh: Meditations Upon Haiku

by Paul Chambers

here is a traditional Andalucían expression on the a historical survey, it is enough to say that this is not, nor nature of poetry, which translates roughly as… has it ever really been, the case. For me, a great haiku carries the feel of the sigh of the The sigh told to the tongue; Spanish poem, both in feeling and in form. By its nature it go and search for words is brief, yet it carries within it a tremendous depth – it is a to say what I can say. vision of the world reflected in a single drop of dew. It is a deep sigh, the life and death of a momentary experience, Though not a haiku itself, to my mind there is perhaps no an expression of life distilled to its purest form. greater expression of the spirit of the form than this simple A haiku is not an expression of a writer’s feelings about folkloric poem. a given subject or experience; it is, in fact, the experience Before my own immersion in haiku, I had experimented itself. When writing a haiku, the poet is instructed to leave with different forms and styles of poetry, developing a not a hair’s breadth between him or herself and the subject. better understanding of my approach to the craft. I came to Take as an example, this poem by Basho, the first haiku I realise that I could usually muster two or three lines that remember reading and, perhaps, the haiku which retains were maybe worth something, but would then find myself the most profound impact on me… attempting to expand those lines into what I perceived to be a ‘proper’ poem of ‘proper’ length. What I actually ended reeds cut for thatching up doing was distorting the original experience into a series the stumps now stand forgotten of ugly riddles, finding shallow, symbolist alternatives to sprinkled with soft snow express what I had already expressed in the moment of initial inspiration. There is no need for anything else. There is nothing Needless to say, a growing awareness of this process grand or ornate. Great haiku cultivates its images in such lent itself to a feeling of incompetence and, for some time, a way that they mean nothing beyond themselves, and at a reluctance to write anything again. Then I discovered the same time express so much that it is not possible to haiku, through Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus. I had not catch their final meaning. There is no room for ‘I feel this ever really read haiku very seriously, but there was some- way about…’ or ‘this is what I thought when…’ – it is the thing in the form, something in the attitude, that resonated sharing of experience; not to express what you felt, but to deeply with me. offer the moment that caused you to feel. Take another I realised that the moments of inspiration that had given astonishing example by Basho… way to those poor offerings for so long, were actually all I needed – there was no need to embellish each moment with pale literary imitations of itself. the first snow – When I read Kerouac’s… the leaves of the daffodils are just bending Early morning yellow flowers –Thinking about The reader has to be absorbed into haiku as into nature, The drunkards of Mexico to lose himself or herself in its depth. There are very clear demands on the reader, yet if one can enter this depth then I was struck with the understanding that, in that moment, the experience is all the more beautiful – beautiful because the moment was enough. I felt all of the romance, the mad, the moment, caught and fixed, is one, and falls into eternity. tragic beauty of the thought, the purity of the expression, Indeed, the impact of reeds cut for thatching is evident in the simplicity and humble brevity of the form, the mystery a poem I wrote in response, years after first experiencing it lying deep in the contrasts of the poem’s parts. Kerouac’s as a reader, which is being published in the autumn issue determination, ‘I will find the right words, and they will be of Acorn haiku journal… simple’, was a revelation. Haiku is a familiar form yet perhaps most ideas or rusted rail track preconceptions of the form carry the impressions of very fading slowly strict technical rules and requirements, syllable counts, early snow cutting words and nature references. Without entering into

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 13 Inevitably, my first efforts at haiku were poor, usually no ment within these traditions to strengthen the sharing of the more than an imitation or a Zen gimmick. Yet, with time, haiku moment – in this instance, to use empathetic expres- and with studying the work of the great haiku masters, I sions of the natural world to root the poem in time and found myself more and more open to the reception of the space and convey the experience of life more deeply. ‘haiku moment’. Though strongly identified as a form of To my mind, there is a common tendency to hold nature poetry, there are a vast number of urban haiku in imagination as the greatest gift of vision. While there is existence, and it was the urban landscape that first in- undoubtedly much mileage in this, it is my own belief that formed my first published poems, the very first appearing the greatest gift of vision is, in fact, insight – not the gift that in Presence haiku journal… adds a picture, no matter how true, to the fact, but that which pierces through the fact and discovers the meaning pigeons mating hidden in its heart; that which breaks through the crust of dark water trapped the outward event to its core of spiritual reality. in the grout lines As well as our acquisitive faculties, those which go out to seek the truth, we have others, the nature of which is As my craft developed, the technical awareness of the receptive – they are there to receive such truth as may power of each individual word, and even the space become to us, and both are essential to our knowledge of the tween the words, became more apparent. Take, for in- truth. If you go out to meet the truth, with intense insight, stance, the unnatural break and the double-meaning of the the truth will come to meet you. If you do this, the rest will word ‘still’ at the end of the second line in this poem, come, and that is the process of revelation. It is by precise- published by Chrysanthemum haiku journal… ly this process that one becomes attuned to the perception and cultivation of the ‘haiku moment’. winter sky The reading and writing of haiku is always a process of the dead child’s clothes still searching. It is endless, infinite. It is offering up mortality to hanging on the line the light of the infinite, and falling infinitely deep inside all that is mortal. On his deathbed, Basho composed this, his The challenge of the brevity of the form, of the succinct final poem, and a work which perhaps best encapsulates nature of the expression, becomes more organic the more the most profound elements at work in a great haiku. In its you work at it. For me, it has become an almost natural greatest moments, is the deep sigh of life… form of expression. Having been a student of film, Eisen- stein’s theory of editing, of contrasts and juxtapositions of falling sick on a journey images and expressions, has had a strong effect on my over withered fields thinking about poetry. Along with my experience as a script dreams wander on writer and script editor, refining the brevity and clarity of style at work in film screenplays, I suppose I had already harnessed two essential technical elements of the form. The greatest thrill I have had in publishing haiku thus far is the appearance of my work in Modern Haiku, the longest running and most prestigious English-language haiku journal in the world, and in Bottle Rockets haiku journal, which has published work by Beat Generation heroes of mine such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso. A sequence of poems published in Bottle Rockets illustrates one of the most well-known of haiku traditions, the seasonal reference…

summer dusk girls chalk their shadows on the new tar

field of dead grass the wind loses its breath

sun in the ribs of the old pier ebb tide

a donkey tethered to a tractor tyre dead sunflowers

One of the stigmas surrounding haiku is that there is some strict imposition of rules and requirements suffocating the natural expression of a poet. Clearly these haiku are all set in summer, yet only one actually names the season itself. Working within the tradition established by haiku masters, it is clear that you can utilise and experi-

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 14 A Tribute to Dannie Abse: Goodbye, Twentieth Century

by Adam Somerset

‘Huesca’ ‘moves me still, its pi- quant directness, its sad music, its silence between the quatrains…’ The influence of the poet spills over into the prose. On arriving in the great metropolis: ‘It takes a long time to like London’s secret ways, her modesty… London disappears down smoky evenings, resenting your familiarity.’ In Llandaff Cathedral he sees the niches filled with gold-plated wreaths of wild flowers. He is reminded that Welsh has dozens of flowers that are named in honour of the Virgin. He honeymoons at Ogmore, ‘that lark-high, seaside village which overlooked the crin- kling, silver-paper shine of the es- tuary below.’ With the poetry comes the literary life. In a restaurant he finds himself sitting between Freddie Ayer and William Coldstream. In a gloomy 1944 London he goes to a lecture by Edmund Blunden and offers him his own poems. He is in the audience to see Stephen he 2011 edition of Goodbye, claims he once found for the nobility of Spender jump to his feet and de- Twentieth Century re-publish- poetry, those of Shelley and Eliot, no nounce Emanuel Litvinoff for insulting es Dannie Abse’s earlier auto- longer carry much weight, ‘hollow Eliot. biographical writing as part of post-Auschwitz and Hiroshima.’ He inhabits that great émigré centre, the Library of Wales imprint. Abse took A galaxy of poets gather to celebrate the Cosmo in St John’s Wood and his place alongside authors such as his eightieth birthday. The meets Elias Canetti. On a flight out of Arthur Machen, Emyr Humphreys and Presence wins the Wales Book of the Heathrow a security guard is puzzled Raymond Williams. For the re-issue, a Year Award for all the comically bun- to find that Ted Hughes travels with third section, ‘Entering the Twenty-first gled ceremony. After a lecture given the tooth of a tiger in his pocket. In the Century’, was written. by Jan Morris a fan tells him how much grandeur of Princeton he is confidently This third part, sixty-seven pages, is he has enjoyed the biography of Philip told he obviously cannot be famous. ‘If the life in old age. Its inevitable centre Larkin, not that he has written one. you’re famous, you haven’t got time to is the calamity of bereavement. It Sombrely, brother Leo dies: ‘He can spend on students.’ As often the writer came brutally in the form of an instant rightly be termed Britain’s top reformer has to suffer the perception that the late night car collision. The couple had of the twentieth century, having in- fruits of the imagination are the life been returning from a Porthcawl din- spired nine Private Member’s Acts.’ All undiluted. In the case of Ash on an Old ner with Robert Minhinnick and wife. have been ‘designed to heal troubled Man’s Sleeve even the publisher con- As both doctor and poet Abse knows personal relationships… eschewed by nives, promoting it as plain autobiog- the ways of the body and the small more timorous politicians.’ raphy. consolation of words. He quotes Doc- Goodbye, Twentieth Century is a Abse’s age of poetry pre-dates that tor Johnson: ‘Grief is a kind of idle- work of prose that is suffused with in which the poet is by default part of ness.’ He spurns the suggestion of poets and poetry. For his first script for the promotional package. ‘Poetry counselling and begins a journal. ‘I cry, television Abse stands beside the Tho- readings,’ he writes, ‘used to be dead- therefore I am’ is its first entry. mas grave in Laugharne. In front of a ly dull. Until the 1960s too many poets This last part opens with another tale bust he sees an ‘astonishingly wild mumbled or read at 100mph or chose from life’s winter. An exhausting lec- and haunted Dylan head staring into poems that were entirely unsuitable for ture tour in America sends him to Lon- space, his tie awry, a cigarette droop- public recital.’ Roy Campbell appears don’s Royal Free Hospital, the doctor ing between his lips. ‘The dead,’ he for a reading visibly drunk. Abse’s own in him knowing the right word: ‘angi- says, ‘can sometimes come alive for a rising public profile raises press atten- oplasty’. Old age brings acclaim for moment.’ He says he has learnt much tion. The Poetry Society is gripped by late work, the pleasure of old friends from Rilke, particularly his Book of feuding. A few lines of conversation and comrades and the curious bustle Hours. He remembers the first poem with a Royal is gruesomely inflated of the literary life. He looks deep for that he ever learnt by heart. It was and misrepresented by London’s meaning into the life he has made. The done voluntarily and John Cornford’s evening paper.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 15 Poetry does not pay. When Blunden diseases, only sick people.’ The sick He recalls the terrible fear when the commends the first verse, father is on people he sees are sufferers from TB, V1 rocket’s engine dies and the inter- hand to comment: ‘He can’t be much bronchiectasis, sarcoidosis, lung val before the explosion elsewhere of a critic. Besides you should be stud- cysts, Hodgkin’s Disease. He goes that means normal life may resume. ying medicine hard, not wasting time back to Robert Koch’s discovery of the He has a mild National Service at a composing poems.’ From childhood tubercle bacillus and overhears a pa- mass radiography unit in Carrington. the young Abse has been aware of tient saying ‘TB, doctor? That stands ‘What’s kind of station is it?’ he asks ‘the processions of the unemployed’ for totally buggered, doesn’t it?’ an airman. ‘Shit-hole,’ is the reply. And and ‘the TB that was rife in the valleys.’ Goodbye, Twentieth Century is his- the medical service? ‘F***in’ ridicu- The medical life dips in and out of the tory, and history weaves in and out of lous.’ Decades on he is on a charity book. The nervous beginner finds that its long length. The London he inhabits panel with a forceful young MP. The symptoms are vague in description – is thickened with exiles. He describes Chair turns to him to field a question ‘this funny feeling I get here, doctor, the refugees in their single rooms with about Auden. Before he can utter a moves from place to place.’ The dis- sputtering gas fire, heavy furniture, word the MP has her word in: ‘When I eases presented rarely match the de- frayed carpet, a photograph of a van- was at Oxford with Auden…’ she kicks scriptions in the textbooks. ished relative, and their cafes, the off. The panel co-member is the formi- Briefly in obstetrics he witnesses ‘the Cosmo, the Dorice, the Glass Hosue dable member for Finchley. most astonishing smile’ that follows and the Swiss. They are the tiniest Goodbye, Twentieth Century is a birth. He cites a French medical prov- fraction of those who have survived; a long, rich and satisfying read, its place erb to the effect that ‘there are no cloud of dread hangs heavy over them. in the Library of Wales well-earned.

Occupy Gezi: The Cultural Impact

by James Lloyd

am sitting drinking tea with friends comprised of second-hand book- ularly its leader, Prime Minister Recep in the Cafe Grand Boulevard in the shops, jewellery and handbag stores, Tayyip Erdoğan. Beyoğlu district of Istanbul. It is tattoo and piercing studios. In the day- However, it was the events of the evening and the place is busier than time, sunlight cut by the grape leaves Friday before, 31 May, that have moti- usual. We are sat so close together all that adorn its inner sanctum lend it an vated him and thousands others to our knees are touching. enchanted quality. At night people sit involve themselves in the movement Cafe Grand Boulevard is located in on the tiny Turkish stools they call that has become known as Occupy a courtyard of the Hazzopulo Pasajı. In “tabure”, huddled together like pen- Gezi. the Nineteenth-century this area had guins, talking until the early hours. Kaan tells us about watching the been the domain of Ottoman Greeks, Following the local municipality’s events unfold at home via Twitter, Fa- Armenians and Jews, and had been seemingly abrupt decision in July 2011 cebook and YouTube, and from known since the middle-ages as Pera – under a directive named ‘table oper- friends texting him pictures and video (‘Across’ in Greek) until the establish- ations’ (‘masa operasyonları’ in Turk footage of police entering the park, ment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. ish) – to remove all outdoor furniture setting fire to the tents of protesters Hazzopulo Pasajı (literally from outside of street cafes and camped there, using their batons to ‘Passage Hazzopulo’) is a testament restaurants, Cafe Grand Boulevard is beat them and then indiscriminately to its former Greek denizens. Built in one of the very few places in Beyoğlu spraying and firing canisters into 1871 by the Istanbul Greek Hacopulo where you can sit outside to eat and mounting crowds aghast at their un- Family and restored in drink. merited brutality. Another of our group, 2002, Hazzopulo is one of One of our group, Kaan, works as an an archaeologist named Ayça, de- many Pasajı’s to flank the indomitable architect for a local firm and lists the scribes the demolition of the historic İstiklal Avenue. A humble entrance ‘table operations’ on the finger of his Emek Cinema Theater in order to build belies an elegant Ottoman-era struc- hand as one of the several decisions a shopping mall (the theatre and its ture which along with the teahouse that has fuelled public resentment to- original reliefs are to be restored and and charming cobbled courtyard is wards Turkey’s ruling AK Parti, partic- refitted on the fourth floor).

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 16 For me, this is the one that stands secular republic, thus cultivating a all due respect, I’m asking the out. If the Occupy Gezi movement had more cosmopolitan outlook. The prime minister, the guarantor a most obvious predecessor, a close Guardian was one of the few interna- of İstanbul’s cultural integrity, warning of what was to come, the tional newspapers to report on its to intervene to save the thea- demonstration held in April to save demolition, noting that: tre and not let commerce out- Turkey’s oldest theatre was it. weigh culture. Among the Emek protesters and Since 1958, the cinema has those signing a petition against its been publicly owned and has It is difficult to build a culture without demolition were the guests of this provided the backdrop for a heritage. And these two events tak- year’s İstanbul International Film Fes small, courageous revolts: the en together – the ‘table operations’ tival, namely, directors Costa-Gavras, first big public 1 May celebra- and the demolition of the Emek Cine- Mike Newell, Marco Becchis and Jan tions after the military coup of ma Theater – can be seen as prime Ole Gerster. Taking this into account it 1980 took place there, it examples of the AK Parti’s ‘wrecking seemed incredible that police would housed left-wing concerts and ball’ effect on the public sphere, what exercise indiscriminate force against a did not shy away from screen- the latter sees as a prioritising of com- peaceful protest, including the use of ing Martin Scorsese’s The merce over culture. With the proposed pepper spray and water cannons. Last Temptation of Christ redevelopment of Gezi Park and Tak- While I’d heard about the demolition, while religious groups protest- sim being seen as another hijacking of I knew nothing about the Emek Cine- ed outside. another civic domain in the interests of ma Theater’s considerable history; its private capitalism, people are asking design and interior, the lives it had The Emek demonstration turned where is this path leading to? cultivated, its role in the personal his- violent. Pepper gas and water can- tories of countless people; and when I nons were used. By its end four people * looked at photographs of the Emek, it had been detained, including distin- fostered in me that strange nostalgia a guished film critic, Berke Göl, while Kaan receives a phone call, and from person feels when encountering Atila Dorsay, Turkey’s most respected his face we could tell it was bad news. something that you’ve never known – film scholar, later announced he was His friend’s house – used on the previ- a letter in Akkadian written on a clay to retire. In an article entitled, ‘Time to ous weekend to escape being tear- tablet or a restored film of London in say farewell’, Dorsay wrote: gassed – had been burgled. The tele- 1927 – a sensation akin to déjà vu; a vision, cigarettes and alcohol had feeling that emanates from our innate This theatre had a value for been taken. In many ways it is a relief collective memory, the psychic residue the cultural structure it carried to discover that it wasn’t some alterca- of our ancestors. This why culture, and and the historic reservoir and tion with the police. heritage, matters: they connect us to lifestyle it represented. Today Since Sunday their presence around the past and future. there is nothing called Emek. Taksim, Istiklal and Gezi Park had Opening its doors in 1924, the Angel We could not manage to ex- abated, so much so that I would not Cinema (‘Melek Sineması’ in Turkish), plain its symbolic and real val- see a single officer for the next five as it was then known, was frequently ue. days, highly unusual in Istanbul. regarded as one of the most beautiful Whether this had anything to do with cinemas in Europe. It formed part of The overzealous reaction of the Kaan’s friend being burgled or not I the Cercle d’Orient, a listed art deco police and the demolition were criti- don’t know, but the demonstration building designed by Levantine cised further by director Costa-Gavras against perceived state oppression architect Alexandre Vallaury in 1884. in a letter to PM Erdoğan: and Erdoğan’s drift towards autoc- The theatre’s interior was a mix of ratism had also provided an opportuni- baroque and rococo artistic styles; two The violence that followed the ty for unnecessary vandalism. Art Nouveau angels on either side of peaceful [protest] should not We all leave the cafe together and the screen inspired its name. cast a shadow over the main separate on Istiklal. The opportunity to I understood as best I could the cause of this gathering […] A cash in on the spirit of Occupy Gezi is frustrations of the protesters, actors, major cinema, a cultural cen- in full swing. Bottles and cans of Efes filmmakers, but also the Emek’s place tre, should not be destroyed. in wooden boxes filled with crushed in the collective memory of Istanbul, It’s like eradicating the memo- ice, hawkers line up fake pairs of train- not only as a monument to Turkish ry of the past, and an impor- ers outside Adidas and Nike stores – culture, but as a emblem of Ataturk’s tant place for the future. It heavily vandalised during the week- transformation of the old Ottoman- would be a mistake; politically, end; swimming goggles, snorkling and Turkish state into a European-styled socially and artistically. With surgical masks along with lemons and

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 17 anticids are being sold in case of an- what kinds of items they required and reported seventy cities around Turkey other gas attack. Above all though is we took a bag of supplies with us, whose concerns would differ to vary- the Turkish flag and the image of Mus- mostly personal hygiene products. ing degrees. In short, there is no ‘one- tafa Kemal Ataturk. It is not my intent to portray the size-fits-all’ ideology. Occupy Gezi is a tactile movement, protesters camped at Gezi Park itself Nonetheless, we should not dismiss people are scratching their protest on as saints – I don’t believe that is how the solidarity the mix of groups have the skin of the city. The protest is they see themselves or how they wish demonstrated in what is surely a goal everywhere. Not only in the cafes, to be seen. However, I have nothing that unites all at Taksim Square and streets and bars. It’s written on the but admiration for their courage in the Gezi Park – ensuring that both remain walls, paint-sprayed on the roads and face of police brutality, pacifist commit- an autonomous space where the pub- pavements, in the metro stations; leaf- ment in protecting the park for them- lic can express themselves both singu- lets have been printed and are being selves and future generations, and larly and collectively. handed out, stencils of penguins have creative approach to organising and Diversity as opposed to homogenei- been designed and are sprayed on arranging the park into cooperative. ty, democracy as opposed to autocra- walls – during the worst of police vio- Their altruism has been overwhelm- cy, culture as opposed to consumption lence CNN Turk instead chose to air a ing. It’s fair to say I have never wit- – this is a message a majority of those documentary on penguins – all kinds nessed anything like Occupy Gezi; the protesting can agree on. of flags are being flown, pots and pans same goes for the many Turks I have hit by woman hanging out of apart- spoken to. I feel privileged. Of the * ment blocks, lights flashing on and off many examples I could give of the against their windows, endless whis- protesters’ energy and inventiveness, Incompatibility defines Istanbul, es- tling; and the chanting – ‘Tayyip Istifa’ I think the Gezi Park Library and the pecially in terms of culture. The city (‘Resign Tayyip [Erdoğan]’) and ‘Her ‘Museum of the Revolution’ (where has in the last decade, since Erdoğan yer Taksim, her yer direniş!’ (‘Every they continue to collect pieces which came to power, become increasingly where is Taksim, the resistance is eve- embody the first weekend of violence internationalised. This has had reper- rywhere!’) – all this amid the aroma of following the gung-ho offensive by the cussions both good and bad. Istanbul roasted chestnuts and a faint whiff of police) stand out as examples of their ’74, an arts and culture organisation teargas. long-term goals and the ideas feeding founded in 2009 by Demet Müftüoglu- For several days we had all been into them. Eseli and Alphan Eseli, initiated the awake until the early hours, some of Each time I have visited Gezi there Istanbul International Arts & Culture us until the sun came up, keeping a has been some new addition to the Festival and international fashion and close eye on the Twitter accounts and culture and spirit of the park produced cultural celebration, Istancool, which hashtags we had, through a process of by a kind of electromagnetivity be- has attracted attendees such as the trial and error, come to rely upon. tween the people – predominately late Gore Vidal, Zoe Cassavetes and Needless to say our bullshit detectors young, but supported by professional Zaha Hadid; there is the Istanbul Mod- have been fine-tuned over the past creative types, the middle classes, and ern and Sultan Selim III’s Tophane-i twelve days. a massive female presence (most of Amire (Tophane Amoury) has been Much has been said of the instant those I have spoken to have been converted into an exhibition centre for gratification impulse Twenty-first cen- women). Gezi has brought together the arts. But what has been described tury society and culture has seemingly men and women of all ages, Muslims as ‘bloodless internationalism’, that is, fostered – next day delivery services, and non-believers, Kurds and Alevis, of emulating the west, has resulted in television programmes and films can and people of all classes. The park the unchecked construction projects be streamed within a few seconds has a children’s workshop area, the that have resulted in the destruction of (that is, if you have a fast internet paintings made there are strewn from historic buildings and turned parts of connection, in which case most people tree to tree on lines of twine (one of the Istanbul into a nondescript conur- won’t bother), likewise for the music them of a police Panzer using its water bation of behemoth shopping malls we download; instant credit and cannon against stickmen protesters). and unimaginative glass skyscrapers. tanned skin, ‘wait a minute I’ll Google There are yoga classes, Gezi Park TV While Erdoğan rightly dismisses a it.’ station – a reaction no doubt to Tur- small minority of the protesters as van- Speculation in situations such Gezi key’s news channels ignoring the dals – I witnessed some teenagers is natural of course, as is the mix of plight of the protesters in the face of wearing Guy Fawkes masks being scepticism and hyperbole feeding it. the excessive force used by the police reprimanded by a large party of Occu- Walking home that night I realised that – and an Activist Cinema Club. py Gezi protesters for damaging a we’d all been guilty of over-thinking, If this sounds ideal it’s because it public bus – it can be said that in spite trying to explain away Occupy Gezi, really is – for now. As mentioned, there of the various restoration projects he reduce it to a series of symbols, when are many different ideologies at work, and his party have instigated (albeit the fact remained that we were still too especially at Taksim Square. You somewhat negligently) the largescale close to the events to make sense of could easily create a glossary in book vandalism enacted on Istanbul as a them. Focus on the here and now, form based on the amount of slogans result of his party’s neo-liberal policies keep the protesters uppermost in your communicated by members from al- are of far greater consequence. mind, communicate what is happening most every sphere of Turkish politics – It is also the creeping Islamisation here without hope or despair. This is there are secularists, nationalists, left- instigated by Erdoğan that have made the conclusion I came to. We had ists, and anarchists. people suspicious of his long term spent much of the day in contact with It would be incredibly difficult to aims. These have of course informed various protesters, through acquaint- establish a political party that would the protest. However, Occupy Gezi is ances, social media and by texting. encapsulate Occupy Gezi. Not only not a campaign against Islam regard- Eventually the requests came through, that, but the spread of protests to a less of the gulf that remains between

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 18 religious and secular parties in Turkey. Last year, when Erdoğan’s youngest While there are pictures of John Neither can Erdoğan’s reshaping of daughter walked out of Young Osman, Lennon and Yoko Ono along with Turkish society and culture restrict a play based on the youthful, reform- messages of non-violence, it’s encour- freedom of speech and pass laws ing sultan, Osman II, at the Ankara aging to the see that a majority of the without public consultation (or even State Theatre, claiming she had been content used to symbolise the multifar- that of his own party). The producers insulted by an actor, the PM threat- ious concerns of the protesters are of Behzat Ç, a TV crime and detective ened to withdraw state support from mostly Turkish or of their own heritage series set in Ankara, and featuring a Turkey’s theatres. Among several oth- and culture. In other words, they are ‘morally ambiguous police officer,’ ers, Erdoğan has also looked to intro not relying on western counter-cultural were put under pressure to stop produce restrictions to the timing of figures. duction as the show contained materi- abortions and public displays of affec- Close to a group of practising musi- al considered contradictory to tion. However, these moral and cultur- cians sat on the edge of a flower bed, traditional Turkish family values. When al intrusions by the state cannot be I stop by a ‘wishing tree’ from which fans of the series complained the gov- said to not impinge on the lifestyles of post-it notes of different colours loll ernment backed down and instead an excusively secular contingent. from its branches, a ‘wish’ scribbled on imposed a series of huge fines through Edorgan’s decision to build a third each one. I recognise a name written the state-controlled Radio and Televi- bridge over the Bosphorus, naming it on a pink note, Nâzım Hikmet, a Turk sion Supreme Council (RTÜK). Script- after Sultan Selim I – nicknamed ‘Se- ish poet and revolutionary. I cannot writers were forced to make the lim the Grim’ following a massacre of translate the rest and ask my someone eponymous protagonist of the show Turkey’s Alevi population (a sect of to help. It reads, ‘To live! Like a tree, marry his live-in girlfriend, conversa- Shi’a Islam with aspects of Sufism who alone and free, and like a forest in tions between characters were heavily espouse mystic poetry, music and brotherhood / this is our longing.’ censored as were scenes that in- dance) in the Fifteen-century – is seen volved alcohol. Speaking of which, the as a provocation to Turkey’s existing * proposed alcohol restrictions have largest minority. Liberal and Anticapi- now been ratified and the sale of alco- talist Muslims (Antikapitalist Müslü- Jay Weissberg, a film critic hol between 10pm – 6am is prohibited manlar) advocating pluralism are also with Variety, wrote in her LRB blog (the ban does not extend to cafes, affected by government policies, that, ‘Several people I spoke to at the bars and restaurants, but will also ap- hence their involvement (albeit to a [Istanbul Film] festival said the pro- ply to the open sale and consumption lesser extent than the main body of gramme of demolition is part of the of alcohol in parks, gardens, open secular protesters) in Occupy Gezi. Erdoğan government’s longterm goal spaces, highways, picnic areas, histor- At Gezi Park I saw a banner held of eliminating Turkey’s multiethnic Ot- ical ruins and the interior of all vehi- aloft by two head-scarfed women toman identity.’ I had wondered cles). When you consider alcohol which read, ‘the trees bow down be- if Erdoğan’s policies were in some way restrictions in the UK or Sweden, the fore God.’ A quote from the Qur’an. a resurfacing of the Islamic building Turkish ban seems compliant. Howev- Another banner displays a line blocks that made Istanbul the capital er, critics argue that there was no real from My Name is Red by Turkey’s of the Ottoman Empire following the call for the ban as Turkey has the Nobel Prize winning author, Orhan ruthless secularisation of Turkey by lowest alcohol consumption in Europe Pamuk, ‘I don’t want to be a tree, I Ataturk. When Atila Dorsay wrote of at 1.5 litres per capita. want to be its meaning.’ the “historic reservoir and lifestyle” the

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 19 Emek Cinema Theatre represented, of So the Islamic element had to tory he claims to respect – it is guided its ‘symbolic and real value’, and be admitted into the picture by the greedy development of com- moreover when director Costas-Gra- eventually. It’s an inevitable mercial capitalism. vas wrote that it was ‘like eradicating process […] But we have the memory of the past,’ they were evolved too far to become * right, but couldn’t the same be said for some kind of Islamic state the cultural amnesia Turkey suffered now. It’s too late. Look around In 1544, two Syrian merchants intro- as a result of Ataturk’s own single- you…What we are seeing, reduced coffee to Istanbul and thereafter mindedness? ally, is the inevitable converg- coffee houses became very popular In establishing the Turkish Republic ing of two Turkish societies: around commercial areas of the city. from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, rural, Muslim Anatolia and They were frequented first of all by Ataturk expurgated the country’s Is- elite, intellectual, secular men who advocated a love of high lamic elements by eradicating Arabic Istanbul…It’ll be a bit tense for culture, enjoyed chess, read books script and adopting a new Turkish al- a while. and wrote poetry. Coffeehouse culture phabet (modified Latin form). He intro- become more popular and wide- duced European dress codes, laws The Ottoman Empire under Sultan spread, and acted as an escape from and calender, including the controver- Mahmud II had understood the need to the social hierarchy of the time, with sial ban of women wearing head- modernise. He heeded the technologi- people of varying demographics com- scarves if working in the public sector. cal superiority of Europe and instigat- ing together for the first time under the Such a bouleversement resulted, ac- ed the various reforms that resulted in same roof. Clubs and associations cording to Esma Kurklu, a screenwriter the burfication of Ottoman education were formed, information, ideas, gos- for the satirical TV show Heberler, in a and ultimately the Decree of Tanzimat sip and rumours exchanged, which kind of schizophrenia. In an article for (1839). posed a threat to established social The Wall Street Journal by novelist Before now the two Turkish societies and political order. As vehicles for po- Lawrence Osborne, she says, ‘The were kept separate. One had been litical debate and mobilization, at- country is moving back to its Ottoman stunted in its need to modernise by the tempts were madeto shut subconscious.’ This in no way means fall of the Ottoman Empire, the second coffeehouses down all over the Otto- a return to a theocracy based relegated it to museums in London man Empire. This top down approach on rigid notions of hierarchy and order, and other cities and imposed, as men- failed as ruling order failed to modern- with a sultan exercising absolute tioned, a kind of cultural amnesia on ise and provide an adequate space for power. As Zeynep Fadillioglu – the first the people of Turkey. the public sphere. woman in history to design a mosque: Critics say Ataturk went too far with Can the same parallel be made with the Sakirin in Istanbul – says in Os- his reforms, that they are outdated and Erdoğan and his ‘table operations’? borne’s article: overly nationalistic. After ten years in In his attempts to restrict people from power perhaps the same might be said expressing themselves both singular Urban elitism was always the of Erdoğan, only from the opposite end and collectively in the public space, to problem in this country. Istan- of the spectrum. The PM has said that engage sufficiently in the public bul is not a bridge between the redevelopment of Taksim and Gezi sphere, and by limiting the information East and West—it’s a bridge Park will include a rebuilding of the made available to them by state-influ- between two versions of the Ottoman-replica Barracks that once enced newspapers and television, it East. The secular Kemalist stood there, and that this is a matter of would seem then that culture has elite lorded it over everyone having ‘a respect for history.’ Nonethe- moved into the virtual domain of Twit- else, and that could not go on. less, it is a misreading reading of his- ter.

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The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 20 Oh, Newport, My Lionheart: 30 years of Music and Nightlife in the City of Cider and Steel

by Craig Austin

‘Let the bombs rain down on London and Bristol. But way past the doors of a nightclub, where I first tasted the most of all, on dirty little Newport’ – Nazi propagandist, heady toxic blast of an American cigarette and, as the William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’. fickle finger of fate would have it, where I first met the stripy-stockinged goth girl from Blaenau Gwent whom I ‘Somebody, in FHM I think, wrote that it was one of the would one day marry. And it all happened here, here in Top 50 best nights out in the world, ever. So to me, that’s Newport. a pretty good night out, isn’t it?’ – a TJ’s punter reminisc- Despite its prevailing folklore, Newport was never my es about the period when Newport threatened to become Seattle, nor my New York, though I did spend the entirety ‘the new Seattle’. of my childhood in the leaden concrete new town of Cwm- bran, its de facto New Jersey. To me, Newport was always ewport is a town that wears its city status as Las Vegas, or perhaps most fittingly, Atlantic City .A shim- uneasily as the awkward looking man who is mering, steamy blue-collar haven of exoticism and sin, its handed a tie by the sniffy maître d‘ of a fancy bright golden lights smeared with the stubborn late-night upmarket restaurant. It is not in the business of stains of blood, sweat and curry sauce. And loud: Newport slavishly following fashion or the latest metropolitan trends was loud. A sea of heaving pubs, clubs, and coruscatingly and moreover it will instinctively mistrust and be wary of tinny jukeboxes that tore at your eardrums and your heart- you if it senses that you might possibly be one of those strings in equal measures, its glamorous jumble of dry ice, people. Newport will hug you to its manly tattooed bosom, neon lights and Marlboro smoke a tantalising beacon of it will buy you a pint, and let you cadge a fag off it, but it will wanton desire and boundless possibility. And Cardiff? also rough you up, try and cop off with your girlfriend, and Cardiff was rubbish. A blandly unimaginative live music will always, always, take the piss out of you. It is the city in scene of formulaic jazz-funk and soulless AOR rock bands which Joe Strummer dug graves, it is the city that dragged that routinely prized joylessly earnest musicianship over Morrissey from its stage, the city that almost killed Paul either maverick inspiration or ragged individuality. Cardiff Weller’s solo career stone dead, and it is the unlikely may aspire to be a world city now but in the 1980s it quite setting of an organic mid-90s music scene that pogo-ed its happily aspired to be Level 42. Newport, in stark contrast, way across the Atlantic from the newsprint sheets of the would never have set its sights so unpardonably low, South Wales Argus to the glossy pages of Rolling Stone in Newport being a place that wouldn’t have even allowed what seemed like a matter of months. Level 42 into its tinny nicotine-stained jukeboxes. In A contemporary outsider’s view of the city, its culture, and thought and in deed, Newport only ever aspired to be The its people has in all likelihood been shaped via the ruth- Clash. To quote the one-time Newport art college attendee lessly unscrupulous camera lens of the interloper; its most and council gravedigger who would later reinvent himself recent national exposure having been Channel 4’s craven as the band’s now legendary agitprop vocalist: ‘Like trou- and exploitative schlock-fest Bouncers, and the shame- sers, like mind’. And Newport is a city that does not wear lessly opportunistic – and geographically inaccurate – flares. global internet phenomenon, ‘Newport State of Mind’. By The Newport music scene to which I was initially and way of contrast, this writer’s experience of the city, its hypnotically drawn, was unapologetically tribal in its make- music and its nightlife, is one underpinned by a redolent up, a gloriously rag-bag collective of the artistic, the crea- sense of both affection and gratitude. At an early age, tive, and the terminally disaffected; a standalone communi- Newport emboldened me with a purpose of spirit, an en- ty of goths, glam metallers, and a puritanical military wing trenched sense of belonging and camaraderie, and a of what constituted the post-punk scene of that era. Writ weapons-grade bullshit detector that works as effectively through it all though was an underlying leitmotif of working now as the day it was first bestowed upon me. It is the class peacockery, a manner of dressing that harks back to place where, under age, I first managed to negotiate my the late 1940s and which differentiates between those who

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 21 undertake jobs grounded in drudgery and repetition, and think that the fire limit on the Labour Club was those whose working lives are either more moneyed or three hundred but we probably had about five more personally fulfilling. At its core is the simple premise hundred in there. It was the hottest, sweatiest night that the working class love to ‘glam up’ for a night out (and imaginable and Husker Du were just stuck in the more importantly, are good at it), and the middle class who corner. Speaking to them afterwards they loved don’t (and aren’t). the gig but they were more than a little bit intimidat- In any event, the South Wales of this period was still ed by the experience because it was so rammed, licking its wounds from the monumental kicking it had only people were so close. We took it in turns to go recently taken from the Conservative government of the down the front to keep people off the monitors, but day, and whilst the NUM’s ‘death or glory’ strike of ’84/’85 the nature of our gigs was that they were always had been massively supported by the politically motivated physical but no-one ever tolerated anybody who bands and promoters of that era who had arranged benefit might turn up just to cause trouble. gigs and solidarity fundraisers for the entirety of the struggle, the miners, and by association South Wales, had It was a scene that at its core operated from a fundamen- nevertheless woken up to a defeat that was utterly devas- tal place of equality, inclusion and fairness. ‘We never, tating and one that at the time it looked unlikely to ever ever had a guest list’, Dean makes clear, still with an recover from. The parallels between the working class evident degree of pride. experience of South Wales and the more industrialised regions of the USA were plain to see and it therefore felt Everyone paid to get in, including the people who entirely natural that the politicised punks of the early 1980s were putting on the shows, and we’d always muck gravitated towards their similarly motivated musical peers in and help people out, financially or otherwise, if on the other side of the pond. For where Thatcher imple- they needed it. We’d travel a lot to see bands too, mented monetarism as a ruthless political weapon in the and in big numbers. Hitch-hiking mainly, and it was UK, the devastating realities of Reaganomics were having often the case that at a motorway service station an equally crushing impact upon the traditional heavy or some other stop-off you’d bump into other peo- industries of the US. In the documentary film, American ple from Newport who were travelling to see a Hardcore, Vic Bondi of Articles of Faith sums up Hard- different band. core’s response to the Reagan era: ‘Everyone was saying it was “Morning in America”, someone had to say “it’s The Butthole Surfers was another pivotal US band that fucking midnight!”‘ the Newport punk scene claimed as their own. ‘When the Dean Lewis, an active member of Newport’s alternative Buttholes played they had one of the most bizarre riders I’d punk scene of the 1980s (and now the Design Editor of this ever seen’, Dean recalls. very publication), recalls the period with much affection, and with it the hugely influential impact of ‘Cheap Sweaty When you read about the kinds of excess demand- Fun’, the organisers and promoters of many of that scene’s ed by Led Zep and the like, the Buttholes rider was now seminal shows: ‘Cheap Sweaty Fun really grew from something entirely different. It was the first time the point at which they booked Husker Du to play the Stow they’d played Newport, again at Stow Hill Labour Hill Labour Club, though at the time people were really Club, and they asked for a hundred wooden pegs, worried that they were going to lose money from it. It was three old ladies dresses, some red and green food £500 to book the band, which really was a lot of money in dye, some safety pins, and a dozen condoms. So those days, but Husker Du records were selling in huge people went round Newport’s shops picking this numbers in Newport at the time, mainly through Simon stuff up, and when Gibby, their singer, took to the Phillips’ Rockaway Records’. stage he was wearing all three of these dresses at Rockaway played a pivotal role within the scene, being the same time with all one hundred wooden pegs the primary means of obtaining imported US vinyl for a in his hair. As a visual thing, it was fantastic. The demanding Newport customer base that employed the condoms had been filled with the food colouring most creative and resourceful means of getting its hands and pinned to the dresses and whilst it looked on these precious artefacts, as Dean recalls: ‘American really good it was really unnerving at the same shops and fans would be after British punk and skinhead time. He stripped off the dresses and broke the records they just couldn’t get over there, and given that the condoms so he was covered in the food colouring. most effective way of bypassing customs regulations was It had poured into his boots and at one point he to mark a consignment as a gift, that’s what we’d do. took off one boot and drunk from it, real schlock- Because of that, a huge amount of transatlantic exchange horror stuff. It was a brilliant gig, loads of people took place, of records and of ideas, and it always helped there, but the committee of Stow Hill Labour Club that Rockaway always had the most desirable stock be- were not happy the next day. The green and red cause of its relationship with record labels like SST’. dye had soaked into their sprung wooden dance As his relationship with the people in and around Rocka- floor and had refused to come out and although we way grew, Dean became more and more involved with thought we were going to be banned from putting Cheap Sweaty Fun and reflects upon the massive impact any more gigs on there it became fairly clear that that that initial Husker Du gig had upon Newport: the money they were making from our shows was the one thing keeping the Labour Club going. We It was due to be the first date of their first proper were keeping it afloat. British tour, but in reality they ended up playing a secret gig in London the night before. And though It wasn’t all thrills, spills and food colouring though, and we’d been concerned that the gig might end up Dean makes no effort to conceal an almost wilful absence losing money when it came to the night itself it was of professionalism that resulted in the inadvertent sabo- like ‘Ah fuck, please don’t let anyone else in!’ I tage of one of the scene’s potentially biggest paydays:

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 22 ever be filmed about its most theatrical and notorious When I first get involved with Disorganisation, a clientèle. Its soundtrack is already in the public domain different promoters but still very much part of the however. It is performed by Soft Cell and is titled ‘Non-Stop same scene, they were really struggling to sustain Erotic Cabaret’. things financially, even the benefits they were It is the musical and inspirational legacy of TJ’s, however, putting on, which were in support of the NUM that towers above everything else in the city, even now, initially and then Ethiopian famine relief after that. over three years after its untimely closure. And in discuss- They were putting on three anarcho bands on the ing the legacy of TJ’s it is impossible to do so without same bill which was all very well but never likely to focusing upon the ungovernable spirit of the man who put attract a big crowd. I encouraged them to put on a the ‘J’ into its name. John Sicolo, both in reputation and more varied bill, to put on more local bands. By physique, was an uncompromising giant of Newport, a city that time we’d got to know a band from Cardiff whose traditional qualities he most uncannily embodied. called No Choice and through them we also got Melody Maker writer David Bennun, who was once introduced to a band from Hull called Threaction. dragged to the club by inebriated members of the 60ft No Choice approached us about a three-band tour Dolls, remembers him as ‘a terrifying hybrid of Tom Jones involving them, Threaction, and another band, also and The Incredible Hulk’. An Italo-Welsh seaman of no from Hull, called The Housemartins who they sug- fixed temperament, Sicolo assumed the default father gested should headline. A suggestion I stomped figure role of a scene, and a whole swathe of like-minded all over. I didn’t think you could have a band like bands, that in the mid 1990s briefly threatened to take on The Housemartins headlining one of our gigs, not the world with an attitude and swagger inherited from its based on the type of music that the people who punk rock predecessors. came to our shows liked. So I told them that we Formerly ‘El Sieco’s’, TJ’s, or latterly, ‘The Legendary wouldn’t be booking the Housemartins as headlin- TJ’s’, a term coined by the equally iconic John Peel, it ers because they were shit! acted as the scene’s default HQ, its CBGB’s, a venue whose medieval toilet facilities it irrefutably shared with its I ask Dean how much The Housemartins were asking for South Wales counterpart. Peel didn’t actually visit the club to be the headline act. ‘Fifty quid!’ he laughs. ‘I told them until almost a decade after he first began to eulogise it, but they could play but there was no way they would be by the time that he did the self-mythologising legend of headlining. So in the end they didn’t play. And though I Newport being ‘the new Seattle’ had already taken hold. can’t now remember who we eventually booked in their Sicolo himself was not immune to the allure of self-mythol- place I do know that by the time the date that The House- ogy, a very ‘Newport’ trait in itself. It was allegedly he who martins should have played came around, the date upon put about the (ultimately false) rumour that it was at TJ’s which they should have been playing the Stow Hill Labour where Kurt Cobain had proposed to Courtney Love. It is Club for fifty quid, they were number two in the charts with true that Cobain and Love had been at the venue. Hole ‘Happy Hour’. The proper charts!’ He laughs again, pon- played more than one show there, Sicolo had cooked for dering the tragicomic outcome of his actions: ‘What a twat!’ them (as he did for many of the club’s headline bands), and Most tellingly however, Dean is keenly driven to share they had indeed spent the night in the flat above the venue. what he believes to be the true legacy of that scene, and Subsequently, Sicolo had allegedly threatened to cut up the impact that it had upon the hearts and minds of those the sheets under which they had slept and sell them off to that it touched: gullible internet punters, another Newport rumour that it would be nice to think had more than a threadbare basis in All the people that I knew that were involved in that fact. When The Guardian, The Times, and most mid-80s punk/American Hardcore movement, go notably Rolling Stone started to visit, and write about, the find them now and I’d estimate that the vast major- city with an agenda that reeked of a ‘next big thing’ skeet- ity of us are either working in education, particular- shoot however it climaxed in a fleeting golden period of ly alternative education, or health, particularly alt-pop paradise that its keenest foot-soldiers still remi- mental health. There’s an empathy there that nisce about with dewy-eyed, broken-veined, nostalgia to comes from the way we all treated each other this day. when we put those gigs on, and looking after Aside from the mad rush of global media fascination, this youngsters at those gigs too.You had some really period also saw Cerys Matthews’ Catatonia shoot the young kids who came to those shows, but you promo film for their breakthrough hit ‘Mulder and Scully’ at knew that at any gig in Newport as soon as some- the club, and culminated in James Dean Bradfield of the body went down on the floor there were at least then all-conquering Manic Street Preachers ruminating three of four pairs of hands waiting to drag them onstage at the Newport Centre about the time when he back up again. That’s just the way it was. was randomly set upon by strangers in a nearby branch of McDonalds, his jaw broken in several places. ‘I didn’t The eventual closure of Stow Hill Labour Club saw understand those people at the time’, he mused, ‘but I do Cheap Sweaty Fun move its ramshackle charabanc to, at now’. Whilst Newport’s Pillgwenlly Library was the original first Newport Centre’s Riverside suite, and latterly TJ’s inspiration for the line about libraries giving us power in ‘A nightclub in Clarence Place, a venue of legendary civic Design for Life’, the band’s signature treatise on class pride and forever the spiritual home of the city’s alternative consciousness and the Welsh working class experience, it nightlife scene. Other venues and hangouts came and is equally and undeniably true that Newport is a city that went, most notably Brahms & Liszt, a decadent revels in its reputation as a place where ‘We don’t talk sleaze/glam hybrid of Weimar Berlin, Studio 54 and the about love / We only want to get drunk’. Blitz club. A bar/club/hideaway that succeeded in creating Antonia Edwards, a devotee of TJ’s in its twilight years, a subculture all of its own and whose certificate would remembers John Sicolo with undiluted affection: surely be R18 should a warts-and-all big-screen biopic

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 23 There’s a lovely photo of us both taken in around 2008 (Right). It was one of the last times I ever went to TJ’s and one of the last times I ever saw John before he passed away.

It’s possible that it is the legacy of the city’s punk scene, through all of its various guises and generations, that singles out a Newport audience as being anything but a passive one. This writer’s first experience of a live show in the city ended in Morrissey, then of The Smiths, a band in the throes of its The Queen Is Dead imperial phase, being dragged from the stage of the Newport Centre by a throng of Ringland Ruffians. He was not to return, and whilst the delicate Stretford flower recuperated in the A&E depart- ment of the Royal Gwent Hospital the remainder of an increasingly frustrated audience responded to this perceived indignity by commencing the wholesale dismantling of the venue with undisguised rage. The band’s live sound If I’m honest I was only fourteen or fifteen when I engineer Grant Showbiz took to the stage to apologise on first used to go there. I used to go out with an older behalf of the band and promptly received a bottle in the boy from school who DJ’d there and other friends face for his troubles. He was also taken to hospital, the of mine had got into Newport’s alternative scene, police called, and six people eventually arrested. The we were classed as ‘moshers’, and so TJ’s was Smiths were never to play either Newport or Wales again. obviously the place you’d go to. Because of my Tony Fletcher, in his much-lauded biography of the age I had to sneak out and make up all sorts of lies band, There is a Light that Never Goes, seeks to encapsu- to get there though. I used to climb out of our study late the incident in terms of the intrinsic parallel pride of window, pick up my nu-rock boots that I’d left both the band and the city: outside, run down the drive, up over the hill, and into the taxi that would be waiting for me there. Newport was a tough Welsh city rapidly losing its Either that or I’d go to friends’ houses on a Friday dock and ironworks jobs, and Smiths fans were night and we’d all make up stories for our respec- always excitable by nature but this (over)reaction tive parents about where we were supposed to be. (arguably on both sides) seemed to represent a breach in the long-standing trust between group It was a timeless generational ruse that only worked for and audience. a limited period however. A similar incident occurred in Preston only a matter of days later, an incident exacerbated by the wilful misreport- My mum would turn up at the club on a number of ing of The Smiths’ Newport experience according to the occasions looking for me, which was fairly embar- band’s virtuoso guitarist, Johnny Marr: rassing. And to make it worse, John would occasionally give me a rollicking. He probably It started at Newport where Morrissey, through suspected I was underage but I don’t think he ever nothing more sinister than over enthusiasm, got cottoned on to quite how underage I was. I remem- dragged into the crowd. He was shaken, a bit ber that one of the nights my mum turned up there concussed, and had a bump the size of an egg on was a Guns N’ Roses tribute band on and even the side of his head. There was no way he could after she’d spoken with John and both of them had have carried on. That all happened about three given me a dressing down she ended up staying quarters of the way through the set, with maybe regardless and she ended up having a great time. four songs left to go. The following day, though, The Sun reports that in the middle of the John was great. He looked out for all of us and I ‘first song’, at the point where Morrissey holds up had so much respect for him. From the age of the ‘Queen Is Dead’ banner, he was attacked by fourteen or fifteen right up to twenty-one that place ‘outraged royalists’. Can you imagine it? Royalists was my life. It was such a happy place. I make it in Newport! sound like a cult, which it wasn’t, but it did feel like one big happy family. We all cared about each The equally forthright Paul Weller who, according to his other. We all looked out for each other, but ulti- long-serving drummer Steve White, was ‘on his arse on a mately it was all about the music, always about the business level’ at the point he sought to kick-start his music. Bands saw it as an important part of the faltering solo career from the ashes of The Style Council in scene too and even when bigger bands like Ma- 1991 also encountered the beery gallows humour of a chine Head would play places like Newport Centre Newport audience during a criminally undersold show, it was always TJ’s that they’d gravitate to for their again at Newport Centre: after-show parties. Oh God, yeah. He sort of walked onstage and he John’s untimely death hit Antonia hard, but she is keen said, ‘It’s like a fucking morgue in ‘ere.’ And they to remember both him and his club in only the most positive all started chanting: ‘It’s like a fucking morgue in of terms. yer! It’s like a fucking morgue in yer!’

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 24 Sam is anything but a defeatist though and she has At the same time, White is equally keen to make clear begun to observe some welcome chinks of light: ‘…but the love was there’, and this experience, most recently recalled by White in the documentary film Paul The spirit, the Newport spirit, is still there and that’s Weller: Into Tomorrow, has not prevented Weller from great to see. I see new rehearsal rooms opening returning to the same venue to play before (a significantly up and because everything is cyclical it would be bigger) Newport audience since. nice to think that we’re coming out of the worst Whilst a Newport audience of 1986 may well have seen period and into a new productive phase. There’s itself as a victim of the dismantling of heavy industry, and no money from record labels to fund things any- the career and life opportunities that this inevitably con- more so bands need to work so much harder to strained, the Newport of 2013 finds itself in equally chal- achieve things, and because of that they need lenging straits, if for radically different reasons. The city more support than they might previously have has, by any estimation, been especially cruelly impacted needed. by the seemingly interminable effect of the global financial crisis. Testament to this is the ghostly trail of abandoned There does appear to be a kindred sense of community shops and premises that litter its traditional shopping within the scene, a sense of bonding that comes with streets, the desolate craters that constitute capitalism’s constantly needing to surf the same choppy waves of global bombsites and the joyless consequence of the adversity. Less choice has driven an urban brotherhood on-going Americanisation of our city centres, the siphoning that has seen Le Pub embark upon numerous ventures off of its businesses to identikit out-of-town Lego-parks, the that has seen it partner with both its longest-standing dreary suburbanisation of our complicit existences. independent record store, Diverse Music, and the city’s The city’s nightlife has not been immune to this onslaught current stellar commercial success story, the Tiny Rebel with further additions to the unremitting litany of pubs and Brewery. The ever-present allure of Cardiff remains a real club closures occurring on an all too frequent problem for Newport’s pubs and clubs however, in the basis. Newport is a place that’s never been averse to a pint same way that it does for much of its daytime traders. and a fight however, and the fight to preserve the right for ‘No-one drinks in the same place for the whole of a night the city’s revellers to continue to down that pint has been anymore,’ Sam explains, taken up by a number of its most spirited licensees. When I speak with Sam Dabb, manager of Newport’s most crea- and because we’re the only pub of its kind in tive and inspirational live music venues, Le Pub, I am Newport, people end up trailing off into Cardiff, struck by her resilience, her sense of purpose, and her simply because there’s nowhere else similar to go. steely civic pride. Having once been one of its resident DJs We’ve taken on a booking agent to deal with much during the venue’s early years (albeit on a very loose bigger bands though so I’m looking forward to contract best described as a ‘drink as you play’ arrange- what we might be putting on in the future. He’s ment) it is a venue that is especially dear to me, holding booked a load of great bands already and so I’m some of my finest memories of what constitutes a truly very excited about that. We need to be positive. splendid night out in the indefatigable city of cider and Just look at Tiny Rebel; they met the targets of steel. Despite recently being shortlisted for the NME’s Best their initial five-year business plan in less than half Small Venue award its 20+ year existence was only recent- of that time. We’ve got an independent skate store, ly at very real threat of closure. Le Pub, and its defiant and where most places don’t even have one inde- landlady – ‘I simply wasn’t having it’ – fought a valiant and pendent record shop, we’ve got two. A lot of peo- high-profile campaign in support of the venue that demon- ple put a lot of negative spin on Newport but it’s strated not just the love that Newport has for Le Pub, but actually a great place. also the esteem that it is held in by the alternative community at large. ‘Kids in Glass Houses did a benefit show for Both her resilience to succeed and her faith in the future is us’, Sam says, ‘and we had a lot of support on Twitter utterly unwavering: through tweets and retweets by some really massive, massive bands, they were all behind the campaign’. Keep fighting us and we’ll just fight back even With a successful battle fought and won, and a new harder. five-year lease in place, Le Pub nevertheless remains almost the sole source of live contemporary rock’n’roll in When the going gets tough, the vultures start swarming, the city. As such, it has assumed even more of an impor- and whilst the negative short-term reputational impact of tant cultural role and become even more of a rallying point Channel 4’s Bouncers did little for the perception of either for the live music scene at large; even more so since the the city or its night-time offering, the flagrant transparency closure of the still deserted TJs. ‘Yeah, we’re the only one of what amounted to little more than opportunistic poverty- left in many ways,’ Sam continues. ‘The Murenger is still a porn by a once-progressive broadcaster was the real igno- lovely pub and a lot of the alternative crowd still drink there, miny of the piece. but there’s no music in there and so hardly qualifies as a For Goldie Lookin’ Chain however who, along with music venue. It says a lot for the Murenger and Rob (Rob Skindred, constitute one the two genuine breakout acts Jones, its ebullient landlord) that it still manages to attract that Newport has produced in the last decade, the global those people and be classed as a kind of alternative music internet phenomenon of ‘Newport State of Mind’ was a lot venue. It’s all down to Rob who’s a brilliant landlord’. harder to take. Though filmed in and around Newport (by I ask Sam if with a greater focus of influence comes an day-tripping English people, no less), and though much even greater sense of responsibility to the scene, and to adored by many of its citizens, the band took understand- Newport: ‘Yeah definitely. If we go, then Newport goes, it able exception to what was by most estimations a flagrant would be absolutely screwed as far as live music is con- steal of their parochially gonzo take on both hip-hop and cerned’. the decadent underground pleasures of the city itself. Their

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 25 almost immediate response ‘Newport State of Mind (You’re tour of duty. For like all those who hold the People’s Not from Newport)’ is a magnificently resplendent rebuttal Republic of Newport dear, the GLC acknowledge the de- of the venture, and an exemplary illustration of righteous gree to which it would be a capital crime to allow a city that ‘get your tanks off my lawn’ indignation. Its sublime kiss-off was once perceived to be an unofficial cultural satellite of of a chorus – ‘You’re not from Newport / I bet you’ve never Minneapolis to be latterly viewed as merely a disorderly been there either / I’ll bet you a fiver’ – achieves so much and unbecoming subsidiary of Cardiff, to see what was more than this writer is capable of in succinctly encapsulat- once ‘the new Seattle’ mutate into the new Detroit. Be- ing the age-old urban principle of declaring that whilst it’s cause, as historical experience has taught us, without the OK for us to disparage our city, its people, and its pubs, requisite investment of thought, attention, and deed that its woe betide the opportunistic interloper who seeks to play proud heritage and rich history surely deserves that could by the same rules, who seeks to cash in his gravy and all happen here, here in Newport. chips without first having concluded his sticky-carpeted

Dylan Thomas: The Industry of Tragedy and the Antithetical Mask

by Gary Raymond

n December 8th 1953, al- Isherwood wrote, ‘primarily, of strug- cite some poems at a cocktail party in most exactly a month after gle. He seemed to be right in the midst Hollywood and notes that they sound- the death of Dylan Tho- of his life – not off on one side looking ed like amateurs compared to Dylan mas, Christopher Isher- at it.’ Thomas). When the reading was over, wood opened his diary to Thomas had started the day with the two of them escaped, Thomas now commit to posterity his encounters drink, he drank some more during a pit in excitable mood at the prospect of with the controversial Welsh poet. stop at Isherwood’s house in the Val- the entertainment Isherwood had lined Stephen Spender had asked Isher- ley, and then continued drinking at up for him. wood to write a piece about Thomas, lunch as the guest of the English facul- Thomas had wanted to meet a Holly- but Isherwood noted that ‘my memo- ty. Isherwood remembers the ‘bogus, wood actress – any Hollywood actress ries were unsuitable for an obituary oily, sanctimonious’ academics at – and his idol, Charlie Chaplin, and notice… But I’d better record them UCLA treating Thomas with ‘con- Isherwood had used his connections here, before they get too vague.’ temptible… prissiness’. Attracted to for the two of them to have dinner at a Isherwood, who lived in Los Angeles the dangerousness in his verse, they restaurant with Chaplin and Shelley and had done since fleeing with Auden were turned off by Thomas’ perform- Winters. The meeting was either a England and the War in 1939, had ance in person, his lewdness and cas- disaster or a slapstick farce, depend- rescued Thomas from the indifferent ual frequent deployment of the ing on which way you look at it. Isher- treatment of the English faculty at four-letter word; ‘It’s the attitude of the wood, ever the gentleman, tends to UCLA one April morning in 1950. Tho- small boy,’ wrote Isherwood, ‘who give Thomas, of whom he was clearly mas and Isherwood had not met be- would love (he thinks) to have the personally fond, the benefit of the fore, and Thomas, as was so often the roaring tigers leap into the room out of doubt. But the facts remain that Tho- case, was stuck, having been given his picture books, but who doesn’t mas insulted Chaplin (enough for the only the number for a bus on how to want to be afraid of them if they ap- auteur to mention it in his autobiogra- reach the venue. Isherwood picked pear.’ phy), before wrestling Shelley Winters Thomas up from the ‘morning desola- Thomas got drunk before the read- to the floor over the back of her chair tion’ of the bar at the Biltmore Hotel ing, but read beautifully – Isherwood whilst trying to grab her breasts (Win- and drove him to the university where was extremely impressed (elsewhere ters took it in very good humour, ap- he was to give an afternoon reading. in his diary, many many years later, he parently). Later on, when the party ‘The impression he made on me was,’ watches Gielgud and Edith Evans removed on to a bar on Sunset Boule-

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 26 vard, and everything became even the sculpting of Thomas’ legend are a poetics, but here at work are the subtle more ‘muddled’ with booze, Thomas predictable offshoot of the life he first cogs of myth-making. To champion tried to fight a screenwriter who had needed to live, and then became greatness can create an exalted, eso- been talking to Isherwood, taking a run trapped by. It is extremely difficult to teric pool in which recognised and up to him like a cartoon bull. Thomas find any reminiscences of Thomas recogniser swim together. was, famously, as quick to dive into a from his contemporaries – the people This is the starkest evidence that brawl as he was useless in the fight. who first built his legend – that are Thomas no longer belongs to himself, He was repelled with great ease and wholly reliable; which is why Isher- he belongs to that industry of tragedy; ran into the night. Isherwood did not wood – one of the twentieth century’s and it is an important part of the artists’ see him again until a chance encoun- finest diarists; compassionate, humor- code, the thing that makes the world ter at the Chelsea Hotel in New York ous, honest – is such a good place to go round. (Thomas would no doubt be almost two years later. start when looking. over the moon to see how he was And so, it seems, was a somewhat Even biographers of Thomas, such adopted by the literati in his death as typical encounter with Dylan Thomas. as Constantine Fitzgibbon, are unreli- a totemic figure of artistic sacrifice.) And as is often the case, the confluent able in their purporting of the Thomas Figures like Thomas are integral to the themes of such stories involved his legend, so in thrall as they so often are standing of the artistic community – drinking, his inexcusable behaviour to their own ego and place in the de- the danger, the mysticism, the other- when drunk, and the genuine warmth veloping narrative of legend-making ness. That so many people recog- the memoirist feels for and sees in the that they elevate their own prejudices. nised the potential of Thomas the man. That his legend has been built In Fitzgibbon’s case, an aggressive Legend and that so many chipped in to just as much upon these traits as it has anti-communist, it is clearly difficult for consolidate it after his death, is proof on his work is irrefutable; that his leg- him to hide his disdain of figures such enough that the lucrative offshoot was end would be less had his public story as the ‘King of Bohemia’ and some- cultural as well as fiscal. In poetry been different is also quite probable. time affiliate of the anarchist move- particularly, from Byron to Wordsworth The truth is that no twentieth century ment, Augustus John, whose recorded through Clare and Swinburne to writer has a posthumous reputation of reminiscences of his long-time friend- Pound and Plath, reputation for eccen- such standing that is so dependent on ship with Thomas (it was John who tricity and danger is priceless when their behavioural legend like Thomas introduced Dylan to Caitlin) may not viewed as sincere. Mix that with an – even writers such as Plath and always be flattering, but they are at early death, and a poetic destiny that Woolf, whose disintegrations have at- least disinterested in the moulding of somehow matches a writer of verse tracted an industry of comment, have any legend at all. (Check out passing with an otherworldly essence, and you their biographies subsumed by jibes from Fitzgibbon when writing have an irresistible legend, one that their oeuvre rather than competing about John ‘… who, in those pre-war reaches way beyond the readers of with it. years, promised to become a great poems. But here lies the inescapable truth of painter. That he failed fully to keep this When writing the lives of Thomas’ Thomas – his most vital creation was promise was due above all to his ex- friends and acquaintances, literary bi- not in his work, but it was in his perso- travagant tastes…’). Fitzgibbon takes ographers have likewise been quick to na. The ‘Dylan’ that Thomas created similar snide shots at anybody else use just the two dimensions of Tho- was what allowed him to be the poet who did not find Thomas as entertain- mas to draw something out of their on the page that he needed to be, it ing as they were supposed to. own subject, often contributing to the facilitated the mining of his poetical Fitzgibbon instead decides to align skewed public character of Thomas gift: a perversion of what Yeats called Thomas with the oddly correlative fig- himself. Arthur Koestler’s biographer the ‘antithetical self’. ure of Theodore Roethke, the big, Michael Scammell noted the attraction Yeats wrote in A Vision of the two womanising, alcoholic, German Amer- between the two fabled drinking part- poles of the self, the primary, that ican poet, who likewise died prema- ners as a ‘shared disregard for bour- which is ‘reasonable and moral’, and turely (a heart attack at 55) due to his geois politesse.’ Their eyes met the antithetical, that which is ‘our inner excessive lifestyle. (That Roethke, of- across a crowded room and mischie- world of desire and imagination’. The ten referred to as the greatest Ameri- vousness sparked. antithetical self is familiar to the writer can poet of the twentieth century, has But Koestler was a brawler, a reac- of fiction, it is the business of the day; not been subjected to the same can- tionary, a former vagabond who used but Thomas utilised an antithetical self onisation as Thomas perhaps lies in to argue down Sartre and de Beauvoir in order to survive, not only economi- America’s lack of need for yet into states of turpitude; Koestler was cally, hired out as a performing mon- another Hell Raising writer). an intellectual giant whose oxygen key to the bourgeoisie, but in order Roethke himself remembered Tho- was tearing strips off people in public that he could live in desperate loyalty mas, whom he knew and drank with drunken debate. Thomas was a very to the poetic truth that he committed to for a relatively brief period in Los An- different creature indeed, although in paper. In more ways than one, it was geles, as ‘one of the great ones, there his own way just as complex. To bind his antithetical self, that which created can be no doubt about that. And he the two with their puerile scoffing adds his legend, that allowed drank his own blood, ate his own mar- colour to Koestler, but adds more his primary self to write. row, to get at some of that material.’ monochrome to the picture of Thomas That this creation also proved his They are powerful, passionate words, as parochial clown. Whereas Koestler downfall is his most powerful claim to from one great poet to another, and in was once described as a ‘noble gob- be the patron saint of the industry of a small way, they elevate the writer of lin’, Thomas is most often referred to tragedy. them as much as they do the eulo- in later years as ‘puffy’. There is al- The prejudices, embellishments and gised. Nobody doubts the kineticism of ways a condescending tone, even Chinese whispers that have gone into the well from which Thomas drew his from his acolytes, in many accounts of

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 27 encounters with the bumpkin Thomas; loyalties certainly seemed reactive, to stand by a supporter of fascism; or perhaps if he had ever learned to land and not formed with one eye on the perhaps when John Malcolm Brinnin a punch, like Koestler or the fearsome shifting winds. For example, Roy commented that Thomas’ socialism Roy Campbell often did (the three of Campbell was persona non-grata with seemed a pose, and half-hearted, them making Soho their drunken play- the Bloomsbury Set after something simply expected from his ground during the War), Thomas may his Georgiad lampooned the main fig- Welshness, he was hitting the nail have been written about quite differ- ures, (that he was also prone to brawl- firmly on the head. Thomas, in the ently. ing, jumping on stage and swiping at end, was ignorant of the politics, and But it was the certainly more placid Stephen Spender at a poetry recital, he just sided with his drinking buddy. and decidedly more circumspect and throwing Jacob Epstein around a Of course, Campbell and Thomas Stephen Spender who Thomas first bar, probably didn’t help either). But (and Koestler) had more in common encountered in London. Spender, in when Generals Franco and Mola than just alcoholism: they were always his Paris Review interview of 1980, came up from Morocco in 1936 and broke. Money, or lack of, is another which is bulbous with delicious anec- sparked the Spanish Revolution, heavy colour to Thomas’ story, and dotes about his encounters with the Campbell, a staunch Catholic, came was the strongest compulsion in the likes of Yeats, Hemingway and Woolf, out on the side of the brutal and mur- creation of his public character. recounts his first meeting with Tho- derous Nationalists, contrary to most It is worth noting here something of mas. They have lunch in a pub in intellectual opinion in England at the the character of the people who creat- Soho, Thomas, Spender, and a friend time. ed the legend of Dylan Thomas. They of Spender’s, invited along were often those un- to ensure awkward silenc- furled from the rarefied es were broken up. And cloisters of Oxbridge, the friend is needed, as which further accounts Thomas is nervous and for the condescending pale and largely silent. tone to which Thomas This is the Thomas before the person is often sub- he was the hired jected in print. It also ac- entertainment de rigueur of counts for the tincture of the socialite scene. vulgarity in Thomas’ por- Spender pulls back to an trait which goes beyond overview of his relationship reaction to his brazen with Thomas; he tells how, lewdness. Someone like many years later, Thomas Stephen Spender, who wrote him a very warm let- although hardly English ter thanking him for the aristocracy, came from a hospitality Spender had more entitled world than shown him when he first Cwmdonkin Drive, com- came to London. And then mented on how Thomas Spender says: ‘He certain- was ‘rather obsessed by ly said extremely mean money’ – ever the view- things about me behind my point of one who had back, of that I’m quite sure. rarely needed for it when I don’t hold that against looking to someone who him. It was just his style. was perpetually strug- We all enjoy doing things gling to feed his wife and like that.’ children. Here we see the melee Thomas worked hard into which Thomas was to make ends meet, to flung in the days and put food on the table. months and years follow- Perhaps his refusal to do ing that initial quiet lunch any work to which he with Spender on arrival. was not physically or in- The biting gladiatorial tellectually suited would throng, so well embodied be lambasted in certain in the legends of the Bloomsbury Set, Thomas, it seemed, ignored both the circles (especially in today’s economi- was in full flow, and Thomas was go- school yard spats and the rather more cally myopic censorious political cli- ing to have to step up if he was to serious political standpoints of Camp- mate), but in hindsight it is difficult to stand out. He certainly did that, as the bell, and continued friendships on both criticise his simple wish to feed his story goes, by becoming more and sides of the divide. Campbell, many children using his talents, especially more rambunctious and unpredicta- years later, wrote about his apprecia- as they were so widely appreciated. ble, more shocking, the bumpkin By- tion for Thomas’ lack of politicking in Thomas’ predicament, and his ron. these matters; but one must consider stresses, is displayed in painful poign- But was Thomas malleable to a Thomas’ loyalty to Campbell as per- ancy in a brief correspondence with scene, rather than stuck in one, or was haps being somewhat lacking in prin- Graham Greene in 1947. Greene is an he just ignorant and naïve? How cal- ciple rather than smacking of it. influential figure in the British film in- culated was this mask? His personal Perhaps it was the loyalty of a friend, dustry at this point, and Thomas tries

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 28 to impress upon him an old script he than intellectual legacy or celestial In private, Amis was cutting of Tho- had written about Edinburgh grave aesthetic vocation. It can be put quite mas’ ‘performance’, it being filled with robbers Burke and Hare. The note simply: it was Thomas’ refusal to dig ‘ragged epigrams topped up with soon degenerates into a begging let- ditches for a living, because of his some impressionistic stuff about ter. Michael Redgrave has shown in- unquestioning belief in loyalty to his America… [and] a backlash of dutiful terest in playing in it, he writes, before gifts, that meant he had to become a impropriety. And the poems he spoke a ham-handed segue into a plea re- performing monkey for socialites and out with his mouth: ooh corks! He garding his infant son’s medical bills literati in order to feed his children; his fucked up two of Auden’s things and the writs that keep falling on the alcoholism gained legitimacy not only from Another Time… In the pub after- welcome mat. It is painful to read. as Dutch courage, but as part of his wards, the more intelligent students Thomas wrote an uncountable act, and his alcoholism gave him noth- sneered at him gently, and he per- number of such letters throughout his ing in the tank when pneumonia came, ceived this.’ Amis’ prejudice against life. and the pneumonia killed him. Thomas’ work informs his rhetoric, just What we see here is the reality of And it was in death that Thomas was as his awareness of the industry of Thomas’ existence, and the strain it moved effortlessly, without his say so, tragedy informs the tone of his piece put on him. He was certainly not alone from performing monkey to patron for The Spectator; and so the signifi- in his penury as an artist, but there saint of the ever-vibrant industry of cance of the pieces lies not in the truth was money to be made, one way or tragedy. For many years after, publi- of Thomas’ character, but in the rigidi- the other, in poetry during the thirties cations traded on the memories of and ty of the construction of his legend. and forties, it’s just Thomas could not encounters with the Hell Raiser and Of his work, Amis was as damning find a way into the middle-class hold. Genius Dylan Thomas. That Isher- as he had always been. He once wrote But he had something he had been wood never published his reflection on to Larkin, ‘I just wish he’d GROW UP’, inadvertently developing that he knew Thomas (until the publication and made overt reference to what he he could mine: his public personality, of Diaries, that is, in 1996), adds much saw as Thomas dressing up a trite the antithetical mask. weight to the accuracy of it. Many idea in language designed to prevent And so as the legend began, it is other writers, even those who had people from seeing how trite it is. quite remarkable how quickly Thomas always been so opposed to Thomas Whether Amis is right or not about the grew to look at his new role, and the and his work, were happy to add to his poem in question (he does not name it demands of it, as a curse. legend. in the letter) is perhaps beside the Novelist and poet Rayner Heppen- Kingsley Amis, who never quite point; what Amis alludes to here is the stall recalls one evening drinking with came to terms with either Thomas’ art of showmanship, of showbiz, of Thomas (Thomas downing some local work or his fame, on news of Thomas’ populism. Cornish moonshine), when Thomas death wrote to Philip Larkin, ‘I don’t What Amis claims is that Thomas is breathlessly held court for quite some grieve for him as a voice for ever si- not what he is held up to be. Perhaps time before stopping and declaring lenced, in fact that part of it is pretty Amis, in his staunch opposition, saw a rather sadly, ‘Somebody’s boring me. much all right with me.’ central truth to Thomas, even if not for And I think it’s me.’ That Amis thought this is important the right reasons. Is it possible that Already, the man trapped. because it differs in tone from what he Thomas’ popularity then and now is After his death, this very real need published on the subject, for The due in part to the public being wooed was turned into a romantic tragedy by Spectator in 1957. by the idea of complexity, the garb of Thomas’ contemporaries. Karl Shap- There are two accounts from Amis, intellectualism, when in fact there is piro wrote in 1955, ‘Thomas was the a private one and a published one, of little profound going on? Add to that first modern romantic poet you could his meeting with Dylan Thomas at one the fact that Thomas’ legend is attrac- put your finger on, the first whose of Thomas’ readings at Swansea Uni- tive in ways that his work is not – the journeys and itineraries became part versity when Amis was just 28. The industry of tragedy is and always has of his own mythology, the first who Spectator account is softer, much been more alluring than the business offered himself up as a public sacrifice.’ more sympathetic, although the bare of poetry, even when the two are bed- A sacrifice?! To the gods of poetry, bones of the story remain the same. fellows. no less!? A cursory reading of Tho- The Thomas of The Spectator article Significantly, what Kinglsey Amis mas’ own letters shows clearly a man certainly appears to be a trapped pub- identifies as showmanship he does just trying to feed his kids. But Shapiro lic figure. We are introduced to the not associate with charlatanism. He subscribes to an idea integral to Tho- Thomas of the tragic myth, he is be- explicitly rejects the idea, in private, mas’ legend when he goes on to write: leaguered and battered, drunk and that Thomas is a fake, but rather, ‘a ‘How much did Thomas subscribe to isolated, pecked at by a hanger-on, second rate GK Chesterton… you official Symbolism?… How much did Thomas too ‘good natured’ to ever know: frothing at the mouth with piss.’ he love death as his major symbol? As turn someone away. Amis concludes It is no wonder that, from all of this, much as any poet I know in the Eng- that, contrary to his own previously a simple, billboard-friendly, and utterly lish language. These factions have a held conception, that Thomas’ ‘atti- vaporous idea of the man has claim on Thomas which we cannot tude was the product of nothing more emerged; it is Thomas’ own creation fully contradict.’ self-aware or self-regarding than shy- after all, one that became so potent it But Thomas was not obsessed with ness.’ Whether true or not, Amis is continues to outlive his primary self. symbols of death, because in some contributing to the legend of Thomas, ethereal poetic bubble he could see as one who moved about us with the his destiny in his posthumous legend. black cloud of his own tragic, poetic This essay is taken from the new The compulsions of Thomas were far destiny overhead, a destiny now ful- collection Encounters with Dylan from more earthbound, far more serious filled. the H’mm Foundation.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 29 The Landscapes of Language: A Mississippian in Wales

by Trey McCain Trey McCain is an American writer, to explain complexions, hair colour stop – in an effort to keep us awake videographer and language scholar, and bad tempers. And while imagina- and fight jet lag – was Conwy Castle. raised in Mississippi and currently tions make leaps that missing census At the time, I had no comparable residing in New Braunfels, Texas. His records encourage, there is some truth experience by which to measure that language studies at the University of in these folk genealogies. Names like day, since I had seldom travelled out- Mississippi placed him in Paris where Carlisle, Carroll, Monaghan and Mur- side of my corner of the South. The he developed a strong interest in mi- phy are plentiful throughout the region, mountains held me in Mississippi won- nority languages and language rights not to mention my own, McCain. derment. The breaking waves on movements. A cultural exchange visit Speech patterns reveal similar links rocky beaches and cliff sides defied to North Wales as part of his degree with the distant past and the British Floridian expectations. The abun- sparked a continuing love affair with Isles. A friend’s grandmother just a dance of sheer rock had me grasping Wales and the Welsh language. couple of counties north still calls back to the stony faces of Tishomingo * boots ‘brogans’. Her family has lived in County, my state’s highest point. The the area for several generations. tide was low when we crossed the y best days start on the These influences, reinforced by ele- bridge into Conwy, revealing the hulls street, before the rest of the ments of pop culture and historical of sloops and motorboats, but the sight house begins to stir. Occa- narratives, coalesced to form my own that held our gaze was the castle itself, sionally I run, but I prefer to slip on vague, Scotch-Irish identification. So looming over the shrunken river and sandals and walk with a pair of bright much so that in 2006, the summer the encircled city, a picturesque scene pink headphones, lifted from my wife’s after my first year at university, I to our American minds. That afternoon bedside table. The dogs bark and of- signed up for a cultural exchange pro- we explored turrets, powder keeps ten howl as I stroll by, in what I imagine gramme that would take me backpack- and the walls of the city. By the to be xenophobic fits of rage, while I ing across Ireland. I had enjoyed my evening we were exhausted, ready to avoid eye contact with other early ris- first year, but I was leaning toward collapse into whatever bunk would ers. I’m practicing my Welsh aloud, concentrating in language and wanted take us to the castle now towering in and here in the heart of Texas, it more than the basic French and Span- our dreams. doesn’t do to stick out on the street. ish offered. So I explored other lan- Our first week was general orienta- Of course, I have a difficult time guages on my own, including Gaelic tion at a camp on Pen Llŷn. We had an blending in without furrowing my brow and Irish Gaelic. I had heard of sum- introduction to the Welsh language and muttering under my breath. My mer programmes for students abroad, that included a visit to a Welsh chapel red mop of morning hair and matching and when I learned that backpacking one Sunday morning. All week long we beard set me apart in the Texas hill in Galway was an option, I jumped at had practiced unfamiliar words at the country and my native Mississippi. My the chance. Too late, it would seem. hands of a patient teacher, managing hair attracted attention from an early When I had news of my application, all to comfortably bid ‘bore da’ and ‘Be’ age when my mother would tow me of the places in Ireland were taken. So ydy dy enw di?’ Chapel was one of our through the supermarket through what were the spots in Scotland, my second first opportunities to try our Welsh. We seemed to be hoards of envious gran- choice. I had been assigned to Wales, stumbled over the words in the hym- nies, each with their grasping handful. though I barely remembered ticking nal, but enjoyed ourselves amid the It was a surprise for my parents, both the box, much less where it was on the rousing chorus the parishioners gave. dark brunettes, but then there were a map. The pastor even paused every few few cousins on either side with auburn * lines in his sermon to give us a synop- locks, and didn’t Grandma Lille Bell We landed in Manchester Airport at sis in English in a thick, North Walian have red hair? In North Mississippi, it’s around 9am. Once collected, we piled accent. There were so many friendly not uncommon at all to have a red- onto a coach and headed for Wales. I faces as we filed out at midday. Peo- headed baby, sparking conversations remember pressing my face against ple were genuinely delighted to hear that sound the depths of family history the window, looking at the rounda- their language in our loud American and Scotch-Irish heritage. bouts and the cars in the left lane. As voices, no matter the forgotten muta- Like much of Appalachia, of which we neared our destination, the moun- tions and poorly rolled r’s. This first Northeast Mississippi constitutes the tains and the coastline appeared, foray into Welsh in the wild set the final, rolling end, people hearken back meeting with the suddenness I could stage for similar encounters all sum- to indefinite Irish and Scottish ancestry later only describe as Welsh. Our first mer long.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 30 I remained in North Wales until the pelling narratives of adversity, but the has left us with unstable growth. end of July, living in Bangor, but often people of Wales made it personal. We’ve been slower to modernise due visiting Caernarfon, Ynys Mon and National stories of economic hard- to our scattered populations. Change Llandudno. The weather was warm ships and social struggles took the comes slowly to some towns and vil- and sunny that summer, and we spent form of family histories in the mouths lages, many of which look and feel the many days on walking paths or driving of Welsh speakers. Beginning a con- same as they did decades ago. People through the mountains. I didn’t make versation with ‘bore da’ or ‘sut mae’ carry long memories of conflicts long the effort to speak Welsh every day, became both memorial and pledge. past; some grudges are justified, oth- and hindsight has led me to regret Through these small words, we could ers are obsessions better left forgotten. those missed opportunities. However, celebrate the perseverance of the Their histories are not wholly analo- Welsh sought me out all the same Welsh language and laud the efforts to gous, due in part to their difference in during my stay, typically in small mo- promote its growth. The pleasure we age and political structure. Wales is ments with people I would character- had in travelling abroad had trans- distinct from the rest of the UK by ize as warm and friendly. I’ve tried to formed to something much more pro- nature of its shared culture and lan- keep up with one friend from Peny- found. Simple novelty was replaced guage, historically if not always literally groes, a kindred wit who taught me to with a deep affection for Wales. nowadays. The South is distinct from recite to other speakers, ‘Mae fy marf When I returned to university in the the rest of the U.S. by the shared yn ogoneddus’ (my beard is magnifi- fall, I was disappointed to find a dearth legacy of slavery and the war for it. It cent). That summer was such an im- of Celtic language classes. Courses has no exclusive claim to either, but portant time in my life. It was over kept me from devoting significant time both endure in our collective con- much too soon. to Welsh, but my experiences in Wales sciousness and they continue to bear * still informed my studies. Studying lan- influence on the structure of our socie- Returning home was difficult. My per- guage variation in American English ty and culture. Modern politics in spective of the world had shifted, while once again revealed the importance of Wales and the South are not entirely my friends and family lacked the expe- choice in speech, which prompted me comparable, but streaks of independ- riences to make the same leap. One to examine my attitude towards lan- ence run through them both. Central socio-political behemoth that surfaced guage closer to home. Southern governance has been criticised in fa- again and again while in Wales was American English (SAE), that is to say vour of more local control and ac- the Iraq War. Before Wales, I hadn’t English in the South-eastern portion of countability. This balance between given much thought to the necessity the United States, and African Ameri- state and federal authority has always and the justification of the war. Tough can Vernacular English (AAVE) are been present in the U.S., but many questions abroad led me to examine often disparaged as lazy and back- Southerners put increased importance the validity of American exceptional- wards, compared to more prestigious on local control, in part due to the ism, the value of nationalism and the standards of English in America. legacy of Reconstruction. Likewise, nature of faith in the patriotic and Wales taught me first-hand the impor- many in Wales have celebrated in- church-laden South. But these ques- tance of linguistic identity and the way creased devolution with calls for in- tions were rarely welcome at home. I in which how we speak conveys more creased autonomy. found solace in sharing my experienc- meaning than the sum total of our Both regions suffer from marginalisa- es with some of the students from my words. When I applied these values to tion at the hands of mainstream cul- programme. As the year progressed, a the way my people spoke, I realised an ture. In a strange twist of irony, the handful of us decided to return to injustice in which I had been complicit. complementary stigma to a backwards Wales the following summer. * Wales and the ignorant South is a I had kept up with one student National opinion and popular rhetoric romanticised version of both, each regularly throughout the year. Amelia in the U.S. often create a South de- presented in a bucolic bubble. Idyllic and I had shared several conversa- fined solely by its shortcomings, scenes of unpopulated landscapes tions late at night that continued when namely cronyism, latent racism, weak and quaint residents with a twinkle in we reunited in Wales. The summer education systems and moral white- their eye and a penchant for good was busy for me, as I spent a couple washing. In the eyes of mainstream manners permeate national discourse. of weeks visiting Paris and Brussels as culture, we are often reduced to igno- Look no further than Hollywood to find part of my programme. Amelia and I rant, uneducated hicks who barely idealised versions of both Wales and stayed in touch by e-mail and enjoyed speak English. Sadly, the variation in the South, in nearly the same breath. the moments we had together in Ban- our speech is often the yardstick by The film version of Gone with the gor when our schedules overlapped. which the content of our character is Wind (1939) remains the prototypical At the end of our time in Wales, we measured. These narratives even af- story of the Old South, covering its began dating; we married just two fect perceptions we hold of ourselves. zenith, fall and reconstruction through years later. Today we are able to say We read between the lines, learn we the eyes of a woman who only wants we spent our first day together traips- shouldn’t sound different and carry to keep her family together, regain the ing around a castle in North Wales. It negative connotations with the way we high living and status she lost and makes for an excellent, one-upper sto- speak. The urge to reconcile our render everything as it once was. ry. speech reminded me of the impact of Three years later, How Green Was My Returning for a second summer the Welsh Blue Books and subsequent Valley (1941) debuted to similar suc- deepened the changes that had begun efforts to reclaim the language. Wales cess. The credits open with a rousing during the first. Our time with the began to teach me about the South. chorus of Welsh singers and the re- Welsh led us to value small, quiet acts Wales and the South are similar on flections of an aged Huw Morgan, who that underscored the importance of various fronts. Both regions are rural vows he will always remember his self-expression and choice. Welsh his- and traditionally agricultural, with a valley as it once was, full of the voices tory and literature offer their own com- history of economic depression that of his family and friends.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 31 These two films are cut from the ing English with a Welsh accent for the own name. He works now as an actor same cloth, pitting a family against the purpose of this comparison). He ex- and faithfully keeps up with Rownd a turns of time, the pangs of unrequited plains to young Huw in unwavering Rownd, Pobol y Cwm and many other love and the snipping gossip of their certainty the various difficulties of life S4C programmes featuring Welsh tal- community. Though both films de- in the valley. At the head of the church ent. He has legitimate aspirations of serve praise for aspects of their pro- he lambasts the deacons and congre- his own to act in Wales someday; just duction, they compress complicated gation in righteous anger. The effect last year he won third place in storytell- societies and complex questions to a becomes even more pronounced ing at the Eisteddfod in Denbighshire. two-dimensional approach. Tara, when contrasted with the heavily Jeremy Schirmer came to Welsh by painted in vivid Technicolor, offers a Welsh-accented snivelling of Deacon way of studying Irish. In Welsh he monochromatic view of plantation life, Parry and nattering among the village found greater access to both language where the slaves are content to work hens. The pastor’s voice never conde- materials and artists who perform till ‘quittin’ time’ and the young men scends; that is left to the English modern styles of music, like the Cow- only worry about the glory of war and schoolteacher along with the rich col- bois Rhos Botwnnog, whose America- wooing the women, who are them- liery owner and his son, providing na style appeals to his tastes. Last selves backbiting harpies jockeying for Gruffydd with unmitigated access to December he began learning through good marriages and happiness. The the moral framework of the film. The audio courses from Say Something in families in Cwm Rhondda are similarly results of these precise shades of Welsh, a popular resource to learners disposed of most worries, content to character portrayal create negative as- the world over, including nearly every- labour in the collieries from which they sociations with variations of English one I know learning Welsh this side of issue in song every day, if they’re not outside of the accepted, national norm. the Atlantic. Jeremy also listens thronging around a flowing firkin. * to C2 on BBC Radio Cymru and picks When anything unsettling arises at These two-dimensional depictions of a few Welsh tunes himself on the ban- work, in chapel or at home, the boys Wales and the South cannot stand the jo, guitar and mandolin. Though he pop off to America or someone storms test of time, so long as we dig deeper lives in eastern Texas, he shares out of a room and everyone is eventu- for the multitude of narratives that un- strong ties to Louisiana and has ally laughing and singing again. Well, derpin our societies and reject the wa- French heritage. He naturally speaks at least till the end. Though the overall tered-down simplifications that belies a little Cajun French himself, and re- tone of both films emotes sadness, their inherent richness. We must stand lates the efforts to increase the Welsh loss and more than a touch of hiraeth, firm against language prejudice in its language to the state of Louisiana the final thought in each clings to an myriad forms and fight against the French, which is undergoing its own idealised past that does not and never division it creates within our own com- small revival. ‘To reclaim what we did exist. munities. We must also resist the have lost, we have to learn to use the One unsettling thread that runs temptation to reach back to a glorious language, it has to be integral,’ he through both films is the way in which past, to a ‘Wild Wales’ or to the ‘Old says, citing the growth of immersion variation in speech is used to mark the South.’ Exploring a culture different schools, tourism in his home state and qualities in characters. Rhett Butler, and yet similar to my own allowed me the growing number of musicians us- though he comes from Charleston, to see my surroundings in a new light. ing the language outside of purely tra- does not sound in the least Southern. The connection of these two regions ditional music. His opening lines in Gone with Wind may seem odd, but I’m not the only There are many more Welsh learn- warn the hot-headed plantation own- Southerner to build an affinity for ers scattered across the South, from ers and their sons against war with the Wales. Central Texas to South Carolina. North. He continues to disparage the Eris Culpepper, a friend and fellow Many are learning because of their values created within the film in a run- Welsh learner from Meridian, Missis- heritage, while others find the lan- ning commentary that nearly devolves sippi, first visited Wales in 1989 while guage itself compelling enough to into asides. He recognizes an ‘historic serving in the U.S. Air Force at Wood- study. Some were stirred by the signs moment’ as the South crashes around bridge in Suffolk. He found similarities they saw during their holiday in Wales. them, providing the audience with a between rural North Wales and his Others made replica castles in school character through which to project own home; life for his family in the and found the Welsh flag a most ap- their own omniscience. Melanie 1950s resembled 19th century living propriate banner. Their stories encour- Wilkes offers a similar role largely void standards. ‘They couldn’t afford a trac- age me, especially when I hear of Southern speech markers who re- tor, so my father would borrow the statements aimed at belittling the flects kindness, genuine affection and neighbour’s mule to do the ploughing’. Welsh language as a relic of the past unwillingness to speak ill of anyone, in He described his return to Wales some unworthy of the future. contrast to Scarlett, the belles at ten years later whilst revisiting We recognize that the world would be Twelve Oaks and the gossiping ladies Blaenau Ffestiniog: ‘It was like I had a dimmer place without Welsh culture in town. These two characters demon- been gone five minutes. Nothing had and the Welsh language. Without strate laudable qualities in language changed… but everyone was so kind Welsh I would understand far less distinct from the rest of the group and and friendly, they replied to me in about the richness of the South – our the South. The effect is subtle, but it Welsh and never asked where I was literature, our food and our complicat- reinforces prejudices already in- from.’ ed identity. For my part, Wales has grained subconsciously in speakers. He bought a Welsh learner’s book created a way to show that mutual Mr. Gruffydd provides a similar char- before leaving during his initial visit respect empowers people and acter in How Green was My and began learning in earnest several strengthens our communities. Valley with his resonant, American years later after seeing credits that voice (I am conflating the difference included Euros Lyn, which offered a between speaking Welsh and speak- clue into the shrouded origins of his

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 32 From Olympia to the Valleys: What Riot Grrrl did and didn’t do for me

by Rhian E Jones

ith riot grrrl now approaching the status of a herit- tory of adolescence. Moreover, I realised that the Rain- age industry, not to mention Courtney Love’s cur- coats had sounded so off-puttingly alien to me at first rent incarnation as the post-grunge Norma because they were – their tentative, unfamiliar steps to- Desmond, it can be hard to recall that both of them helped wards music had been a groundbreaking way of doing me find my feminist footing on the slippery rocks of a ’90s things. girlhood. This is a roundabout remembrance of how it Sure, women had been singers and musicians before happened. now, and I had been awed and enthralled by punk, pre- punk and proto-punk women from Ma Rainey to Gaye I. Advert, but even Patti Smith had been reliant on male instrumentalists and male-defined musical styles (in addi- The arts have long been a space for radical expression tion to her almost exclusively male role models) to back up by women, even if the extent of that radicalism has often her creative ambition. By contrast, the Raincoats’ self-titled gone under-acknowledged. In 1915, the author and debut was described as the first ‘women’s rock’ album, its journalist Dorothy Richardson produced Pointed Roofs, deconstruction of traditional forms pioneering an arresting credited as the first English stream of consciousness nov- and persuasive form of rock without the cock. The Rain- el, using an innovative prose style which she saw as coats’ music and lyrics mapped a landscape previously necessary for the expression of female experience. Virgin- alien to mainstream rock; a female-centred one of self- ia Woolf observed that Richardson ‘has invented, or, if she consciousness, self-doubt, embarrassment and anxiety, its has not invented, developed and applied to her own uses, borders defined by the pressure to conform aesthetically a sentence which we might call the psychological sentence and cosmetically as well as by family, society and biology. of the feminine gender’. If Richardson’s challenge to lin- Punk’s preoccupation with mundane daily routine – bus guistic convention in her writing has musical counterparts, rides, shopping, boredom – is rendered with drab watercol- one of them is the ‘new, raw and female’ sound made our realism rather than the gritty outlaw glamour with which possible by post-punk. Punk removed barriers of prece- The Clash tended to sculpt their cityscapes. dent and technical expertise to engagement in music, Postpunk was full of such subtly subversive manoeuvres enabling trips into less-charted musical and lyrical territory. as female musicians attempted to realise a self-conscious- But it was in the subsequent voyage of discovery that was ly radical sound dealing with emotions – embarrassment, post-punk that punk’s revolutionary potential really bore awkwardness, anxiety – infrequently expressed in contem- fruit, and the untried, experimental nature of post-punk porary rock. Post-punk’s concern with the politicisation of music was particularly suited to women. the personal, and with identifying and promoting authentic- Accepting a work’s artistic value doesn’t automatically ity rather than cultural and media stereotypes, lent itself to mean that you’ll enjoy it, of course. It took me a long time exploration from a feminine and feminist angle, resulting in to appreciate both experimental literature and post-punk in lyrics which demystified and deconstructed conventional practice as well as in theory. One of the most acclaimed of femininity, love, sex and romance, and which analysed post-punk bands were the Raincoats, a London-bred col- social and cultural pressures on women, or the tensions of lective based around the partnership of Gina Birch and personal relationships, in implicitly political ways. The Slits Ana Da Silva, but on my first listen, at the age of thirteen made skanky, shadowy dub-punk hymns to sex and shop- or so, their hesitant, eerie, self-effacing, gentle and loose- lifting, identified mainstream femininity as a profit-driven knit stylings were something I had no patience for and no invention in ‘Typical Girls’, and scathingly dismissed its sympathy with. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that, attendant angst and insecurities. The stinging lyrics of the intrigued by Kurt Cobain’s fanboying of the band, I gave Bush Tetras’ ‘Too Many Creeps’ conflated love, romance the Raincoats a second chance, or at least a second listen. and consumerism, ultimately rejecting the whole package This time around, I could discern something I could identify as the fruitless result of ‘shopping around’ only to find with, something that was tangled up with the altered terri- ‘nothing that’s worth the cost’. There was an obvious

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 33 prototype here for riot grrrl’s alarms and anxieties: the ment’s nerve-centres and unable to practically engage, I struggle to occupy public space with confidence rather listened and I read. than fear, the revelation that falling in love can be more baffling nausea than fairytale bliss, the terrifying tricks that At the end of the ‘90s, the Spice Girl’s water-down biology and psychology can play. version of ‘Girl Power’ had me questioning wheth- While there are cons as well as pros to what Greil Marcus er there was a place for real independent women called post-punk’s ‘spontaneous amateurism’ – a lot of in mainstream pop culture, not to mention the post-punk music sounds like it was more entertaining to effectiveness of the early-‘90’s riot grrrl movement make than it is to listen to – it’s difficult to deny its interest in the face of this blatant co-option of our terminol- and importance as a form of self-expression, especially by ogy. those more usually found in the audience than on the stage. The musical legacy of post-punk, with its accelera- – Tobi Vail, Bikini Kill/Jigsaw tion of the female self-expression which punk initiated, remained deeply embedded in underground and alterna- In political terms, riot grrrl in the UK felt more aligned with tive music, occasionally rising to break the surface. the self-consciously alternative and oppositional left of the ’80s, which made it feel increasingly out of place as alter- The whole climate changed in the ‘80s – music native culture in the ’90s succumbed to a celebratory, reverted back to being a careerist option… But we conformist complacence. The major-label hijacking of the were amazed that there was this void, with no one ‘girl power’ slogan was grimly predictable, and so was the taking up the baton. There was a ten-year gap until hostility that riot grrrl in its undiluted form had initially faced riot grrrl and Elastica came along. – non-traditional music and art has a long history of rejec- tion as incoherent and amateur. In ’90s Britain, riot grrrl - Viv Albertine, guitarist/vocalist, The Slits was to some extent a casualty of the post-Oasis critical dismissal of experimental music as the preserve of affect- The early-’90s eruption of riot grrrl bore all the musical ed middle-class art-school cliques, inferior to more well- and political hallmarks of female post-punk, continuing worn and familiar forms of artistic expression. Arguing that both its experimentalist and deconstructionist approach to bland and basic music is inherently superior, by dint of its form, and its mocking and subverting of conventional fem- appeal to a ‘less pretentious’ man-in-the-street demo- inine looks, dress and behaviour. In terms of women in graphic, is of course a damaging class-essentialist line bands, the manufactured mainstream of the late 1980s which implies that the ‘ordinary’ working-class music fan is was obviously a barren ground for post-punk’s experimen- incapable of engaging with anything more challenging, and talist legacy, and I had little inkling of the alternative or which further implies that there can be no emotional, underground until my adolescence, which was why it took psychological or political depth to straightforward, ‘simple’ the ’90s to introduce me to the ’70s. Riot grrrl was the other music. No matter how loudly and frequently made, neither shoe dropping, the lower jaw meeting the upper to snap charge should stick. shut on the vacant, rapacious maw of the decade between. Where riot grrrl was open to more valid criticism and challenge, however, was where it subscribed to an unex- II. amined liberal feminism which took little account of other axes of privilege and oppression. For all that I read of riot Like many foreign phenomena, riot grrrl seemed to land grrrls in Leeds, Manchester, London and Brighton, I re- in the Valleys slightly after the fact and almost entirely in ceived it as an intrinsically US concept, especially in its the abstract – which was just as well, seeing as how the college-age personalised and confessional third-wave ’90s NME would inevitably have dubbed any Welsh equiv- feminism, and this led me to regard it with a certain degree alent something like Riot Grllll. According to retrospective of reservation. As has been shown in mythology, the US-spawned movement was propelled into several retrospectives on the movement, its largely white popular consciousness in Britain by Huggy Bear’s 1993 and middle-class makeup meant that exclusionary tenden- performance of ‘Her Jazz’ and subsequent disruption of an cies – albeit often unspoken and subconscious – adhered episode of The Word – something I only dimly recollect, to it in spite of its inclusionary rhetoric. In the book Girls though I do remember the acres of newsprint it generated. Make Media, Mary Celeste Kearney observes: Radicalising existing UK indie subcultures, riot grrrl continued post-punk’s emphasis on demystifying music, not The gender deviance displayed by riot grrrls is a merely through forming bands but also through actively privilege to which only middle-class white girls making physical space for girls at gigs and questioning have access. Indeed, the gender (and generation- gender norms and power dynamics within music and wider al) trouble celebrated within riot grrrl may be the society. primary reason for its lack of appeal to poor female Despite riot grrrl’s understandable and justified antipathy youths and girls of colour, whose performance of to mainstream media, with its well-documented tendency gender and generation are structured quite differ- to sensationalise, misrepresent and exploit, the fact that I ently as a result of their disenfranchised status … was able to experience the movement at all, in my isolated and alienated pre-internet adolescence, was due to the I grew up a feminist as well as a socialist. The two things ’90s weekly music press. For a brief and brilliant moment, were intertwined for me in, for instance, the legacy of across its pages, as well as those of the associated fan- 1980s miners’ support groups through which Valleys wom- zines and communiqués I subsequently acquired, there en, while on the one hand supporting what might be seen raged a range of women who made me feel that, as a as a macho and patriarchal industrial culture, had on the teenage girl, the validity and logic of my involvement with other hand gradually challenged the chauvinism in which it music was never in question. Separated from the move- could be steeped. In doing so, their focus had been on material rather than abstract issues. Riot grrrl’s emphasis

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 34 on questioning and disrupting conventional ideas of femi- was, as my insufferable teenage self would have delighted ninity – scrawling SLUT or UGLY on exposed skin, re- in putting it, no distinction between the signifiers and the claiming or subverting sexually derogatory terms and signified. You were what you wore. This was of course one identities – was something I accepted and experimented of the very notions that riot grrrl was attempting to combat with on a theoretical level, but, as a pathologically under- – but, if you don’t have the luxury of stepping in and out of confident small-town teenage girl, I felt entirely unable to your chosen role, then seeing others do so, no matter how practice it. politically praiseworthy their intentions, can feel like watch- As anyone who’s ever over-listened to the Manics’ ‘You ing them take a holiday in other people’s misery. Love Us’ will know, antagonism can be life-affirming, and Frequently, as a teenager, my body didn’t seem to sometimes deliberately adopting a confrontationally ex- operate in the same context or circumstances as my brain, traordinary look, defiantly dressing ridiculous, can be a and, while I gratefully escaped into the realm of abstract perverse form of self-defence. By the same token, though, theory, theory remained an awkward fit with my lived it is at least a gamble, at most a risk, depending on its experience. Out of context, and outside the teenage bed- context, and those who adopt it cannot really bargain for its room, the idea of applying my lipstick with the back of my varying receptions. The lack of everyday space in which to hand and prowling my post-industrial shopping-centre in aesthetically experiment was partly why the gigs I did ripped tights and a babydoll nightdress in order to Subvert manage to attend as a teenager, and for which I spent the Ubiquity of the Heteropatriarchal Gaze might well have whole days ritually preparing, attained such value as safe been boundary-pushing, but as a unilateral move, without subcultural spaces where one could dress up and act out access to practical collective solidarity, it would primarily – something that riot grrrl actively emphasised – even have felt ludicrous. In any case, the Olympia thrift-store though the same gigs could also be confrontational flash- Kinderwhore trappings I coveted were not yet so recuper- points (See, for instance, the polarised accounts of Huggy ated and commodified as to be available from my local Bear and their 1993 gig at TJ’s in Newport in Craig Austin’s branch of New Look. (There was in fact a building in my zine Cocksucker Blues (February, 1993). town called The Olympia, which, with suitable bathos, had Mimi Thi Nguyen, in her counter-history of riot grrrl, writes been for some years a disused cinema and then a discount that certain forms of rebellion performed by women can carpet showroom.) look different when race, class or sexuality is brought into Despite its practical limitations and occasional lack of play: nuance, though, what I read of riot grrrl as a small-town teenager made complete sense intellectually. Riot grrrl’s For instance, women of color wondered out loud performative ways of challenging feminine convention for whom writing ‘slut’ across their stomachs oper- were – to me – a new strategy of dealing with an intrusive ated as reclamations of sexual agency against and proscriptive external gaze. Riot grrrl enhanced the feminine passivity, where racisms had already idea of musical idols as aspirational, as escapist, as inhab- inscribed such terms onto some bodies, and poor itants of an age yet to come where the identities they or criminal-class women argued that feminists presented could be an individual choice rather than some- ‘slumming’ in the sex industry (through stripping, thing externally and judgementally imposed. And it intro- for the most part) as a confrontational act implied duced me to a self-sexualisation which could be that other women in this or other tiers of the indus- aggressive and confrontational rather than pliantly submis- try were otherwise conceding to patriarchy. sive. Riot grrrl was not the bulletproof, unfaultable realisation of punk’s political potential, but merely a tentative step While the criticisms quoted above were more directly on the way, and it is to the credit of the movement’s more relevant to US riot grrrl than its UK manifestation, the limits recent subcultural offspring – local queer and feminist that could be placed on riot grrrl’s radicalism by a lack of bands, clubnights, zines and festivals – that they seem to attention to race, class, and other dimensions of female be taking greater account of intersectional correctives. experience, have an obvious resonance with recent debates on the need for an intersectional approach to femi- III. nism. As a working-class teenage girl, I felt that I was missing out by being unable to practically engage with A good song’s a good song. That’s my politics. contemporary riot grrrl, but I wonder whether practically Please don’t slice PJ[harvey] in half—her assimila- engaging might only have brought its own set of frustra- tionist compromise has done more for us than 30 tions, whether I would have found myself feeling more a grrrls banging on a pot and spoon. part of the problem than the solution. Yes, riot grrrl’s performative ‘slut’ aesthetic could be – Courtney Love, Hole useful to women wanting to escape or overthrow an op- pressive set of ‘good-girl’ expectations – but these expec- Live Through This, my first and favourite Hole album, tations are often race- and class-dependent. If your class climactically staggers and collapses into half-smothered already leads external observers to stereotype you with a giggles with ‘Rock Star’, an arch burlesque of riot grrrl as lack of respectability, a certain availability, a certain ‘easi- just another collective enforcing homogeneity (‘We look ness’ – then the deliberate adoption of that same identity the same, we talk the same…’), little different from the is not straightforwardly empowering or liberating. To fur- petty tyrannies of high-school. Courtney Love, a riot grrrl ther complicate matters, this identity ran counter to the refusenik with a mutually antagonistic relationship with the imposed notions of working-class respectability with which ‘official’ movement, is of course not beyond criticism of her I grew up, and reclaiming or even challenging it would have own music and politics. Nevertheless, her band spoke to taken more balls than I possessed in my teens. It was also my teenage self far more directly than the Raincoats did, a difficult role to inhabit temporarily without becoming in music, lyrics and delivery that were fiercely expressive, obliged to occupy it permanently; it was difficult to convey raging towards articulacy in a manner that sometimes that one was in fact merely performing a ‘slut’ role – there came off, sometimes didn’t, but which always triumphed

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 35 through the power of suggestion and impression. Court- The clichéd debauchery of Axl Rose or Steven Tyler was ney’s lyrical preoccupation with petal-stripping, in particu- accepted and even lauded as a necessary part of their lar, seemed to exemplify a determination to peel away the appeal, but in Courtney it was judged unseemly and irre- decorative superficial to get to an ugly but authentic heart sponsible. Equally, the respect accorded a contemporary of the matter – the real, beyond fake, inside the pretty. like the Manics’ Richey Edwards, the mourning for his lost Courtney’s music, like other aspects of her politics and genius, was something for which I could not imagine a presentation, rubbed up against riot-grrrl’s concern with female equivalent – self-harm, alcoholism and anorexia in anatomising female neurosis and breaching the a male rock star was proof of tortured sensibility too deli- personal/political divide, expressing what it found as a cate for this world, while in a female rock star it was just a cathartic, exhilarating blend of rage and revel. lurid spectacle. There was a ghoulish and lascivious edge Like Patti Smith and her phallocentric pantheon (Rim- to public concern over Courtney – as there was, years on, baud, Dylan, Morrison, Richards), Courtney’s significant over Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse – which was and idols and inspirations – McCulloch, Cope, Curtis – were is seldom present in attitudes to their male counterparts. mostly male, but her attachment to traditional forms of Her unrepentant behaviour, and her own critique of criti- macho rock songwriting was undercut by her entire ap- cism rather than bowing beneath its barrage, dragged proach to it, in particular the confessional outpouring of her these double standards into the spotlight where they could lyrics. She drew on tropes considered irredeemably girly – be openly examined. diary entries, fairytales, dolls and babydolls, plumpness Back in my ’90s adolescence, it is testament to riot grrrl’s and satin pumps, petals and candy – and mixed them up unpredictable trajectory in the UK that it happened to with the gritty, grisly business of actually being a woman, inspire Sunderland pop-aspirational indie band Kenickie. the raw, bloody meat and the mindfucking. I had to work at Explicitly influenced by Courtney Love, they, like her, suc- ‘getting’ the Raincoats, and to a lesser extent at ‘getting’ ceeded in extending the attitudes and lessons of the move- riot grrrl, finally managing to interpret the former through ment beyond its initial target demographic. If Courtney the latter. My ‘getting’ Courtney, however, felt instinctive, veered between resignation to and revelling in her ‘bad- automatic, even if I didn’t quite know why, and even if it girl’ role, Kenickie refused to grant the good-girl/bad-girl was due to the familiarity of the artistic territory on which dichotomy the dignity of recognition. Through their glamor- she operated. Even if you view the electric guitar as a ous, defiantly regional aesthetic – animal print, glitter, hopelessly compromised phallic instrument, there’s surely lashings of lipstick and towering heels – and their sleek, a subversive thrill to be had from seeing it in female hands. fierce paeans to the complexities of female independence, Moreover, Courtney’s attempts to navigate the perilous Kenickie demonstrated riot grrrl’s wider potential, much as waters of Doing It Like a Dude uncovered the existence of riot grrrl itself had intensified the aftershocks of punk. undercurrents which still make it difficult to do so. Unlike Kenickie’s music and image offered me a more familiar the acknowledged performativity of riot grrrl, Courtney did and accessible way of valorising the feminine, or, to para- not seem to be permitted to escape her bad-girl role, phrase their song ‘Come Out 2Nite’, of ‘becoming what you appeared unable to shrug off her costume after any given can’. Drawing, like Courtney, on an aggressive femininity performance. She was constantly reviled or ridiculed for and a brash, ambitious and unapologetic kind of glamour, behaviour and attitudes which got, and still get, her male their look called to mind the trappings of working-class contemporaries praised and indulged. Her relationship nights out: the meticulously, ritually constructed approxi- with Kurt Cobain exemplified these inequalities, seeing her mation of excitement, luxury and sophistication as an automatically dismissed as a golddigger, a groupie, a age-old reaction to being surrounded by drabness and modern Yoko. Her position and prominence was repeated- mundanity. In doing so, it also evoked the escapist and ly explained with reference to her ‘easy’ sexuality or manip- empowering potential of that process. This, ultimately, was ulative harpy qualities rather than her talent – regardless the kind of riot grrrl that struck the strongest chord with me of Hole’s early commercial outpacing of Nirvana or the – its radicalism muted in some respects, perhaps, but artistic equivalence between her band and his. amplified in others.

On Sale Now.

Wales Arts Review’s A Fiction Map of Wales. Editor: John Lavin with a foreword by Ali Anwar

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 36 ‘Almost like a world on its own': Wales Arts Review goes to Festival No.6

by John Lavin

Festival No 6, Portmeirion, 13th – 15th September, 2013 In any case, at least I wasn’t driving, and despite this and the mad-for-sadness-seeming skies, things were set much Number Two: Quite a beautiful place, really, isn’t it? Al- more on the right track by a wonderful lunch at The Felin most like a world on its own. Fach Griffin outside Brecon, a pub which we discovered Number Six: I shall miss it when I’m gone. upon entering had recently won no less an accolade than Number Two: Oh, it will grow on you. the Good Pub Guide’s Inn of the Year 2013. Something of a result you might very well say. A bloodstream-cleansing - ‘The Arrival’, The Prisoner combination of butter-roasted Bryn Derw chicken served in a light, pea, spinach and tarragon broth, washed down by y grandparents first visited Portmeirion in the a fantastic pint of Otley ale (my Wales Arts Review co— 1950s, when on a holiday in nearby Criccieth conspirator, Craig Austin, meanwhile partaking of the most they stumbled upon it by accident, suddenly vast and sensational-looking Ploughman’s that I have ever looming out at them from across the bay. This was before enviously eyeballed), set the tone for a festival weekend Portmeirion was to be made famous by the cult sixties TV which was notable for the presence of some genuinely series The Prisoner and so you can imagine their surprise delicious food and drink in place of those more-usually-to- and even bewilderment at coming across an Arts and be-expected twin stars of festival hospitality: insipid lager Crafts/Italianate style village surrounded by trees, while on and meat-based products that contravene even the most holiday in North Wales. My grandmother always said it basic of animal welfare standards. struck her as a magical place from that day on and in truth But more about such supposedly un-rock-‘n’-roll topics as it must have been a little like walking through a wardrobe vodka, cucumber and elderflower cocktails served along- and finding oneself in Narnia such is the unapologetic side scallops with celeriac puree and Old Spot lardons atmosphere of magic realism that defines the Village and later. It is now time perhaps to describe the first musical its surroundings. Holidays with their son, my father, duly highpoint of the festival, the very wonderful Neon Neon. followed and in turn my own parents were to take me to Festival No 6 – no doubt partly in recognition of the sweet Portmeirion several times when I was a child, although madness involved in hosting a three day festival in the sadly I never visited with my grandparents. Couple this with middle of September on the North West coast of Wales – a teenage obsession with The Prisoner and you may see has large tents in place of main stages, which was some- why I was particularly keen to attend the second incarna- thing of a relief when taking into account the extremely tion of Festival No 6, having been unable to attend last variable weather which characterised the weekend. The years praise-heaped affair. main stage/tent in particular proved to be an excellent Wales Arts Review (or at least this member of Wales Arts venue in terms of sound and atmosphere. An enclosed Review) began the long, diagonal journey northwards un- setting was also the ideal environment for Gruff and Boom der both a literal and a metaphorical cloud. The literal cloud Bip to bring a stripped back Praxis Makes Perfect to No 6. being the deeply unpromising black-purple, puffy-eyed sky, The theatrical level of the performance was considerably the metaphorical cloud being the presence of far too much toned down from the Cardiff/ London performances earlier residue of whisky pumping around my bloodstream. While this year and at times didn’t really consist of much more this may sound like the stuff of music journalism cliché it than Gruff holding up placards saying things like ‘Diolch’. was, in fact, brought about through no fault of my own but Indeed all in all it reminded me more of seeing them on rather through the coincidental and unexpected twin-visit the Stainless Style tour. But this is no bad thing for a of both an old friend and my partner’s Canada-based festival and the band were clearly on form, from the pop brother. Alas, much like in the scene from North by perfection of Praxis track ‘Dr Zhivago’ (with its flippant take Northwest, whereby Martin Landau makes Cary Grant on Stalinist censorship: ‘Cold war dictator/ I once believed down a whole bottle of spirits, this turn of events served to but now I can’t accept you/ How you treated Pasternak/ metaphorically hold me down and, while forcing my mouth You know you really upset me’!), to the sleazy, electropop open, send an inordinately large amount of Isle of Jura perfection of early single, ‘I Lust U’. gushing into my unsuspecting liver.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 37 The main stages/tents were in a field above the Village that can only be described as a pretty overt homage to A and after securing ourselves a pint of Snowdonia Ale from Bout de Souffle – the film is a tiny, undiscovered gem that the pricey but certainly good quality real ale tent, we is surely worth checking out on the new BFI/Saint Etienne descended into the world that is forever inseparable from boxset. Patrick McGoohan’s surreal indictment of totalitarianism, This was followed by a short and jolly Q&A with Saint democracy, state-sanctioned espionage and mind control. Etienne themselves, wherein they revealed that the gene- And do you know what? It was better than I could have sis of their filmmaking came about both as a result mainly expected. The Village lit at night by lanterns and flares and of the advances (i.e. cheapness and ease) in digital tech- marked by mime artists and unusual processions was truly nology, combined with the huge promotional video budgets a thing to behold. Having only ever visited in daylight of the 90s. Instead of making another ‘He’s On The Phone’ before it was a thrill in itself to see the place by night but to type video they made the sumptuous feature- see it thriving with people, and colourful, decadent, happy length, Finisterre instead. people at that, the Village came to life in a way that just isn’t After this genuinely stimulating and thought-provoking possible when you are wondering around as a tourist. I event we ventured back into the arena to catch a wouldn’t want to go so far as to say that it felt like little London Grammar and partake of the aforementioned actually being in The Prisoner, but a tiny little bit it did, no scallops with celeriac puree and Old Spot lardons. London question. Grammar split the Wales Arts Review consensus some- Even though the biggest bands played in the tents there what; Craig Austin considered them deeply uninspiring is a case for saying that the events to truly treasure during while I myself found them frustratingly Florence Welch-like, the festival were the ones that took place in the Village, but not without promise. The piano-led music was atmos- whether it be at the Caught by the River stage located pheric, the lyrics sufficiently arresting, but the problem appropriately by the water’s edge, in the Town Hall (where really was in singer Hannah Reid’s Florence-like yodelling, we saw a promising French which frankly is annoy- Canadian singer called Cara- ing enough when Flor- col), the Stage in the Woods, ence herself does it, or in the main piazza itself. It never mind somebody was here that every night the who appears to have Brythoniaid Male Voice Choir just stumbled out of a sang a selection of songs philosophy seminar at ranging from ‘You’ll Never Sussex University. Hav- Walk Alone’ to ‘A Design for ing said that when it Life’. The kind of thing, really, does work, as on a song that might not ordinarily be like ‘Wasting My Young the Wales Arts Review cup of Years’, there is a certain tea but in this setting and amount of chemistry and with the natural acoustics of poise that suggests their the piazza it was not to put success may not be a too fine a point on flash in the pan. it, magical. (Hell, they even Having partaken of made by ‘Insurrection’ by said scallops, Wales Muse sound good!) Arts Review took it upon The evening ended with a itself to have a wander return to the main arena to by the beautiful, Manics- catch the end of inexplicable inspiring Portmeirion headline act James Blake. beach, having caught While by no means a mori- too little of John Cooper bund artist, Blake’s brand of Clarke to give a properly XX-meets-Boards of Canada electronica really felt far too critical perspective. Some white wine later we found our- dull and coffee table-lite for a headline act, his impressive selves in a state of Beatlemania-like excitement, queuing but strangely unmoving vocals meaning that the evening up for a viewing of Lawrence of Belgravia (which was to be ended on a slightly non-plussed note (while a full-on Na- followed by a Q&A with reclusive genius Lawrence him- tional Theatre of Wales production of Praxis would surely self!) in the salubrious settings of the town hall. Unfortu- have brought the house down). nately, it became clear, having talked to some people Day two for your friends at Wales Arts Review began in behind us who appeared to be related to Daughter, the the Heavenly films cinema hut, which was happily located nascent band who it transpired we were actually queuing next to a really quite reasonably priced cocktail stall. And up to see, that bad luck had once again befallen Lawrence so with our vodka, cucumber and elderflower cocktails to and the film had been moved to the tiny Heavenly Films hand we set about analysing the Saint Etienne/ Paul Kelly cinema hut in which we had watched This is tribute to the Royal Festival Hall, This is Tomorrow. A Tomorrow earlier that day. rarely seen and therefore preposterously neglected little As we had already seen this superlatives-are-really-not- film it charted the story of the Festival of Britain and how its enough film before and Lawrence himself appeared to be modernist, Utopian-stylings were immediately dismantled a no-show, we decamped to catch My Bloody by the second Churchill government, before going behind Valentine in the main arena. Playing several songs from the scenes of the Festival Hall’s recent refurbishment. Set their astonishing comeback album mbv, they were, on the to some of the most gorgeous music Saint Etienne have one hand, a magnificent live band, but on the other hand made in years – Stepford Wives-style-flutes aplenty, al- they were also, without question, unpleasantly and quite ways a good thing on a St Et track – and filmed in a style frankly, absurdly loud. By the time of the famous holocaust

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 38 section of ‘You Made Me Realise’ I was feeling queasy and himself has ever managed – you were left in little doubt that thinking for the umpteenth time about my ears and possible you had witnessed something truly special. deafness. I really wasn’t thinking about the music and this Perhaps owing to this and to the fact that – due to being seems somewhat self-defeating to me. Of more concern timetabled at the same time as Chic – they were playing to was the presence of a number of children in the tent for a practically empty tent, These New Puritans, seemed a MBV, standing around with their parents and looking deep- little dour, while their intensity was muddied somewhat by ly unhappy – and in some cases actually crying. One sound problems which were no fault of their own. For all particularly irresponsible mother was even trying to make that there is still no one else making music quite like them her son wave his hands in the air to stop him crying. Wave in the UK right now and towering versions of ‘Attack Music’ your hands in the air? To My Bloody Valentine? – with its appropriate references to September – and the The next day began with sideways rain and anxious utterly fantastic, DJ Shadow-goes-contemporary-classical, tweets suggesting Apocalypse Portmeirion would be the ‘Organ Eternal’, served to turn things around. likely title of this article. However, the combination of hav- Wales Arts Review caught the end of Chic and have to ing – thank God! – elected to stay in self-catering accom- admit to bellowing the phrase ‘fall into my arms and trem- modation outside of the festival rather than camp, (it is ble like a… flowaaah’ in a no doubt annoyingly loud man- possible to stay in some of the beautiful houses in Port- ner. But, of course, so was everybody else. The tent meirion but booking needs to be extremely early for was rammed for Chic and without a doubt they were as this), Wales Arts Review were, in truth, not feeling so very completely fantastic as people have been saying all year. bad. The hasty purchase of some cheap wellies and the ‘Good Times’, ‘We Are Family’, the aforementioned ‘Let’s fact that Portmeirion’s famously protected climate turned Dance’… all delivered with a joy and enthusiasm that along out not to be a figment of their brochure writer’s mind but with Johnny Marr’s glistening, Irish folk guitar riffs served actual truth, meant that by the time we had drunk our first to turn the close to the weekend into a wild and celebratory vodka, cucumber and elderflower cocktail the sun was affair. quite literally shining. Emboldened we took a tour of the All in all it might have seemed like a hard act for woodlands raves, home on the Sunday to some rather the Manics to follow but of course these days they have a poorly looking middle aged MDMA casualties, magnificent Nile Rodgers-like armoury of instant classics in their reper- viewpoints and of course Portmeirion’s famous dog ceme- toire that could, frankly, have stretched long into the night. tery (the woodland grove with the swivelling statue heads This was underlined by the way they nonchalantly wan- that features in The Prisoner, somehow alluding us). dered on stage and broke straight into a magnificent ver- Next up was the always beguiling Caitlin Moran, who sion of ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’. Now, I will confess to not delighted in reminding us all about her censor-baiting having seen the Manics live for some years, not perhaps tweets regarding the merits of Benedict Cumberbatch’s since their rather by-numbers Glastonbury headline per- glowering deductive mannerisms and his ideal Sherlock- formance in 1999, (and even to have gone off them some- spindly physique. This, along with some more delectable what between then and the devastating renaissance Snowdonia ale, was followed by a fairly tiresome and that Journal for Plague Lovers represented some ten years self-congratulatory conversation between Guy later), but here, truly was a performance of such power and Garvey and Stuart Maconie about lyric writing. If you like confidence that I felt instant regret of the kind that you feel Elbow’s lyrics then this was the thing for you. If you don’t – when you meet a dear old friend you haven’t seen in years I don’t – then Garvey’s choices of favourite lyrics at least and instantly hit it off again. served to act as an indicator as to why his own lyrics are Because the setting was Portmeirion and because so lightweight and pseudo-profound. Portmeirion Beach was the setting for the cover of fifteen- On a day which was unquestionably the best day for year-old-birthday album, This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours – music, we made our way with some excitement to the record, which I have to say, made me fall out of love see Johnny Marr, whose festival performances this sum- with the Manics – they elected to play several songs from mer seem to have already passed into legend. And so it it. This could have been quite a bit of a negative for me but came to pass. His first song, ‘Generate! Generate!’ from because MSP were playing with such verve and confi- the new album was good enough as it was, his band dence it actually served to reinvigorate and highlight the having built up some rare form and Marr himself looking craftsmanship involved in those songs. And with the ex- like he had been zoomed in from one of those classic ception of TIMTTMY’s one true moment of genius, ‘Ready Smiths’ TOTP appearances. But next up he played ‘Stop for Drowning’, about the submerged Welsh village of Trew- Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before’ and eryn, they stuck to the singles like ‘Tsunami’ and ‘The everything changed. My eyes welled up and there were Everlasting’, which were always pretty good live anyway. genuine shivers down my spine for one thing. Being too It must be a good Manics gig if they only play one Holy young to have ever seen The Smiths live and having been Bible track and you still have a fantastic time, but neverthe- enormously unimpressed with Morrissey’s solo rockabilly less ‘Revol’ was still the evening’s undoubted highlight, butchery of tracks like ‘Shoplifters…’ and ‘There is a preceded as it was by a touching and appropriate eulogy Light…’, this really did feel like that moment when you hear to Richey Edwards, from an emotional and pleasingly a song you love for the first time, performed by the person drunk-sounding Wire (Manics gigs are always at their best, who wrote it. And in this case it was a rejuvenated Johnny in my opinion, if Nicky’s drunk – an expletive laden tirade Marr and he was playing a song, (and indeed songs), that against Michael Gove bears this out). I have loved, and which have meant a great deal to me, for And so, with the sound of several thousand recession hit over half my life. By the time those glowing opening chords people bellowing ‘and we are not allowed to spend’ the of ‘There is a Light…’ rang out with the same soulfulness magical, surreal, high-quality-beverage-and-food-provid- and ease with which they must have rang out on the day ing, quite possibly unbetterable Festival No 6, drew to a Marr composed them – and when, indeed, Marr sang those close. Be seeing you next year. Mine’s a vodka, cucumber lyrics with the kind of understanding that no one save Moz and elderflower cocktail.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 39 To the Detriment of Us All: The Untouched Legacy of Arthur Koestler and George Orwell

by Gary Raymond

y August of 1945, Arthur Koestler had alas ‘anti-Manichean’, ‘a man of subtleties, interested in ready completed many journeys; indeed, you absolute truth and in the complexity of things’. Koestler could say he had lived many lives. His tra- was a fundamental driving force in almost every significant vails and explorations had taken in vast geo- intellectual political movement of the thirties and forties. graphical extremes, from his native Hungary, It is striking then, in his long and intriguing life story, that to his time in the Communist Party of Germany where he at his intellectual peak, in the aftermath of the sensation was a vociferous and passionate young intellectual. He that was Darkness at Noon, he left the vibrant intellectual had been to the North Pole, where he tasted his first dram culture of 1940s London to set up home in a drastically of fame as the sole reporter on the Graf Zeppelin Arctic remote cottage in North Wales. But this corner of Wales expedition of 1931, and he had a stint with the French was perhaps not quite so remote as might first appear, and Foreign Legion in North Africa – his only route to escape Koestler’s motives may not have been quite so abstruse. inevitable execution at the hands of the Vichy. He had This corner of Wales had its own intellectual circle, and it experienced, first hand, the most significant political and was most sympathetic to Koestler’s mindset at the time, or philosophical movements in Europe and its edges, from so he thought. Clough Williams-Ellis’ wife, Amabel, for Zionism in Palestine to Stalinism in Russia. And in August instance, was Lytton Strachey’s niece, and a former com- 1945 his quest for Utopia brought him and his later wife, munist, like Koestler, and around the Williams-Ellis’ Mamaine, to Wales. Koestler and Mamain would spend swarmed the likes of Rupert Crawshay-Williams, Michael three years in the cottage of Bwlch Ocyn, a secluded Polanyi, English PEN president Storm Jameson and, most farmhouse that belonged to Clough Williams-Ellis, the significantly, Bertrand Russell, who lived just a few miles builder of the Italianate coastal town of Portmerion, situat- up the road from the Koestler cottage. ed just a short drive from the other side of the Vale of But Koestler had another motive for the seclusion, even Ffestiniog. if the seclusion was not an honestly intellectual one. Within Koestler was already famous by this point, not only for his months of moving to Bwlch Ocyn he had lured a like- novel, Darkness at Noon (1940), (an epochal condemna- minded trail-blazer, a political intellectual democratic so- tion of Stalinism and the Left’s apologias of it), but also for cialist, who was also terminally disillusioned with (and his reportage, and for the intellectual rigour in his essays disgusted by) the institutionalised claptrap of the interna- such as ‘The Yogi and the Commissar’. Koestler was a tional comintern. George Orwell was perhaps the ally man who pushed himself to the centre of things, who Koestler had been looking for all along. gorged himself on argument, who enraged friend and foe alike with his caustic, uncompromising, fierce, intellectual * ideas for humankind’s progress. His journeys had seen him move from Zionist to anti-Zionist, from Communist to It was in reference to Koestler that Orwell famously wrote, anti-Communist, and from existentialist to mystic. His jour- ‘Nowadays, over increasing areas of the earth, one is ney, in fact, was a search for a pure society, a broad imprisoned not for what one does but for what one is, or, democratic socialism, a civilisation built upon justice and more exactly, for what one is suspected of being’. What compassion. Koestler was a significant figure in the intel- Orwell had witnessed and experienced in Spain during the lectual circles of every city he inhabited, an urban, explo- civil war, the things that had driven him away from the sive presence amidst the pock-marked concrete, low established Left, Koestler had experienced at an increased ceilings and smoke-filled air of Europe’s coffee houses. He intensity. was one of Sartre and de Beauvoir’s many third wheels; he Koestler had been imprisoned many times by the time he had travelled Soviet Russia with Langston Hughes, estab- moved to Bwlch Ocyn, and not only by the traditional lishing writers’ forums in Hughes’ digs in Ashkhabad; he enemies of the Left. Koestler was an intellectual warrior not had helped Malraux refine his definition of the intellectual a martial one, and he had always been petrified of physical

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 40 harm. Whilst working under accreditation as a foreign Orwell’s concerns with totalitarianism were both spurred on journalist, trying to cover the Catholic-military uprising in by Koestler’s work, and, apart from Koestler, came from a Spain, he eventually found himself not only on the side similar place. Orwell, too, had witnessed the unpleasant getting beaten, but in the unforgiving and paranoid em- reality of imperial rule, albeit as disillusioned voyeur, during brace of Franco’s forces. It was his time in the prisoner of his time in Burma, and like Koestler, had spent some time war camp in Seville, under constant threat of execution, as a vagabond in the cities of Europe. which sculpted his writing into the darkly powerful prose we Like Koestler, Orwell had lost his faith in communist now know him for. He also later spent time at the infamous socialism in Spain in the thirties when faced with the reality French political prison camp of Le Vernet, and in 1940, of the brutality and in-fighting in the civil war between the being a person of note and a suspected revolutionary factions of the Left. Orwell, hypersensitive to such infrac- communist, he had been imprisoned in London’s Penton- tions on the clarity of his ideology, did not need imprison- ville almost from the moment he set foot on British soil after ment and torture to turn his stomach or his mind. Koestler escaping the Nazi shadow. On each occasion he had been might not have done either, but nonetheless Orwell saw in charged with no crime. Darkness at Noon was a culmina- Koestler the grace of god. Orwell, however, was a pragma- tion of his own traumatic experiences in solitary confine- tist, unlike the quixotic Hungarian, and their personal rela- ment at the hands of Franco, and his witness to the early tionship, inevitable as it was the moment Koestler settled days of Stalin’s show trials. himself in Britain, was never smooth. Koestler was notori- Darkness at Noon is a masterpiece; George Steiner said ously difficult company, and Orwell had a reputation for it was one of the few books that may have ‘changed cutting to the heart of the matter. But so closely linked were history’. Orwell reviewed it in The New Statesman in 1941: the two men in philosophy, and so activistic in nature, it is perhaps surprising that they did not collaborate when in Brilliant as this book is as a novel, and a piece of such close proximity, as Koestler had done with the leading brilliant literature, it is probably most valuable as intellectuals of every city he had made a home in. But if a an interpretation of the Moscow “confessions” by joining of forces had not occurred to Orwell, or if it had at someone with an inner knowledge of totalitarian least not appealed to him, it had and did to Koestler, and methods. What was frightening about these trials his move to Bwlch Ocyn was the first step in his plan to was not the fact that they happened – for obviously create something from these combined forces. such things are necessary in a totalitarian society Just a month before Koestler and Mamaine took on the – but the eagerness of Western intellectuals to cottage; Orwell had become vice-chairman of the Freedom justify them. Defence Committee, a civil liberties group that included Bertrand Russell, Koestler’s new neighbour, and other Darkness at Noon was cannon fire when the intellectual notaries among its sponsors. The point of the committee company that Koestler had been used to keeping – Sartre, was to oppose the increasingly Communist-dominated Camus, de Beauvoir – were still pontificating through can- leftist groups in London and on the continent. But soon into dlelight and smoke rings. Not only was the threat of prison the life of the committee, Orwell, perhaps sensing the and torture very real to him – (whilst in Franco’s prison in aromas he had smelled as rot in Spain, began to feel the Seville his cell was in close proximity to the execution yard focus of the group too narrow, and too in sway to the whims where he could hear the shattering volley of the firing of its anarchist chairman, Herbert Read. Koestler heard squad blast out thirty to forty times a day for the months he word of Orwell’s disillusionment with the Committee and was there) – but he had first-hand experience of the conse- invited him to Bwlch Ocyn to spend Christmas. It may not quences of his beliefs. Whilst others turned a blind eye to have been as enticing a proposition for Orwell had Koestler the inherent paradoxical untruth of Stalinism, Koestler was not already thought ahead. Staying with Koestler and compelled to blow the lid off it. It was everything he was Mamaine was Mamaine’s sister, Celia, with whom Orwell about. As his biographer Michael Scammell notes, ‘Koes- had recently met in London and with whom he had fallen in tler’s quest for enlightenment was not some arid, abstract love. Koestler was fully aware of this and suspected that sort of search, but a deep instinctual urge… which started Orwell would drop everything to come to the remote and early in his life and continued to the end of his days.’ The slate-bleak setting in the hope of wooing Celia, and he did. quest, as Scammell goes on to assert convincingly, ‘was But Koestler was only interested in a proposition of his the point.’ own; the founding of a separate leftist committee that Orwell’s lauding of Darkness at Noon in The New would neither be in thrall to the cliques, skirmishes and Statesman was to be the first public utterance of the myopia of either the Communists nor the Anarchists. essence of his own 1984, and the seed of Winston Smith Over the Christmas of 1945, Koestler and Orwell talked can be seen in the broken, corrupted, ‘empty’ protagonist at length in their armchairs, pipe smoke mingling with the of Rubashov. Koestler was just thirty-six when the review open fire, their faces half lit by the orange glow, about the was written, a life of astounding drama and variety already foundation of a successor to the League for the Rights of behind him. Man. Their vision of the future was bleak, coloured by their In 1945, with the war at its end and Koestler now a justified perception that totalitarianism and despotism were member of the English literati, commonly terrorising Soho becoming held up by the intelligentsia, (especially in Brit- with his drinking partners Roy Campbell and Dylan Tho- ain, Orwell pointed out), as methodologies worthy of admi- mas, one may be forgiven for thinking a time of reflection ration. Orwell believed the situation called for not only might have been on his mind. But Europe had, in many political action, but a redefinition of democracy itself. Koes- ways, only been saved from the extraordinary awfulness of tler knew that to establish the Committee that he wanted – Hilter’s fascism at this point. Totalitarianism, the target of and that Europe needed – he would need both the intellec- both Koestler and Orwell, continued to flourish in its grey tual involvement of Orwell and the endorsement of Ber- solemnity, and would do so in Franco’s Spain until 1977, in trand Russell, who was the figurehead and undisputed Salazaar’s Portugal until 1968, and Stalin’s Russia long heavyweight of British progressives at that time. after the Communist despot’s death in 1953. In many ways

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 41 Orwell and Koestler were not men easily adjusted to the centre-point to a real movement. Unfortunately, enlistment intimacies of friendship; Orwell was famously stubborn and was slow and riddled with counter-arguments. Some felt enforced a strict discipline on himself – and Koestler was the manifesto was too anti-Russian, others felt it was too equally stubborn, and his reputation for being a prickly abstract in its ideals. Russell, the most important ally on the character often undersold his pugnaciousness somewhat. list, felt that the world was on the brink of apocalyptic war, But it seems the two, who had been developing a friend- (Truman had dropped the bomb in August 1945), and ship-of-sorts built from mutual admiration for a few years wanted to turn the committee into an opportunity for a when both in London, did become close during the few conference to discuss avoidance of global nuclear annihi- weeks in Bwlch Ocyn, taking long walks together and lation. This was Russell’s condition, and Koestler and sharing many intimate thoughts and ambitions. But conver- Orwell reluctantly agreed and began to set up the confer- sation, ushered by Koestler, always returned to the forma- ence in the Vale of Ffestiniog. tion of a committee. Orwell became as equally enthusiastic It was to be peopled with extremely significant political as Koestler, and after many days and nights debating the philosophers, such as Victor Gollancz, Michael Foot, Ed- state of the Left across Europe, and the poisonous influ- mund White, Andre Malraux, Manes Sperber, and the ence of Stalinism in progressive democratic socialism, editors of Polemic, a leading theoretical journal of the time. Orwell agreed to put his full The conference, the starting attention into the formation and point for the committee, was success of the committee. never to proceed, however. The Back in London, Orwell spent reasons are an exemplar of the a week writing a fiery manifes- best and the worst of Koestler. to. He sent it back to Koestler It was his energy that had in Bwlch Ocyn. It opened with brought all of these figures to- the assertion that, ‘while liberty gether, and it was his temper without social security is value- that pushed everything apart. less, it has been forgotten that He fell out, in a matter of weeks, without liberty there can be no with the editors of Polemic, security.’ Orwell was con- whose collaboration was inte- cerned with the very fabric of gral to the success of the move- democracy and the ties be- ment (even if only from an tween the governing classes administrative point of view), and the people over whom and then fell out with Russell they governed. He and Koes- A carnival of voices in independent after insulting his wife during a tler intended to redefine de- publishing row over the wording of the mocracy, to reach downward manifesto. Russell’s wife wrote as well as outward, and to op- to Koestler later, saying, ‘is it pose the ‘infringements really necessary, among people against the rights and the dig- who have the best will in the nity of man’. It was an attempt world to like you, to be so com- at a pure vision that was nei- bative?’ ther corrupted by the evils and In truth, as Scammell points grabbing of the Right, nor by out in his essential biography of the corruptions of the Left, but Koestler, he and Bertrand Rus- saw a better world for all sell were simply too alike to through liberty. It was a new direction for politics. work together. It was the fulcrum and tragedy of the Orwell- Orwell has often confused commentators who would like Koestler union that it depended entirely on the endorse- to position him (and often claim him) as a champion of the ment of the third. Left or the Right. But he was never been more clear than With his plans in tatters, Koestler’s life in the cottage in the manifesto he wrote for Koestler. He was not only became one of domestic drudgery, bickering with Ma- neither Left nor Right, but the mere suggestion that we maine, and generally feeling ostracised and frustrated. should think of him (or Koestler) in these terms is wilfully Both Koestler and Orwell were drawn through their lives to missing the importance of his ideas. As global politics finds opportunities such as the one that Koestler manipulated ever more grim and cynical ways to fail the populations during that Christmas at Bwlch Ocyn – socialism was the from which it first grew, the deconstruction of left and right life-blood of both men, and was the candlelight by which is the only viable progressive philosophy. Orwell and Koes- they wrote books such as Scum of the Earth, Darkness at tler not only professed this, but they ended up prophesying Noon, Animal Farm and 1984. Orwell, of course, died the necessity of their own ideas. And it is the most ‘Orwelli- tragically young, of tuberculosis; Koestler died in 1983, in an’ of all his legacies. Koestler, the firebrand, urged Orwell, a suicide pact with his wife Cynthia, after being diagnosed infested the man with enthusiasm and vigour, to create a with terminal cancer. Both men left legacies the outer template, a map, for the way out of the suffocating institu- reaches of which stretch so far it is almost difficult to tional corruptions of our time. The way is through liberty, comprehend. Their respective Great Works changed the not through the ‘admiration’ for ‘totalitarian methods’, as perception of our modern world. But perhaps their greatest Orwell wrote. legacy is in the venture that never took off, the one moment Koestler was impressed by the verve and accuracy with when they joined forces, and through Koestler’s energy which Orwell had taken up his idea. His plan to lure Orwell and rhetoric, and Orwell’s intellectual vigour, they drafted to Bwlch Ocyn seemed to have worked without a glitch. a manifesto that signposted a new political causeway; one The next step was to recruit others to the committee, to that, to the detriment of the western world, has still yet to widen support and make Orwell’s manifesto a palpable be explored.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 42 Against the Evil of Violence – The Wales Window of Alabama

by Cerith Mathias

he sky looms low, heavy with ‘It was a dreary day, not really a Around 23 were injured. Four were dark cloud as I step from the car sunshine day but overcast… my moth- killed instantly. The bodies of 14 year- into the humidity of a deserted er woke everyone up for breakfast… olds Carole Robertson, Addie Mae parking lot. The hot air crackles with then we began the process of getting Collins and Cynthia Wesley, along the promise of a downpour; often the ready for church.’ with 11 year-old Denise McNair were fare, or so I’m told, of a mid-Septem- As his family was about the leave the found huddled together under the ber morning here in Birmingham, the house, he remembers a loud noise twisted debris. largest of Alabama’s cities. The streets ‘that was like nothing that we’d heard ‘I don’t remember how I got to and are unexpectedly empty, an almost before… it was a strange noise. Every- from church that day’ says Lowe, who eerie quiet reverberating from the thing seemed to get quiet and the is now the Bishop of the Guiding Light gleaming-grey pavements. A befitting world seemed to stop.’ Church in Birmingham. first glimpse, perhaps, of where, this Moments earlier, on the other side of ‘The one event seems to have over- year, the painful events of the past are town, as her friends came to the end whelmed everything else.’ being ushered to the forefront of the of their Sunday school class, 15 year- Racially motivated bombings were present. old Carolyn McKinstry answered the not extraordinary at that time, with The street on which I am standing ringing telephone of the 16th St Baptist nearly fifty unsolved incidents taking was at the heart of the Civil Rights Church. place from the late 1940s through to Movement of 1960s’ America; the con- ‘Three minutes’ said a male voice the mid-1960s – earning the city the crete underfoot once pounded by the before hanging up. nickname ‘Bombingham’. This, how- soles of marching children and baton McKinstry reportedly replaced the ever, was the first to result in the loss wielding police officers. Dr Martin phone receiver in its cradle and made of life. Luther King’s calls for non-violent pro- her way into the next room. She’d The months leading up to September test in what he dubbed ‘the most seg- taken around 15 steps when, at exact- 15th had been tumultuous. The regated city in the US’ were met on ly 10.22 am, a bomb exploded near church, at the centre of Birmingham’s this very corner with water cannons the church basement, tearing violently black community, was the headquar- and the snarling jaws of police dogs. through the large stone building, de- ters of the local civil rights movement. And in the Baptist Church, here on stroying its steps, shattering its win- In May that year, it had become the Birmingham’s 16th Street, the lives of dows and spilling rubble and glass out organising centre of the children’s cru- four young girls were snuffed out by a into the street. The face of Jesus in the sade, a campaign that produced the racist bomb attack. church’s main stained glass window Birmingham Accord, which sanc- The horrific events of that day would was blown clean out. tioned, amongst other things, the de- prove a turning point in American his- Jim Lowe, who was 11 years old, segregation of lunch counters, public tory and the actions of one Welsh artist was with his classmates in a room bathrooms, fitting rooms and drinking and a campaigning newspaper editor three doors down from where the fountains. forever linked Wales with the struggle bomb had been planted. He knew all Martin Luther King proclaimed ‘…the to be ‘Free in ’63′. four girls who perished. walls of segregation will crumble in The morning of September 15th, ‘I remember a loud deafening noise Birmingham and they will crumble 1963 began much like the day of my and seeing glass flying out of the win- soon.’ visit. dows’ he tells me. On August 28th 1963, just a fortnight ‘It was a typical Sunday morning at ‘My ears were ringing and I could before the 16th Street bombing, King my household,’ recalls William Bell, hear muffled voices yelling and shared his dream with over 200,000 who was 11. Now Birmingham’s May- screaming… I had no idea what was people who had marched on Washing- or, he is the fourth African American to happening.’ ton. Tension rippled through Birming- hold the office in the city, something Inside the church were nearly two ham’s streets. unimaginable at that time. hundred congregants, mostly all chil- Alabama’s high profile, outspoken dren, attending Sunday school. pro-segregation Governor, George

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 43 Wallace stood firm in his prejudice, as ‘…a gift from the people of Wales. my brethren, ye have done it telling The New York Times in order to A national gesture of goodwill.’ unto me. stop integration, the state needed a The following day, the paper ‘few first class funerals.’ launched the campaign with the head- Back in the Birmingham of today – A week later, a small splinter group line ‘Alabama: Chance for Wales to it’s the result of that gesture of fellow- of the Ku Klux Klan, the Cahaba Boys, Show the Way.’ More than 3,000 peo- ship that I’m here to see. enacted Wallace’s rhetoric by planting ple donated no more than half a crown The 16th Street Baptist Church is an a box of dynamite beneath the steps of each, as per Petts’ stipulation. Within imposing building. It stands broad and the 16th Street Baptist Church; its det- days the £500 target had been solid occupying the corner of onation forever slashing a deep, ugly reached, with the fund closing at £900. 6th Avenue North and 16th Street. scar on Birmingham’s timeline. De- ‘Photographs were shown of chil- Walking up its stone staircase, it is spite the biggest FBI operation since dren both black and white in the Car- difficult to marry the structure before the pursuit of bank robber John Dill- diff Docks area queuing up at me with the images of devastation inger in the 1930s, from fifty years it would take anoth- ago. Opening the er forty years be- heavy wooden fore the bombers doors I’m met by were brought to the church’s custo- justice. dian, Richard The tragedy al- Young, along with tered forever the the clatter and chit- course of the civil ter-chatter of clean- rights movement, ers and workmen. according to many, Only a few days acting as a catalyst previously the for the Civil Rights church was host to Act of 1964 and the a ceremony com- Voting Rights Act of memorating the 1965. events of 1963, a ‘They became service so well at- martyrs,’ Bishop tended, Young Lowe explains. says, that it was ‘Their deaths start- ‘…packed out. We ed a movement for even had a screen change that could over in the park op- not be stopped… posite, because so That explosion ig- many people want- nited an even ed to come and be greater explosion – a part of it.’ an explosive move- Richard Young is ment that changed a lifetime member the heart of a na- of the church, tion.’ which he tells me America was not has an active con- alone in her revul- gregation of almost sion. Across the At- two and a half thou- lantic, in the small sand. Though his Carmarthenshire village of Llanstef- The Western Mail offices handing over own personal history is deeply inter- fan, news of the injustice was met with their pocket money,’ Petts recalled. woven with that of 16th Street – he has indignation by Welsh-based artist ‘And within a short while the fund his own seat for Sunday services, John Petts. was closed and I found myself flown which he jokes that ‘no one can sit in if over to Alabama… They had never I’m not here’, he however narrowly In a series of interviews, archived by heard of Wales, had no idea where it missed ‘…that terrible, terrible day.’ the Imperial War Museum, the artist, was, but they very quickly were told The afternoon before the bombing, who died in 1991, recalled hearing the something of the little country Wales.’ Young left Birmingham for college, news on the radio. Petts’ bold design for what has enrolling in the historic Tuskegee Insti- ‘Naturally as a father I was horrified become known as The Wales Window tute, located around two hours’ drive by the death of the children. As a depicts a black Jesus ‘…a suffering south of the city. craftsman… I was horrified at the figure in a crucified gesture, with one ‘I couldn’t believe what had hap- smashing of all those windows, and I hand flung wide in protest, the other in pened’, he says of hearing the news: thought to myself: my word, what can acceptance.’ One of the girls lived around the we do about this?’ Written underneath are the words corner from my family – we were Petts contacted David Cole, the ‘You Do it to Me’, inspired by the words friends. It hurt me. A lot of people were editor of The Western Mail suggesting of Jesus in Matthew 25:40: very upset; there was a lot of hurt for a a fundraising campaign to replace the long time. church’s main stained glass window Inasmuch as ye have done it I follow Young down to the base- unto one of the least of these ment, watching as he runs his hand

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 44 along the wall as we walk, patting the smooth white plaster gently every now and again. We enter a large room filled will folding chairs and tables, still used for Sunday school classes. At the back, behind a small partition, are some of the objects rescued from the church following the blast; a clock stopped at exactly 10.22 am, the telephone answered by McKinstry along with framed pictures of the events of the civil rights movement. On the wall, hangs a yellowing copy of The West- ern Mail from 1964, complete with Petts’ charcoal designs for the window. In a glass case underneath sit four stones painted with the names of the four girls. We move back upstairs to the main hall, a bright, light-filled room, where row upon row of wooden pews sink comfortably into the pile of a deep red carpet. A balcony with further seating hangs overhead. Young raises his eyes, and nods upwards towards the Kelly Ingram Park, directly opposite Elizabeth MacQueen’s statues are centre balcony. There in a dazzling the Baptist Church. not the only ones that inhabit Kelly haze of purples and blues stands The MacQueen, herself from Mountain Ingram Park. The small square of Wales Window. Brook, just outside Birmingham, was green has its own difficult story to tell; Chuckling at my reaction, Young 14 at the time of the bombing, the often the location of police water can- says ‘Yep, it’s a beauty all right.’ same age as three of the girls who died. nons and vicious attack dogs used More vibrant and intricate than any ‘It bored a hole in my psyche for against civil rights campaigners. photo could ever do justice, Petts’ win- justice,’ she tells me. These events are also immortalised in dow is truly breathtaking. Above the MacQueen’s artwork depicts the stone here, as is another martyr of the figure of Jesus, arms outstretched, girls playing and reading – all four are movement, The Rev Dr Martin Luther curves a rainbow constructed of tiny engrossed in an activity of some sort, King. In the shadow of the 16th Street pieces of blue, purple and pink glass – bringing the statues very much to life. Baptist Church, he stands at a dis- representing racial unity. The daylight While researching her design, she be- tance, but directly behind the four girls, streams through, making kaleidoscop- came close with Carolyn McKinstry, a watchful parent presiding over inno- ic patterns on the carpet. who had been talking with the girls in cents at play. What does Richard Young know of the church’s basement, immediately Walking amongst the shrubbery and the story behind the window I wonder? before going to answer the telephone. sculpture, as the first fat drops of rain, ‘I remember that the children in ‘They were all friends and I saw overdue from the morning, start to fall, Wales wanted to give the pennies they them talking together and getting the value of art in not only recording had to us,’ he says. ready for their service upstairs,’ Mac- and honouring events like those of ‘And the window was a symbol here Queen says. September 15th 1963, but of also of their love for us when we were ‘Carolyn told me Addie Mae was healing the pain caused, is incredibly suffering. It really means a lot to the tying the bow on the dress of Denise… apparent. church.’ Carole was a Girl Scout, so I have her ‘In my work, I have fought and Many events are taking place in saying “Come on y’all we are late!” shouted aloud against the evil of vio- Birmingham throughout the year to Cynthia was the child of teachers, she lence – especially with the Alabama mark the 50th anniversary of that fate- loved reading.’ window,’ John Petts once told a re- ful day. The weeks preceding my visit Indeed, Cynthia Wesley, the only porter. have been especially busy. In addition one of the four statues who is seated, From my conversations with the to the service at the 16th Street Baptist is depicted reading WB Yeats’ The people affected – those who survived Church, prayer meetings, and talks Stolen Child. and lived through those events – Petts’ have also been held. A website – Kids ‘I wanted a quote that was original voice has been heard loud and clear. in Birmingham 1963 – has been estab- if possible’ states MacQueen: ‘The people of Wales showed they lished as a platform for all; white and cared in a tangible way, even if people black, who were children at the time to It took me nights and nights. I here did not,’ says Bishop Jim Lowe. share their experiences. And a further looked at so many quotes, ‘That impression upon me as a piece of art commemorating the lives including Ralph Ellison, Maya young child was very important to help lost has been unveiled in the city. Angelou – on and on into the me eradicate the belief that hatred Sculptor Elizabeth MacQueen’s Four nights. Eventually someone against me and my people was not as Spirits - life-size statues of the four sent me The Stolen Child and widespread as I had been led to belittle girls – stand in the gateway of I wept. That was it. lieve.’

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 45 Deeds Not Words – Remembering Women’s Suffrage

by Ben Glover

‘We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide reform was also introduced. Throughout the massive up- for another what is and what is not their “proper heaval of the nineteenth century the fight for political repre- sphere.” The proper sphere for all human beings is the sentation was constantly being waged, the horrendous largest and highest which they are able to attain to.’ inequality between rich and poor was only heightened by - Harriet Taylor Mill the newly established industries and forms of commerce. The clamour for parliamentary representation from many he notion of female enfranchisement, and more sections of society became deafening. latterly gender equality, is a relatively new concept The first significant attempt at forming a national organi- in political and cultural discourse. For millennia a sation to lobby for the enfranchisement of women was woman’s role and place in society has, more often than started in 1867. Lydia Becker, founder of National Society not, been defined by her relationship to men – as a wife, for Women’s Suffrage, developed many of Mary Woll- mother or daughter, but never as an equal, that is inde- stonecraft’s assertions on education and gender equality pendent or free. Even great female historic figures, such as and won a surprising victory for women’s suffrage in the Elizabeth I (The Virgin Queen) or Cleopatra, are signifi- Isle of Man, by securing the right to vote for women in the cantly defined through their relationships, or lack thereof, 1881 election to the House of Keys. However, this small with men. Through religious dogma and cultural norms, the victory had little impact on the plight of women’s suffrage role of women in society has not developed for much of our on the mainland of Britain. Despite the support of many history, it is certainly true that women have mostly fulfilled radical Liberal MPs, such as John Stuart Mill, the momen- the role of domestic slave; destined from birth to undertake tum of the suffrage movement was beginning to stall. The a position in society that was always subservient to man. lack of any progression in the suffrage cause forced a split, From Genesis 3:16 assertion that ‘Unto the woman He in 1903, in the ranks of the National Union of Women’s said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) – a small minority, including In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, believed that the shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee”’ to constitutional approach to claiming the vote for women, considerably more modern forms of discrimination (witness undertaken by NUWSS, was too passive and ultimately the current conversations concerning the limits of women ineffective. The formation of Women’s Social and Political in politics, music and comedy), the insistence that this is a Union (WSPU) was a bold and militant step in claiming man’s world is undoubtedly true. victory for female enfranchisement. By 1913, WSPU had However, it was during the age of revolutions (the come to dominate polite conversation and newspaper French, American and Industrial) that the seeds of possibly headlines in the stifling orthodoxy of Edwardian Britain. one of the most significant cultural advancements were The upbringing of Hannah Mitchell was a fairly typical planted. The publication, in 1792, of Mary existence for a woman in the Victorian era. Born in 1872, Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Mitchell was denied a formal education by her parents and Woman began the slow process of debate and dispute that expected to assist her mother in supporting the male challenged a contemporary society that cherished tradition members of her family – disillusioned with the prospect of and innate cultural conservatism over equality and reason. eternal domestic slavery and marital servitude, she ran The arguments that Wollstonecraft outlines, that men are away from home at the age of fourteen to Bolton in search not naturally superior to women and lack of education is of employment. After witnessing her mother driven to furi- the only difference between the genders, were easily dis- ous outbursts of anger and despair by the monotonous missed by a patriarchal society. But as the new century drudgery of housework, Mitchell quickly became radical- developed the arguments grew in volume: Jane Austen ised by first socialism and then the Suffrage Movement. and the Brontë family started to describe polite society However, unlike many of her WSPU colleagues, including from an often unheard female perspective; women began the Pankhursts and Margaret Haig Mackworth who were to enter the industrial workforce; and institutional education born into relatively comfortable economic surroundings,

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 46 Mitchell knew only too well the struggles and indignity of being poor and female. In her autobiography, The Hard Way Up, Mitchell honestly details many aspects of an average woman’s life that led her to believe that militant suffrage was the most efficient way to secure the vote. From the ‘sheer barbarism’ of child birth to the subjugation of marriage, she became vehemently resentful of the inequality of the sexes, and embittered at the freedom and opportunities afforded to men. She noted:

Perhaps if I had really understood myself, as I did later, I should not have marries. I soon realised that married life, as men understand it, calls for a degree of self-abnegation on the part of women which is impossible for me. I needed solitude, time for study and the opportunity for a wider life.

It was not just the traditional role of women that drew so many to the militancy of the WSPU. Working conditions and employment opportunities for women in the pre-war Britain were limited at best and non-existent at worst. Annie Kenney, one of the most indefatigable members of the WSPU, had started work at a local cotton mill at the age of ten years-old to help her parents (and eleven siblings) survive the crushing economic reality of so many of Brit- ain’s working poor. For many working class women there were limited employment opportunities available in the mills, mines and in domestic service, but little chance of any progression from general hard labourer. However, for the women of the established lower middle classes the options were fewer; teacher, Poor Law Guardian, wife and mother. The glass ceiling was so restrictive, in terms of employment, that it would have been more accurately described as a glass cage. The suffocatingly limited employment opportunities combined with the lower wages for women, for instance Kenney would have been paid up to fifty percent less than a man who did a similar job, meant that many women felt the constitutional approach of the NUWSS, although valid, would not produce the required It is perfectly evident to any logical mind that when results. Sadly the correspondents of a man in Twickenham you have got the vote, by the proper use of the to his local newspaper typified the indignation felt by many vote in sufficient numbers, by combination, you people towards the Suffrage Movement: can get out of any legislature whatever you want, or, if you cannot get it, you send them about their It is a pity that women, especially married women, business and choose other people who will be cannot find sufficient domestic duties to keep them more attentive to you demands. from such acts as these, and helping to lower the opinion of the British woman in the eyes of other nations. However, Parliament was reluctant to change. It was through both ideological stubbornness and political prag- Dr Martin Luther King once pronounced ‘a riot is the matism, that the Women’s Franchise Bill and the Concilia- language of the unheard’, and whilst the Suffragettes never tion Bills did not pass the reading stages. Even though rioted, the actions undertaken by the WSPU were these many Liberals in the government supported the idea of women shouting to be understood. Political and civic insti- women’s suffrage they still voted against these Bills be- tutions were failing women – employers exploited them, cause they believed that it would gift the Conservative husbands could beat them and a society ignored them – Party one million more votes – considering that the Liberal yet it was only men that had proper recourse against the Party lost the popular vote in the December 1910 general vagaries of a conservative society. Emmeline Pankhurst election by over one hundred thousand votes, they still identified that women suffered in society because their controlling majority in Parliament (thanks to our wonderful experiences and opinions were never understood in Parlia- first-past-the-post voting system) – it was a risk that the ment (a Parliament run by men, voted for by men and Prime Minister HH Asquith was unwilling to take. This which produced laws designed for men). If the lawmakers failure of Parliament was the final insult to the Suffragettes do not understand the issues faced by a section of people, and, as the prospect of a global conflict darkened the how can they produce a law to help them? It was clear, to horizon, the WSPU stepped up their campaign. the WSPU at least, to attain an equitable Britain, for both The images of Emily Wilding Davison being struck by sexes, that women must be free to vote. Emmeline Pan- the horse of King George V, Anmer at the Epsom Derby, khurst noted that: whilst she attempted to grab the bridle in 1913, is still as

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 47 shocking and poignant today as it has ever been. This condition had improved, was preferable to the negative desperate act of rebellion is in itself worthy of commemora- publicity that surrounded the forcible feeding procedure. tion, the ultimate sacrifice given for what today we take as Also the government thought that there could be a second- a mundane democratic right. However, there were many ary benefit in keeping the suffragettes as weak and frail as more women, in 1913, which yielded their rights, health possible as the women would less likely to be undertaking and freedoms in order to secure a better, more equitable, any nefarious activities while on license. However, what future. Many Suffragettes, including Kenney, Pankhurst was designed as a discreet method to deal with the suffra- and Haig Mackworth, were imprisoned in 1913, as the gette problem became genuinely counter-productive, as it WSPU undertook a campaign of window smashing, arson, undermined the government’s moral authority and devel- pillar box burning, bombing public buildings and more oped into the embodiment of the movement’s struggle in general acts of civil disobedience. Under the green, white the public’s consciousness. But as the time passed, it was and purple banner that proclaimed ‘Deeds Not Words’, the the untimely death of Emily Davison at Tattenham Corner Home Office, Kew Gardens, David Lloyd George’s house that will always symbolise the sacrifices made for the in Walton-on-the-Hill and the Tower of London all became suffragette movement and democracy in Britain as a legitimate targets for the Suffragettes’ anger. The justifica- whole. In life she was a nuisance, but in death she became tion for this increase in militancy was made by Emmeline’s a martyr. daughter, Christabel Pankhurst, while in Paris avoiding So, why is it so important to commemorate this hun- prosecution in Britain, she opined ‘[t]he fact that the miners dredth anniversary? Is it just to pay tribute to the sacrifices are going to get legislation because they have made them- made by Emily Davison and her colleagues in making our selves a nuisance is a direct incitement to women to society more equitable and democratic? There, of course, endeavour to obtain a similar privilege’. should be a significant element of remembrance in this It is noticeable commemoration, that none of but it also gives these attacks us a chance to against property, put in perspective firstly public but the challenges latterly private, that still face us. were intended to The women fight- physically harm ing for the vote a any person, in- hundred years stead they were a ago, weren’t clear message to fighting for an ab- Parliament that stract notion of voting rights for civic involvement women was a or democratic non-negotiable idealism – they demand. The ob- saw the vote as vious conse- an instrument to quence of these improve the lives defiant acts was of all women in the incarceration Britain; who, for of many leading too long, had members of the been ignored and WSPU in some of abused by a the worst jails in deeply conserva- Britain. The suffragette leadership, including the Pan- tive and patriarchal society. Many issues that blighted the khursts, knew the publicity value of women being impris- lives of women in Edwardian and Victorian Britain are still oned for their campaign was significant; to highlight this in existence today; the glass ceiling and limited employ- even further, and to protest at the truly appalling conditions ment opportunities, the projection of a stereotypical role of that inmates were subjected to, many suffragettes began a women in society, pay inequality and the representation of hunger strike. Though technically not illegal, the govern- women in our civic institutions. ment realised the public relations disaster if it allowed any Although there has been significant improvement in one of the suffragettes to die in prison while on hunger many of these areas, there is compelling evidence that strike – so it initiated a policy of force feeding to ensure that suggests that we still have a long road to travel to reach a the prisoners were healthy enough to serve their sentenc- truly equitable society. Currently women earn on average es. However, the forcible feeding of women in prison fifteen percent less than their male counterparts. In Parlia- became the perfect metaphor for the suffrage movement; ment women make up less than a quarter of all MPs. The women, keep against their will, subjugated by men and justice system is only now beginning to realise that attacks who had no control over their own destiny, not even death. against women, including rape, are not brought upon them- The Liberal Government’s response to this escalation in selves. There is a complete lack of female representation hunger striking was the introduction of the Prisoners (Tem- in the boardroom of Britain’s companies, one survey sug- porary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913 or more common- gesting less than one fifth of all boardroom members is a ly known as the Cat and Mouse Act. It was believed that by woman. The victories of the suffrage movement were hard letting the suffragettes (the mice) to go on hunger strike won, but there are many battles ahead if we are going to and then releasing them on license when they became ensure a fair society for everyone, regardless of gender, weak and malnourished, only to re-arrest them once their race or economic heritage.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 48 David Pountney in Conversation: Schoenberg, Verdi and Issues of ‘Faith’

by Steph Power

elsh National Opera continue Steph Power: This summer will be a But I found this production in Stuttgart their themed seasons this particularly enticing season at which I thought was very intelligent summer with new productions Welsh National Opera. I wonder if and interesting, and which actually of Schoenberg’s epic, unfinished we might talk about the ‘faith’ doesn’t use anything except the cho- masterpiece Moses und Aron and the theme, especially in regard to the rus. It was an ideal solution for us and opera that heralded the onset of Ver- Schoenberg? Moses may have made it possible to even think of doing di’s creative maturity: Nabucco. The been in the desert for forty days, the piece. Interestingly enough, if I’d heading is ‘faith’ , so, of course, it is a but it’s nearly forty years programmed it in two years time we contentious one, with clear contempo- since Moses und Aron was per- would not be doing it; that is to say you rary resonances. formed in the UK – it was 1976 when won’t see anything like this again in On the eve of the eagerly Deutsche Oper am Rhein took it to the next five years because of the way anticipated Moses und Aron first Edinburgh! the funding situation is developing. So, night at Cardiff’s Wales Millennium opportunistically, I seized the right mo- Centre (24 May), Wales Arts Review is David Pountney: And it’s ment before anyone could notice that proud to publish the latest conversa- nearly fifty years since it was staged at this was basically impossible! tion between WNO Artistic Director Covent Garden, in 1965! I looked out and CEO David Pountney and Steph my old programme of it the other day. Well, I salute you! What’s your view Power. Here they explore various as- I’ve even got it here actually. of the opera’s subject? pects of faith in relation to Moses und Aron and Schoenberg himself, but al- To me it’s an extraordinary opera – I actually have a rather controversial so in relation to Verdi and the twinning an opera about ideas as much as view about Moses. First of all, I think of the two operas. anything – and an interesting con- Moses is completely wrong. And I Moses und Aron is directed by Jossi trast and yet complement to the think it’s behoven to every intelligent, Wieler and Sergio Morabito, conduct- Verdi. How did the ‘faith’ season liberal intellectual person to resist and ed by WNO Music Director Lothar come about? defy Moses with every ounce of your Koenigs, and features Sir John Tom- body and soul and mind and intellect! linson as Moses. Nabucco is directed Like all these things it was a mixture of Because I think his prescriptive insist- by Rudolf Frey and conducted by Xian serendipity and of fitting a rationale ence that he knows the answer to Zhang and opens at the WMC on 31 behind it. When I first came to Welsh whatever your faith might be is some- May. National Opera, Lothar [WNO Music thing quite horrific. And of course, to David Pountney is also directing a Director, Lothar Koenigs] flagged up some extent, the same could be said double bill, ‘The Fall of the House of his interest in doing Moses und of Schoenberg too – they’re a pair of Usher’ , at WNO this summer under Aron and I thought this was a suffi- arrogant bastards really! We have this the ‘British Firsts’ heading. The pro- ciently mad project to be taken quite rather sentimental idea that you’re gramme will comprise the UK seriously! I had to find somewhere a supposed to admire or like the people première of a new version of production that we could actually man- you write about or put on theatre Debussy’s La Chute de la Maison age with our resources here; I did one about. Actually I don’t think that’s true Usher by Robert Orledge, and the myself in Munich about six or seven at all, it’s a rather naïve view. So it world stage première of Usher years ago, and there’s no way that that doesn’t belittle my respect for the orig- House by Gordon Getty. It will open, could have been put on at WNO be- inality of what Schoenberg achieved – again at the WMC, on 13 June. cause it used the full resources of that or, indeed, even possibly what Moses company, with dancers and extras and was trying to say. I just don’t like being * God knows what. Because obviously told by anybody that this is the only you can go in that direction.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 49 way to do it. And both men are, to Jews. It’s a period in which the cult of really say that serialism of itself rules some extent, guilty of that. nationalist violence – of a self-help out or is in conflict with representation vigilantism – was widespread; with the of non-musical ideas. The interesting thing about Moses und Nazis of course, but with others as Aron is that, because it was left unfin- well. For example, the Sokol move- No, I agree. But that charge, if you ished by Schoenberg, we’re allowed to ment in the Czech lands was a move- like, of ‘abstraction’ – even of math- get away with a pseudo-tragic view of ment of physical fitness and health, ematical obsession – has pursued the piece because it ends up with Mo- and those people went around beating Schoenberg with regard to his 12- ses in despair saying, ‘O word, o word up Germans in the Sudetenland – tone works; even though he said of that I lack’. So we think, oh gosh poor which was part of the reason for the serialism – apropos Moses und chap, he’s struggling with this and so Germans protesting that they were Aron as it happens – that you ‘use on. But of course that was not what being mistreated. And sometimes they the method, but compose as be- Schoenberg had in mind; that was the were; it was not the case that the fore’. Is there something here too ‘ending in doubt’ of the second act. In Germans were always the aggressors about Moses being a response the third act, let’s not forget, Moses in this period. And Schoenberg really to Parsifal? I’m thinking about Wag- orders the murder of his brother embraces this idea of vigilante nation- ner’s attempts to represent the di- Aron. [Schoenberg wrote the libretto alism on behalf of the Jews. Well, you vine in that last opera: it seems for Act 3 but never set it to music could say that if everybody else is interesting that, in Moses, Schoen- despite his oft-stated intention to do getting fit and punching noses then berg uses serialism – the method so. Sometimes it’s performed as a you’d better be armed in the same kind he devised to organise pitch materi- spoken text following Act 2, though not of way! But it’s interesting that he did al in the wake of the breakdown of by WNO in this production.] So he advocate Jewish participation in such tonality from Wagner on – to argue becomes a murderer actually and he a movement. for a taboo on images of the divine? then leads a march – and I use that If that makes sense?! word advisedly – of the Israeli people I wonder if, from what you’re say- into the promised land. So Moses is a ing, and regarding the issue of im- It does but I don’t get it. Surely, just to violent fundamentalist. To me he be- age and representation of the back track to what else Schoenberg longs up there with all these nutters divine, there’s an interesting sub- said, he found himself using language capturing schoolgirls in Nigeria! version in the opera of the Nazis’ that today we would identify immedi- conflation of Judaism and modern- ately as being fascist language. He But do you think that Schoenberg – ism? Whether in some sense Sch- said ‘I think I have found a musical because I’ve pondered this myself – oenberg actually accepted that system that will guarantee the suprem- is actually more sympathetic to Ar- equation but turned it on its head to acy of German music’. Firstly, it’s inter- on in the piece than has often been show, contra the idol-worshipping esting that he saw himself as a painted? Or, to put it another way, Nazis, that it’s the ‘worship’ of im- German composer – which he was. is there at least room for Schoen- ages that causes ‘degeneracy’ – not He’s basically implying that what was berg to show any doubt of Moses? modernist values that do. laid down by Bach had ensured the Perhaps it would be a self-doubt in supremacy of German music for three part, as the parallel between Moses Yes, that’s his view. It seems to me an centuries, but that what was laid down and Schoenberg is obvious; Sch- untenable view that image and repre- by Arnold was going to ensure that oenberg too struggled to deliver a sentation necessarily leads to degen- supremacy for the next three centu- ‘message’, so to speak, in serial- eracy, but that’s Moses’ view. ries! In which prediction he’s thankfully ism, and he became a sort of pariah been proven to have been entirely figure for many beyond his own And to an extent Schoenberg’s? – wrong! circle. Indeed, as far as the Nazis That is, if one views serialism as a were concerned, he was a symbol step away from representationalism But it’s so fascinating that he would of ‘degeneracy’. and towards pure abstraction as even think of the concept of suprema- some have argued, and as some cy in musical terms – that that would Sympathy towards Aron is not some- later serialists tried to do? even occur to him as an thing that I have perceived. It is of idea. Vorherrschaft is the German course true that Aron has more beau- Is it? I don’t think so. Serialism in itself word [literally pre-dominance, suprem- tiful music but that’s part of the way in is only really a technique to decide acy] and of course now it’s a word that which he’s characterised by Schoen- which notes to write down. If you want nobody would use because it was to- berg. It’s very instructive, in terms of to represent a storm, or a cow mooing tally tainted by the Nazis. But he used Schoenberg and Moses’ intentions, to as Richard Strauss might have done, it and, even more importantly, he go back to the play that Schoenberg there’s nothing to stop you doing that thought it. wrote prior to writing the opera. within a 12-tone structure. So, there’s an irony here for Sch- Der Biblische Weg? [1926-7] No indeed, as Berg did, and Henze oenberg, in terms of the taboo on and many others. divine images that Moses tries to Yes. In the play there is a single char- instil; because Schoenberg himself acter called Max Aruns who is obvi- Yes. I’m sure you could point to lots of has not only taken the legacy of a ously Moses and Aron in one person moments in the score of Moses und basically representational aesthetic and who is essentially a Zionist. Actu- Aron where he’s choosing a particular on board, but he sees himself as in ally, what the play is partly advocating colour in order to emphasise a point in the vanguard of working for it to is a kind of nationalist cult of physical the story, which is a kind of represen- endure? fitness and aggression on behalf of the tationalism. So I don’t think you could

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 50 I suppose the point is that Moses, like Schoenberg, is a visionary who comes up with a new idea. But, ultimately, Moses is going to be prepared to murder the person who might compromise this idea – which is quite a frightening thought!

It is!

Going back to the point that you made about Aron – it would be very interesting to know how much this read to people at the time, in the early 1930s – but of course the concept of the demagogue became one of the cata- strophic legacies of the Nazis. Be- cause that’s the reason why, after the Second World War, the whole idea of writing anything popular became anathema; the taste of the people was associated with demagoguery. It was considered that if you pandered to the tastes of the people you were actually going down a fascist path. And I don’t know the extent to which Schoenberg identified Aron as a type of Goebbels.

The propagandist. much to try and popularise Verdi as So the opera is actually full of con- The propagandist. But he’s certainly a freedom figure. tradictions, right from the start. playing that role isn’t he? Yes. Va pensiero [the famous Chorus Fundamentally, yes. Yes indeed. of the Hebrews in Nabucco] was more or less adopted by the fascists as a That in itself is interesting in terms Of course, that really led to the whole second national anthem in Italy. of the spirals of contradiction and catastrophe of post-war modernism, paradox that religious fundamental- which led music off into a complete Going back to Moses und Aron, ists rely so much upon. Interesting cul-de-sac for half a century, out of what does it mean to stage an opera that no such thing happens in the which we’re just emerging, with some that is effectively about – at least in Verdi! There’s far more clear cut relief! part – the impossibility of images? good and bad in Nabucco, with res- Is that part of the challenge of olution thereof – though he’s still Blinking in the light, perhaps! putting it on? Although it seems to tackling very knotty issues at some me that, despite Moses’ anguish at level. – and with a substantially alienated lacking the words to deliver his public! Anyway, that’s just speculation message, Schoenberg did find the Yes – and there’s also the issue that really. words – that is, in those two acts at fundamentalism, or your view of it, least, he managed to get something depends on which side you’re looking But what an interesting contrast to written and staged and voiced. at it. For instance, Zaccaria happens Verdi’s Nabucco, which embraces to be the person who is able to lead his the popular – with Verdi himself in Yes – and surely Aron would point out people – a bit like the Polish Pope his day being so beloved of so that Moses’ despair was just as much [John Paul II]. But actually, if the Polish many people, in stark contrast to an image as his own fluency and abili- Pope had not had to lead the Poles to Schoenberg’s later experience. Of ty to demonstrate. freedom from the communists, he course last year’s bicentenary of would probably have been seen as a Verdi and Wagner led many to re- And the Voice from the Burning rather grumpy, right-wing religious fun- examine notions of a difference in Bush is a hugely dramatic image. damentalist! He acquires heroic status sensibility between Italian and Ger- because of the situation that he was in, man opera, but it seems to me that, Exactly. As is Moses’ gesture of break- but actually, in terms of doctrine, he with Moses und Aron and Nabucco, ing the tablets of stone. That’s show- was quite a hardliner in fact. If you talk it’s there and writ particularly large! manship too! And later, in the about his views on abortion, or wom- uncomposed third act, you could point en’s right to decide whether to have It’s colossal! to the execution of Aron as a very children or not, he comes over as a powerful image – pour encourager les much less sympathetic figure than if And it’s ironic too, given our con- autres! you talk about his resistance to com- versation, that Mussolini did so munism or to Soviet power and so on.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 51 Completely! whole of Europe in the 19th century, which is the issue of national identifi- The chorus has a tremendously I think if you met Zaccaria on another cation – right up to the point where the powerful role in the opera – and it’s piece of territory, in another narrative, King of Egypt feels he has to commis- very hard! you might find that he was just as sion an opera in order to establish the unpleasant as any other such figure. fact that Egypt is a grown-up nation; to And they’re doing very well I think, too. have the opera tell the story! [The then That’s really the point of doing it here So that issue of leadership be- Khedive of Egypt, Is’mail Pasha, later at WNO – to showcase the WNO Cho- comes one, again, of representation commissioned Verdi to write Aida.] rus. – even of propaganda. There’s Which applies all over Eastern Europe something about the tantrum that too of course. Yes, I see that. Nabucco too is fa- Moses has in the opera when he mous for its choruses – including, smashes the tablets. I wonder if there is a faith aspect of course, Va pensiero. Another in Nabucco that happens to reso- thing common to both operas in a Also an image of course, as we’ve said. nate with Schoenberg personally – way, seen in part through the which is the issue of religious con- chorus/crowd scenes, is the notion Exactly. For me that’s one of the version? [Schoenberg converted to of cultural destruction. In the Verdi, most shockingly revealing parts of Lutheranism as a young man and there’s the destruction of the He- the piece – for what happens in that then back to Judaism upon having brew temple, and then of the statue moment to Moses’ absolute mis- to flee Germany pre-war.] At least, of Baal – another image. sion to impart God’s Word? Some- your twinning of the two operas has how the personal ego asserts itself got me thinking about that. Conver- Your saying that reminds me that you when the chips are down – and sion is very powerful in the Verdi can see, in relation to Verdi’s life and that’s very revealing about the na- within that context of nationhood career, how relatively ture of leadership and the will to and imperialism and subjugation; primitive Nabucco is. Because there is power. the idea that one side in a conflict no music for the destruction of Baal. only really knows it has won when Yes. I guess the one thing that you the other side accepts its God. No! It slips through doesn’t it, with- could say in criticism of out being ‘set’ by him. putting Nabucco under a title of ‘faith’ Right. Yes, it goes together with impe- is that I’m not sure in the end that faith rialism, with insisting that everybody Yes. And so I’m reminded of the fact is the subject of Nabucco. It’s as much thinks like you do. So it’s a decidedly that the attitude of the composer to a another of Verdi’s family dramas isn’t illiberal agenda. Which is part of why I scenic event in Nabucco is the same it? have problems with Moses himself, as it was for Handel. When, in Xerxes, because I feel that those are all things the bridge across the Hellespont col- Indeed. that people should decide for them- lapses, there’s no music. Maybe the selves. harpsichord does a kind of rumble or And it’s got another of Verdi’s very something – but there is nothing other- powerful father-daughter conflicts or Moses is a very angry man some- wise; the composer didn’t see it as his situations [as in Rigoletto for instance, how, as depicted in the opera. He’s job to depict that kind of thing. most famously], with Abigail discover- angry with God for wanting him to In Nabucco, Verdi hasn’t quite noticed ing that she’s illegitimate and blaming be His mouthpiece. He knows he yet that the grand opéra has emerged her father for that – which drives her to can’t do it, but approaches Aron in Paris, where people are beginning do all kinds of monstrous things. with extremely bad grace – and im- to compose all kinds of scenic effects: mediately starts disagreeing with moonlight and thunderstorms. Nabucco has also been painted as the way Aron wants to set about the a very political opera in the sense task. So it’s not a straightforward Representing the image in music that the oppressed Hebrews are of- case of ‘Moses loves God, Aron even! ten taken as a metaphor for the loves the people and ne’er the twain Italian people under the subjection shall meet’, but all those very hu- Yes! And later on of course, with Verdi, of Austria. But I wonder how much man emotions of anger and despair when you think how he deals with the that’s in retrospect; how far Verdi are very much part of the opera. opening of Otello for example, he gets really was in his day a figure direct- right in there. But he was writing in a ly associated with And I suppose jealousy too. I think different world in Nabucco. the Risorgimento, and whether the Moses is quite jealous of Aron’s abili- opera’s story is more to do with his ties and plausibility. And from that point of view also, it’s being a brilliant dramatist? an interesting opera to twin Yes – that contrast between with Moses because of the simulta- Oh I think he knew perfectly well that Moses’ Sprechstimme [or sung- neous dryness and yet huge ex- that would pull the right strings. He speech] and Aron’s eloquent bel pressivity that Schoenberg puts was a good theatre man and I think he canto is very powerful. And it’s in- into that piece. He really goes for it knew what was going to stir people’s teresting that God, through the cho- with the Golden Calf music. I take it emotions – and that was a very power- rus at the beginning, as the Voice you’re not going to have people ful topic, even without it necessarily from the Burning Bush, uses both running through fires in that scene, being identified with Garibaldi or Sprechstimme and song. as he writes in the score?! the Risorgimento specifically. The opera is part of a big subject for the Right.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 52 No no! But I’m not sure I should give ‘scenic word’]; just the right, pithy way piece is one of extreme simplicity you away the solution to all that! The fact to bring a situation clearly onto the could say. He’s a tremendously nice that Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito stage. But Schoenberg sets off what I man and very knowledgeable about in Stuttgart came up with a rather intel- think was a disastrous tendency in opera. But I rather floored him the ligent way of dealing with that scene 20th century culture, of cultivating other day by saying that his piece was was what made it possible for us to do complexity – very often for its own in the tradition of Dargomyzhsky. He’d the production! sake. never heard of Dargomyzhsky, which is fair enough – most people haven’t. No, don’t give it away! On the sur- You think so – even in Moses und But what Dargomyzhsky did – I don’t face you look at those massive forc- Aron? know whether you’ve heard of Dargo- es that Schoenberg employs and myzhsky? you think, this is epic opera, but it’s I think there is a kind of intellectual an opera as much about one man’s arrogance which is saying, if you can’t Yes I have, he was a Russian com- inner torment as it is epic on a demonstrate utter mastery of an over- poser, but carry on! grand scale like the Verdi. But complexity, you’re not really qualified. again, the Verdi is also, as you say, I don’t think you can necessarily point He created this idea of permanent a very personal drama. to a bar in Moses und Aron and say recitative really. That is, that the func- look, you could have written that a lot tion of the music was simply to illumi- Well you can see that as a parallel. simpler and got the same effect. But nate the text and only under Moses is about two brothers and a lot you can say that of the music of a lot exceptional moments should the mu- of the driving force of at least one side of his followers. sic rise up and say something on its of the story in Nabucco are the two own. And of course this technique was sisters and their very hostile relation- Oh yes, that’s very true! very influential on all the ‘Russian- ship to one another. Russian’ composers. By that I mean And so he established something – obviously not on Tchaikovsky, who’s Yes. Schoenberg seems to me to and maybe he shouldn’t be blamed for the opposite; the ‘non-Russian’ com- have been actually very interested what less talented people did after- poser. But on Mussorgsky in particu- in human relationships and the dif- wards – but he established a kind of lar. This was very influential, and ficulties of, I suppose, being in the rule of thumb that complexity was im- established this whole pattern of con- world. But he was caught in a bind portant. centrating on the speech and reserv- because, on a personal level, he ing outright musical expression for craved love and acceptance, but as Perhaps there’s an arrogance in his very significant moments. And that’s a true modernist artist, he didn’t using just one note-row as a basis for basically what the Getty does. It’s just want either! the whole opera in the way he did? In a very nuanced, careful handling of the the sense of ‘look how I can write all of text. Whereas the Debussy of course I think he wanted to be admired. this music out of twelve notes ar- immediately gets into a sort of wallow- ranged just so’? At any rate, that’s ing hot tub of misty perfumes and bath Yes – perhaps not ‘loved’. Revered. potentially rather fundamentalist in it- oils! So that’s an interesting contrast self isn’t it? as well! Revered, yes. There’s another dread- ful quote from him isn’t there? Some- It is, yes. But of course Bach would Yes it would be! I gather you’re do- thing like ‘all art should be created have done the same. ing a new version of the Debussy by cold’. Robert Orledge? Perhaps without the self-con- And yet his music wasn’t created sciousness? Well, it’s a version Robert Orledge did cold. At least, I don’t think so! five years ago or so. We premièred it Yes, without the self-consciousness. in Bregenz [an opera festival in Austria It isn’t cold necessarily, but it may where David is Intendant], which is have been created cold – or the proc- Well thanks for talking with me Dav- how I know it. ess may have been so. There’s anoth- id. I suspect I’d better let you go er strange thing that is interesting to because you’ve got a rehearsal! Well, I look forward to it, as well as look at between the two pieces: I don’t to the Schoenberg and the Verdi. think it’s any insult to Verdi to say that Yes I have. I can’t remember whether Thanks again for talking with me. he actually cultivates simplicity. I think I’m rehearsing the simple piece or the that’s very often what he meant by his complex piece! Because that’s quite Thank you – it’s important to have concept of parola scenica [literally, the an interesting contrast too! Getty’s serious discussion!

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 53 In Conversation with Gruff Rhys

by Sarah King

stand quietly at the door and lis- I ask him about the origins of the like. Which was fine for most of the ten to the sound check. Voices project. journey, but when we came to New calling out, snippets of melody and Orleans they presumed it was a voo- song, a laugh, feedback rising to a Gruff Rhys: Well, it was based around doo fetish. So that completely distorted pitch and brought back down an investigative concert tour in Ameri- changed the nature of this doll. We again. ca, following the path taken by John were persisting that it was not a voo- Gruff Rhys is in Acapela, a small Evans between 1782 and 1789. We doo fetish, it was just a representation converted chapel in Pentyrch, getting toured along his journey. I had done a of a distant relative, and they said ‘yes, ready for the first of a series of gigs previous investigative concert tour that’s what a voodoo fetish is. A repre- across Wales this spring and summer with my friend Dylan Goch directing sentation of a relative. You must build to promote his new multimedia the film. A film called Separado! And him a shrine, give it cards and food project, American Interior. then, about eight years ago, we found and sing to it’. So that meant had to American Interior, a highly ambitious a film by Gwyneth Williams build a shrine for it. We took it back to concept comprising a record, a film, a called Madog, that deals with the Ma- North Wales and we had a voodoo book, an app, and personal perform- dog myth. John Evans was following ceremony in Waunfawr on top of a ances, chronicles the journey of John the mythical tribe of Madogus, de- mountain. I’m sure he would be horri- Evans from his hometown Waunfawr scended from Madog the mythical fied. The real John Evans would have across the Atlantic ocean to Baltimore. Welsh prince. And the story of John been very religious. He lived at the And his long walk along the Missouri Evans was featured a little bit in this beginning of a huge protestant refor- river in search of a lost tribe of Welsh wider documentary from the 1970s. So mation in Europe. He came from a speaking first nation Americans. we’d seen this documentary and that very religious, Methodist family, but he Gruff’s tour manager passes me at was inspiring for me, and Dylan as was very pragmatic. He was a baptist the door and as he rushes past he well, and I went to see a booking agent within three weeks of arriving in Amer- says ‘five minutes…he won’t be long in America three years ago. Asked him ica, and then there is no mention of now’. to plot a tour along the journey. So we religion again in his correspondences. ‘That’s fine’, I answer, ‘there is no were following the journey of someone And he got to experience the ceremo- rush’. following someone else’s journey. nies of some of the tribes of the Mis- I’m meeting Gruff before the concert souri. He would have experienced the tonight to talk about his new project. Sarah King: Was the destination at Buffalo dance and the okipa, where Half an hour later we are sat upstairs the end of the journey different than people hang themselves by hooks in a small room. Bottles of water, iPad what you thought you would find? from the ceiling. on the table and a deep sigh and smile from Gruff as he sits down. He apolo- Absolutely, and we were willing for that Did you see the story as a metaphor gises for keeping me waiting, I apolo- to happen as well. For example, we for a larger Welsh issue? gise for taking up his time when he’s created an avatar of John Williams, obviously busy. He is charming, re- one metre tall, and for most of the Yes, there are contradictions as well, laxed, intelligent, an attentive listener journey he was just a visual aid. John in that he was escaping colonisation. and an astute and deliberate speaker. Evans existed before visual surveil- There was also a class struggle. It was lance, so we have no idea what he the time of the French Revolution and * looked like. We created this approxi- the American Revolution. Iolo Morgan- mation of what he may have looked nwg who was his mentor, and people

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 54 like John Rhys, were radicals. They to be an opportunity for a short period strategy of booking agents is to have wanted to live in a land free of the of time. you go to cities where lots of people monarchy and the ruling classes and live, so large groups of people can they thought they could creative this It’s very interesting to be in this build- gather at your concerts and make lots new Wales based on the values of the ing in Pentyrch. If you walk around the of money for the promoters etc. I was American Revolution in the region cemetery it’s very obvious that not just looking for ways to change the where the lost tribe of Madogus exist- long ago everyone here was Welsh- way I tour and maybe have a new ed. I mean they were completely de- speaking, and this whole village was sense of purpose for touring that was luded, and by attempting to colonise Welsh-speaking until the 1960s when beyond commerce. Touring can be someone else’s land they were contra- the city reached the village. It’s almost vacuous if it’s just fulfilling someone dicting themselves. Would it not have unimaginable now, this close to Car- having sat in an office filling in the tour been better to start a revolution in diff, and such a short time ago. It without any input from the artist. You Wales? All that energy John Evans shows how easily the language can are basically at the behest of someone spent walking 4000 miles looking for a just disappear from the remaining elses whim. You don’t really get any- lost tribe and start a new Wales. I heartlands if it happened so quickly thing back from it. It’s usually a won- mean, he had a good look. Would that here. derful experience but I was trying to energy have been better spent starting think of touring in a way that was solv- a revolution in Wales? Except people Is that part of the reason you chose ing something. But then my love of at that time were putting all their ener- to make the album bilingual? music is naive, rather than conceptual. gy into establishing religion. Organis- ing themselves outside The Church of Well, it shows the contradictions in me Tonight, it’s just you on the stage. England. Which is political in a way, as well. I use the English language, Do you enjoy the live gigs? Are they but now we are in a post-religious era, and I love American pop culture. At the important to you ? maybe we would rather they have put time I was writing the songs, I was their energy into a political revolution. portraying the story to American audi- I was thinking recently about the dis- ences. I was doing a tour and was connect between songwriting and re- This story seems to have started travelling through America, and telling cording, and then having to create a out as a story about looking for the story to people who were com- spectacle, a live spectacle, without it Welshness, but also became about pletely ignorant about Wales, and of- being related in any way. Unless you other minority cultures and lan- ten my music, and definitely John are the artisan folk musician. guages. Evans. I had to explain everything, so I wrote a lot of the songs in English It’s a different part. They are maybe Yes, I think it’s very profound to see because I was in the moment, and in how I make some kind of living, so in the physical manifestation of what the the journey. But now, taking every- that sense I am the artisan. Going end of a language looks like. I met the thing in, I probably would have record- back to the naive state. Singing melod- last speaker of a language that was ed an album about John Evans in the ic songs. Enjoy it? Maybe like being in being spoken when John Evans trav- Welsh language. It seems strange to a car driving fast… elled through. At that time they were record it in English language, but that’s still practising their ceremonies and what I did. * were close to the height of their civilisation. Although they had already suf- Did going to art school inspire the Downstairs, in the bar, 180 people fered from smallpox at this point, he idea of the concept album? The no- are milling around. A hum of voices. met the Omaha tribe at the very height tion of a bigger vision rather than Excitement and anticipation. The con- of their civilisation and lived with them. being intuitive? cert was sold out in less than 2 hours. It’s obviously slightly disingenuous We take our seats in the chapel, the comparing the Welsh experience to I’m not sure how it has manifested lights are dim, and Gruff makes his people that have gone through near itself, because I am a big fan of music, way to the pulpit in a black suit, wear- genocide. I’m not comparing it, but and making music, and I have been ing the wolf hat, and carrying the John there are lots of similarities between trying to write songs most of my life. As Evans doll, that along with the black, what happened to the people in a musician I’m a figurative songwriter, white and purple colour scheme that Wales, and what happened in America. but having gone through that process runs throughout all the multimedia maybe I am not interested in authen- platforms, have become the visual Does that make you worry for the ticity, and through that I have come branding of the concept. John Evans Welsh language? across ideas that the whole self image is placed on top of the pulpit, and the can be a construct. It doesn’t have to hat is placed under as the guitar Well, yeah. The mood in the reserva- be genuine or touched by the hand of comes on. tions was incredible. They have some the artisan. I’m not the greatest musi- He has his hands full, and the show sovereignty, and some control over cian, but I can create anything, use is an impressive feat of multitasking. education so they can learn about their any sound. I mean, I’m just speculat- Playing, singing, controlling effects own culture. The age of assimilation is ing here…why I take it to certain plac- and loops, storytelling, managing a over. They have their own sort of pop es. Maybe I’m comfortable in ideas… slide show and keeping the audience culture ad pow-wows, and it was very in the palm of his hand with warmth inspiring to see that. It was also inter- Do you see yourself as a conceptu- and wit. esting to see how lucky we are in al artist? He switches naturally between Wales, and what an amazing opportu- Welsh and English in song and in tell- nity we have to keep the language and Well, the tour was conceptual, and ing the story of John Evans. A story grow the language. But it’s only going people take conceptual arcs in art. The told with humour and a feeling of lais-

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 55 sez-faire calm amid all the activity. The through the jest and humour to remind the borderlands between music and connection with the audience is easy. us that behind the tales of adventure art, reality and myth, comedy and trag- Gruff is on home turf and his audience lies a story of hope, oppression, belief, edy. laps up every joke and exchange. endurance and tragedy. A 22 year old As the concert ends the audience Technical hitches are dealt with wit, man, inspired by the age of enlighten- make their way back into the still warm and become running jokes throughout ment, mythological tales of Prince Ma- spring evening. Walking through the the 90minute set, and the small room dog having discovered America and graveyard surrounding Acapela, creates a familiarity and intimacy that left behind Welsh-speaking descend- smoking their post-sensory experi- would have been impossible in a larg- ants and a wish for freedom from Eng- ence cigarettes, laughing, comparing er venue. lish imperialism. Encouraged by notes. Hopefully with a reminder of the He opens with ‘Honey All Over’, and intellectuals like Iolo Morgannwg, who fragility and vulnerability of the Welsh the set is a mix of solo back catalogue himself wimped out of the expedition language and culture, and maybe a like ‘Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru’, ‘Sensations in last minute, John Evans set out on a lesson that the way ahead is to be the Dark’, ‘Shark Ridden Waters’, suicide mission that not only resulted brave and follow in John Evans’ foot- ‘Gwn Mi Wn’ and songs from the new in the inevitable realisation that there steps by moving forward, exploring album including the title track, ‘Iolo’ was no such tribe in America, but led and not accepting a situation as inevi- and ‘100 unread messages’. Halfway to his eventual death aged just 29. table. through the set the hauntingly beauti- Gruff delivers a thought provoking ful ‘Walk into the Wilderness’ cuts and inspiring experience that sits in

Dark Room

by Anna Metcalfe

very year, when the plum tree had lost its work chairs and the plum tree itself — appeared in greater leaves, my father, would take a photograph. definition. The residual warmth of summer evaporated. From the moment the air turned cool, we He was particular about the photographs. His practice would keep a close eye on it, watching the was consistent. He would stand with both feet on the path shades of green become a spectrum of gold. with his back to the dining room window, so close that he And then, the colours shedding, a thickening was almost leaning against the glass. At the centre of the blanket over the roots, we would wait for the last leaf to frame was the point where the largest branches diverged drop. from the trunk. This meant that, although the garden was Some years — looking out of the window — we would not particularly large, the table and chairs, the flowerbeds wake to find the tree suddenly bare, the remaining few and the greenhouse remained out of shot. The plum tree leaves having fallen in the night. stood near the back of the garden which gave way to corn At other times, the last leaves would struggle on through fields, ash blond plants that stood tall and firm. A dip in the the morning but, later in the day, when one of us would go land meant the scattered houses beyond remained invisi- back to check, they would be gone. Then, there were the ble. In this way, the photographs made it appear as though handful of more memorable occasions when, upon looking the tree were the only marker on the horizon for miles out of the window — that of his bedroom or the dining room around. below — either he or I or both of us together would catch I would stand by his side and wait for the click, followed the last leaf as it came fluttering down to the ground, by the familiar winding of the film. He only ever took one watching it curl and flip through the air, before resting shot. If the weather was bad, my father would make me weightless on the grass or skipping away on the cusp of a watch through the dining room window. I would kneel on breeze. the deep wooden sill, looking at him through the central ‘It’s time,’ he would say, and fetch his camera. pane. At this distance, my mind became active. It was my At that time of year, it was not quite winter-cold, but the mother’s tree, a memorial planted shortly after she died. seasons were shifting. Fewer clouds gathered overhead. That was all I knew. We seldom talked of her which meant The daylight sharpened and the materials of the garden — that I seldom gave her much thought. the stone path, the greenhouse, the antique table, the iron

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 56 My father developed the photographs himself in the ‘It was a stupid thing to do,’ he said. ‘I made a mistake.’ basement — the only part of the process in which I was not involved. The images were large, ten by twelve inches, * black and white. He mounted them on pieces of black sugar paper cut to size to give a narrow frame. When he Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I enrolled to study had finished, he would come to show me his work and I architectural design at the University of Valencia, leaving would nod my approval, commenting on the particulars: the my father alone in the house. He had encouraged me, then position of the clouds, the blur of a breeze, the quality of resigned himself to the change. It was summer, a month or the light. Each one was dated, numbered and stored in a two before term began, and I had little thought for autumn. heavy wooden box that he kept in the cupboard under the When the days of September ran out and the heat endured stairs. — no change in the leaves, dry and brittle as ever — an I was often alone. Sometimes, if I was bored, I would uneasiness crept in. Every few days, I would phone home take them out to look at, arranging them in patterns on the and enquire about the tree. carpet or sorting them into piles. The few friends I had lived ‘A few more have gone,’ he would say. ‘One or two in the next village and, while on summer days I was glad to fallen, I think. Though it’s early yet’ I sensed his irritation at make the journey on my bike, when autumn closed in my my absence and made an effort to talk of other things. Until father became anxious and I chose not to anguish him one November afternoon, he said: ‘They’ve all gone, I took further by straying out of doors. In any case, I liked to be the picture.’ there, in the house, reordering the pictures, always looking In Valencia, autumn was never cool. When it finally for the most pleasing arrangement. arrived, the air was only a little altered and the light the It would be easy to imagine that the photographs are all same. Trees were slow to lose their leaves and many alike. The plum tree did not grow a great deal over the never did. Instead, the habit of Valencian leaves was to years and, as far as was possible, its shape was main- grow limp and hang, undead, waiting for a cold that would tained by frequent pruning. Even so, while certain of the not come. When I went home for the winter holidays that photographs bore close resemblance to one another, oth- year we did not talk about the photograph I’d missed, the ers differed so wildly that, had the backdrop not been so first in almost twenty years. consistent — had the fields been dug up for housing, say, In my third year abroad, I decided to go home for the or the farmer chosen to plant a new crop — it would be photograph. I called a few weeks ahead and had a long easy to say that these were different plum trees from conversation with my father regarding the precise timing of different lands. A certain kind of evening light made one my trip and over which days I would have the best chance image pale and over-bright, the sun burning a hole in part of catching the plum tree as it lost its last leaves. He kept of the trunk. In another, the wind had torn through the careful records of his work and, looking at the dates of the upper branches and made them blur. photographs, he concluded that the most opportune win- There are a number of ways to categorise the photo- dow was between the fourteenth and the twenty-second of graphs. From the position of the sun and the quality of the November. I made my arrangements accordingly. light, it is possible to identify those taken in the morning, When I arrived back it was the fourteenth. Eight leaves the afternoon and at sunset. Some skies were dull, some remained on the tree. The next day there were six, then gave way to an occasional cloud, and others stretched five. On the fourth, fifth and sixth days there were three. away smoothly, disturbed only by the grain of the lens. But After a week had gone by, only two leaves remained and when I was in my teens, I preferred the simplest method: on November twenty-second — the day of my departure — to make two piles, one for before and one for after the storm. there was one leaf left. I had packed my bags the night In the winter between the tenth and the eleventh before and my train to the airport was at half past one. We photographs – I was ten – there was a night of crazed would need to leave the house at twelve. By the time we winds, lashing rain and forked lightning. Disturbed by the finished breakfast it was nine. There was a three hour commotion, I ran into my father’s room and we lay in bed window. holding onto one another. We didn’t think of the tree until ‘Still one, still one,’ my father said, looking out of the the morning. The largest branch, and others leading off dining room window. Then, when the last of the coffee had from it, on the right side of the tree (as viewed from the been drunk, he said: ‘I know what to do.’ photographer’s stance) had split and fallen. We stood at ‘You can’t take the picture with the leaf still there,’ I said. the dining room window, looking out at the rupture where ‘Of course not,’ said my father. the branches had torn. The two largest branches had been I followed him out the back door. Instead of assuming wrenched apart at the trunk, a jagged tear in the bark. The his usual position on the path, he kept on walking towards felled branch lay broken on the lawn. In the pictures that the tree. He reached up and before I could stop him he had followed the storm you could chart small changes in the the last leaf in his hand. It was stubborn and it took a hard tree. The branches on the left sunk lower as it began to tug to free it from its branch. He stuffed the leaf into the lean, losing its balance, slowly giving up on the sun. back pocket of his jeans and moved away from the tree, There were other events, other exceptions. Of the the camera slung around his neck. He took the picture, the thirty-two pictures he took, only one – the eighteenth – was twenty-first in the sequence. The ritual was broken, the in colour. archive contaminated. ‘Why, when the others are black and white?’ I had said. He had ignored his own rules. I felt ashamed that he I looked forward to the developed picture and this move had done this for my sake, because I no longer lived there, away from tradition set me on edge. because we were both getting older, and who knew how ‘Because when I took it the sky was so grey,’ he said. many photographs were left? My coming home at all like Alone, the picture could pose as monochrome. It was that, right in the middle of term, was already an anachro- only when it was placed among the others that its particular nism in our story. subtlety and warmth of tone became evident. My father When I graduated from Valencia, I got an apprentice- held it against the photograph from the previous year. ship in New York. My father was thrilled, and for the first

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 57 time since I had left home, I sensed that we had come to ‘Did you take these?’ she said, holding up an image in some kind of understanding. I no longer had to ask about each hand. ‘Where did you find a tree like that in New York?’ the tree; when autumn arrived he told me all about it and She was oddly suspicious, as though I might have been when he said that the photograph had been taken he sneaking out taking pictures of trees behind her back. described the sky and the light and the movement of the air ‘You know that tree,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen it. It’s the plum so well that I could picture it perfectly in my mind. There tree in my father’s garden.’ were one or two years when I went home, though I was She looked blank. never there to see the last leaf fall, but just being there at ‘You sat beneath it once to toast our engagement,’ I said. that time of year was enough. ‘But it looks so different,’ said Laura looking at one of Then, I met Laura. An American and a dancer, lively, the pictures from before the storm. always laughing, with a large and close-knit family up state; ‘I know, but that’s the one.’ a heritage utterly removed from the quiet, almost silent, ‘Did you take them?’ she said. world of my childhood. We went to art galleries. She took ‘No, he did.’ me to the opera. I showed her my projects, she took me to ‘Well,’ she said, calmer, ‘they’re lovely. You should do rehearsal. When she walked, there was a slight turn-out in something with them. Put them up.’ her feet. ‘In the house?’ The spring before the very last picture was taken, Laura ‘If you like, or in your office, or in a gallery somewhere.’ and I got engaged. The same April, I took her home to I laughed. ‘Let me think,’ I said. meet my father. The plum tree was in full bloom. We sat At that time I was working for a firm on the Upper West beneath it, drinking prosecco and laughing like children. Side. I made models of the cities of the future, the ones that Laura charmed him; she seemed to have an effect on his my child would come to know. On the ground floor of the character: he became playful, gracious, even stylish. He building was a printing office, run by a woman called Lin. took great pride in the way he served us dinner and in the She was softly spoken, almost to the point of inaudible, as mornings he laid on lavish breakfasts, with pastries, fruits, though the incessant back-and-forth noise of the printers breads and jams the likes of which I had never seen him and copiers had dulled her over the years. buy before. We stayed a full week, during which time ‘I need a favour,’ I said. I showed her the pictures. She neither my father nor myself made any mention of the looked at them with curiosity but made no comment. I catalogue of photographs under the stairs. I remember asked for ten copies of each. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Is having wanted to ask him if he continued to honour the that too much?’ I asked. tradition, but something — whether a sense of embarrass- She shook her head. ‘Come back in three days.’ ment or ritualistic sanctity, I don’t know — prevented me When I went back, she handed me the images, all three and I kept quiet. hundred and twenty of them, plus the thirty originals, in a He died the following winter. A heart attack. Aged 62. It cardboard box. I reached for my wallet and took out a few was quick, without pain, they said. I went back alone — notes. Laura had a Broadway show at that time — and made the ‘No need,’ she said. arrangements for the funeral. She would arrive in time for ‘Are you sure?’ that. I called the vicar and asked him to make an an- ‘I made an extra copy of this one,’ she said. It was the nouncement. The local newspaper was informed. When one in colour. ‘I’m going to put it in my kitchen,’ she said. ‘It the day of the funeral came, the church was packed, pews looks like a tree from my grandfather’s garden.’ crammed, people standing at the back. Even more turned ‘In Japan?’ up for the wake at the Drifter’s Inn, the other side of the ‘I know,’ she said, ‘but it does.’ village. ‘And the others?’ ‘I had no idea he had so many friends,’ I said. When I ‘I know, they’re all the same. But this one looks more like was a boy he had very few visitors. In fact, he had never the one I remember than the rest.’ exhibited much need of other company at all. But it seemed I set to work. On the back of each print I placed a sticker that once I left he became an active member of the com- with the date of capture and numbered them in sequence. munity. He mowed the lawn of the cemetery and volun- I hung one set of copies across three walls of my study at teered at the local school. He had even, someone told me, home. I knew that the light in the room was uneven and led a photography workshop at the village hall. that some of the pictures would fade faster than others. But Laura went back to New York while I stayed on for a few now that there were so many copies, it was hard to imagine more weeks. There was no good reason to hold onto the a time when they would all be faded. They would outlive house. I called an estate agent. It was sold within two me, at least. When all the pictures were arranged, I stood months. A few bits of furniture, pieces of my mother’s before them, looking carefully. When I stopped at one, jewellery he had kept and other items I had loved or that perhaps the fourth or the fifth, a warmth crept over my seemed important somehow, were shipped to New York; shoulders, radiating from the memory of the way the dining among them, of course, were the photographs. room window almost touched my father’s back. I felt the stone path beneath my feet and the change of the air * against my cheeks. Though I had never taken a single photograph in that house, I felt the weight and the coolness They remained in their box on a low shelf in my study for of the camera in my hands and the presence of a young many years. Whenever I looked at it, I told myself I was boy at my side, watching and waiting for the click of the big keeping them there for their protection, so they would not black button, the winding of the film, the tap on the shoul- fade. In the end, it was Laura who unearthed them. She der that meant it was time to go back inside. was pregnant at the time and, unable to dance, had set her Laura gave birth to a girl, a long-limbed little thing with mind on clearing out the house. It was more than a decade a shock of fair hair. We named her Carla, after Carla since he had died. Fracci. She couldn’t take her eyes off us, when we were I was in the kitchen when she came to find me: working or cooking or sitting down at the end of the day to

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 58 listen to music. It was as if she were watching over us, and When Carla was twenty, and I was as old as my father not the other way round. When she was very small, I used had been when he died, she unveiled the project. It could to carry her into my study. I held her to my chest so that her not be done at home, she said, so she hired a cheap space head poked over my shoulder. I walked her slowly from in Brooklyn, a room with no windows about fifteen feet one photograph to the next, moving with my back to the square and painted white. When she ushered us in, it was frames, so that Carla could get the best view. I pictured pitch black. She held some manner of remote control in her each image as she arrived at it, her breathing soft and hand. She clicked a button and the room filled with light, steady in my ear. which cast peculiar shadows on the wall. When she was old enough I gave her a set of copies. The back wall was filled with miniature spotlights and Just as I had done, she liked to reorder and reorganise the each light was fitted with a lens from which the shadows images, dividing them up, placing them in grids or columns were generated. As my eyes adjusted, I began to recog- or zig zags across the floor. nise the shapes on the wall as images of the plum tree. I At school, her subject was art and she came home, counted the lights. Thirty two lenses for thirty two photo- night after night, with some new painting or drawing rolled graphs. I looked more closely at the projections, identifying up under her arm. At sixteen, she went to art school. At the tree before the storm and after it, the pictures with clear eighteen she decided to go professional, living at home, skies, with dark skies with clouds. The shadows were all saving money for her first show. She was friends with the different sizes, the images magnified to different degrees right people. She had Laura’s quiet confidence. I never and tilted to fall upon different parts of the room. In the doubted she would succeed. We gave her the dining room middle of one wall, something strange caught my eye. I to use as a studio, taking our meals at the kitchen table. walked towards it. The tone of the shadow was faintly blue, For two whole years she wouldn’t show us a thing. and the sky not quite clean. In that time, I learned that the old house was no longer ‘The one in colour,’ I said. there. The family who had bought it sold it on to develop- Carla nodded. ers, who had simply waited for the right time to build. They She handed me the remote control. There were thirty razed it to the ground and, presumably, the plum tree with two buttons. it. I was suddenly aware that there were no photographs of ‘How did you do this?’ I said. anything else. My father had not documented my childhood ‘Magic.’ the way most parents do, the way we had with Carla. There ‘How long can we stay?’ were no pictures of our Christmases, our outings to the ‘As long as you like.’ city, my football matches or school plays, though he had I took them on a tour of the room. I told them about the attended them all. There was only the plum tree, thirty two storm, the years I had missed, the years I returned. We versions of it, and all more or less the same. Soon after, I clicked the lights on and off, all three of us, and adjusted took the photographs down and replaced them with bits of the angles, moving the images from ceiling to walls to floor, Carla’s work. I left them in their frames and piled them into in order to find the most pleasing arrangement. a box.

The Lonely Crowd is a new magazine devoted to the short story, founded by John Lavin of Wales Arts Review and The Lampeter Review. Its primary desire is to create a new space in which the short story form can flourish. Find them at http://thelonelycrowd.org/

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 59 Halloween Special: ‘Like Water Through Fingers’

by Carly Holmes

nd you’re here again and they still can’t see told them that one of these days they’ll interrupt me in the you. But they won’t even look, when I point middle of something they’d rather not witness, but we both they don’t turn their heads and so how can know they’ve seen it all and there’s nothing that could they expect to. Stubborn is what they are. embarrass them anymore. It’s the water they’re concerned They refuse to fit their hands around mine about. The waste. I sometimes think I must be personally and let me steer our cupped palms through responsible for the thirst of millions, the way they go on you, to feel you spill like water through our fingers, they tell about it. They call it an obsession and ask me how many me not to touch. And when I plead and then I grab at them times I’ve filled and emptied the sink today. Last week I was they press me back in my chair and tell me to calm resting my face on the water’s surface, trying to see if I down, be quiet, stop getting so aggressive. could hold myself still enough to dance cheek to cheek with And then you fade again and it’s just me and them. It’s you and one of them came in and pulled me up by the hair easier for us all, when you’re gone. They study my face and and shouted for help. They didn’t understand when I tried nod at each other and let me eat my dinner with the others. to explain. They wouldn’t leave me alone after that, not for I’ve thought about pretending you’re gone when you’re not, days. wrapping you around me and wearing you like a shawl, And you’re here again and I think I’m close to getting it knotted tight over my heart, but as soon as you’re here I right, that balance between us, that skating on water, so shine with it, with you, and I start to twitch and reach to pull that we can touch without merging. It’s enough that you’re you close. I can’t help myself. And then they know you’re here though, I don’t mind if I never get it right, but I’m here again and they stiffen and sigh, straighten up and put practising anyway, I’m practising every day. When you’re their cigarettes out. I’m starting to become a nuisance. here and you smile at me the way you do it’s enough. If I could stand I would, and dance with you like we used They think they can help me get over you as if you’re to. It wouldn’t be as easy as back then, when you used to some kind of obstacle, a fallen branch on the ground in front hold me pressed against your chest as if I might float away, of me that, with their support, I can scramble over. I have to and you’d slip your palms down past where my spine flares talk to a lady who comes in twice a week. I’ve never seen out to flesh, and flirt them there, and smile at me. Do you her legs, she’s always sat behind her desk and when I remember how you used to do that? Now it would be more knock on the door she doesn’t get up to let me in, she just tentative, even ludicrous. Me with my absent legs trailing calls out. Maybe she thinks she’s being kind, or respectful, nails and panic through the murk of what you are, terrified but it just seems rude. I have to wheel myself in and twist to you’d drop me. Maybe I’d slide down you like a waterfall, shut the door behind me without tipping myself out of the cascade over your torso, the rush of your thighs, and chair and she just sits and watches or writes things in her collapse in the froth of your faint, almost-there feet. And I’d notebook. You’re never with me when she is. Even when I flail around on the floor until someone came and lifted me close my eyes and wish so hard to have you here again, for back into my chair and told me to stop crying. her to see you, you stay away. But what if that didn’t happen? What if we could hold We go through the same things each time and I wonder ourselves, and each other, in that place before skin breaks if she’s as bored as I am. She asks how often I’ve seen you. the surface of liquid and disappears below it? When I fill the She asks whether you’ve changed. Whether you speak. In sink in the bathroom and rest my hand on the water there’s our last session she told me to explain why you don’t look a moment when it’s solid against my flesh. Its weight push- the way you looked when I last saw you. She said that, if es back at me, all those molecules tight and gathered and you were really real, you’d be suspended in the moment of thrusting, I can feel them. But then the tremble begins in my death, swollen and blue, and that’s what I’d see. I asked her arms and forces my hand down through that moment, and if she was an expert on the paranormal but she just smiled it’s ruined and I have to empty the sink and start again. and gave me two books on grief to read and one on PTSD They don’t let me do that too often. They bang on the then wrote something in her notebook. I don’t think she likes door and if I don’t answer at once then they barge in. I’ve me at all.

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 60 The other people who stay here told me they’ve seen you though and that’s all that matters. The other time, the last too. Twice in the kitchen and once in the garden. I wanted time, I don’t want to think about that. I’d rather have no legs to hit them. Why would you be doing that, giving yourself to and the way it is now than have my legs and the way it was them when you never even knew them? I think they’re lying then, the last time I saw you. just to get attention but then I’m scared that they’re telling Crushed. I knew they were crushed beneath the steering the truth. It annoys the staff though. They call it group column. The car was reared over me and I wanted to move hysteria and glare at me as if it’s my fault, like I’m doing this but I couldn’t move and so I sat there, propped like a doll on on purpose just to create problems. They say when I leave a shelf, safe and strapped in, and I watched as your feet here things will settle down, because I’ll take you with me jerked and tapped on the car’s bonnet, almost close enough and there won’t be any more of these fantasies. But what if to touch if I leaned through the shattered windscreen, but I they’re wrong and you don’t come with me? What if you couldn’t raise a hand to touch you and you drowned without stay here and they won’t let me come back to see you? All a struggle in six inches of water. Six inches of water. And I that’s a long way off though, because I heard them saying sat with you through the night as we sank deeper into the that I couldn’t be trusted by myself, away from here, until ditch and I watched you and said your name and my legs I’d accepted what had happened and stopped trying to got colder and colder but your feet stopped jerking and then drown myself in the sink. So I don’t need to worry about it you didn’t move at all. Six inches of water. They kept saying for a while. that afterwards, as if it were so slight an amount, so ridicu- And you’re here again and I’m just going to sit by the lous a death, we would all find it funny. They’d chopped my window with you beside me and watch the afternoon filter legs off by then. through you, and we’ll smile at each other and it’s a perfect So I sat with you through that night and stared at the way to spend my time. I love the way the sun turns you soles of your shoes and remembered the first time we dusty, like candlelight through a crystal-thick glass of bran- danced together, and it was the first time we loved and dy. I could sit here with you forever and never move, never meant it, and that’s it really. That’s what we are. want to move because you’re here again, and it’s only when But you’re here again and you’re smiling and I’m so close I look away or someone speaks to me, that’s when you go. now, I’m practising so often, soon we’ll be able to dance So if they leave me alone I can concentrate just on us and together, properly. Until then I’ll just keep reaching out to you’ll stay, for a while at least. I just need to concentrate. you, and that’s enough to make me happy, it’s enough for I wish she hadn’t said that, about the last time I saw you. now, to stroke my hands over you and feel you spill like She didn’t need to say that when it’s in my head all the time water through my fingers. anyway. The swollen and blue. You’re here right now

The Very Best of the Wales Arts Review: Volume 1 61