woobiquity

The belch heard round the world

History does have a habit of repeating on us doesn’t it. Just like this morning’s spicy Spanish eggs. Uggh.

Checking the BBC news page tonight, I see that a wildly overvalued online start-up is making a lucrative deal with a big record label, Italy’s discussing whether it should bring back the death penalty, and Russia and the USA are in a new arms race. Oh, and the American president is calling for a global pact on carbon emissions. (Maybe that's a new one, but it sure seems like it should be an old one.) What year is it? Does anybody know?

Round and round and round we go. Next stop: Yoknapatawpha County, where many a deep, dark secret will be revealed, again. And again. And again.

Big White Fog (a brief, er, review)

The lights came down, the actors entered, and we in the darkened rows assumed our roles. Laugh here. Applaud there. Gasp. Laugh again.

The Almeida has brought Big White Fog, Theodore Ward’s 1938 play about an African-American family bickering and dreaming within a cloud of choking racism, to Europe for the first time. And that leap, 70 years back in time, is apparently a leap too far for some British reviewers, who thought the play’s dated ideologies and the high mindedness of its dialog ‘clunked’ or flawed the piece outright.

Is there a course at weeknight critic school called ‘How to Miss the Point in a Period Production’ or what? Ward wrote what he saw, mirroring or conversing with south Chicago family life, a political cacophony and the styles popular to theatre at the time. Which makes the play a perfect time capsule, a rare glimpse at living rooms past, at a nuanced world – rich and impoverished, hopeful and wasted, resigned and anguished, funny, stylish, defiant - that history has generally simplified into a matter of black and white.

It was a transcendental experience, sitting there knowing that the fog in question was far denser than any of the characters would have wanted to believe. (And Americans think London fog is impressive.) How old or dead would these characters be by the time their human rights finally became law?

And so I began to wonder how well we were performing as an audience, compared to the play’s original viewers, mired as they were in the thick of it. A ‘negro unit’ premiered Big White Fog in Chicago. An all-black theatre company revived it in Harlem. Would those who watched have sipped gin and tonics at interval? Certainly not in a postmodern theater lobby. Would they have laughed in the same places? Louder? Softer? Would their gasps have been exhaled as giggles quite so swiftly as ours? Would they have gasped at all?

Some things don’t change at the speed of history. “The family’s horror at the elder daughter’s prostituting herself to a white man seems excessive,” Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian. I take it he hasn’t seen the film Dirty Laundry (2006)… “A white boy in my house. On a Sunday!” The fog has dissipated, but it still exists. At least after watching Theodore Ward’s play I understood it a little better, falling out of history and back into Friday night.

Big White Fog is at the Almeida until 30 June 2007. The play is published in the UK by Nick Hern Books.

Help! Help! I'm missing an ear!

'Gotcha... Har har har.' (Guru, yesterday, in my chair.)

The new Cutty Sark's triumphal approach

Just kidding. But the sight of three sailboats (one of which you see above) weaving disappearing patterns into the Greenwich curve in the Thames on a calm evening in late spring felt like poetic justice, so close to the concrete berth of yesterday's drama.

More cynically I had to ask myself: if they replaced the ruined relic with a prefab schooner would anyone really notice? The news cycle had long since passed. By 9.45AM EST yesterday, maybe four hours after the blaze was out, the New York Times news blog had published a necrological review of the Cutty Stark news event. The stages of grief had evidently already run their course. I'm sure someone felt better for the online outpourings, the gnashing of teeth, the tears spilt onto suddenly poignant vacation photos. And today? Graveyard silence.

A desk by a garden-facing window half a mile from the scene is, I found, the ideal perspective from which to observe one of the day's biggest news stories. I didn't need to rush down there and watch the flames. I could see them on CNN. I know what the Cutty Sark looks like. I pass it every other day. Though the whir of hovering news helicopters and wail of sirens made for nice sound effects, I'll admit.

Anyway, if I'd left my computer I'd have missed the real story, the tsunami of misguided grief that slapped the internet. The confusion and debris. The careless joy that many seemed to take in riding the wave, facts melting like ghostly plastic across the bow of a charred ship amid apparently widespread (dis)belief that the clipper's great masts had crumbled into the greedy flames. Or worse: that this had happenened and somehow hadn't been recorded to be watched with whooping awe repeatedly on You Tube, winged on a bed of exclamation points down to relatives in Florida. When of course said giants have been warehoused now for weeks.

And now the thrill is gone. Pieces of you, me and everyone we know from the school trip to London can be swept back under the bed. We can go back to complaining about how wrong the weatherman always is. Or watching 24. And what goes on meanwhile in Lebanon?

Of course, you are reading this so you do not deserve the rant. I am preaching to the deckhands. And so I'll assume that your memory of yesterday's troubles has not been wiped by the dramatic news that Jolie is taking a career break. And I'll tell you that when I passed by Cutty Sark Gardens tonight, there was not pandemonium, not a Diana-sized pile of stinking flora, not a BBC crew dismantling a jolly good film set. There was peace. I had to wait my turn behind a couple of curious locals (I felt tacky doing it, but I was there and so I did) to peep through a square in the construction barrier, where I saw the scenes from CNN, just from a less dramatic angle. Beneath the hull a worker in hard hat and jeans took a tea break in the doorway of a trailer, next to a neat row of differently-sized boots.

And the rich, smoky aroma of 130-year-old beams and tar roasted on the morning of the day before was one that everyone should inhale at least once. It'll take you right back.

Thomas Wolfe's shadow

Really Tall Man Writes Books. I don’t know, it just doesn’t grab me. You? Which is why I was a little baffled on visiting Old Kentucky Home, the boarding house that inspired Thomas Wolfe’s novel Look Homeward Angel, to find myself face-to-absent-shoulders with a freestanding silhouette.

If the words “he sure was a big fella” had been spoken there once they’d been spoken a thousand times. (As if the need to stoop to get through doorframes had any relation to typewriter prowess. “Well, sure anybody could write a book, but it’s not every man that’s six foot six.”)

Never mind. This was simply a cheap (we’re talking nonprofit budgets) attempt to compete with television, to somehow connect with teens wishing to be riding the monster roller coaster at Carowinds instead of touring the bone-china remains of some long-dead writer. I guess it was also conscience soother for the full-grown adults who had dared to approach this sacred literary site without having bothered to read the book that made it sacred. Meaning most of us.

“Does anybody read Thomas Wolfe anymore?,” a woman from North Carolina had asked me in London a year earlier. It’s a question that only a North Carolinian speaking to another North Carolinian would ask, and then only while safely abroad, Thomas Wolfe being the closest we’ve got to a Hemingway or a Fitzgerald. And he died young.

It cuts close to the bone, that question, for a lot of reasons. It’s bugged me for years now, with my personal reply forming a particularly long and guilty ellipse. The novels are, how can I put it, not thrillers. One is an alarming 898 pages. But that’s nothing compared to the number of days Look Homeward, Angel has spent by my bedside unopened.

As penance I’ve been collecting survey data points from other people. DO YOU READ THOMAS WOLFE? It’s a slow project, with participants stepping forward at a rate of, oh, about one every two years. Blake Morrison took part accidentally once when he mentioned Wolfe in a public lecture, invoking him in distant, contextualized tones. I put him and the rest of Britain in the ‘no’ column.

Then to my surprise I stumbled across this yes-column tidbit over the weekend: the band Battles listing You Can’t Go Home Again as an influence, citing the the “adjectival and adverbial exuberances” of Wolfe’s style, “which is almost poetic.”

“This is the 'Book Of Battles' which is to be passed around and made the subject of many late night discussions. Recently we made Dave (bass player) read it on tour, but were unsatisfied with his summary of chapters three and 22, so we made him read it again. It's 743 pages long.”

Seeing our home state hero wheeled out in the eclectic company of Igor Stravinsky, Andy Kaufman, viral videos and Stanley Kubrick made me want to close the books on my little burning question and open one of Wolfe’s again.

The last time I held a copy You Can't Go Home Again I was 13 and my great grandmother, who had made me fetch it from the library for her the day before, was shoving it back into my hands, saying, “It wasn't what I thought it was going to be at all.” That should have been my cue to hide the thing in a hollow tree stump and read it secretly, all of it, till my library card was revoked and I'd had to run away to New York to escape the late fees. But I didn't.

By the way, Old Kentucky Home burned a few years ago. It was arson. No one put the motive down to reader’s rage. It wasn’t even all that big of a fire. But it was big enough.

Suburb, a lament

There’s this great place for coffee in Covent Garden, right next to the famous Neal’s Yard cheese shop. What’s so great about it? It’s a coolly original independent, with iPod listening-stations, leather sofas and tall windows that open onto the street on a summery day, like something in Ibiza. Downstairs is Stockholm, with pine walls and built-in furnishings. The coffee, by the way, is excellent, the staff friendly and interesting. And there’s free wi-fi. Free. Wi-fi. (Free!)

What then makes this a lament? Go there and you’ll see. Change every ‘is’ above to was, because the perfect body is no longer breathing. The lights have gone out. The postings say ‘retail space’, inviting, one assumes, a cruelly unoriginal chain to rip out the pine and install just-so prefab in keeping with strict brand guidelines. Each man kills the thing he loves, while presumably some go because others didn’t love them enough.

(Photo: 'Another suburb.' Point Hill, London, today.)

Imagine yourself in southeast London

For many Londoner’s that’s one leap of the imagination too far, unless you count twitchy-eyed quick trips to Greenwich, marching in-step with the GMT troopers, up the hill and back down again in time to get the last boat out of dodge.

But there’s fresh noise about New Cross becoming the Hoxton of its time. (Who was it that guffawed when I mentioned this idea recently?) This rumor just won’t die.

“It's true that New Cross is one of those places where it's best to walk fast and keep your head down. Yet, these days, your view of the pavement is more likely to be greeted by the sight of bubblegum-pink Louboutins or two-tone brogues rather than the expected scuffed Reebok Classics.”

I don’t know about that, but my Penguin cracked-leather sneakers will be seeing quite a bit of those grotty pavements over the next couple of years, to-ing and fro-ing between Goldsmiths lectures, coffees, tutorials and other writerly whatnots.

If, however, you’re an artistic type who would rather keep your feet firmly in a place where you’re not so likely to have eggs thrown at you by rotten youths, here’s a way to make your mark on New Cross's Rhoda-like neighbor, Deptford, without ever having to set foot there. Can you just see it? If so, you’ve got until September 1 to apply. Not an artist? You can vote.

And if you win, well… I’ll be seeing you. Or anyway, the contents of your head, which, we’ll take it as read, must be more interesting than your footwear. Unless of course you've managed to get your hands on a pair of vintage Vivienne Westwood platform pumps. And God help you. You'll never outrun the hooligans in those.

A good newsletter is hard to find

I've been too busy to mention that I've got a short article in this month's Real Business magazine. It's about email newsletters, and like most such things it was born out of idle wondering. Liz, a creative copywriter friend, and I were passing the time one day, emailing about matters of professional relevance, when one of us asked "Does anyone actually read newsletters?"

The answer, as best I can tell, is a definite maybe. I know I read Urban Junkies religiously, because every so often it improves my life. And don't read the newsletters from 1-800-FLOWERS, Nordstrom, Amazon or Travelocity. Ever. Though I get a weekly giggle out of the Ticketmaster email that greets me with 'Hello, Shirley'. (Delete.)

I was especially interested in the quaint, retro quality of a cheap, old-skool medium that's been revived and updated for modern techno-times. Though that didn't really make it into the piece, which is more of a practical how-to for small or medium businesses thinking about launching a rivetting regular read of their own. If that's you, don't read this article. Really, don't. (And I'm not saying that just because its formatting's all squiffy.) Rather, get in touch (my email's on the About page of this blog). Because what's hardest of all to find is a good newsletter WRITER.

[End of shameless self promotion.]

Buildings that have something to say

You get on a train. You travel for an hour. You get out. And, confound it, you’re right where you started out. Or that’s how it can feel anyway, traveling around Britain.

Every high street looks almost exactly the same. Vodafone, Barclays, Next, Domino’s, Pizza Express, I could go on until you’d have to scroll to read them all. Which isn’t a bad metaphor, really, for what our cities have become. Digital representations of themselves. I’m reminded of my cat Sissie looking recently behind the TV screen, hoping to touch the lions.

So this is Oxford. Oxford of all places. I walk Cornmarket, which must once have been a fine street. Now it’s a hall of mirrors. Flim-flam. Age-old buildings – every one a novel – given the cheapest chic-lit dust jacket imaginable. Signs so temporary you wouldn’t be surprised tomorrow to find them shuffled into a completely different order. I’m in Oxford, so I'm tempted toward arcane phrasings. What hath humanity wrought? And how on earth do you say ‘wrought-ing’? We're still doing it. Or isn't 'wrought' too sturdy and permanent in this instance?

Luckily there are still a few places, in Oxford especially, where you can go to think about all this – or just to be – in the absence of mind-altering corporate sponsorship. I was in town with a bunch of the authors from Common Ground for an event at the QI building. Amazing. A building that literally says Quite Interesting. Not ‘freedom’ or ‘play’ or ‘heart’ or some other subliminal brand value meant to get our hearts a-pounding.

And then there is the Said Business School building (2002), a pristine Heaven’s gate in modern-classical style next to the railway station. Shortly I’ll board a capsule and be whisked from one brand hub to another. But for the moment there’s this Place. ‘SAID BUSINESS SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,’ the building says, the words carved right into the stone. ‘Wrought,’ I think, feeling better. ‘Written.’ Right. Expresso-machine coffee for your journey?

Good news that comes in the post

It’s not all bills, junk mail and circulars. Not today anyway. I’ve been accepted into the MA in Creative and Life Writing program at Goldsmiths College, University of London. I start in September. Part-time for two years. My tutors, I think, will be the poet Maura Dooley, the poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw and the novelist and critic Blake Morrison.

How did that news make me feel? Honestly?

It was a dark and stormy night. It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It was love at first sight. It was the hour of twilight on a soft spring day. It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening. It was three hundred forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago today that the citizens of Paris were awakened by the pealing of all the bells.

I think I need to sit down. Oh, right, I already am.