woobiquity

72,165, but who's counting?

Graphic photos in the press get a lot of flack, but maybe sometimes we forget that mere words can be just as evocative, just as graphic. (I'm sure the couple I spotted browsing the erotica section of Borders last night would agree.)

Statistics, statistics. Bombs, bombs, bombs. And the true horror of Iraq passes us by. If even the numbers are elusive, what hope of grasping what's really going on? This American Life interviewed Haider Hansa, a teenaged spokesperson for Saddam in the dictator's last days who became a reporter for Iraqi TV after the US invasion. Haider is, frankly, full of himself, full of youth. But his story is fascinating and necessary, particularly on a backdrop of the kinds of words politicians and the media use to describe Iraq, words that so often add up to mud. 'Civil war' or 'sectarian violence'? Does it really matter?

Haider Hansa describes reporting from the annual Shia festival of Ashura, at which large-scale suicide bombings are now as traditional as the ritualism. The bombs go off, a cameraman brings him a tape, speechless, and, well, he tells it best.

So I took the tape. There was this scene. A horrific scene. A woman. She was Iranian, because a lot of Iranians come to this ceremony. And she was – you could see her holding her child, from her armpits like that. His head was hanging down, and she was so silent. She was not crying. She was not shouting. She was not weeping. She was just quiet, looking around, holding her son. And her son is cut from here. You can’t, you just, from over the belt. And you can only see the flesh hanging down, and blood was just pouring down from his body. And she was holding him as if he was alive and he was a full body, although he’s just half a child. And she was in a shock, and she was not reacting at all. She was looking around, as if she was looking, saying, what are these crazy people? What are these crazy people doing?

Trees in the City

Can poetry stop climate change? Only a fool would say yes unabashedly. But only a cynic would say no outright. And if that’s your game you’ll probably have something extra scathing to say about Trees in the City, a London poetry project sponsored by (boo!) Lloyd’s, the insurers.

Lloyd’s make no bones about why they’re interested in climate change. Can you guess? Claims from climate-related natural disasters are costing the industry billions. Their interest in poetry, however, may be less ‘truth and consequences’ and more ‘truth or dare’. At any rate, it’s not every big company that has the nerve to blow some of its investors’ (ahem) hard-earned money on new poems.

In fact, Lloyd’s commissioned 18 new poems from three respected British poets: Patience Agbabi, Matthew Hollis and John Burnside. The charity Poet in the City brokered the commission and co-hosted a ‘Trees in the City’ evening at the iconic Lloyd’s Building this week.

Ya-shoulda been there. Youda-loved it. Or been horrified by it, but then, how could any serious poetry about climate change not be charged with foreboding and alarm? Patience Agbabi had, for me at least, the most spine-tingling couplet of the evening, in a poem called ‘Tsunami’.

The children they found
Were not full of water but of sand.

But there were child-like, sing-song poems, too. Matthew Hollis’s found poem ‘Instructions for Making a Globe’ (‘1. Blow up and knot a round blue balloon...’) drew a laugh or two, along with the poetry audience’s customary, knowing moans at the end.

If you missed it, all is not lost. Because the poems are published in a beautifully designed booklet, which you can either pick up for £5 at a Poet in the City event or download for free. Two of the poets will even read their poems aloud to you, if you wish.

If poetry changes anything, this is how it happens. One earth-shattering line at a time, one earth-shattered reader at a time. One earth.

Sprinkler stop valve

More raised text, from Floral Street in Covent Garden, today. I like that the words themselves look as if they've been sprinkled, until the last, 'inside', is just a wet whimper.

Mere linguistics?

Or is there something more disturbing at play when George W. Bush says at a press conference: “They can try to have their votes of no confidence, but it’s not going to determine — make the determination who serves in my government."

'My government'? His administration, maybe, but typically only kings or queens claim a whole government for their own, and then (these days) only for the ceremonial pleasure of rolling the words over in their mouths.

This saddens one.

Omigod you guys!

If you're at all creative you'll relate to the eleventh-hour godsend in this anecdote... You're writing a musical. The opening scene is set in a sorority house. You need an opening number, and you're stumped. Your deadline is hours away. It's 3AM. And suddenly, there it is, as whole and perfect as if you'd plucked it from the heavens. The song will be called 'Omigod You Guys'.

Then when you visit a sorority house linked to the production and tell the girls there the name of your opening number, what do they say in chorused response? "Omigod you guys!" Nailed it.

Of course, by you in this case I mean Nell Benjamin and Lawrence O’Keefe, whose Broadway version of Legally Blonde has been nominated for a Tony Award. You can hear the cast recording of Omigod You Guys here.

They heart Paris

Do you love Paris? Or at least the idea of Paris? Who doesn’t, right? And so of course you will want to go see the new film, Paris, Je T'aime, which opens in the UK at the end of June (it’s already on limited release in the USA). I caught a preview Friday night.

Eighteen short films, each by a different director, sounds like an endurance test, but you’ll quickly drop the desire for countdown. At times, sure, you may feel like you’ve strayed into a French-dubbed episode of Casualty or a freaky Coen Brothers movie (oh, right, that IS a freaky Coen Brothers movie), but this unpredictability is exactly what keeps the film ticking along. Which is lucky, since there’s no plot.

It’s simply love, expressed 18 different - very different – ways, with stars as diverse as Elijah Wood, Marianne Faithful, Willem Dafoe, Nick Nolte, Bob Hoskins and Gena Rowlands (Gena Rowlands!) making a brief, experimental turn.

Paris, Je T'aime is like an exhibition of ‘found photographs’, each stumbled across in a different arrondissement, in which the pictures spring to life to grant us a tad more than the single moment, a fleeting glimpse of what was going on just before the shutter snapped. As a portrait of a city, the collage is imperfect, fragmented. But what would a perfect portrait of modern Paris look like? You might as well try to fathom eternity. Forget about it. Just forget about it.

As with an anthology of stories, a film like this is written in disappearing ink. It’s not the collection that will stick in your memory, but the one or two pieces that spoke most directly to you.

I won’t forget the final short, by Sideways writer-director Alexander Payne, in which Margo Martindale plays a fanny-pack-wearing tourist from Denver. She narrates her story in badly-pronounced French, doing all the stereotypical things that we expect an American tourist to do. She is wide-eyed, myopic, a joke. And then, just as we’re preparing to leave the cinema smug in our world-wise superiority she surprises us, and herself, by sitting down to a moment of such poetry and self-awareness that we feel too blessed by it to be ashamed.

Having said all that, I have to admit: I’m not that crazy about Paris myself. But I do love London, Rome and New Orleans. Anyone for a sequel?

Watch the Paris Je T'aime trailer.

Melancholic joy in the theatre

The shape of an Alan Bennett play… it’s like one of those long, black stylized fingers from a 1960s animation, stretching out and out and out, far longer than any human finger could stretch, even in shadow.

But you don’t see this finger. You see the actors on the stage doing just enough to divert your attention. Or so little that you don’t dare look away, in case you miss something sudden and unexpected. At times you just sit there together, you, the actors, the rest of the audience, your breath a low, rolling thunder of laughter. And then when you least see it coming the finger reaches round and tickles your chin. Your spine will still be tingling on the following afternoon.

Office Suite, two one-act Alan Bennett plays from the 1970s, featuring the glorious, inimitable Patricia Routledge, finished its run at the Richmond Theatre last night. Its UK tour continues. It made me want to see more of the British workplace as it was before computers, consultants and team-building events spoiled the lackadaisical farce of it all. And it gave me a kinder appreciation for the seemingly meaningless code-words and systems that bring a shared if flimsy sense of purpose to so many office-based lives. Written with love... received with a melancholic joy. Bring back chunky telephones. Bring back the paper pushers. Encore!

Raised text

One of my current obsessions is collecting raised text seen in public places, particularly of a sort where age or time's effects have given the three dimensions an artful aspect that the original designers may not have anticipated. These examples fit both bills brilliantly. And best of all, I spotted them while out on my usual gym-and-back walk. They'd been there all along. And then some.

Royal Mail post boxes, Greenwich, London, recently. And by the way if you like this kind of thing (found type, graphic design and the like) you'll love love love Ace Jet 170.