Showing off? shutting shop? showing up?

Even amid a forest of high towers, St Paul’s Cathedral remains, architecturally, the heart of the City of London.

It could be a key place for people to confront anxiety and seek a new vision for the future of humanity, money, and power. This process, that is goinog on around the world, has to take in all interested parties — Limiting it to the elite who got us into this mess is insane.

After visiting the OLSX camp yesterday, I have no idea why St Paul's shut up shop last week. The appearance of a large handful, but still only a handful, of cheap tents fifty yards from the front door would be possible to manage, one would think. If, as Woody Allen suggests, 80% of success is showing up, at least now St Paul’s has reopened it is back in the game.

But what game?

Once upon a time an Urban PCC in theSouth of England was interviewing candidates for the post of Vicar. One willowy Anglo-Catholic youth made a big pitch for a shift up the candle — recalling the grand tradition of Anglo-Catholic slum clergy he said “what this place needs isn’t a leader, but a Priest!” Stirring stuff... until, quarter of an hour later a local bag lady with a skinful of cider but a heart of gold, crashed through the doors crowing, as was her wont, her signature line - “Help! I need a Priest!” Willowy Anglo-Catholic youth disappeared to the Toilet. He did not get the job.

And, as St Paul’s reopens its doors, this tale raises a question for its managers. Can they redeem their initial hysterical over-reaction? Do they want to draw all voices into a vital public debate, or will they clear the site as tactfully and soon as possible, probably in the middle of the night — when Caiaphas and chums used to do their business?

In other words do they have the stomach to engage in the real world at the crest of a tidal race between people, money and power, or are they just overgrown public schoolboys playing indoor games in their own self-important Tourist Disneyland?

Over to them...

August Riots: Sous les pavés, la plage

I was visiting the US for the first time when the Brixton riots happened, so there's some element of déjà vu as I wonder what future historians will make of our current curiously British evènements. Perhaps it’s too early to say anything until after Thursdays grève generale, but here goes.

No excuses — Violence against innocent people and gang thuggery is a matter for the full rigour of the law, and no amount of sociologizing it away will help its innocent victims — vulnerable people of all ages whose lives are tarnished by fear, who have nothing to gain from what is going on, and whose anxieties and issues are of no interest to the probably surprisingly small gangs driving all this.

I feel very sorry for members of the Police Service, no crew of plaster saints, but by and large good and decent people whose function in British society seems to be either lightning conductors or ham in the sociological sandwich.The only thing worse for them to be seen to be dong than nothing, is anything; and everyone's a ruddy expert on what they ought to have done. So I'll rejoice in my ignorance about the localities and pragmatics, and just voice what I know the vast majority of people will offer, thoughts and prayers for those at the sharp end of sorting the whole bloody mess out.

Some historians of France point out that rioting in nineteenth century Paris sometimes happened because ripping up pavé stirred memories of earlier and more stirring times — a ghost image in the collective mind that bubbled up surprisingly often when the forces of law and order were out of town. But that of course is the French for you.

The adjective the English use is “mindless.” On one level it's true, of course. Generally low levels of intelligence are at work here, and misdirected youthful testosterone, catalysed by a desire for significance on any terms, no doubt. However, as a sage churchwarden used to remind me frequently, things do happen for reasons. Reasons do call for understanding. It seems there’s a youth and gang culture in some urban areas that is deeply disturbing and needs to be understood then challenged at a very basic level.

Two big historic structural questions marks lurk in the background.

One is about social purpose. In the last century, young men derived a sense of larger purpose from progress, then Empire, then war, then having saved Freedom, then the white heat of technology, then help yourself loadsamoney Thatcherism, then celebrity, then... ? There's a vacuum out there. Some wheels are wobbling on the axle if not clean off the wagon.

If the only point of being alive is to have designer things and feed your face and get away with it, and that’s pretty much the only public belief we own up to, people without stuff will pinch it when the constraints come down. Looting offers a radical form of selfishness, banality and materialism. British secular society is profoundly uninspiring. People see those in high places helping themselves, and leaders who have abandoned as obsolete the notion that “Thou shalt not steal” as part of the bedrock of life. If it is no more than a quaint conviction for a minority of religious people, here’s one result.

Secondly, the more unequal a society becomes, and we are currently shooting inequality rates that take us back to the nineteenth century, the more frustrated everybody becomes at one level or another — a point well made by The Spirit Level. Subterranean violence, born of boredom, social humiliation and frustration, will out in bad ways as well as ambitious ones.

When it does criminal behaviour should, of course, be met with the full rigour of the law. But is it too much to hope that someone will pick over the history of the past few days sometime when it becomes possible to do this, address the Moral Vacuum it indicates, and draw from it raw materials for a strategy of reinspiration as well as anger and mere containment?

Mahler Nights: Cool Live Music

Very absorbed, me, in two amazing evenings with the Berliner Philharmoniker, currently visiting London, with its musical director Sir Simon Rattle. This meant Maher 4 on Monday and Mahler 3 on Wednesday, some 35 years since I last went to a Mahler symphony concert, at the Proms.

There is a fatal facility about recordings, fine as they are. The illusion, reinforced by the quality of the digital equipment on which we play them, is that they capture the music. Of course they don’t. They capture a sound impression of the music, but there’s so much more life and vibrancy in a live performance.

It is extrordinary to be in the same room as over a hundred of the finest musicians in the world, listening to each other, creating a joint pulse of something bigger than any of us or all of us, and feeling their way together through a shared adventure. I have no caustic critical words, not because evryting went perfectly, but because I was too absorbed to stand back and pass comment for fear of missing something. You can’t simultaneously swim a river and stand out on the bank commenting on the splashes and bumps.

And, frankly, there were no egregious splashes and bumps. Every voice in this orchestra has a wholeness and versatility to throw itself into different modes freely. Every voice that was a voice seemed like a musical instrument, free of intrusive ego, whether cool or soaring or cool supremely lyrical. Such mutual respect and understanding resolves the intensely activties of 120 soloists into more than the sum of its parts — a blended, poised, unity that is not uniformity, and brings out of each performer the best that they can be. The band is engaging not competitive, compelling but not coercive, and what it does feeds the soul.

Now how can our lives be made such music? When are we going to see a Church that does half those those things, half as well? And how?

Biking with Boris

Time to take the plunge and try the new Cycle Hire Scheme for London. Ken’s Koncept, but the Bikes are Boris’ if not Barclays Bank’s.
Yesterday I had a meeting at Lambeth and half an hour to get there from Marylebone Station. According to the Transport for London calculator it should take 27 minutes to cycle the route. I had nothing to lose but my chains. Lose one of mine, and gain one of Boris’ Cycle Chains...

Well, my first 27 minute journey took 33 minutes, but mainly because I took a couple of wrong turns and had to hoof my bike down some steps near Carlton House Terrace. I'm glad my dear mama brought us up to know our way round London, because you do have to have some idea of where you're going. You can generally use bus lanes, and even car lanes, and when desperate can pick up thy bike and walk. This is slightly weird, but it works as long as you have some idea of your way round London. If you have no idea where you are tryinug to go, you have a problem — but there's only one way to learn.

It was so much fun that I happily dropped off my bike and, after my meeting, went off to Tate Modern, which is not easily accessible by tube. I then picked up my third bike of the day, and headed back to Marylebone — another half hour trip up Fleet Street and through Covent Garden. With a stand every 600 feet across the centre of London you will usually be closer to your destination than bus or tube would have got you, and finding the last place you wanted taken on the stand is no more annoying than just missing the tube would have been.

On a slightly muggy day, with a coat on because it looked like rain, furious pedaling does slightly raise the heartbeat in good and bad ways. It’s all very invigorating, but if Ladies glow, bishops sweat like pigs. If in doubt, take your coat off and stow it. You certainly get around at a similar speed to other forms of transport, and probably faster than you would be car. London is not an especially cycle-friendly city (yet...?), and there are occasions on every London cycle ride when you need balls of steel (or female equivalent) if you don't want to end up as a high class hedgehog on the tarmac. Those who hesitate are lost.

Confession. I didn’t wear a helmet. I just didn’t have one in my laptop bag. But soft! The CTC reports research by Dr Ian Walker of the University of Bath. Apparently, motorists give cyclists more room when they don’t wear a helmet than when they do. They give the widest berth of all to cyclists wearing big blonde wigs. So perhaps I should carry, not a helmet, but a Big Dusty Springfield Wig. That said, there are other reasons to steer well clear of a bearded fifty-something man wearing someone else’s Big Hair, even if he is not riding a bike. I don’t know. The jury’s out on that one.

But I digress. With no cycle clips, I tucked my trousers into my socks. You would need a substantial rain cape on some days — for various reasons holding an umbrella off the front of the bike is unlikely to be a winner.
Snow will pose more serious particular challenges, but all forms of transport experience difficuty when it snows. It wouldn't be British to have a fully functional system on snow days.

The whole régime around charging and paying is good in parts, and could be superb once it’s fully up and running. Registering on the internet was easy. Activating my key was glitchy because after ten minutes of listening to music and selecting items off a seven item menu, whilst being reassured my call was important, the operator the other end still failed to work the magic he promised to work for me. As a result all I got was a red light when I tried to use it. I phoned the number at the stand, and they got me going, but again, after ten minutes of listening to Miles Davis etc. etc. The second time round, it worked. So I learn, if in doubt, phone them up. It's also a good idea to set your preferences to automatically deduct access charges, so you don’t have to go on the internet between trips.

The bikes themselves are rugged and pleasing to drive. The 3 gears are basic but rugged. The storage for a laptop bag is excellent. It’s rather jolly zipping up between columns of traffic dodging wing mirrors. Health benefits are obvious, but with two major caveats that could be particularly upsetting to anyone with paranoid tendencies

• some vehicles aim special jets of warm smelly diesel fumes down your lungs until you feel like you're on sixty a day. The whole thing is a massive commercial for Barclays Bank and some will object so profundly to that they’ll be holding their noses anyway. The only answer is not to breathe at traffic lights, but this solution is only good for a couple of minutes or so.
  
  
• Some motorists seem hell bent on killing you. If successful, this would surely damage your health.
  

I came away from a sunny day feeling surprisingly positive about the whole expirience. There are doubtless developments to come which will further refine the service, but it's perfectly usable, and reasonable fun. Would I do it again? You bet.

Secretes, Shoots and Leaves

Once upon a time, all we had to prevent us eating each other in public places was Civic Virtue and the Old Bill. Now we have over 4 million surveillance cameras in the UK. We British really love ’em — New York gets by with a paltry 5,000, where London has more than 400,000. Keep smiling, because unless you are in Church or on the can, you can pretty much bet you're starring in someone’s real life Big Brother show. And they call it a liberal society.

Tate Modern is putting our ongoing Snoopy Show into context with a summer exhibition Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. I thought I’d go along to find out where it all began. The Victorians had a variety of gadgets, including cameras hidden in shoes and the tops of canes, to record the unwilling. Cartier-Bresson snapped his Leica around the streets of Paris with sublime results, some of which are in the exhibition.

Developing technology since the nineteenth century has delivered images to feed a growing culture of celebrity. Here is Garbo sheilding herself from the camera with a perfectly formed hand, and an utterly wonderful shot of Kim Novak trying to sit down discretely in a dining car whilst a row of men in homburgs sit and stare. The exhibition includes Weegee’s iconic shot of Marilyn Monroe accidentally on purpose flashing her thighs over a stream of hot air. All culminates in the Paparazzi martyrdom of the Princess of Wales, captured in some newspaper stories of the day. There was interesting work by Alison Jackson, who spoofs the whole idea by using lookalikes in a way that makes you think “surely it can’t be...” It isn’t.

There were some fine historical examples of Candid photography, in the Monty Python sense — Brassai’s images of 1930’s secret and scenes from mexican bordellos to travellers on the New York Sunway. Stripped of the accoutrements of glamour photography most people look surprisingly contemporary, simple and innocent.

There is a harrowing section on war, which takes us from the shocking images of carnage thrown up by the American Civil War to the human débris of concentration camps, Nick Ut’s Vietnam and various recent gulf wars. One image stays on the memory — Lee Miller’s shot of the fair-haired daughter of Leipzig’s Bürgermeister, draped exquisitely over a chair, hours after she had committed suicide with Nazi Germany collapsing around her.

The extraordinary mechanisation of snooping has not improved the quality of the images. The final rooms make you wonder who watches this stuff, and how close we are coming to an entirely surreal position where we are all constantly photographed for the amusement and edification of machines. Once nobody’s watching any more, what is the point? The almost complete elimination of privacy raises interesting questions about the integrity of the person, and the almost complete elimination of liberty by the control mechanisms required by unfettered liberalism. Time for a re-think?

Holy Hyperactivity, Sherlock!

Crash, bang, wallop, what a picture! Guy Ritchie has transformed Dick van Dykes’ Hollywood London Town into a schlock horror Gotham City for his hyperactive Sherlock Holmes. Gone are the dancing chimneysweeps, to be replaced by low life slimy rodents, many of them human, and plastic bats. The walls glisten and the streets heave with shifty urchins and cheeky beggars. The weather is crap. That bit, at least, is profoundly authentic.

The Doyen of screen Sherlock Holmeses, so far, has been Jeremy Brett, who spent most of his time in a darkened room being feline and aloof, taxing his brain. This made it possible to believe he could actually deduce from the dirt under a girl’s fingernails that her stepfather was a Cavalry sergeant who had served in the Indian Mutiny, played the bassoon, and married his housemaid.

Robert Downey Jr’s Holmes is shallower, I fear — “less cocaine, more speed.” I ended up wishing he’d try Ritalin. When not tripping, this Great Detective comes over as a bit of a layabout. He must pop out to the gym on the quiet, for at least the occasional trip on nandrolone. I deduce this from his generally ripped appearance when, Ladies watch out, he removes his shirt for a spot of bare knuckle boxing. Even then, though, he’s so tripped out that his slow-mo Hong Kong click-click-click bits occur before they’ve actually happened. So, Sherlock Holmes is an 007 paced action romp, with direction that’s rather itchy and scratchy, annoying even at times, but, as they say in Newcastle, it gets yer there.

Universal Education means the criminal classes can now read. Pentonville Prison thus bears the legend “Pentonville Prison” in six foot high letters. The same bloke’s probably painted “Hangings Tonite” round the back in three foot letters, with a big sign on the chimney saying “This Way Up,” for really thick crooks. The general effect of all this public signage is rather Mel Brooks. Frankly, if I were Professor Moriarty, greatest criminal mind of my generation, I’d feel slightly patronised. I’d do something really dastardly, like going to the London Hospital for War Heroes (labelled “London Hospital for War Heroes”) and turning the last “o” into a “p.” But I digress.

Tower Bridge is a-building and all London’s aghast at the sadistic antics of Lord Blackwood, who indulges in “I don’t expect you to talk, Mr Bond: I expect you to die” fun with bandsaws in a Porky Scratchings factory in Southwark. He maintains a shedload of Black Magic gear, and what Arlo Guthrie used to call Implements of Destruction, in a creepy crypt underneath Parliament. Blackwood has gathered a band of prominent baddies, à la Da Vinci Code, and, guess what, for their next trick they are planning to take over the world. This is especially spooky because back at the beginning of the first reel Lord B was actuallly hanged at Pentonville (in a hanging shed labelled “Hanging Shed”) and certified dead, by Dr Watson, no less.

In spite of a faintly Hammer film ambiance, this film is all good fun, and pacy enough to keep most people awake, if not on the edge of their seats. What’s not to like? Well, the CGI is superb, and although I don’t think Downey will redefine the character, Holmes himself is just believable. Rachel McAdams pouts and puzzles her way through over two hours as a sultry action heroine. Unfortunately I’m not sure anyone, her included, has quite worked out what she’s doing there, or indeed, whether she’s a goodie or baddie. Bit of both, really. Anyway the movie ends (without giving everything away) with the most blatant pitch for a second series since Alan Partridge went for a BBC lunch, so we may yet discover new depths in the character on her next outing. Seven out of Ten.

Change: How Turtles Turn

The preferred English method is one leg at a time, say every ten years, each leg elastically stretched backwards over the head for as long as possible, just to make sure. Actually, it’s agony, but it’s kindly intended to reassure those parts of the turtle that never wanted to turn in the first place that nothing’s really changed. Intellectually, it’s one way to express notional fairness to both sides.

But turtles could do far more than turn. Poems on the Underground, launched in 1986 by Judith Chernaik, brings poetry to London Transport. On a great working day with archdeaconry colleagues, I spotted this, from her collection Carnival of the Animals:

Under the mottled shell of the old tortoise
beats the heart of a young dancer.

She dreams of twirling on table-tops
turning cartwheels,
kicking up her heels at the Carnival ball.

“Oh, who will kiss my cold and wrinkled lips,
and set my dreaming spirit free?”

And, on St Joseph the Worker’s Day, still on the subject of change management, I see somebody the other side of the pond has been plotting the demise of a very dangerous, if influential, candidate for high office:

Twitter: How to be a Twit

What is Twitter, what isn’t it? People wonder how so much small talk can have any value. If you don’t read it all, what’s the point of having any of it? In fact, very few people religiously read every word of a newspaper, and most of the stuff in there is trivial or made up. Fact is, Human beings, social animals, have an immense appetite for low-grade information from and about people they barely know. Only Twitter’s cultured despisers, Hampstead journos, people like that, stuff all their social encounters with serious social analysis & breaking news:

Ah, the eighteenth Century! London grew wealthy on the back of its coffee houses, the birthplaces of significant institutions like the Stock Exchange and the Bank of England. Why were they born in Coffeehouses?

Well, BBC R4 women’s hour has been dramatizing Joseph Addison’s pieces for thee Spectator. This is how Addison described his work in 1711:

I have passed my latter Years in this City, where I am frequently seen in most publick Places, tho’ there are not above half a dozen of my select Friends that know me; of whom my next Paper shall give a more particular Account. There is no place of Resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my Head into a Round of Politicians at Will’s and listning with great Attention to the Narratives that are made in those little Circular Audiences. Sometimes I smoak a Pipe at Child’s; and, while I seem attentive to nothing but the Post-Man, over-hear the Conversation of every Table in the Room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James’s Coffee House, and sometimes join the little Committee of Politicks in the Inner-Room, as one who comes there to Hear and Improve. My Face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa-Tree, and in the Theaters both of Drury Lane and the Hay-Market. I have been taken for a Merchant upon the Exchange for above these ten Years, and sometimes pass for a Jew in the Assembly of Stock-jobbers at Jonathan’s. In short, where-ever I see a Cluster of People, I always mix with them, tho' I never open my Lips but in my own Club. Thus I live in the World, rather as a Spectator of Mankind, than as one of the Species; by which means I have made my self a Speculative Statesman, Soldier, Merchant, and Artizan, without ever medling with any Practical Part in Life. I am very well versed in the Theory of an Husband, or a Father, and can discern the Errors in the Oeconomy, Business, and Diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them; as Standers-by discover Blots, which are apt to escape those who are in the Game. I never espoused any Party with Violence, and am resolved to observe an exact Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forc'd to declare myself by the Hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my Life as a Looker-on, which is the Character I intend to preserve in this Paper...

There you go. Twitter, in 1711. Addison wasn’t a printing press enthusiast, but a people enthusiast. I realised years ago that our kids go MSN’ing not to explore hi-tec, but to chat with their mates. It’s a social process, stoopid. The sign of a technological dimwit is to think it’s all about the technology.

So, to recap, this is how to use Twitter. You have a stream of short snatches of conversation fed to your desktop. Imagine a drinks party at which several hundred people stand in small self-selected circles talking. Like Addison, you circulate and engage, knowing fullwell you don’t have to respond to all of every conversation, or even hear it, to give and take social value. Unlike Addison, you can:

• select as many or as few as you want to be of your party;
  
• engage people simultaneously all over the world;
• read and recall every conversation going on in the room if you really want;
• paticipate or not, if, for example, you have a condition like Aspergers affecting enjoyment of social interaction, on terms of engagement with which you can be comfortable
  
• search every conversation almost instantly to find people talking about whatever you want. For example if you really must go on about Treaty of Westphalia, you Twittersearch it and if anyone else has been talking about it, off you go. If they’re not you can start a conversation;
  
• turn it off and do something else at any time;
• Spend your cash on other things as the whole party costs almost nothing in either time or money terms.
  

These are useful things to be able to do with and at a party, but that’s all there is to it. You need to bring and mix your own cocktails, or not. Some people hate social gatherings, and that’s OK. Others think they’re going to hate them, but enjoy them when they push themselves. Other people were made for them.

Small talk is both entirely trivial and the essential stuff of life. In that spirit, why not let’s all just relax and enjoy Twitter for what it is? or not?

For my basic first thoughts about Twitter, click here.
There’s a brilliant post by Matt Kelland on the Haiku aspect of Twitter here. Thanks, Matt.

Excellent Introduction and tips for Twitter by David Pogue in the New York Times, here.

London Atheist ads: Shome mishtake?

I’m with Simon Barrow about the new London bus atheist poster ads campaign:

To those without a huge vested interest in promoting or dissing religion, this probably looks a slightly odd initiative. Frankly, the slogan is a bit anodyne. It's the non-believing equivalent of "God may very well exist. Now have a nice day". But it will probably still be enough to upset counter-evangelists of the kind who like to tell everybody they are going to hell for not subscribing to their particular doctrine, and who think atheism is very, very naughty.

I wonder what impact this kind of campaign has, though? It will appeal to those who like that kind of thing, no doubt. And in part it seems to have been born out of resentment towards comparatively prodigious (and extremely well-funded) religious advertising. But apart from raising brand awareness, I suspect that the vast majority of people will be as sceptical about being sold unbelief as they are about being sold belief. Well, unless someone is thinking of throwing in a free set of wine glasses or something.

Perhaps this particular ad is more agnostic than atheist, and we still have to await a genuinely atheist poster ad. The wording puts me in mind of a brilliantly funny song by the world’s first Atheist Gospel Singer, Susan Werner, which I sometimes play in the car for a chuckle.

Actually I suppose, like the ads, the song’s more agnostic than atheist, really. The humerous twist at the end is a refreshing break from the characteristic grinding pig ignorance associated with Dawkins and chums over here. Nothing in the ad isn’t in the Bible anyway — its line is characteristic of some strands in the Wisdom Tradition. And because God is implicit in everything, anything that raises the question actually helps people on their own journey towards him — as the sermon on the mount says, those who seek, find. It happens every day, and whilst these ads may well annoy people of a fundamentalist persuasion, they will raise a big question creatively for some people who might not have prayed Psalm 49 at a Cathedral evensong or read the book of Job recently...

Birthdays with a bang (Pop)

March birthdays here a great success. Lucy and I hit London for mine — lunch with a great mutual friend in the city, Duchamp/Picabia/Man Ray at the Tate and time with Catherine in her flat above her Day Centre, followed by luscious family dinner with Indian friends — the real thing, you understand.












Late March included Stewart & Nick’s birthday. Our Go Ape trip was snowed off (watch this space for the re-run) but we compensated in part with Diet Coke-and-Mento pyrotechnics out the back — 11 turns out to be the optimum number of mentos: