The Artist – Jonathan Greenbank

AKA An Investigation of the Laws of Thought…

AKA Neophilia (AKA The music of what happens) AKA importance is the illusion of man… and myriad other lovely little sayings I read last month and took a note of, debating exactly what the next title should be.

The one I eventually picked is a hauntingly beautiful album by Mogwai, about whom I’d kind of forgotten since that wonderful evening at FACT many moons ago swooning at their soundtrack to the Zidane movie. If you read last month, you’d know the musical influence is led by ol’ Neil Sedaka and his Calendar Girls comments (the Scouse version of which would be “February – your me little valentine”) but I think we need to go a little more highbrow with our first discussion of some things that happened.

I started the month watching an amazing Seamus Heaney documentary, reminding me of a long standing attraction to Belfast, around the time that Betsy was learning about the city in school.

I’ve taught Heaney’s beautiful words for a while now, and more recently given Joe Biden’s affinity for his work, and was blown away by the film’s detailing of the writer’s background as well as the mind-blowing minute’s silence which took place after his death. The breathtaking funeral ceremony summed it up, too. This news report says it all:

Walk on air against your better judgement is a beautiful sentiment, and is engraved on his headstone. How wonderful, and fitting, and I do try… but it’s been hard recently. I find it somewhat serendipitous that that line came from his speech when accepting the 1995 Nobel prize for Literature (when I was doing my GCSE, as I teach now) and is really about ‘being able to see beyond your moment’ according to one scholar: ‘trying to find a balance between things’ as we’ve all been doing for a year, now.

I also rediscovered Mac de Marco – whom I listened to regularly on little walks to and from school, getting ready for or recovering from a day of home-schooling – singing about Salad Days, how apt… and thought I might have gout, had to have yet more expensive dental treatment after grinding teeth caused yet more pain – and, amazingly, it’s a widely accepted fact that the pandemic has caused an increase in teeth grinding for anyone who is also suffering – but got me thinking back to Birdbox and it being an allegory not, as many believed upon its release, for social media… but for the pandemic, seeing into the future.

Think about it. Parents, protecting their young. Scared to go outside, blind leading the blind…

On a lighter note, Netflix also offered up Schitt’s Creek (we were about four years late, but who’s counting?) which Mrs G loves and I often have one eye on whilst reading / marking / blogging and is a nice escape for modern times. As is the engrossing and fascinating series, Can’t get you out of my head (available on iPlayer) by Adam Curtis which melds together a plethora of found footage from around the world and tries to make sense of our social history. It’s not always an easy watch – I’ve only just scratched the surface of it, but really love what I’ve seen so far.

Talking of which, more teeth probs this month leading to expensive dental treatment, pain and mouth guards. However, this blog used to be about art and now it’s about popular culture, so the second best thing I watched this month – wow, I’m getting so much like other TV critics, Charlie Brooker, Harry Hill or as we liked to call her as kids, Nina Dishcloth – was ZeroZeroZero.

A fictionalised adaptation of the non-fiction book by one of my heroes, Roberto Saviano, which references drug wars in this very city. Anyone interested in gang warfare or just the sad side of society as we know it, might enjoy this book. It starts off with a bang and keeps you guessing until the very end.

There are twists and turns, but thankfully the good guys win at the end.

Talking of which…

Of course, the series ran concurrently with the Merseyside derby, which had a similar narrative, but with class and dignity I will simply share ONE OF THE GREATEST PHOTOS EVER TAKEN and laugh quietly at the silence of those who are normally so quick to comment.

And at the unimportance of it all!

Needless to say, it evoked memories of my twentieth birthday, which took place the same evening on the last time such a momentous event occurred. More than half a lifetime ago, now, hence why I took on the emotions of Macbeth that evening and pondered the meaning of life.

Then celebrated a little more, but with class and dignity as always.

Back to ZeroZeroZero and it was – ahem – the finest series I’d seen for ages. That’s a reference to the title, if anyone is confused. The scenes in Mexico were particularly resonant, because I’d visited one of the border towns facing similar struggles with the Narcos in a previous life, and Manuel was an incredible character. The episode 6 training sequence and subsequent signals of intent were especially powerful, but even the scenes aboard the container ship were emotive as they highlighted how close we are to some of the struggles… that Mogwai provided the soundtrack to all of this, doing a similar job to Mokadelic in Gomorrah which is thankfully coming back soon…

The other cultural highlight (alongside the Wolf vs Owl podcast, My Mum Tracy Beaker, World Book Day, Subbuteo’s resurgence and the Ghostbusters Playmobil) was the surreal but superb WandaVision which I didn’t get at first but persevered with and grew to really love. Fans of Marvel will understand it better than I – and probably caused the Netflix meltdown – but I took my time to get my head around it and really loved the escapism, fantasy and adventure of it all.

Talking of which, we march back into school and some sort of normalcy, now…

January – start the year off fine…

This year’s resolutions were no different to any other, although I was full of extra positivity and spent the early part of the new year letting every WhatsApp group that asked know that – in the words of Elbow – “it’s all gonna be magnificent!” 

It’s certainly not been so far, but I find solace in the fact I’ve found time to post this blog which is an unusual plus at least.

Every month, in fact, I’ll try my best to post a Neil Sedaka themed musing.

Schools closed, plans changed, childcare struggles ensued and workloads were juggled accordingly. Vaccines were rolled out, with some questionable decisions made – some put it on a t-shirt, I’d’ve kept mine hidden out of respect for those still dying, or desperately (but patiently) waiting, but hey, ho – and some other things changed, but the majority stood still. 

Early year highlights included the exciting finale of Cobra Kai, which brought about a lovely nostalgia for my childhood and key characters from the original films. Ali – with an I – made a welcome return.

Meanwhile, the town in which we live was abuzz with the impending arrival of Tottenham Hotspur and myriad TV cameras & lights. I was castigated for not criticising the socially distanced support, as if that’s something I would do anyway… why? Because they didn’t launch fireworks at the Carnegie Library? Batter the local police? Attempt to laud it over Bootle or Formby when it had nothing to do with them? But this was different. Special… meaning more?

Anyway, proudly I took the kids to the ground in the morning, spoke to the chairman, had our photos taken and got home before the careful crowds amassed. Bought (proudly) the virtual ticket alongside myriad others, got a programme to keep as a memory for the kids… Frank Cottrell Boyce summed it all up rather nicely (I posted that last month, read it and weep!) so here’s a picture of us there on the day…

A proud dad moment, adding to the list, and I wrote last time about how lockdown has helped me start to slowly embrace middle age. I do try to keep up with good culture, I really do… very little art nowadays, using Apple Music there’s some new music and I’ve started watching WandaVision (don’t yet get it, but will prevail) and other ‘cool’ topics but feel like I’m slowly moving towards the mass media and older generations’ favourites. For example, I’ve changed my opinions on certain popular comics such as Lee Mack (Not Going Out is very cleverly written… I really got the Earl Grey joke in a recent episode) and mainly Romesh Ranganathan. I like his Wolf v Owl podcast, enjoyed his overnight stay in Hamleys, look forward to his new TV series, religiously read his weekly Guardian column.

I’ve also started to embrace the kind of things my parents would watch (and that’s a compliment!) such as Lingo (when time allows) and The Bay, which I love dearly because it brings back memories of childhood (and even last summer) because it makes the resort look so beautiful, and meanwhile love sharing daily our word puzzles which keep the brains active but more importantly, keep us in touch mentally (and electronically) when we can’t in person for who knows how long.

This month also reminded us of the beauty that is the pizzas by Il Capitano’s (which just get better and better) and an ensuing game of Neapolitan bingo, aka Tombola, and the rather risky number associations it involves. After ten days of self isolation, it was the perfect opportunity to remind Elijah of his numbers and also further fall in love with both Accrington and the Amalfi Coast (although we didn’t always divulge the real meaning of what was called!)

Apart from James Rodriguez, the real apex of the epiphany was the inauguration of Biden, and one moment in particular… I sat with tears in my eyes as a confident, articulate young woman stepped up to the podium and spoke so eloquently, so entertainingly, so energetically.

Amanda Gorman, then – more than anyone else – helped us start the year off fine, what with her beautifully poignant poem which clearly linked back to her early inspiration (Hamilton, which we watch regularly) that had (thankfully, for us all) helped her overcome her speech difficulties.

There was so much to feel good about during that ceremony, but she and her words were the shining light.

We’re not American; we haven’t had the same terrible treatments, the tyranny, we didn’t watch the horrors of an attempted uprising or insurrection or whatever else you’d like to label it, from the same epistemological standpoint… but still we see a divide, albeit different.

“When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it.”

It’s all about that journey. The hill.

The hill we climb.

We can, at least, see the top…

Hope, then.

For us all.

Happy New Year, everyone… Smith & Burrows once sang:

So tell everyone
that there’s hope in your heart
Tell everyone or it will tear you apart
The end of Christmas day,
when there’s nothing left to say
The years go by so fast,
let’s hope the next beats the last…

Many people believe that January is named after Janus, the two faced god, as the month is all about reflecting on what’s passed and as well as looking forward to what the next calendar year will bring.

Perhaps never before in the history of the universe has this notion – of hoping the next year’s better than the last – ever been as apt, and plenty of writers much more eloquent than the present author have mused on the negatives which have gone before, and the positives to come, so I won’t waste words and effort elaborating on that.

I’m still halfway through Death to 2020, the excellent Black Mirror instalment just released on Netflix, and the opening sums things up nicely. I’d totally forgotten that last January saw terrible bush fires, threats of world war and myriad other pre-Covid problems, and am somewhat embarrassed that, even when news of the virus started to spread, I was sceptical of those stockpiling and even critical when events I was looking forward to were cancelled.

Fast forward to the end of the year, though, and I feel lucky to still have family members (even though I’ve not hugged them for longer than it takes to gestate) and a job – however hard both may have been at times – and even find myself genuinely excited about what the world might be like after all this, having seen the really good side of people and communities during the pandemic and not really missing that much some of the things we took for granted before.

Like many, I too have re evaluated what’s important, and totally ‘got’ Soul, the truly wonderful new Pixar animation even before noticing the similarities with my own situation compared the other Mr G – another JG, no less – especially as his experience came when finally getting to perform on stage, whilst only last week I finally got my writing in the online travel section of The Guardian:

‘My favourite Christmas abroad’: readers’ travel tips | Travel | The Guardian

Of course, a big difference is that I have my wonderful wife and kids to grow even closer to during lockdowns, so can’t complain even when negotiating the nightmares of childcare provision probs and live lessons from home whilst mouths need feeding and bums need wiping.

Christmas was perfect and restful, just the tonic after the trials and tribulations of the month leading up to it. They included the sad passing of Maradona, who became a real icon in recent years, and whilst I shed a tear at the news and subsequent panoply of footage of not just his greatest moments but also his myriad nadirs, I feel lucky to have all that lovely Trickett stuff, a lasting legacy on the toilet wall of Il Capitano’s and now some beautiful socks courtesy of a sincere friend at the other end of the M62. We also lost another legend in Paolo Rossi, about whom I once attended a fascinating talk at Liverpool University, and I consoled myself with an evening engrossed in a brilliant and moving documentary about Francesco Totti.

Other great things watched over the festive period included The Mandalorian, which just gets better with every episode – especially the dark troopers, and the surprise appearance of Hamill himself – and Tin Star Liverpool, which makes the city – and even Bootle Strand – look even more gorgeous than usual. Now, of course, my nightly viewing is based around the return of Cobra Kai, transporting me as it has to the mid 80s and my obsession with Karate Kid 2 (including a Daniel action figure which I seem to recall breaking pretend ice with, and my early feelings for the beautiful Kumiko) which is something of a comfort in these troubling times.

Another positive, which I’ve been excited about for weeks, occurs this weekend, when the mighty Marine welcome Mourinho. The TV gantry is up, the huge temporary floodlights dominate the skyline as I look out of the kitchen window, and the town is abuzz with excitement. I’m one of the ten thousand who bought a ‘virtual ticket’ to make up for the lost revenue, and can’t wait to see what happens. Frank Cottrell Boyce wrote about the magic much better than I:

The magic of Marine is the magic that will get us through these next months | Frank Cottrell Boyce | Football | The Guardian

And, whilst I don’t have the credit for this photo, our house is on it so I will reuse (thanks to @peterjharvey)

Whatever the outcome, the club and the community can enjoy their moment in the spotlight and I think the whole situation symbolises how things have changed since last January. Unsung heroes being recognised and celebrated, whether part-time footballers, or volunteers, or NHS workers, or the staff at my local Sainsbury’s or fruit and veg shop who I’m making an extra effort to support and appreciate – we need to help local businesses and services out, celebrate them more, hope that they can prevail when this is all over.

Janus was the god of doors, gates and transitions; beginnings and endings. Similarly, someone once said that middle age is also Janus-faced, as we look back on our life and then forward to what we have to come. The pandemic has taught me to accept I’m forty one now, not nineteen forever, so things like gigs and wild nights out are a thing of the past as my lifestyle and appearance grows old (and grey) gracefully instead of clinging to the youth slowly slipping away.

Even on our lovely little Christmas Day, I was more concerned with perfecting the recipe for a Smoking Bishop to recreate the Cratchit family Christmas than anything else, and very nice it was too!

Whatever our ages, beliefs, denominations, stances or epistemological standpoints, I hope he is looking down on us all favourably as we struggle on through the dark.