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…