Ode to the Past

I think I should be creating more poetry so lets start with this. Following a twitter flurry over a badly named project, Kill The Archivist, I decided I should turn my talents to writing about the archives I work in. To celebrate the inspiring stories and documents held in the collections. This is the first draft of a poem prompted by the idea of minute books being essential in recording the lives of ordinary working men and women. Our history is full of the rich and famous. Studying documents that were written by and about the common man ensures that their struggles, lives, and deaths are not just recounted in history from the perspective of the politicians or big business. This is a poem in first draft but it has hopes of being good one day.

Minutes

Turning the leaves of the past

You find the people

Black dust under the inked skin

This is the frontline now

They won’t stay silent

 

Witness blistered marchers feet

Wrench blood from the ground

Keening again widows’ songs

 

Inking the turns of progress

Remembering pasts

The seasons’ leaves whispering

This is our frontline now

We won’t stay silent

Rant On

Warning: Early morning ramblings. Literary content and grammar dubious (except the poem which despite being a work in progress has hopes of being good one day)

How lucky am I?! I know it every afternoon when I metaphorically clock on to literally the best job I've ever had. The Richard Burton Archives took me in and gave me shelter and told me to look after interesting stuff and help other people look at interesting stuff. So that's a layman's explanation at the simplest level of what my job entails (but this is written in the early ours as I procrastinate from writing a conference paper or two). A few weeks ago a job was advertised somewhere over the English border, under the project title of Kill the Archivist. WRONG ON SO MANY LEVELS. Obviously this was no jihad being declared on the profession (though it is worth remembering that through history, even to recent times, archivists and curators have indeed been killed for trying to protect historical manuscripts and works of art). But the controversy sparked a debate over a worrying trend that I noted when at a conference in Galway over the summer. Archivists are viewed as gatekeepers with Thou Shalt Not tattooed on their hearts. Somehow they are thought responsible for preventing access to the interesting things locked away in their vaults - like Smaug resting on their golden hoard. Worse still there is an idea that archivists dictate a version of history by their cataloguing and categorising, inflicting a hidden nomenclature barring the way to the common folk and their voyage of discovery through their own subjective histories. Imagine there were no archivists. Wouldn't it be great to be allowed to rummage around collection in your own merry way. Imagine what you could find unimpeded by those pesky key rattling archivists. This is all tommy rot. Without archivists over centuries protecting documents and ephemera there would be no manuscripts to view. I have heard stories of local archivists climbing into skips where a building was being renovated, to rescue minute books and correspondence that will reveal the history of South Wales to future generations - what is the living memory of strikes and struggles recorded as tomorrows distant history. Recorded by the ordinary (and extraordinary) man and woman. Their histories protected now thanks to the dedication of archivists. Or then there is the case of the family torturously finding a home for their loved relatives records - the beloved also being a celebrated figure in local life or a writer of international acclaim. Not sold off piecemeal into private collections the papers pass instead into the hands of a public body - an archive where historians, family and academic, can read the penned words of the famous. There is so much to learn so much to be excited by. But do away with the archivists? No. For the sake of the future and for the sake of the past. They are not gatekeepers but custodians. Kill the archivist? Come on if you think you're hard enough...

Highlights of Dylan's Year

I made good on my promise to keep the Dylan Thomas malarkey in perspective. Living in Wales has meant an overload of 'stuff'. Frothy stuff. Most of it aimed at tourists. But among the year's celebrations and exploitations there were some gems that I was glad to have experienced. A lot of the enjoyable events have involved friends and colleagues who are talented performers, writers and academics. However, for me, three stood out for the highest quality in production, performance and originality.

Under Milkwood: The Opera - Not an opera fan me I have to say. So the first fifteen minutes were hellish as my brain adjusted. Then Lily Smalls took to the stage. Brilliantly characterized by Helen-Jane Howells who proved herself the consummate actress in all the parts she played that night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu6gWwZk3-M  Similarly impressive was Liz Donovan as Polly Garter who was just as Polly should be, warm and buxom, vulnerable and weary. Her vocals were mesmerizing. http://www.tycerdd.org/recording-studio/label/under-milk-wood-an-opera/listen-purchase

DylanLive: Dylan Thomas, Beat Poetry, Jazz and the Welsh Bards as the first hiphop artists. If only all lectures were like this. Thoroughly entertaining, inspiring and informative. Get a taster and a look behind the scenes here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjsIHpKX6Q8

Caitlin: Everything I could say is said in my New Welsh Review article. http://www.newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=867

Everyone will have had a different expectation of the centenary year. Everyone's tastes and experiences will have differed. These are my moments... what were yours?

Too much thinking

How to be right and wrong at the same time.

So youngest son has been taking some tests in school. The paper seems to have been testing reasoning skills and problem solving... you know the sort of skills that require thinking to be applied. The scenario was a shop and the shop owner had installed security cameras. From the position of the camera the pupils had to say which people in the shop were in blind spots. For the first question he answered as he was expected to, but with the added comment in brackets explaining that you couldn't actually tell whether the camera could see people due to not being given the height and position of the shop shelving. Then having decided that the questions were flawed he simply wrote "See brackets as above". He was of course right. In a real situation you would have to take into account all the variables. If he was undertaking a scientific experiment, a military operation, designing a building - or installing actual cameras in an actual shop - this would be the right way to approach the problem. But in the hypothetical world of testing a child's ability to think like a robot, to give the answer that the educator has programmed you to give, to jump through the hoop, well then he would be marked as wrong. One day this ability to think outside the box will hopefully find a place in the world. But for now I have to find a way to help him navigate the system. Anybody got a map?

How to get ahead in business

Or "Things my children teach me  #1"

So my eldest son was telling me how he once got a job based solely on his answer to one question...

“Which person would you most see as a role model that you would want to be like?”

“Fictional or non-fictional?” he asked.

“Either” was the reply.

After a little thought he confidently gave his winning answer “Jean-Luc Picard and the actor Patrick Stewart”. And what a worthy answer too. Picard is a man who commands respect and wields authority, acts with intellect and compassion, strives for excellence and humanity. Stewart has reached the top of his profession through hard graft and talent, while also then using his hard won celebrity to support philanthropic work, campaigning for women’s rights and highlighting the problem of domestic violence. Fictional and non-fictional displays of strength and humility.

I thought for a little while about how I would have answered the same question. The only name that sprang to mind was Jo Brand. She made a very successful career in a virtually all male environment. She has responded to change by diversifying from stand-up into acting, writing and light entertainment on radio and television. All done with an uncompromising style and maintaining a healthy, happy family life. But is that what an interview panel would see? Or would they turn me down for the job afraid that I’d voice everyone’s opinion of the CEO by telling him to his face “Well you’re a bit of a wanker aren’t you!”

Writer's Block

Or "Why I haven't been Blogging as I promised"

It isn’t just a myth made by precious artists to increase their enigmatic allure as they wait for the muse to take them. Nor is it somehow a symptom of poor discipline or laziness (that is quite a different reason why I may neglect to write). There are times when the brain just refuses to compose. I have had times when my brain literally could not function properly – reading with any sense of understanding, writing academically or creatively with any sense of purpose, even making decisions about what to buy for tea feels like struggling against quicksand. In the end you just stop trying so you don’t sink any deeper into stress or despair. Instead you just wait for rescue. Tricks of the trade just don’t work. Breaking the blank page, writing something everyday however small, writing whatever comes into your head even if it is rubbish – all these fail to take into account your brain’s inability to make that step and write. So yes I can write a letter in work because to an extent it is routine. Yes I can join in facebook discussions cause they don’t really matter. And yes I will not starve because I will buy something for tea but it usually ends up being cheese and bread because it requires no effort or real thought. There are other times when it feels as if my brain is in rebellion. I am simply asking it to do too much. It seems this can actually be a problem for creative minds in particular. When the world throws too much information at you, too many emotions, too many signals to process and respond to then you just can’t process it all. Most people filter what they need to process and respond to. The creative mind, it is believed, tries to interact with it all. You unknowingly overload the circuits and a fuse blows. It has taken me a long time to recognise these patterns and to take charge of fixing the problem not just hitting my writing function with a spanner in the hope it will kick start it into productivity. If the tricks don’t work for you then maybe there is something deeper at the heart of it. Remember that the allusive muse finds expression through a physical body. Sleep well, make eating healthy a habit requiring no thought, have downtime, switch off, do stuff that doesn’t matter, meditate, walk, read only for the pleasure of it, sit in the sun, hang out with lovely people, laugh, listen to birdsong or music you adore, have picnics, breathe, and do not attempt to write until the thought of it ceases to paralyze your brain. Basically… try some new tricks.

(p.s. If you can’t sleep, are too exhausted to walk, can’t find anything to make you laugh then visit a doctor and get well xxx)

Lou Reed

Strumming my pain

It isn't often that a performer dies and I feel something inside me really ache with sorrow. I remember it happening a little when Elizabeth Sladen passed away (the actress who played Sarah Jane Smith in Dr Who). Of course I enjoyed her work but I didn't know her, never met her. What I felt was that a little part of my history had just been snuffed out. So when I heard of Lou Reed's death yesterday, his real death not a hoax one, I immediately wanted to mark the moment. I wanted to post a song on fb that meant something to me. But which one?

When I was 16 I joined a band on a whim. I sang with them in various guises for four years and went out with the lead guitarist for all four years too. My musical tastes were reinformed and matured from teenybopper New Romantic into something loosely called Indie. If I had to find us a category it would be new wave 60's influenced jazz punk. We listened to The Velvet Underground continually and knew someone who knew Maureen Tucker. He became our champion because I sang like Nico. And I lost my virginity whilst Walk on the Wildside was playing on the radio.

I listened to tracks like Heroin and Venus in Furs with no knowledge of the subject matter they danced so darkly with. Yet it was a darkness that I came to recognise. After the death of my father in 1985 I suffered from bouts of depression that verged on despair. This was no Emo fixation nor an intellectual appreciation. Velvet Underground were writing from a dark place and their music connected with the dark place I was in. Cale's violin peeling the skin, Tucker sounding the beat of an inevitable but always postponed doom, and Reed, voice bleeding, making poetry out of pain. It was the poetry that made the works masterpiece. Like Hamlet dreading the nightmares his life-ending would bring or Keats walking in sensory deprivation after the nightingale's song was lost. The darkness becomes sublime. The light all the more worth living.

Reed's ability to place simple words into simple melodies carried by majestic arrangements lead to some of the most charismatic expressions of ordinary human emotion and extraordinary human existence. The one never far from the other. Perfect Day carries in it all the ordinariness and extraordinariness of love. The most common and valuable emotion. So simple yet beyond our understanding. When love is as right as this it is hard to ever imagine that it will not be there. But I always felt Reed knew that this day, everything just as it should be, was worth more celebration than any big adventure or pomped up circumstance. Always his voice expressing the fragility of joy and the moment made special by its transience. This was his carpe diem song riding on the exhilaration of being more than just a survivor.

"It was good what we did yesterday and I'd do it once again" Pale Blue Eyes