History

Yesterday was a day of new history being written, in a momentous kind of way. I must confess that I cried a tear or two, moved by the enormous step in the right direction that was taken for Northern Ireland, the troubled place I hold so dear. Don't even know if I have thought it possible, despite the developments over the past years. And there is so much still to be done. But nevertheless, it has to be said, as first steps go - this is a big one. Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams. At the same table.

(Paisley and Adams: Image from www.guardianunlimited.co.uk)

Violet Day

In bold defiance of my "mid body ailment" I went for a walk in the lovely sun today. I realise that this blog is fast turning into a weather rant, but then again, the weather, the changes in temperature and the coming and going of the seasons is something that we never can, never should become blasé about. The reason we tend to "talk of the weather" is because it affects us, deeply. At least it affects me. And I would like to state for the record that this was the first day of 2007 I saw violets, in my usual violet spot. Violets. That's all, and yet so much, for today.

Red Nose Day

Friday was red nose day in England, a day of comedy for charity, instigated by Comic Relief and with the purpose of raising money by cheering people up. And what a great idea that is. Sir Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi, addressed the topic in his Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme. He pointed out that there is something spiritual about humour, our ability to laugh at something meaning that we are less intimidated by it: “humour is the opening of freedom in the prison wall of fate; it’s a close relative of hope”. Humour heightens humanity and creates bonds. How true.

For me it was a red nose day simply because I was out in the sun again, as much as possible, and the sun kindly put a little colour on my face. Hopefully my silly reddish nose cheered someone up a little.

http://www.comicrelief.com

http://www.rednoseday.com

My dear football players in Tottenham of course joined the cause; below Dimitar Berbatov, handsome even with a silly red nose. (Image courtesy of www.tottenhamhotspur.com )

Budding

Today really was the first day of spring. And I want to put it on record. There, it is done.

Budding trees and bushes, budding green colour of the grass... and budding smiles in the awakening faces of all the people out there greeting the sun. The jacket came off, I put my pale nose in the direction of the sun with the fervour of a sunflower, and the sun rewarded me with turning it just a little red. April may be the cruellest month, but this year March is doing pretty well.

Cycling in the sun is happiness. And I went for a tour of my city - deciding to cycle all around it on the outskirts. I found entirely new areas (it's obviously been a while) and even old roads that I cannot recall having been on before, and was left with the contented satisfaction of an explorer on a mission. The whole thing only took a couple of hours. Lund is of a managable size in a way that Dublin is not. Of course, the smaller size severely limits the potential for getting lost - something I love doing. Most importantly, however, was the sense of community with everyone I cycled past who smiled back at me; a sense of community between people out there greeting the March sun...

Music and postmodernism

Postmodernism or post-modernism, a concept - or two - so hard to define that it is barely a concept. The fact that it is impossible to define with any degree of satisfaction or success is perhaps in itself the epitome of the post-modern condition. Whatever that is. You see?

Nick Hornby, in "Fever Pitch" described the Dutch invention Total Football as the footballing version of postmodernism; people playing out of their expected positions in order to surprise and attack better. Of course, it only works up to a point. But the idea of playing out of position is an instructive one. Because perhaps postmodernism is simply that - changing positions, revealing the norms of society by breaking them, inverting them. Expose master narratives as being discourse. Question everything and see where you end up. So you are a defender? Who decided that you can't make a run and score a goal? The manager - or tradition? Why listen to authority at all? And who decided that the pitch should be rectangular - and covered with grass? And then we have to take a step back and realise that some things are required if we want to keep the game intact. And a theory of rejecting theories (Tony Cliff) is, of course, a theory.

So what does this have to do with music? Well, I first started thinking about postmodernism in conjunction with music on Wednesday when a student brass band where entertaining bemused innocent bystanders in the very modern university building which houses, among other things, my department. A new glass contrivance has been placed among three existing buildings, connecting them and making them one big centre for humanistic research. Outside walls became inside walls, inside walls became inner balconies - in fact, the whole thing is rather postmodern. So, in the former courtyard, now the cafeteria, we were entertained by a group of people who, as the gig proceeded started moving out of position - walking around with trumpets among people trying to eat lunch and availing themselves of the inner balconies and stairs to create a feeling of omnipresence rather than a stage act. Audience became participants, musicians hid behind chairs… and so on. Changing positions, basically.

Now, what really brought on these thoughts and indeed the need to write about it was the Swedish Eurovision Song Contest competition. Deciding upon which song to send to wherever the ESC is held used to be, historically, a fairly straightforward affair. One night, 10 or so songs, a well-dressed presenter or two. There was a formula which was followed in some way or another. Today it has evolved into a venue for postmodern irony. To begin with, it is no longer one event, but 6 – a month and a half of competitions which are held all over the country, in increasingly obscure venues.

The starting line-up for all the competitions comprised 32 songs and contained some old-timers doing their usual stuff, some utterly forgettable washed down pop songs, a euro-disco tune sung completely in Italian (!), oriental disco sung mainly in English, one sweet but dull singer-songwriter and the yearly comedy contribution: a song which through puns and innuendo was all about masturbation. (Funny or vulgar? Clever or moronic? Postmodern or just silly? Can’t make up my mind.) The most interesting tune, which predictably did not make it to the final, was a propitious fusion of Swedish and Iranian folk music, sung in three languages by the band Sheida. Mixtures of cultures and their music can yield wonderful results and the apparent ease of the process is exciting and encouraging. See also:

http://www.sheida.se/

http://www.salsaceltica.com/

http://www.afrocelts.org/

http://www.stockholmlisboa.com/

I must confess to not watching all the programmes – by way of boycott and sheer lack of interest in an event that just cannot merit quite this much attention. Due to a rigorous selection policy, the songs that finally made it to the main final were all variations of the bestselling concept that is a Swedish ESC winner. Three ballad efforts and the singer-songwriter number made it seem a little more varied than it really was. The songs which brought the ESC to Sweden were all similar – as were these songs. Needless to say it works quite well, catchy, happy tunes which stick in your head like a persistent migraine. I liked most of them and am still cheerfully humming. And am quite impressed by that the fact that I have for the first time in my life been seduced by something approximating a latino lover act – and what finally did it was a local lad, 20 years of age. How postmodern of me. Some songs were in Swedish, most were in English – and contained quaint little grammatical errors and faulty pronunciation which made the artists appear not only conventional but also mildly illiterate.

Ultimately, this conventionality of the songs undermined the postmodern efforts to make the actual competition a little different. Again. The presenter did his best to do the unexpected, make meta-jokes and turn the whole thing a bit queer. But essentially, having two men sing a love song and do a romantic dance towards the end seemed just as formulaic as everything else. The postmodernism that is the Swedish song competition has just done a full circle. By now the revolutionary thing might be to bring back the actual traditional concept. The song which in the end won (quite as expected) epitomised the fact that the queer postmodern irony of this competition is just gloss – even if it is entertaining when the skimpiest little outfit of the whole evening covers (or un-covers) a man. While the stage performance differed from all the others, the song itself is a conglomeration of all the songs this country has won the competition with. And the outfits, while marvellously silly, just don’t reach the silliness standard of 1974. But the refrain sums up the whole discussion of postmodernism quite well:

Words, I like to break ‘em
Words, I’d like to shake ‘em
Shake them from my troublesome mind
And you turn up your nose
It’s a joke you suppose
But baby, I’m the worrying kind

Don’t even know if the double meaning is intentional, but very few people would be deeply worried at this stage. Because in the end what can be more conventionally postmodern than a modern-retro glam rock band from southern Sweden that almost, but not quite, takes itself seriously? Yet, more importantly, what could be more old school? An updated rendition of Waterloo sung by a group of lads who look and sound like The Sweet. Europe, we proudly give you - The Ark.

http://www.thearkworld.com/

Earthiness

The weather has been obliging again. Sunshine with a spring feel last Sunday, the same today. After months of cold, wet darkness one day a week becomes a treat. Surely we cannot ask for more.

I've called this blog coffee spoon measure, and today was just such a little measure of life. Not a great day (I woke up late after a turbulent night with more stomach cramps than sleep and felt miserable) but a quite good one nonetheless. I took my harassed body on a walk through the fields north of Lund, let the sun shine on my upturned and smiling face and just enjoyed the smells of the fields, the odd tree and the little patches of grass. The snow is almost gone, only the odd little lonely pile remaining in places, and the ground underneath awakens again. This year it has not been covered by much snow - this has not only been the warmest winter for a very, very long time, but, according to meteorologists, not even a winter at all in technical terms - but somehow the uncovering process can still be felt. For me, at least, mainly because it uncovers the scent of spring, the earthiness of the fields and the grass being the first smells to return.

The smell of spring is in fact a multitude of different smells, and all have their time. They arrive in the same order, every year and are to be held accountable for the giddy madness which overcomes me every year in March. Uncovered earth is the first one and today it reminded me how easily a bad day can become a good one and how the things that make this life so wonderful are small and there for the taking. A walk in fresh air - a measure of life.

Sex Talk

I am reading Lady Chatterly's Lover (1928) at the moment, partly for academic reasons, partly because I was curious and perhaps mainly because it was standing, unread, among my books. Since I haven't finished it yet, this is not a literature blog entry gone astray. It has merely spawned reflections. In a book where clothes are sometimes shed with a speed that would do justice to cheap German porn, it is almost the discussions about it that are more shocking. And so far, men do all the talking. In a memorable scene Lord Chatterly and friends (mainly the friends) talk very freely about sex, from their various viewpoints. Not until the end of the scene does the author reveal that Lady Chatterly is in the room, listening, but having to remain silent. So who does Lady Chatterly talk to? So far, nobody.
The lack of female communication struck me as one of the main tragedies of Anne Brontë's wonderful The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Helen falls in love with, and marries, a man because of sexual attraction - against all rather tame advice from people who can see what type of man he is. She lives to regret it, and has to ponder what happened. We get her story from her diary, a gripping narrative, not the least because of the immediacy and closeness of it. But it also contains the tragedy - Helen has never had anyone to talk to, and therefore writes. It becomes clear that the situation is about to repeat itself, when Helen meets a young woman who is in a similar situation as she once was. But the lack of openness in the society they find themselves in means that Helen, rather than openly explain how things may develop, finds herself merely echoing the distant advice that she once received - and did not listen to.
Do we today have equality between the sexes and a full understanding and acknowledgment of gender issues? Not really. But today, women talk.

I was at a birthday party yesterday, and suddenly found myself enmeshed in sex talk with three women I had never met before. We were under the influence, of course. No, not alchohol - nor drugs. Quite simply, sugar. The table had been cleverly hidden under a mountain of buns, cakes, sweets... sugar in all its possible incarnations. We indulged. And were rewarded with a collective sugar rush. I entered their conversation somewhere around new trends in sex-aids and did not leave it until we had pretty much covered the field. We exchanged opinions and experiences about things that we knew about and discussed and pondered things that we did not. (When we entered speculation about the truly kinky an innocent bystander left the room - but I cannot be sure whether the two events were causally linked...) I have of course talked about these things with my friends, in fact I habitually do, but the fact that this conversation happened with complete strangers showed how far we came come. Talking frankly means affirmation and these women shone with a healthy mixture of confidence and curiosity, the perfect mixture, indeed, for being able to have such a conversation at all. The whole experience has left me feeling happy and hopeful about the future of womankind because at the end one thing was cheerfully obvious: we claim our sexuality as our own. And are not afraid to talk about it anymore.

All highs are followed by lows, however, and when I felt the second wave of sugar-induced fatigue (like so many things, sugar makes you go up and then down) I realised that it was time to pedal home. I will always be happy that I was invited to that party - even if my stomach will punish me for that second piece of cheese cake for a while yet. Gluttony certainly is a sin, coming with instant punishment from within. Lust, however, is not.