Voices Off

Despite Lou Reed having just died, it was a perfect day: the sky was blue, the air was fresh and crisp and I was catching a train to the ancient city of Lancaster to meet an old friend with whom I share not only some personal history but also an interest in things historical.

Waiting for a train I had time for coffee in a cafe that has a view of the station entrance - perfect for people-watching. But, as it turned out, the day was to be more about people-listening, beginning in the cafe where two young men were in conference. One of them, with his volume control jammed on max, spoke in a strangulated, monotonous drone.  The other spoke (whenever he could) so quietly as to be almost inaudible. They were experts on the management of soil erosion, water tables and capillary fringes - a worthy and interesting subject, though here badly presented: the effect was like listening to one end of a phone call.

In the train carriage most people were solo and silently engaged in reading or social networking but there was one loud voice talking on the phone - a man in late middle-age with a rich, deep voice, slightly ragged from smoking but soothing to the ear. His accent was Lancashire, which was appropriate to his subject - a guide to rail destinations in the North West of England. It might have made for interesting listening but for the fact that it came with much repetition and that his evaluations of places were limited to either “nice” or “boring” - a sort of Trip Advisor for the undiscerning.

But at Lancaster Castle we were lucky to have a tour-guide who was blessed with a pleasing tone of voice, a carefully modulated volume control, sensitivity to his audience, a sense of humour - and fascinating subject matter: proof that information can be packaged and communicated agreeably.

Lancaster Castle has always been the embodiment of aristocratic power and de facto oppression of the people. From as early as 1196 until as recently as 2011 it has housed, among other institutions, a prison - and this continuity provides a reminder that English law is founded on nothing more than the protection of property. Of the 200 executions carried out at Lancaster, only 43 were for the crime of murder: the remainder were for theft of various kinds. The original holding cells - still intact – are dark, airless holes in the wall which served merely as accommodation for prisoners awaiting either hanging or transportation.

Later, when custodial sentences were introduced, habitable cells had to be provided to ensure the prisoners did not actually die in captivity. Consequently, in 1815, a new prison block was built along the lines of Bentham's panopticon design. It was still in use when the place closed in 2011. The Castle is a part of the Duchy of Lancaster, an estate owned by the Monarch for the purpose of generating an income, but now that it is no longer rented to the Home Office as a prison, HM’s advisors are canvassing for new ways to squeeze rent out of the property.

After the tour we took our lunch in a pub on Lancaster's now defunct dock-side (the river silted up long ago). The landlady was welcoming - perhaps because there were so few other customers - and we dined well on moules marinieres and burgers. But, as the beer went down, our discussions became a little heated and naturally attracted an audience. When, after a while, the landlady came over to ask whether we were scheduled to speak in the debate to be held at the nearby museum that evening, we got the message. Perhaps our own voices are not always as mellifluous and modulated as we imagine.

Marking Time

"The nights are drawing in": it’s one of those expressions we inherit from our parents. It doesn't make literal sense - nights can't actually do anything - but we know that it means nights are becoming longer at the expense of days and that clocks must be set back an hour to compensate. In my childhood this simply involved father re-setting the clock on the mantelpiece and the watch on his wrist. Later it became more complicated and involved everybody in the house fiddling with the digital displays on a host of electrical appliances. Nowadays the internet takes care of them all - except for that old VCR that we no longer use.

Whereas the re-setting of clocks is an adopted practice which has its origins in the industrialisation of society, nights have got longer ever since Earth first orbited the Sun. In any case there are benefits which, in our household, boil down to being free to watch more TV without feeling guilty. In the last ten days we have watched the first 15 episodes of Breaking Bad - and we have been to the cinema a couple of times. As a consequence I now appreciate two things in particular: one is the extent to which made-for-TV series have successfully borrowed techniques from cinematography; the other is the advantage they have in being able tease out stories and develop characters over an indefinite period of time.

But they should be careful not to squander such an advantage, given the quality of competition in the cinema. One film in particular, The Selfish Giant, is a paragon of what can be accomplished in the 90 minutes format. To say that it is a story of a few days in the lives of a couple of pre-pubescent boys from poor families in a northern British town is merely to outline the structure. That it is a powerful commentary on the social consequences of capitalism and industrialisation is closer to a description of its scope and ambition.

Coincidentally there is an exhibition at the City Gallery, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, which resonates with the film. Jeremy Deller's assemblage of art and artefacts is essentially an exploration of the impact of the Industrial Revolution on popular culture. It reminds us of the origins of our present-day circumstances but it also comments implicitly on capitalism and industrialisation.  One exhibit is a poster displaying the rules of an early cotton mill which, shockingly, is no more than a tariff of fines payable by the workers in the event that any of them should happen to disrupt, in any way, the process of making profit for the employer. And just around the corner is an old clocking-in machine, the symbol of lifetimes sold.

But is this art? Consult Grayson Perry who, in the current series of Reith lectures, is addressing this very question imaginatively, amusingly and with an open-mind. Coincidentally (again) his work The Vanity of Small Differences hangs in the next gallery. It comprises a series of large tapestries which depict social mobility and the influence of class on aesthetic tastes - further evidence of our lives having been shaped by capitalism and industrialisation.

At the end of the week I visited Blackpool, a one-time village which the mill-owners of Lancashire developed into a holiday resort for their workers - not out of altruism, mind you. They built and owned the attractions which their workers paid to enjoy; they organised their mill shut-downs consecutively so that holidays were staggered. As a holiday destination it became fabulously successful but, now that its block of captive customers has disintegrated, it looks and feels like just another post-industrial town desperate for the clock to turn back.

Unforeseen or Unforeseeable?

Ever since I learned that exercising on a treadmill generates ten times more energy than it consumes I have become obsessed with the idea of feeding all that excess gym-power into the National Grid: I just need someone to do it. If Thomas Edison were still alive, I am sure he would sort it out. He was a prolific inventor but, more to the point, he understood the commercial importance of delivering new inventions to the world. For example, not content with his part in the invention of the electric light bulb, he went a stage further and invented power generation and distribution systems which enabled us all to use it - since when we have been eagerly burning all available fossil fuels in order to generate ever more gigawatts of electricity.

In doing so we have created the problems of global climate change and increasingly expensive electricity and, unless we resolve them, future generations will be living in a retro stone-age. Meanwhile, in modern-day Britain, the benefits of Edison's invention are already unaffordable for the least well-off whose current dilemma is whether to heat or eat.

One of our prominent politicians last week made an ill-advised attempt to help the poor by promising that, if his party wins the next election, energy companies will be obliged to fix their prices. Within days the inevitable happened: one by one, the energy companies raised their prices. This clearly demonstrates the folly of showing one's hand - a tactic which the politician in question will no doubt avoid in future.

More importantly, however, it demonstrates the rise of 'retail politics', whereby ideology-based policies are eschewed in favour of populist measures aimed at winning votes in the short term. Votes must be won, but the net effect of this behaviour is that governments are reluctant to commit to long-term planning, especially in respect of controversial or "difficult" issues. Short-term political expediency trumps the more noble purpose of long-term governance for the benefit of society as a whole.

Power generation is a case in point. It is an infrastructural necessity which society has come to depend on, yet there is an ambivalent approach to providing for it. Politicians, shy of the high-cost, long-term commitment required, look to the private sector to take it on, but the acknowledged necessity for reducing carbon emissions is a crucial part of the equation and the corporations have too much invested in the present fossil-fuel system to be entrusted with its demise.

Cleaner, renewable energy sources are feasible but, having failed either to commit significant public funds or to encourage private investment in developing the technology required for delivery, Britain's government has been backed into a corner. It has just announced an eleventh-hour decision to return to nuclear generation - a technology which we pioneered in the 1950's but which, due to circumstances entirely within our control, we have since lost. Consequently we are obliged to offer generous inducements to others to provide it for us.

And so it comes to pass that our nuclear stations will be built and operated courtesy of the sovereign investment funds of other countries. Our government has absolved its responsibility for the nation's infrastructure; corporate profits will determine price and availability; renewable alternatives will wither for lack of investment and we will accumulate a pile of nuclear waste which will be someone else's problem in the future. It's a worrying example of party politics at its least effective.

What a pity that Thomas Edison is no longer around. He died in 1931 but before he went he said:

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. I wish I had more years left.”

Techno-fix

Having just spent the best part of two days trying to figure out software and computer networking 'issues', I have cut my losses and made a call to an expert. He is coming tomorrow to sort it all out. Those who work from home will be familiar with this dilemma: whether to spend time in order to save money or to spend money in order to save time. Those in salaried employment, meanwhile, will be more familiar with the concept of taking a coffee break while the IT department gets to work.

Of course it has never been necessary to understand how technology works in order to use it. Most of us drive cars, operate computers, make phone calls etc. without an inkling of the underlying electro-mechanical principles on which the technology functions. We accept the fact that someone, somewhere has invented a device which makes life easier for us and, if it goes wrong, there is someone, somewhere who knows how to fix it. Advice in this matter is offered in this pithy, early-industrial-era rhyme:

Lord Skinflint tried to fix his electric light

It struck him dead - and serves him right

It is the duty of the nobleman

To provide employment for the artisan

...which is also an unflinching endorsement of the economic theory known as "trickle-down".

But the accelerating pace of technological advance is so rapid that we are challenged simply to keep up with its inventions. There was a time - not so long ago - when we had fixed-line telephones and communication was simple, if limited. When the bell inside the handset rang you would say "I wonder who that can be?", pick it up and respond politely to whoever was on the other end (of a very long cable). Nowadays, if the landline rings, it is easy to guess who is calling: during the week it will be a marketing call; on a Sunday evening it will be an ancient relative who is still under the impression that landlines are owned by the Post Office and that it is cheaper to use them after six pm.

I am never intentionally rude to elderly relatives who call, but pre-recorded marketing pitches are fair game: since machines have no feelings I usually say something nasty and slam the phone down. But the other day I did pick up in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon because I was expecting a pre-arranged call. I said "Hello" in my friendliest tone, only to be answered by a brief silence and a recorded "Goodbye" which, eerily, had about it the unmistakable smirk of 'Gotchca!'

I think technology was trying to tell me something about etiquette for, while we may pride ourselves on being quick to adopt all the devices it offers, there is a degree of uncertainty about what constitutes polite behaviour in their use, especially concerning phones. When, for example, is it more appropriate to send a text than to make a phone call? Is it socially acceptable to respond to email and texts when in company? It has been argued that these questions will be resolved in due course: etiquette takes time to develop and become adopted because it is a complex amalgam of social interactions. There is no downloadable app for it. Or perhaps there is? If so, it is surely based on the principle that etiquette is nothing more than manners, and what defines manners is a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.

But there is another thing that lags behind technological advance: vocabulary. Phones, for example, now make all kinds of alerting sounds but we still say that they ring. It's about time we found a new verb for that so, if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear from you. Just give me a bell.

Painting by Numbers Never Worked.

Last week, at Tate Liverpool, I saw the exhibition Chagall, Modern Master. Chagall’s paintings are recognisable by their dream-like qualities: people and animals float above landscapes; perspectives are distorted; colours evoke mood and there are visual references to his home town, Vitebsk, Russia. His images are varied but his style is so constant and distinctive that it has become a successful ‘brand’. (Witness its ubiquity in the gallery shop where it shifts the merchandise: mugs, place-mats and tea-towels are all given the dreamy makeover - and the designer price-tag).

Although I have always been attracted to his paintings as objects of beauty, I have been flummoxed when it comes to interpreting their meaning. I found it helpful, therefore, to have been given some background information about the man and his times. I learned that his Hasidic ancestry had left a profound mark upon his work, that he travelled to Paris where he was exposed to the influences of Cubism, Fauvism, Constructivism, Orphism, Simultanism and, most sinister of all, Suprematism. For me, however, it boiled down to the gratification of discovering that the romantically involved, gravity-defying couple depicted in one of his better-known paintings represents the artist and his wife, Bella.

On the wall in front of me is one of my brother’s paintings - one which needs no explaining to me. It’s a landscape – a view from where he once lived, high up on the side of a valley in West Yorkshire. It shows the buildings down in the valley petering out into the fields above on the opposite hill, all painted in tones of green, brown and grey - except for an intriguing and apparently random sliver of red in between a chimney and a wall.

I mean to ask him about that sometime. Why is it there? Is it a painterly device which works on the viewer in a subliminal way? Or is it simply a smudge of background colour that escaped his attention in the finishing?

Assuming the latter is unlikely, the painting benefits from its presence in a way that defies layman’s logic. A seemingly misplaced splash of colour contributes to the imaginative evocation of the landscape, not a precise depiction of it and, in doing so, demonstrates the artist’s ability to interpret a scene while eschewing logic.

But artists, as we know, are licensed; and as I look up at it now I am conscious that I cannot employ any such license in the process of writing. I write not to make an impression, nor even to make myself understood. I write to make sure that I am not misunderstood. Choosing the precise word, the right phrasing and timing are all critical to ensure the elimination of ambiguity. The written equivalent of a random sliver of red is likely to alter the meaning of a piece - as in “eats, shoots and leaves”.

I am not suggesting that the process of painting does not involve rational thinking (I have no experience to call upon) but, if it does, it is trumped by creative visual expression. On the other hand, I am not so sure that the process of writing should rely entirely on thinking, remembering Niels Bohrs’ famous admonition “No no you’re not thinking, you’re just being logical”.

Chagall lived through troubled times – the First World War and the Russian Revolution - but, by judicious migration, avoided harm and continued to work as an artist into the 1960’s. He lived and worked in St. Petersburg, Paris, Moscow, America and the south of France but, after all that, his paintings consistently bear his stamp: evidently you can take the man out of Vitebsk, but you can’t take Vitebsk out of the man and his ‘brand’ will endure.