my paintings now arrived

Here are two light-hearted painting I did some years back.   

I find looking at people looking at pictures in art galleries as rewarding as what is on show.

The 'Flintshire' send up, is a nostalgic egg tempera painting I did when living in Aberdeen. They are in memory of those wonderful railway posters in the 1920s-30s, and of the magical Russel Flint - he of the fabulous nudes - but even of much better landscapes!

Both are about quarto size if not smaller. I like egg tempera. A lovely quiet medium. Acrylic is OK, not as good as oils for me. but I use acrylic a lot becuase it is handy, especially if  used by putting dabs of the stuff on kitchen baking paper,placed on top of old fashiond blotting paper, placed on a tray in which a little water has been added. The paint stays usable for sometime - days even if the tray is covered in between whiles.

Yesterday - I couldn't open these pictures and got cross - bingo, today, here they are - Wow!

Now am painting one of my mythological pictures - Orestes in the hands of the Eumenides, poor devil - I find now that I think more about the ancient greek drama than I do about any other - shall have a go at the Trojan Women next - the story is so full of meaning with today's displaced, killed, raped people haunting our daily news

The elastic bucket of faiths

‘A’ believes that vapourised chocolate is the basic essence of the universe, and that the Aztecs were correct (nearly) in acknowledging it as fundamental to life on the planet.  He admits that they made their mistake in killing those who enjoyed cocoa products.  If they had demonstrated to the setting sun that cocoa was life enhancing in itself, especially if taken in the form of an evening drink, with a desert spoonful of white sugar, a product that rains down from the sky when the moon is full, they would have flourished and would now rule the world.  He gives talks on this subject in pubs to be found in the NE of England and is fondly rewarded with pints of beer.

‘B’ has a firm belief in what he read in the Old Testament

‘C’ will, a year or two after she is born, believe in fairies and the wisdom of her teddy bear beyond anything.

‘D’ has complete faith in the words of the Koran

‘E’ puts his trust in the words of the Pope and the Bible

‘F’ is absolutely convinced that prayer wheels work

‘G’ puts her faith in the stars

‘H’ talks to her dead relatives.

‘I’ bowed low, once upon a time, to the statue of Pan at the gate to his property every morning before going to the market convinced that the god would protect all his interests.

J’ turned to Dr Henry Maudsley and said, I killed the man in the factory because I heard a voice telling me to do so’.   Etc etc.. 

It seems to me that faith is a magical bucket that grows bigger and smaller depending on the number of people who hold to ideas that are unprovable at any one time. 

Sadly, our beliefs can become so important to us that we are ready to kill each other to maintain what I think might be nothing more than states of mind - the product of synaptic activity.  I hasten to add that I do not hold to this idea any more than I think cats rule the world.  My interest is only in reducing the size of that bucket!…a bucket, I hasten to add, in which I hold little faith, since it is only a rather poor metaphor for something I do not basically understand, life being as complicated as it is.

I once walked onto a darkened stage shortly after a show had come to an end, and surprised myself by saying out loud, ‘excuse me’ to what was in fact an empty space. The apology was spontaneous, born out of the intensity of the acting that had gone on a few minutes before. For a brief moment, I felt the character’s presence again.   If I had had no knowledge of how we respond to our own psychological projections what would I have made of that?  I think I would have carried away with me a belief in theatre ghosts – and thus added to the capacity of that very elastic bucket of faith.

The sea of faith and Charles Darwin

Reading again Mathew Arnold’s poem, Dover Beach, I got for the first time - rather slow of me I admit - the inspired aural pun contained in the phrase ‘The sea of faith’.  In a word, references to the authority of the church, as in Bishop’s See, and to the watery images that are in the poem.  Together with the last line, 'where ignorant armies clash by night', the phrase has remained with me all this week.

Hourly broadcasts tell of the killing and wounding that go on while contending forces jockey for position and power, many deriving additional strength from a fervour that has little to do with the moderate philosophies that religions rely on to foster peaceable and kindly lives - philosophies that, as I understand the world, have come down the ages from physical experience. As Shakespeare has it, ‘there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently’ (Much Ado 5.1.36).  And in our impatience to find anaesthetics we have dulled not only pain but also our need for religious fortitude in coping with it.  Kate Hotspur in Henry IV Part One would have prayed over her husband’s agitated condition.  In today’s world, she would phone her doctor and before you know it Harry Hotspur would be admitted to a psychology unit specialising in treating Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome acquired from previous hard fought battles. The warrior presents with at least 5 of the necessary criteria.

I was reminded again in an article in the FT Weekend, 11 Sep 2010, written by John Cornwall, that the religious battle lines are always drawn up and that it is best to be on the qui vive.  In particular, the author asks if Pope Benedict is hastening the beatification of Cardinal Newman merely to put a damper on one of the Vatican’s most inspired critics.  Whether it holds or not, the piece emphasises the point that history is littered with people of faith playing politics, going for each others’ throats, and in a word, behaving like the rest of the natural world, even amongst their own kind.

Will the makers and shakers of all the religions eventually come to recognise that because they are human and part of the natural world they too are subject to the forces of Darwinism?  I doubt it, but if they allowed the point it might quieten a predilection for lusting after the blood of those who do not agree with them.  Also, and here is something I shall never get my head round, if the Creationists are the ultimate winners in this lottery of survival and are the ones to fly up to heaven - think El Greco’s 'Adoration of the name of Jesus' - how will they square it with themselves that they have got to the top of the tree as everything seems to do - by a Darwinian progress of good luck.  An answer might be that everything is ordained.  But again, doesn't that smack too much of the old penny dreadfulls, when, after the hero is left in the previous chapter facing a sure and horrendous death, 'with a bound he leaps free' at the beginning of the next.

Perhaps I should pop these and similar thought into a drawer in the hope that when I next look into it the moths will have got at them and there will be nothing there but dust….

The ghost in the machine - TV style

I was there when an actor died on set during a live performance of a TV play.

I was working as an announcer with Associated British Corporation otherwise known as ABC Television soon after it began broadcasting from Didsbury studios in Greater Manchester.   One day, in the canteen, grabbing a quick lunch, I found myself sitting opposite Gareth Davies, a friend from the days when we had been drama students together at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama.  I have good reason to remember our conversation.  I’d asked him how he was, not expecting a serious reply, but that’s what I got.  He told me that he had to be careful not to over exert himself.  By rights, he said, he should not be taking part in a live performance with all its stresses and strains but he needed the money.  Looking back, I now realise that this had been the last ordinary conversation he was to have.  For the rest of the day he was busily involved with preparing for a performance that evening that was part of the very popular ABC Armchair Theatre series.

The play was set in wartime Britain.  The characters were sheltering in an underground station in London while an air raid was going on above them. Every now and then a loud explosion would denote bombing getting nearer and nearer.  A large bang, accompanied by smoke and dust ushered in the first commercial break, leaving the audience to wonder what had happened to the wounded and dying – one of whom was the character played by Gareth.  

A minute into the commercial break with everything going well, we, in the control room were shocked to get the news that Gareth, had over played his part, and suffered a real heart attack, and was now dying where he had been hastily laid - behind the scenery. He died shortly after in his dressing room.  Because he had had lines to say once the second part of the play began, the director and actors, fuelled by copious amounts of adrenalin had gone into over-drive and were re-writing the script to cope with the sudden loss of an important character….

Years went by.  Sometime in the middle 1970s Marianne and I were half way through a two month theatre tour of Britain in which we had booked to perform at the old ABC Studio’s that in the meantime had been adapted to accommodate a drama college.  By then ABC had merged with another company and the building had been taken over by the local polytechnic.

Students who were there to greet us told us that recently one of the friends had been frightened by a ghost somewhere on a flight of stairs s going down to the green room, the actors' rest place.  At first we did not take what they said very seriously. But I remembered the sudden death that had happened exactly where we were then standing and told them the story.  It was the first they'd heard of it.  Some of them were very anxious not to meet this spectre – I wondered why: Gareth would frighten no one, it was not his style.

And here I think I must bring in the influence of having lived on an island off the west coast of Scotland where there is, or was when I lived there, a lingering belief in the ‘wee folk’, fairies, the giant, Fionn mac Cumhail, that is, if translated into fluent English, Fynn Macool; kelpies, ghosties, and things that go bump in the night.  Marianne and I decided to err on the side of caution with regard to the uncanny and do what we could to allay the students’ fears which were very real.  They were, after all students of the drama.   Keeping them well away, we duly descended the staircase and entered the green room, where, feeling very self-conscious, and rather silly, we talked to the air, the empty air.

We suggested to the invisible ‘ghost’ that it might be held to this earth because it was in a state of confusion about the manner of its arrival in its present state: was the death real or was it acted. I explained what had happened in the hope that it would help.   Just because we didn’t believe in what we did didn’t mean the ghost wasn’t real – or so we told ourselves.

I have hardly thought about this event for many years until yesterday when there was mention of Didsbury studios, and it all came rushing back to me.  Gareth was a very good actor, and as a mature student at Central had given a fine performance of Tartuffe in the play of the same name by Moliere. He was kind, humorous and clever, I remember him with affection.

I wonder if his ghost haunts the flats that now stand where the old cinema building once weaved its spell over the people of Didsbury. May I suggest if Gareth is looking over my shoulder as I write that he might turn his attention to the people who allowed the old building to be destroyed - they should have had more sense and had it listed.

For more information:
 http://www.manchestermovies.com/capitol-building-didsbury.shtml