The Debt

It is in music that I miss you most,

in which your two year absence is

most keenly felt, a bright sharpness.



So dense the solid ghost who enters

my presence, a man made man again,

but only in music, only in that realm.



I remember my child’s hands upon

your old vinyl records – your masters –

covers in green, red, brown, and blue.



The oval portraits of Mozart, Strauss,

of Haydn and Beethoven, such serious

expressions on their faces, how you



Often played those crackling concertos

and symphonies so that their grooves

indelibly marked this boy’s cochlea.



Thus marked you left your greatest gift,

and also made this vast underworld

in which I might visit with you again.



Years later, lying in hospital, the time

long before you died, you came to me.

There, in the Sheldonian, drunk on



Champagne, the thin evening sunlight

straining through those high windows,

the anguish of the Philomusica’s strings



Opening Tchaikovsky’s adagio lament

of the Pathétique, those swooping cries,

that in some way foretold your death,



As the orchestra strained its last breath,

just as you would on another white bed.

Even then I seemed to be preparing for it.



Almost two spent years since you died

I found you again in the Musikverein

in Vienna, the greatest of concert halls.



It was you who introduced me to those

New Year broadcasts, the joyous pomp

of the Blue Danube and Radetsky March –



You would have loved to have seen it,

the majesty of its grand, gilded ceilings

and delicate, pear-shaped chandeliers.



Listening to Schumann I knew you were

somehow close, in raptures, fulfilling

your dreams that never came to pass.

The Viktorian – 8th May 2010

The Viktorian is your weekly guide to news, reviews, and media
throughout the past week which has caught the eye of blogger P.Viktor.

• Britney Spears’ demo of Telephone leaks on the internet (3/5)
• Madonna’s Interview and photo-spread cause a sensation (3/5)
• Google resolve court case in UK and become Gmail again (4/5 from Google)
• Conservatives offer ‘flaky’ gay rights reform (4/5 from Pink News)
• New details emerge on the sequel to The Dark Crystal (4/5 from Empire)
• Cyndi Lauper posts video tease for new album, Memphis Blues (5/5)
• Hanif Kureishi discusses his new book, Collected Stories (5/5 from Guardian)
• My review of Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (6/5 from P.Viktor)
• Kele Okereke launches new single, Tenderoni (6/5)
• Britain wakes up to Hung Parliament (7/5 from BBC)
• Caroline Lucas becomes first Green Party MP (7/5 from Pink News)
• My review of Henry Moore at Tate Britain (7/5 from P.Viktor)
• Chemical Brothers release their comeback single Swoon (7/5)
• First look at the trailer for JJ Abram’s new film, Super 8 (7/5)
• Perez Hilton posts new, unheard song from Lady Gaga – Future Love (8/5 from Perez Hilton)
• New Inception trailer is posted online (8/5)

For more regular updates, please join my Facebook Page.

Charlatan

The woman poses

as a favourite aunt,

as a nurse matron,



As kindness itself –

her smile anointing

the predicted scars.



She possesses none

of the usual

trappings; the glass ball,



Small, stunted candles,

worn tarot pack, or

phrenologist’s head.



Just her oracle

card deck, her angels.

She gives a reading –



Brings into being

an apparition

of a man composed



From clues, from guesses,

from quick slippages,

a jigsaw puzzle.



He has been with me,

she suggests, as I

come to terms with his



Death. I thought I had.

Perhaps her real gift

is not pale foresight,



Or divination.

Instead she knows when

someone is lying.

 

Henry Moore – Tate Britain, Review

The Tate Britain is currently showing a major retrospective of British sculptor Henry Moore’s work. This high profile exhibition is a genuine coup for Tate Britain who often get overshadowed by the Tate Modern on the more accessible Southbank. Though there are no Tube stations next to the gallery one can get off at Westminster and have a rather delightful walk along the river, preferably when it is not raining (as was the case for us). The Henry Moore exhibition brings together a huge range of his sculptures which are brilliantly arranged in a series of basement rooms  representing each part of his long career including "150 stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings".

The curators have used the exhibition space to tell both the story of the artist’s development and also the story of the twentieth century as the influences of the Second World War, the Holocaust, the advent of Freud and Psychoanalysis, the influences of Surrealism and primitive art, as well as new ideas about modern sexuality all infuse Moore’s work. The softer mother and child images of the exhibition are replaced later by harsher, more abstract figures and sculptures such as helmets and nuclear bomb clouds highlighting the realities of a country anxious about nuclear and cold war threats. His poignant drawings of poor Londoners seeking shelter in Tube stations during air raids are also especially compelling. 

The highlights of the exhibition are the large scale elm sculptures which are beautiful wooden carvings of reclining figures. It is here where the audience gets a sense of Moore achieving his ultimate artistic goal, as though he has nothing more to say. Moore deserves a major retrospective like this, being as important to the period as Picasso (one of his most obvious influences) and fellow sculptor Giacometti and it is certainly worth seeing if you are having a day out in London.

Official Website of Tate Britain

The Henry Moore Foundation

The Dogs of Sodom

This way death lies –

the road a track of dust

on which it writhes,



An odd contortionist,

hind legs about its neck.

What devilry is this?



It licks its thighs,

the fleshy, glittering eye,

engorges its faeces.



It is sodomised

on a stake –

as it copulates the self.



Such depravity,

such evil infection here,

in this scavenger



Of men’s parts,

as human flesh is pared

to the bone.



It knows only itself,

the condition

of a long troubled sin



It considers the echelon

of pleasure no one

but inhabitants of Sodom



Might accomplish.

Its back wears a dust caul,

its limbs in prosthesis,

 

The pitiable animal.

There in the semen is

the inevitable extinction.

Philip Pullman – The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Review

Philip Pullman’s latest book is part of Canongate’s ‘The Myths Series’; a collection of modern, reworked takes on classical and historical myths attracting big literary names such as Margaret Atwood, AS Byatt, Michel Faber and Jeanette Winterson. Pullman is the perfect author to give the story of Jesus a modern and daring twist, being best known for courting controversy with his brilliant ‘His Dark Materials’ series in which a young girl, Lyra, takes on organised religion and god in a fiercely critical tale from the pen of a self-confessed atheist and supporter of the British Humanist Association. Pullman was attracted to this particular story after a commentator observed how Jesus had not featured in Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy, even though his role is pivotal in the existence of the church. He decided to pursue the idea and thus The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ was conceived.

Official Website of Philip Pullman

Official Website of Canongate

Official Website of The Myth Series



Buy Philip Pullman – The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

Suburbia

“Nothing, like something, happens everywhere”.

Philip Larkin, I Remember, I Remember



The small boy’s cry pierces the manicured quiet,

a ceaseless, high pitched squeal of unconcealed joy,

playing as he does along the low slung brick wall.



He knows nothing of monotony – such repetition

is a gift to children in order to learn, to imitate

the adults taken by this gross business of living.



He has started early – the wooden Wendy house

models itself on the vast set of bricks and mortar

neighbouring it which is to be his basic destiny.



The slow breeze carries with it the distant screams

of other children’s new found pleasures, as the sun

hangs with lethargy in the sky, spilling gold lazily.



Here are the neat, plotted kingdoms of England –

carved out of agricultural land and long dead

forests, which our former countrymen founded.



Their chariots in gravel drives glint in neat rows

outside redbrick terraces, semidetached houses,

bungalows mirroring each other on narrow streets.



They flank this low hill, each home a life’s work –

a testament to not living, as each generation tears

down the dedicated work of the one before it.



Despite this, nothing changes – the old town sleeps,

worn out by industry, veins emptied of their coal,

the Victorian age left in ruins like a bad hangover.



Only the inhabitants grow older, once children

themselves, they are the guardians of this place,

parents with their small offspring to look after.



Something here deadens the senses – the smoke

of a million barbecues making rancid the air, or

the dull rhythm of the train passing, marking time,



Or the yoke of a life that seems simply inevitable.

The blackened sandstone brick of St. Nicholas

casts its long, deathly shadow over the cul-de-sac.

River Mersey

We wait patiently on the landing stage

as it gently rocks with the river’s tide,

dwarfed by Liverpool’s three graces –

white, effacing facades of a past that is

obstinate in the face of regeneration.



The ferry unleashes its steel tongue

by which we embark, find a bench on

the ferry’s bow. The river is a brown

vein through the city – it runs also

through me, is my entire genealogy.



As we quickly sail to the sea’s mouth,

the cold salty air fierce against the sun,

I remember whole lifetimes now gone,

each one somehow bound to this wide

expanse as a great line in a family tree.



My grandfather, a boy of just sixteen,

had attempted to row across it late at

night when he missed the last boat –

to return his father’s coat before he

found out his son had borrowed it.



But such was a lack of boyish strength,

he could not quite navigate its width,

and had to be rescued halfway across.

My mother recounts the tale for me

in case I had not quite remembered it.



Along the waterfront my uncle cycled

everyday to work, no doubt marvelled

at the river, the promise of escape from

his dull occupation, a tributary towards

other shores, other countries, other lives.



I recall the many trips with my father,

when we children curious of big ships,

taking us with my surly grandmother

to the Pier Head to pick up the steamer

for her long voyage to the Isle of Man.



And recall the time in New Brighton –

an English sea resort since forgotten,

walking in the sun along the great prom,

to the New Palace Amusement Arcade,

an indoor fairground, to our amazement.



Then, much later my time as a student

living on my own for the first time –

walking along this waterfront alone

by the Albert Dock, perhaps in a first

attempt to gather ghosts of my past.



But so much of this life is part of a past

closed off like an iron door, and I lean

against the ferry’s rail, a fatherless son,

my grandparents long gone, as history

ebbs behind me in the wake of the ferry.



Our trips ends and thus we disembark

back to the city, humming that old tune,

Ferry Across the Mersey. I contain this

sadness looking back, wondering what

this ageless river could ever know of me.

 

The Viktorian – 1st May 2010

The Viktorian is your weekly guide to news, reviews, and media throughout the past week which has caught the eye of blogger P.Viktor.

• Author Alan Sillitoe dies in London aged 82 (25/4 from BBC News)
• My review of Simon Curtis 8Bit Heart (25/4 from P.Viktor)
• Candace Bushnell talks The Carrie Diaries (26/4 from The Times)
• M.I.A. releases controversial new video for single Born Free (26/4)
• My review of newly released The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath CD (26/4 from P.Viktor)
• New biography gives insight into the reclusive life of Syd Barrett (27/4 from The Times)
• Peter Tatchell encourages Green voters to support the Lib Dems (27/4 from Pink News)
• Sylvia Plath – The Spoken Word: Why the Plath-Hughes Marriage Failed (27/4 from P.Viktor)
• Stuart Price talks up new Kylie album Aphrodite (27/4 from Pop Justice)
• Matt Smith (Doctor Who) to play Christopher Isherwood in new drama (28/4 from Pink News)
• My review of Jes Highglow (28/4 from P.Viktor)
• Inquest gives an insight into the last tragic hours of Alexander McQueen’s life (28/4 from BBC News)
• Courtney Love interview on David Letterman (28/4)
• Bad news for music bloggers as royalty firms request annual payments for mp3 downloads (29/4 from The Guardian)
• Why having it all is a Faustian bargain paid for with your mental health (29/4 from The Guardian)
• My review of Rufus Wainwright – All Days Are Nights (29/4 from P.Viktor)
• Counsellor who refused to work with gays loses appeal bid. Faith should not come before discrimination (29/4 from Pink News)
• Christina Aguilera accused of plundering Madonna videography and Ladgy GaGa’s Bad Romance in Not Myself Tonight (30/4)
• My review of Hole Nobody’s Daughter (30/4 from P.Viktor)
• Sue Sylvester sings Olivia Newton-John’s Physical for upcoming Glee episode (30/4)
• UKIP candidate claims party would scrap gay equality laws (30/4 from Pink News)
• Brandon Flowers to release solo album, Flamingo, and launches new website (1/5)
• My review of Robyn – Body Talk Part One (1/5 from P.Viktor)

For more regular updates, please join my Facebook Page.

Robyn – Body Talk Part One, Review

(4.5/5) The music industry is currently swamped with female electro-pop artists making quirky electronic music coupled with genuine songwriting craft but one of the pioneers who started it all off (alongside Roisin Murphy) is back to reclaim her crown with not one but three albums which she intends to release this year. Robyn has been rather quiet since her seminal eponymous album released in 2007 whose quirky electro-pop went on to launch the careers of Lady GaGa, Annie, Dragonette, Little Boots, La Roux, Ellie Goulding, and Marina and the Diamonds. However, while their stars rose but she has been little short of prolific. Her Body Talk trilogy is a way of being able to release new music without having to wait for an entire album’s worth of material to be ready and follows its lead from Lady GaGa’s The Fame Monster which, also at eight tracks, keeps things lean and without unnecessary filler, a format Robyn is very happy to be working in.

Official Website of Robyn