Silence

We are returning to Ireland next Saturday for a week. We are looking forward to quiet and fewer citizens. We will visit Donegal for a day or two which promises both.

 

When I return to London I will pay the BFI a visit to see a film called Silence. It is by an Irish documentary filmmaker called Pat Collins and is his first foray into (semi) fiction. He eschews professional actors. His main character is played by a Donegal novelist called Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde. It is story of a Irish sound recordist who returns home to record landscapes free from man made sounds. He meets local people on his journey and reflects on the title. I havent seen Mr Collin's work but the the themes and the location make it (potentially) fascinating.

 

The irish landscape has not been treated well in film. The Quiet Man (which has its charms) and other representations in Hollywood tends to chocolate box with staple images. The landscape in Donegal and the West coast of Ireland is beautiful but it can be harsh and unadorned. The latter qualities are the attraction for the writer.

 

 

Leviathan

When driving through east Kent we passed Manston airport and the  Spitfire and Hurricane museum.

We stopped at the museum and had a coffee . I noted a lack of Spitfires and Hurricanes but  read on a memorial plaque of the 116,000 RAF deaths during WW2. It was  a world war with battlefields and uniforms.

Modern warfare is different .  Drones are sent to far away places with pilots seated behind video game consoles. In future pilots may be dispensed with altogether and robots will conduct future battles. I doubt they will  build museums  for drone pilots and  robots.

Beside the museum was the strange sight of abandoned and partially cannabilised jumbo jets. I am told they are used for hijack training. Whenever an airline has an incident or a near miss they train on these metal cathedrals.

Modern war is termed asymmetrical. Drones and guided missiles destroy combatants (and non combatants). Planes are hijacked and turned into missiles.

The circle of life and of death goes on.

Walpole Bay

A pretty horrible week at the mill and unsustainable . I will be making decisions on my gainful employ shortly.

Mrs Emigre and the writer spent the weekend with a couple in Minster in east Kent. We  dog sat their sterling pouch Lottie a while ago and they wanted to treat us to a meal by way of thanks . We had a great time and they were kind and generous hosts .We got to see Lottie again which was a bonus. She is a labradoodle . I did not know of such a thing until recently . It is a cross between a Labrador and a poodle. It doesn't sound promising but Lottie is top mutt.

We went to Walpole Bay beach near Margate for breakfast. I have been to Margate a couple of times and previous trips had reminded me of a line from Morrissey of the Smiths. The Philip Larkin of pop sang of the "seaside town they forgot to close down".

On reflection I have been unduly harsh on Margate. It has many problems and  the oft quoted statistic of the most boarded up high street in England. There is unemployment and issues with drugs and crime .But it does have a warped charm. The Tate gallery and plans for a new cultural future are grounds for optimism. A neophyte writer  should frequent  a Margate cafe for inspiration. It has vitality.

Mr Morrissey could do worse than leave Los Angeles (or wherever he is now ensconced ) for the charms of Margate. It might inspire the troubadour to better songs.

W G Sebald

A tough week at the satanic mill. The weekend is a blessing.

I had an anniversary during the week . Not  a birthday or wedding. It was the anniversary of something that cannot be committed to memory . It is both past and the present. This led to the writer W G Sebald . I  read Austerlitz, the Rings of Saturn and the Emigrants years ago. In fact I bought two copies of the Emigrants -  I left one half read  on the Stansted Express.

Sebald is held in high regard amongst literary folk. Before his death in a car accident in 2001 Susan Sontag considered him one of the few examples of literary greatness in English. Look up " Why you should read W G Sebald" in the esteemed cultural rag The New Yorker. I cannot improve on it.

Though I read them 10 years ago this books are ever present. His prose is  both elliptical and opaque.  There is no plot, few characters and no action. The subject matter is  part fact, part fiction . The prose is accompanied by black and white photos which do not illustrate  but  enrich and comment on the text . He created his own literary form. I urge you to investigate.

In Austerlitz his protoganist states  "I feel more and more as if time did not exist at all only various spaces interlocking according to the rules of a higher form of stereometry, between which the living and the dead can move back and forth as they like, and the longer I think about it the more it seems to me that we who are still alive are unreal in the eyes of the dead.”

The anniversary I mentioned above is the loss of someone. I don't agree with Austerlitz but his assertion   haunts me.

Digital love

I have been listening to tracks from the Daft Punk opus Random Access Memories. In fact it is lodged in the car CD and accompanies our commute to work.

There is a quality in the music that sets it apart from streamed bits and bytes of the digital age.  There is  melancholy and a sense of loss . The hook of Get Lucky swirls drunk Uncles (and Aunts) to the dance floor at  weddings. The rest of the CD  is the surface  beauty of Touch and Contact . It is like listening to a cyborg cry.

The digital age has brought untold benefits in music, art  and mass communication. But we should  mourn the  end of the analogue age. Film, tape and vinyl. A benediction . You have been replaced by 1 and 0's which do not fade.

Sterile?. Maybe. But we love that which makes us empty.

Table Mountain

I am waiting for the final episodes of Southcliffe on Channel 4.

It is extraordinary bleak viewing. An ex soldier commits a mass killing in a fictional English town. I wouldn't have watched it until I read it had been shot in Faversham Kent. We lived in the aforesaid for one year to shorten our commute . I am sure Faversham is a lovely town for those happy in its warm communal embrace. We found the place  awful and fearful . Our rented house was damp, the managing agents rude and petty. We were DFL ( down from London) and unwelcome. Watching the loner in Southcliffe slowly tip over the edge  I recognised the mist, rain and despair. Sorry Faversham . I do not miss you but I will watch your fearful streets on TV.

Fear is alien to the young . In South Africa I visited  Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town.At the top I watched kids standing near the edge of the abyss . The photo is a trick of the eye - the edge is not as close as it seems. But there was no fear. And they didn't blink when the abyss stared back.

Bravo young man. Bravo. And never visit Faversham.

South Africa

I have been inspired to write online by a friend . His blog is arcane, well written and by turns informative and whimsical. I recommend the Northern Scrivener .

All beginnings are arbitrary so  I start with a recent disastrous trip to South Africa.  A long friendship from university led to a shared dream to see Namibia. The dream had  crystallised with a plane ticket to Cape Town and a hired truck to drive to Swakopmund.The friend was a former lawyer turned world traveller and photographer ( a fine one). The writer was an Irish lawyer living in London and working at a satanic mill.

The reunion in South Africa did not go well. The shared interests and affinity from the past could not disguise we had taken different paths . The trip was impossible and I was left with two weeks to fill in a strange city . I missed my wife back in London and knew little of Cape Town. I spent  a week holed up in a B & B with a novel and  a  hospitable owner called Dirke. Dirke had been recently bereaved and memories of the loss of his wife left him tearful .  I think he liked the company and insisted on shared evening meals . I doubt I was good company but he didn't notice.

 When  a friendship ends it marks time but something takes its place . I spent two weeks as a tourist and visited  usual suspects like the  Cape of Good Hope, Robben Island and Table Mountain . South Africa has its own problems but South African people are wonderful .

I end the post with a correction. The trip was not a disaster. I had money, time on my hands  and a car to drive around in. I visited a fishing village called Hout Bay a few times. On the pier local people trained seals for  tourists. The woman in the photo is called Tsoutas . She told me she has five children and she trains seals for a living. I don't know if she brings  her children up on her own. I do know I gave her the ten rand note she holds in the photo.That is modern tourism.