The Tower of David

I watched a recent episode of Homeland. The first series of the TV show was an impressive study of post 9/11 paranoia . The second and third series were greeted with less favour having jumped the shark ( the reference is to an episode of Happy Days were Fonzie while water skiing jumps a shark - it meant le fin du Happy Days).

Brodie is the former jihadi (?), former Vice President and former marine on the lam in Caracas . His paramour is the bi polar CIA operative Carrie Mathison currently ensconced in the funny farm. The critics have a point - credibility is not a strong suit. This is not an entry about Homeland - it's about the extraordinary sight of Brodie's hide out in Caracas .

I had never heard of the Tower of David. It is is an unfinished skyscraper in Caracas named after the tower's investor David Brillembourg. The construction of the tower began in 1990 but was halted in 1994 due to the Venezuelean banking crisis. The government took over the building and a housing shortage led to occupation of the building by squatters .

I read about the building in an article in the New Yorker. It is an extraordinary sight. A gleaming monument to capital turned into a high rise shanty town for the poor and dispossessed . The article was largely hostile to the now deceased President Chavez. I am not qualified to comment on his time in office though America usually disapproves of Latin American socialists who distribute wealth to the poor. The distribution of wealth to the rich is much more acceptable.

If you get the chance check out the Tower of David. It is a monument of our time.

 

Doire

I read an interview with artist David Shrigley by the writer Will Self. I knew a bit about Mr Shrigley's work from an exhibition . His photo of a stuffed Jack Russell standing on its hind legs holding a placard with "I'm dead" written on it is a difficult image to shift. He spoke of his plans for the vacant fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square. He has cast a bronze thumbs up ( the thumb is elongated) titled "Really Good". It made me smile anyway. He is up for this years Turner Prize with the ceremony in Derry/Londonderry.

In the alternative I like the name Doire which is Irish for oak grove.Derry is the Anglicised name. Such is the history of the place a local broadcaster avoids the issue and calls it Stroke City.I worked in Doire for almost three years and have good memories and friendships from my time there. I much prefer it to Belfast where I also lived and worked . I found Belfast prickly and it tried too hard. We all have our preferences and I am sure others will disagree.

I am happy to see Doire is European City of Culture and is staging events like the Turner Prize. Stroke City seemed to be in the shadow of the gaudy charms of Belfast . The City of Culture events have given it publicity and the chance to step into its own.

I hope Mr Shrigley is triumphant . Not because I know much about his art ( I don't). It's because his stuffed Jack Russell made me smile.

 

What's outside the window?

The quote is from a wonderful book called the Savage Detectives. It is a roman a clef in the tradition of Ulysses and is worthy of the comparison. The author was Roberto Bolano. He was a Chilean exile who led a peripatetic existence in Mexico and Spain. He wrote many great books but the Detectives is my favourite.

It tells the story of the search for a 1920s female Mexican poet by two 1970s poets, the Chilean Arturo Belano ( Bolano's alter ego) and the Mexican Ulises Lima. This doesn't sound promising but reading it opens a door to a room where everything is alive. I read it in a (very good) translation - my Spanish is not up to scratch. I envy the reader who has not yet encountered the odyssey of Belano and Lima across the Mexican desert.

Today there is little of interest outside the window . It's wet autumn day in South East London. Apropos nothing I attach a photo of a window at the Hilton at Gatwick. The round window reminded me of a TV programme from childhood called Rainbow. For those unaware of George, Zippy and Bungle you have been spared . It was a traumatic experience . Most children's TV from the 70's seems to have been made by space cadets with a familiarity with hallucinogenics.

Instead of the wind and the rain on a South London garden I will dream of two poets driving through the Sonora Desert in Mexico on a search without end. It doesn't end until Bolano's posthumous follow up called 2666 . His alter ego declares "And that's it, friends. I've done it all, I've lived it all. If I had the strength, I'd cry. I bid you all goodbye, Arturo Belano".

 

Le fin du cinema

I (re)watched a movie yesterday which is technically beyond reproach. Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive is formally perfect - sound design, cinematography , editing are faultless. The actors emote with a bare bones screenplay and play out Godard's dictum that all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun (or a skull crushing boot). Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising is an influence . The actors play archetypes and the action is fetishised. The unnamed driver wears an iconic jacket with a scorpion on the back.

The quote from Godard is that cinema is dead. Ever the absolutist he claimed that in a capitalism without alternatives you end up with heartless cruelty like Drive.There are many fine humanist filmmakers working that deal with real lives and human drama. The soon to retire Ken Loach, Terence Davies and Clio Bernard all produce films reflecting lives lived. But they seldom trouble the multiplex and are deemed art house . Ken Loach's last opus Angel's Share is an uplifting tale of ex convicts and whiskey. It is not difficult but hasn't the cool veneer of Drive or Mr Tarantino's latest.

The visceral thrill of depersonalised violence sells tickets . If is what we want. Cheap thrills and a metallic taste in the mouth. Or it is what we are told we want.

Drive baby. Drive.