It is certainly no longer golden.

[Written in script one month ago.] I have managed it. I think. Through the trials and perils of 2009, I have managed to keep my mouth shut.

The real ‘temptation’ of the present is no longer the stray drink or takeaway (for this commentator, coffee), but new forms of social networking. Whilst I appreciate the social functions of these sites, I cannot understand the prerogatives for documenting daily existence, the new staple of daily existence.

Andrew Marvell’s few public poems express the same dilemmas. He criticizes the agents of the public, anxious of the new forms of public that have emerged through print in the revolutionary decades. His 1648/9 poem to Richard Lovelace subtly acknowledges its self-consciousness at contributing towards a saturated print culture which it is fundamentally against. Equally, Marvell’s lyric writing appears to be relatively consistent in withholding from the public.

Facebook and Twitter are as irrefutable in 2009 as publishing has been in previous centuries: their service is to disseminate one’s voice. Unlike LiveJournal or alternative blogging services, Facebook and Twitter cannot pass as serving any real diurnal function; their output can only be ephemeral and serve the trigger-happy. Publishing tends to imply a confidence in one’s own voice ~ that which many Facebook users exude several times daily. To some extent, that is all well and good, but the technicalities of authorship transfer across to give a more condemning view.

Facebook and Twitter demonstrate, more than any format has allowed before, that which J. L. Austen describes as public ’speech-acts’. This causes a cognitive problem when thinking about authorship with privacy, or about keeping a private diary. A ’speech-act’ may be made to oneself, as desolate as it may seem, but by and large, a ’speech-act’ requires a speech-act audience. This opens up a new set of presumptions, namely that those who indulge in the meaningless trivia of their daily lives in such a fashion do so presuming that their audience is interested.

"Silence is Golden, Speech is Silver"? Maybe not any more.

I might envy the day when I think anyone should give a damn about my peripheral daily activity. Perhaps it is right to feel proud about one’s every act, or perhaps normal people [which I use to my detriment] do have enough friends willing to engage in text-pamphleteering… but I say this in a space that has no direct followers [which has risen to 1 since composition]: that there should be respect for silence for those who participate less.

Silence can be troublesome, dangerous, or even fatal. Shakespeare’s logic comes to force, again, with irony, through King Lear, who turns out to be one of the most insane characters of the entire oeuvre. Cordelia’s “Love, and be silent” pledge is struck blind by Lear’s “Nothing will come of nothing”. Her modesty, or stubbornness, to the public sycophancy displayed by sisters Goneril and Regan is at first shown to be cold and naive, but her silence eventually proves to be true and substantial in the face of her sisters’ empty words and superficiality.

We are closer to the public than ever. For many, it is always within easy reach. But with that comes an easy complacency. Do we care about those who are not stood in front of us or not bombarding us on Facebook? Do we allow ourselves, in a world dominated by public spheres, to remember those dwelling outside those spheres, when every loss is swallowed by yet more publicness? Ouch: it is the kind of friendship that requires commitment. And, as shown in those revolutionary decades of the 1640s and 50s, when the agents of the public last undertook such major changes, and when the love of one’s own voice came alive and ran riot, commitment can become a fickle thing.

Thank you, Enigma. “Silence must be heard”.

Refreshed by the thoughts on Circles previously, I am reminded this week of my first ambition in life, which was to be a professional snooker player. Snooker has always captivated me, and I remain, as ever, a ardent follower of Stephen Hendry (now, the old guard). The obsession with snooker perhaps helped to develop my patience. There is a great sense of calm to come from playing or watching a good session on the baize.

Stephen Hendry vs. Ding Junhui, World Championships 2009 (Getty)

It is not a sport that attracts a great deal of publicity. However, the last few months have seen the topic of the game’s uncertain future filter into public channels. This season sees a meagre total of just 6 ranking events, reduced from last year’s already slender 8. Part of this is down to what some see as complacency and mismanagement, and part is down to the branding problem that snooker has faced as society’s demands have, by and large, turned towards pace and excitement rather than stamina and strategy.

Snooker’s financial climate has probably suffered the most from the banning of tobacco advertising in 2005. I distinctly remember the Benson and Hedges Masters as a childhood favourite, particularly the 1991 final when Stephen Hendry overcome an 8-2 deficit to defeat Mike Hallett 9-8, and I still think of the tournament with its old sponsor attached. Since the advertisement legislation, there has been no consistency or coherence behind snooker’s sponsorship. The Masters became the Saga Insurance, a deal which expires this year; the UK Championships (current), which has traditionally had a more chequered sponsorship record, moved on from Maplin to seal a deal with Leciestershire firm Pukka Pies only last month; while the World Championships recovered from 888 severing a five year deal two years early to land a deal with online betting agent Betfred.

Moves have been made in recent years to stage more ranking events in Asia, and to host travelling tournaments across Eastern Europe with a faster format (fewer reds) to try and widen snooker’s appeal. But this doesn’t seem to have been enough. Earlier this month Sir Rodney Walker was voted out as chairman of World Snooker after he invited a vote of confidence on his leadership. Set to replace him is Barry Hearn, owner of Leyton Orient football club and the man seen to be the revitalising force behind darts. Joining him on the board will be six-time World Champion and commentator Steve Davis, who believes people may have ‘had their fill’ of snooker, but is eager to avoid the game ‘petering out’.

Steve Davis, a very highly regarded figure within the game, may now face a tricky liaison role.

Therein lies the problem. Huge in the 1980s, snooker has accrued a nostalgic function because of its extraordinarily fixed capital: the players. Relatively speaking, snooker sees very few new faces emerging year on year capable of competing. This decade, for example, has seen the likes of Ding Junhui, Marco Fu, Mark Selby, Mark Allen, Ali Carter, Stephen Maguire, Shaun Murphy and Neil Robertson coming in to compete at the highest level. Some, such as Liang Wenbo and Jamie Cope, are potential in the wings, but, by and large, the personnel remain familiar. BBC panellists and commentators include Steve Davis, John Virgo, Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne, John Parrott, Neal Foulds, Ken Doherty, Dominic Dale, and Matthew Stevens. It is like a family from the 80s and 90s all growing old together. This is a cosy allegiance that Hearn might seek to break up. Like Charles Van Commenee, the new performance director of UK Athletics, known for his ruthlessness, there is the sense that Hearn would like to slim the ranks by upholding the rewards for the best, while letting everyone else slip away.

Hearn’s mantra is all about drama and excitement, and he is seeking to readdress the format of the game to appeal to the ‘new audience’. However, thinking of the baying audiences at Alexandra Palace, this seems a worrying notion. Are we seeking a game where Peter Ebdons and Ali Carters are leaping Andy Murray style through the air, or where Stephen Maguires are thumping the table or smashing tiles? While the players are supportive of Hearn’s directorship, the flamboyant Neil Robertson seemed to hold a slight ambiguity as he labelled snooker ‘a gentleman’s game’ that shouldn’t stray from its principles. Indeed, snooker is the sport where competitors show unfailing sportsmanship to their own detriment. If such discipline starts to slide from the most traditional of sports, as has been seen in cricket, for example, it is very difficult to recover.

Ideas of ‘Best of 3’ matches are proposed, akin to cricket’s 20-20 format, and dart’s Premier League which scores in legs rather than sets. This is, ultimately, a different game. The problem with this is the possibility that those who cannot, or would rather not, adapt to such a format might end up segregating like darts’ competing factions, the PDC and BDO, where players are attached to one or the other and only play in their affiliated tournaments. Such a segregation opens up bitter disputes between players and board members, and Hearn is seen by some in darts as destroying tradition. Forget ‘new fans’; snooker could not do a greater disservice to its loyal fan base than to separate players into bands who can only compete in certain tournaments. Imagine Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins, Mark Selby and so forth being given the choice to make big money in shorter formats, with the possible resulting caveats that they end up creating a separate alliance which removes them from certain majors. It doesn’t bear thinking about. One of the key things going for snooker at the moment is that there is no one player dominating snooker in the way that Davis did in the 80s and Hendry in the 90s, and as Phil Taylor currently does in the darts world. O’Sullivan, Higgins, Selby, Murphy, Maguire, Junhui and Robertson are all capable of winning tournaments, and nothing is a foregone conclusion. Natural progression is just about doing its bit to keep snooker’s current full format treading water.

But one of the other refreshing things about the ‘gentleman’s game’ is that it is played by decent, family orientated people who do not seek fame or back page headlines. Ronnie O’Sullivan is the most vocal and most celebrated of the current crop, but even he does not revel in the limelight and looks remarkably coy in marketing campaigns that accompany the Asian tournaments. There is a clash of opinions from both sides. Alan McManus has suggested that there is little the players can do to manufacture influence for themselves and the game, while Lee Doyle, one of the remaining directors on the board of World Snooker, speaks of his frustration that players put little back into promoting the game. The question is, then, how to make something of snooker without destroying the elegant balance between the game’s format and the etiquette associated with it.

[BBC Feature: Is the future of snooker secure?]

An excellent idea, noted by Al in his post ‘Branding Snooker’, is to look to reintroduce something like Big Break, the BBC’s humorous snooker based quiz show which ran from 1991-2002. The arrival of reality television onto our screens has left little room for the now dated gameshow format, but Big Break on a Saturday evening once again would give the players a chance to show personality away from tournament play without forcing them into something majorly uncomfortable or unfamiliar, and it allows a different format in a way that doesn’t affect the mainstream game. Perhaps Big Break ran its course. Perhaps the audiences did not stretch to the main snooker tournaments. Yet, the seven year break has allowed enough new players to come through to give at least one new season a trial run without regurgitating all the same old faces.

A sublime start to the O’Sullivan-Higgins semi-final shows what life there remains in the game. Clearly, something has to be done to take the game forward. Yet, I hope there is some way to make more out of what there is, rather than making radical changes. To me, that would be the death of snooker in the same way as if it was left to perish anyway.

Snooker: A Game of Private People

If the paradigm shift can be forgiven, I am nervously returning to the world of thought. Perhaps I mean sentiment, or perhaps, for me, the two co-exist. A case, maybe, of the impersonal neoclassicist yielding to the romantic. It has something to do with the temporal. Tomorrow morning (28th) marks the ten year anniversary of an event that shaped much of what I have become in this decade. The causes no longer reach me with their unexplained darkness, aside from the day permeating the calendar. For the effects, I’m glad to have the opportunity to address the case personally in Holloway’s The Founder.

But I’m also grateful for new avenues, catching up on lost time, being heard, and opening my mind to boxes locked by embarrassment. At the end of a long conversation with someone I trust unendingly, the thought just crept into my head. “It’s like …” I reached into my pocket and found two inauspicious copper coins, which became one circle of need, and another of asset love. A glimpse of a return to days of naivety, characterised by my little crackpot ideas, and crackpot instability.

What startles is that I could talk stoically about plenty of other emotional matter, but this was most difficult of all. What is so bashfully difficult about casting the mind back a number of years and feeling shame? As a more closed person now, perhaps reminders of times defined by openness, commited openness, the kind that wields vulnerability and elasticity of response from every shade of thought, feel like a tickle at old sores. This little analogy of circles, a philosophy for me back earlier in the decade, and a reacquaintance  now, was something from the core of my emotional being. I left the conversation feeling vulnerable, which was, paradoxically, reassuring. I have spent a lot of time working on mental safety and security: in the face of adversity and illness, it has been the defence strategy, but it has been to not feel, or not feel enough.

I am glad for Renaissance support for my circle appreciation. George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (1589) considers the properties of gemetric shapes in terms of ‘proportion poetical’:

The most excellent of all the figures Geometrical is the round for his many perfections. First because he is even & smooth, without any angle, or interruption, most voluble and apt to turn, and to continue motion, which is the author of life: [he] … for his ample capacity doth resemble the world or universe, & for his indefiniteness hauing no special place of beginning nor end, beareth a similitude with God and eternity. This figure hath three principal parts in his nature and use much considerable: the circle, the beam, and the center. The circle is his largest compass or circumference: the center is his middle and indivisible point: the beam is a line stretching directly from the circle to the center, & contrariwise from the center to the circle. By this description our maker may fashion his metre in Roundel, either with the circumference, and that is circlewise, or from the circumference, that is, like a beame, or by the circumference, and that is ouerthwart and dyametrally from one side of the circle to the other.

With this in mind, it is impossible not to recall John Donne’s A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning with its paramount conceit of twin compasses, and it’s self-reflexive compositional ending:

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

To reach full circle is always to return; to achieve full circle must be a form of harmony. I source early modern literature in hope this week. Circles return as time returns to an event that has had telling influence since October 1999. I do not expect a valediction, nor an absence of mourning, but I would like to find something to celebrate about this event in the hope that it wielded a moderately decent human being at the end of it all.

After a day like today, recent goblin reminiscence and all, the search for “taking nothing seriously” (relating to this post) rounds itself here. And I won’t tag this with Andrew Marvell; although this sentence in theory allows me to. I’m still just a boy at heart who finds the childish banal so very funny. The giggles are mild hysteria just before I’m not allowed any more.

So Marv: snog, marry, avoid? [And don't worry, old chap. Unless embedding a few links makes me popular, rich, or famous, I'll not leave this here around you. There are just times, you know, when there feels no respect left to lose. I'll blame it on Richings, because he's amazing, and I can.]

The truly amazing Matt Richings (left). His fault.

As an afterthought to this outburst of hilarity, there are precedents in earlier material. They come in fascinating shapes, forms, and stories, some of which I included in the syllabus for my English Civil War course in Geneva. Oxford’s Trinity College president, Ralph Kettell, kept to hardened traditions by reputedly spying on students through keyholes to see if they were studying, and labelled those he found slacking to be ‘turds’ and ’scobberlotchers’. I’m not so sure what to make of John Dougill’s description that he ‘carried scissors in his muff’ (44).

Early newspapers of the 1640s were very quick to turn to scandalous propaganda and scatalogical humour in their attempts to undermine the opposition. One particularly memorable story involves Thomas Atkins, crudely nicknamed ‘Tony Turd’, who had reputedly shat himself in shock over gunfire in the Civil War, and then again over hearing schoolboys regurgitating the tale, requiring him to return home and empty his breeches (86). Video 3, I imagine.

Such splenetic libel had come earlier in the century, during the reign of James I. The ‘Censure of the Parliament Fart‘ (1607) lands with wry affliction on the nose of the iconic ‘bodie-politique’, with an unbeatable observation from Hungerford on following through. This ode transforms farting into a speech-act, and therefore political statement. To talk out of one’s arse, figuratively speaking, may have been an epithet set in place long ago. The very literal was, for our amusement, hinted at by David Mitchell in his excellent column this week about research councils.

The circle would not be complete without the forbidden sport. I was contacted just recently by a friend teaching in this area with a reference offering particularly interesting overtones to the grand theme of privacy. In the 1650s, Samuel Pepys comes across several pornographic volumes. His attention is particularly drawn to L’Ecole des Filles, despite it being ‘rather worse than Puttana Errante‘, another he is familiar with. Attempts to resist the book are futile, and he concedes to buying it ‘in plain binding’ so that he could burn it once read to destroy the evidence. After drinking, he succombs to the book’s charms and keeps a hand free from the pages (“una vez to decharger“). The fascinating duel between shame and excitement, pleasure before pragmatism, is superceded by the need to voyeuristically document the experience, overriding the destroyed primary evidence with nostalgic confession.

There are witty and creative ways to keep bodily functions a pleasingly fresh source of humour, but we owe medieval and early modern predecessors a debt for circumventing decorum, censorship and rigidity. Who knows? Keeping a sense of humour alive 350 years ago might have allowed us to today.

Illuminations. How far do they attract?

J. W. Saunders’ study, ‘The Stigma of Print’ (1951) touched an important nerve on the subject of publication. The premise is that with the advent of print in the Tudor period, the commercialisation of writing, the move from manuscript to print, was clearly regarded by many as a vulgar and defamatory practice. Literature was imbued with a mode of exclusivity; whilst the circulation of manuscripts around small coterie circles was a cultured activity, the opportunity to disseminate to a wider audience for fame, prestige, careers (although not profit) devalued the whole basis of writing.

My third PhD chapter considers why Marvell published 3 poems in 3 different collections in the late 1640s, but very little else besides. My argument follows that during this short spell, Marvell convinces himself that publishing is not his vocation. It is difficult to know his reasoning. One of the poems, praising Richard Lovelace’s Lucasta, is entered following problems with the licensing of the volume, and tackles two prominent issues with immaculate ambiguity. ‘Swarms of insects … of wit corrupted’, which are said to surround and harass the poet, could refer either to censors preventing material from being published, or else the hundreds of hack poets, critics and pamphlet propaganda artists who saturate bookshops and market stalls with their trash. With no barriers to entry, every publication not by an established name faces a harder battle to be read. To those ends, where would Lovelace’s elegant poetry stand amidst the clamour of the King’s execution and the country in turmoil? Later in his career, Marvell announced his hatred of the media, and there are signs that he developed an earlier distrust with the agents and consumers of publicity. Another perplexing suggestion is that Marvell’s own self-critical impulse led to insecurity at his own material in print. The question that remains is: can we imagine anyone writing poetry purely for themselves?

Richard Lovelace: The True Cavalier

As with the majority of issues that I encounter with this thesis and the enigmatic Marvell, I find myself enveloped in a solipsistic bubble with my own enterprises. Already this blog has threatened to become everything that I hoped to break free from. A scroll down the page, a sense of pride at the carefully crafted essays, and disappointment arises. Clearly, I do not write this just for myself – I could not justify the effort. ‘Fame’, as John Milton kindly points out, ‘is the spur’. I seem to envisage, in blinkered passion at the time of writing, an audience so in tune with me that they indulge my identical, lengthy paragraphs. It looks neat, even, considered, thoughtful … I then don’t update because I don’t want the most recent effort [Knightmare, in this case] to be uprooted by something less meaningful or less artistic. Yet, it is all in vain, for who reads this kind of material other than those who feel obliged?

Nothing is harder on the eyes than blocks of identical, lengthy paragraphs.

[alallday.cc]

There are fewer fine writers than Al, and yet even in bringing up this very subject, I regularly break a multitude of his suggestions. Simplicity: unlikely. Formatting: dense. Bad words: why on Earth is this blog found through the term ‘boy erection‘? Cliché: guilty. I’m used to listing my sources / inspirations, and the fine Al is mine here.

I am not a copywriter in my own space; I am a commentator. In the article I am working on for publication, I try to become an up-and-coming academic. My offerings here are like editorials, of which I have had some formal practice. My aim, governed by an over-complicated interdisciplinary PhD, is often to tie a multitude of dissonant ideas together seemlessly. Thus, grasshoppers become alive [*]; introverted musical behaviour brings together cultural theory, Gareth Malone and Libera [*]; and Knightmare becomes a form of counselling [*].

But what I have failed to grasp is versatility. My PhD is detailed academia; journal articles are succinct (and perhaps more tactful) academia. I have been fortunate that the Noted team in Geneva gave me the freedom to publish the likes of Crackpot Culture. But, out on my own, for my own purposes here, I am actually a copywriter. If this blog is ever to develop an outside readership, it can only do so by gaining interest. Another of Al’s teachings concerns self-branding, which is true to the word. I am likely to read the long and highly entertaining columns of a Caitlin Moran or John Sutherland, but not a great deal that I stumble across accidentally. Hence, the aesthetic style with full paragraphs and bizarre allegory that I cherish fails to advertise my writing to any but the most dedicated (and I’m not sure this space procures any).

When everything fights just as hard to be read in 2009 as 1649, how does Keith, in place of Richard Lovelace, stand any hope of interest over the rest of the seemingly infinite space that is the internet, less still without the marketing accolade of poetic testimony by the likes of Andrew Marvell? Perhaps the abrupt ending of Marvell’s last published poem of the 1640s, before he seemingly relapsed into private writing, says it all: ‘Art indeed is long, but life is short’.

Life is short? Too true, dear Whiteboard of Bewilderments.

Those who know me well enough will know that Knightmare is never far from my thoughts. It is a permanent feature, for better or worse, of my being. Knightmare elegantly punctuated my primary years. It introduced me to fantasy, encouraged me towards intellectual pursuit, and proved to be a strong enough source of a fair majority of my strongest friends. I appreciate criticism against this kind of thing, but I am neither a fanatic gamer, a regular role-player, nor a writer of fan-fiction; first and foremost, I just engage in nostalgic appreciation of revolutionary television, for a show which has transcended its particular era, demonstrated the exponential nature of technological change, and has provided millions with entertainment, discussion, and memorabilia; far more than ever will be said for the majority of today’s mediocrity.

To several of those ends, it shares a place with Andrew Marvell. What could the two possibly have in common? Well, let me explain in the following paragraphs. A few months ago, I alluded to my current state of mind as the character of a grasshopper from a poem by Richard Lovelace [Farewell Frost]. Not so long ago, I exchanged private comment regarding some of the issues of that piece, and was inspired enough that looking for novel ways for self-expression may be a sufficiently rewarding process. When I tried to refresh the thought, what came to mind was an image that encapsulates one of Knightmare’s most enigmatic in-game mysteries: a firestone cased in ice. The concept is not unique to me. I have often, in similar vein, sought inner counsel to Sir Thomas Wyatt’s antithetical sonnet; from an entry evocatively titled ‘Nirvana‘ in 2005, I nonchalantly labelled it a ’stock-epithet’ in ‘Maranatha‘ at the end of 2008.

I find no peace, and all my war is done;
I fear, and hope. I burn, and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise.
And naught I have, and all the World I seize on…

Attaching this to Knightmare has unique significance to me. For those not overly familiar with the show, it would require more space than I have liberty to take, but in short, it was a revolutionary and groundbreaking (labelled the world’s first) virtual-reality television gameshow, which ran in the UK between 1987 and 1994, and was also commissioned for shorter periods in France and Spain. The game, or quest, was undertaken by groups of four aged 11-16, with the objective of surviving three ‘levels’/stages of increasing difficulty, interacting with in-game characters, solving and navigating around tough riddles, puzzles and perils, and achieving an end-goal of, (with the odd exception), retrieving a magical, historical object. One player, blindfolded by a helmet, took the role of ‘dungeoneer’, and entered a chromakey blue-screen set, onto which was superimposed an atmospheric fantasy dungeon environment. Three companions remained in the central antechamber along with the Dungeon Master, and gave aid and directions.

One of the attractions of the game was its controversially graphic nature and its notorious degree of difficulty. The show was not without some political forbearance. Created in the uncompromising Thatcherite era of the 1980s, and intercepting trends favouring historicism, the show was fantasy escapism, that, in a sense, was no escapism. The vast majority of the participating teams met the ‘death’ of their dungeoneer, which was achieved in a variety of creative ways, ranging from falls, to bomb explosions, to piercings by spikes, to massacre by blades. There is a glint in the eye of Tim Child, the show’s creator, when he states in an interview in 2007 [accompanied by a clip from the final series in 1994]:

Some of the gameplay was really quite complex. It was always challenging, and also, it was quite scary. A dungeon is a dark, dank, dangerous place. It’s not the sort of place you would send six-year-olds in. Even in fantasy terms, with drawn environments, it’s pretty convincing. We scared an awful lot of children, but it made for great gameplay once they had been scared.

(Tim Child, ‘Children’s TV on Trial’, 2007)

Knightmare, refreshingly, did not suffer fools and often displayed exacting standards: failure, for example, to answer one riddle correctly in the final level, after 40-45 minutes of airtime, would withhold the vital information needed to complete the game, and rendered the team’s pending end inevitable. At the opposite end of the spectrum, several weak teams, especially in the early seasons, did not escape the first level. Near the beginning of each level, teams were presented with a choice of objects, of which two could be taken, often with clues as to what may be needed or prove helpful in the coming scenes. But from a series of more sporadic single-room challenges, as Knightmare’s audience swelled and the fantasy world and its characters began to formulate a television trademark, from its 5th series in 1991 the gameplay began to switch to greater background narratives and wider level synopses for each quest.

Knightmare Series 3 (1989). For one incorrect riddle in an earlier scene, the excellent Martin is foiled, or fried, at the death by the sorceress Morghanna

The evolution of the gameplay added a strong autopsic value to the legacy of the programme. It has long been argued amongst fans that there were elements of the show that were intrinsically unfair, and there are parallel attempts to try and decipher some of the tantalising mysteries behind some failed quests that continue to perplex its adoring fans 15-20 years afterwards. This is what begins to resemble the study of my favourite poet. The primary evidence is there, and so often it poses so many fascinating and intriguing questions that actively encourage the speculation, but it can only really be subjected to conjecture, with little chance of finding conclusive answers.

In this vein, I once declared that discussion of Knightmare was a science. I understand what was meant by that – a search for answers, with known facts and probabilities thrown in – but perhaps I am a little mistaken. The ‘field’ of my interdisciplinary PhD surrounding Andrew Marvell and seventeenth-century privacy falls into a strange category. A draft of my second chapter, which comprises the main historical synthesis, has recently been completed, and so I wait tentatively to learn how it is received, which directs my mind towards such methodologies. Literature fits within the humanities, while the history component falls between the humanities and social sciences. One objective, then, is to present the historical case as more conclusively factual, and then to offer a subjective reading of the poet within that context. The other is to present an original contribution to knowledge.

Applying that principle to Knightmare, to my regret, I have only been able to offer what I believe are two small contributions. The first is factual, related to my hometown: the shortest quest, in terms of airtime, was the first team of series 2, and not, as commonly thought, a later team of that same year. The second, true to form, is much more interesting in terms of conjecture, and relates to the quest featured here. One of the most seasoned of fans was left to consider, ‘This has got to be one of the best teams as far as wild speculation is concerned, since there are so many possibilities about what could have happened’. [The images are linked to clips, but this does not come close to representing Knightmare at its fiery best. The docile series 5 of 1991, plus a young team, has produced a mystery, not a thriller. These clips might help to follow the events].

"Fair Trade is No Robbery"

"Change" or "Switch"?

Backfire. The spell is a trick, and portends a gloomy end.

My interpretation of the synopsis of this level, to the best of my knowledge, has not been registered elsewhere relating to this discussion. The team learn that passage to the final level will require a firestone, and that one is frozen away in the level and will require magic to free it. The clue they receive along with the choice of objects in the level clue room is ‘Fair Trade is No Robbery’. The trader they encounter in the level is trickster Julius Scaramonger, who offers them a potion of impurity. When the team ask persistently about magic, he offers a choice of spells: Change or Switch. With little on which to base their choice, the team take Change, and attempt to cast it at the encased firestone, but it turns out to be a trick, and turns the dungeoneer, Chris, into a goblin. They are left to progress without their required object, and inevitably their progress is doomed. Their unique death is consumption by a Blocker. The discussion has all centred around the choice of spells. To me, ‘Fair Trade is No Robbery’ indicates that the initial offering, a rarity with Scaramonger, is the correct option, and that the impurity solution will dissolve the ice.

However, this does not solve all of the mysteries. In a later scene, the team encounter the monk, Brother Mace, for a second time. Mace hints, rather uniquely, at a second chance saloon, by advising them that with a jester’s stick (available to choose earlier from the clue room, but rejected), the team could summon the dungeon jester, Motley, who could reverse the spell. We learn after the team’s demise from the Dungeon Master that the jester would have provided them with the password to bypass the Blocker. Therefore, even though the team are lured into a trap and fail to retrieve the object needed for transport to the next level, there was still a potential synoptic route for the team to at least advance to the end and give themselves a chance. But there was no obvious clue that the team should choose the jester’s stick over any other. So, even had the team achieved the difficult element of the level in successfully retrieving the firestone, we might still be left to believe that without taking a gamble on the jester’s stick, their quest was bound to end in the same manner.

What this sequence of clues shows is that enough pieces of the synopic jigsaw were revealed to start forming an hazy image of how the level could be cracked, but not enough to be conclusive. If a dozen academically minded fans contemplating the case cannot conclusively decipher the fact, goodness knows how 12-13 year olds are expected to. But that, in a nutshell, was Knightmare.

The same degrees of mystery are true of the good poet. The end of the finest essay on Marvell’s finest poem, the equipoised and ultra-ambiguous ‘Horatian Ode’, says: ‘Reading the poem through once more, we think that Marvell has declared a commitment after all. Then we see the shadows closing in’ (Blair Worden, 1987). Meanwhile, the opening paragraph of the doctoral thesis of one of my academic inspirations, speaks of Marvell in a way that I have come to regard Knightmare as well:

his most distinctive poems are brilliant precisely because they perplex the reader, perhaps perplexed Marvell himself, and often tacitly make perplexity their subject.

(Dr. John McWilliams, ‘Andrew Marvell and the Act of Writing’, 2003)

Why I come to this in the first place is distinctly personal: something that I wish to underplay, but which may benefit from understanding in the exploration. I have been looking for that same brand of striking, iconic allegory, and find that the allusion runs deeper than an image, but an episode wreathed in perplexity. I find what I am looking for, not only in the thoughts surrounding perplexity, but in this wonderful antithesis of fire encased in ice. There is some icy kind of barrier inhabiting my fire, and it stops me from moving on, figuratively speaking, to the next level. And I don’t know how to break through it. Do I need medication? Do I need counselling? Do I need to go back in time and alter my choices? Perhaps the answer is ‘yes’ to all three, but I fear that to take the wrong option, I may start inflicting yet further damage that cannot easily be rectified. If only all such problems could be consigned to a gameshow, to remain on a pedestal for others to heartily discuss for decades to come.

It is a fruitful time to be studying the intellectual history of privacy. Privacy has been connected with print and politics since the seventeenth century, and has become a permanent fixture in current news.

The scandal over MPs’ expenses, which has dominated headlines over a good number of weeks, has posed many moral questions about the jurisdiction of public and private information. Even without the revelation of expenses claims, the attempts to hinder the release of members’ claims, and the vilification of those who promoted it, actions which proved the downfall of speaker Michael Martin, may have been evidence enough that there was something rather dreadful to hide. Conservative MP Sir Patrick Cormack, approaching 40 years of service, remarked that “The times that we are living in are unprecedented as far as Parliament is concerned. What is at stake is the institution of Parliament and its integrity”. We witness a brand of secrecy so corrupt that the only way of maintaining any faith in parliament as a ruling body is to preserve that which is already unknown to the public.

The popular turn to history has centred right upon Oliver Cromwell (Conservative; Telegraph). However, in terms of the public and private nature of these practices, it is important to expand the context right to the beginning of the seventeenth century. The early Stuart kings had forged an impression of public transparency. At the turn of the century, James I’s model of kingship, the Basilikon Doron, declared that anything spoken ‘in darknesse, should be heard in the light’, that whatever ‘spoken in the ear in secret place, should be publicklie preached on the tops of the houses’, and that kings, ‘being publike persons, by reason of their office and authority are as it were set (as it was sayd of old) upon a public, in the sight of all the people’ must be ‘the more careful, not to harbour the secretest thought in their mind’. Intended as a private text, a leak led to hack publication of the Basilikon Doron, which prompted a legitimate published version in 1603. Certainly, the divulgence of the king’s intentions for public affront and transparency offered little to be afraid of, but an ‘authorised’ version may have been sharp to remove advice that it was sometimes necessary to deceive the people you serve. What emerged was the familiar discrepancy between words and practice. James’ distaste for publicity was made abundantly clear in the first instance during the coronation ceremonies. Upon a courtier reporting that a large crowd surrounding his carriage wished to see his Majesty’s face, the king’s retort was clear:

‘God’s wounds: I will pull down my breeches and show them my arse!’

James displayed tight, private control over foreign and military policy, which came under the realm of state secrets, the arcana imperii, and desired complete discretion over decision making, achievable through divine right. His successor, Charles I, privately vowed not to follow hypocritical elements of his father’s behaviour, but his predisposition showed obsession towards personal privacy. The capture of Charles’ private letters at Naseby in 1645, published triumphantly by parliament as a sign of victory and conclusive evidence in their efforts to discredit the king, demonstrated the ability of the public sphere, once it is able to penetrate, to blast apart the private.

As we appreciate that constitutional power has all but transferred from the crown to parliament, the public outcry at the revelations was completely justified, though I think it has been cleverly manipulated. This is not to excuse the actions of bankers nor members, but more to contextualise the reaction. Vast banking incentives, vast pensions, and glorious expenditure would not make such grandiloquent headlines in a period of strong economic growth. In the midst of recession, however, close investigation of such sums has not only covered recent ground, but largely the past 5 years. Interrogation in 2009 of sums from 2004-2007 are difficult to ignore, but there is a grain of hypocrisy in criticising now, with mass public attention, that which was branded less significant and yielded less public reaction then. Ways, means and ideas make up traditions, and so much depends on what is inherited. Comment and reaction has rekindled Oliver Cromwell’s speech in April 1653 to the Rump Parliament. This parliament was succeeded by what contemporaries labelled the Barebones Parliament, a failed experiment, which, in essence, served to prove that no man was necessarily exempt from the power, wealth, and corruption that could be accrued at Westminster, nor the tendency for damaging confrontation. If English history has shown that Westminster promotes itself as a lucrative haven or the place where good men are turned, it has also shown, arcana imperii through caveat emptor, that secrecy governs advantage. There are fundamental flaws in a system with tempting allowances so great that it actively encourages opportunistic and entrepreneurial behaviours.

What is almost as equally lamentable about the situation is the moral rectitude that comes forth, because I struggle to believe that the vast majority wouldn’t try it on in much the same way. A test of public spiritedness is not nearly the same as a test for public profligacy, which is not nearly the same as testing the average person with the allowances available to MPs, which must raise a sense of entitlement, to see how well they resist the temptation that comes, with the only requirement being – pre June 2009 – the prerogative to claim privately. Is there any way in which the television licence fee could be branded public money? Some of the salaries of TV celebrities are extortionate, and while it is lamentable that Lord Foulkes believes that democracy can seriously be undermined in a country led by an unelected prime minister, whose avoidance of an election speaks volumes, I do agree that MPs salaries, as such, are taken out of context when we consider that newsreading brings in £92,000. [4:45-6:00]

[Alas: not yet able to embed the BBC content through its own flash player]

However, even if we take into account press manipulation, and a certain degree of displaced overreaction, what is particularly hard to understand is the PM’s tight defences in trying to maintain that which is not only lost, but which is damaging in the flailing attempts to retain it. The mid-seventeenth century through 2009 has shown that privacy is the barricade or dam to a public torrent. Once there is a breach, or, more potently, a collapse, there is a certain folly in trying to patch this up. The first move was the attempt to recalibrate the expenses system to resemble that used in Brussels, which proves even less restrictive than the vilified existing system. The second, given the almost inevitable need to release the details of expenses, was to restrict the flow of sensitive information from the published expenses claims by blacking it out. The obvious flaw with this evasion, which eludes to earlier shades of government censorship that Milton respectfully began the campaign against in 1644, is that sensitive information, including addresses, could protect members against the most lucrative claims for the ‘flipping’ of second homes. From an EU summit in Brussels, the Prime Minister has stated that he is committed to “maximum exposure”, and that “while ensuring that security issues are addressed, as they have to be, our first principle must be maximum transparency”. David Cameron, on the other hand, believes that much more could be revealed without compromising “legitimate security concerns” (BBC). The third move, revealed this week, a ‘private’ inquiry into the Iraq war, shows how clearly the higher echelons have failed to understand how public and private domains operate in the relationship between leaders and their people.

MPs Expenses Blackout: 'Maximum transparency'?

So, politics and print (or the press) would contend that it was in the public interest to avoid privacy and secrecy in all matters of public life, and even to some degree the private lives of its servants. But the ethics surrounding privacy are particularly uncomfortable. For the purposes of this piece, I am defining ‘secrecy’ as a use of privacy, an action that intends to restrict information on a large scale. Secrecy is widely associated with subterfuge, and often spells malpractice. But where do we draw anonymity into this? The anonymous author of the now defunct blog NightJack, which provided insight into the inner workings and bureaucracy of the constabulary, was revealed this week. Inquisitive journalism procured the details and a judge rejected Mr Horton’s appeal against their release, ruling effectively that writers publishing material on the internet forfeited their right to withhold names and identities should they be in any way detectable.

Samples of NightJack available here.

The author’s response to the release here.

A legal view here.

Anonymity provides a thin veil between publicity and privacy. Detaching the identity of the writer disrupts the theoretical associations made for ‘speech acts’. Controversial speech acts these may be, but anonymous commentary has the power to propagate a new genre of information that would otherwise be unavailable. This specific case revolves around ‘public interest’, or, at least, this is the premise that has been used to justify the journalistic involvement. When we draw politics and print into the diagnostics of privacy, where do we draw the line at what constitutes public interest?

There are certain limits I think we are all prepared to adhere to with regards to freedom to speech; to some extent, those who publish in any sphere have their responsibilities. This is not to condone breaches of the law and of sensitive case information, but instead to argue that there is a degree of public interest represented in such content. Exposing a particular brand of voice, perspective, into the inefficiencies of our service, could use public exposure to instigate change in the way that only public exposure can. Whenever Pandora’s Box remains closed, there is often so little incentive for development and improvement in what is occasionally shoddy practice. If boardrooms and executives on large salaries are allowed to use protective boundaries of their institutions and repressive law to build barriers around comfort zones, we might expect little honesty, transparency and/or efficiency in overall management, and only a tightening around secret practices. The public tends to support the efforts of ‘whistle-blowers’ who aim to publicly outcry chronic failings in operations, but such actions come, more often than not, with self-sacrifice. One high profile example is UKIP’s Marta Andreasen, who was notably ousted from her position as Chief Accountant for the European Commission for persistent reporting of serious laxity in systems of accounting and expense. Inevitably, the author of NightJack has already been disciplined. It is worth noting that the blog did not receive mass interest until it was inadvertently recommended for, and won, the Orwell prize, which came after the blog had ended; nor was the award collected by the author.

Privacy has a complex relationship with the concept of authorship, and these pointers show that there is little way of attributing straightforward codes of authorship to this kind of literary format. Respected columnist Daniel Finkelstein has led the argument in favour of the exposure, but for a dead or dormant journal, it is difficult to believe that The Times’ priorities lay in any way as a moral crusade in the public interest. Journalistic interests have come first; however assuredly, justification has been concocted afterwards [Note the difference in sympathies from June 17th to June 19th]. Having looked back to Jacobean England, Guido Fawkes’ hugely popular blog, another victim of identity disclosure, argues that the press need to be equally transparent in their more subtle moves of anonymity [before, and after, response].

Publicity and transparency are the new popular political weapons, and privacy threatens to be transformed into a new brand of human selfishness. The calls for Cromwell to reform Parliament have, so far, missed the wider and more potent allusion. The PM seems to resemble Charles I in several ways: lacking charisma and interpersonal skills, an inclination towards Personal Rule, a lack of awareness of the public and private domains, and a damaging disposition towards secrecy. If The Kings Cabinet Opened , the publication of incriminating private letters in 1645, was the move that brought Charles to execution, the parliamentary revolution that threatens once again from the private affairs of expenditure made public may leave the prime minister thankful for enlightened times. The bleeding head held aloft in January 1649, reminding Marvell of that found on the Capitol Hill, ‘which caused the architects to run’, might remind the PM of his one resemblance of Cromwell. Did he, in fact, ‘by industrious valor climb / To ruin the great work of Time’? Milton’s 1648 sonnet to the leader of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax, urging him to finish the job, contains a chilling omen.

a Nobler task awaits thy Hand,
For what can War, but Acts of War still breed
Till injur’d Truth from Violence be freed;
And publick Faith be rescu’d from the Brand
Of publick Fraud; in vain doth Valour bleed,
While Avarice and Rapine shares the Land.

Perhaps, then, it’s back to the private gardens and bergamots.

Thank you very much for visiting and supporting this space. It is a little quiet of late because our family is expecting a new arrival soon, and I am baring the brunt of the physical upheaval.

A fine Bordeaux red for the early hours (2003)

It is hard to judge whether this red sky was at night or in the morning, but I will miss the wholesome view either way.

It is good to see the warmer weather returning, and to feel the sunshine gracing days again. It makes quite a considerable difference to monotonous days. The weather this past week first brought to mind the setting of Robert Browning’s ‘A Lover’s Quarrel’: “Oh, what a Dawn of Day! / How the March sun feels like May”. However, at the back of my mind, a slightly more convoluted idea was forming, taking its roots in Robert Herrick’s ‘Farewell Frost, or Welcome Spring’.

FLED are the frosts, and now the fields appear
Re-cloth’d in fresh and verdant diaper.
Thaw’d are the snows, and now the lusty spring
Gives to each mead a neat enamelling.
The palms put forth their gems, and every tree
Now swaggers in her leafy gallantry.
The while the Daulian minstrel sweetly sings,
With warbling notes, her Terean sufferings.
What gentle winds perspire !   As if here
Never had been the northern plunderer
To strip the trees and fields, to their distress,
Leaving them to a pitied nakedness.
And look how when a frantic storm doth tear
A stubborn oak, or holm, long growing there,
But lull’d to calmness, then succeeds a breeze
That scarcely stirs the nodding leaves of trees :
So when this war, which tempest-like doth spoil
Our salt, our corn, our honey, wine and oil,
Falls to a temper, and doth mildly cast
His inconsiderate frenzy off, at last,
The gentle dove may, when these turmoils cease,
Bring in her bill, once more, the branch of peace.

Robert Herrick, ‘Farewell Frost, or Welcome Spring’

The identity of the seventeenth-century citizen, and much of their livelihoods in turn, revolved around ideology: moral instruction and religious practice. The far-removed identity of the twenty-first-century English citizen revolves around different factors. Be it money, status, pride, the size of one’s car, or bank balance, or perhaps family, friends, children, and day-to-day survival, much of this boils down to occupation. Although cultural materialism interests me these days, I am not suggesting a direct parallel between the English Civil War and the current recession. What is evident, though, is the scale of the effect on livelihood.

Herrick was a Royalist, what many would call a ‘Cavalier’ poet. The execution of Charles I in 1649 had, and continues to have, a profound effect on English history. A book of elegies, Lachrymae Musarum, commissioned for the young Lord Henry Hastings, who also died in that year, featured a poem by Robert Herrick, and has been described as ‘the funeral of active royalism’. With the execution of the King in 1649 went the magnanimous figure of God’s representative on Earth, and the nucleus of a system of beliefs that kept a sizeable proportion of the population with a sense of purpose.

Likewise, to many twenty-first century individuals and families, jobs are the intellectual, physical, and often social, centerpiece of their lives, the means of survival, and the sense of accomplishment. With the numbers of unemployed rising, that sense of purpose is becoming ever more elusive as this economic crisis continues to unfold.

Two current concerns in the early modern studies are writing lives and displaying lives. But my wider concern, for the purposes of this entry, is thoughts around representing lives, understanding lives, and supporting lives. It can be easy to seek comfort in the past, even exploiting the present for its cultural concerns where opportunity can be found. But we risk alienating the people who count the most: those of this day and age.

The old adage states that we learn something new every day. Sometimes, whether we realize it or not, that something is only the perilous indictment of human nature. In a book I reviewed last year on Royalism in the final years of the English Civil War, the author questioned why Royalism, in his view, had received considerably less attention than Parliament and the English Republic. His answer was telling: ‘perhaps defeat, like familiarity, breeds contempt’. Is that a general rule? Personal experience does not discredit the theory.

"Defeat, like familiarity, breeds contempt"?

Since leaving Geneva and hallowed status behind, it is remarkably transparent how the process of communication, which always seemed to work relatively seamlessly as an academic staff member, has now dried up. Since the beginning of 2009, some of my finest work (by request) and/or important queries have been sent through electronic channels, and precisely nothing has come back in return. There is no dispute that these recipients are extremely busy people: academic professors and journalists. What is unduly provocative, however, is that the professors in question either instructed me to get in touch, or actively contacted me in the first place.

What troubles further is a slight air of suspicion. Last month, I submitted a polite but detailed query about a particular article in the Sunday Times, bringing up my dissertation topic and why it was relevant. No reply came, but an article has since emerged from the journalist on the topic of privacy. There is no direct parallel, but connection enough just to set alarm bells ringing a little. This is not an isolated event. An esteemed academic recently got in touch to compliment one of my syllabuses, informing me of the intention of adapting it for their own course, and expressed keenness to see my work. Having sent it across, the communication stream went quiet, and it was later discovered that, for all the best intentions and purposes, this most esteemed and distant colleague may be co-authoring two books on the subject. Is there reason to feel slightly aggrieved? A compliment has been traded for an awful lot more.

While there are all manner of reasons and explanations why the tide goes quiet, it just seems unusual that a number of promising situations have shrivelled thanks to the vacuous silence from other parties, silence which comes with my departure from Geneva and downwards spiral. Looking for counter-evidence – of healthy co-operation with my staff status intact – I might state the example of Prof. Scott Paul Gordon, who contacted me last year through a LiveJournal entry on the topic of second hand books, before emailing to offer assistance with any other books I may be looking for. Around my difficulties at that time of working and living in two different countries and replying sparsely, he very kindly took the time to help assess which books he could offload for a knockdown price, and could not have been more helpful.

This is not to say, of course, that Prof. Gordon would not have offered the same help had I not been affiliated with the Genevan English Department, nor that the replies hoped for from more recent activity would have been forthcoming had I retained my status. This situation remains an unlikely conspiracy on my part with evidence acting like popcorn. But with that powerful quotation in mind about defeat – failure – breeding contempt, I just wonder if there are others out there who feel a sudden change in attitude towards them following a ‘negative’ change in their circumstances. Somehow, I’m sure I am not the first.

One of Robert Herrick’s contemporaries, fellow Royalist poet and Cavalier (in the true sense of the word), Richard Lovelace, wrote a moving ode entitled ‘The Grasse-hopper’. Lovelace was a champion of his cause, by the sword and by the pen. However, he was incarcerated several times for his cause and died lonely and forgotten, an epitome of how fortunes can change.

But ah the Sickle! Golden Eares are Cropt;
Ceres and Bacchus bid good night;
Sharpe frosty fingers all your Flowr’s have topt,
And what sithes spar’d, Winds shave off quite.

Poore verdant foole! and now green Ice! thy Joys
Large and as lasting, as thy Pierch of Grasse,
Bid us lay in ‘gainst Winter, Raine, and poize
Their flouds, with an o’reflowing glasse.

Thou best of Men and Friends! we will create
A Genuine Summer in each others breast;
And spite of this cold Time and frosen Fate
Thaw us a warme seate to our rest.

Our sacred harthes shall burne eternally
As Vestall Flames, the North-wind, he
Shall strike his frost-stretch’d Winges, dissolve and flye
This Aetna in Epitome.

Richard Lovelace, ‘An Ode, To My Noble Friend, Mr. Charles Cotton, The Grasse-Hopper’, 13-28.

Perhaps due to idleness, naivety, passivity or apathy – the ambiguity allows plenty of interpretation – the grasshopper freezes. With undertones of patriotism and allegiance, Lovelace tries to inspire a warmth through love, and the warmth or springtime he envisages releases the creature. It is not clear, however, whether the grasshopper defrosts and lives, or evaporates and dies: it is a beautiful stasis between life and death.

I join many others out there as grasshoppers of this winter. We exist as fragile poetic fragments, unsure whether we survive and continue (waking the dead), or whether we see our existences evaporate and vanish (‘dissolve and flye’). Rather, we are at the mercy of others empowered to make these interpretations for themselves – if they have a care to notice in the first place.

Official UK Charts, 1st March 2009. Rare Thrill!

NT: I don’t think pop needs to worry about whether it’s art … it’s not really the concern of pop to decide whether it’s art.

CL: Thank you for expressing in words what I can only sigh and groan.

(Guardian)

If you participate in or follow music that is unlikely to catch on with the greater public, the keen disclaimer is that the charts are not the only measure of success for musicians. But it is nice to revel in them now and again.

The charts, like many methods of assessment, are not perfect. They give the straightforward statistics of the current market for music. Record labels, along with the artists, work assiduously at creating demand. Strategies include popular advertising, weeks of prior radio or television airtime, and choosing the release date, with the most explicit example the high-exposure X-Factor, now with monopolistic control over the coveted Christmas no. 1 spot. But the last twelve months have shown that certain events which upset the charts or resurrect older music can still bring a mischievous sense of fun to it all.

Consumer demonstration against the X-Factor winning single in December 2008 forged an antagonistic and reactionary interest in Jeff Buckley’s 1984 cover of Hallelujah, which made no. 2 in the singles chart, and brought Leonard Cohen’s original, which had never itself seen such exposure before, also inside the top 40. The Pet Shop Boys’ recent (and long overdue) acclaim with a BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music and a prime time live performance saw their 2003 PopArt album reenter significantly higher than its original placement of 30, and anticipates the release of their new album, Yes, later this month.

PopArt! Back in vogue?

for everything which is Natural...

As pleasant a surprise as it was for tripping generic expectations, the rise of Scooter’s Jumping All Over the World to no. 1 in the album charts in May 2008 was considered a shock. Had record labels not missed an opportunity here? Word is, that if a techno outfit, whose previous single releases (despite delighting clubbers) have not threatened the higher reaches of the UK charts, can reach the top spot, it speaks of a real lack of quality releases and an opportunity for another battery album to reach a coveted statistic.

Such a response hints at the nature of the music business, predicting, presupposing, and pushing to determine trends. We are talking about the symbiotic relationship between business and culture: what will sell, and fashion, what consumers want. Fashion is attached to period: perhaps twenty years, perhaps a season, perhaps a few weeks, or maybe as brief as a single week. It speaks of the here and now. What the charts essentially show is fashion, as superficial as it might seem on occasion. The charts are not there to celebrate Queen’s 1981 Greatest Hits every week, nor to concede that more people own that record than most no. 1 sales for several years combined, but instead to celebrate, for example, The Saturdays’ latest new entry at no. 2, a cover of ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’. Thankfully, the writer of this track, the grossly underrated Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure), wasn’t a million miles away.

This is not a criticism of the format: a hierarchy of greatest selling albums remaining the same every week would be no use, and the absence of such revered bands in the charts does not in any way detract from their great achievements. The charts provoke interest, competition, and a mark of success that everybody strives for. Top ten hits prove a fan base; success makes much more possible. Without the security of a multi-record deal, an album that fails to take off could always be an artist’s last. The criticism might be that the mark of success sometimes holds a disproportionate weighting in judging quality. Simon Amstell’s take on self-declared avant-garde says enough. [Message for the clip]

So, how should success be measured in the music industry? Charts and sales are the automatic indicator, but there is a certain frivolity to the cultural sphere of market driven output, when artists flitter in and out before disappearing off the horizon. Like sports league tables, if you support whatever act is floating near the top at any given period, success and victory have a certain inevitability, if not a shallowness, to them. It was reported in December that around 500,000 copies of the X-Factor winner’s single had been pre-sold before the winner was announced. Is that a perfect reflection that half a million consumers would have been as happy with an Eoghan Quigg rendition as an Alexandra Burke one, or is it about trying to buy into a little piece of success for oneself? “That recordbreaker – I was part of that!”

For music, a cultural entity shaped by new technology, evolved language, a sexual revolution of sorts, indulgence in the short-term and fashion, and essentially, a changing world, what about longevity? You can imagine the disgruntled headline in some quarters, and a tickled amusement in others: “What is the world coming to? The Pet Shop Boys and Erasure are sitting proudly in the album charts.” Absolutely Fantastic.

If part of my identity is music that strikes a different demographic, then I’m behind any attempt to drive releases up to unlikely heights. A defining memory from my Masters year at Edinburgh in 2006/07 (something about studentdom and independence), was getting behind Erasure’s releases and getting them airplay. It was refreshing to know that presenters of the calibre of Jonathan Morrell were all too glad to comply. Success can be judged on its merits. Nobody supposes that artists forever dubbed with the quintessential tag of ’80s’ continue to release material with any expectation of chart-topping, but reaching the top 20 is neither a foregone conclusion, nor a poor achievement, and if I speak for fans, this one has certainly been appreciative.

The ingredients of an unlikely postgraduate: SCONUL card and Erasure single

Moving from context to content, with a precursor. Writing about pop can be a dauntingly intellectual pursuit, and rightly so. If the pioneering Pet Shop Boys warranted a label, perhaps ‘intellectual pop’ would not be far from the mark. One of my main insecurities about writing is not knowing enough: even writing a doctoral thesis, there is always an unerring feeling that somebody out there knows  more. The first rule of such writing, however, is writing about what pleases. Even if I can only be a New Critic to Iain Moffat’s relative brand of Historicism, I am reassured that passion for the music is always the best place to start.

One of the more negative practices encountered through my specific academic endeavours is the critic’s prerogative to categorize schematically – almost as if it is a test of the credentials to do so – and then to trouble over, or manipulate evidence around, the works that their structures do not accommodate. I adore the glowing reprisal of the upcoming Yes, and yet am troubled by any consensus that the 2006 album Fundamental was such a disappointment. Even in their praise, reviewers of Fundamental, in turn, address the poignant 2002 Release with reluctant tones. Pop is, for many, there to entertain; the intricacies can please and puzzle but not trouble. That is, to some degree, the problem with genre, which subconsciously carries too much expectation. In the wake of the BRIT Award last month, Rob Morris says it perfectly:

What sets them apart is their bloody-minded refusal to do what people expect. It annoys people who just want them to put out another Very-esque album of disco stompers (even though that album isn’t actually that disco heavy), but it means they’ve a rich and varied catalogue which always sounds quintessentially them whilst regularly sounding like nothing you’ve heard them do before.

It also means that the claims of “a return to form” which have, bizarrely, been thrown at their last and next albums, are invariably wide of the mark. They can’t return to form, because they never actually left it, they just didn’t do what you expected.

… They like dance music and they like pop music, like I do, and they manage to make both intellectually satisfying. “Depth through surface” is how they were once described, and I think that’s a fantastic result to achieve.

(Fallen-Angel / Rob Morris)

Effortlessly, without donning the mantra of prog. rock predecessors, they defy generic expectations, and thus continue to divide opinion quite severely. They are the closest musical entity I can proscribe to Andrew Marvell. Firstly, everything is underpinned with lyrical quality. They are poets, of an unexpected leaning: their very own ‘once-in-a-lifetime production’. Very much left to their own devices, ‘Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat’ exemplifies the nuclear fusion that once took place between the compelling, and yet repelling too-striking lyric, with the energies of the pop engine. ‘Form, Earth, Life, Decide something less decisional’ counters ‘the greatest vocoder-rized chorus of the new millennium’ (Stylus). It is a formula which, like the metaphorical fusion it derives from, feels unstable through its surreality, but which produces a unique isotope in the music world.

Secondly, ambiguity constantly promotes much from little. ‘A sharp suggestion, He couldn’t get an erection’: the story of ‘Casanova in Hell’ from Fundamental about the shame of a failed sexual experience strikes as a reverse subterfuge. Normally, one looks for innuendo, the explicit within the implicit. For all the expletives that are paraded in modern music, nowhere else do we get anything that cuts the atmosphere like this. Typically, empty bravado stems from the man who isn’t getting any, not honesty bound with shame. Who else would face failure in masculine credentials right in the eye? (Pun intended.) Take the film scene, with one character left standing as time speeds around him, crowds dash by, until all dies down and all that remains is swirling rubbish and dereliction. Take the white suits, the long limos, and the tangible air of masculinity, and know that Tennant and Lowe stand aloft, as pop counsellors to the superficially broken. How often, given the explicit, is one so compelled to seek out the profundity?

Thirdly, fierce public political messages are matched with concerns for privacy. Fundamental is an album that fascinatingly troubles me. I agree with the Guardian review that the single, ‘I’m With Stupid’, was a ‘misfire’, although that is through my own apprehensions at the admirable complexity of a catalogue being misrepresented by a song that caught public imagination through its sardonic and moronic catchphrase. All the pieces were there, but something about the album does not sit comfortably. The choice of singles was questionable, likewise the order of the tracks. Yet, there is a surreal aura about the album, a vortex of static electricity, that thrives off its imperfections. ‘God Willing’, as dramatic an opening as 80 seconds can find, punctuates the middle of the album, and flows directly into ‘Luna Park’. There’s your quota of coherence. No messing, however, with the outspoken and demonstrative dance inferno which completes the album. ‘Integral’, a condemning view of ID cards, leaves you in no doubt that music can carry messages much more powerfully than a soundbite in a newspaper column.

In certain counts, the delicate Release (2002) could not be much different. On another, the beautiful ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’, the penultimate track of Fundamental, blends in effortlessly. There is a strained, cathartic purpose to Release, but it showcases interiority with a poignancy that Fundamental for the most part avoids. Even ‘Casanova’ finally gets it right. The Pet Shop Boys hide novels and mandates in albums, they tease musical theatre through a delightful escapade of electronica and dance, they are cut-throat and yet empathetic, progressive and yet nostalgic. All of this goes some way to explaining the 10 consecutive top-ten albums across three decades between 1987 and 2002, and Fundamental’s fully justified no. 5. Their music, to paraphrase what has been said of Marvell’s ‘The Garden’: is, and it isn’t, anything and everything you want it to be. They are the most slippery of eels, and amongst the finest of contemporary musicians.

The PSBs team up with Girls Aloud producer Xenomania for their new album, Yes

It is a parallel, and a journey, that Erasure dearly deserve, but have yet, and seem unlikely, to find. One of Vince Clarke’s treasures sitting at the top of the charts serves as a reminder of how underrated Erasure remain. What the Pet Shop Boys publicised throughout the late 80s and early 90s, Erasure, in another sense, mastered. Whilst few pop figures carry half the charisma of Neil Tennant, Erasure have become victims of their own quietude. Nobody would easily guess that Erasure had five consecutive UK no. 1 albums: The Innocents (1988), Wild! (1989), Chorus (1991), Pop! (1992), and I Say I Say I Say (1994). To put that into context, of all the most popular artists I could think to check, including Michael Jackson, Queen, The Smiths, Pink Floyd and (-give me strength!) Westlife, only The Beatles, Abba, and Robbie Williams share that credential. Erasure collected a BRIT award in 1989 for best British group, but have received precious little recognition in recent times.

If the Pet Shop Boys have a strongly political identity, Erasure’s has been a predominantly gay one. That it not to say that it has been inflicted on an unwilling audience, nor that it has excessively infiltrated the music. For one, even the most endemic of their classics, ‘A Little Respect’, is hardly Village People; for another, the venerable Vince Clarke is married with a young son, Oscar, and tucked away in the outskirts of Maine, New England. But openness has remained part of Andy Bell’s persona, and Love is synonymous with their music. There is a touch of the bucks-fizz: sparkle, sweetness, and firmly grounded. Without intellectual faux-pas, Erasure reach closest to home. Their lament for a bleak climate of unemployment in the late 80s, the plaintive accordion jaunt of ‘The Circus’ (‘There was once a future for a working man’), could soon come back to bite. If the Pet Shop Boys are metaphysicals or neoclassicists, Erasure are undoubtedly the ‘romantics’ of pop.

Tours in recent years have involved Pride and True Colors in the US, whilst it could be argued that they never hit the heights they could have done in the States because of a dilemma about how they should be marketed to what was believed a homophobic music audience. The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers recently noted in the documentary Pet Shop Boys: A Life in Pop that ‘America is still getting used to this word gay … there’s going to be a wall that’s going to get put up’. The PSB hit ‘Opportunities’ from their first album, Please (1986) strikes a particularly resonant chord because Erasure have nobly put identity, and, in Vince’s case, family, before opportunity. This seems all the more fetching when we note that Vince’s local community in Maine have no idea about his musical credentials [Boston Globe], and Andy Bell’s recent activity involves selling bread on a market stall in Hastings [Quietus]; meanwhile the likes of Tom Jones and Michael Jackson continue to cash in on empty careers.

Erasure: Wild (1989). Worthy pin-ups 20 years ago

It remains to be seen how gay issues (beyond orientation) affect the market for music in the UK as well. In 2006, the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘I’m With Stupid’ reached no. 8 in the UK singles chart, and the subsequent Fundamental album went on to reach a worthy 5th in the album chart. The year before this, Erasure’s single ‘Breathe’, released in early January 2005, reached 4th in the singles chart, and yet inexplicably the Nightbird album only peaked at 27th. How defining was it that Andy Bell announced just prior to the release of the album that he had been HIV positive for several years? I ask this as a loaded question because Nightbird, for me, is possibly the most complete pop album of the decade. It had a defining single – the right one – and somewhat softer, sadder, plaintive tracks that lose none of the pleasure of pop. The BBC reviewer Zoe Street rightly draws attention to the nocturnal quality of the album suggested by name: ‘it’s magical listening to it at night’.

The scale of the polarised reception itself showed how the widespread attitude to pop remains. Through methods unknown, the BBC review links Nightbird to King Crimson’s The Power to Believe, admirably rich acumen. Progressive rock it is not, but different from the 2005 crowd – certainly. One thing is evident: after Erasure’s perceived lull, with the obscure but likeable sound of Loveboat in 2000 and the richly nostalgic Other People’s Songs in 2003 (which fans will adore), and the Pet Shop Boy’s perceived dip with Release in 2002, Erasure made the move to keep this little corner of music afloat.

Magical listening at night

'Purely honest, tender and revealing'

Reviews suggesting that Erasure sounded bored could surely not have been further from the mark. Andy and Vince believed that Nightbird was their best work to date, and were enthusiastic about their future in music. Their next move, perhaps in response to the criticism they received from sticking to what they know best, was Union Street in 2006, an acoustic collection of some of their back catalogue revived with the clandestine exposure which shows Andy Bell to be one of the most underrated singers of his generation. He has a vocal range that Neil Tennant, and even A-Ha’s Morten Harket, cannot match. The underpinned but distinct American country sound plays a feeling second best to Bell’s naked flame vocals. You can strip away the sine qua non defining electro-synth sound (most then complain of its absence) and realise that beyond the pale is another supremely talented combination of gifted writer and gifted vocalist. Vince himself notes that ‘We’re not a synth duo, we’re a song writing duo who use keyboards’ [Quietus]. Moreover, Mallory O’Donnell’s review, the most moving I have found on Erasure, takes this low-key album and admits that he has them all wrong.

Erasure have taken a chance with Union Street, but then their continued insistence on making music this purely honest, tender and revealing is in itself taking chances in the face of hipster irony and designer miserablism. No doubt their fanbase will appreciate the evident amount of love put into this release, and no doubt a larger success will continue to elude them. What should not continue, however, is the critical mistreatment of one of the most dedicated, unwavering groups delivering pure pop satisfaction with a minimum of self-indulgence and trendiness. We could all stand to learn a lesson from the loyalty to one’s own vision that Erasure represent in the face of a world largely bent on indifference—an indifference that chafes particularly as we desperately need voices like these in such trying, callous times.

[Stylus]

It has also emerged recently that an Erasure collaboration with Kate Bush was unsuccessful [Quietus], which puts into focus the fortune that the Pet Shop Boys have had with their collaboration and networking. After Dusty Springfield performed for ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This’, which reached no. 2 in both the UK and US singles charts, the Boys were invited to produce her next new album Reputation (1990). Many high profile collaborators have followed, including David Bowie, Elton John, Madonna, and, tapping right into the heart of the contemporary market, The Killers and Girls Aloud. As Erasure built on Nightbird with the acoustic album, the Pet Shop Boys, likewise, followed up their 2006 Fundamental success by producing something different. A double-CD of a concert recording from the Mermaid Theatre in May 2006 was released as Concrete, and featured stunning performances from Rufus Wainwright, Frances Barber and Robbie Williams. Into 2009, what better advocate to present the BRIT award and speak of his admiration of the Pet Shop Boys than impressionable frontman Brandon Flowers? How Erasure could use some of the same fortune of their own, if any high profile fans wish to emerge from the woodwork.

Brandon Flowers performs at the Brit Awards. Hot property, and a hot contact

The resurgence of quality pop has to be a great encouragement to fans of the genre, and Erasure have joined the charts in 21st with their latest release, Total Pop!, a selection of 40 hits spanning their entire career. Perhaps it is not the smartest move to market the release in the same way as the no. 1 album Pop! released in their chart prime, though Vince Clarke has already revealed that this is the record company’s initiative with Mute now absorbed by EMI. Erasure’s career has taken many more twists and turns in the last 15 years than its opening decade, and the irony is that most of the numbers on CD2 (1994 onwards) are not ‘hits’ in the same sense and should be contextualised differently, although the release encourages a heady comparison. The later tracks are album songs, or temporal samples, responsible to their respective albums. That is the mark of a duo who have experimented with sound where the PSBs have with content; suffered the blows that the PSBs have manoeuvred around; and matured in their own way, to try and keep their musical identity and dignity above the nostalgia act which they have proven themselves far beyond.

Doubts aside, the timing of a best-of compilation, following the Pet Shop Boys’ BRIT award, has evoked favourable memory of Erasure. Can they do the unthinkable and follow? Unbegrudgingly, Andy Bell labels the Pet Shop Boys as the ‘media darlings’ of pop compared to Erasure’s working class heritage (tracks from The Circus come swaying back into memory), attributing this to the PSB’s affiliation with the larger record labels. But yes, he would be delighted if the call came their way [The Sun]. Such optimism is to be admired, and perhaps the chart and fashion swing back towards pop comes just in the nick of time. With Bell taking time out from Erasure at the moment, one had to wonder if there was anything left. Emulating the BRIT success may be one goal which the Erasure duo now see as achievable, and which nobody in their right minds should deny them. There is introvert and extrovert, and if it is to be believed that you get nothing unless you’re asking for it, let’s hope that Erasure’s domestic tendencies don’t see them overlooked for the lifetime achievement or outstanding contribution accolade that they so richly deserve.

Pet Shop Boys: Love Etc. Released today (16/03/09)