Coincidences No.s 270 & 271 – Eat Your Heart Out

11/10/17

I go in to Eat opposite my office to have a coffee with an Irish TV presenter I’m meeting for the first time. We sit at one of the only two tables in the branch, two two-person tables side by side. The presenter asks me early in the conversation where I live. I tell him and mention that Feargal Sharkey (Northern Irish lead singer of The Undertones) also lives there. I am about to mention other music-related people in the neighbourhood, striving for a moment to recall, when I sense the person sitting diagonally opposite me, alone at the other table, perhaps four feet away, has had their attention drawn to our conversation. It turns out he had overheard reference to East Finchley. Because that is indeed where he lives too. And he is the very person I was about to name because he was in the much admired post-punk band Gang of Four. It’s nearly four years since I last saw him (when I was writing my first book). The three of us ended up having a fascinating conversation about Catalunya as the musician splits his time between East Finchley/Fortis Green (home of The Kinks) and Catalonia.

Gang of Four

12/10/17

I go to see the Basquiat exhibition at the Barbican. I notice how he uses three parallel horizontal lines for E and think perhaps I’ll adopt that for my own surname.

I walk away from the Barbican and pop into the nearby Eat for a sarnie. As I walk in I notice a prominent display (Grill Club) that uses a three parallel horizontal lines symbol.

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Creative Accounting No. 265

Nick Cave = Dave Vanian + Neil Diamond

Coincidences No.s 268 & 269

28 & 29/9/17

cocktail shaker kaleidoscope by judyth greenburgh

I meet an old friend of mine near the BBC in White City – she’s an artist from North London who now lives in Darwin, California in the desert. Recently she’s gotten really into making kaleidoscopes. One of the ones that most appealed to me was one made out of a cocktail shaker with pills/capsules providing the coloured pieces. I told her how I’d loved capsules since childhood when I was allowed to play with them in the back of my uncle’s pharmacy in Arnos Grove. I then showed her my capsule bracelet which I was wearing – a red-white capsule on a black band sold to benefit an AIDS charity.

I’m having a chat with TV presenter Tim Lovejoy and he tells me about some art he’d seen at a Soho exhibition the night before – it showed the work of an anonymous artist called Chemical X made of pills and capsules.

The Spirit Of Ecstasy by Chemical X

 

5/10/17

On my jog this morning I was listening to an episode of ‘Desert Island Discs’ featuring Caitlin Moran. For her final track she chose a song by Anne-Marie. I’d never heard of this singer and wondered who she was.

At 17:33 an email arrived from TicketWeb. It advertised an imminent concert by Anne-Marie.

 

 

Coincidences No.s 266 and 267

8/9/17

I am walking down to the bus stop to go to a meeting in Camden Town. The meeting is about a website I commissioned some  years ago on behalf of Channel 4 and the Arts Council called Quotables. This prompted me to think about the colleague I worked with at the Arts Council who I haven’t been in touch with for over a year, wondering how she was.

I’m in the meeting at Camden Town about an hour later and an alert comes up on my phone screen – an incoming email from that very person.

Derek Hill by Cecil Beaton (courtesy of Glebe House & Gallery, Co. Donegal, Ireland)

10/9/17

I am working on a documentary at the moment to do with the Mitford sisters, in particular Unity.

I stayed in Donegal during August beside the house of English artist, the late Derek Hill.

I read today that Derek Hill was the person who introduced Unity to Hitler. (I had no idea he had any connections with the Mitfords.)

A late realisation

As the annual Hajj comes to an end, here’s a quote from ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’ which would seem to reflect a significant realisation:

“I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land — every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike — all snored in the same language.”

 

Although I’d take the liberty of remixing it…

“I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping brothers and I learned that people from every land — every colour, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike — all snored in the same language.”

 

Loss of Good

Today 20 years ago I entered the day at a party in Tufnell Park (where we lived then) hosted by journalist Maggie O’Kane and her husband John, a Guardian editor. Despite the late night I found myself waking early with the radio on quietly on which I heard first about the accident of Diana, Princess of Wales, then early reports of her death. I told my Other Half when she woke. Despite being not in the least royalist and not particularly interested in Lady Di during her lifetime, I felt a sadness at the loss of someone who was so evidently kind-hearted and fundamentally good.

by Mario Testino

My Mrs had left something at the party and asked me to go get it once the time was decent – it was a Sunday morning. When I was back at Maggie’s flat, John already had a conspiracy theory worked out for the ‘murder’. Occupational hazard of being a journo I guess.

Later in the day we went into town and had lunch al fresco in Covent Garden. There was a copy of the Sunday Mail at the restaurant. On the last-minute-changed front page was wailing about the tragic loss of the people’s princess: inside, too late to change, was an ugly, snidey piece with a photo taken secretly in a gym from above of her. Caught out in their rank hypocrisy.

3.3.92

I crossed paths with Diana only once. It was at the premiere of the movie ‘Hear My Song’ at the Odeon Marble Arch (formerly the Disney cinema). I had a seat by the aisle and she walked close, breezed blondely by. The Irish singer Josef Locke, the main character of the film (played by Adrian Dunbar who had invited us along), attended that night and sang her Danny Boy. I still have a white kerchief with embroidered text they gave away to mark the occasion at the back of my sock drawer. (I’ll add a photo when I get back to within reach of my socks. – done)

To mark today I bought, in semi-ironic spirit, a small Charles & Di wedding dish in a junk shop in Carlingford, Republic of Ireland a few weeks ago. It cost 3 euros. They are pretty much ten a penny (plus Brexit currency rate) over there.

 

bought in Carlingford, Co. Louth – August 2017

More Egon Schiele

1914 – on the eve of war

Following on from the last post, I’m now enjoying a weissbier and melange (white coffee) after sausages and sauerkraut in the central square of Tulln. It turned out the railway station was actually Schiele’s birthplace – his father was station master and Egon was born in the apartment that came with the job on the first floor. His earliest subjects as a budding artist of 6 or 7 were the trains.

On leaving the station up the cobbled lane you start to come across notices on the ground marked: Egon Schiele Weg (ES Way). This is in marked contrast to my 1984 visit to Neulengbach (where Schiele kept a studio in his key years with his lover Wally (Walburga Neuzil) and where his guardian had a summer house). On arrival I asked a man in the main street if he knew where Schiele’s studio was. He told me urgently that you can’t talk about that round here and hussled me off to a nearby bar. He bought me a white wine before launching into an apology (in the original sense – explanation) for Austria’s role in WW2 – they were poor being the crux of it. I failed to find the studio which I knew had been in a small country lane. I may try again tomorrow.

Following the Weg I came across a junior school named after Schiele in 2015 on the 125 anniversary of the birth of who is now recognised as ‘the most famous son’ of Tulln. Quite a turnaround since his still underground status in the 80s.

By the Danube is a small museum dedicated to Schiele’s early years which was established in 1990, on his centenary, just over 5 years after my scholarship visit. None of the paintings I saw there today in the Frühe Gemälde (Early Paintings) exhibition betray his genius or originality except one. He was only 17/18, not yet finding his voice, but a painting of sunflowers (a field of which I saw from the train at Klosterneuburg where Schiele went to secondary school and first exhibited (in the monastery)) showed the advent of a design sensibility which shaped his future work.

1908 – on the eve of adulthood (aged 18)

Triple Coincidence No. 416 – Egon Schiele

The picture on our bedroom wall – Schiele’s wife, Edith (1917)

I’m in Vienna for the first time in over 30 years for Doc Campus documentary workshop at ORF (Austrian TV). The last time I was here was on a scholarship from Girton College, Cambridge for research on the Austrian painter Egon Schiele.

I’d first heard about Schiele in a radio interview of David Bowie. At the time (mid-late 70s) Schiele was not well known outside of the Euro art cognoscenti. His description caught my imagination and I became a teen devotee, having always favoured a graphic approach to figurative art. At school I used to deliver drawings of, say, a glass of water that looked more like cut diamond.

So today I decided to go on a Schiele pilgrimage either to the site of his studio (Neulengbach, just outside of Vienna, where I had a memorable visit in around 1984) or his birthplace (Tulln). I’m writing this on an S-bahn to Tulln.

As I was reading Schiele stuff online this morning in my pension room near Schwedenplatz I noticed for the first time ever that he shares a birthday with my wife. (Along with Anne Frank and Robert Elms.) There is a reproduction of a painting by Schiele in the corner of our bedroom which my wife bought me years ago: it is inscribed “thanks for always bringing pictures”.

I left the room to go to the hotel for the workshop. As the taxi ride dragged on I felt irritated by how far out of the city centre the hotel they had chosen was, out near Schloss Schönbrunn at Hietzing. Never heard of the place. Not much zing. Burbs.

I dumped my stuff and got on the U-bahn to go to to Franz Josef station for the train to Tulln.

I have just set foot in Tulln, sitting on the platform to finish this. Schiele’s father was an official at this station.

On the underground to the train station I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Schiele. Lo & behold there is a mention of sleepy old Hietzing! Schiele had a studio at 101 of the Hauptstrasse I just walked down. (I’ll go check out the site later.) It is here he met his wife Edith Harms, who lived opposite and features in many of his later paintings. She died three days before him in the Spanish flu epidemic in the wake of WW1. He was just 28 but had brought a new modern expressionist vision to painting.

Update, 5pm:

On the way back from Tulln I’m reading my book on the train – The Travelling Hornplayer by Barbara Trapido, a novel with nothing to do with painters – at least it hadn’t had until I got to the shores of the Danube at Tulln where, as I was reading, one of the main characters meets a student painter at college in Edinburgh. On the train back I got to a passage where this student painter’s style is described: “Stella thinks they [the student painter’s paintings] are maybe just a bit like Auerbach; maybe just slightly like Auerbach crossed with Egon Schiele.”

Coincidence No. 415 – orange & smiley

I am looking for the coaster from my office desk. No immediate joy so I decide to add it to my list of lost things to find. (Top of the list is a postcard from the early days of The Great War from a lad announcing to his parents that he’s joined up – it has a bulldog on the front.) It’s just I can’t describe it properly as the name of the toy from which the coaster design derives escapes me, it’s been so long since I’ve thought about it. The coaster design is flat orange with a particular black smile. I resort to asking Prof. Google… A Space Hopper – that’s what those classic 70s bouncy toys with horns were called.

The next morning I hear on the news about a new set of stamps to be released by the Royal Mail. Classic British toys. The Space Hopper features.

Media Technology & Stories

I’m a bit wary of the fetishisation of ‘Story-telling’ in recent years, but nonetheless I really like this quotation recounted by Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman in his entertaining volume  ‘Which Lie Did I Tell? (More adventures in the screen trade)’.

The words come from legendary literary agent Evarts Ziegler (who acted for many top screenwriters) – he was told (back in the 70s) that technology was going to change everything about Hollywood. His response was… 

I don’t care what you say. I don’t care if your fucking technology figures out a way how to beam movies from the moon directly into our brains. People are still going to have to tell good stories.