Archive for the ‘musings’ Category
The Question of ‘Work-Life’ Balance
Kate Winslet’s film ‘Lee‘ about the life of American photographer Lee Miller, which premiered at TIFF in Toronto last September, is due to arrive in cinemas and on Sky sometime this quarter or thereabouts.
The movie is based on the biographical ‘The Lives of Lee Miller‘ by her son Anthony Penrose, who I had the pleasure of meeting when it came out in 1988 and I was reviewing the book – he gave me a tour of Farley Farm in Sussex (where the Lee Miller Archives are now based, it had been Lee and Roland Penrose’s home, which then was passed on to Anthony and his late wife, who together welcomed me warmly to their cosy kitchen). Anthony later pulled various prints out of plan chests to show me. The moment I particularly remember relates to Holocaust Memorial Day which was this weekend. Lee, working as a war correspondent for Vogue, was among the first to enter Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. She felt she had to telegraph to the editor this message once she had sent back her photos: “I IMPLORE YOU TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE!” Anthony recounted to me that his mother had told him in relation to these pictures that the one thing she could never forget, more than the sights, was the smell.
Following the bijou ‘You Will Not Lunch In Charlotte Street Today‘ exhibition of her work which closed a week ago at the handsome TJ Boulting building in London’s Fitzrovia, I visited another Lee Miller show at Brighton Museum, ‘Lee Miller: Dressed‘ (also well worth a visit – 59-minute train from London, closes 18th Feb). It explores Lee’s life through clothes, given that Lee was a celebrated model for the likes of Vogue, becoming a fashion photographer in her own right after training with Man Ray in Paris, the clothes lens makes perfect sense. The exhibition was prompted by the recent discovery of boxes of Lee’s clothes in the attic at Farley Farm, including a number of items by top European couturiers.
A quotation caught my eye (and imagination) near the exit:
When I fired up LinkedIn this morning I noticed a post by Fanatics Live CEO Nick Bell about work-life balance, prompted in part by a video of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on the subject. My late mentor, veteran documentarian and polymath Roger Graef, was always a brilliant help and support but work-life balance was arguably his one blind spot, he was a ferociously hard worker who rarely seemed to switch off. It’s a fascinating and nuanced issue, and my jury is still out on whether Bezos’ argument – that it’s actually a work-life circle – and Nick’s – that being happy at work makes you a better spouse and parent – is on point or has an underlying post-rationalisation. As another Jeff (Goldblum) says in another movie, ‘The Big Chill‘:
“Michael: Don’t knock rationalization! Where would we be without it? I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Sam: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?”
I directed a film years ago about creative thinking and I remember a line from it which was broadly: “No one on their death bed ever thought ‘I wish I’d spent more time in the office’.” Perhaps the starkest factor: you can’t ever get back time with your children once it’s passed.
So I find Lee’s reflections resonant – why not be more focused on and bold with our ideas, our physical being (less time in our heads) and our love in its myriad forms (romantic, parental, familial, environmental, spiritual, for our fellow human-beings…)?
First day of the year
That back to school feeling never really fades. The first day back at work every year is a bit of a challenge however much you like your work. Despite the promise of new beginnings, fresh slates, new directions the contrast with hanging out with family and friends, enjoying entertainments, walks, sleeping in is never easy.
The Christmas holidays are synonymous for BAFTA voting members with the first round of the Film Awards voting. This year – a very good year – IMHO was crowned by the astonishing The Zone of Interest directed by Jonathan Glazer. Loosely based on a novel by Martin Amis, it tells the story of the Holocaust at Auschwitz through a domestic drama set in the commandant’s house just over the wall from the death camp. The acting is flawless, the sound design a revelation and the direction perfectly judged. It has clearly been a long time in the making as I spotted in the credits my lovely old Channel 4/Film 4 colleague Sue Bruce-Smith who very sadly passed away way too young in 2020 in Dublin.
Untimely death and the Holocaust both bring us back to a quotation from Anne Frank which for me gives a clue as to where to start the new year of work…
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
Anne Frank in Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables and Lesser-known Writings
Given that, hidden in an Amsterdam attic with the threat of violence and death all around her, she was facing something far more challenging than a new year of work and making a living, her positive perspective is very striking and inspiring.
So the new work year is beginning for me today, by happy coincidence, with a documentary film about witnessing the Holocaust from close quarters through the barbed wire. I have been working on the project for a couple of years with journalist Martin Bright and it feels like this is its year. The release of The Zone of Interest can only help as the stories are very complementary.
For this project and others this year the other words I am going to keep in mind are these from the American author William Faulkner…
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
William Faulkner
Having the courage to try new things and realising that exciting new work which makes a real difference in the world can begin this second is my suggestion for where to begin…
Other thoughts on the best of cinema in 2023 can be found here
St George’s Day
There’s been a lot of discussion in the UK media about English identity yesterday and today so here’s a take on Englishness worth celebrating…
The Road to DeMaskUs – life after Lockdown
Coming out of this third Lockdown following along the government’s ‘roadmap’, it is like emerging from a bomb shelter blinking into the light. As your eyes adjust to the brightness, you look around to see what’s still standing. So with the relief, liberty and happiness, it is natural to feel some uncertainty and anxiety too.
Coincidences No.s 291 & 292 – A London Boy
No. 291 All Things Must Pass
I go for my last run (of hundreds) in St Pancras & Islington cemetery. It’s only open on weekends at the moment due to Lockdown/Covid so this Sunday is my last opportunity. I am due to move house on Tuesday. I know every inch of this huge cemetery-cum-nature reserve and have deeply enjoyed the hours I have spent here running, walking and meditating. I jog listening to a BBC Radio programme (‘Archive on 4‘) about George Harrison’s first solo record ‘All Things Must Pass’.
As I reach the gate coming out for the last time the narrator, Nitin Sawhney, reminds us that the record first came out in the UK 50 years ago on 30th November. This is 29th November. On the 30th I am packing up the house and home office of ArkAngel to move out.
As I reach the side gate of the house at the end of the run George says (referring to the long recording process):
“…and it’s finished.”
No. 292 A New Dawn
I just received the following message (30 seconds ago via Facebook):
“Listening to it myself. Dedicating Nina to you. Xx”
It refers to this playlist, ‘Weekend at Home‘, created by my Best Man, and the track ‘Feeling Good’ (by Nina Simone). I’ve been listening to the playlist all morning on the first Saturday in my new home, where I’m sitting at my new ArkAngel desk.
About two minutes before the message arrived I got an email from a colleague/friend at Little Dot Studios. It was about somebody pirating ‘Surf Girls Jamaica‘ and at the end he asked
“How’s the new place?”
Exactly as I read the email these were the very words I heard from Spotify…
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me
Yeah, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me
And I’m feelin’ good
‘Feeling Good’ was actually written by two Londoners – Anthony Newley (Hackney) & Leslie Bricusse (Pinner) for a musical, ‘The Roar of the Greasepaint’ . As I finish off this post, on the ‘Weekend at Home’ playlist I’ve reached the track ‘The London Boys‘ by David Bowie. It was a 1966 B-side on Deram records which put out his early work. He sings it in a very Anthony Newley London style as Newley was a huge influence on Bowie when he was starting out. My move takes me back to my native postcode: London NW7
Things That Are No More #2: I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas – and forever
This is Michael Dickinson (filmed by me in April 2018) not far from Spike Milligan’s stomping ground. Sadly he passed away recently. He was a much-loved presence in East Finchley as well as other parts of London such as Camden Town. He came to East Finchley to visit the Phoenix Cinema (which BTW is about to re-open) among other things.
Michael was an actor, writer and campaigner. He suffered from a psychological condition called ‘retropulsion’, a compulsion to walk backwards, which is a symptom of Parkinsonism. He died from Peritonitis on 2nd July in his bedsit in Highgate, aged 70.
Michael was born in Yorkshire. He lived all around Camden Town in the 70s and 80s, then moved to Istanbul. After 30 years living in Turkey and working as a teacher, he was deported back to Britain in 2013 after being arrested for exhibiting a collage portraying President Erdogan as a dog collecting a rosette from George Bush.
He studied at Manchester School of Theatre in 1969. Michael acted and wrote for the Pentameters Theatre (which BTW urgently needs support to survive and has a crowdfunder on the go to that end) above the Three Horseshoes pub on Heath Street, Hampstead where he was considered a talented actor. His final play was about Keats whose manor included Heath Street. Léonie Scott-Matthews, who has run Pentameters for over five decades, witnessed when the condition kicked in: “I remember when he started walking backwards. He was in a play here. He got off the stage and just started walking backwards. It was just after he had got back from Turkey.”
In a 2017 interview in the Camden New Journal Michael said: “I am not acting. If it wasn’t for the retropulsion, I would much prefer to be walking forwards.”
For some time he lived in a tent on Hampstead Heath. Other times his home was a cardboard box behind Sainsbury in Camden Town and various squats including Hampstead Police Station (also on Heath Street). Eventually he got more regular accommodation.
The Erdogan episode took on international proportions. Michael arrived at the appeal hearing bearing a similar collage with Erdogan’s face on a dog’s body. During the shenanigans Charles Thomson, co-founder of the pro-figurative Stuckist group of artists, wrote to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to encourage the “strongest condemnation of this prosecution”. Thomson said: “The story got international media attention because they were trying to get into the EU at that time. I think without it he would have got a stiff jail sentence.” He described Michael’s art as “exquisitely wrought political collages”. Relating it to the movement he founded he said: “Stuckism is for individuals who feel marginalised and not prepared to kow-tow to the establishment. They are not afraid to be themselves and often they pay the price for that.”
Besides plays, as a writer michael wrote dozens of articles, mainly published on Counterpunch. His output included various essays about his life.
Michael’s life is a perfect example of the richness of stories that can underlie people in our communities we are perhaps dismissive of or put in a judgmental box. Another such example from my own childhood community was Dr Stephan Hassan, known as the Edgware Walker. When I started working at Channel 4 the filmmaker-comedian Lee Kern (Co-producer of Who Is America? with Sacha Baron Cohen) gave me a copy of the film he had just finished (2003) as a tribute to a forwards runner, as mysterious as Michael Dickinson.
Lee’s affectionate film, The Edgware Walker, was first broadcast in 2004 (Channel 4). Its core message is that is is important to engage with such people where we live, including asking them questions as you would your friends and neighbours.
Jewel of Irony
Gary Oldman (actor) is 13 days younger than Gary Numan (singer)
Something Is Happening
Just listened to a music podcast called ‘Is It Rolling, Bob? (talking Dylan)’ in which two actor blokes (Kerry Shale and Lucas Hare) talk to a journo bloke (David Hepworth) about a song & dance man, Bob Dylan.
It is a lot better than ‘Stalking Time for the Moon Boys’ in which two TV blokes (David Baddiel and Tim Hincks) talk to various other blokes and each other about a song & dance man, David Bowie. But it’s still not great. Entertaining enough if you’re keen on your Dylan.
One interesting fact I picked up was that Dylan named himself not after Welsh poet D. Thomas (which I’d believed) but after Marshall Dillon in some TV cowboy show (‘Gunsmoke’). Dylan as lifelong cowboy makes a lot of sense.
A question they asked David was how did you first come across Dylan. Got me thinking.
As a six year-old, just allowed to go by myself across one road to the newsagent (Eric & Mavis’s or perhaps it was the previous incarnation), I bought myself a fold-out poster magazine. I got it home expecting it to fold out to reveal a hippy rabbit (Dylan of ‘Magic Roundabout’ fame). Instead it was an unprepossessing bearded bloke with a guitar. A disappointing first encounter.
When I first fell under Dylan’s spell was having one of those Moments listening to ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’. I’d heard bits & pieces of Dylan during my childhood, listened to him a bit at uni through friends who were advocates (but I still had my Punk head on). But it was listening to this track on ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ when the light went on. It was the Surrealism of the lyrics that really grabbed me – I’m not really a lyrics man but the words made their impact, above all the non-rational, dream-like nature of them. I was in.
This moment lead directly to my ending up with a son called Dylan (who looks at times a little like the Big Man of this vintage).
You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard but you don’t understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?You raise up your head and you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says, “It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?” and somebody else says, “Well, what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God, am I here all alone?”
But something is happening and you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
Story Snippet No. 401 – books and covers
I got on the tube at East Finchley heading into town, sitting in a corner seat by the glass. Opposite me was a woman in her late fifties or sixties, loud, stocky and short. To my left was an elderly man with a proper voice, who just added in the odd question or remark to keep the conversation going. Because she was performing diagonally across the carriage the woman’s monologue was audible and, in some way, for public consumption.
She works on the Underground, on the other branch between Edgware and Golders Green, but lives on this branch because she likes the separation. She was highlighting the amassing problems on the Underground – lack of staff leading to lack of team work; well meaning, personable managers who are clueless; growing discontent that she predicts will spill over in the next two years as the individual lines are teed up for privitisation. Watch this space, she warns.
She recounted the lack of demand for the night services, which she saw as mainly politically motivated. She said she mainly sees drunks and stoners, people pissing and shitting on the platforms, which her and her colleagues have to clean up. A man comes in, asks if there are public toilets in the Tube (there aren’t any inside or out in the streets these days), is drunk, is spotted moments later on CCTV urinating on the platform. That’s typical on these night shifts she now has to do. She mentions she has a chronic medical condition which accounts for her short stature. She was not supposed to live into adulthood. She now has grandchildren.
She likes to do art with her grandkids, as doesn’t allow them on phones when they visit. They like this. She does talks in schools and opens with two questions: Who’s got a phone, tablet or similar? (Most of them, even in primary classes.) Who knows how to sew on a button? (None of them.) She recounts the story of a man she met on holiday somewhere in Britain who paid £5 to have a button sewed on by a dry cleaner. Can’t you sew a button on? She was appalled.
She mentioned her A Level achievements, including in Biology. (I’ve a vague memory she wanted to follow a particular course of further study but was somehow thwarted.) She explained how she and her colleagues have to go on many courses each year to retain their licences (many to do with health & safety and emergency procedures), that it is actually a skilled and technical job.
She moves on to talk about how many of the staff are talented amateur artists. (We’ve seen this at East Finchley where for a while, before they pulled out the ticket office and most of the staff, we had an enthusiastic painter decorating the entrance with his framed pieces.) She mentioned a display at the back of Southwark station organised by staff (and where all costs are borne by the staff). She had a shopping carrier which turned out to contain some of her works. She buys high quality sheets from charity shops and uses them as the base of her embroidery. She described three pieces she’d done to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. Then she pulled them out. (She knew I was watching too over my book.) They were very detailed depictions, interestingly composed. One had a soldier writing home to his loved one in a trench enclosure. Another had a soldier silhouetted against a golden sunset in a cornfield. A great deal of work in both, both framed, both a little surprising in contrast to her weighty hands and projecting voice. She rammed them back into the tightly packed shopping trolley as I got off at Euston. She mentioned she had done her own version of the Bayeux Tapestry over many years, 55 feet long.
[This last fact enabled me to find her story online and discover her name, Annette Banks. She is one of eleven children from Canning Town.]