Story through Inventory

Bought my Other Half Jarvis Cocker’s new book ‘Good Pop Bad Pop’ for our 13th monthiversary, she’s a big fan of Jarvis and Pulp. I’ve admired him from a certain distance without ever getting in deep. I’m more the Punk generation and it turns out he’s 8 days younger than me, so the next musical generation as a performer. The one time I saw him on stage was at ‘The Story’ conference in Red Lion Square, Holborn – talking rather than singing, speaking about the Extraordinary. He spoke about how he started out trying to write extraordinary things, then realised he had to make the ordinary extraordinary to capture what was significant about his life.

Needless to say I found myself dipping into the book once it had been presented as a gift. It is subtitled ‘an inventory’. It is written very well, clear and conscious of the reader’s perspective, shot through with a dry sense of humour. And beautifully designed and printed. Reading the opening immediately reminded me of my own attic-load of accrued stuff. The book springboards from objects fished out of a London attic as Jarvis finally moves out of his Victorian pile. I had the same experience in 2020 – first emptying out my office archives in Kentish Town (by coincidence, as I look up from writing this on my phone on the train from Brighton, I see a pale blue mural on a Victorian building saying “Welcome to Kentish Town”) and then the loft of my London house of 22 years. In the process I came across numerous resonant objects from my past which collectively tell some kind of story.

You just have to tune in to that wonder that is all around you. It’s everywhere, honest. That’s the way life works. Extraordinary moments, the extraordinary comes from the extra ordinary.

Jarvis Cocker at The Story conference 2018

The creative who comes to mind with a significant relationship to objects is designer Paul Smith. I visited his studios in Covent Garden near Richard Seifert’s Space House when I was at Channel 4. It was filled with random little objects he had collected from which to take inspiration. Some mailed in by admirers. I too take creative inspiration from objects – colourful ones, well designed ones, pop ones, quirky ones, toys, souvenirs, orange ones, 70s ones, ceramics, Bakelite, art-related ones, shiny ones, old things, gifts, a French folding knife from Marco with a Napoleonic bee motif, a small plastic skinhead from Emma-Rosa.

I so enjoyed reading about Jarvis’s old exercise book, chewing gum packet, Northern Soul patch, that I decided to dust off a few of my random objects on Insta. Here are the first 3…

[1] a cassette single (1980)

[2] what used to be called a Transistor Radio

[3] Keith Haring painted on stage behind the bands

worn by father in Paris in 1983

worn by son in London in 2020

Even just this opening salvo, what does it add up to? What story does it tell?

A man who loves his music. Of a generation around 1980 (1978 to 1991 were probably the defining years). Strongly connected to Malcolm McLaren and what radiated from him – from Public Image Limited to Buffalo Gals, Bow Wow Wow to Joy Division. (I’m currently working on a music documentary which includes Public Enemy and Talking Heads.)

A person who, despite being very visual, loves radio. Radio has been an important part of my life since school days. I discovered Egon Schiele (when he was still little known) through Bowie on the radio. I used to listen to Phillip Hodson‘s late night phone-in in bed on this tranny (!) with people ringing in for counselling on the most debilitating of mental health and sexual challenges – I went on to make a film with him twenty years later entitled ‘Conflict!’, semi-improvised drama Mike Leigh style. (On the audio front, I’m now working on three podcast series.)

A bloke who loves jazz – and Caravaggio. And Keith Haring and street art. Who had a formative year in 1983 which included a trip to Montreux for the jazz festival, to Grenoble for Bowie’s ‘Serious Moonlight’ tour, to Evian to see his friend Mirjam (artist & air hostess), all in the context of a year-long sojourn in Chambéry, Savoie. (At the moment I’m also working on an art feature documentary which should be finished by Jarvis’s birthday – 19th September.)

This first trio of objects actually captures quite a coherent story of what makes this particular creative tick and foreshadows much of what I went on to do in the wake of them coming into my world.

The cassette single in a way gave rise to ‘Amy Winehouse & Me‘ (MTV)

The pocket radio gave rise to ‘The Radio Play’s The Thing‘ (Channel 4)

The T-shirt gave rise to ‘Big Art Project‘ (Channel 4) and ‘Big Art Mob‘, Instagram five years before Insta launched.

Picture of the Month: E for Enigma – A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

Un bar aux Folies-Bergère - Edouard Manet (1882)

The most striking thing for me about Un bar aux Folies-Bergère, the last masterpiece by Édouard Manet, painted in 1882 for exhibition at that year’s Paris Salon, are the green booties. What on earth are they doing up there? What kind of night club were they running? Some wild place that they’ve got trapeze artists flying about overhead and no-one gives a monkey’s – no-one is even bothering to look up at them. Circus Circus 90 years ahead of its time. That pair of bright green booties top left and the pink leggings – some kind of surreal joke on the part of M. Manet? Always gets a wry smile out of me. You can see this painting in the Courtauld Collection in London’s Somerset House, London.

I’m currently reading Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge (appears on a lot of people’s Books That Changed My Life list so thought I’d give it a bash) which includes a scene of a visit to the Folies in post-Global Economic Meltdown Europe i.e. the early 30s . It’s in the context of a bit of a night crawl where a bunch of posh folk trawl the nighttown for thrills from the rough. The sense of classes colliding is strong in this picture, questions of power balance looming large.

Looking and not looking seems to be a preoccupation of Manet.  The barmaid stares straight out at you the viewer – the last of a long line of such enigmatic stares. Olympia gives a challenging enigmatic stare in the eponymous painting [below]. As does that cheeky naked picnicker in Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe [below] (a quick tribute here to recently, dearly departed Malcolm [McLaren] who had fun with Manet’s woman in his Bow Wow Wow period). Manet gets his female protagonists to give as good as they get from staring males, no matter how much at a disadvantage they are (e.g. a bit light on the clothes front).

Now in this picture, Manet puts us, by a bit of mirror jiggery-pokery, in the position of said staring male. You, evidently, are that moustachioed, top-hatted, red-nosed chap reflected in the right-hand corner. Whether you’re more interested in the young barmaid or a bottle of Bass Pale Ale (spot that familiar logo, Britain’s first trademark) is debatable. But she is evidently giving him a run for his money on the gazing front, much like naughty, bold Olympia and the naked picnicker (though interestingly not the woman on The Balcony [below] who is altogether elsewhere – this barmaid’s stare is not quite as bold as picnic woman, not as insouciant as the odalisque, a tad more vulnerable and a little bit less there. That is where my fascination for Manet resides – it’s all in the eyes, eye and eye, and I and aye, what a rich mix of stories contained in the women’s eyes, looks and stares.)

Also in common (and common is the operative word – to reiterate, there’s a lot of class stuff going on around here) in common with Olympia is the fact that the barmaid is wearing a black ribbon. Why is Olympia wearing just the ribbon and the odd adornment – a bracelet, a hair ribbon, slippers? The answer can be found in the writing of poet Charles Baudelaire, a contemporary of Manet, just some ten years older – he had a conviction that Nature is much enhanced by Artifice – whether that artifice (Paradis Artificiels) is a ribbon or a reefer doesn’t much matter, it is the contrast which enlivens.

Interest in Manet should be livelying up in certain quarters with the announcement this week that one of the only two self-portraits of Manet (Self-Portrait With A Palette) was put up for sale this coming June, also staring in the mirror but without quite the enigma of E. Manet’s women…

Olympia (1863)

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863)

Le Balcon (1868/69)

Enigmatic Malcolm, you done good

Last Picture of the Month: Merry-Go-Round