December 2012 - St James`s Church, Piccadilly

197 PICCADILLY
church without walls
December
2012
£1
John Rutter and Radiohead compose themselves
Shami Chakrabarti Talking Liberties
A day in the life of The Royal Astronomical Society
Mark Thomas My Dad and Bravo Figaro
Melissa Kite Jesus is my Airbag
Michael Gambon’s favourite haunts
Lucy Winkett with the Kids Company
Rowan Willams on Advent
Piccadilly’s Rocky Roads
• Antique and
contemporary jewellery
• Cosmetics
• Ceramics
• Fossils
• Framed photographs
• Glassware
• Handmade soaps
and essential oils
• Hats & fascinators
• Herbal & fruit tea
• Kaleidoscopes
• Kitchenware
• Knitwear
• Leather goods
• London souvenirs
• Postcards
and greetings cards
• Prints
• Russian dolls
and militaria
• Silverware
• Watches
Piccadilly Market
at St James’s Church
Arts & Crafts • Antiques & Collectables
Market open Tuesday-Saturday
10.00am-6.30pm
Also… Good Food Market every Monday 11.00am-3.00pm
offering hot and cold food from four continents
St James’s Church, 197 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL • 020 7292 4864
www.piccadilly-market.co.uk
197 PICCADILLY
Table of Contents
Sandra Heavenstone
2
4
5
Talking Liberties with
Shami Chakrabarti
In the courtyard of Burlington House
Piccadilly’s Rocky Roads
In tune with John Rutter
Open Letter to the Home Secretary
David Southwood
Dr Ted Nield
Roderic Dunnet
Horatio Morpurgo
3
Mark Thomas
6
Jonny Greenwood and Radiohead
compose themselves
My Dad and Bravo Figaro
AndyVivien
Jonathan Holmes
Tim Nichols
7
8
9
Tom Cook
RowanWillams
10
Sue Brackell
Sam Phillips
LucyWinkett
11
Melissa Kite
Lindsay Meader and
Sir Michael Gambon
13
Rachel Obordo
Image courtesy of Chris Beetles Gallery, St James’s, London, www.chrisbeetles.com
RONALD SEARLE, CBE HRWS (1920 – 2011)
12
Tim Kurek, The Experiment
Random
A living wage, Child Poverty
Action Group
Piccadilly People
Advent Calendar
The new Archbishop and
street violence
Losing Liam
The Turner Prize and social narrative
The Kids Company and Camila
Batmanghelidjh
Jesus is my Airbag
Favourite Piccadilly haunts
Editor Sandra Heavenstone, Sub-editor Heather Toner.
Designer Kristina Floelo, Printers: Williams Press. Subscription and delivery
enquiries: St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL Tel: 020 7734 4511
Volume 1 c 197 Piccadilly.
The views expressed within this magazine are not necessarily those held
by St James’s Church, Piccadilly.
First thoughts...
Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James’s
Welcome to this experiment. You may or may not know that
London (as the rest of the UK) is divided into parishes – and
you may not know that you’re in ours. The truth is that in London
where over 300 languages are spoken, many different religions
are practised too.
The magazine that you’re reading is produced by the church of
St James’s Piccadilly. We live and work at the Circus, a byword
across the world for busyness, activity and the meeting of nations.
We’re hoping this publication might be a humane, even intelligent
contribution to the debates about contemporary society; debates
that often produce more heat than light.
So here it is, and online too; at the end of a year in which London
has had one of its most extraordinary summers, during which
Danny Boyle helped us tell ourselves who we are. But also at a
time when, as the Evening Standard has been highlighting, huge
numbers of young Londoners are out of work and unable to find
work experience, jobs or apprenticeships.
Here in Piccadilly, Regent Street and St James’s, the contrasts
are huge; the iconic images are everywhere and frequent: the
teenager with a pink suitcase sleeping out opposite some of the
smartest restaurants in the world; the bearded older man asleep
on the pew next to the exquisite Grinling Gibbons carving in the
church. We live and work amongst contradictions. As the London
poet and prophet William Blake, who was baptised in St James’s
in 1757 wrote; “without contraries there can be no progression.”
What might a vision for a 21st century city look like, particularly
this corner of London? What effect does public space have on the
people who inhabit it; the architecture, the rules of ownership,
the parameters of access? What is the relationship between our
physical environment here and the virtual world we spend much
of our time in? What is, therefore, ‘real’?
We hope you enjoy this experiment along the way, get involved
and if there is anything we can do for you, just let us know.
Letters to the Editor
197 Piccadilly is for you, the public. So, we would like to hear what you have to
say. If you would like to tell us your views on any of our articles, send your letters to the editor at St James’s Church, 197 Piccadilly W1J 9LL with the subject
line “Letters to the Editor” or email [email protected]
We will pick a few and publish them in the next issue.
1
Near home and far away
Sandra Heavenstone
with Shami Chakrabarti
Q You joined Liberty just after 9/11 – Is the
war on terror at the top of your agenda?
The events of 9/11 marked a major shift in
world politics and the human rights agenda was
no exception to this. The war on terror has had
a profound effect on the context within which
Liberty has worked for the last decade or so.
At times of fear (whether caused by physical
or economic insecurity) our commitment to
fundamental rights and freedoms is put to the
test. Post-9/11 this was present in the battle
over 42 day pre-charge detention, and in the
long fight to limit section 44 stop and search
powers. More recently we’ve seen flawed
arguments about national security used to
justify chilling government plans to introduce
the controversial system of Closed Material
Procedures into civil law. These ‘Secret Court’
proposals would overturn centuries of fair
trial protections for those seeking to challenge
abuses of power and undermine the principle
that no one is above the law, including the
government. But more broadly and “top of
the agenda”, we now find ourselves having to
defend the concept of human rights and the
Human Rights Act itself.
Q How important are our religious
freedoms?
They are vital as human rights reflect and
protect what it is to be human. Human beings
are creatures of both faith and logic, emotion
and reason. Because of this, we must have
the right to believe in any religion or none
We now find ourselves having
to defend the concept
of human rights and the
Human Rights Act itself
and perhaps even more importantly – to be a
heretic – in any faith or ideological community.
As for the manifestation of our faith, here
the freedom cannot be so absolute but must
allow such interferences as are genuinely
necessary for the protection of others. So
Liberty defends religious speech (even where
it offends others but not if it incites murder)
and clothing (save where it genuinely interferes
with e.g. the performance of employment).
A trickier question arises where someone’s
faith or belief motivates them to discriminate
against others (e.g. those of a different faith,
gender or sexuality). Here the law of the
land should be slow to interfere in the core
practise of the faith (e.g. to force rather than
permit a faith community to ordain women
or marry same sex partners). However, once
2
people offer goods and services
to the public or take up public
duties, conscience cannot trump
the fundamental principle of
equal treatment.
Q You have said that if we
start carving up human rights
on the basis of nationality
rather than humanity, we are
on the road to Guantanamo
Bay. Can you explain?
Human rights are universal,
they apply to everyone equally,
regardless of their nationality,
gender, religion or any other
label we use to distinguish one
person from another. If we decide
that only UK citizens have the
right to a fair trial, what is to
stop us detaining “foreigners”
indefinitely without charge?
That and its “off-shore” element
was the justification for both
extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo
Bay. It can feel all too comfortable to sit
at home in Britain and deride the rights of
“foreigners” but look at the ease with which
Britons themselves can be extradited around
the world to face dubious charges in a strange
land. In this shrinking interconnected world
of ours, we need to decide whether to see
ourselves as “foreigners” in most parts of the
globe or human beings deserving of basic
protection everywhere.
Q To what extent is the major reduction in
Legal Aid in family law and in asylum cases
contributing to breaches of Human Rights?
When the legal aid cuts come into force next
year they will put justice beyond the reach of
some of the most vulnerable in our society.
One of the insidious aspects of the cuts is that
Gurjit Nahal
Talking
Liberties
Shami Chakrabarti,
Director of Liberty
the cases of people whose rights are breached
but who cannot afford recourse to the law will
fall below the radar and the danger is that such
breaches will persist unexposed. Aside from
the obvious injustice of this, it also means that
getting an accurate picture of the full effects of
the cuts will be a challenge – albeit a vital one.
Q The Home Secretary has accepted
Liberty’s long-running argument for change
to our extradition laws. What will this
mean?
The introduction of a “forum bar” is to be
welcomed as it will allow British courts to
bar extradition when an alleged crime has
happened in the UK. But, disappointingly,
Theresa May ruled out requiring that a basic
test case be heard in a British court before
anyone can be sent anywhere.
Bizarrely, she wants to remove the very
power that was used to stop the extradition of
Gary McKinnon, the British computer expert
accused of hacking into US government files:
the Home Secretary’s power to intervene
in such cases. This is an essential safeguard
because significant changes can occur in the
period between the court’s final decision and
a person being put on a plane. In such a case,
the Home Secretary would be powerless to
intervene. Now that the case for change has
been accepted, it’s vital that the Government
takes this opportunity to create a just, fair and
equal extradition system
Shami Chakrabarti – Director of Liberty since
September 2003, the British Civil Liberties Advocacy
organisation. Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University;
governor of the British Film Institute; Visiting Fellow
of Nuffield College, Oxford and a Master of the
Bench of Middle Temple.
Near home and far away
David Southwood is a British space
scientist and current President of
The Royal Astronomical Society
Photographers Credit not supplied
I was the director of the European Space Agency,
responsible for sending spacecraft to explore our
solar system and building space telescopes to look
far beyond to the very edge of the universe or the
beginning of time, from which I’m now retired.
Today first is a note from Mark Bailey of
Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.
Archbishop Robinson founded the Observatory
back in the 18th century in a time of great wealth
in Ulster. Armagh is the ecclesiastical centre of
Ireland with both Catholic and Church of Ireland
cathedrals. The observatory and the planetarium
Burlington House
...with our feet
on the ground
Piccadilly’s Rocky Road
Popular science author Dr Ted Nield
is editor of the magazine Geoscientist,
published by The Geological Society of
London, in Burlington House, Piccadilly
On the day that the Maltese High Commissioner
opened what was then the Malta Air office on
Piccadilly (now Cafe Ritazza), two security
men stood guarding the entrance. Suddenly,
an uninvited guest barged past them and the
assembled dignitaries within and fell on his hands
and knees on the amazing travertine floor with
livid red streaks like a flitch of bacon. He appeared
to be moaning incoherently. They quickly
picked the assumed vagrant up, and threw him
unceremoniously back into the street.
That floor has now disappeared beneath
some nasty hardwood planks; the supposed
vagrant was in fact none other than Dr Eric
An artist’s impression of the
Cassini spacecraft arriving
in Saturn’s orbit on June 30
2004. The Imperial College
magnetometer is deployed on
the 11m long boom
make it also the astronomical centre
of Ireland.
An email follows from the
society’s deputy executive secretary.
He raises the question of the recent
gaoling of six Italian scientists for not
being sufficiently alarmist before the dreadful
earthquake in L’Aquila a few years ago. The
society looks after geophysics as well as astronomy
so this is a serious matter for us. The problem
is that the public (and apparently some of the
Italian judiciary) don’t understand risk and the
scientific method. We can’t predict any particular
earthquake but we can work with past precedent.
The swarms of small earthquakes that preceded
the big one had not presaged in the past a large
event. Indeed, small earthquakes often release
stress and so reduce the likelihood of a big event.
The Italians seismologists offered calming words
beforehand and, horrifically in this case, were
shown to be wrong. L’Aquila is a lovely medieval
city and there is something medieval about this
verdict. I feel the society needs to say something
publicly about the uncertainties of science.
Few people know but space law is very different to the law on the ground. There is no issue
of national air space and so spacecraft can look
down anywhere. How does that enter into our
lives? For example, ships illegally discharging oil
waste are regularly tracked from space and are
brought to book. However it becomes much more
Robinson of University College London,
renowned expert on building stones, who had
been en route to a meeting of the Geological
Society of London, in Burlington House – a great
cultural campus consisting of the Royal Academy
and five learned scientific societies for geology,
biology, archaeology, astronomy and chemistry.
The Geological Society, the oldest
national learned society for Earth sciences in the
world, has occupied Burlington House’s East
Wing since 1873. It is faced in ornately carved
Portland Limestone – the skull-white, urbane
freestone used almost everywhere for grand civic
buildings, and the most common facing stone
along Piccadilly.
Piccadilly – not only of the most
famous streets in the world but
also one of the most geological!
If you visit The Geological Society of
London, via its doorway opposite Fortum’s, you
can examine its magnificent new reception desk,
built from an assortment of great British building
stones, all of which would have been available
in 1807 when the Society was founded (though
many today are rather rare and hard to find).
David Seal
Looking at
the stars...
sensitive when space information shows that one
country is polluting the air of another. Moreover
in an age where national carbon monitoring is very
important, how can space means be used to check
which nations might be cheating in their figures?
These days, scientists can download data
anywhere using the internet. One of my pleasures is to download data from the Imperial College magnetometer orbiting Saturn on the Cassini spacecraft. I built the instrument (to measure
magnetic fields) at Imperial before going to ESA.
Launched in 1997, it got to Saturn in 2004. My
scientific reputation hardly depends on going head
to head with the data now.That pleasure is for others but I still get a paternal buzz out of seeing it
still producing measurements 15 years after it
left Earth
David Southwood is a British space scientist and current President of the Royal Astronomical Society (as
of 2012). Until 2011 he was Director of Science and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency. He also
holds the post of Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College, London. His research interests have been in
solar-terrestrial physics and planetary science, including building the magnetic field instrument for the Cassini Saturn orbiter.
The Simpson’s building (now Waterstone’s
bookshop) occupies the site of the former
Museum of Practical Geology, begun in 1835
at the behest of Sir Henry de la Beche, founding
director of the British Geological Survey, and
later the base for ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’. Thomas
Henry Huxley delivered his legendary scientific
lectures to working men here. At 5, Air Street,
from 1790 to 1792, the scurrying figure of
geologist Rudolf Erich Raspe also would
have been seen, as he pursued his business as
prospector and rogue, and of course author of that
classic of European Literature, The Adventures of
Baron Munchausen.
And down beneath it all, where the
Piccadilly Line tubes rumble, the bones of
hippopotamus lie embedded in the clays and
gravels of an ancient terrace of the River Thames,
laid down in Eemian times, an interglacial
period like our own, from about 130,000 to
114,000 years ago. This saw much higher global
temperatures than today, with higher sea levels
(hence the elevation of the Thames terrace) and a
flora and fauna living in the London Basin more
akin to that of the Nile today
Dr Ted Nield is chairman of the Association of
British ScienceWriters
3
Words and music
Rutter and Radiohead compose themselves
John Rutter
at rehearsal
In tune with John Rutter
John Rutter is a composer who excites different
reactions. To some, his music is the antithesis
of what classical music should aspire to: tonal,
rather simplistic, easy on the ear, populist, and
at worst, frankly, wet. To the tens of thousands
who sing or hear his music, in church or in
concert, he is the very opposite: he has set the
world singing.
Rutter’s popular anthems and carols, and
especially works like his Gloria, Requiem and
Magnificat, or more recently Mass of the Children,
have been sung by countless choirs worldwide.
The Lord Bless You and Keep You and For the Beauty
of the Earth are among the most treasured pieces
ever written.
More recently, he composed This is the
Day for the wedding of HRH Prince William
and Kate Middleton (the Duke and Duchess of
Cambridge). It has been beautifully recorded
(on COL CD 136) by the Cambridge Singers
conducted by the composer.
This modest man writes music that is
tuneful – and above all, singable. Still based
near Cambridge, John is also occupied with
carols for Christmas Eve at King’s College,
Cambridge, through to arrangements and pieces
that are singable by choirs of limited forces or
modest ability.
Not everyone takes to the ‘approachable’
kind of music Rutter writes. For years classical
music was preoccupied with serial and atonal
music, and obsessed with the (to some)
impenetrable world of Schoenberg and Webern,
of Bartók, or of their successors, like Ligeti.
True, these composers are now starting to find
a wider audience. But recently the pendulum
swung: tonality, and many different styles, are
accepted. Previously, many saw Rutter’s music
as perhaps too naïve, even simplistic.
His approach is refreshingly different: “I’ve
always enjoyed music with a tune you could
whistle, which is why – although my heart was
(and still remains) with Tallis, Byrd and Purcell
– The Beatles and Rolling Stones meant a great
deal to me”, he says. From the 1960s, he recalls,
“you almost had to have a licence to write a
tune! That drew me to choral and church music.
What was unfashionable in classical music
circles was still acceptable in church.” Hence
the (to many, welcome) approachability of so
many of his works: “You can only really swim in
water you’re comfortable with,” he says.
“But the extraordinary pop music then
certainly touched my life. The best Beatles’
songs are up to those of Schumann, or Fauré, or
Hugo Wolf. Paul McCartney had an incredible,
4
Please supply PHOTOCREDIT thank you
by Roderic Dunnett
instinctive gift for working out a melody that
was absolutely right,” he enthuses.
On a recent ‘Songwriters’ course, John
used music by Richard Rodgers and The Beatles’
‘Yesterday’ (‘the way it derives from a two-note
motif’ is remarkable: the whole thing is woven
from the same cloth’) to illustrate the way a hit
melody evolves. He also tried jazz. “But I felt
like a child, with his nose pressed to the pane
looking in at someone else’s party,” he adds.
Quite a few pop musicians have tried
their luck in the classical music field. Take Paul
McCartney’s heart-tugging Liverpool Oratorio. Or
Deep Purple’s Jon Lord, who composed several
appealing classical works. Groups like Genesis,
‘I’ve always enjoyed music with a
tune you could whistle, although
my heart was (and still remains)
with Tallis, Byrd and Purcell – The
Beatles and Rolling Stones meant
a great deal to me’
Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Abba, jazz
saxophonist Jan Garbarek, even Duke Ellington,
made their imprint drawing on classical
influences; and modern folk musicians are deeprooted in musical genres from the ancient past:
witness enduring groups like Steeleye Span.
“Fauré is one of the composers who
inspired me most. My Requiem wouldn’t have
been written without his example. Like him,
I see the text as a journey from Darkness to
Light, ending not violently but serenely with
In Paradisum, so as to suggest that death is a
natural process, and that out of darkness and
bereavement come hope and redemption,”
says Rutter.
“Melody is in a literal sense artificial: it
involves artifice – craftsmanship; and it needs to
sound natural. That’s my aim when I compose.
It doesn’t come instantly: you have to hack
away, a bit like a sculptor chiselling his stone.
It’s a process you can’t control. Where the
music comes from remains a mystery. Invariably
a composer gets asked, ‘Where do you get
your ideas from?’ The honest answer is, I
don’t know.”
One profound influence on John was
(Sir) David Willcocks, Director of Music at
King’s College, Cambridge, and still, at 92, a
treasured friend.
While inspiring the best chapel choir
in the world (John also co-edited, with
Willcocks, volumes in the influential Carols for
Choirs series), he would then go out and work
with raw amateur singers, and make people
who might never have had the confidence to
sing with a choir feel it was the best musical
experience of their lives. “If I now go out today
and run a Come and Sing event, I realise it
wouldn’t have happened without his example.”
As to his own music, Rutter recalls: “I
always think of my parents. Neither of them
was a trained musician. But I like to think that
if my father were sitting in the front row, he
might find something to enjoy, or to make him
tap his foot”
Roderic Dunnett has reviewed books and music for
newspapers such as The Guardian and The Financial
Times. Previously music critic of The New Statesman,
he is now chief music critic of The Church Times.
Words and music
An Open Letter
to the Home Secretary
by Horatio Morpurgo
In awarding the Peace Prize as it has,
the Nobel Committee was not setting a trick
question about the European Union. It was
stating a fact. The EU came about as a response
to the chaos which had dragged a continent
and the whole world after it into war. As
this uncontroversial truth begins to lose its
imaginative hold over Europeans, it is natural
and even right that EU structures be called
into question.
The Home Secretary, Theresa May, by
contrast, has recently spoken of opting out
of 130 cross-border agreements on justice
and security. She is also reviewing freedom of
movement within the EU.
Those of us who believe in the value of
the EU have to make our case afresh and make
it credible. In frightening times people will
reach for whatever comes to hand. It wouldn’t
be the first time. Let Conservative politicians
recall what nationalist hysteria did to Europe
last time we failed to rein it in, and that their
own beloved Winston Churchill was among the
first to call for political union in Europe as the
best way to avoid a repetition.
Regulated, mixed economies with welfare
provision were created all over Western Europe
after the Second World War, recognising these as
the necessary precondition for peace.The French
Foreign Minister’s declared purpose in 1950 was
‘to make war not only unthinkable but materially
‘The French Foreign Minister’s
declared purpose in 1950 was ‘to
make war not only unthinkable
but materially impossible’
impossible.’ To that end France and Germany
(and four other countries) created a common
market in steel and coal. That may sound dull,
but ask yourself what you primarily needed,
then as now, to manufacture armaments. On its
own terms the EU has spectacularly succeeded
where the Treaty of Versailles disastrously failed,
by tying Germany’s industrial capacity into the
wider European economy.
That said, when M. Hollande urges us to
“love” the EU he is surely asking too much. It
got its Common Agricultural Policy wrong
and arrogantly refused to listen when people
objected. In treating 1989 as little more than an
opportunity to create new consumers and grab
The Unlikely
Hollywood Innovator
Jonny Greenwood
”
Horatio Morpurgo’s writings range from the environment to Central and East European affairs, and his essays have
been published in The New Internationalist and Le
Monde Diplomatique to name a few. He studied both at
the University of Cambridge, and Edinburgh.
Radiohead at the Heineken Music
Hall in Amsterdam, May 9 2006
Michell Zappa
A pioneer for melodic discordance
by Rachel Obordo
Renowned by the masses as the guitarist in
Radiohead, Jonny Greenwood has once again
collaborated with There Will Be Blood’s director
Paul Thomas Anderson to bring us a beautifully
nuanced score for his new film The Master.
Taking the world by storm, and only
narrowly missing out on an Oscar last year,
the multi-talented musician and songwriter is
considered an innovator by many.
In The Master he captures the tension and
uncertainty that underlies the film. A drama
centred around the story of a Second World
War veteran, Freddie Quell, it follows him on
his journey as he discovers a movement called
‘The Cause’.
Like John Rutter, both composers have the
sought after ability to reach large audiences.
Greenwood is able to captivate audiences
with the use of instruments such as celtic wirestrung harps (as featured in the film We Need To
Talk About Kevin), and the ondes martenot (an
electronic instrument).
In an interview for Nialler9.com*, he said
the process of composing a score is the “opposite”
to the conventional kind of recording that occurs
in the studio. “I obsess about the performance,
the players, and the sound of being in the room
with them.
“Recordings are still second best –
cheap motivated labour, it squandered a historic
opportunity to extend the project’s imaginative
range. Its “vision” of Europe as a gigantic single
market and nothing else was always flawed, even
before the euro’s weakness became apparent.
The Commission is unelected and answerable,
apparently, mainly to corporate lobbyists. The
austerities the EU is now attempting to impose
on Greece have led straight to movements like
The Golden Dawn, for which Greek identity is,
it could be argued, constructed entirely around
hostility towards immigrants.
The continent’s peak moments, from
Moorish Spain to Habsburg Vienna, in literature
and art, from Gothic cathedrals to the scientific
revolution, all have been nourished by crossborder cooperation of one kind or another. No
Chaucer without Petrarch. No Hamlet without
Montaigne. Europeans are more inter-married
and connected up through work than ever
before. That is what seventy years of peace, trade
and freedom of movement can do for you and
that is what the EU has helped to deliver
nothing like hearing an orchestra start up in a
silent room.”
‘I try to think of them as all being
equally important or useable, from
guitars, to laptops to french horns.
Whatever makes the song work’
According to Greenwood, the music produced with Radiohead and that of his own compositional work, is more similar than fans realise.
“Radiohead is all about compositional and arranging work, so I’m happy writing for any arrangement of instruments. I try to think of all of
them being equally important or useable, from
guitars, to laptops, to french-horns. Whatever
makes the song work.”
Noticeable in his film scores, as well as his
music with Radiohead, Greenwood appeals to
audiences with his esoteric and modern tones.
Influenced by the likes of Polish
composer, Krysztof Penderecki,
French composer, organist and
ornithologist Olivier Messiaen, and
the very prominent Impressionist
composer Claude Debussy, to name
but a few, mixing classical strands
with electro-edge is what makes his
music appealing.
Speaking about the score he
produced for There Will Be Blood,
Greenwood said, “It’s easier having a
reason to write music – something to
hide behind.
“That music was written about those big
landscapes, and the smaller chamber pieces
were about the kid, HW. I had real luxury with
that film.”
The dark sounds of his music, especially
in The Master, attract aficionados from all walks
of life. The interjections of traditional classical
sounds interspersed with electronic tones, make
for an unlikely harmony. Mesmerised by sounds
that appear to juxtapose against each other, it is
no real surprise that people believe his music to
be incredibly effective in provoking emotion
*The website was started in 2005 and is the most-read
Irish music blog. Niall Byrne is a music writer based in Dublin
and was chosen as one of Ireland’s key cultural influencers by
The Sunday Times last year.
Rachel Obordo is a freelance journalist who has
written for newspapers such as The Catholic Herald and
The Guardian. An amateur artist and photographer, she
studied theology at the University of St Andrews.
5
My Generation
Relatively Speaking
Mark Thomas, well-known comedian
and producer of the stage show Bravo Figaro,
talks about his relationship with his father
with Sandra Heavenstone
How would you describe your father?
He was a fighter and a grumpy old bugger. I
remember when he had a dispute at one time
with the Moonies; he ended up kicking them
down the street and was eventually bound over
to keep the peace.
He was also an incredibly proud man and
was determined that all his children would get a
good education. He hated debt, we would always
save for things we needed. He would say to my
mother, ‘You should get out and make a living’.
My mum was employed as a midwife in some
very tough areas, before abortion was legalised,
and saw situations that led to her becoming
massively pro choice.
Me and my dad always had political
arguments. My parents had their first ever dinner
party when I was 18. I’d been out and came back
a bit drunk. As I walked in, my dad started saying
how Maggie Thatcher was ‘a bloody wonderful
woman’ just to wind me up. I went upstairs and
was going to go to bed. I didn’t have a dressing
gown, I had a long coat from Oxfam, so when
Uncle Charlie came up and said: ‘You’ve got to
get down there, boy, and argue your case.’ I went
down naked except for this coat, going on about
union rights, and Uncle Charlie pulled my coat
open, exposing me to the dinner party guests.
That epitomised the level of political discourse
in our house.
How did Bravo Figaro come about?
The decision to produce Bravo Figaro was more
instinctive than rational, but, with so personal
a story, it raised the question of how to represent
my father on stage. Should I treat him differently
because his time with us is short? Well, yes and
no. Once again, my dad is resolutely lambasted
as there seems no point in telling so private a tale
without being truthful.
‘The working class are too poor for culture,
they just gossip?’
That’s a load of old tosh. Karaoke is a form of
culture. The history of the working class in
Britain is one that is really strong in developing
self help communities and focussing on self
6
improvement. If you
look at the history
of the trade unions
you will see that
they represented
what was best for
the community.
The BNP wouldn’t
show their face if
the National Union
of Miners were still
around.
If you consider the
Grimethorpe Colliery bands
in the north of England, they highlighted working
class respectability. They had a pride in wearing a
smart uniform and no idea that the working class
should not be allowed to dress smartly.
What political views were held within your
family?
My dad was a knee-jerk, right-wing Thatcher
supporter. The big politicising events for me
were punk rock and the miners’ strike. I was
at college in Yorkshire when the miners’ strike
kicked off. People who lived in the village were
suddenly being starved. They were on strike for
a year, couldn’t get benefits and were being kept
alive by food parcels.
How did your father develop his love of
opera?
Through the church mainly. He had more
knowledge of opera than eighty per cent of other
opera lovers. As we started to lose him I listened
to opera to connect with him.
‘We can love and cherish people
that disarm and distress us, even
those who betray or wrong us’
He was first introduced to classical
music, like many churchgoers, through choirs
and choral music. My father was a Wesleyan
Methodist preacher and a very religious man. His
god was a vengeful god of the Old Testament, a
patriarchal god.
On Sunday mornings, our neighbours
were blasted with Rossini and Verdi played at
such volume that even now I have an impulse
to apologise. He would take a cassette player
to work, playing his favourite operas across the
rooftops and building sites of south London,
singing along with the gusto of a Welsh male
voice choir – and the precision of the carpetbombing of Cambodia. It was excruciating, but
Idil Skan Draw
“My father was born in the wrong century:
he wanted a world where men were masters, women were quiet and children had
rickets. When he said, ‘They should bring
back the death penalty and if no one else
will do it, I’ll throw the switch,’ not only did
he mean it, he would also have brought his
own jump-leads and a car battery as backup. Unsurprisingly, he was frequently the
focus of my early routines.”
if you look at opera being performed in Italy, it’s
incredibly popular; people take a nationalistic
pride in the way that the arias are sung. If a tenor
gets it wrong they are made to sing the aria again.
What traits have you inherited from your
father?
His work ethic and thrift. He was a very generous
man if you were in his company.The thrift was all
about just looking after what you had. If you had
a new pair of shoes you didn’t waste them.
I’m an atheist but my sister is a Church of
England vicar. I just narrowly escaped religion.
Religion hasn’t given me a faith but I still go
to carol services and I love it. The ceremonies
remain the same in church, it’s the people that
change. We can see the change in each other.
What message were you trying to convey
to your father through Bravo Figaro?
That we can love and cherish people that disarm
and distress us, even those who betray or
wrong us. My dad was diagnosed with a disease
called progressive superanuclear palsy. My father
was given a prognosis of six years to live. It has
now been ten years. Bravo Figaro is a way of my
trying to end things and reconcile our lives.
Relationships are never black and white
Comedian Mark Thomas has been performing since
1985. An activist and a writer, he contributes a regular
column to the New Statesman and has had his own
show, The Mark Thomas Comedy Product, on
Channel 4.
My Generation
Timothy Kurek was twenty-two when he
undertook an undercover social experiment.
For a year he pretended to his church, his family
and his friends that he was gay. He’s been talking
about the experience to Andy Vivian
Kurek grew up in a conservative Christian
home in Bible-belt America. At the age of
18, his attitude towards gay people was that
homosexuality was an abomination and gays
were sinful people who made the wrong choice
and would go to hell for it. He could show you
the six passages in the Bible used by conservative
Christians to condemn homosexuality.
When he reached 20, his church-going
ebbed and his horizons broadened. A friend
took him to a karaoke bar in Nashville which
every Tuesday night was the chosen venue for
some lesbian women who liked to sing. “I felt
like I’d found this home away from church. I
was there religiously every Tuesday night to sing
songs with my friends and drink cheap beer.”
One of his acquaintances, Lizzy, had come
‘He learned afterwards that his
mother had written in her journal
that she’d rather she’d been told
she had terminal cancer’
out to her parents to devastating effect. Her
father had told her to pack her bags and go;
her mother suggested she come back when she
was ‘fixed’. There would be no more cash to
support their ‘faggot daughter’ through college.
Seeking a shoulder to cry on, she came to the
karaoke bar where she told Kurek her troubles.
He discovered he couldn’t help her. “I knew that
I should get my Bible and explain to her that she
was an abomination. I zoned out on what she
was telling me.” Lizzy went her way.
“That’s when I had this light bulb moment.
I realised that the voice I was hearing wasn’t
the voice of God but two decades of religious
programming instilled into me since I was a
little kid.” Kurek decided to test the sincerity
of this new conviction. He wanted to prove he
was free of homophobia. For a year he would
experience at first hand what the label “gay”
means in Bible-belt America. Before he began
he sought and won the blessing of Mel White,
founder of the American LGBT campaign
group, Soulforce.
Kurek ‘came out’ in January 2009. He
says his family treated him lovingly, though he
learned afterwards that his mother had written
in her journal that she’d rather she’d been told
she had terminal cancer. Of his friends, four
said they couldn’t be close to an “unrepentant
homosexual”, and at church his pastor exhorted
him to renounce the “enemy”.
Having set aside his old life, Kurek
immersed himself in his adopted role.
“I became like a ‘yes’ man. Given the
opportunity to go to a gay rally or poetry gig, I
was going to take it. I ended up working behind
the bar in a gay café. I joined a gay softball
team. I put on a marriage equality event with
friends and joined a gay rights protest in New
York City.”
The biggest test of his resolve came when
he attended his first gay dance.
“I was immediately yanked onto the dance
floor by a man wearing no shirt and covered in
baby oil and glitter. He flipped me round to a
Beyonce song and started to play the cowboy
riding his horse. Looking in the mirror I felt
more like a jackass than a horse.”
This episode led Kurek to share his secret
once more.
Tim Kurek undercover
“I invited a gay friend out to dinner and
asked him to pretend to be my boyfriend for
the year so that I had a plausible excuse if I was
asked out or if I was in a hairy situation, he
could come in and take me out of that.”
Kurek had come close to abandoning
Christianity. He describes one particular
turning point. One evening he heard singing at
the LGBT community centre next door to the
café where he worked. It was a karaoke night
Random
by Jonathan Holmes
When Abraham Lincoln said it was
“better to remain silent and be thought
a fool than to speak and remove all
doubt”, he was probably talking to a
local politician.
Take our own Westminster Council,
which recently told a local pub to serve
customers more slowly. The idea was
suggested by the landlady herself, as a
joke, in a licensing meeting. The ‘goslow’ was designed to reduce customer
numbers. The council claimed that they
were concerned about the number of
people hanging around on the pavement
outside, as it might impede pedestrians and
wheelchairs. They instructed bar staff to
serve customers one at a time, rather than
dealing with multiple orders at once.
Various councils avoid using the word
‘obese’ or the titles Mr and Mrs for fear
of offending someone. Several have banned
themselves from tweeting, including about
the ban itself: a kind of self-inflicted
super-injunction.
Councils pay marketeers to speak for
them, but even that’s no guarantee.
Hull Council was furious after
PHOTOCREDITS
The Experiment
and a familiar tune drew him inside where he
found about 30 people singing ‘Our God is an
Awesome God’, led by what appeared to be a
drag queen at the microphone.
“I felt the Spirit in that place, as tangibly as
I’d ever felt it in church. And I could tell from
how people were responding to the words and
the music, that they were having an intimate
time with God. So it was really cool and eyeopening; it was the main life-changing moment
of the entire year – when I walked in and saw
Jesus in drag.”
In January 2010, Kurek ‘came out’ a
second time, this time to the Nashville LGBT
community, admitting that he was after all
straight. Given the nature of his deception this
was never going to be easy. In his book, he quotes
a conversation with one of his closest friends.
“Did it change you?”
“Yes it did. I never understood who I
was condemning before or why it was I was
condemning them. I am a different person now”.
Some have never forgiven him for the
deceit involved in his experiment. But if Kurek is
to be believed, the vast majority of gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender people who thought he
was gay, have accepted his explanation
The Cross and the Closet tells the story of
a Bible belt conservative who spent a year pretending
to be gay.
Andy Vivian is the administrator of the Progressive Christianity Network, known as PCN Britain. Prior
to that he worked for the BBC for ten years as a producer
on Radio 4’s TheWorldTonight and for twenty years
as a journalist at BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
an escort agency copied their tourist
campaign. Adverts for Secret City Girls
lifted phrases directly from the ‘Visit Hull
and East Yorkshire’ website. Thus, under
pictures of scantily clad women, appeared
the words: “With so many attractions just
waiting to be explored – all at tremendous
value for money prices – you can cram in
so much more.” The website has since been
updated, removing the offending phrases.
This year Edinburgh Council
employed marketeers to produce a
campaign, reportedly worth £300,000,
to promote their Christmas festival. The
result was “Incredinburgh!”: a slogan so
bad the council immediately ripped it to
shreds-inburgh. Unfortunately, the ad-men
had already been paid. They proceeded to
announce yet more groaners, including
‘Winter is aheadinburgh’, ‘Paint the
town redinburgh’ and ‘Romance isn’t
dedinburgh’. They even released a rap
song, with lyrics like “stick a battered
hat on the snowman’s hedinburgh”.
It’s Armageddonburgh without the
Mayans, and the council have been left,
well, speechless.
In addition to working for the Edinburgh
Festival, Jonathan Holmes has done stints at
the Daily Mirror, Private Eye and the BBC.
7
Window on the world
London Life
Members of Citizen UK
Campaigning for a living wage
on Oxford Street
Action
speaks
Tim Nichols,
Press and Parliamentary
Officer, Child Poverty
Action Group
Nearly five million workers in
Britain are paid less than the living
wage, a report by accountants
KPMG suggested. Research found
that up to 90 per cent of those
who earn far less than the living
wage work as waiters and bar staff.
The notion of a fair day’s
pay for an honest day’s work is a
shrinking reality for many British
people today, no matter how hard
they strive. In October, KPMG published
research showing that five million workers
and their families are now struggling to
survive on pay below living wage levels.
Who are the poverty pay employers?
Around half of all London’s low paid workers
are employed in retail, hotels and restaurants.
These sectors account for only around a fifth
of all London’s jobs, so they are very overrepresented as low pay offenders. British
supermarkets were investigated in a report
by the Fair Pay Network. The biggest four
supermarkets employ around a million
people between them. In my former work
as a housing benefit assessor I saw the pay
slips of employees from these big retail firms
come through with their benefit claims. It
frustrated me knowing that the public money
I authorised to help with rent costs is really
part of a chain that effectively subsidises
billion pound profit margins, million pound
executive pay packets and shareholder
dividends. It’s just not right for executives
and shareholders to sponge off the public
purse by dodging their own responsibilities.
One in five workers in the country is
paid less than the salary required for a basic
standard of living.
For London, the living rate is £8.30
an hour, a voluntary figure compared to the
national minimum wage set at £6.19 an hour
for 21-year-olds and over.
A barmaid working on minimum wage
in Clapham said she is experiencing a “gaping
8
financial hole”. Sarah (not her real name)
just moved to London and since starting
her job, everyday things such as buying food
have started to incur feelings of panic.
“Little routines such as going to the
supermarket take on a new meaning; staring
at the shelves to see which items I can
afford this week, feeling guilty for spending
money on anything non-essential, and trying
to make food last before having to do
another supermarket trip.”
Sarah lives in a crowded house
share, which she would like to move out
of. However, the cost of moving is too
expensive for someone working on £6.19
an hour.
Paul Gallagher, an economist at the
London School of Economics argues that
the collapse of the manufacturing industry
combined with the technology revolution
has meant the wages of highly skilled
workers has increased compared with the
least educated.
“Since differences in education
attainment and income can reinforce each
other in a vicious cycle, policy needs
to focus as much on the educational
attainment of the poorest as on the eventual
inequality resulting.”
‘It frustrated me knowing that the
public money I authorised to help
with rent costs is really part of a
chain that effectively subsidises
billion pound profit margins, million
pound executive pay packets
and shareholder dividends’
One approach has been very
successfully pursued by London Citizens
and its founding chapter, The East London
Communities Organisation (TELCO). They
have used community organisers to work
directly with people affected by low pay
and negotiate with employers to secure
living wage policies. It has been a very
empowering experience for many of the
employees themselves to be directly involved
in winning victories for themselves and their
fellow workers.
However, Sarah is not convinced: “I
think the main issue is that nobody has
stopped to consider that minimum wage is
just not enough when you live in certain
areas. It's all a bit of a catch-22 situation”
Window on the world
Piccadilly People
Great Mountain Mother
The political pilgrimage of an artist
on his way to St James’s Piccadilly
Tom Cook
I was born in 1937, raised in New York City,
and conscious of contemporary history since
the Second World War, first as a child listening
to Roosevelt’s Sunday radio fireside chats, continuing through most of the stages of my life.
I had been raised a Christian and attended
a Baptist boarding school, an experience which
put me off organised religion for most of the
next four decades. The only teacher at this
school who had a positive effect on me taught
the Bible class and frequently challenged us
with questions like “If Moses was often depicted as having horns could it be that he had extra
sensory perception?”
Apart from passing by St James’s Piccadilly many times on my way to and from
BAFTA or the Royal Academy, my first internal
contact with the church was in 1992 when I
attended a Monday night talk at Alternatives,
which looked interesting. I don’t remember
the actual subject, but the experience kept me
coming back.
Out of curiosity, shortly after the 1992
Alternatives talk I went to a Sunday service,
wondering why Alternatives, (which has now
been here for 30 years), was a regular event
at a church.
At this service the rector, Donald Reeves,
spoke about the state of Britain’s Thatcherite
society, which made me sit up and listen. It was
the first time I had ever felt the divine spirit of
Christianity in a church service directly connected with the condition of the world that
struck me as uncompromisingly truthful.
Attending Sunday morning services and
Alternatives on Monday nights gave me a sort
of holistic life experience where I could ex-
acrylic on canvas,Tom Cook
plore my Christianity and my body, mind, spirit
inclinations under one roof with many people
I admire and respect: in short, a community of
like minds open to the diversity of our world
and the universe.
My two older brothers had fought in the
Korean War where one of them was severely
wounded. I still remember my mother receiving the fateful telegram. I served in the military for three years between the Korean War
and the Vietnam War and remain grateful that
for once in my life, my timing was impeccable.
In 1960 I had began a career in television
with CBS television in New York and from an internal media perspective witnessed the conflict
in Vietnam, the struggle for human rights for
black Americans, the assassinations of John and
Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The
day the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out found me
‘I believe the issue is not about
saving the planet. The issue is
about saving ourselves’
in the Soviet Embassy negotiating for Soviet embassy children to participate in a TV programme
teaching children internationalism. They cautiously participated, and I learned a lot about the
‘realpolitik’ of US/Soviet relations.
In 1995 our son, Adam, died of AIDS. He
was not a regular churchgoer, but he recognised the value of my experience of St James’s.
His memorial service here gave the deepest
possible meaning to what I value as a member
of our community.
Following a health crisis, I had taken up
painting as a fulltime activity after almost 30
years in television as a producer, director and
executive. I could no longer continue working
in the media but had no idea how to earn a living to support my artistic ambition. Then I saw
that St James’s was giving a weekend creativity workshop entitled ‘The Artist As Prophet’. I
signed up and to my amazement the organiser,
Petra Griffiths, called me a few days before the
workshop to tell me that one of the facilitators
had dropped out – and could I take his place?
As a result of this, running art and creativity
workshops became a staple source of income
for the next several years.
Occasionally I become dispirited about
the state of our world which is nothing like
I have experienced before. At least until the
21st century dawned most of the issues facing us were pretty straightforward. It was
them or us; we need to help the poor nations
become rich; we need to eradicate disease....
all to one degree or another viewed in a spirit
of hopefulness.
That hopefulness seems to have disappeared in a fog of too much information, fear,
financial chaos and global warming. The other
day as I walking down Piccadilly I muttered
to myself, loud enough to be heard by anyone
close: “Come back Khrushchev, all is forgiven!”
Well, not really, who would want to go back
to those days, but at least defining the issues
seemed simpler.
I believe the issue is not about saving the
planet – the planet will continue on its heavenly course whether we are here or not. The issue
is about saving ourselves. For this to happen we
need to look at life in the spirit of awareness,
gratitude and wonder
Caravan Drop-in
2012 is the 30th Anniversary of the Caravan at St. James’s Church,
Piccadilly – a unique drop-in and counselling centre situated in
the courtyard of St. James’s Church.
It is manned by 21 volunteer students, mostly training at the
CCPE – the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education.
“The Caravan,” says Nigel Hamilton, Director of the CCPE,
“is a special place for all who use it. Possibly because it expresses
love and care at the edge of a society itself struggling to develop
values, stability and mental health. Because the Caravan appears
so temporary, vulnerable, and transient, it is a reminder to us all
of the fragility and impermanence amidst the splendour and buzz
of Piccadilly.”
9
Voice of the people
Deep Society
“People are too busy making sure they’re
respected for them to worry about what goes on
out there.
“Fights between gangs are a big thing today.
People have nothing to lose so they deal drugs or
anything that gets them money.”
A 23-year-old bus driver agreed with Ale saying that he remembers being involved in street
wars. “It’s all about reputation and being untouchable. No one wants to be bullied, they want to be
the bully.”
To which he replied, “Well they do it because
there’s no way out.They want people to be scared
of them. If you look for a job you’re seen as weak
and wasting your time.
“There’s no point in working Monday to Friday.
Someone on the streets, a person who is involved
in gang culture, would say it’s better to deal drugs,
because there’s no tax.”
by Rachel Obordo
The right-wing extremist who shot dead
at least 85 people at a youth camp in Norway laughed, cheered and shouted “you
all must die” as he sprayed the youngsters
with bullets.
Following the riots of 2011, we were informed that one in five of the rioters were
part of a gang in the UK.
I speak to two friends who want to help those
on the “outside” try to understand why there is so
much violence affecting young people.
Ale Soria, a 19-year-old student at Gunnersbury Catholic School Sixth Form, said he does not
believe events like the killings in Norway really
affect people embroiled in gang wars.
Advent Calendar by Rowan Williams was set to music
by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies as one of the 44 Anthems
“I expect that the
in the Choirbook for the Queen which was launched at
new Archbishop of Canterbury
Southwark Cathedral in November 2011.
will be more protestant, more liberal,
more worldly, and even more adept at “Anglican
expression” (that is, the attempt to generate
Advent Calendar
consensus by crafting statements that can be read
in multiple ways, well beyond the breaking
He will come like last fall’s leaf fall.
point of ingenuity).”
One night when the November wind
Keith Blundy / Aegies Associates
Great Expectations
The Right Revd. Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham
(Archbishop of Canterbury Designate)
The first Archbishop of Canterbury was Augustine in 597. But probably the most famous was
Thomas Becket, who became Archbishop in
1162 during the reign of Henry II.
The Archbishop is leader of the Church of
England and the symbolic head of the worldwide
Anglican Communion. What are our expectations of a new Archbishop in 2012?
The current Archbishop of Canterbury
says “my successor needs a newspaper in
one hand and a Bible in the other.”
But what about the risk of getting caught, I ask
the bus driver. “Only the dumb ones get caught,”
he said.
The two nod at each other in agreement,
before Ale remembers a recent incident that has
unnerved young people in the area.
“There was this stabbing in Kingston [at
Oceana nightclub] that happened a while ago,” he
said.“People are scared to go there because someone was stabbed to death.”
I ask him why he thinks violent incidents are
so frequent. “People get too worked up man.
Sometimes it’s attitude and sometimes it’s about
girls,” he said.
Before I leave the bus driver gives me
a word of advice: “Don’t try to understand
why they do it. I’m not saying it’s a good
thing, but people deal with their problems in
different ways”
Jason Pascucci, software engineer from
Ashland, Massachusetts
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
“I suggest that the
One morning when the shrinking earth
new archbishop allows a
opens on mist, to find itself
separation of the Anglican Church
arrested in the net
as a whole. But if the CoE is having to
of alien, sword-set beauty.
compromise, on issues such as equality and
moving into the 21st century, because of more
He will come like dark.
‘conservative’ groups within the wider Anglican
One evening when the bursting red
community, then I disapprove of this. Perhaps if
December sun draws up the sheet
churches were more independent and separate, then
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the CoE could be a much more forward thinking
the star-snowed fields of sky.
and relevant institution in the UK. The obvious
downside, from an atheist’s perspective,
He will come, will come,
might be that it allows the conservative
will come like crying in the night,
groups to be even more
like blood, like breaking,
conservative.”
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
Will Kew, chemistry student at the
University of St Andrews
He will come like child.
© Rowan Williams
“My hope is that the
next Archbishop will initiate
disestablishment proceedings, ending the
Church’s privileged input into government but
also gaining autonomy for itself. I would also like to
see the next Archbishop put an end to the Church of
England’s opposition to equal marriage, or at least its
shameless scaremongering over the issue.”
“It would be refreshing to see the Church involve
“What
itself far less with politics and instead, return to
about
a
gin
fund
Andrew Green, Advocacy
its original mission of bringing people to
for the clergy wives/
Press Officer at The
salvation.”
partners!”
Evangelical Alliance
10
Elizabeth Lil, Cantor,
St James’s Piccadilly church
Stephen Evans, Campaigns Manager
at the National Secular Society
The Tablet
“The Evangelical
Alliance hopes that the new
Archbishop of Canterbury will be a
shepherd to the people of God in this
nation, and a preacher of the gospel
to those who are lost.”
Voice of the people
The Social Narrative
Alan Dimmick
by Sam Phillips
Luke Fowler, All Divided Selves, 2011
If the annual Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain takes the temperature of British art, then this
year’s show presents a contemporary art scene
that appears to have warmed up considerably.
Who could forget 2001 when Martin Creed notoriously won the award for his room in which a
light repeatedly turned on and then off again.
That artwork – cold and conceptual in its
concerns – seemed indicative of an art world that
had turned away from social engagement. This
year at least three of the four Turner nominees
look outward to address the social world we live
in, in particular the Scottish film-maker and photographer Luke Fowler, who presents at the Tate
the third of his trilogy of films on psychiatrist and
fellow Glaswegian R.D. Laing, who pioneered an
alternative vision of how to treat mental illness.
Laing exerted a major influence on our
post-war understanding of psychotic disorders
such as schizophrenia; his first book The Divided
Self (1960) sold 700,000 copies in English by
the time of his death in 1989. His ideas, seen as
affiliated to a wider movement known as ‘antipsychiatry’, promoted the importance of listening to patients in order to understand their episodes in social rather than biological terms. He
argued against the reduction of human beings to
scientific classifications, which he claimed led to
misdiagnosis and tended, when combined with
one-size-fits-all drug treatment programmes, to
exacerbate symptoms. Popular as they were in
countercultural circles, these concepts were controversial: Laing was attacked from both inside
the medical establishment and by other radical
academics, such as Thomas Szasz and Lionel Trilling, who saw Laing’s ideas, in the latter’s words,
attributing to the insane ‘an upward psychopathic
mobility to the point of divinity’. Laing’s personal
behaviour – his drunkenness, occasional aggres-
Losing Liam
sion and alleged neglect of his own family – also
damaged his reputation.
Fowler’s All Divided Selves (2011) is a feature-length documentary that intercuts fascinating archive footage of Laing and psychiatric patients with short vignettes from the artist’s life,
featuring rushes of his friends, commonplace
objects and local landscapes.The film interweaves
these elements in a subtle, poetic form that is
never didactic, unlike most modern documentaries; there is no narrator, no clear narrative arc,
no structural elements that make clear what the
viewer ‘should’ think. In this sense, the form of
film echoes and reinforces many of Laing’s ideas
about respecting individual experience.
Fowler recently explained in an interview
at the ICA: “Laing was against scientific determinism – the way that it removed the patient’s subjectivity and reduced their experience to a set of vec-
‘Who could forget 2001 when Martin
Creed notoriously won the award for
his room in which a light repeatedly
turned on and then off again. That
artwork – cold and conceptual in its
concerns – seemed indicative of an
art world that had turned away from
social engagement.’
tors and co-ordinates that are already mapped
out. I felt that’s what’s happened to a lot of documentary film.There’s a script, a treatment, there’s
an industry around it, and that’s something that I
was very consciously trying to avoid.”
But in an interview with Mark Hudson in
The Telegraph Fowler dismissed the idea that his
work was a paean to the politically activist and
experimental documentaries of the 1970s and
’80s. “My films aren’t a sentimental journey back
to a time when art was political,” he said. “You
only have to look at the repressive response of the
authorities to the G20 protests to see that these
things are as relevant as ever”
Sam Phillips is a London-based arts writer and editor
and he is currently writing Isms: Understanding Modern Art, published by Iqon Editions (Autumn 2012).
Formerly assistant editor of RA Magazine at the
Royal Academy of Arts, he has contributed articles on art, design, architecture and music to a wide range of a publications,
including TheWorld of Interiors, Time Out, I-D, Artists & Illustrators, Blueprint, Asian Art Newspaper and The Independent.
Installation view Inverleith House, Edinburgh, 2012
Commissioned by CCS Bard Galleries, Center for Curatorial
Studies Bard College
Courtesy of the artist, The Modern Institue/Toby Webster Ltd,
Glasgow and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
Last Will and Testament
My son Liam committed suicide in 2003.
Writing the poems has helped me to grieve
and shown me, through friendship with
parents who have lost their children, that
“love is strong as death”.
The book Losing Liam is used by Samaritan
volunteers,the Child Bereavement charity and
the mental health charity Rethink.To obtain
copies email [email protected].
You left
No money in the bank,
No shares or dividends,
No antiques or valuables.
Then I found
Your box of stones
(Treasured for years),
Fossils and ammonites,
Pebbles and quartz,
Which I will carry
To your grave
St James’s
Church Piccadilly
Christmas would not be
Christmas without our
annual performance of...
Handel’s Messiah
Saturday 15th December 7pm
Sunday 16th December
6.00pm: Festival of Lessons and Carols
The Christmas story told in
Scripture and poetry with wellloved carols
Tuesday 18th December
5.30pm: Carols for Shoppers
Come and sing traditional carols
with readings and music from the
Vigala Singers (junior students
from the Royal College of Music).
Mince pies and mulled wine served
afterwards
Monday 24th December
5.00pm: Carols for the Eve of Christmas (with blessing of the crib) Children
are especially welcome to this
dramatic re-telling of the Christmas
story with well-known carols
10.30pm:
Church opens for meditation
– a preparation for Christmas
11.30pm: Christmas Midnight Eucharist
Tuesday 25th December
11.00am: Christmas Eucharist
Every Sunday
11.00am:
Sunday Eucharist
And make a border
There –
But you have left me more –
Have shown me how it was for you –
How to mime laughter,
Crack a joke,
When feelings have been
Honed away to nothing,
And only emptiness is left –
Have left me this inheritance.
A deep mine-shaft,
A quarry of despair,
That ‘something missing’
Of which you spoke
So sadly,
Which can never be regained –
Those things that were
All yours
Are mine now,
You bequeathed them all
To me –
A legacy of pain
So vast,
I should be taxed
For all Eternity.
SB 2003
11
Wise words
In conversation with
Camila Batmanghelidjh
Lucy Winkett
Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James’s
Church Piccadilly, chats to Camila
Batmanghelidjh, Founder of Kids
Company about life, lollipops and
learning from kids
In your experience, what are the main
issues facing young people in London?
Young people in London are not thought about
in the decision-making process. Consider the
new rule – cutting housing benefit for under25s without children. Ministers think that young
people should live with their parents unless they
are economically independent enough to sustain
their own homes. It’s not just that they are economically impacted by lack of work; their entire
ability to socialise with a range of people is also
prohibited. Why not have centres at street level
where unemployed people can go for lunch, advice and camaraderie?
What conclusions do you draw from the
high percentage of young people who refer
themselves to Kids Company?
Kids Company operates centres to which ninety
seven per cent of children self-refer; eighty two
per cent arrive ‘criminally involved’.We don’t refer to them as “criminal”, we recognise them as
being children in need. Once their complex life
issues have been addressed, they rarely reoffend.
We have collaborated with UCL, the Anna Freud
Centre, Cambridge University and the Institute
of Psychiatry, among others, and preliminary results show children who were assessed presented
not only with shocking life adversities – one in
five had been shot at and/or stabbed – but also
had neurophysiological damage secondary to the
maltreatment.
I have been working for over 20 years in
poor inner-city environments. I have never met
a child who wanted to be a criminal or a killer.
But who is this criminal? Mentally ill people, addicts, individuals who, through lack of care, have
developed personality disorders, those with hidden head injuries, those who have been sexually
and physically abused, and those with learning
disabilities constitute the majority of our offenders. Only a small percentage of those in our criminal justice system are pathologically dangerous
or psychopathic. Unfortunately, too many doors
slam in their faces and, in their families as well as
neighbourhoods, there isn’t the social capital to
help them overcome obstacles. The drug dealers,
sadly and perversely, provide better solutions to
their problems than social care agencies.
You have spoken about love and care being
the primary focus of your work, and that
love is a difficult word to use. Can you say
why?
Even though the fabric of every human being is
12
driven towards the experience of love, we don’t
know how to describe this compulsion to attachment. Love is only known once it has manifested
itself in action. Intimacy and compassion are its
two manifestations. So you’ll know it when you
have love, and you’ll piercingly feel it when you
don’t. So much damaging behaviour is about a defence against the lack of love.
Some of the greatest themes of
theological debate are about trust; in
whom or what do we put our trust.
In whom or what do you put your trust?
The person I trust the most is my brother.We are
eighteen months apart. Being born premature,
I only survived because he was born and I could
share the milk. He lives in America; I speak to him
every day.
I have faith in a logic beyond the one we delude ourselves that we have mastery over. People
manifest aspects of this holistic interconnectedness, so you can have faith in them, too – provided
you know they are part of a much larger tapestry.
For those who don’t find this accessible: I
have faith in cupcakes!
‘I have been working for over
20 years in poor inner-city
environments. I have never met
a child who wanted to be
a criminal or a killer’
A lot is written about social attitudes in
contemporary British society. Would you
be able to characterise how you see our
attitudes towards young people today?
Adults often, sadly, project their distortions of
life onto young people, reflecting back demonic
aspects of themselves. So young people end up
being ostracized and blamed for what is, in effect, their capacity to reflect back at society its
ugly choices.
Would you support a lowering of the voting
age to, say, 16?
Absolutely not. There is already too big an erosion of childhood. The whole point of a healthy
society is that its adults must take responsibility
for protecting the young through intelligent decision-making.
In the Christian New Testament, there is
a story where Jesus places a child in front
of the crowd and asks them to be more
like children in their attitude towards God.
Modern scholarship says that this is not in
order to keep people infantile but more
to emphasise the fact that children were
powerless in his day. In doing this, Jesus
was asking adults to identify more with
the voicelessness of children. Do you think
that this story has resonance today and if
so how?
I would interpret this story slightly differently:
children have an aspiration to belief, and faith.
It’s an important part of the human psyche, because it allows attachment at a more profound
level. So I would argue that the child was held up
as an example of humility, and to demonstrate
the importance of belief without the sarcasm of
pseudo-knowledge. But you can interpret it however you want! PS “Voiceless children”? Have you
not had a toddler screaming down for a lollipop
in the shop? A teenager bellowing insults whilst
they slam the door? I think children are gloriously
loud, and deliciously defiant! Jesus must have
been wearing some rose-tinted glasses...
What attitude changes would you like to
see from people of faith groups towards
young people?
Stop lecturing them – do something practical
for them, because God’s expression of love is the
compassionate act. The Church and faith groups
need to work out how to act in love, rather than
talk about it.
A Christian theologian has stated that “hope
imagines the future and then acts as if that
future is irresistible”.What do you hope for?
To be a size zero model, tottering around in my
stilettos, flapping about my eyelashes, racing to
my Botox appointment, investigating nipple enlargements – and then I wake up to discover that
it was a mere nightmare.
I have to say that we are very lucky at Kids
Company to benefit from the friendship of some
utterly amazing and hugely generous individuals. But we always hope for continued support
as we currently help some 36,000 children
and young people across London and are still
under-funded
Wise words
That’s Life?
‘Jesus is
my Airbag’
Melissa Kite
Sitting in a traffic queue behind a VW
Camper van the other day, I suddenly realised
I was staring at the most ingenious rear
window sticker.
“Jesus is my airbag,” it said, alongside a
little picture of Our Lord’s head.
“How jaunty,” I thought. “I must have one.”
I have been searching for a rear window
sticker that expresses my innermost soul for
a long time. The standard ones seem to be
those yellow diamond-shaped signs bearing the
legend Baby on Board.
The moral of this message is thoroughly
confusing and a bit suspect, if you ask me.
I assume they are exhorting me to try
extra hard not to rear-end them because
they have an infant in the back seat.
But if you take that argument to its logical
conclusion you would get stickers saying “Old
person on board so don’t bother slowing
down!” or “Sad 40-something childless
singleton with a dog on board so probably best
if you speed up and put her out of her misery!”
The childless singleton with a dog is me, by
the way.
Apparently, some of these baby signs are
now so big they are blocking the driver’s view
out of the rear window and actually causing
accidents (one in twenty, it is argued).
I’m sure the reason the baby diamonds
are getting bigger is because they aren’t
warning signs at all, but show-off signs. “I’m
fertile and have successfully procreated so
even if you beat me at the lights because I’m
driving an old Ford Fiesta I’m still better
than you!” is what these people mean to say.
I have toyed with the idea of designing my
own show-off sticker, but “Hormonal woman
at the wheel!” or “Spaniel on board!” would be
too embarrassing.
A few months ago, I noticed there was
another kind of show-off rear window sticker:
the religious one.There is a particularly popular
one that reads “Love for all, hatred for none,”
promoting a moderate Islamic movement that
rejects violence and reaches out to the western
community by, for example, selling poppies.This
is extremely laudable, but only makes me want
my own sticker even more.
So when I saw the little Jesus on the back
of the camper van I got straight onto eBay and
ordered one. As a former convent schoolgirl
who once belonged to a guitar-strumming
folk group, I can think of nothing better to
showcase my moral compass than a happyclappy Jesus sign proclaiming my heartfelt
belief that, no matter what life throws up,
God will always look after me. I’m so looking
forward to showing it off. I can’t wait to see
what reaction I will get. I only hope that no
one will rear-end me to test it out
Melissa Kite columnist for The Spectator and
GQ magazine. Deputy Political Editor of The Sunday
Telegraph until May 2011.
Michael
Gambon
‘I’d have been a very good priest...’
“Church is a sort of theatre. I was
brought up as a boy as a Roman Catholic.
I was an altar boy. The whole Latin mass –
we had to learn that, I was two years being
taught Latin as you have to repeat the Latin
Mass (he launches into it without missing a
beat). The Brompton Oratory is where you
can hear the Latin Mass twice a week. I
remember having to ring the bell in our
services. That’s the sacred moment. I used to
love all that. I should have taken it up – I’d
have been a very good priest... ”
Sir Michael Gambon is currently appearing
alongside Dame Eileen Atkins in the 70-seat
Jermyn Street Theatre in All that Fall, a
one-act radio play by Samuel Beckett.
We meet outside Getti’s on Jermyn Street,
where the celebrated actor is enjoying a
coffee and a smoke. “This is a great street.
This is the best street in London. The
name is wonderful and the shops are
great. I like St. James’s Square, The
Wolseley and Christie’s Auction house –
I’ve always bought there.
“I collect anything mechanical; that was my
first obsession. I belong to a society – three times
a year we have meetings in those posh gentlemen’s
clubs. It’s limited to twenty members and we’re
all very intellectual until we’ve had a drink. It
starts really getting fun about half past ten.
Nothing seedy, just men who’ve never grown up.
Collectors are usually people who’ve never
grown up. We use White’s, we use the Army and
Navy, the Royal Automobile Club, we use them
all, but each one of them throws us out. We’ve
been through about five now. We need to get
through all the gentlemen’s clubs.”
What then?
“I think we’ll end up in Lewisham.
Polly Hancock
talks to Lindsay Meader about
his favourite Piccadilly haunts
“As a collector, I’ve always bought
at Christie’s Auction House. I collect
antique clocks and anything mechanical
– that was my first obsession. I like The
Wolseley for eating out – that’s packed
every night.
13
Book now
Constable
Gainsborough
Turner
and the Making of Landscape
8 December 2012 –
17 February 2013
Thomas Gainsborough RA, Romantic Landscape (detail), c. 1783.
Oil on canvas, 153.7 x 186.7cm. © Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Limited
14
www.royalacademy.org.uk
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