Brian on Art

Regular readers will know of my fondness for Brian Micklethwait’s blog and his narrative, no nonsense style of writing.

Today, Brian gave us a collage of Anthony Gormley’s exhibit(s?) in London during the summer of 2007. But it wasn’t the pictures that piqued my interest so much as Brian’s commentary:

For some damn fool artistic type reason that need not concern us unless we want it to, Gormley called these Men “Event Horizon”.  (Artists who make nice things but talk bollocks about them are a characteristic type of our time, I think.  I don’t blame them.  If they didn’t talk bollocks they’d never get their careers cranked up.  Anyway, it makes a change from a generation ago, when the things they made were almost entirely bollocks also.) The Gormley Men are all based on Gormley himself.

Critic Howard Halle (see here) out-Gormleyed Gormley by saying this:

“Using distance and attendant shifts of scale within the very fabric of the city, [Event Horizon] creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations – alienation, ambition, anonymity, fame – it entails.”

Whatever.  In other words, you see in these metal Men whatever you want to see, much as you see whatever you want to see when confronting actual men.

I can’t agree with Brian that what artists produce these days is any better than what artists produced a generation ago. Lest we forget that during this year’s (at least partially) publicly-funded “Infecting The City” arts “festival” in Cape Town:

City “treasures”, including King Edward’s statue on the Grand Parade, were covered in clingwrap and trees on the station forecourt were draped in toilet paper.

Which, to me, almost entirely indicates that things in the art world really haven’t moved on at all in the last 30 years.

Advice for Spurs…

I was going to write this before the game tonight, but now I find myself writing while the game is on and already Spurs are behind to the mighty Real Madrid. Look, we’ve seen some amazing heroics from Spurs this season, and I’ve been wrong about football scores before: who hasn’t? If I knew the result before every game, my life would be very boring, although the MASSIVE amounts of money I would have might take the edge off that boredom.

Anyway, my advice for Spurs is even more pertinent now:

Settle for a draw,
Well you’re not gonna get no more so you should settle for a draw.

Actually, with Peter Crouch sent off, I’m guessing that might even be a bit of an ask.

PTSD therapy

I haven’t really talked much about the events of four months ago, but I did meet with a psychologist recently (not in her professional capacity, I hasten to add) and she told me that it was entirely possible that I could have mild Post Traumatic Stress Disorder over the whole missed concert thing.
Mild, I suppose, because in missing the concert, at least I didn’t see friends blown up or shot dead like some soldiers may have done for example, but she pointed out that this was a traumatic event and said that all too often people write these things off while they are actually having a lasting and detrimental (no pun intended) effect on them. If I recognised any of the signs or symptoms of PTSD, then I should probably seek some sort of therapy.

Lesson one: One should never look up warning signs and symptoms of any disorder on the internet. Now I have PTSD about the time that I looked up symptoms of PTSD on the internet.
Here are a few of those signs and symptoms that I not only recognise, but have now welcomed into my life as friends:

  • Intrusive, upsetting memories of the event (Actually yes. Good guess, Sherlock.)
  • Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma (ARGH!)
  • Avoiding activities, places, thoughts, or feelings that remind you of the trauma (I haven’t listened to an a-ha song in 4 months. Seriously.)
  • Guilt, shame, or self-blame (should I have tried to get to Manchester instead of to Gatwick?)
  • Substance abuse (I’m guessing they mean Milk Stout)

Did you see that third one? 4 months without an a-ha song. Madness. (And by that I mean it’s crazy that I haven’t listened to it, not that I’ve started listening to 80’s ska or anything).
Time to move on, I feel. So I put my big boy pants on and pre-ordered this – the CD and DVD box set of the concert I never got to see – from CD WOW.

*deep breath*

So it’s make or break time.

Not just for me, but for SAB as well.
Their Milk Stout department are teetering on the edge of oblivion.
Which, I guess, could lead to a certain amount of PTSD amongst their employees.

Alastair Campbell in SA

Lucky us.

Tony Blair’s PR (spin) man was in town (fortunately not this one) to chat to government communicators about communicating government issues. And that alone should set alarm bells ringing amongst the population of South Africa.

But it was one of the lines from his presentation as reported in the Cape Times that got me thinking of  the excellent British comedy of yesteryear: Yes, Prime Minister:

Campbell urged his audience to stay calm in a crisis and not to turn off their phones as it would fuel the sense that there was a crisis.

Which there is. As defined by My Campbell himself in the first part of that sentence. It’s just a way of saying “Don’t tell the people the truth”, when you think about it.

Ah – the joys of government communication. Don’t believe a word they tell you.

4 from 42

I don’t often blog about football considering how much of my time it occupies, so you’ll surely forgive me this (or, more likely, you have already stopped reading).

While the world was watching the Barca players and their referee overcoming Arsenal at the Nou Camp Circus, there was huge joy and no small amount of mild relief Chez 6000 as my beloved Sheffield United ended a winless streak of 14 league games, a spell during which they have only taken 4 points from a  possible 42, by beating Nottingham Florist at Beautiful DownTown Bramall Lane last night. This was obviously a great boost to the Blades, but was marred by Bafana Bafana’s Kagisho Dikgacoi scoring the winner for Crystal Palace against Cardiff, thus meaning that we made absolutely no ground on the London club whatsoever.

“Local boy done good” never sounded so hollow.

Rather than now suggesting that we have taken seven points from a possible forty… forty-five, I have decided to abandon the subject numbers required for statistical significance so sought after in my chosen profession and instead claim (accurately, nogal) that recently, we have taken three points from a possible three.

It’s surely onward and upward from here: mainly because we can’t go back in time and we can’t go much further down at the moment and Watford must surely be quaking in their collective yellow boots as the Mighty Red and White Machine rolls into Hertfordshire for Saturday’s High Noon (Brazilian time) showdown.