Walking into the intimate space that is the auditorium of Donmar Warehouse, you're immediately struck by the sense that something quite familiar has been subtly changed. Upon closer inspection, all three sides of the balcony seating area have been transformed into decorative balustrades that echo the spiral staircase in one corner on stage, and the railings that seem to constitute 'floating ceilings' high up in the air. Welcome to Tennese Williams's New Orleans. Even before the play starts, you're captivated by this elegantly constructed world (designed by the Donmar veteran, Chris Oram, in his signature grey hues) where there's a sense of mad decay lurking just underneath the plain surface, in every corner, of the Kowalski household. It captures the stage direction by Williams perfectly, juxtaposing the exterior and the interior in one setting.
Any production of Streetcar, though, ultimately depends upon the central quartet of the cast, and in particular to whoever portrays Blanche Dubois, the faded Southern beauty whose own decay in this household forms the emotional core of the play. Vivienne Leigh's Oscar-winning performance on silver screen was such a definitive interpretation, made all the more poignant by her real-life descent into madness, it's almost the inevitable yardstick to which every actress taking up the role would be compared. I suspect Rob Ashford (who choreographed Donmar's celebrated 'Guys and Dolls', and also directed the excellent yet underrated 'Parade' here) thought long and hard about choosing Rachel Weisz as his Blanche. Despite a slightly faulty start, she quickly takes total command of the role, showing us Blanche's deceptive dreaminess, innate passion and vulnerability, jealousy (fundamentally, of everyone else whose life seems simple and straightforward compared with her own) and eventual derangement, layer by layer, an onion of a human tragedy, to devastating effect. Her long, breathless monologue to Mitch, the eager and clumsy suitor, revealing her unfortunate past (or at least part of it) at the end of Scene Six, was the highlight of the whole evening, an acting tour-de-force, and the perfect spot for an interval filled with a much-needed stiff drink (for the audience, not her).
Yet there's one fatal problem to this otherwise commendable casting choice: Weisz is decidedly not a faded beauty, but a beauty in full bloom. When Blanche, pondering the possibility of bagging Mitch (an Barnaby Kay, also impressive) as her last chance at settling down with someone, nervously suggests to Stella that 'Men lost interest [in women] quickly, especially when the girl is over – thirty', the intended comic effect cannot possibly be achieved, because she truly and honestly looks like, well, thirty one. And later, when a drunken, heart-broken Mitch confronts her about her less-than-honourable recent past, tearing down the lampshade which she's used to create the eternal haze in the room in order to hide her own decay, what's startlingly obvious to anyone in the room is the fact that this is a stunning young woman, not the memorable, deeply-lined, heavily made-up face of Vivienne Leigh from the same scene in the film. One may argue that this should be overlooked in lieu of the strong performance from Weisz, but impressed as I was, I couldn't help thinking this was a perfect example of dramatic incongruity.
The rest of the cast also did a good job, although easily eclipsed by Weisz's central performance. Elliot Cowan's Stanley is muscular, ruthless and viciously attractive in the Brando mode, who also handled the comic element in some of the early scenes (especially when he scavenges through Blanche's suitcase) well. Ruth Wilson is a competent Stella, though one would have wished for a bit more emotional depth. A very nice touch from Ashford is the ghostly appearances of Blanche's ex-husband and his old lover, in her reminiscence/monologue scenes. It would be churlish to dismiss such a remarkable effort just on the grounds of miscasting, so I would really recommend that you do go to see it. Just use your imagination and try to accept Ms Weisz as really being fifteen years older than she appears. You may need to try very, very hard but this Streetcar's worth it.
Tuesday 28 July 2009
Thoughts on Flights I - On Cities Big and Small
20 May 2009. BA 799, HEL-LHR.
The most reassuring public announcement? Whatever comes from a BA cockpit, in a magnetic male voice in Her Majesty's English (I do sometimes wonder if they're filtered by quality of speaking voice as well as aviary skills) must rank among the top. 'Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I'm pleased to let you know that we're making good progress towards our destination, London Heathrow. Weather report is very good indeed, a cloudless day, making it a nice descent...'
Since truly cloudless days are actually something of a real rarity in London's skies, when it turns out to be true, you notice every single window-seat passenger - and some further from the windows attempting a neck-crankling exercise - being completely absorbed by the birds-eye view of the metropolis, noses stuck to the windows. All the more remarkable considering the vast majority of the passengers on this flight appear to be frequent business travelers who may have the tendency to count their daily/weekly commutes in airmiles. The reason is that the view is indeed mesmerising on a day like this. To start with, you can't help being startled by the realisation (or confirmation really) that London is MASSIVE. Even the area within the Circular (the 'inner circle' as opposed to the monstrous M25), which looks like a reasonable size on your road atlas, contains a fascinatingly diverse landscape, viewed from this height. Landmarks along the Thames - there's a reason why every major city in the world has to have a river in the middle of, or circling, it - are easily spotted. But you also take in the green patches everywhere, among the concrete sprawls: parks, heaths, commons, with the undulating trees and boat-dotted ponds. The Millennium Dome (aka 'The O2'), the arch at Wembley Stadium, and the 2012 Olympic site echo each other as 21st-century London's answer to the Colosseum. We spend far too big a part of our daily lives getting from A to B in a sealed tube carriage or on a standing-room only bus, we tend to forget to look up and look around everywhere in between. On this enormous canvas, even the clusters of ugly big council blocks suddenly take on an intriguing character of their own, a striking cubist shade perhaps.
Which, inevitably, brings up the nagging thought I've always had at the back of my mind: how can so much of the London surface that we do encounter everyday seem so helplessly dull? How can so big and great a city have so little character on its streets?
To be specific: London, like every other sizeable city in the UK, is now full of 'cloned streets'. You know the one: a Next next to a Boots next to an Oasis next to a Starbucks next to a Zara next to a Tesco Metro next to a Coffee Republic next to a Waterstones next to... etc etc. And the more upmarket version of this, available to the yummy mummies of the more expensive postcodes (Upper Street in Islington, King's Road in Chelsea, High Street Kensington, shopping centres in Westfield and Canary Wharf), would be something like: a Whistles next to a TM Lewin next to a Café Nero next to a Waitrose next to a Karen Millen next to a Zara (big winners are those who appeal to all classes)... and so on. Even the mighty designer brands, having been so mercilessly bombarded in our faces in every media outlet in the last couple of decades,have lost their previously haughty air of exclusivity, and even Bond Street and the northern end of Sloane Street now merely feel like clones of all the other shops in other world capitals offering identical goods, give or take the currency discrepancies.
I do realise that these are all inevitable and bountiful fruits of market economy/capitalist consumerism/globalisation. And it's produced at least one immortally funny line on screen - in Woody Allen's last good film, Small Time Crooks, the cop who caught the hapless, cookie-shop fronting bank-robbers red-handed offers his priceless one-word advice on how to really make it big without breaking the law: 'FRANCHISE!' But I suspect that I'm not the only one suffering from clone-street fatigue, longing for something different, something that stands out from all this predictable drab (predictability being the evil twin of the omnipresent convenience that modern technologies bestow on us).
This collective frustration has, presumably, played no small part in the increasingly wild popularity of the markets of Portobello, Spitalfields and Borough. That trusty barometer of middle-class Londoners' opinions, Evening Standard, launched its 'save our small shops' campaign last year as a firm rebuttal to the clonisation of high streets everywhere, and had overwhelming responses. Being a realist, though, I think we'll have to accept the demise of independent retailers as an eventuality, a price to pay for having an iconic city without microscopic iconic components on the street level. Yet how does London compare with other capital cities in this respect? My first reaction, on pondering this question, is that the bigger they are, the fewer interesting, non-chain shops they seem to allow. If we take the distinctive architectural backdrops out of the picture (an easy task these days, thanks to technology), the shopping streets of London, New York, Hong Kong and Beijing can all blur into one. Globalisation flaunts itself in the flesh, loud and proud. In comparison, the smaller European capitals and other major cities that often captivate me, rarely fail to come up with unfamiliar brands and logos in their spades (and this is a shopaholic writing): Stockholm, Copenhagen, Antwerp, Berlin, Bologna, Tallinn, Vilnius. But wait a minute, there are exceptions to this theory too. Paris and Tokyo are both bona fide metropolises, yet still have plenty of shop-keepers who run their hundred-square-feet spaces with phenomenal success, and who would run a mile from the smiling corporate boss contemplating a merger/acquisition deal. Is this the great socio-cultural divide again, the one between the English-speaking world –yes, the likes of Hong Kong and Beijing can almost be comfortably categorised as such - and the rest of the (real) world? I don't have an answer, but I know I'd be happy to see London, for one, de-cloned considerably. But I have to stop thinking about it, because in the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at London Heathrow Terminal Five. The local time is seven p.m., the ground temperature, eighteen degrees. It's been a real pleasure to have you on board.
'This is a journey...'
My month-long 'retreat' (only in the loosest sense of the word - hence the emphatic inverted comma) drawing to a close, I'm pleased at the progress I've been able to make on certain projects that I set for myself. A lot of boxes remain unticked though, and I (only half ingenuously) attribute this to an even busier evening schedule over the past few weeks than usual. Perhaps I should have blocked out the whole month as some kind of culture Ramadan, but when the enticing alternative was to see Helen Mirren, Jude Law, Simon Russell Beale and Rebecca Hall - and some more - all in the space of one week, for a total sum of what a return train journey to Manchester would usually cost, I made my choice in a flash. And now, of course, the Proms are beyond us. My terrifying annual reminder of yet another year that's passed. Before diving into the thick of it though, I'm relishing the memory of a trio of concerts that we enjoyed earlier this month, within 5 days of each other at Barbican (why of course, where else?), which ended our 08-09 season on a high note - or should it be a string of high notes? A high chord?! All the more special because only one of them belonged to the category that we usually attended.
There was Pablo Milanes, the venerable Cuban singer/songwriter who belted out one ballad after another to the accompaniment of his understated three-piece band. The concert, which also featured two jazz acts in the first half, was the main event of the 'Cuba 50 weekend', marking the 50th anniversary of the Revolution (also the beginning of their mutually-sworn enemity with the Western world). We were sitting in our 'usual' seats in the Hall, but were very much the aliens amongst a sea of Cubans and other Latin Americans of all ages. Latin Spanish was the official languge of the evening, and the crowd went wild when it was announced that none other than the daughter of Che Guavara was in the audience, and she was invited onto the stage for a speech. A plain, middle-aged woman, she reminded the audience of the origins of the Latino revolutoinary spirit, the many struggles that they (or she, at least) had undergone over the years, and the inevitable call for a closure to the Cuban people's plights that have now lasted half a century. When Milanes took stage, all eyes were glued, with an almost religious fervour, on this slightly frail old man looking like a retired school-master. Who'd have thought that the Cuban equivalent of Cliff Richards (minus the nip & tuck jobs) could elicit a 2000-strong sing-along like this, with virtually every single tune he belts out? We're the only members of the audience who don't know the repertoire, and we try hard not to be too embarrassed by this fact. Our friends leave early, later emailing to say they found the music too monotonous. But I think they're missing the point - this was a socio-cultural experience as much as anything. And it was thrilling to be part of the crowd.
There was the ever-reliable LSO, under the charismatic Michael Tilson Thomas, presenting an evening of Ives, Prokoefieff and Stravinsky - just my kind of programme. The Chinese pianist Yuja Wang finally arrived this side of the Atlantic, having already taken the US by storm, as another wunderkind barely in her twenties and already poised to take at least a sizeable share of Lang Lang's hitherto undisputed crown of Chinese classical superstar, and the global market that comes with it. Does she have what it takes? Why make our judgement now, she's got a lifetime to prove it, either way. Besides, Lang Lang is not yet thirty himself. The top management agencies and record companies will keenly keep their eyes on the next budding Chinese wizzkid for quite a while yet, that much is for sure.
Then, finally, there was Ute Lemper. With her seductive smile, magnetic voice, impeccably choreographed stage moves and mischievous yet intelligent narration between songs, two hours passed very quickly. She announced at the beginning of the evening that this was to be a journey, chronicling her influences as well as her own career, both historically and geographically. This immensely versatile, endlessly entertaining polyglot even did an astonishingly vivid impersonation of Helmut Kohl flirting with Margaret Thatcher with the aid of a scarlett boa (don't ask). True, the intimacy of both her musical reditions and her spontaneous, witty exchanges with the front-row audience members would have suited the pit of a cabaret - her natural milieu - rather better than the vast Barbican Hall, but when treated to an evening of thoughtfully-programmed numbers sung with this kind of pedigree, this would be a minor quibble. But the most memorable items, given the most empassioned performances, were naturally the Weills. Even with the silky New York accent, you kow that home is Germany, and she looks back at the Germany that she left behind with more than a little wistfulness. 'There was a wall, and it just seemed, to two, three generations, like part of the furniture - that it would be there forever. But then the wall came down. And the rest is history...'
History, of course, continues to be re-written every minute, by the biggest decisions made as well as the trivial ones. As we walked down Silk Street, for the third time that week, I couldn't help looking back as well, to the Latino crowd that we briefly belonged to several days before. Who knows what the future holds for Cuba? And will a new icon, a younger Milanes, archive it all, the history-yet-to-be-written with a different kind of ballad, perhaps? I imagine a svelt figure, a dark face, deep brown eyes, at the 'Cuban 70' weekend (for sure there will be one at the Barbican):
'This is a journey...'
There was Pablo Milanes, the venerable Cuban singer/songwriter who belted out one ballad after another to the accompaniment of his understated three-piece band. The concert, which also featured two jazz acts in the first half, was the main event of the 'Cuba 50 weekend', marking the 50th anniversary of the Revolution (also the beginning of their mutually-sworn enemity with the Western world). We were sitting in our 'usual' seats in the Hall, but were very much the aliens amongst a sea of Cubans and other Latin Americans of all ages. Latin Spanish was the official languge of the evening, and the crowd went wild when it was announced that none other than the daughter of Che Guavara was in the audience, and she was invited onto the stage for a speech. A plain, middle-aged woman, she reminded the audience of the origins of the Latino revolutoinary spirit, the many struggles that they (or she, at least) had undergone over the years, and the inevitable call for a closure to the Cuban people's plights that have now lasted half a century. When Milanes took stage, all eyes were glued, with an almost religious fervour, on this slightly frail old man looking like a retired school-master. Who'd have thought that the Cuban equivalent of Cliff Richards (minus the nip & tuck jobs) could elicit a 2000-strong sing-along like this, with virtually every single tune he belts out? We're the only members of the audience who don't know the repertoire, and we try hard not to be too embarrassed by this fact. Our friends leave early, later emailing to say they found the music too monotonous. But I think they're missing the point - this was a socio-cultural experience as much as anything. And it was thrilling to be part of the crowd.
There was the ever-reliable LSO, under the charismatic Michael Tilson Thomas, presenting an evening of Ives, Prokoefieff and Stravinsky - just my kind of programme. The Chinese pianist Yuja Wang finally arrived this side of the Atlantic, having already taken the US by storm, as another wunderkind barely in her twenties and already poised to take at least a sizeable share of Lang Lang's hitherto undisputed crown of Chinese classical superstar, and the global market that comes with it. Does she have what it takes? Why make our judgement now, she's got a lifetime to prove it, either way. Besides, Lang Lang is not yet thirty himself. The top management agencies and record companies will keenly keep their eyes on the next budding Chinese wizzkid for quite a while yet, that much is for sure.
Then, finally, there was Ute Lemper. With her seductive smile, magnetic voice, impeccably choreographed stage moves and mischievous yet intelligent narration between songs, two hours passed very quickly. She announced at the beginning of the evening that this was to be a journey, chronicling her influences as well as her own career, both historically and geographically. This immensely versatile, endlessly entertaining polyglot even did an astonishingly vivid impersonation of Helmut Kohl flirting with Margaret Thatcher with the aid of a scarlett boa (don't ask). True, the intimacy of both her musical reditions and her spontaneous, witty exchanges with the front-row audience members would have suited the pit of a cabaret - her natural milieu - rather better than the vast Barbican Hall, but when treated to an evening of thoughtfully-programmed numbers sung with this kind of pedigree, this would be a minor quibble. But the most memorable items, given the most empassioned performances, were naturally the Weills. Even with the silky New York accent, you kow that home is Germany, and she looks back at the Germany that she left behind with more than a little wistfulness. 'There was a wall, and it just seemed, to two, three generations, like part of the furniture - that it would be there forever. But then the wall came down. And the rest is history...'
History, of course, continues to be re-written every minute, by the biggest decisions made as well as the trivial ones. As we walked down Silk Street, for the third time that week, I couldn't help looking back as well, to the Latino crowd that we briefly belonged to several days before. Who knows what the future holds for Cuba? And will a new icon, a younger Milanes, archive it all, the history-yet-to-be-written with a different kind of ballad, perhaps? I imagine a svelt figure, a dark face, deep brown eyes, at the 'Cuban 70' weekend (for sure there will be one at the Barbican):
'This is a journey...'
Tuesday 7 July 2009
Children of Syria
Like the best of adventures, it all started with a complete chance encounter.
Her handsome companion, not to be outdone, effortlessly strikes the movie-star pose, with what we have already recognised as the typical Damascene look in so many of their elders' eyes: an innate combination of charm, friendliness and confidence. He's going be a heartbreaker one day, I say to myself.
[Day Three, Palmyra]
[Day Two, Damascus]
It is our second afternoon in Damascus, and we have decided, on an all-too-full stomach from yet another scrumptious lunch, to launch into our favourite Damascene activity for the third time since arrival: letting yourself lost in the maze-like narrow streets in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, south of The Straight Street. While seeking out the Beits and Pashas with the aid of the trustworthy guidebook, we already realised that with the best maps available, it is still a major challange to navigate through the streets of the Old City even for those armed with a better-than-average sense of direction. Forgoing the book and not worrying about whether Sight No. 46 really is indeed in the surreptitious-looking lane on the third right, therefore, at once becomes an attractive alternative, especially after you've ticked off most of the 'must see' items on the list already. The myriad of narrow streets with unexpected turns and ends in various quarters, lined with deceptively crumbly-looking, centuries-old houses, reveal and conceal at the same time the palimpsests of histories that Damascus has witnessed as the Oldest City in the World. And, best of all, here in the warm afternoon sun in the Jewish quarter, there are no other tourists in sight.
It is our second afternoon in Damascus, and we have decided, on an all-too-full stomach from yet another scrumptious lunch, to launch into our favourite Damascene activity for the third time since arrival: letting yourself lost in the maze-like narrow streets in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, south of The Straight Street. While seeking out the Beits and Pashas with the aid of the trustworthy guidebook, we already realised that with the best maps available, it is still a major challange to navigate through the streets of the Old City even for those armed with a better-than-average sense of direction. Forgoing the book and not worrying about whether Sight No. 46 really is indeed in the surreptitious-looking lane on the third right, therefore, at once becomes an attractive alternative, especially after you've ticked off most of the 'must see' items on the list already. The myriad of narrow streets with unexpected turns and ends in various quarters, lined with deceptively crumbly-looking, centuries-old houses, reveal and conceal at the same time the palimpsests of histories that Damascus has witnessed as the Oldest City in the World. And, best of all, here in the warm afternoon sun in the Jewish quarter, there are no other tourists in sight.
We turn another corner and suddenly run into four school children. As I raise my camera tentatively the older two (siblings of the two younger ones respectively, we think) shirek with laughter and run away, but the little girl in the pink woolen dress (the April sun, while a sub-tropical relief for us, is evidently just signalling the end of winter for the locals) greets the shutter with the most captivating smile, and as I brave a second attempt, moves to the narrow stairway leading up to a house in the corner (her house?) and properly poses, like a happy little debutante at Royal Ballet School.
Her handsome companion, not to be outdone, effortlessly strikes the movie-star pose, with what we have already recognised as the typical Damascene look in so many of their elders' eyes: an innate combination of charm, friendliness and confidence. He's going be a heartbreaker one day, I say to myself.
[Day Three, Palmyra]Once again, serendipity plays kind God to our itinerary. We originally planned to spend most of the afternoon visiting the ancient sites just outside of Palmyra town, thinking we would arrive by noon. Glitches with the car rental company in Damascus (almost compulsory in the Middle East, it seems) meant we didn't get to set off until almost noon, and by the time we arrive it's later afternoon. Would it not make more sense to take it easy for the rest of the day, and visit the sites tomorrow morning instead? This is of course what normal, sensible people would have done, but then we're far from sensible. We take the car out to the temple after the briefest snack that acted as lunch, and tour the entire site extensively yet efficiently, just before an ominous sandstorm approaches. Tomorrow morning, all the monuments would still be blurred in vision and we would have had to part Palmyra in regret. This is just perfect.
On the two-kilometre drive back to town centre, we're caught in a traffic jam. It's not stationary, just that everyone is moving considerably more slowly than we have come to expect Syrian drivers to be. We realise it's the combination of the bumpy road surface, and the number of families who have been out picnicing (it's Friday, the Islamic holiday) at various corners in the sites now heading home en mass. All of a sudden this truck overtakes us and stays in the queue, and this platoon of exctied children - mostly girls, but also a few boys - seem perfect in the camera viewer. The road remains bumpy though, and even my lovely new high-tech camera finds it difficult when both vehicles are in wave motion all the time. The children keep waving, smiling and shouting Hellos throughout my minute-long attempts, and finally, a split second before the truck swerves onto a side road and leaves our front view, I have it.
[Day Four, the road from Palmyra to Deir Er-Sur, near Iraqi border]
'The ruins of Mari, an important Mesopotamian city dating back some 500 years, are about 10km north of Abu Kamal (on the Syrian/Iraqi border).' Lonely Planet thus tells us. Unless you're a specialist archaeologist, it probably holds less interest than the nearby ruins of Doura Europos, which are at once more sprawling and imposing, with the perfect backdrop of the ancient river. We are glad we did come to Mari though, not least because the caretaker's family, a gaggle of female spanning several generations (no wonder the man had a deeply furrowed face, despite having young children), constitute a group-sitting portrait in their tent - effectively the living room - connect to the ticket office/souvenir shop that would surely have captured many a painter. Darting away from this silently inqiusitive group, almost as the perfect counterpoint, is the caretaker's youngest daughter, bouncing around the place and happily posing for/with a group of French tourists in her striking kaftan. After they're gone, she's ever so slightly withdrawn, and smiles shily for us. Is it simply because she's much more accustomed to the hordes of Caucasians who arrive in big buses than two badly-tanned Orientals who drive to this remote corner in their own car?
Petrol station attendants in Syria, even in this more remote corner of the country, turn out to be a lot more blase about foreign tourists who drive rental cars around the country than we expected them to be (our fellow travellers from the West, in comparison, usually think we're barking mad when they hear our planned itinerary). Here on the early morning of our fourth day, we have left a Palmyra that's still recovering from previous evening's sandstorm, and are heading off east. The first thing we need, though, is a thorough wash of the car before we can really get anywhere, as the sandstorm has graced all surfaces of the vehicle with its indelible mark. The bearded guy squatting on the ground smoking next to the pump - the manager?! - waves to the boys, looking about 10 years old, whom we have presumed was just a neighbour hanging about, signalling for him to take the job. He handles the big power-faucet dexterously enough to convince me that this is indeed his day job, and goes through the whole job with such ease and skill, that I start to think that he's doing it not out of financial necessity, but really because he's a lot better than any of the half-dozen older guys squatting idly. When he's done, I ask if I could take a photo of him with his 'territory'. He looks at the camera uncertainly, looks at the other guys and shrugs, then, looking in yet another direction, gives me the perfect smile.
[Day Four, later, near Halabiyya]
Syrians really are incredibly beautiful. It's a bountiful beauty with many origins, thanks to their diverse ancestral lineages. It's effectively the genetic melting pot of Middle-East - their version of New York, as M puts it. We've seen people in Damascus whose racial resemblance to ourselves was striking, and their best friends from down the street would have the angular central Asian face topped with a waterfall of blond hair. This young sheperdess has the deepest dark brown eyes as she turns to gaze at us, and I can swear the stunning redhead has nothing to do with any commerical colouring brand whatsoever.
[Day Five, Mari, down the Euphrates]
'The ruins of Mari, an important Mesopotamian city dating back some 500 years, are about 10km north of Abu Kamal (on the Syrian/Iraqi border).' Lonely Planet thus tells us. Unless you're a specialist archaeologist, it probably holds less interest than the nearby ruins of Doura Europos, which are at once more sprawling and imposing, with the perfect backdrop of the ancient river. We are glad we did come to Mari though, not least because the caretaker's family, a gaggle of female spanning several generations (no wonder the man had a deeply furrowed face, despite having young children), constitute a group-sitting portrait in their tent - effectively the living room - connect to the ticket office/souvenir shop that would surely have captured many a painter. Darting away from this silently inqiusitive group, almost as the perfect counterpoint, is the caretaker's youngest daughter, bouncing around the place and happily posing for/with a group of French tourists in her striking kaftan. After they're gone, she's ever so slightly withdrawn, and smiles shily for us. Is it simply because she's much more accustomed to the hordes of Caucasians who arrive in big buses than two badly-tanned Orientals who drive to this remote corner in their own car?[Day Seven, Aleppo]
Of all our unusual encounters throughout years of travelling, this will go down the memory lane a long way. We're in Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, home to the most enchanting souq in the entire Middle East (and therefore probably the world), some truly amazing cuisine, and hand-made aged olive oil soap. It is in the pursuit of a famed soap factory - which turns out to be closed - that we run into an army of schoolboys, all rushing home for their lunch hour. This lot, unlike all the others we've met so far, aren't just willing to have their photos taken by you. They want you to take photos of them, they actually follow you around and hound you until they've seen an image in the viewing screen on your camera that they relish. And as with all human groups, you immediately discern the various types, even with these little ones: the philosophical, the fraternal, the mischievous, the audacious.And, in the midst of all this clamour, emerges the surreally beautiful trio of angels, perpetually smiling:
[Day Ten, Krak des Chevaliers]
[Day Ten, Krak des Chevaliers]
This was the briefest of encounters - we've just come out of the awe-inspiring Krak after wandering around for a couple of hours, and are ready to head down towards Damascus to complete this memorable road trip. In the midst of the car park, there he is - while all his fellow hawkers are busy trying to allure some potential customers for a ride around the castle, this one is simply enjoying the two thousand features on his new phone to bother. I raise the camera, press the shutter, get into the car, and we drive away. I look back, and he's probably just started yet another text message...
(To see all the photos with better quality, run the slideshow here:
Friday 3 July 2009
My stories of Michael
I knew this had to be the subject for my comeback post after the 3-month absence (I won't pretend that the two lines post Syrian trip was a proper post). Those of you who would, for a moment, expect shockingly salacious/banal/revealing stories about my married life (no, actually I don't think there's anyone out there who would) should drop those shoulders now - for, of course, this is to be the gazillionth personal tribute to the King of Pop, albeit 10 days too late. But I'll do my damned best to try to make my perspective unique enough to hold your interest for a moment longer.
It's indeed a bit bizarre to remind ourselves that MJ stopped breathing only 10 days ago. The press coverage of the man and the music has seemed to multiply every day both in its abundance and weirdness. For once, with the death of a major celebrity ('controversial' is such a weak word to be applied here), the world agrees on at least one thing: the man was mind-blowingly, ground-breakingly unique. Oh, make that two actually - he was a true genius too. You really can't think of that many others still breathing who tick both boxes, in pop or any other art form. And for how long have I been thinking so?
When Thriller was released in 1982, I was four years old. Even though I was probably precocious already , all-singing and dacing werewolves were not exactly part of my consciousness. Nor was anything too overtly Western, for that matter - China had only opened its doors three years previously after years of near-total isolation from the rest of the world, and the influx of information was conveyed with a little caution and absorbed with a lot of overwhelm. The most frequently- and fervently- used adjective in those years, at least in big cities, was 'imported'. It was enough of an all-encompassing category, a universal code for originality/novelty, the ultimate endorsement for quality. People queued up for foreign-made cameras, stereos, kitchen utensils, dolls, stationery, stereos - anything and everything with a provenance outside of the Chinese borders that they could get their hands on. No one could possibly forsee that a mere couple of decades later, the hippest New Yorkers and Londoners would keenly seek out the latest trendy bars in Beijing and Shanghai. More significantly for my generation (now officially christianed as 'The 70'ers') - although we didn't know it then - some of us were growing up to be the first cliche-defying first-generation immigrants to The West. And one day we would look back at the astonishing phenomenon that was Thriller, taken for granted as an integral part of our own past as it is to our fellow New Yorkers/Londoners walking down the street.
Then came Bad, explosively. If it's hard for you to understand the monumental scale of shock factor the music and the video (in particular) sent through Chinese youths at the time, just imagine sending MJ back to post-war USA. For in the intervening years, the Pop/Rock genre had not been experienced in the Middle Kingdom with the same narrative. English-learning, trend-following (these two things were often synonymous) twentysomethings - and a very precocious nine-year-old - were happily humming to the ballads of The Carpenters, Phil Collins and Whitney Houston, and selective early Madonna (we liked 'Holiday'. We didn't really get 'Material Girl'.) while being oblivious to the Stones. There was one radio station in Shanghai with an hour-long weekly programme devoted to English pop songs. We all saved up to buy blank 'Hi-Fi' cassette tapes to record it. There was one shop in the entire city that stocked 'imported recordings', mostly cassettes and also - still a total novelty at the time - some CDs. My father would buy me one of them at the end of each term as reward for my exam results, which would inevitably become the envy of many friends (the cassette, not the good marks). Piracy was yet to be adopted and proliferated by the Chinese, although it wasn't far off the horizon. And in the midst of all this, the sound of 'Bad! Bad! Cos you're Bad!!' came out of nowhere, and came crashing down on all of us.
To start with, there were frenetic debates in newspapers and semi-academic columns in English-studies journals about what 'Bad' actually meant. Bad could now mean something else?! Something not really bad? That alone sufficed to engage a whole generation of youngsters for quite a while. Then there was the image - did he really use to be a black man? What happened to him? Is this what all American pop stars do to themselves? Those now-and-then photos of MJ that appeared in mainstream media might have heralded the dawn of proper entertainment news in China, for all I know. But above all, the dance. I could recall, almost to the day, when suddenly all the under-45 Chinese males worked day and night so that they could do 'the dance from Bad'. For quite a while, at any semi-significant social gatherings - weddings, New Year celebrations, Chinese New Year celebrations, National Day celebrations - you could bet someone would serve up an attempt at 'doing the Bad dance'. It's a shame we didn't have early enough imported video cameras to capture this craze. Set against the social/cultural/political backdrop of everything else that was happening in the country at the time, this uncanny syncronicity of MJ fans with their worldwide accomplices would surely have made fascinating study for some modern historians. 'Man in the Mirror', 'I Just Can't Stop Lovin' You' and 'The Way You Make Me Feel' also became popular, though nothing was as ubiquitous as Bad itself. In due course, the Thriller album was retrospectively discovered and similarly revered. MJ became an object of worship just as much as he was anywhere else. We couldn't wait for the next album (having just properly grasped the concepts of 'albums' and 'singles').
And boy, was it worth the wait. I can actually say with some confidence that I was one of the first owners of a copy of 'Dangerous' in mainland China, for that was exactly what it was: a pirate copy. Probably one of the first too, which I bought in a street market in Guangzhou (Guangdong province being, to this day, the manufacturing epicentre of Chinese pirate CDs). But unlike what you can get for 10p nowadays, back then the pirate recordings were Properly Made - they had real jewel cases! And proper lookalike booklets! And they were actually being passed off as bootlegged authentic copies, for a not-too-shabby price!! Alright, I was in the wrong AND also conned. But I was 14. I had just entered one of the most prestigious music conservatories in the country and discovered that what a lot of my classmates actually wanted to do was to be MJ. We collectively gaped at the video of 'Black and White' over and over again, and declared that nothing that would ever top this. 'Heal the World' became our love anthem. 'Will You Be There' made us regard Free Willy as the cinematic masterpiece of the decade. MJ remained the King, but in the meantime we had moved on much further - even as teenagers! - than we realised at the time. Or is evolution always like this, that we take progress and development for granted, even (or especially) when they come fast and furiously as they did in turn-of-the-century China? The pirate recording I bought was a CD. Several TV stations regularly featured music videos as special programmes, with an increasing amount of works by Chinese singers. We were already absolutely in-synch with Hong Kong pop (to this day an important well of Chinese talents). And I was spending a lot of time listening to The Police, Billy Joel, Prince, Sinead O'Connor, Tori Amos, and was soon to be gripped by Boyz II Men. The great thing about not growing up with the pop/rock narrative chronologically is that you don't have any pre-conception at all. Whatever I reacted to, whether intellectually or emotionally, was by intuition. I did also have the advantage of language skills superior to most of my fellow 70-ers, and was frequently begged/requested/hired to write down lyrics from songs in English by dictation, which in turn helped me to improve it further. I started to read in English. Short stories first, then the classics, then newspapers and journals.
When HIStory was released, I could afford to buy a legitimate copy of the CD, but I didn't. I didn't buy a pirate copy either. I listened to the new singles on the radio and decided that they were not worth the dough, and I preferred to hold on to my past favourite MJ hits. There were rumours that he would come to do some live shows in China but nothing ever materialised. I, and all my friends, were seventeen going on eighteen, ambitious, restless, hopeful for the future of ourselves and our country. But as every day went by, going abroad to study became a more urgent primary goal. Everyone was buying pirate CDs (and VCDs!) now, and I couldn't quite believe that this wasn't also the case in the West. I started listening to a lot of movie soundtrack albums, and was obsessed with Annie Lennox. And U2. And Take That - the perfect overture to my move to England, I have to say.
Year 1997. United Kingdom handed Hong Kong back to China in exchange for me. I remember buying quite a few pop/rock CDs from HMV during my first week in Newcastle, but none of the MJ albums. And I never did. I don't think I can hum a single song from 'Invincible'. I followed the child-abuse trials and the ever weirder news stories, watched the tearful public testimonials and the Martin Bashir documentary with much the same kind of mild, passive curiosity as the rest of the country. When talent could still shock and shock all the more because of its increasing scarcity, MJ became Just Another Boring Weird Celebrity.
Of all the incongruous and/or unsual things he said on the Bashir documentary, though, one thing stuck with me. 'No, I don't think of dying at all. Because I want to live forever', he said - I've completely forgotten what the precise context or what Bashir's question had been, but I remember the reply clearly. And this is how I had come to regard this being whose physcial looks appeared to be on the verge of falling apart at any moment. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to hear a BBC headline announce one day that MJ really was immortal. It would have only been the perfectly sensible conclusion to all that had gone on with him. All the creations, mysteries, glory, notoriety, adoration, hatred - only immortality could have sealed it all. Now we mourn him, but as I look back I also want to mourn that pure state of shockability that millions of Chinese were in when we first got 'Bad', an innocence lost twice over. Would any future pop artist, Chinese or Western, suddenly break on to the scene to deliver something mind-blowingly original to the Chinese youths of now, who're as dexterous at Googling, downloading or Facebooking as any of their Western counterparts, and who have had everything made ready and easy for them? I'm not holding my breath. Me and my generation, we didn't have it easy, but we had it good. Or Bad. Really, really deliriously BAD.
It's indeed a bit bizarre to remind ourselves that MJ stopped breathing only 10 days ago. The press coverage of the man and the music has seemed to multiply every day both in its abundance and weirdness. For once, with the death of a major celebrity ('controversial' is such a weak word to be applied here), the world agrees on at least one thing: the man was mind-blowingly, ground-breakingly unique. Oh, make that two actually - he was a true genius too. You really can't think of that many others still breathing who tick both boxes, in pop or any other art form. And for how long have I been thinking so?
When Thriller was released in 1982, I was four years old. Even though I was probably precocious already , all-singing and dacing werewolves were not exactly part of my consciousness. Nor was anything too overtly Western, for that matter - China had only opened its doors three years previously after years of near-total isolation from the rest of the world, and the influx of information was conveyed with a little caution and absorbed with a lot of overwhelm. The most frequently- and fervently- used adjective in those years, at least in big cities, was 'imported'. It was enough of an all-encompassing category, a universal code for originality/novelty, the ultimate endorsement for quality. People queued up for foreign-made cameras, stereos, kitchen utensils, dolls, stationery, stereos - anything and everything with a provenance outside of the Chinese borders that they could get their hands on. No one could possibly forsee that a mere couple of decades later, the hippest New Yorkers and Londoners would keenly seek out the latest trendy bars in Beijing and Shanghai. More significantly for my generation (now officially christianed as 'The 70'ers') - although we didn't know it then - some of us were growing up to be the first cliche-defying first-generation immigrants to The West. And one day we would look back at the astonishing phenomenon that was Thriller, taken for granted as an integral part of our own past as it is to our fellow New Yorkers/Londoners walking down the street.
Then came Bad, explosively. If it's hard for you to understand the monumental scale of shock factor the music and the video (in particular) sent through Chinese youths at the time, just imagine sending MJ back to post-war USA. For in the intervening years, the Pop/Rock genre had not been experienced in the Middle Kingdom with the same narrative. English-learning, trend-following (these two things were often synonymous) twentysomethings - and a very precocious nine-year-old - were happily humming to the ballads of The Carpenters, Phil Collins and Whitney Houston, and selective early Madonna (we liked 'Holiday'. We didn't really get 'Material Girl'.) while being oblivious to the Stones. There was one radio station in Shanghai with an hour-long weekly programme devoted to English pop songs. We all saved up to buy blank 'Hi-Fi' cassette tapes to record it. There was one shop in the entire city that stocked 'imported recordings', mostly cassettes and also - still a total novelty at the time - some CDs. My father would buy me one of them at the end of each term as reward for my exam results, which would inevitably become the envy of many friends (the cassette, not the good marks). Piracy was yet to be adopted and proliferated by the Chinese, although it wasn't far off the horizon. And in the midst of all this, the sound of 'Bad! Bad! Cos you're Bad!!' came out of nowhere, and came crashing down on all of us.
To start with, there were frenetic debates in newspapers and semi-academic columns in English-studies journals about what 'Bad' actually meant. Bad could now mean something else?! Something not really bad? That alone sufficed to engage a whole generation of youngsters for quite a while. Then there was the image - did he really use to be a black man? What happened to him? Is this what all American pop stars do to themselves? Those now-and-then photos of MJ that appeared in mainstream media might have heralded the dawn of proper entertainment news in China, for all I know. But above all, the dance. I could recall, almost to the day, when suddenly all the under-45 Chinese males worked day and night so that they could do 'the dance from Bad'. For quite a while, at any semi-significant social gatherings - weddings, New Year celebrations, Chinese New Year celebrations, National Day celebrations - you could bet someone would serve up an attempt at 'doing the Bad dance'. It's a shame we didn't have early enough imported video cameras to capture this craze. Set against the social/cultural/political backdrop of everything else that was happening in the country at the time, this uncanny syncronicity of MJ fans with their worldwide accomplices would surely have made fascinating study for some modern historians. 'Man in the Mirror', 'I Just Can't Stop Lovin' You' and 'The Way You Make Me Feel' also became popular, though nothing was as ubiquitous as Bad itself. In due course, the Thriller album was retrospectively discovered and similarly revered. MJ became an object of worship just as much as he was anywhere else. We couldn't wait for the next album (having just properly grasped the concepts of 'albums' and 'singles').
And boy, was it worth the wait. I can actually say with some confidence that I was one of the first owners of a copy of 'Dangerous' in mainland China, for that was exactly what it was: a pirate copy. Probably one of the first too, which I bought in a street market in Guangzhou (Guangdong province being, to this day, the manufacturing epicentre of Chinese pirate CDs). But unlike what you can get for 10p nowadays, back then the pirate recordings were Properly Made - they had real jewel cases! And proper lookalike booklets! And they were actually being passed off as bootlegged authentic copies, for a not-too-shabby price!! Alright, I was in the wrong AND also conned. But I was 14. I had just entered one of the most prestigious music conservatories in the country and discovered that what a lot of my classmates actually wanted to do was to be MJ. We collectively gaped at the video of 'Black and White' over and over again, and declared that nothing that would ever top this. 'Heal the World' became our love anthem. 'Will You Be There' made us regard Free Willy as the cinematic masterpiece of the decade. MJ remained the King, but in the meantime we had moved on much further - even as teenagers! - than we realised at the time. Or is evolution always like this, that we take progress and development for granted, even (or especially) when they come fast and furiously as they did in turn-of-the-century China? The pirate recording I bought was a CD. Several TV stations regularly featured music videos as special programmes, with an increasing amount of works by Chinese singers. We were already absolutely in-synch with Hong Kong pop (to this day an important well of Chinese talents). And I was spending a lot of time listening to The Police, Billy Joel, Prince, Sinead O'Connor, Tori Amos, and was soon to be gripped by Boyz II Men. The great thing about not growing up with the pop/rock narrative chronologically is that you don't have any pre-conception at all. Whatever I reacted to, whether intellectually or emotionally, was by intuition. I did also have the advantage of language skills superior to most of my fellow 70-ers, and was frequently begged/requested/hired to write down lyrics from songs in English by dictation, which in turn helped me to improve it further. I started to read in English. Short stories first, then the classics, then newspapers and journals.
When HIStory was released, I could afford to buy a legitimate copy of the CD, but I didn't. I didn't buy a pirate copy either. I listened to the new singles on the radio and decided that they were not worth the dough, and I preferred to hold on to my past favourite MJ hits. There were rumours that he would come to do some live shows in China but nothing ever materialised. I, and all my friends, were seventeen going on eighteen, ambitious, restless, hopeful for the future of ourselves and our country. But as every day went by, going abroad to study became a more urgent primary goal. Everyone was buying pirate CDs (and VCDs!) now, and I couldn't quite believe that this wasn't also the case in the West. I started listening to a lot of movie soundtrack albums, and was obsessed with Annie Lennox. And U2. And Take That - the perfect overture to my move to England, I have to say.
Year 1997. United Kingdom handed Hong Kong back to China in exchange for me. I remember buying quite a few pop/rock CDs from HMV during my first week in Newcastle, but none of the MJ albums. And I never did. I don't think I can hum a single song from 'Invincible'. I followed the child-abuse trials and the ever weirder news stories, watched the tearful public testimonials and the Martin Bashir documentary with much the same kind of mild, passive curiosity as the rest of the country. When talent could still shock and shock all the more because of its increasing scarcity, MJ became Just Another Boring Weird Celebrity.
Of all the incongruous and/or unsual things he said on the Bashir documentary, though, one thing stuck with me. 'No, I don't think of dying at all. Because I want to live forever', he said - I've completely forgotten what the precise context or what Bashir's question had been, but I remember the reply clearly. And this is how I had come to regard this being whose physcial looks appeared to be on the verge of falling apart at any moment. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to hear a BBC headline announce one day that MJ really was immortal. It would have only been the perfectly sensible conclusion to all that had gone on with him. All the creations, mysteries, glory, notoriety, adoration, hatred - only immortality could have sealed it all. Now we mourn him, but as I look back I also want to mourn that pure state of shockability that millions of Chinese were in when we first got 'Bad', an innocence lost twice over. Would any future pop artist, Chinese or Western, suddenly break on to the scene to deliver something mind-blowingly original to the Chinese youths of now, who're as dexterous at Googling, downloading or Facebooking as any of their Western counterparts, and who have had everything made ready and easy for them? I'm not holding my breath. Me and my generation, we didn't have it easy, but we had it good. Or Bad. Really, really deliriously BAD.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
