‘The Whole Place Ruinated’: Samuel Beckett and The Wisdom of the Ancients

‘The wisdom of the ancients that’s the trouble they don’t give a rap or snap for it any more, and the world going to rack and ruin, wouldn’t it be better now to go back to the old maxims and not be gallivanting off killing one another in China over the moon.’
Cream, ‘The Old Tune’ (Samuel Beckett)

I recently saw a fine production of Samuel Beckett’s short 1960 play ‘The Old Tune.’ (The Jermyn Street Theatre, London)

Gorman, an organ grinder, is struggling to get a melody from his dilapidated instrument. He encounters Cream, an old friend he has not seen in years.

‘All this speed… has the whole place ruinated, no living with it any more, the whole place ruinated, even the weather.’

They sit on a park bench together and chat about the good times of yore, the fates of various acquaintances, sweethearts and family members. They endeavour to smoke a cigarette. They complain about the younger generation and the traffic, about modern machinery and manners.

‘Ah the young nowadays Mr Cream very wrapped up they are the young nowadays, no thought for the old.’

‘They’d tear you to flitters with their flaming machines.’

As is the way with the elderly, Gorman and Cream are comfortable talking about death. It is a constant companion, a familiar friend.

‘Seventy-three, seventy-three, soon due for the knock.’

‘And Rosie Plumpton bonny Rosie staring up at the lid these thirty years.’

Their animated reflections seem lucid, but between them they cannot agree on any of the details of past events. Their memories are fading, and like the antiquated barrel organ, they struggle to conjure up the old tune.

‘The Old Tune’ is a gentle, poignant play, rich in elegant language and wry observation. And it has a warm human relationship at its centre.

It’s easy to be dismissive of old people. All that rose tinted nostalgia, free association and discontinuity. The story juke box and the family Rolodex. The trivial details about journeys and parking, ailments and treatments. The distrust of youth and technology. The points of view that have fixed and hardened with time. The ardour for refuse collection.

‘You had to work for your living in those days, it wasn’t at six you knocked off, nor at seven neither, eight it was, eight o’clock, yes by God.'

But, of course, if you can see past the sentiment and wistful reminiscence; past the ritual and conservatism; past the confusion of cracked recollection – the elderly still have a good deal to offer. They have precious experience, shrewd insight and hard earned wisdom. They have seen the world and lived a life.

Cream is keen to establish that humankind should seek progress, but not in every direction. He’s particularly sceptical about distant wars, atomic bombs and moon landings.

‘My dear Gorman the moon is the moon and cheese is cheese what do they take us for, didn’t it always exist the moon wasn’t it always there as large as life and what did it ever mean only fantasy and delusion Gorman, fantasy and delusion.’

Why, Cream asks, are we investing so heavily in things that really don’t matter at all? 

‘Rheumatism they never found the remedy for it yet, atom rockets is all they care about.’

I found that these sentiments still resonate today. Progress and innovation, science and technology need direction and focus. They should be pointed at the greatest human needs and the truest human benefits. Let’s not burn precious time, expertise and money on ‘fantasy and delusion.’ Some journeys may not be worth taking. 

‘Ah there I’m with you progress is scientific and the moon, the moon, that’s the way it is.’

At length the two chaps begin their farewells. But they don’t actually get up to go.

‘You know what it is Mr Cream, that’d be the way to pop off chatting away like this on a sunny morning.’


'But now the days are short.
I'm in the autumn of the year.
And now I think of my life as vintage wine,
From fine old kegs,
From the brim to the dregs.
And it poured sweet and clear.
It was a very good year.’
Frank Sinatra, ‘It Was a Very Good Year’ (E Drake)

 No. 272

The Riches of Embarrassment: The Awkward First Outing of My NHS Spectacles

Zhang Xiaogang’s My Mother, 2012. © Zhang Xiaogang / Courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo by: Wang Xiang.

'The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.’ 
Paul Schrader, Screenwriter and Film Director

I was allocated a desk towards the back of class. I sat behind Marco, who had charm and menace in equal measure, and had recently attacked my new geometry set with a G-clamp. Our inventive Maths Teacher had taken to communicating technical terms through pictographs. An empty birdcage, for example, suggested a polygon. 

Squinting at the cryptic chalk marks on the distant blackboard, I decided now was the time.

I reached into my blazer pocket and pulled out my first pair of glasses - robust black, plastic-rimmed NHS spectacles that had recently been fitted by Uncle George the optician. 

I gently settled them in place. A little uncomfortable perhaps, but at once the blackboard squiggles became magically clear. Excellent, I thought to myself. And surely no one will notice this modest adjustment to my appearance.

Unfortunately Marco, ever alert to distractions, turned in his desk and set about mocking my new geeky look.

I blushed. 

With an excited scowl Marco licked his index finger and held it towards me, hissing, as if the heat of my embarrassment was causing it to steam. Soon the whole class had joined in - scoffing, scorning, taunting, teasing - hissing with hilarity. 

I wanted the earth to swallow me up.

I could feel a hot sweat creeping across my whole body. My temperature went through the roof. And all of a sudden the lenses on my new glasses steamed up – like window panes on a cold winter’s day. I couldn’t see a thing.

Please, God, make it stop.

At length my classmates exhausted their mirth and the Maths Teacher restored order. Of course, I got over it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. 

And the class sat in wait for the next scapegoat...

On reflection my whole childhood was characterised by a good deal of discomfort and embarrassment.

I was awkward in my home-knit sweater, in the black shiny shoes that Mrs Crossley gave me. I was awkward carrying my kit to school in a Sainsbury bag, in my slight lisp when I said the letter R. Awkward in my duffle coat when everyone else was wearing parkas, in my crew cut when everyone else had a shaggy mane. Awkward in my FA Cup ears.

Perhaps this is the lot of all children: to be shy and embarrassed, clumsy and graceless, bashful and blundering; to obsess about any absurdly insignificant differences that might set them apart; to pine for normality; to long to belong. 

And of course a predisposition to embarrassment endures beyond childhood. 

I arrived at College wearing white socks with Romford cut-downs and the sleeves of my tartan shirt torn off in the style of Big Country. At my first formal luncheon I put a spoon of salt in my coffee. In a conversation with Mikey G, who had scant knowledge of soul music, I confused the Four Tops with the Temptations - and he never let me forget it. At a literary dinner party I cited John Osborne’s famous play ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger.’ In the preliminary exchanges before a meeting I found myself kissing a male colleague.

I once mistook my most senior Client for a taxi driver and asked him to take me to the airport.

‘No, Jim, it’s Barry.’

I could go on…

Embarrassment is a curious thing. According to the American author Toni Bernhard, it is ‘an emotional response to an innocent mistake.’ It’s prompted by taking a step below the line of one’s own standards, or across the line of social conventions. 

'The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate.’
Douglas Engelbart, Engineer and Inventor

Of course, an innocent mistake may make us feel uncomfortable and may indeed create an enduring impression. But it shouldn’t lead to guilt or shame. It’s really not that important. Some people claim, with age and wisdom, to have overcome embarrassment. I’m not sure that’s the right attitude. 

Embarrassment is the lens through which we get to appreciate our own unrealistic expectations of ourselves. It is the prism through which we see the irrational assumptions of others. Embarrassment makes us conscious of conventions and codes, and aware of our own unique differences. It makes us more alert, more observant. It prevents us from taking ourselves too seriously. 

Surely embarrassment should be cherished as an essentially human quality. It is the gateway to insight and humour. It is the creative’s friend.

The American theatre and opera director Anne Bogart made the following observation:

'Every creative act involves a leap into the void. The leap has to occur at the right moment and yet the time for the leap is never prescribed. In the midst of a leap, there are no guarantees. To leap can often cause acute embarrassment. Embarrassment is a partner in the creative act—a key collaborator.'

A couple of years after my glasses made their inauspicious debut, Elvis Costello arrived triumphant on the British music scene. Suddenly and incredibly NHS spectacles were hip. I realised, with hindsight, that I ought not to have been embarrassed at all. In fact I had been ahead of my time.

'Received a letter just the other day,
Don't seem they wanna know you no more,
They've laid it down, given you their score,
Within the first two lines it bluntly read.

You're not to come and see us no more,
Keep away from our door,
Don't come 'round here no more.
What on earth did you do that for?

No commitment, you're an embarrassment,
Yes, an embarrassment, a living endorsement.’

Madness ‘Embarrassment’ (Thompson, Barson)

No. 271

Dora Maar: A Subversive Life

Dora Maar Untitled (Hand-Shell) 1934 © Estate of Dora Maar / DACS 2019

'All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.’
Andre Breton, Surrealist Writer

I recently attended a fine exhibition of the art of Dora Maar (Tate Modern, London until 15 March).

Henriette Theodora Markovitch was born in 1907 and raised in Argentina and France. Her French mother owned a fashion boutique and her Croatian father was an architect. She studied art in Paris and gradually developed an enthusiasm for photography. In 1931, with director and set designer Pierre Kefer, she opened her first studio. And she changed her name to Dora Maar. 

Initially many of Maar’s assignments were in fashion and advertising. Between the wars there was a burgeoning interest in women’s style, health, and fitness. As consumption grew, so did the appetite for bold, arresting images. This was a time when advertising walked hand-in-hand with contemporary art. 

Maar was naturally inventive and had an eye for the unusual and uncanny. A woman washes her hair and the lather takes on an alien quality. A lady removes her smiling face as if it were a mask. A model’s head is replaced by a sequinned star. 

Cecil Beaton Dora Maar behind one of her works, in her studio at 6 rue de Savoie, Paris 1944 Musée Picasso (Paris, France) © The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s

In one striking image Marr hand-painted elaborate tattoos onto an elegantly attired woman. For an anti-aging cream she superimposed a spider’s web over a model’s face. She had a talent for subversion.

‘Nothing is as strange as reality itself.’
Brassai, Photographer

Maar was active in left-wing politics at the time and developed an interest in street photography. Recording the poverty on the edges of Paris, travelling to Catalonia and London, she sought out the strange sights that surround us in everyday life. A wicker kangaroo wearing boxing gloves stands watching the traffic. A legless mannequin looks out from a first floor window. A suited man disappears beneath the pavement. 

'The unconscious must reign through the intellect.’
Eileen Agar, Surrealist Painter and Photographer

Maar established close relationships with the Surrealist movement that was then based in Paris and she became one of the few photographers to be included in their classic exhibitions of the 1930s. The Surrealists celebrated the power of the unconscious mind. They were fascinated by the revolutionary force of dreams, and believed that the associations we bring to everyday objects reveal our unconscious desires.

Dora Maar, The years lie in wait for you (around 1935). The William Talbott Hillman Collection © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

Photography had hitherto mostly been a medium of fact and rationality. But in Maar’s hands it was a vehicle for subjectivity and fantasy. Through extreme close-ups and bold crops she challenged the viewer to look afresh. Through unexpected contexts and dramatic angles she made cryptic images that questioned logic and common sense. Through carefully constructed photomontage she created bizarre and exotic new worlds.

A two-headed calf sits atop a classical fountain. A hand emerges from a conch shell on a beach. Eyes float across a gloomy sky. A child bends backwards on an inverted stone vault. And a baby armadillo regards us with sinister detachment. 

Maar teaches us to challenge rationality and convention at every turn; to construct and deconstruct; to subvert people’s expectations - of ourselves and the world around us. If we want to catch the eye, to arrest attention, to provoke thought, we need to see the strange in the everyday. We need to stop making sense.

Dora Maar, Man Looking Inside a Sidewalk

From the late 1930s Maar pursued painting as an artistic outlet. She created cubist portraits, sombre still-lives and melancholy landscapes. And then in her seventies she returned to photography, her first love, making a series of photograms – camera-less images produced by placing objects on photo-sensitive paper. With these moody abstractions, sometimes scratched and over-painted, she was asking questions to the last. 

Maar died in Paris in 1997, aged 89.

In support of International Women’s Day (8 March), this piece was written without any reference to Dora Maar’s famous partner.

'Isn't it strange?
Isn't it strange?
I am still me.
You are still you.
In the same place.
Isn't it strange?
How people can change
From strangers to friends,
Friends into lovers,
And strangers again.’

Celeste, ‘Strange’ (C Waite / J Hartman / S Wrabel)

No. 270

Picasso Drinking Gasoline: In Praise of Restless Souls and Inventive Minds

'Study for the Horse Head (I)', a sketch for ‘Guernica’ (1937)

'I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.'
Pablo Picasso

Picasso sits before his easel in a pair of shorts and no shirt. He is 75. He has been set the challenge of creating an image in 5 minutes with a new felt-tip pen. He sketches with speed and confidence - long fluid lines, bold squiggles, dabs of colour. He stares intently at his canvas. A bunch of flowers becomes a tubby fish, which turns into a jaunty cockerel, and finally a red-eyed faun.

‘I could go on all night if you want.’

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s fascinating 1956 film ‘Le mystère Picasso’ seeks to shed light on Picasso’s creative process. The artist paints on transparent blank newsprint so that the crew can film on the other side. He takes us on a dazzling, restless, inspiring journey.

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.’

The documentary features in the fine ‘Picasso and Paper’ exhibition, currently running at the Royal Academy, London (until 13 April).

Pablo Picasso, Women at Their Toilette, Paris, winter 1937–38
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean

‘By chance I managed to get hold of a stock of splendid Japanese paper. It cost me an arm and a leg! But without it I’d never have done those drawings. The paper seduced me.’

For Picasso paper was a vehicle for expression that was always close at hand. It was a tool for preparatory studies. It was a fertile medium in its own right. He created on writing paper, wrapping paper, wallpaper and newspaper. He sketched on notebooks and napkins, magazines and menus, packaging and postcards. He drew in pencil, oil, ink, crayon and charcoal. He folded and glued, cut and pasted, painted and printed.

'I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.’

The exhibition presents a torrent of ideas, thoughts and feelings, a gushing stream of consciousness. It takes us from two charming silhouettes of a dog and a dove, cut from paper when Picasso was nine years old; through his Blue and Rose Periods; through Cubism, Surrealism and Neoclassicism; all the way to a skull-like self-portrait, in black and white crayon, that he made at the age of 91. 

Dog, Málaga, c. 1890 Cut-out paper
© Museu Picasso, Barcelona. Photo, Gasull Fotografia © Succession Picasso/DACS 2020

'To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.’

On the way we see countless fauns, goats and doves; matadors and minotaurs; harlequins and horses; nudes and portraits; lovers, jesters, cavaliers and circus performers. Picasso burnt two eyes and a mouth into a paper napkin with a cigarette to make a head. He created a plaster cast of a crumpled sheet of paper. He drew a cheeky leg on a Vogue fashion spread.

'Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.’

Picasso clearly had a phenomenal work ethic. He just kept producing fresh, original ideas across all manner of media. He couldn’t help himself.

'Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.’

And he wasn’t afraid of the absurd, the ugly or the obscene. His work is unfiltered, unfettered, uncensored. Freud would have had a field day.

'The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' sense.’

When fellow artist Georges Braques first saw 'Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon' he observed:

'It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire.’

Picasso next to the cut and folded cardboard sculpture of a seated man for Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / image RMN-GP © Succession Picasso/DACS 2020

I left the exhibition in awe of Picasso’s extraordinary appetite for change, his craving to create. He seems to have had a relentless desire to express ideas, to articulate feelings, to explore, to pioneer. He was indeed drinking gasoline.

'If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!’

Picasso was, of course, a unique talent and a problematic personality. But he still suggests some simple lessons for people working in the creative professions.

We should cultivate a restless mind - diligent, dynamic, determined; alive to new possibilities and fresh perspectives. We should not seek to check, edit or censor ideas before we’ve given them room to breathe. We should avoid nostalgia; never rest on our laurels; never look back.

'Action is the foundational key to all success.'

Above all, we should reach for a pad. Scribble, sketch, jot and note. Carry a journal, make a list. Devise a scheme, form a theory, hatch a plan, draft an idea, plot an escape.

Go on. Make it up, write it down. Now.

'I do not seek. I find.’

At the end of the Clouzot film Picasso expresses dissatisfaction with one of his images. He sets about over-painting it. ‘But what about the audience?’ Clouzot asks.

‘I’ve never worried about the audience and I’m not about to start now.’

'O, the wayward wind is a restless wind,
Is a restless wind that yearns to wander.
And I was born the next of kin,
The next of kin to the wayward wind.’
Sam Cooke, ‘The Wayward Wind’ (S Lebowsky, H Newman)

No. 269

‘Ace in the Hole’: Beware the Seductive Allure of Cynicism in the Workplace

'Bad news sells best. Cause good news is no news.’
Chuck Tatum, ‘Ace in the Hole’

In Billy Wilder’s splendid 1951 movie ‘Ace in the Hole’Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a hard-bitten, unscrupulous journalist who has been fired from the big East Coast papers for lying, drinking and womanising. Arriving in a small New Mexico town, looking for a break to take him back to the big time, he takes a job at the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. 

'I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog.’

After an uneventful year at the paper, Tatum stumbles across an incident where a man has been trapped alive down an old Native American mine. He weaves a sensational story about an ancient curse, a hero in peril and a distressed wife waiting back at home. The piece makes the front page and precipitates a stream of onlookers and reporters to the site of the accident.

'This is the way it reads best, this is the way it's gonna be. In tomorrow's paper and the next day's. It's the way people like it. It's the way I'm gonna play it.' 

Tatum understands that human interest sells newspapers, and he’s happy to spice up the truth a little to enhance that human interest.

'Human interest. You pick up the paper, you read about 84 men or 284, or a million men, like in a Chinese famine. You read it, but it doesn't stay with you. One man's different. You want to know all about him. That's human interest.’

Next Tatum does a deal with the local sheriff to keep competitive press reporters away from the scene, promising that the celebrity he garners for the official overseeing the rescue will increase his chances of re-election. When the disgruntled wife of the trapped man threatens to leave, Tatum coaxes her to stay on and reap the commercial benefits of the sensation at her hitherto desolate trading store. 

'I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.’ 

Then the chief engineer reports that he can get the trapped man out in 12 hours by shoring-up the mine walls. This is too soon for Tatum. He persuades the contractor to drill from above, which will take a number of days. The more dramatic the project, the greater the engineer’s reputation, the more lucrative the jobs he’ll secure in the future.

'I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.’

For Tatum himself the incentive for spinning out the story is simple: more exclusives, more recognition, a bigger job, more money. Soon he’ll be back at the top where he belongs.

'Look, I've waited a long time for my turn at bat. Now that they've pitched me a fat one, I'm gonna smack it right out of the ballpark.’

Intense, vigorous and on a short fuse, growling and grinning, teasing and cajoling, Tatum orchestrates a full-scale media circus. Day-trippers arrive from the city. Cars and tour-buses queue to get in. A special train is laid on. A carnival sets up in the shadows of the mine. 

The disgruntled pressmen endeavour fruitlessly to get Tatum onside.

'We're all in the same boat.’
'I'm in the boat. You're in the water. Now let's see how you can swim.’

‘Ace in the Hole’ is a modern fable. It illustrates what happens when truth is pushed to one side, when compromises are made, when people are manipulated to pursue their own self-interest. It’s a story of when cynicism takes hold.

Of course cynicism can be seductive. Cynics are often charming and funny, crafty and canny. You’ll find them at every level of status and experience; in every company, community and country. They can bend the truth to make it more attractive. They can make straight dealing seem archaic and naïve. 

But cynicism is corrosive. With every corner cut and lily gilded, with every minor deception and petty deceit, with every scornful remark and sarcastic observation, there is an erosion of trust, a decay in confidence, an unpicking of the ties that bind people together. And, in time, sooner or later, things fall apart.

Of course, for all his charisma, intelligence and foresight, there’s one element of the whole media circus that Tatum can’t control: the health and durability of the hapless victim trapped for six days down a mine. And this is where his perfectly laid plans gradually come unstuck.

'When you have a big human interest story, you've got to give it a big human interest ending. When you get people steamed up like this, don't ever make suckers out of them. I don't want to hand them a dead man.'

In memory of Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) who passed away earlier this month.

'Well, if friends with their fancy persuasion
Don't admit that it's part of a scheme,
Then I can't help but have my suspicions
'Cause I ain't quite as dumb as I seem.
And you said you was never intending
To break up our scene in this way.
But there ain't any use in pretending
It could happen to us any day.
How long has this been going on?
How long has this been going on?’

Ace, ‘How Long?’ (P Carrack)

No. 268



The Clash Teach The Three Rs: ‘Rehearse, 'Rite and Record’

The Clash - Credit: Pennie Smith

'The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in.
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growin’ thin.
Engines stop running, but I have no fear,
'Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river.'
The Clash, ‘London Calling’

I recently visited a display at The Museum of London commemorating the 40th anniversary of The Clash’s third album, ‘London Calling’ (until 19 April 2020).

This 1979 release marked a critical moment in British popular music. It led a breakout from the narrow confines of punk and mapped new, more expansive creative territories. It was swaggering and confident, rebellious and romantic. Where previously The Clash had been the standard bearers for punk minimalism, ‘London Calling’ experimented with ska and reggae; with rockabilly and rock’n’roll; with piano, sax and brass. Where previously the band had been deeply sceptical about America’s cultural worth, they now embraced its status as the wellspring of rock’n’roll. 

'We wanted 'London Calling' to reclaim the raw, natural culture. We looked back to earlier rock music with great pleasure, but many of the issues people were facing were new and frightening. Our message was more urgent — that things were going to pieces.’
Joe Strummer

True to The Clash’s own roots, ‘London Calling’ considered contemporary themes: police oppression, racism and unemployment; lost idealism, consumer ennui and nuclear fallout. (It was written in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident.) But it also looked further afield, reflecting on the Spanish Civil War, Montgomery Clift and the enduring appeal of a brand new Cadillac. It was a thrillingly eclectic cocktail of top tunes and radical ideas.

'I'm all lost in the supermarket.
I can no longer shop happily.
I came in here for that special offer,
A guaranteed personality.’
'Lost in the Supermarket' 

The Clash - Credit: Pennie Smith

The display at the Museum of London, along with the accompanying scrapbook, afford us the opportunity to consider the very particular circumstances that led to this vital, exhilarating album. 

Here are some of its lessons.

1. ‘If You’re in a Rut, You Gotta Get Out of It’

‘If you hold them to their past, you’re strapping on a straightjacket.’
Kris Needs, ZigZag Magazine

By the time The Clash came to planning their third album, they’d reached a fork in the road. The Sex Pistols had split up and Sid Vicious was dead. The punk genre they had collectively pioneered, for all its blistering brilliance, was running on empty. It had become all three chord Spartanism, snarling nihilism, safety pins, spitting and mohicans.

As a journalist observed at the time:

‘The first album detailed their concerns (repression, class war, boredom, etc.) while the second showed up the dilemmas of their position rather than actually going some way to resolving them.’

The Clash recognised that they had to evolve and move on.

2. Build a Tight Team

The band had recently parted company with their manager Bernie Rhodes and found themselves without a studio. They relocated to Vanilla Studios in Pimlico and set about rehearsing. In contrast to previous albums, they kept these sessions private.

‘We felt quite alone in some ways. We found the place in Pimlico and became even tighter, to the point where you didn’t need to talk when you were playing because there was a natural communication there.’
Paul Simonon

The main songwriters, Mick Jones and Joe Strummer, had not penned a new song in over a year. And so the group began the process by performing covers from a broad variety of genres.

3. Establish a Routine

 ‘There was a real intensity of effort and our recreation was playing 5-a-side football as a way of starting our rehearsal days. We’d play until we dropped and then we’d start playing music. It was a good limbering up exercise.’
Joe Strummer

The band developed a disciplined daily routine: a midday game of football in the playground opposite the studio, egg and chips in the nearby café, followed by extensive rehearsals. As ever, habit is the creative’s friend.

'I just think we really found ourselves at that time and it was a lot to do with the football.’
Mick Jones

4. Do Things in the Right Order

Once they had built confidence and coherence through rehearsing cover versions, the band took to writing new songs, and then rehearsing these. They then transferred to Wessex Studios in Highbury to begin recording. They referred to their disciplined regime as the Three Rs: ‘Rehearse, ‘Rite and Record.’

This may seem an obvious point. So often in any creative endeavour we charge ahead and try to do everything at once. The Clash demonstrated that it’s critical to give each developmental phase time and space, and to approach them in the right sequence.

‘That’s probably why it’s our best, because it was written, rehearsed and then recorded, rather than just going into the studio and see what turned up.’
Topper Headon

5. Add a Dose of Adrenaline

The Clash had appointed veteran producer Guy Stevens to oversee the album. Stevens was a fast-working maverick who had recorded with Mott the Hoople back in the day. He created a sense of urgency in the studio by smashing chairs, whirling ladders and shouting in the musicians’ faces.

He also liked to play a recording of the 1979 FA Cup Final - when Arsenal beat Manchester United 3-2 - at full volume over the studio speakers, while holding a scarf bearing the words 'There's only one Liam Brady'.

6.  When You’ve Found a Groove, Stay in It

One of the remarkable things about ‘London Calling’ at the time was that it was a 19-track double album. This seemed at odds with the punk movement for whom such things had the whiff of prog rock excess and self-indulgence. In order to address possible accusations of commercial exploitation, The Clash insisted that ‘London Calling’ be sold as a two-for-one offer.

The truth was that the band had hit such a rich vein of form that they had too much material for a single album. The final song, 'Train in Vain,' arrived so late that it was originally excluded from the back cover's track listing. 

The lesson is: when you’ve found a groove, stay in it.

‘London Calling’ was released on 14 December 1979. Pennie Smith’s iconic cover photo featured Paul Simonon smashing his bass on stage at New York’s Palladium theatre earlier that year. (She had originally been reluctant to use this image as it was out of focus.) Ray Lowry’s art direction echoed that of Elvis Presley’s first album.

From the moment we heard the first urgent chords of ‘London Calling’; from the moment we acquainted ourselves with the assertive strut of ‘Working for the Clampdown’; from the moment the bass on ‘The Guns of Brixton’ came rumbling in … we knew this was it, the real deal – it can’t fail.

'I know that my life make you nervous.
But I tell you I can't live in service.
Like the doctor who was born for a purpose.
Rudie can't fail,’
‘Rudie Can’t Fail’

Rudi Can’t Fail - Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, The Clash 1979

No. 267

‘An Intenser Expression’: David Bomberg on Building Life and Art Anew

David Bomberg 1890–1957 Vision of Ezekiel 1912

'We must build our new art life of today upon the ruins of the dead art life of yesterday.’
David Bomberg

I recently visited a small exhibition of the early work of British artist David Bomberg. (The National Gallery until 1 March.) 

Bomberg was born in Birmingham in 1890, the seventh of eleven children. His parents were Polish Jewish immigrants who subsequently settled in Whitechapel in London’s East End. He grew up in poverty, but single-mindedly pursued an artistic career. After a chance encounter at the V&A with the established painter John Singer Sargent, he gained a place at the Slade School. 

‘I hate the Fat Man of the Renaissance.’ 

Whereas the British art establishment of the day steadfastly resisted the innovations that were taking place on continental Europe, Bomberg was one of a number of young painters who were emboldened by the likes of Picasso and Matisse. He gradually developed a radical style that combined the abstraction of cubism with the dynamism of futurism.

When he was 22 Bomberg’s mother died of pneumonia. She was just 48. He channelled his grief into 'Vision of Ezekiel,' a work that considered the biblical story in which a prophet is taken to the Valley of Dried Bones and witnesses their resurrection.

'And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.'
Ezekiel, Chapter 37

The geometric figures in ‘Vision of Ezekiel’ dance with pure joy, hug one another, and raise their hands ecstatically to the heavens. They are in awe at what has happened to them, animated with a renewed lust for life. It is a heartfelt work.

Detail from David Bomberg In the Hold, about 1913-14 © Tate

Bomberg’s paintings around this time responded to his family’s experiences and to the world around him. He was inspired by the muscular activity at the Judeans gymnasium where his brother trained as a boxer; by the dramas played out at Saint Katharine’s Wharf where ships brought in human cargoes of immigrants; by the raw physicality that he witnessed at Schevzik’s Vapour Baths in Brick Lane where locals went in search of ‘purification.’

Bomberg created sharp, angular abstractions, teeming with energy, vibrant with colour. There were jagged elbows, taught necks, arms aloft and legs akimbo. Stretching and straining, squatting and stooping. Wrestling, embracing, gripping and grasping. Holding on for dear life. His paintings had an urgency about them, an electric charge, a vital sense of struggle. 

Bomberg’s progressive thoughts and rebellious attitude got him expelled from the Slade. But he forged ahead, and within a year, in 1914, he was given a show at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea. In the catalogue he wrote:

'In some of the work… I completely abandon Naturalism and Tradition. I am searching for an Intenser expression. In other work… where I use Naturalistic Form, I have stripped it of all irrelevant matter.’

Perhaps there is a lesson for us all here. So often in work and life we compromise, concede and dilute. We waste time and energy. We allow ourselves to be caught up in the trivial and superficial, the bland and banal. 

If we truly want to ‘build our new life of today’ the answer may reside in ‘stripping away irrelevant matter’; in finding more concise, more concentrated articulation of our feelings; in seeking out heightened experiences. We need to find ‘an intenser expression.’

David Bomberg, The Mud Bath, 1914. © Tate

With the onset of the First World War Bomberg enlisted and served in the trenches on the Western Front. Like many of his comrades he turned to poetry as an outlet. Distraught at the death of his brother and many of his friends, in 1917 he shot himself in the foot. He was fortunate to escape a firing squad.

After the conflict Bomberg’s experiences prompted a change in artistic direction. He increasingly painted portraits and landscapes, embracing a more figurative style. The radicalism of cubism and the optimism of the machine age just didn’t feel relevant any more.

‘Hemmed in. The bolted ceiling of the night rests
on our heads, like vaulted roofs of iron huts the troops
use out in France, - unlit. Grope – stretch out your
hand and feel its corrugated sides, rusted,

Dimly seen, six wiring-stakes driven in the ground,
askew, some yards apart; - demons dragging, strangling -
wire. Earth and sky, each in each enfolded -
hypnotised; - sucked in the murky snare, stricken dumb.’

David Bomberg, ‘Winter Night’

No. 266

A Taste of Honey: You Find Unusual People in Unusual Places

‘Dear Miss Littlewood,
Along with this letter comes a play, the first I have written. I wondered if you would read it through and send it back to me because no matter what sort of theatrical atrocity it might be, it isn’t valueless as far as I’m concerned.'

So began a letter sent in April 1958 by 19-year old Shelagh Delaney to radical theatre director Joan Littlewood. Delaney, the daughter of a bus inspector, was living on a Salford council estate. She had left school at 17 and worked in a number of low-paid jobs: a clerk at a milk depot, a shop assistant, an usherette and a photographer's assistant. The play that came with her letter was ‘A Taste of Honey’. 

'A fortnight ago I didn’t know the theatre existed, but a young man, anxious to improve my mind, took me along to the Opera House in Manchester and I came away after the performance having suddenly realised that at last, after nineteen years of life, I had discovered something that means more to me than myself.' 

Legend has it that Delaney was spurred to write ‘A Taste of Honey’ after seeing a production of Terence Rattigan’s ‘Variation on a Theme.’ This polite middle-class drawing-room drama was typical of British theatre at the time. To Delaney it seemed completely irrelevant and she believed she could do better. In a subsequent interview she observed:

'I had strong ideas about what I wanted to see in the theatre. We used to object to plays where the factory workers came cap in hand and call the boss 'sir'. Usually North Country people are shown as gormless, whereas in actual fact, they are very alive and cynical.’

‘A Taste of Honey’ is set in crumbling, neglected post-war Salford. It’s a world of industrial pollution and grinding poverty; of uninspiring schools and unfulfilling jobs; of a cold shabby flat with a shared bathroom and a gas cooker on the blink; of make do and mend, worrying about the rent, and keeping your cups in the sink. It’s a world of awkward truths and pernicious lies.

‘We’re all at the steering wheel of our own destiny. Careering along like drunken drivers.’

The play relates the story of working-class teenager Jo, who has grown up following her bibulous mother from one tatty bedsit and unreliable boyfriend to the next. 

‘When you start earning you can start moaning.’

Jo falls in love with a black sailor, but he returns to sea and leaves her alone and pregnant. She strikes up a friendship with gay art student Geof, who moves into her flat and looks after her.

'You need someone to love you while you are looking for someone to love.’

A mixed race relationship, single motherhood, homosexuality - these were themes that had not hitherto had a place on the British stage. Above all ‘A Taste of Honey’ was ground breaking in its frank and affectionate depiction of working-class Northern life.

‘In this country the more you know the less you earn.’

Despite all the daily injustices and inequities, Delaney’s Lancastrian characters are resilient, cheerful, sarcastic and funny. They move freely from bitter rancour to light-hearted teasing. They take life’s challenges in their stride.  

'I’m not afraid of the darkness outside. It’s the darkness inside houses I don’t like.’

At the heart of the play is an extraordinary portrayal of the relationship between a mother and her daughter. We see resentment and affection, rivalry and companionship. And we get a strong sense that they have more in common than they’d like to admit.

‘Why don’t you learn from my mistakes? It takes half your life to learn from your own.’

In May 1958, just a few weeks after Littlewood received the teenager’s letter, ‘A Taste of Honey’ opened at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. It was a runaway success, winning awards and a West End transfer. Delaney worked with film director Tony Richardson to translate it into the splendid 1961 movie of the same name, starring Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan and Murray Melvin.

'The only consolation I can find in your immediate presence is your ultimate absence.’

I found the story of Shelagh Delaney’s first play both thrilling and troubling. On the one hand, it’s marvellous to encounter such talent in someone so young: so bold and original; so determined and confident.

‘I just applied my imagination to my observation.’

On the other hand, one can’t help wondering: How lucky was Delaney to find the supportive Littlewood? Would similar talent be recognised and rewarded today? How many words go unspoken? How many voices go unheard? How many perspectives go unexpressed? How many ideas go unrealised?

‘My usual self is a very unusual self.’

Nowadays we spend a good deal of time in the world of communications obsessing about transformation and reinvention. We tend to imagine that all the answers are to be found in new models, new platforms and new processes.

But the greatest opportunity facing this, and so many other industries, may reside in untapped talent – in young people from classes, regions and ethnicities that are currently overlooked. You find unusual people in unusual places.

‘People of my age – a bit younger than me – want to go somewhere and they know what they want to do, and they’re all like tethered… jerking about waiting for someone to cut the tether. Let me off. Let me go!’

Delaney’s letter to Littlewood concluded with a simple plea for help:

‘I want to write for the theatre, but I know so very little about it. I know nothing, have nothing – except a willingness to learn – and intelligence.’

Isn’t that all you can ask for?

You can see a fine production of ‘A Taste of Honey’ at the Trafalgar Studios in London until 29 February.

'I dreamt about you last night
And I fell out of bed twice.
You can pin and mount me like a butterfly.
But 'take me to the haven of your bed'
Was something that you never said.’

The Smiths, ‘Reel Around the Fountain’ (S Morrissey / J Marr)

No. 265

Trojan Business: Can an Ancient Myth Teach Contemporary Lessons?

Filippo Albacini (1777–1858), The Wounded Achilles. Marble, 1825. © The Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth

'Like the generation of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.'
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, VI

I recently attended an exhibition at the British Museum considering the enduring myth of ancient Troy. (‘Troy, Myth and Reality’ runs until 8 March, 2020.)

The displays recount the legend of the Trojan War as described by Homer, Virgil, the great tragedians and poets. They consider the central role the story had in ancient cultures, the archaeological endeavours to discover the true site of Troy, and the range of artistic responses to the myth through the centuries.

According to legend, the Trojan War was precipitated by the abduction of Helen, the wife of Spartan King Menelaus, by the Trojan Prince Paris. An alliance of Greek kings, led by Menelaus’ brother, Agamemnon of Mycenae, rallies in support. They sail in their ‘sea-cleaving ships’ across the Aegean for ‘many-towered’ Troy. A huge army of ‘well-greaved‘ Greeks then embarks on a ten-year siege that culminates in the fall of the city. 

'At last the armies clashed at one strategic point,
they slammed their shields together, pike scraped pike,
with the grappling strength of fighters armed in bronze
and their round shields pounded, boss on welded boss,
and the sound of struggle roared and rocked the earth.
Screams of men and cries of triumph breaking in one breath,
fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed blood.’
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, IV

It’s a story of fearless bravery and human frailty, of camaraderie and brutality. Heroes strive through their acts of courage to create reputations that will endure through the ages. Theirs is a quest for immortality. But ultimately their fates are determined by the gods, who are fickle, capricious and partisan.

'And someday one will say, one of the men to come
steering his oar-swept ship across the wine-dark sea
'there's the mound of a man who died in the old days,
one of the brave whom glorious Hector killed.'
So they will say, someday, and my fame will never die.’
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, VII

The ancients studied Homer and Virgil as sacred texts that revealed truths about life, death, individual responsibility and destiny. Let us consider whether these same myths and legends have any contemporary relevance.

1. Life and business are about hard choices

Inevitably the true origins of the Trojan War derive from a disagreement among the gods. Paris is asked to arbitrate in a dispute over a golden apple inscribed ‘to the most beautiful.’ The apple is claimed by three competing divinities: Hera, the goddess of marriage and power, who promises Paris an empire; Athena the goddess of war and wisdom, who guarantees glory in battle; and Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who vows to give him the most beautiful woman in the world.

Paris chooses the path of passion and sentiment, and so sets in train the events that lead to war.

We may censure Paris for his short-sightedness. But what was he to do? Which goddess should he have chosen? Whomever he selected, wouldn’t he inevitably have encountered problems? 

The exhibition features a 1569 painting of Queen Elizabeth I by Hans Eworth that shows that Paris could have been more creative. Elizabeth, confronted with the same dilemma, chooses to reject the offers of the three goddesses and retain the apple herself - thereby demonstrating her extraordinary wisdom, and instinct for diplomacy and peace.

And this is the first lesson: life and business are about hard choices.

Hans Eworth - Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses 1569. © The Royal Collection Trust

2. Petty rivalry divides a team

‘Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.'
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, I

A central character in the siege of Troy is ‘swift-footed’ Achilles, fearsome warrior and Greek hero. The war rages for nine years without any decisive victory, but in the tenth year an argument prompts Achilles to withdraw from the fray. He has been given Briseis, the queen of a neighbouring city, as his prize. However, ‘wide-ruling lord’ Agamemnon pulls rank and demands her for himself. Furious Achilles threatens to remove his troops and return home. He prays that the Trojans will succeed and retires to sulk in his tent. 

This seemingly insignificant incident tips the scales in favour of the Trojans, who drive the Greeks back behind their defences. The Trojans now have the upper hand.

Beware. Petty rivalries, trivial feuds and false pride can divide a team and determine events.

‘Love at first sight’: amphora, c530BC (detail), showing Achilles killing Penthesilea. Photograph: British Museum

3. Everyone has an Achilles’ heel

'I know you and what you are, and was sure that I should not move you, for your heart is hard as iron; look to it that I bring not heaven's anger upon you on the day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo, valiant though you be, shall slay you at the Scaen gates.'
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, XXII

When Achilles was a baby, his mother Thetis made him invincible by dipping him into the River Styx. But since she held him by the heel, one foot was untouched by the magical water and was therefore left unprotected.

When Achilles is eventually persuaded to reengage with the combat, he kills ‘horse-taming’ Hector, the first-born son of King Priam, and drives the Trojans back behind the gates of the city. But triumphant Achilles is then shot by Paris. The arrow is guided by the god Apollo ‘with the unshorn hair’ to strike Achilles at his one weak point: his heel. It seems a tragically modest way for such a man to die.

Even the most fearsome warrior has an Achilles’ heel. And even the most celebrated businessperson has a vulnerability, flaw or weakness.

4. You’re most at risk at the height of your success

And then one day, as ‘rosy-fingered Dawn’ rises over the city, the Trojans awake to discover that the Greeks have sailed away across the ‘wine-dark sea’. They assume that the invaders have been fatigued by the years of fighting, or that the gods have demanded their departure. They then discover that the Greeks have left a huge wooden horse on the beach and interpret this as an offering to appease the heavens. The Trojans drag the horse into the city, breaching their own defensive wall in the process.

‘Four times it stalled before the gateway, at the very threshold;
Four times the arms clashed loud inside its belly.
Nevertheless, heedless, blinded by frenzy,
We press right on and set the inauspicious
Monster inside the sacred fortress.'
Virgil, ‘The Aeneid’, II

In fact the wooden horse conceals the Greeks’ best warriors. When night falls, the Greek fleet sails quietly back to Troy and the warriors emerge from the horse. Troy is sacked, suffering many atrocities.

When we think we’re on top, we’re most exposed to complacency. Pride comes before a fall.

Exekias
Achilles and Ajax Playing a Board Game 540-530 BCE. Terracotta amphora. Height 2 feet (Musei Vaticani, Rome)

5. It’s not enough to be right

'I fear the Greeks, even those bearing gifts.’Virgil, ‘The Aeneid’, II

Red-figure jar, c480-470BC: Odysseus, strapped to the mast, sails past the Sirens. Photograph: British Museum

The tragedy of Troy’s fall is enhanced by the fact that, first the priest Laocoon, and then the priestess Cassandra, warn that the Greek horse cannot be trusted.

Serpents emerge suddenly from the sea and devour Laocoon and his sons, seemingly confirming that the horse is bona fide. Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam, is gifted with prophetic skills, but cursed never to be believed. With the fall of Troy she is taken back to Mycenae as a concubine by Agamemnon, and subsequently murdered by his embittered wife.

Sadly, it’s not enough to be right in life or business. Your success and happiness revolve around your ability to persuade others that you are right.

6. Sometimes it pays to delay

'So by day she’d weave at her great and growing web—
by night, by the light of torches set beside her,
she would unravel all she’d done. Three whole years
she deceived us blind, seduced us with this scheme.’
Homer, ‘The Odyssey’, II

Meanwhile the Greek heroes have left their loved ones to cope without them for ten years. In Ithaca Penelope, the wife of ‘great hearted’ Odysseus, must fend off an army of suitors who assume that the king is dead. She is obliged by the laws of hospitality to entertain these admirers at great expense, but, ever loyal, she devises a scheme to keep them at bay. She promises she will choose a new husband when she has woven a shroud. So she sits all day weaving this garment and then spends all night secretly unpicking her work.

We tend nowadays to celebrate speed of thought and immediacy of action. But sometimes, as Penelope knew, it pays to delay.

7. Leave a legacy

There are passages in ‘The Iliad’ that are little more than relentlessly grim lists of wretched, painful deaths. The phrases and epithets are repetitive and formulaic. The plot seems stuck in a rut.

There is, of course, poetic truth in these ‘retarded’ verses: war is a brutal, endlessly monotonous exercise in munitions, names, numbers and statistics. It has no neat narrative shape.

Scholars have also concluded that ‘The Iliad’ was not originally a written work, but rather was transmitted orally. Primarily performed around a campfire, the poem was the product of improvisation, adapted to the location and audience. Homer may have felt obliged to name-check the local hero of the townsfolk he was addressing. And so with time the work accrued more and more valiant deaths.

'My doom has come upon me; let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.’
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, XXII

With ‘The Iliad,’ Homer secured the immortality of legions of heroes for generations to come. Perhaps we too should sometimes focus on the reputation we leave behind us. 

 8. Follow your destiny

Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ picks up the tale of Troy with its demise, and pursues a positive theme. It relates the fate of Aeneas, a Trojan prince who survives the defeat, endures adventures, and goes on to found Rome. ‘The Aeneid’ suggests that some people are ordained by the gods to achieve great things. They will undergo hardship and tragedy on the way, but they will succeed.

'Duty bound, 
Aeneas, though he struggled with desire
to calm and comfort her in all her pain, 
to speak to her and turn her mind from grief, 
and though he sighed his heart out, shaken still 
with love of her, yet took the course heaven gave him
and turned back to the fleet.'Virgil, ‘The Aeneid’, IV

We may conclude our review of the Trojan story with a somewhat outdated sentiment. Perhaps we, like Achilles, Hector and Aeneas before us, would do well to pursue our lives and careers with a belief in our own destiny; with a sense of purpose; with an ambition to leave a legacy in the hearts and minds of our colleagues and friends. 

Even in this anxious modern age - even in the context of contemporary commerce - it’s still possible to be a hero.

'When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.’
Henry Purcell, ‘Dido’s Lament’ (Nahum Tate)

 No. 264

Flawed Beauty and Awkward Truths: What I Learned from My Brief Career as a Ballet Dancer

"Ballerina In Sink II, London" (2004) Credit: Courtesy Mary McCartney

'I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.'
Choreographer, George Balanchine

Did I ever tell you I once performed in a ballet?

When I was a student at Oxford, a visiting ballet troupe from London put on a production of ‘Cinderella’ at the Playhouse. The custom in those days was for touring companies to recruit extras from the local student population. Our friend Jez had some connection with a theatrical agent, and we were always interested in earning a few extra quid.

So, one afternoon, along with a handful of my mates (Tall Jez, Little Jez, Matty and Alex), I tramped along to the Playhouse for a briefing. We were of varying height, aptitude and agility, but it didn’t seem to matter too much. An hour’s instruction and we were stage-ready, match-fit.

When it came round to the performances, I think we acquitted ourselves rather well. We employed the principles of method acting to inhabit our roles as military cat people. We stood to attention and looked distinguished. We held spears and marched about a bit. The highlight came when four of us carried a feline ballerina across the stage in a sedan chair - a cat litter, I suppose.

I was left with a couple of enduring impressions.

First of all I developed a real respect for ballet. I had had no previous exposure to classical dance and I guess I thought of it as a rather rarefied, elegant affair. I had no idea of the physical exertion involved. But as we stood in the wings awaiting our next entrance, the principals would join us from the stage, having completed a seemingly effortless, graceful, gravity-defying pas de deux. The moment they were out of the audience’s sight, they would be bent double with exhaustion, gasping for breath. 

Ballet dancers are not just artists. They are athletes.

George Balanchine and Arthur Mitchell

Secondly I had a rather chastening encounter with my ballet costume. We got changed in the archaic theatrical dressing room backstage at the Playhouse. Space was limited and we were surrounded on all sides by mirrors with bright bulbs around their edges. We’d been given a number of feline military garments to accompany our roles. Coarse black breeches, red velvet waistcoats and white furry cat heads. But before we could don these, we first had to strip right down and put on a pair of pink ballet tights that extended up to our chests and were suspended by thick elastic shoulder straps.

As I regarded myself in the unforgiving dressing room mirrors, clothed only in my long pink ballet tights, I was confronted with the truth of my moderate looks and unconvincing masculinity. There was nowhere to hide. I was indeed no Rudolf Nureyev. It was a humbling experience. 

'The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.’
George Balanchine

I was reminded of this recently when judging the APG Creative Planning Awards. 

Across a diverse range of categories and tasks, brands were taking a long hard look in the mirror. KFC sought to acknowledge its historically flawed fries and the logistical disaster when its stores ran out of chicken. Mothercare focused on real women’s bodies post childbirth and endeavoured to translate ‘body shame’ into ‘body pride.’ And with its ‘Bloodnormal’ campaign Bodyform/Libresse shed a positive light on the truth of periods. 

In the age of transparency, brands need to be prepared to recognise their flaws and failings – indeed sometimes to celebrate them. Brands also need to be positive and proactive around issues that were hitherto regarded as unappealing and unattractive. We must speak honestly, talk candidly, take on taboos vigorously. We must learn to embrace flawed beauty and awkward truths. 

Though scarred by my experience with the pink tights, I retained an affection and respect for ballet, which in my later years has translated into something of an enthusiasm. Ballet is where art meets athleticism. It’s both an escape from, and an engagement with, the real world. It’s an exercise in essential truth.

As the great choreographer George Balanchine once observed:

'Music must be seen, and dance must be heard.’ 

'Mirror in the bathroom,
Please talk free.
The door is locked,
Just you and me.’

The Beat, ‘Mirror in the Bathroom'

No. 263