The Conversational Gambit: If You Were Restricted to Five Fruits, What Would They Be?

Basket of Pears, 1882 by Édouard Manet. Photograph: © Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen

‘'What ho!' I said.
'What ho!' said Motty.
'What ho! What ho!'
'What ho! What ho! What ho!'
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.’
PG Wodehouse, 'My Man Jeeves’

I have often thought that what little success I have had in business derives from one particular conversation.

I had been working at Bartle Bogle Hegarty for only a short while when I was invited to a dinner. Co-Founder Nigel Bogle wanted to meet a few of the recent recruits, to get a sense of the emergent talent pool and perhaps to impress on them some of the company’s values.

I’m not the most socially confident person, and I am generally awkward at such work events - worried that I will say the wrong thing or, worse still, say nothing at all. And so I approached the occasion with some trepidation.

'I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.'
Sally Rooney, 'Conversations with Friends'

My nerves jangled all the more when I found that I was seated next to the evening’s host. Nigel was an imposing figure. Fiercely intelligent, serious-minded and somewhat laconic. How could an anxious fool like me keep him interested and entertained for three courses?

My Classics teacher at school, Mr Deasy, had advised that such situations called for the deployment of a Conversational Gambit: a short remark, story or question that would start a discussion. And so I had subsequently developed a stock of gambits to see me through uncomfortable interactions:

‘What would be your final meal?’
‘What’s your favourite bus route?’
‘Which body part would you change if you could?’
‘When were you happiest?’

On this occasion, I thought I’d try my Five Fruits gambit:

‘If you were restricted to five fruits, what would they be?’

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of limiting choice, particularly in the area of food. Too many permutations. Too much fuss. Altogether a distraction. A little editing would do us all a favour.

And so the table debated my question.

‘Well, you’ll want an apple as a work-horse fruit.’

‘And a banana as an indulgent fruit – with all its associated energy benefits.’

‘You’ll need one citrus, probably orange. I’m tempted to go for satsuma for easy peeling.’

‘And then perhaps a berry. Raspberry is slightly more tasty, and certainly less obvious, than a strawberry.

‘Or grapes, as you wouldn’t want to do without wine.’

Inevitably there was some disagreement. Snobbishness about satsumas. Preference for exotic varietals like mangoes and mandarins. Debates about the botanic status of plantains and avocados.

‘Is a tomato a fruit?’

The gambit served its purpose. It had the whole table buzzing. And I noticed Nigel was particularly engaged. He probed away at the question as if sitting an exam, exploring the many ways of interpreting it, developing different strategies for answering it. He was addressing the task with a little more seriousness than I had intended.

In any case, I was informed the next day that I’d made an impression on the Agency Co-Founder. And from that moment on I felt I had earned his tacit support. Something about my Five Fruits gambit had suggested to him that I could be of value to the Agency. What value exactly was not entirely clear to me.

Perhaps there is a lesson here.

We treat conversation as something effortless and instinctive; a consequence of social chemistry and circumstance; a gift that comes naturally or not at all. But in fact conversation is an art worthy of our study. It merits time and attention, practice and preparation, strategies and tactics. Our ability to converse shapes how people think of us.

'My idea of good company, Mr Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.'
Jane Austen, ‘Persuasion’

I have continued to employ Conversational Gambits in both my professional and domestic lives. In the course of an average day, as I’m working my way through The Guardian or The Times, I’ll make a few notes of interesting news items or cultural topics at the foot of the front page. And then later, as my wife is preparing dinner, I like to pepper our discussion with anecdotes, facts, quotes and opinion.

It amuses me at least.

'Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?’
Stella Gibbons, 'Cold Comfort Farm'

Of course, the pandemic has presented a particular challenge to our social confidence. We all feel a diminution of experience, a narrowing of bandwidth. When we emerge blinking into the wider world, will we have forgotten how to converse? Will we have anything to say?

I have taken to compiling a list of candidate conversational topics, loosely categorised, on a piece of paper: recently watched movies and documentaries, political events, aphorisms, fashion trends, music tips. I carry my list with me at all times, so I’m properly equipped if ever I get to encounter another human being.

A recent Conversational Gambit list suggests:

French generals; ‘Not trickle-down, but bottom-up and middle-out’; the dignity of labour; protest against ‘guys’; Blair Hair; Abrdn; shullet, shrobing, linners; languishing; Citizen Kane v Paddington 2; ‘I Am Duran’; HER.

One of the rare pleasures of lockdown (when we’re allowed) has been meeting My-Mate-Andy-from-Back-Home on a park bench at the Stratford Olympic Park (Excellent amenities!). Wrapped up against the elements in hoodies and anoraks, drinking a bottle of wine from plastic beakers, I’m sure we look like a couple of old tramps. But we’re happy enough.

With the advantage of familiarity built over many years, we can chat effortlessly about people and politics, sport and music, old times and new places. And then, after a good while, there is a break in the conversation. And a pause. And when the silence drags, Andy looks across at me.

‘Go on then. What have you got on your list?’


'Talk to me,
Talk to me.
I love the things you say.
Talk to me,
Talk to me,
In your own sweet gentle way.
Let me hear,
Tell me dear.
Tell me you love me so.
Talk to me,
Talk to me.
Tell me what I want to know.’

Little Willie John 'Talk to Me, Talk to Me’ (J Seneca)

No 332

'Who Pushed Taylor Off the Pier?': Why The Big Sleep Is a Little Confusing

'Your story didn't sound quite right.’
'Oh, that's too bad. You got a better one?’
'Maybe I can find one.’

‘The Big Sleep’ is a classic 1946 detective thriller directed by Howard Hawks, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Private investigator Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is commissioned by wealthy invalid General Sternwood to extract his troublesome younger daughter, Carmen, from extortion over gambling debts. But nothing is straightforward: Sternwood is also keen to locate his trusted bodyguard who has recently disappeared; his older daughter Vivian (Bacall) seems unduly curious about Marlowe’s brief; and Carmen is being inappropriate.

'She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up.’

When Marlowe embarks on his enquiries, he discovers a drugged Carmen beside the dead body of the blackmailer, and a hidden camera with the film missing. This sets him off on a trail of vice, violence, corruption and infidelity; of sophisticated clubs, hired guns and poisoned drinks. There’s a disappearing corpse, a mugging in the car park and a shooting at the apartment door. 

'You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.’

Marlowe navigates these challenges with a cool head and worldly cynicism. And he meets his match in Vivian - reserved, sharp tongued, quietly amused - and not entirely to be trusted. 

'Why did you have to go on?'
'Too many people told me to stop.’

Marlowe and Vivian are clearly attracted to each other and they spar flirtatiously whenever they meet.

Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're frontrunners or come from behind… I'd say you like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free…
Marlowe: You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.

They make a compelling couple. The suited Bogart, hard-boiled and obstinate, nervously touching his ear lobes when he thinks, striding through the mean streets in battered trench coat and fedora. Bacall, her head tilted down, her eyebrows arched, her feline beauty gliding across the screen in trousers, loafers and velvet shirt; in hounds-tooth jacket and black beret; in gold lame evening gown.

‘The Big Sleep’ has a labyrinthine plot, with key characters we never see, seven murders and numerous double crosses and false leads. It’s difficult to keep up.

Of course, the complexity was written into Chandler’s original narrative. But it was exacerbated by the troubled production process. Bogart and Bacall had embarked on an affair, and, with his marriage on the rocks, Bogart was drinking heavily. Bacall’s agent, concerned by her recent box office flop, and the fact that Martha Vickers as Carmen was dazzling in every scene, demanded rewrites that diminished the younger sister’s role and gave Bacall a chance to shine. The resulting edit did not entirely make sense.

On one occasion, Bogart, perplexed by the death of one of the minor characters, marched onto the set and asked Hawks:

'Who pushed Taylor off the pier?' 

Equally confused, Hawks could get no explanation from scriptwriters William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett. So he sent Chandler a telegram, asking him to clear things up. But the author couldn’t answer Bogart’s question either. 

At length Hawks concluded that strong character development and powerful individual scenes should take precedence over narrative coherence. 

'I never figured out what was going on, but I thought that the basic thing had great scenes in it, and it was good entertainment. After that got by, I said, 'I'm never going to worry about being logical again.''

This may give us pause for thought.

Given the necessary brevity of advertising communication, we go to great lengths in script reviews, pre-production conversations and research to ensure that everything contributes to a simple powerful story with the brand at its heart; that every script, casting, wardrobe and set decision has a logic; that it is all pointing in one direction. 

But as we iron out irregularity and polish off inconsistency, so we also diminish character, credibility and memorability. Even in our reduced format, texture, tone, quirks and foibles matter.

Thankfully Marlowe and Bacall emerge from ‘The Big Sleep’ in tact and together. With the chief villain lying dead in the hallway, they sit in a gloomy parlour awaiting the police. Marlowe sketches out the story he will tell Sternwood and the cops; and the treatment best suited for Carmen. Everything seems resolved. 

Vivian: You've forgotten one thing… Me.
Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.

'She is watching the detectives.
"Oh, it's so cute."
She's watching the detectives,
When they shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.
They beat him up until the teardrops start,
But he can't be wounded 'cause he's got no heart.’
Elvis Costello, 'Watching the Detectives'

No. 331

Poly Styrene’s Provocation: ‘When You Look in the Mirror Do You See Yourself?’

‘I just consider myself a person first. And anything else that anybody else might call you - well, they’re just names really, aren’t they? ’
Poly Styrene

I recently enjoyed a documentary about the luminous singer and inventive songwriter Poly Styrene.

Co-directed by Paul Sng and Poly’s daughter Celeste Bell, ‘Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché’ reminds us that, as leader of her band X-Ray Spex, Poly gave us some of the most inspiring music of the punk era. She engaged with issues - sexism, racism, consumerism and identity - in a way that was heartfelt, insightful and way ahead of her time. She was a creative force, a defiant political voice and a unique style icon.

Let us consider what Poly teaches us today.

‘Who am I? I’m just an ordinary tough kid from an ordinary tough street.’

Mari Elliot was born in 1957 in Bromley and raised in Brixton. Her mother was a Scottish-Irish legal secretary, her father a Somali dockworker. Bullied at school, she encountered racism from all sides.

‘They see us as a threat to their genetic existence.’

As a teenager Mari travelled around the country going to gigs. She dabbled in a recording career, and made her own customised clothes and jewellery to sell on a stall on the King’s Road. On her nineteenth birthday she saw the Sex Pistols perform on Hastings Pier. She decided there and then to form a punk band, and promptly put an ad in the Melody Maker for ‘young punx who want to stick it together.’

And so X-Ray Spex was born. Mari chose her stage name, Poly Styrene, from the Yellow Pages. It suggested ‘something around today - something plastic and synthetic.’

In 1977 X-Ray Spex released their first single. The song begins with a gently spoken intro:

'Some people say little girls should be seen and not heard. But I think ...

Poly’s voice suddenly becomes irate:

‘Oh bondage up yours! 1-2-3-4!’

‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’ was inspired by Vivienne Westwood’s Seditionaries outfits, by the Suffragettes and David Bowie, by rage against ubiquitous sexism, racism and consumerism. It was banned by the BBC and was not a hit. But it became a seminal punk single. 

‘I discovered a new-found sense of freedom….I had an innate desire to be free – to be free from unwanted desires seemed desirable.’

The X-Ray Spex sound was built on a base of buzzsaw guitar. A robust saxophone added melody and mystique. And over the top of it all Poly shrieked, chanted and sang with raw power and intensity.

'A lovely girl with a voice that could punch a hole in a steel plate.’
Johnny Rotten

Poly Styrene in 1991. Photograph: Ian Dickson/Redferns

Lyrically Poly was particularly concerned with the omnipresence of plastics and synthetics; with a culture that was becoming increasingly disposable and fake. 

'I know your antiseptic,
Your deodorant smells nice.
I'd like to get to know you.
You're deep frozen like the ice.
She's a germ free adolescent,
Cleanliness is her obsession.
Cleans her teeth ten times a day,
Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away,
The SR way.’
‘Germfree Adolescents'

Poly recognised that, on the one hand, this modern consumer society dumbed down and desensitized; but, on the other hand, it had seductive charms. And she found this paradox fascinating.

‘The weird thing about all the plastic is that people don’t actually like it. But, in order to cope with it, they develop a perverse kind of fondness for it.’

There were few women in pop and rock at that time, and they were often forced by the industry into highly sexualised presentations of themselves. Poly was determined to be different. 

Here’s Poly in her signature dental braces; in DIY day-glo and brilliant bri-nylon. Poly in an army hat and scarlet military jacket; in home-made creations, jumble sale discoveries, ornamented with enamel badges. Here’s Poly in leggings, pink socks and court shoes; in huge white woolly cardigan. Poly in granny prints; in emerald tank dress with orange tights. Poly in a pale blue trouser suit with lemon-and-lime head dress. Poly with red and blue pom-poms in her hair. She was a magnificently inventive dresser.

‘Clothes are never really you. That’s why people wear them. Cos you can just create an image with clothes. They’re just part of a façade, which is good fun to play sometimes.’

On stage Poly performed with righteous anger and joyous pride. She skipped, strutted, danced and did a playful hand jive. You can’t take your eyes off her. 

Given her experiences growing up, Poly was keen not to be defined by demographics, gender, ethnicity or style tribe.

‘Identity. That’s one of the current problems at the moment is identity. Everyone’s looking desperately to identify themselves with one thing, instead of themselves.’

She elegantly articulated these sentiments in song.

'Identity
Is the crisis,
Can't you see?
When you look in the mirror,
Do you see yourself?
Do you see yourself
On the TV screen?
Do you see yourself
In the magazine?
When you see yourself,
Does it make you scream?’
‘Identity'

I have always found this a compelling provocation. When we look in the mirror, do we see categories and classifications? Do we see other people’s standards and stereotypes - their expectations of who we are? Or do we see a unique individual, liberated from definitions and divisions?

X-Ray Spex did not hang around for too long. They only released five singles and one album, 1978’s ‘Germfree Adolescents.’ They performed in all the classic punk venues: The Roxy, the Man in the Moon, the Hope and Anchor, New York's CBGB's. And they featured in the famous 1978 Rock Against Racism gig at Victoria Park. 

But then in 1979, exhausted by touring, Poly left the band. She was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and sectioned. Only many years later was her condition recognised as bipolar disorder. 

‘It isn’t normal for people to be surrounded by people telling them that they’re great.’

Poly pursued a solo career, developing a more jazz-based sound, and in 1983 she joined the Hare Krishna movement. She died of breast cancer in 2011. She was only 53.

Poly Styrene teaches us that creativity is, at heart, an articulation of your own personal tastes, your individual feelings, your particular perspectives – unconstrained by custom, consensus and convention. Creativity is an expression of self.

The B-side of X-Ray Spex’ first single was ‘I Am a Cliché’ and featured the song title being repeated over and over again. Of course, Poly Styrene was anything but.

'I drove my polypropylene car on wheels of sponge,
Then pulled into a Wimpy bar to have a rubber bun,
And watched the world turn day-glo. 
You know, you know,
The world turned day-glo.’
X-Ray Spex, ‘The World Turned Day-Glo’

No. 330

A Visit to the Skincare Institute: Do We Have to Live a Brand to Think It?

Sir Oswald Birley (1880-1952), The Nurse (Margaret Elizabeth Barrett) 1921

'I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.'
Carl Jung

Our Clients were planning to extend their male toiletries range into skincare. It seemed reasonable enough. Men the world over were becoming body-conscious and were adopting more sophisticated grooming regimes. They might finally be prepared to pay for smooth, soft, healthy skin.

In order to get the Agency team into the right frame of mind, it was arranged for us all, while on a trip to Germany, to visit the local Skincare Institute for a facial.

I confess I’m not the most tactile person. I’m not the first in the queue for an emotional embrace, a corporate cuddle or a muscular man-hug. Am I innately awkward? Did I miss out on physical affection when I was a child? Am I emotionally crippled? I don’t know. Suffice to say that, while I have enormous respect for saunas and spas, hot tubs and health clubs - they’re not my natural habitat. 

Nonetheless, I put my reservations to one side and joined the small group climbing aboard the company minibus. It was all in a day’s work.

The Skincare Institute struck me as a rather forbidding place. All white walls, polished floors and framed photos of winter landscapes. It reeked of clinical excellence and joyless professionalism. We’d arrived as a group, but were soon separated. A tall fraulein with plaited hair and starched uniform called my name and led me to a studio full of glass cabinets, steel trolleys and fluffy towels. At its centre was a padded massage table at which she busied herself as if preparing for a medical operation.

I stood nervously awaiting instruction.

At length, she glanced over her shoulder and issued a businesslike command.

‘Now, take all of your clothes off.’

Somewhat taken aback, and concerned that something had been lost in translation, I made dramatic gesticulations around my face.

‘It’s only for my face. It’s just a facial.’

The fraulein was not impressed.

‘Ya, of course. It will help you relax.’

‘It won’t help me relax,’ I complained under my breath. 

But I did what I was told and folded my clothes into neat piles on a nearby chair. She seemed the type of person who would brook no argument.

I lay face up on the cushioned massage table, with only a fluffy towel covering my dignity. The fraulein set about her business with grim concentration: pressing and patting my face and shoulders; rubbing and kneading my chin, cheeks and forehead; smearing and smoothing her fragrant unguents deep into my pores.

It was all very awkward. But I maintained a carefree grin to reassure her.

I suspect my masseuse was somewhat taken aback by my epidermal condition. As she reached for another handful of moisturiser from a capacious tub at her side, she exclaimed:

‘Your skin is drinking my products!’ 

Eventually the procedure reached its conclusion. I sprung to my feet, hurriedly pulled on my clothes and scampered for the exit.

‘Excellent. Thank you. Thoroughly relaxing. Really enjoyable. Must do that again some time.’ 

It certainly helps a Planner to taste and see a brand, to feel and touch a product in the market, on the shelf, in situ; to experience a service as a consumer would. 

And yet I don’t subscribe to total immersion – to the belief that one should demonstrate passion for a product in order to justify working on it. I’ve never felt I need to live a brand in order to think it.

I’m no car enthusiast, but I’ve given good advice on cars. I’m no fashion expert, but I’ve helped create fashion advertising. I’m not the world’s biggest fast food fan, but I have an opinion about fried chicken.

Come to think of it, if I were only to work on brands that are genuinely integral to my life, I’d be restricted to the likes of Bic biros, Tunnock’s biscuits and Guinness stout. A slim portfolio.

We never did get round to launching the mass-market male moisturiser. I guess the numbers didn’t quite stack up. A shame really, as I always thought the fraulein’s words would have worked rather well in an advertising campaign:

‘Your skin is drinking my products!’

'Hold me, baby, drive me crazy.
Touch me, all night long.
Make me love you, kiss and hug you.
Touch me, all night long.’
Fonda Rae, ‘Tuch Me (All Night Long)’ (G Carmichael, P Adams)

No. 329

Louise Brooks: 'If I Ever Bore You, It’ll Be with a Knife.’

'I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept it without wishing I had given it away.'
Louise Brooks

I recently read ‘Lulu in Hollywood,’ the collected essays of Louise Brooks - legendary silent screen actor, dancer, writer and icon of the Jazz Age.

Brooks defined a naturalistic approach to performance that was years ahead of its time. With her sharp bobbed hair, hedonistic lifestyle and independent spirit, she epitomised 1920s flapper cool. And with her acerbic wit she shone a light on Hollywood’s guilty secrets. 

Let us consider what we can learn from this thoroughly compelling character.

1. You Have to Leave Home to Find Yourself

Mary Louise Brooks was born in Cherryvale, Kansas in 1906. Her father was a virtuous lawyer, and her mother a talented amateur pianist who inspired her with a love of books and music. She grew up in a household without discipline, ‘where truth was never punished.’

When Brooks was 9 she was sexually abused by a neighbour.

‘We were Midwesterners born in the Bible Belt of Anglo-Saxon farmers, who prayed in the parlor and practised incest in the barn.’ 

At 15 Brooks joined the Denishawn School of Dancing, a company that included a young Martha Graham. It provided her with an escape route.

‘I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.’

2. ‘Excellence Comes from Ceaseless Concentration’

Brooks toured the United States with the Denishawn Company and spent a season abroad with them in London and Paris. She was reputed to be the first person to dance the Charleston in London. Then, in 1924, she moved to New York, finding employment as a chorus girl in ‘George White's Scandals’ and the ‘Ziegfeld Follies.’

‘The rest of the girls wore smiles as fixed as their towering feather headdresses. I decided right then that onstage I would never smile unless I felt like it.’

Brooks took to New York life with enthusiasm. Dropping her Kansas accent, she stayed at the Algonquin, rode in Central Park West and swam off Long Island Sound. Courted by Wall Street bankers, she dined at 21 and the Colony, and partied on Park Avenue. Hobnobbing with millionaires, she danced at the Ritz, drank cocktails at the El Fey club and slept with Chaplin and Garbo. 

Brooks still found time for her work, which equipped her for subsequent success.

‘Nobody can learn to dance without complete attention and sustained concentration on the disposition of the head, neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet – on the use of every muscle of the body as it moves before the eyes with the speed of motion-picture film… Anyone who has achieved excellence in any form knows that it comes as a result of ceaseless concentration. Paying attention.’

3. It’s Not Just Your Time, It’s Your Life

In 1925, spotted by a Hollywood producer, Brooks was signed on a five-year contract with Paramount. Soon she was playing the female lead in silent light comedies and flapper films. 

'Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter.’

On the West Coast Brooks launched herself into a similarly hedonistic world of glamour, gossip, liquor and cocaine; of all-night parties at the beach house and a suite at the Beverly Wilshire; of sexual experimentation and tragic suicides. She was a frequent guest of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

‘He was always standing up as he sat down and going out as he came in.’

Perhaps inevitably for someone who was at heart independent, bookish and fiercely truthful, Brooks grew tired of Hollywood.

‘The pettiness of it, the dullness, the monotony, the stupidity - no, no, that is no place for Louise Brooks.’

As the studios switched over to talkies, they took the opportunity to cut contract players’ salaries. When Paramount denied Brooks a promised pay raise, she stood her ground. Eventually she’d had enough and walked out.

‘That’s what we are paying you for – your time.’
‘You mean my life.’

4. Playing Yourself Is the Hardest Thing in the World To Do

Brooks leapt at an offer to travel to Germany and work with Expressionist director GW Pabst. He was casting for his next film ‘Pandora's Box,’ which was based on the plays of Frank Wedekind. He just stopped short of offering the lead to Marlene Dietrich.

Brooks found that for the first time in her acting career she was taken seriously.

‘In Hollywood I was a pretty flibbertigibbet whose charm for the executive department decreased with every increase in my fan mail. In Berlin I stepped onto the station platform to meet Mr Pabst and became an actress.’

At that time film acting still shared many of the characteristics of its stage counterpart. It was all exaggerated body language and pronounced facial expressions. In ‘Pandora’s Box’ Brooks’ gestures, by contrast, were more subtle, her movement was more graceful, her posture less affected.

‘The great art of films does not consist in descriptive movements of face and body, but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.’

Brooks was pioneering a more psychologically nuanced, more naturalistic style of acting.

‘I was simply playing myself, which is the hardest thing in the world to do – if you know that it’s hard. I didn’t, so it seemed easy.’

Inevitably perhaps, when audiences and critics first viewed her performance, they were bewildered.

‘Louise Brooks cannot act. She does not suffer. She does nothing.’

Louise Brooks and friends at Joe Zellis Royal Box nightclub in Paris May, 1929

5. They Can Control Your Circumstances, But They Can’t Control Your Soul

‘Pandora’s Box’ (1929) is one of the masterpieces of the silent era. It follows Lulu, a carefree young woman whose raw sexuality and uninhibited nature bring ruin to herself and those who love her. The film is remarkable for its frank treatment of sexual attitudes, including one of the first screen portrayals of a lesbian.

Alwa: Why don't you marry Lulu, Father?
Schön: One doesn't marry such a woman! It would be suicide!

Brooks recognised something of herself in Lulu: spirited, unselfconscious, indifferent to others, living completely in the present.

 ‘Lulu’s story is as near as you’ll get to mine.’

6. ‘Fashion Changes, Style Endures’

In the 1920s, in the wake of World War I and the suffrage movement, women  embraced more emancipated fashions: discarding their corsets, raising their hems and dropping their waist-lines. Brooks was the archetypal flapper. She was short and slender, with big brown eyes and thin, horizontal eyebrows; pale skin and a knowing lip-sticked smile. She wore Mary-Jane shoes, pleated skirts and silk blouses; elegant tank dresses and deep-cut evening gowns with a string of pearls. 

And, of course, Brooks had a dazzling black bob - cropped short to the ears with a little fringe, sometimes concealed under a cloche hat. According to critic Kenneth Tynan she was ‘The Girl in the Black Helmet.’ 

Though indelibly associated with the Jazz Age, Brooks’ look is also timeless. As Coco Chanel observed: ‘Fashion changes, style endures.’

In ‘Pandora’s Box’ we meet Lulu in a diaphanous Jean Patou dress, backless and unstructured. Here’s Lulu in a v-necked white wedding gown with a waterfall hem; Lulu in mourning in a long-sleeved black satin silk ensemble with a veil. Magnificent.

Both Lulu and Brooks gain power from their clothes. Their style makes them more resilient, more confident, more in control.

‘A well-dressed woman, even if her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world.’

After ‘Pandora's Box’ Pabst cast Brooks again in his fine social drama ‘Diary of a Lost Girl’ (1929) and he tried to persuade her to stay in Europe.

'She belongs to Europe and to Europeans. She has been a sensational hit in her German pictures. I do not have her play silly little cuties. She plays real women, and plays them marvellously.’

7. There Is a Time to Weep

Nonetheless, Brooks returned to the United States and resumed her quarrels with the film industry. 

She refused to go back to Paramount for sound retakes of her most recent American movie. The resentful studio found another actor to overdub her part, placed her on an unofficial blacklist and put out a story that she didn’t have a voice for sound pictures. Columbia offered her a contract, but she wasn’t prepared to pay the price the studio boss was asking. And then, when she was proposed as the female lead alongside James Cagney in ‘The Public Enemy’, she turned it down and the role went to Jean Harlow.

Brooks’ 1930s were marked by poor roles, poor reviews, bit parts and bankruptcy. She began dancing in nightclubs and writing for magazines to earn a living.  

‘The only people who wanted to see me were men who wanted to sleep with me.’

Eventually Brooks retreated to Kansas.

‘I found that the citizens could not decide whether they despised me for having once been a success away from home, or for now being a failure in their midst.’

After an unsuccessful attempt at running a dance studio, Brooks moved back to New York. She took work as a radio actor in soap operas, a gossip columnist, a salesgirl and an escort. Living in poverty in a small apartment, she wrote a tell-all memoir, but destroyed the entire manuscript. She drank heavily, was often  ‘gincoherent’ and considered suicide. 

‘I was navigating, but not seeing.’

8. There Is a Time to Laugh

In 1955 French film historians rediscovered Brooks' work, proclaiming her a neglected cinematic icon. This led to a Louise Brooks Film Festival and the rehabilitation of her reputation in the US. She was persuaded by the curator James Card to move to Rochester, close to the George Eastman House film collection. There she studied cinema and wrote about her career in movie magazines.

Brooks revealed herself to be a talented author, offering frank opinion and lucid observation on cinema, reflecting with sharp wit and total candour on her life.

'I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita in 1922 at the age of 15 to become a dancer… How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything - spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying.' I tried with all my heart.’

In 1985 Brooks died of a heart attack. She was 78 years old.

Louise Brooks was an extraordinary woman. Smart, beautiful, funny and stylish. A gifted dancer, actor and writer. In her total immersion in the present, in her relentless quest for truth and good times, in her seeming indifference to the judgement of others, she was thoroughly modern.

'I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you, it’ll be with a knife.’

Brooks was too intelligent, too thoughtful and questioning, for Hollywood. But thankfully she left us one of the great movies of the silent era and some very witty writing.

In one of her last essays Brooks explained why she had not written her memoir. 

‘I am unwilling to write the sexual truth that would make my life worth reading. I cannot unbuckle the Bible Belt.’

'I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free.
I wish I could break
All the chains holdin’ me.
I wish I could say
All the things that I should say.
Say 'em loud, say 'em clear
For the whole round world to hear.
I wish I could share
All the love that's in my heart,
Remove all the bars
That keep us apart.
I wish you could know
What it means to be me.
Then you'd see and agree
That every man should be free.’

Nina Simone, ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free’ (B Taylor / D Dallas)

No. 328

Merce Cunningham: ‘The Surprise of the Instant’

Gerda Peterich, Merce Cunningham Courtesy of the Barbican

‘Dancing exercises on dancers an insidious attraction that makes them work daily at perfecting an instrument which is really deteriorating from birth.’
Merce Cunningham

I recently watched a fine documentary about the American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham (‘Cunningham’ by Alla Kovgan).

Cunningham liberated dance from established practice and historic convention. He celebrated the infinite possibilities of human movement. His dance was precise and complex, intensely physical and intellectually rigorous. He collaborated across media and embraced the creative potential of chance, technology and the absurd. He redefined the way people think about dance. And he always resisted definitions.

‘Are you an avant garde choreographer, a maker of modern dance?’
‘Oh, I’m a dancer. That’s sufficient for me.’

Let us consider some of Cunningham’s core principals.

‘Everybody in the audience is different. So they may all dislike it. But they dislike it for different reasons.’

1. ‘The Only Way to Do It Is to Do It.’

Cunningham was born into a family of lawyers in Centralia, Washington in 1919. Having learned tap as a young boy, he studied acting and then dance at the Cornish School in Seattle. In 1939 he moved to New York and danced as a soloist in the Martha Graham Dance Company for six years. In 1944 he presented his first solo show, and in 1953, while teaching at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, he formed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

‘The only way to do it is to do it.’

Success did not come easy to the company. In the early days they would tour America in a VW Camper Van. On one occasion they arrived at a gas station, piled out of the bus and started limbering up. The attendant enquired:

‘Are you a group of comedians?’
‘No, we’re from New York.’

Gerda Peterich, Merce Cunningham, 1952. Courtesy of Fall for Dance North

2. Expand Your Vocabulary

Cunningham was concerned with all forms of movement. He liked to set up oppositions – between, for example, a slow arm and a rapid foot. His dancers twisted and turned, jerked and juddered; they slid, skipped, squatted and stretched. Their actions were sometimes beautiful and sometimes on the edge of awkward.

‘My idea about movement is that any movement is possible for dancing. That ranges all the way from nothing of course, up to the most extended kind of movement that one might think up.’

3. Broaden Your Perspective

Cunningham was not interested in the conventions associated with ‘putting on a show.’ He distributed his dancers across the whole stage and oriented them at every angle – eschewing the ‘front and centre’ spot and its associated hierarchies, denying the audience a focal point on which to settle their gaze.

'What really made me think about space and begin to think about ways to use it was Einstein's statement that there are no fixed points in space. Everything in the universe is moving all the time.’

Merce Cunningham Dance Company in Cargo X, 1989Photography by Jed Downhill

4. ‘Don’t Interpret. Present’

Cunningham wanted his dance to be autonomous, and so his choreography was ‘non-representational.’ It did not refer to, or interpret, any historical event or mythical story; any particular feeling or idea. 

‘We don’t interpret something. We present something. We do something. And then any kind of interpretation is left to anybody looking at it in the audience.’

5. Don’t Integrate. Liberate

From the outset Cunningham worked with composer John Cage, who became his lifelong partner and frequent collaborator. They determined that music and dance should exist independently within the same performance. The dancers’ movements would no longer be harnessed to the rhythm, mood and structure of the music. 

'I think the thing that we agreed to so many years ago actually, was that the music didn't have to support the dance, nor the dance illustrate the music, but they could be two things going on at the same time.’

6. Assimilate the Flaws

‘You have to allow for every body. Every single person has a possibility.’

While ballet had a tradition of elegant uniformity, Cunningham sought to accommodate individuality of body shape, personality and movement. Although he was incredibly precise and demanding, he saw creative opportunity in human differences and flaws.

‘I think that Merce was interested in what could be considered our flaws as dancers. And he hesitated to correct us unless he just got irritated by what he saw.’
Viola Farber, Dancer

‘He demands that you are first of all yourself as a human being, and from that a dancer.’
Gus Solomons Jnr, Dancer

Martha Graham with Merce Cunningham

7. Renounce Competition

In keeping with his embrace of individuality, Cunningham cultivated an egalitarian ethos within his company.

‘I myself never liked that competitive thing that so much of dancing seemed to have. So I never tried to do that in my own situation. I went on the assumption that each dancer was a person who had certain abilities. I would attempt to let each of the dancers find out for himself how he danced, what kind of person he was in that situation. It’s not politics. It’s dancing.’

8. Accept the Absurd

Cunningham was interested in challenging audiences with the surreal and the absurd. 

‘People have often defended art on the grounds that life was a mess and that therefore we needed art in order to escape from life. I would like to have an art that was so bewildering, complex and illogical that we would return to everyday life with great pleasure.’

And so Cunningham presented a door on wheels and a man with a chair on his back. There was a woman with an illuminated umbrella and a chap struggling to put a sweater on. The stage was filled with silver pillows.

9. Embrace Chance

Recognising that chance is a critical component in ordinary life, Cunningham put it to work as a creative tool. Randomness could be used to break up traditional structures; to challenge conventional notions of narrative – beginning, middle and end. Randomness also freed his imagination from its own assumptions, counterbalancing his habits and rationality with the unplanned and the unexpected.

'The use of chance operations opened out my way of working. The body tends to be habitual. The use of chance allowed us to find new ways to move and to put movements together that would not otherwise have been available to us. It revealed possibilities that were always there, except that my mind hadn't seen them.’

Cunningham would flip coins, roll dice, turn playing cards or consult the I-Ching to determine the order of different steps or the sequence of different passages. Sometimes dancers were given a set of movements that they could execute as they pleased: in any order and with any frequency; exiting and entering at will.

10. Experiment with Technology

Cunningham experimented extensively with television, video and computers; with animation, body sensors and motion capture. Technology enabled him to overcome long-established limits of possibility; to re-imagine the human body and the process of dance creation.

'It expands what we think we can do. I think normally the mind gets in the way and says, 'You can't do that.”

11. Embark on ‘An Adventure in Togetherness.’

‘We have only two things in common: our ideas and our poverty.’
Robert Rauschenberg

Rather than seeking to impose a singular artistic vision, Cunningham enjoyed the alchemy of collaboration. As well as partnering with Cage, he worked with musicians David Tudor and Brian Eno; with fashion designer Rei Kawakubo; and with artists Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella and Jasper Johns.

For Cunningham these partnerships represented ‘an adventure in togetherness.’

‘One of the most amazing things about our collaboration was sort of a carte blanche trust, where nobody is really responsible, but as a group of people we’re not irresponsible. And I think that creates a wonderful feeling about the possibilities of society.’

Breckyn Drescher and Christian Allen performing “Roaratorio” by Merce Cunningham.Credit: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

12. ‘Believe in the Surprise of the Instant’

Over a 70 year career Cunningham choreographed some 180 dances and more than 700 site-specific events. He took his company all over the world and performed as a dancer into the early 1990s. In 2009 he presented ‘Nearly Ninety’, a piece that marked his 90th birthday. He died at his home in New York a few months later. 

Cunningham encouraged us to reflect on the fundamentals of our endeavours; to be radical in our ambition and bold in our execution. And he sustained his enduring appetite for dance through ‘a continuous belief in the surprise of the instant.’

‘It is for me a question of faith, and a continuous belief in the surprise of the instant. Put aside fatigue, aches, injuries to the body and psyche. Let the shape and the time of a single or multiple action take its weight and measure. It will be expressive.’

'Soon as I get used to the pain,
Maybe then I'll understand why
Tears fall down like rain. 
Tell me how can love seem so deep 
And leave at the wink of an eye?
Surprise, surprise. Look what's falling out of my eyes.’

Bobby Womack, ‘Surprise, Surprise’ (B Womack, J Ford)

No. 327

The Weeping Businessman: The Pros and Cons of Emotional Contagion

'I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.'
Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself'

There was a time when my work obliged me to take quite a number of long-haul flights. 

Despite the frequency of these trips, I remained something of an amateur: making the most of the superior meal and movie selection in Business Class; exploring the variety of options enabled by the adjustable seating; availing myself of the ample supplies of oaked chardonnay; and making myself cozy in the grey tracksuit pyjamas that Virgin gave passengers back in the day. Ideal!

Nonetheless, I always admired the professional travellers: the seasoned veterans that eschewed the fuss and finery; rejected the in-flight meal, entertainment and alcohol  - and got straight to work.

I particularly recall being seated next to one such executive on a plane to Boston. He was a lean, suited man, who made no gesture of greeting on arrival. He carried one of those bulky lawyer’s briefcases that suggest seniority and seriousness. 

After take-off he set out his paraphernalia for in-flight comfort, neatly arranging his unguents, earplugs and blindfold on his tray table. He refused food, donned his reading glasses and settled straight into a set of files, reports and spreadsheets, making authoritative notes in the margins.

After a good few hours of focused industry, my neighbour was satisfied. Having secured his documents in the overhead locker, he sat back, switched on a monitor, donned his headphones and poured himself a glass of water. 

He then selected ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ from the movie menu and proceeded to cry profusely all the way through. Floods of tears poured down his cheeks, and he made no effort to stop them, to hide them or to mop them up. He just focused intently on Grant, MacDowell, Scott Thomas et al, lost in his own melancholy reverie.

Finding this all rather moving, I took another sip of oaked chardonnay and began to cry too. The mood was contagious.

'No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.'
Theodore Roosevelt

The Guardian recently had a piece about Emotional Contagion (24 Jan 2021).

This is the phenomenon whereby humans synchronise their emotions with those of others. Typically, we mimic our friends’ expressions and gestures. If someone smiles at us, we smile back, and the act of smiling improves our mood.

Emotional Contagion is found particularly to occur in people who are empathetic – those who feel a connection, read non-verbal clues and echo behaviour. Indeed, according to a 2011 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Duke University, people who take a course of Botox are robbed of their ability to understand what others are feeling, because they are physically unable to copy their emotions.

You could argue that, as advertisers, we are in the business of Emotional Contagion. Our communication campaigns are not designed to convert every audience member directly and independently. Rather we create a positive predisposition in the few that becomes, in time, a positive predisposition of the many. We catalyse an emotional response to a brand that others share and distribute. We prompt infectious affection.

It’s one of the reasons mass media are an important part of the advertiser’s armoury.

But we should be wary of the power at our disposal.

A 2014 study by Facebook demonstrated that Emotional Contagion could occur even without personal interaction. Researchers - somewhat controversially - manipulated the emotional content of 700,000 users’ newsfeeds and found that those who had been exposed to negative content tended to share more negative posts with others.

More recently, scientists from the universities of Oxford and Birmingham have concluded that young people are particularly inclined to ‘catch’ moods from each other – and that bad moods spread with greater virulence among them.

The phenomenon of Emotional Contagion reaffirms the need for brands and communication agencies to adhere to ethical practices; to use their power responsibly; to be a force for good in people’s lives.

In this social media age, this Age of Anxiety, we should also encourage mental toughness in our friends, colleagues and consumers; and be mindful that empathetic people require that resilience more than most.

When the flight landed in Boston, my neighbour and I went our separate ways without exchanging a word or glance. I had assumed at the outset, from his cool demeanour and serious disposition, that we had little in common. But when we parted I felt we had formed an emotional bond – albeit one established around a sentimental Britflick.

'Baby, baby, when I look at you
I get a warm feeling inside.
There's something about the things you do
That keeps me satisfied.
I wouldn't lie to you, baby,
It's mainly a physical thing.
This feeling that I got for you, baby,
It makes me wanna sing.
I feel for you.
I think I love you.’

Chaka Khan, ‘I Feel for You’ (L D Anthony / D Andrea)

No. 326

The Exterminating Angel: Will Our Natural Inertia Constrain Industry Reinvention?

‘The best explanation of this film is that, from the standpoint of pure reason, there is no explanation.’
Caption at the beginning of ‘The Exterminating Angel’

Luis Bunuel’s 1962 film ‘The Exterminating Angel’ begins with an aristocratic dinner party on Providence Street. Curiously, as the guests arrive, the stewards, cooks and domestics are busy making excuses and slipping away from the mansion. 

'The help becomes more impertinent each day.’

Nonetheless a skeleton staff remains, and the visitors enjoy a long, indulgent feast, peppered with hearsay, slander and sharp remarks. After dinner they stroll into the drawing room for more drinks and a piano recital. So successful is the evening that the guests seem reluctant to leave. Some take preliminary steps towards going, but don’t quite get round to it. They begin to overstay their welcome.

Gradually it becomes apparent that, for one reason or another, the guests can’t leave. There is an invisible barrier at the edge of the drawing room – something psychological, not physical - that they just don’t feel able to cross.

'Wouldn't it be a good joke if I sneaked up and pushed you out?'
'Try it, and I'll kill you.’ 

Eventually they all bed down where they have been partying. But after an uncomfortable night they wake up confronting the same problem. They want to leave, but they cannot. 

The group’s self-control and composure deteriorate. They argue with each other, plot and conspire. The old and infirm fall ill. Some of the guests conceal a corpse in a cupboard. And in another a couple conducts a romantic tryst. They slaughter some hapless sheep that have wandered into the room, and turn to Masonic codes and Kabbalah rituals. A woman sees a severed hand crawl across the room towards her. She squashes it with a desk ornament.

‘We turned this room into a gypsy campground.'

As the internment continues, a crowd of onlookers gathers outside. But they are equally incapable of breaking the deadlock. To add to the confusion Bunuel repeats certain short sequences of the film, creating the impression that the characters are stuck in some sort of time loop. 

Over the years critics have endeavoured to interpret ‘The Exterminating Angel.’ It seems to be a dark satire on the thin veneer of civilisation, the savagery that lies just beneath social etiquette and proprieties; on the hopelessly detached world of the elite, and their condescension towards the lower orders. Some have proposed that Bunuel was specifically criticising Franco’s regime in his native Spain. 

'I believe the common people, the lower class people, are less sensitive to pain. Haven't you ever seen a wounded bull? Not a trace of pain.'

More broadly ‘The Exterminating Angel’ implies that communities, cultures and corporations are prone to inertia, to repeating anachronistic behaviours and beliefs even when they have determined to change; that we are not as free as we may think.

Boxed in by consensus, custom and convention, we consistently struggle to accept that the world no longer conforms to our cosmology; that things have moved on. We claim we want to break free, but we don’t know how to.

In the communications industry, for all our visionary talk of new models, new platforms and new behaviours, we have in the past found it hard to change. We create initiatives and frameworks, launch disciplines and departments, coin phrases and aphorisms. But we remain addicted to habitual practices and familiar routines. 

Of course, as we emerge from the pandemic, we have a better chance than ever to reinvent the industry. New ways of working have already been embraced. Agile thinking comes more naturally now. Nothing is quite as it was. Perhaps finally we will be able to leave the party.

At the end of ‘The Exterminating Angel’ the bourgeois guests manage to escape the cursed mansion. They attend a church service to give thanks – only to find they have been trapped once again by an unseen force. Outside the church there are gunshots and riots on the streets. Bunuel seems to be suggesting that revolution is the only answer.

'We wouldn't change this thing even if we could somehow.
Cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us.
There's a darkness in this town that's got us too.
But they can't touch me now.
And you can't touch me now.
They ain't gonna do to me
What I watched them do to you.

So say goodbye, it's Independence Day.
It's Independence Day
All down the line.
Just say goodbye, it's Independence Day.
It's Independence Day this time.'

Bruce Springsteen, ‘Independence Day'

No. 325

‘Seeing More Deeply’: Hilma af Klint, the Abstract Pioneer

Staggering’: The Ten Largest, Youth, 1907. Photograph: Albin Dahlström/Courtesy of Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk

‘Every time I succeed in finishing one of my sketches, my understanding of humanity, animals, plants, minerals, or the entire creation, becomes clearer. I feel freed and raised up above my limited consciousness.’
Hilma af Klint

I recently watched a fine documentary by Halina Dyrschka about the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (‘Beyond the Visible’, 2019). 

Af Klint produced a prodigious amount of thrilling work in the early 20th century. She pioneered abstract art – painting her first abstract piece in 1906, five years before Kandinsky. She experimented with new creative techniques twenty years before the Surrealists. And, as the film demonstrates, her work foreshadowed that of Mondrian, Klee, Warhol, Twombly and Albers.

However, af Klint was intensely private and not inclined to self-promotion. She rarely exhibited her paintings, and she requested that, after her death, her work should be hidden away for twenty years. Art historians, until recently, chose to ignore her, because she was inspired by her spiritualist beliefs - and because she was a woman.

Artist Hilma af Klint in her studio at Hamngatan, Stockholm, circa 1895. Photograph: Courtesy of Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk

Let us consider what we can learn from this remarkable painter.

1. ‘Explore the Infinite Possibilities of Development’

Hilma af Klint was born in 1862, in Solna, Sweden. Her father was a naval officer and mathematician, and most of her childhood was spent in the cadet school at Karlberg castle. In the summers the family adjourned to an island in Lake Malaren, and it was here that she developed a fascination with nature.

In 1882 af Klint enrolled at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm and, after graduating with honours, she was awarded a studio in the city’s artist quarter. Dressed in black, with neat hair and cool blue eyes, she quietly worked away at her landscapes, botanical drawings and portraits, gaining recognition and financial independence. She was a shy, gentle person. But she had a fierce yearning to explore.

‘In this moment, I’m aware, living as I do in the world, that I am an atom in the universe, possessing infinite possibilities of development. And I want to explore these possibilities.’

2. Take Inspiration Wherever You Find It

Af Klint became interested in spiritualism and the occult, and her curiosity was enhanced when in 1880 her ten-year-old sister died.

‘What I needed was courage, and it was granted to me through the spiritual world, which bestowed rare and wonderful instruction.’

Af Klint’s fascination with the paranormal was not unusual at the time. Many intellectuals sought to reconcile a growing awareness of the plurality of religions with an acknowledgement of scientific progress.  

‘Accept, accept, Hilma… Hilma, you were brought here to do this.’

In 1896, with four female artist friends, af Klint established The Five. The group held séances every week and recorded mystical thoughts and messages from spirits called The High Masters. They also experimented with free-flowing writing and drawing; with intuitive and spontaneous ways of creating art, opening themselves up to their unconscious selves. 

Af Klint believed that a force was guiding her hand in the act of creation. 

'The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke.’

Hilma af Klint Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece (Grupp X, nr 1, Altarbild), from Altarpieces (Altarbilder), 1915. Guggenheim Museum

3. ‘See Beyond Form’

As scientific interest at the time focused on the world beyond the visible – sub-atomic particles, x-rays, gamma rays and radio waves - so too af Klint wanted to see beyond her already acute understanding of physical form.

‘Those granted the gift of seeing more deeply can see beyond form, and concentrate on the wondrous aspect hiding behind every form, which is called life.’

In 1906, at the age of 44, af Klint painted her first series of abstract paintings and, in a torrent of creativity, she went on to produce 193 pieces, some of which were extremely large - measuring over 2 metres by 3 metres. 

Af Klint painted biomorphic and geometric forms; segmented circles and bisected spirals; shapes suggesting shells, butterfly wings, flowers and fans; cellular structures; beams and hoops, cones and curves; all rippling and pulsing, overlapping and intersecting. She used bold, soft colours: feminine blue and masculine yellow; pink and red for physical and spiritual love; golden orbs. There were symbols, letters and words; swans and doves; dualities expressing heaven and earth, good and evil. 

Af Klint imagined installing the collected work, themed around the different phases of life from early childhood to old age, in a grand spiral spiritualist temple. 

‘My mission, if it succeeds, is of great significance to humankind. For I am able to describe the path of the soul from the beginning of the spectacle of life to its end.’

4. ‘Through Nature We Can Become Aware of Ourselves’

After Af Klint completed the Paintings for the Temple in 1915, she continued to explore abstraction and mystic themes, but without spiritual guidance. Her work became smaller, she experimented with watercolour and she produced more than 150 notebooks of thoughts and studies.

‘The more we discover the wonders of nature, the more we become aware of ourselves.’

In 1920 af Klint moved to Helsingborg, a coastal city in Southern Sweden and she committed to examining the wondrous truths in the natural world around her.

‘I shall start with the world’s flowers. Then with the same care I shall study whatever lives in the waters of the world. Then comes the gate into the blue ether with its many species of animals. And finally I shall enter the woods to study the damp mosses, all trees and animals living among the cool dark multitude of trees.’

Group IX/SUW, No. 17. The Swan, No. 17, by Hilma af Klint. Courtesy of Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk. Photo: Moderna Museet / Stockholm

5. ‘Achieve Stillness in Both Thought and Feeling’

Af Klint was a fiercely independent thinker, a vegetarian, a loner who didn’t need the affirmation of others. Having spent a lifetime contemplating existence, she seems to have attained peace.

‘Only for those prepared to leave their familiar life behind, will life emerge in a new gown of continually expanding beauty and perfection. But in order to attain such a state, it is necessary to achieve stillness in both thought and feeling.’

6. Don’t Hide Your Light, or Let Your Light Be Hidden

Though af Klint was wholeheartedly committed to spiritualism and her artistic path, she rarely had the confidence to show her work to her contemporaries, and she only exhibited a few of her abstract paintings at paranormal conferences. She was not actively engaged with the artistic movements of her time, and to the outside world she maintained the profile of a conventional landscape artist. 

In 1908 af Klint had invited Rudolf Steiner, the founder of a spiritualist movement whom she greatly admired, to view her abstract paintings. Much to her dismay, he disapproved of them and of her claim to be a medium, and he advised her not to let anybody see the work. The setback prompted her to give up painting for four years and she concluded that the time was not right for her abstractions. 

Af Klint wrote a will leaving all her art to her nephew and stipulating that it should only be made public twenty years after her death. Accordingly more than 1200 paintings and drawings, 100 texts and 26,000 pages of notes and sketches were carefully stored away.

The Ten Largest, №7., Adulthood, Group IV, 1907 Tempera on paper mounted on canvas 315 x 235 cm Hilma af Klint

Af Klint died in Djursholm, Sweden in 1944 following a traffic accident. She was nearly 82 years old.

Perhaps it was no surprise, given all this, that when in the 1940s and 1950s the Museum of Modern Art in New York set about defining the history of modern art, af Klint did not feature. Yet even when her archive was opened at the end of the 1960s, recognition came slowly. In 1970 her paintings were offered to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, but the donation was declined unseen, due to scepticism about her spiritualism. This seems particularly unfair, since many artists working in the same period, including Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevitch, were also enthusiasts for the paranormal. 

‘You must learn to ignore fear, for without the will to believe in yourself, nothing good will happen.’

Now, at long last, af Klint is being given the credit she deserves. In 2018-19 more than 600,000 visitors attended her first major solo exhibition in the United States: ‘Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future’ at the Guggenheim in New York. It was the most-visited show in the museum’s history. 

Af Klint had finally found her grand spiral temple.

Hilma af Klint Exhibition @ Guggenheim. Photo: Radiofreemers

'All the modern things
Have always existed.
They've just been waiting
To come out
And multiply
And take over.
It's their turn now…'

Bjork, ‘The Modern Things’ (B Gudmundsdottir / G Massey)

No 324

A Family Outing to the Beach: There’s a Gap in the Market, But Is There a Market in the Gap?

'I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.’
John Masefield, ‘Sea Fever'

All through the school holidays we’d been pestering Dad to take us to the beach. He was somewhat reluctant, I suspect because he regarded summer as a time to be watching cricket on TV. 

And then one day, out of the blue, he announced:

‘It could be a good day to go to the seaside.’

I was a little confused. It was not the blistering hot day I had imagined. Rather it was overcast and blustery outside. Perhaps he’d been studying the weather forecasts and knew something we didn’t.

Mum packed some cheese and pickle sandwiches into the blue tartan picnic basket and prepared a Thermos of sweet tea. Dad ensured he had a supply of roll-ups to sustain him. We four kids picked up a few buckets and spades, and crammed into the back of the ageing Austin Cambridge (no seatbelts back then, of course). 

And so we all set off down the Arterial Road to the coast. The thrill of it all!

My friends at school had entertained me with stories of days out in Southend. I could expect a crooked house and a carousel at the Kursaal amusement park; candyfloss and kiss-me-quick hats on the pier. There would be crowds of carefree holidaymakers, abundant fish and chip shops, seagulls soaring up above. The town would be teeming with life.

When we’d been on the road for some time, Dad announced that we were not in fact heading for Southend, but nearby Walton-on-the-Naze. 

‘It won’t be so busy.’

He took us to a rather secluded part of the coast. It wasn’t really a beach - more rocks and pebbles than golden sand. And there was no one else there. 

This didn’t seem to trouble Mum, who made herself happy poking around among the shallow pools for elegant rocks and ancient fossils; nor Dad, who just stood there, admiring the view and puffing on his roll-ups.

‘I’ve always found water very relaxing,’ he sighed.

There’s a tatty old photograph of the family on the deserted beach at Walton-on-the-Naze that day. I used to keep it pinned to my desk at work.

Martin and I wear home-knit sweaters and school shorts, and Martin has adopted the confident squatting pose of a footballer from the Soccer Stars sticker album. Sarah and Anne are wrapped up in neat anoraks, and Anne seems to be carrying a Filofax 10 years ahead of her time. We’re all sporting sandals. Mum gives Sarah a tender embrace. 

Dad was probably happier taking the shot than appearing in it. He tended to avoid crowds and he had naturally shunned the hustle and bustle of Southend. No doubt he had calculated that a pebble beach on an overcast day would be more peaceful than a sandy shore on a sunny afternoon.

Of course, he was right. It was certainly tranquil. But to me as a child he seemed to have got it all wrong. This certainly wasn’t the day out at the seaside that I had envisaged.

There’s an old marketing saying: ‘There may be a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?’

The aphorism is designed to remind us that the existence of an empty space in a sector does not necessarily entail commercial opportunity. That space may be deserted for a reason.

We spend a good deal of time seeking out the roads less travelled; the unusual, uncommon and unfamiliar. We like to discover new territory, to pioneer new frontiers. But we must always ask ourselves: is there a good reason for this absence, this inaction, this stillness?

A year or so after our trip to Walton-on-the-Naze, one of Dad’s mates from the pub took Martin and me to Southend. We rode on the dodgems and ate candyfloss. We gambled on the slot machines and tottered around the crooked house. That day I had my first hamburger. It was at a Wimpy, and was washed down with an extravagant milkshake.

It was bliss.

'Somewhere beyond the sea,
Somewhere, waiting for me,
My lover stands on golden sands
And watches the ships that go sailin’.
Somewhere beyond the sea
She's there watching for me.
If I could fly like birds on high,
Then straight to her arms,
I'd go sailing.’

Bobby Darin, ‘Beyond the Sea’ (A Lasry / C Trenet / J Lawrence)

No. 323