‘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

‘Oh, I’ve got news for you, Baby,
That I’ve made plans for two.
I guess I’m just a stubborn kind of fellow.
Got my mind made up to love you.’

Stubborn Kind of Fellow/ Marvin Gaye (Stevenson/Gaye/Gordy)

I recently saw an excellent production of the August Wilson play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (which runs at The National Theatre in London until 18 May). Through a ten-play cycle Wilson, who passed away in 2005, sought to document the African American experience. He wrote one play for each decade of the twentieth century. It’s a titanic achievement and surely one day a major British theatre company will stage all ten.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago in 1927. It considers the lives of a group of black musicians for whom slavery is a recent memory and discrimination is a current reality. Ma Rainey, the ‘Mother of the Blues,’ is booked into a studio to record, amongst other material, her signature tune, Black Bottom. Rainey is tough, imperious, defiant. Through years of bitter experience she has learned to stand up to the threats and enticements of corporate white America. Her manager and producer are eager for her to evolve her blues sound to accommodate the growing public enthusiasm for jazz rhythms. And they have an ally in the ambitious young dandy of a trumpet player, Levee, who has written a more jazz-inflected arrangement of Rainey’s tune.

Our sympathies are naturally with Rainey. We applaud her dogged determination, her inflexible insistence on doing her song her way. We want her to win.

Maybe we always side with the stubborn ones. We admire the independent voice, the tenacious spirit. Our cultural history is crammed with heroic tales of single-minded artists taking on the reactionary establishment, the carping critics, the fickle public.

So we applaud Ginger Rogers when she insists on wearing her ostrich feather dress for Cheek to Cheek, despite the protestations of Fred Astaire, who found the wayward plumes distracting.

We delight in the rigidity of Samuel Beckett’s stage directions, which preclude any new director’s interpretations of his work.

We cheer when we hear how Shostakovitch responded to critics’ comments as he was finalising his Leningrad Symphony:

‘I take them under consideration, but not into practice.’

But are we right to side with Rainey? Perhaps her producer and manager are just thinking about money. But Levee clearly has artistic, as well as selfish motives, to adapt her piece. And why not sympathise with the audience’s appetite for change, freshness and innovation?

Is the accommodation of public opinion and preference inherently wrong? Shouldn’t any creative endeavour evolve and transform in tune with times and tastes?

I suspect that, whilst we celebrate romantic yarns of artistic integrity and defiance in the face of feedback, most of us in the commercial sector are engaged in more nuanced, calibrated calculations. Indeed the navigation of different dynamics and tensions is at the heart of commercial creativity. We’re not pursuing ‘art for art’s sake.’ We have attitudinal, behavioural and financial goals. For us creativity is not an end in itself. It is a strategy for achieving effectiveness.

In my experience the best Creative Directors and Strategists know when to be stubborn with an idea; when to stay with it, despite dissenting opinion and challenging research. But they can also judge when to back off; when cumulative evidence or circumstances prevent progress. Sometimes they evolve and adapt a concept to accommodate the external point of view. And sometimes they can switch effortlessly from single-minded passion to starting all over again.

Fundamentally we need to learn when to stick and when to twist. It’s not a science. It’s a skill.

‘You notice how in winter-floods the trees which bend before the storm preserve their twigs. The ones which stand against it are destroyed, root and branch.’

Haemon to his father Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone

In many ways Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a joyous, funny, inspiring play. But there’s also a note of sadness hanging over proceedings, as the whole cast variously reflect on their experiences of prejudice, failure and loss. As the wise pianist, Toledo, says of his own disappointments:

‘Gonna be foolish again. But I ain’t never been the same fool twice.’

No. 72

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

Stick Or Twist? Learning When To Change