Jesus and Mary Street

He lay, elongated, on the corner of vias Gesù e Maria and Corso, beneath a sign that read in capitals ‘STOP HERE’. The normally generous people of Rome walked around, or over, his prostrate form, making – no doubt – their interpretations as a single, unified body, a single eye. ‘Young man’ first, then ‘student’ (from his clothes, you see), then ‘fair-skinned’ (American?), and finally ‘drunk’.

As it turns out (and I’m sorry if you’ve heard this kind of thing before), this guy wasn’t really a student, an American, or even really drunk. His eyes were open, although hardly looking at anything, you would think. In any case, there were fewer people stepping around him now, as it was a Wednesday afternoon and it looked like rain.

One of those peculiarly Roman raindrops smacked him on the lips with such accuracy that he was sure, later, that it had been an intentional gesture of the gods of the city. The large, heavy, warm ball didn’t really revive him at that moment, however. It was a strong feminine arm that did that.

The rain in Rome falls rather rarely. When it does, it is a particular joy, washing buildings and streets, making marble and graffiti gleam. The cobbles become slippery; the pavements empty, especially in the area round piazza del Popolo, towards the northern gate, and those who are outside are putting up umbrellas and trying to get indoors as soon as possible.

As for that arm, it was maternal more than anything, and it peeled his head from the pavement, gently though, as if he were really sick. He realised that he was breathing far too quickly, that his body wasn’t ready for this movement, and that it was desperately fighting this upward trajectory. Maybe he was really sick.

“Come on, get up.” And then she added, not so much because it was a fact, but rather as an excuse for having touched him, “It’s raining.”

To his surprise, not only did he get up, but at that exact moment, the rain really started. She lead him down the little shiny street running east, past parked scooters and closed doors, towards a dark green doorway. “Jesus and Mary Street”, he mumbled to himself, and his mouth felt dry and sore. Although it hadn’t really registered at the time, he would later hypothesise that this spontaneous translation had occurred precisely because the strange woman had spoken to him, not in Italian, but in English.

Campbell MacKenzie Campbell

I have great difficulty absolving myself from the charge of pretentiousness. I do feel, however, that there are certain things I can allow myself without my glasses bothering my pudendal nerve. Some examples:

I can sense whether a book has been translated from French, Russian or Italian into English.
I know the names of the Muses.
I can tell you the story of Turandot.
I invented a story that has become accepted as true by tour guides in a certain European city.
I know the Greek alphabet.
I support Partick Thistle.

Now, any one of these statements might compel you to utter the "all familiar suggestion". And yet each is true. Well, I haven't tested the first one in a while. But it is the last that perhaps gives me most difficulty.

You see, I've met so many people who are Thistle fans (usually 'Partick' fans, actually) because they are not fans of the Pope's Own Rangers or the Crown Defenders of Celtic. These are usually Glaswegians with degrees, career prospects and a bizarre accent that is at the same time broad and syruppy with confidence. A mix that betrays the working class origins of their fathers and the middle class futures of their children. Imagine how James McFadden's kids will speak after 2 years at Gordonston.

I have a recurring nightmare in which I awake as usual, walk to our kitchen and make my wife a caffe latte from our Gaggia machine, stop to glance at the Guardian crossword from the night before and OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN!!!

To provide a modicum of sanity and to halt this inevitable decline to smug snugness I have designated a part of my personality - an annex - to a character I call Campbell MacKenzie Campbell LLB. He represents everything I fear I could have become - and still might. He buys Art, he is in the Jags Trust, he watches foreign cinema. He likes to learn a bit of the language when he goes abroad. He goes to Pixies concerts and eats sushi.

I check everyday to see how close I am to Campbell. I see in him my destiny, a gradual loss of identity to a monological world that demands my indivduality.

I bet Campbell would keep a blog.

Dundee United 1 - Hamilton Academical 3-6-1

O no no no! I was at the game, and if Mr. Levein thinks he can get away with that kind of talk, he’s simply wrong. I am, essentially, a fan of the Dundee United manager. I remember even his curtailed Scotland career as a source of disappointment. I certainly believe that he is a good manager. I support his sometimes brave stance on the perceived biases of referees in Scotland and would like to hear answers about it. But he can’t get away with slagging off other teams.

I was there; I saw the whole sorry scene unfold. Hamilton Accademical (say it aloud! Doesn’t Scotland have the best names for football teams? Queen of the South, Heart of Midlothian, Forfar Athletic. And we’re still coining them: Inverness Caledonian Thistle) were in the lead, against the run of play, after 8 minutes through Richard Offiong. Lee Wilkie later claimed that Stuart Mensing was offside before he set up the remarkable Offiong, although given that his man was the one who slotted into an open net, he may be wise in directing attention elsewhere. Nevermind, my friends and I thought: United are the better side, they will score a couple. 3-1 seems like a fair result at this stage.

Instead United decided to try and show their superiority to these ‘First Division Rejects’ – surely the best/worst heckle for a newly-promoted side ever – by challenging them to a game of 3rd Division football. And I am aware that now since Stevie Murray now plays for Dumbarton that that is an insult to the 3rd Division. This ancient sport recalls the origins of the Beautiful Game – tribal warfare – and consists of running very fast towards a football, kicking it as hard as you can off the player nearest you. This causes, more often than not, the ball to float high in the air off the shins of an opponent. At this point, players rush madly to where they think the ball ought to bounce and bump into each other. The referee will then award a free kick to one or other of the two teams at random, who then have the chance to pump the ball to the opposition keeper. He catches it, kicks it back into the middle of the park and the whole sequence begins again. This is the sort of encounter that Johnny Foreigner doesn’t fancy.

Now, it seems that Levein doesn’t fancy that sort of game much either. It’s not football, he says. Well, Craig, it is. It is, and what’s more, it is a sort of football that has been the foundation of careers of players - like o, maybe, Craig Levein? – for generations. It isn’t pretty, certainly. It’s not like watching Brazil. It won’t feature in a music video. But to complain that Hamilton are not set up so that Sandaza can sand dance his way round them is petty, at best.

‘When a team sets up 3-6-1, that’s disappointing.’ No, Craig. That the people of the Middle East can’t find a lasting peace, that’s disappointing. It’s disappointing that our government took us into a war that we weren’t willing to fight. It’s disappointing that my breakfast was not served to me on a doily by a roller-skating panda. That Hamilton Academical arrived for a tricky away fixture, finding themselves bottom of the league, against a team who want European football next year, is entirely predictable. The fact is that United seemed unwilling, or unable to get past a belligerent Accies side who, let’s not forget, scored first. The Tangerines lost their football skills and their heads as they pointed to players after their first win in 10 and screamed about timewasting to one of the most inept group of match officials I have ever seen.

So if Craig wants to moan, maybe he should be looking at his players and questioning why they had no more inventiveness and creativity and not complaining that Hamilton didn’t do the sporting thing and lose 5-1.

Perhaps the last word should go to Billy Reid, who has his own theory about why Levein is so mad. ‘We’ve taken 4 points from 6 against them this season.’

Brel

The one cool thing I do is liking Brel. The recordings, the performances, the songs. Although I will no doubt be accused of a nostalgic longing for the better days I never knew, I genuinely know of no-one who is comparable. Of singers who write songs and then perform them – and I mean really perform them – we have, who? George Michael? His voice is too pretty and subject matter too various in quality. Elton John? But he doesn’t write his lyrics. Jamie Cullum? Who? But he’s not the same thing at all!

Scott Walker is really the only figure who comes close to Brel in the Land of the Living. But even Scott belongs to a different time: either in a silky voiced past or in a desolate future, always singing back to us. Walker tackles us in the way Brel maybe would now, though Jacques may have kept a sense of humour longer, or at least one less grim.

There is such a thing as music that causes a physical effect, a psychosomatic element. Though it makes me sound terribly old and Telegraph, I recall a startling physical sensation of pleasure and shock at the climax of ‘Nimrod’ from the Enigma Variations when I first heard them live played by the RSNO. In defence of this tweediness, similar effects are not always occasioned by Edwardian England. Other than Elgar, Scott Walker is the composer who has most often caused physical sensation in me. Jumping with terror at ‘The Escape’; the quickening of breath occasioned by ‘Clara’; these things are unusual in the Pop World. And Brel is surely no exception. Would Brel be capable of a track – there are no songs anymore – like ‘The Electrician’? a piece so disturbing as to make me nauseous.

Brel is the chief poet of the chanson for me precisely because of these physical effects that he causes in me. He can cause me to involuntarily thrust my chest out in an ironic self-importance (le Chanson de Jacky), have my heartbeat speeding and my muscles tense with unfelt anger (Amsterdam) and, yes, double me over with sickening pain in the pit of my stomach (Ne me quitte pas). He is a master of manipulating our bodies through his art, through his music.

And good art does this. It is my defence of ‘Modern Art’, that it can have this psychosomatic effect. In my view, it bypasses the strictly emotional functions that traditional art depends on and strikes one coldly in a primal way. It is thus that a slashed canvas can cause all the symptoms of terror in me, more than the painting of a knife or a crucifixion ever could. Brel is the Modern Pop Star, the great Chanteur of the Twentieth Century. He smoked, looked like a philosopher and wore a dark suit. His music may be the one cool thing I like, but it is much more than just ‘cool’. It is art.

Legend of the Liver bird

In the news: Liverpool FC desire to copyright their world famous crest. For some reason the larger community on Merseyside – which will include Everton and Tranmere fans, I’m just saying – are perturbed by this perfectly natural assimilation of a symbol of their city. I mean, the Liver bird, if anyone recognises it at all, is principally known for its starring roles in the European Cup (5 times!) and its domination of the English First Division circa 1985.




Think, moreover, what great risks Liverpool FC run if they do not protect their brand in this basic and sensible way! Given that the colour red is, sadly, outwith the remit of the courts, the badge is the only thing that will guarantee that you are watching the real Liverpool. Can you imagine? You turn up to watch a ‘glamour friendly’ at your local junior team: Stoneybridge Juniors vs. Liverpool! What a matchup! Only for you and your fellow fans to notice something amiss about 20 minutes in.

‘I hadn’t realised that Gerrard was so short!’
‘That Jamie Carragher just used his left foot!’
‘The linesman’s outpacing Torres! And he appears to be a tall blond lady, teetering on high heels!’

And then it hits you. This isn’t the real Liverpool F.C. It’s just a team of copyright thieves and Fernando Torres, conning the hard-working public out of its money. This would never, could never happen if only they had been allowed to copyright their emblem in a neat, legal way.

That, I’m afraid, is not all. There is a huge market for memorabilia for every football team, and Liverpool is one of the tops. Who knows what kind of money the American owners of LFC have lost out on because of counterfeit – counterfeit and therefore dangerous, don’t let’s forget – tea towels, mugs and pencil cases? DVDs of glory years, great players. Can you imagine what horrors await if image rights are not protected? Cheap C4 style ‘drama-documentary-we-know-you-have-no-imagination-so-here-it-is-look-look-its-Admiral-Nelson’. Shankly played by Robert Carlyle! Hansen and Lawrenson played by steaming sacks of knowitallness! Steve McManaman played by a mop! What about the more recent past? Without copyright, will theatre companies up and down Merseyside be donning the red shirt with green scrolls and un-trademarked Liver bird and re-enacting that time they played Newcastle? Or worse, cutting the LFC’s profits with a new musical: Istanbul! with Marti Pellow as Stevie G?

It is time for the nonsense to stop. How is anyone to make a profit these days, for the love of God! in these dark times, unless they can gradually buy up, copyright and subsume all cultural symbols? How can you be a supporter of a team except by buying Genuine Apparel with the right badge on it? How can we be sure of our place in the world unless we have exchanged real money for it?

More Saints In Strange Places

My recent visit to the home town of Carlo Emilio Gadda provided me with a chance to visit the churches that he would have known as a child and to test my theories, such as they are. I postulated that he had some interest - an intellectual interest - in the lives of certain of the saints, and that he uses some of these same saints in an interesting way in his art.

I make the point in my PhD (out next year, in all good libraries. Maybe.) that an artist often has to make his or her work live outside of the work. Just as Ovid uses the template of Roman myth to write his poetry, Gadda uses the characters of Catholicism to anchor his text in a cultural context that is, in one sense at least, fixed and unchanging. The extreme example for me is Martin Creed's Work 232 in which he appeals to the entirety of human experience as validation for his art.

Gadda's saints, however, are not quite fixed in place. They are like Latin, a dead language that is acquiring new words. About 10 years ago, when I studied in Rome, I had a friend whose job it was to translate Papal encyclicals and speeches into Latin from Polish. He told me that when the Pope referred to things and objects that did not exist in the Latin of the lexica, a decision had to be made over creating a new word and describing it. I remember telling me about a particularly troubling debate over the word 'pizza'. Similarly, the lives of the saints are open books, and much deconstruction, re-reading and psychoanalysis (and psychobabble) are therein performed.

Anyway. In one of the churches I hit the jackpot, with my Motherly Triumvirate in its full glory. St. Anthony of Padua, St. Joseph and St. Christopher all depicted in art in the church. These are the only 3 male saints commonly depicted with any sort of child, and this is a circumstance that interests me because of the use that Gadda makes of it. It seems to me that these very three are set up in opposition in his works to the childless. The patermaternal image of these saints is a wonderful way to suggest, to hint at the pain felt by characters whose lives are not blessed (yes, blessed) by the biological completeness they crave. When Gadda uses this supertext, he is moving us above and beyond our reading, and into a world beyond the novel wherein the characters dream with us.

A Bolero for Boyd

Boyd-y, Boyd-y, Boyd-y. All my friends and relatives hate you. Some of them hate you because they are bigots and you sometimes play for Rangers. Others dislike your arrogance. A few lament the shame you brought on the Scottish Cup Final with your moustache.



I remember, instead, the greatest free kick I ever saw in that self same game. Sir, it was a V2. It was in the net before you struck it. I remember you scoring against my wee team in the League Cup. The ball went over your shoulder and you just hit it. Just hit it! And the Bluenoses in the stand went nuts. I sat dumbstruck and, bewildered by greatness, applauded. You jammy sod.


Why isn’t Boyd always playing for Scotland and Rangers? ‘He doesn’t track back’. He doesn’t play bass and sing for Level 42, either. ‘He wastes more chances than he scores.’ Jesus! Even Pelè missed open goals sometimes. ‘He’s a one-trick pony’. The day a pony finishes as top scorer for two different clubs in the same season is the day I give up fitba for badger baiting.


So Kris, what do they all have against you. Managers, fans, referees! I hear now that you have turned your back on George Burley because you didn’t get the chance to miss the chance Iwelumo missed. On his film-star-playing-a-politician-looks? Our own Burley, who took Hearts (Hearts!) to the top of (gasp!) the Scottish Premier League: our own, our Premier League, for a couple of weeks? Kris, dice not with greatness. Don’t play chess with death. A rose by any other name. In the midst of life we are in death, etcetera. Come back into the team! Burley must certainly recognise eventually that you are as much a specialist as Craig Gordon, and you at least have the good fortune to not look like a 14 year old at a school disco. But George and Walter say the same thing. ‘When you are playing sickening anti-football, you can’t afford Kris Boyd in your team’. Obviously, that’s not a direct quote. But they agree. Boyd doesn’t do enough to impress them. So what’s your problem, Krissy boy?

You must really do feckall in training, you go missing when the ball isn’t at your feet, you are ponderously slow, you play for Rangers, you used to play for Killie! But:

Last night I was playing 5 a sides. I was in space on the right and a deflected pass ballooned off a hapless 42 year old opponent. It bounced high over my head but I read the pitch and outmanoeuvred the closing defender. I smacked the ball on the half volley and it swerved past the keeper into the net at the near post. A lucky wonderstrike. And as I wheeled away, grinning like a goalscoring idiot, I thought of you. Not Burley, not McFadden, not Ferguson, not even Iwelumo. I thought of Kris Boyd. And that’s why I want you back in the Blue of Scotland.