knit one street purl one city

Leopold Bloom to Dervla Kirwan

Well I’ve always had a soft spot for Mrs Kirwan I must admit. So that old middle-class BBC I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-genes exposé, Who Do You Think You Are, told her story – and guess what – her great-great grandfather – a Polish Jew living in Dublin called Henry Kahn – was probable model for said Mr Bloom. Naturally it doesn’t end well for Mr Kahn and family; appalling prejudice, institutional racism and medical ignorance, only a generation ago, put Kahn in a lunatic asylum, where he died after suffering several strokes.

Kudos to the BBC again – Reithian né Grauniad stance continuing or not – they are the best when it comes to this kind of personal heritage/history.

adam curtis on debt

Best person to tackle it – should turn out to be a classic Curtis documentary.

\\I am researching this area, and I thought I would put up some of the films from the BBC archive from the time when there was moral disapproval by those in power of the “lower orders” wanting to “live beyond their means”.

And beyond that there is a growing envy and resentment.//

See the films here.

ben okri : a way of being free

//Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings//

//Unhappy lands prefer utopian stories.
Happy lands prefer unhappy stories//

//The magician and the politician also have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing//

quotes from Ben Okri’s A Way of Being Free : the joys of storytelling III

—————————–
So I have only now found out that Uri Geller bought Lamb island in the Firth of Forth. His enthusiasm for the islands’ alleged central part in the Eqyptian Queen Scota / Arthurian legends, and his belief there’s egyptian treasure under Lamb’s volcanic rock is, as usual with illusionists, infectiously wonderous; yet clownishly false when revealed in all its glittering sham-glam.

And in this instance of course, spoon-bendingly daft too – but it’s a revealing look into what makes stories (myths?) so endearing to those looking for “answers”. What would those answers contain? Like the Queen was actually descended from the same familial line as Mohamed al-Fayed maybe? Actually Uri… that one’s been done already…

For everyone else I can highly recommend Inchcolm Island and the Bass rock if you’re looking for an island trip on the Forth – both islands are remarkable. For the scurvy knave though – put awa’ that bucket an’ spade, laddie, ye dinna ken the difference between allegory an’ simon schama…

my favourite writer

The enigma/bright-worded delight that is Anne Herbert –

acts, ax, backs, blacks, clacks, cracks, facts, fax, hacks, jacks, lacks, lax, max, pacts, pax, plaques, quacks, racks, sacks, sax, slacks, shacks, smacks, stacks, tax, tracts, wax

You can swap Sausalito for a wee holiday in Scotland anytime, dear – you’re invited.

his clyde less bonnie moment

Vanilla sky, Dark city, the Matrix, and now Inception all follow a simple-as-sliced-bread storyline (mixtaped from 30s city-noir) that pits individual against system. Dopplegangers and unreliable narrators make us think fantasy, think escapism, think I am not a number, invincible against the Forces of Control for many, several, seconds, in an airconditioned box.

Raoul wrote The Revolution of Everyday Life, an almost unreadable book that is nonetheless frighteningly incendiary in its own way. Individual less system = freedom (but freedom costs).

Raoul wants to kill cops. I doubt he has read the above. But he’s possibly seen the films – more like a dull rambo fantasist though.

I have a basic experience of the north tyneside area where Raoul Moat grew up. This is the Denton of A Touch of Frost. This is Chris Killip, the Battle of Orgreave, Boys from the Blackstuff (west), Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (east). It is Scando-Saxon territory : cold and rain is not a bother.

In Hollywood, it ends in some anonymous corridor in an urban glass prick. I think he’ll take the country comfort route, like Hoskins and Campbell killing the cruel farmer/adulterer-stoning-caster within themselves in Potter’s Pennies from Heaven.

…and a feather in your cap mr oliver

Jamie Oliver might be annoying but he knows plenty about food. Andrew Lansley, CBE / MP / westminster career brown-noser is I dearly hope the first in a new long line of utterly out-of-touch frontline conservative politicians who are embarassingly hopeless – apart from being hopeless at fox-baiting and taxpayer usury, allegedly.

Food affects mood. Rubbish food affects kids big time. Oliver is completely right.

If the Right Honourable Gentleman Sir Andrew Lansley CBE / Tebbit-fancier would bring it on… shiny new sparkly suits and spiffing latex heads all round… 2000s comedy just wasn’t the same without the conservatives…

WELCOME BACK BOYS!

gold star for mr saxe-coburg-gotha

Well not quite. But I do feel myself drawn to believe Charles’ protestations about the real reasons why he dissed chelsea barracks – “one’s subjects need to be protected from the moneygrabbing slab n’ glass merchants operating in this, um, glorious scept’red islOK enough.

Poor old George VII. Damned if you do (Poundbury) and damned if you don’t (listen to your tenants).

The fact is his protestations on behalf of Clapham omnibus person-of-no-fixed-gender-or-ethnicity-or marital-status (have you been affected by the stereotyping issues raised in this post? Like to talk to someone? Call 0300 123 1212 in confidence and ask for “Knacker”) are decades too late, and far too puny. The whole system of architects and planners and developers and public consultations is rotten to the core (but very safe, and accessible, and ISO accredited and – oh joy – GREEEEEENNNNN – our new supamegaxtra-store may look like a cardboard box with holes punched in it with a blunt stick but did you know, due to our water recycling plant, 5 ducks will not now die in the displaced brackish pond we had to dig because we built on marshy wetland? We are so committed to excellFUCK OFF!!!!).

Some people love post-war brutalist architecture. Some people love a man in a ponytail flourishing a favourite Rotring. Some people think Skodas and Hyundais are quite nice and must buy a brand new one at full cost over all other options… in this company, Vauxhalls are exotic. In this company, white socks and grey plastic shoes are really very practical – and comfy.

So there is a problem here, above and beneath. Above, the articulate Lord Foster gives it away first by his terrible taste in clothing – pink corduroy trousers and yellow shirts are not PoMo, just infantile. Cucumber Charles wears suits that make him look as if he’s about to re-enact the St Valentines day massacre. Beneath – the Primark-clad, american-imperialist-baseball-topped, sink-estate’d baldricks just look traumatised as usual, nipple-surrogate chemical-stick their only pleasure and ultimate pain. Yet they’re the only ones who really know about “modern architecture” – ironic, eh?

Along with Betjeman, one person who foresaw all this complete crap and stupidity and crass commercialism and inhumanity, top to bottom, was Ian Nairn.

Ian tomlinson murder

No charge. Not a one. Explanation full of lengthy legal machinations based on the coroner’s conflicting evidence – a complete red herring of an excuse. The actual event takes them one sentence to describe, in amongst all the bull (oddly no mention of Ian Tomlinson’s head hitting the ground).

What with Kenny MacAskill getting caught with his pants down in front of the president this week (I wish Americans would recognise that Scottish people died too – it’s not all about them), one thing is clear.

Black IS white. Right IS wrong.

Got that?

Maybe the IPCC have something up their concealed sleeves – or maybe a simple legal embargo – either way the truth will out, even if the murderer gets let off with a flea in their ear like poor Delroy Smellie, assaulted with a ferocious, deadly 150ml cardboard orange juice carton held at arms length. Oh poor Delroy, what a tragedy. THANK YOU Delroy, belatedly, for standing up to such a devilishly evil little female, out to crush you and all we hold dear with her moriarty-ish tiny little limbs – and deeply depraved miniature cardboard orange-juice carton. Suburbia is safe again thanks to you, Captain Corrupt.

Not forgotten.

Still waiting, 2010.

a change is coming

With the imminent arrival of the PsyGeoEdinburgh guidebook (with app following shortly after), several facets of fromztoa will change to reflect the direction that’s been planned for a while.

Firstly the adoption of a magazine rather than blog format, with limited edition quarterly (or half-yearly) printed issues too.

Secondly there will be more of an emphasis on urban topography and art interventions; and much more variety in terms of location now Edinburgh’s fending for itself!

Thanks for all those who’ve looked in so far. This is just a beginning amongst the endings.

robert burns in edinburgh

The Wonder of all the Gay World by James Barke is a semi-fictional account of Robert Burns’ visits to Edinburgh during the period 1786-1788. The book is part three of a quintet of biographical novels of Burns by Barke, and are being re-issued by Black and White publishing – highly recommended if you’re interested in Burns.

WGW is actually one of the most vibrant books written on Edinburgh’s enlightenment period. It puts Burns beside well-known Edinburgh people like his canny publisher Creech, his darwinian-foxed friend Lord Monboddo – and also contextualises the political issues of his time rather brilliantly. Other people like Jean Armour, Clarinda, Holy Wullie et al are woven in too of course – but its Barke’s descriptions of the dirty, corrupt, poverty-stricken, chaotic Edinburgh scene that is most memorable, not least because Burns’ presence and walking commentary adds such a large extra dimension.

Not being a Burns fan, this book would normally have been vacant on my radar – but having finally decided to wade through it with the promise of a different perspective on Edinburgh, it quickly became evident that Barke had developed a fully rounded critique, including all the blemishes Burns is often accused of by certain (normally polar-opposites) opinionators. What is totally clear is that Burns movingly realised he was a failure, in his own lifetime, as a farmer, father and poet, dying in pain and poverty. Today most of us only really see the steaming haggis through rose-tinted whisky tumblers, thinking nothing of the hardship he endured – this book sets that right. In fact I think there’s a case for saying this book should be read first by all, before any of the poetry.

I have a silly idea of what went wrong – not with the poetry obviously, even from my appallingly limited understanding of it, and that’s with living with the poetry since I could read – but with the lack of opportunity to blossom, possibly into writing plays for example. As Andrew O’Hagan has pointed out here, Burns lived just up the road from James Boswell – that Boswell of Johnson fame. What stopped Boswell from inviting Burns down to London? Was it really just simple snobbery as O’Hagan suggests or was it a problem with Burns’ anti-georgian views?

Oh and this small thought… think on what Burns might have said to William Blake… or what Blake would have done with Burns’ diamond-tipped pen…

nice banksy pastiche from zigzag site