Theatre of Disillusions 2: This Time, It's Versical

I have redone the prologue as verse, to see what would happen. What has happened is that it has become rather more explicit and didactic. The ghost of Brecht peered critically over my shoulder while I was at it. I think it's certainly more striking and interesting, but then the form suggests a rather grand idiom when this is all supposed to be deliberately sordid. Well, here it is: since both end by saying that everything is up to the audience, I had better leave it to you to decide which you prefer.

Theatre of Disillusions: a burlesque show in X acts

Prologue

Lights up. Stage empty but for the Master of Ceremonies, a tall, athletic man, very good-looking in a chiselled masculine way, dressed immaculately in Edwardian fashion. Young, but old enough for stubble. Could be a bit ethnic, but only a bit. Energetic and active: strides about and accompanies his words with expansive gestures. Distinctive voice: histrionic, but with a slightly tinny, grating, artificial note – as if heard through a loudspeaker.

Master of Ceremonies: My friends! I bid you welcome to our play,

Beneath whose powerful hypnotic sway

No thing upon the stage is what it seems:

Our International Theatre of Dreams!

In this, the planet’s greatest magic-show

We mean to upturn all you think you know!

In earlier ages, primitive and poor,

Beset by famines, plagues, and deadly war,

Illusion’s art was greatly in demand

From all the greatest powers in the land:

Without our magic-tricks, the masses might

Have asked about the reasons for their plight.

But what a simple stumbling display

These early efforts seem to us today!

On viewing them, we jaded moderns smirk:

How can a priest do a magician’s work?

Then came old Shakespeare, reckoned in his time

A crafty wizard: he could spin a rhyme,

I grant you, and his rhymes could make a king

Into a noble or a monstrous thing

Just as he pleased. But, well, these words recall:

[Quoting in a melodramatic Victorian voice]‘Suppose within the girdle of these walls

Are now confined two mighty monarchies.’

Such simple, humble, quaint effects as these!

To gamble all his labours of creation

Upon his audience’ imagination!

Good God! This was of all his several flaws

The worst: that he would bid the audience pause

And think! [this word to be enunciated much as a camp pantomime villain would the word ‘children’] A thought will make illusion flee

And leave exposed the grim reality,

More naked yet, once robbed of its disguise

Than if it had been plain before our eyes.

But never fear! Such thought-provoking feats,

Our modern methods render obsolete.

Imagination, now, has had his day:

He slowly starves to death for want of pay.

His job has gone to us, dear friends, who can

Turn strings of simple numbers into man,

And what is more, can likewise reduce man

To numbers in our simple formulae:

Such miracles we practice every day!

Our theatres to temples we can turn,

And temples as mere theatres we spurn!

It’s true, dear friends: the world will never know

So marvellously intricate a show

As ours; and yet all that would be for naught

Without a public free from loathsome thought.

All that we do is meant to entertain

You! [sinks imploringly to his knees], audience, and all would be in vain

If ever you should you should raise a heckling voice:

All our success, or failure, is your choice.

You are the kings and queens at whose fine court

We are but jesters who must sing and sport.

You are stern Caesars, who, with one raised hand

Can life and fame, or shameful death, command

For we who strain and struggle at your feet.

You are the gods whose favour we entreat

When every night we build and sacrifice

A new-made miracle of rare device:

A whole world put together in a day

Presented to you, juggled, thrown away!

And so, like Shakespeare, we must humbly pray

That you will kindly judge our little play. 

Curtain down. 

Glasgow Rose

Work on 'Bandits!' will, I hope, continue but the central image for this came to me just now and I needed to get it out of my head. It's another Glasgow poem. Possibly I should put a day in the diary for the writing of an Edinburgh poem, before I lose my ability to say 'dearrrrrrr' and forget that sex is what potatoes come in.

Glasgow Rose

Glasgow bears its backside along the old canal -
Rough and red, and bruised with open windows -
And fills it with its slurry and its waste.
Drunkards with heavy eyes go stumbling past,
Or stand and stare down urine-coloured swans.
Crushed cans lie in the beds of yellow reeds:
'Coca-cola', they lament,
And 'Tesco' say the flapping shopping bags;
And silently they argue with graffiti on the walls.

The mural seems like more graffiti, at first glance,
On its brick wall among the gutted warehouses,
The factories forever shut, their windows ever-open.
In the mural the canal is blue,
The factories are busy with black smoke;
But there are red flecks where the paint is chipped,
And I can hardly read the legend:
'Our Canal. Our Future.'

On a wet Spring evening,
Looking across the Forth-and-Clyde canal
I see a vision eloquent, complete,
Too perfect to change,
Too perfect to communicate.

Like the little white rose of Scotland.
And like that rose, too perfect yet to last.


For another poem, strike out the last line and write 'Too perfect to last' under 'Too perfect to change'. But that poem, that bit of no-good moony Romantic fatalism, could hardly be less like the call for change and struggle of my hard-edged Marxist pentameter. That other poem was written by a self-indulgent Edinburgh bourgeois, who I happen to know very well.

I suppose it's a Forth-and-Clyde poem by a person who has had a Forth-and-Clyde life, such of it as has transpired so far.

(PS: It has been observed by another Marxist poet that 'First comes grub and then the moral' and I know that I have of late been less regular in documenting my grub. But it's exam season so I am living on the same dish of Cauliflower Watsit for three nights in a row; probably silence is the best policy.)

Statues

The following inspired by discussions at the GU LitSoc. If I create a literary work per hot meal it is entirely legitimate owing to the GU LitSoc's free pizza policy.

Statues, or: a traffic-cone poem

At the end of Princes Street where Edinburgh meets the world
I met the Duke of Wellington. Command was written
On his bronze face beneath the bird-shit. His horse reared,
Lifting up the weight of its dark metal muscles,
While its mad rolling eyes said:
'Bugger me, not again!'

With one hand he made that gesture that builds empires up
And topples them and builds them up again - as if directing his battalions.
But where are those battalions? For it wasn't only Napoleon that this Iron Duke
Broke at Waterloo. Behind him, the Register House: the numberless battalions of the dead
Form their lines across paper in locked cupboards.

And in front of him, the station:
So I followed the orders of his imperious hand
And caught a train. I went to Nice, to Florence,
Munich, Krakow, Kiev; but everywhere some carved face sneered sternly down at me
And made me want to smash it, to bring kings and generals toppling,
Break them in their turn. There'd be no blood or breaking bones:
Sanctimonious stone faces would be kicked about the street for footballs.
But instead I retreated from sanctimonious stone gazes.

Until I came to Xi'an, where the dead battalions have their statues:
Nameless, but not faceless, they stand in their clay ranks - far easier to smash
Than bronze and marble. Some were smashed even in death, but all were smashed in life.
Enough of smashing, then.

But bring the marble kings together,
Put them in ranks as their clay subjects stand in ranks,
Make them share their podiums,
Line up their rearing leaden horses, as if to start a race:
The first to one million dead!
And let the terracotta soldiers give mute witness
And pass mute judgement.

My train pulled in - a little late - at Queen Street.
The Duke of Wellington greeted me again,
From underneath his traffic-cone.

I thought of Napoleon in a droopy false moustache,
Ceasar with a red nose on his Roman nose;
Hitler hung about with strings of pearls or wooly scarves
In a shop window; a half-peeled banana in Lenin's gesticulating arm.

And the mute clay ranks look on, and mutely smile.



The list of cities are all those twinned with Edinburgh on the Eurasian continent: we are indeed, by a happy chance, twinned with the home of the Terracotta Army. I did miss out Aalborg, because the Danes are much too lovable (there is a rough correspondence between the eastern marches of cities and dictators, France-Italy-Germany-Ecksovietlandia, and come on, name me one mass-murdering Dane).

Glasgow - to the immortal spirit of whose immortal people an Edinburgh boy humbly dedicates this poem, may it live and prosper when all kings and conquerors are buried up to their traffic-cones, hurrah! - is handily enough twinned with many cities that stand as democratic landmarks on the map of world history: Marseille where the song of liberty was sung, Nuremberg where kings and conquerors finally got what was coming to them, and Rostov-on-Don, home of the free Cossacks.

It is also twinned with Bethlehem. Naturally the revolutionary connection is there - Bethlehem, Palestine!, the information boards paid for by the Glasgow taxpayer inform us proudly - but of course that is not the first association with Bethlehem. Many people think it is the place where light, peace, and love entered the world. So I suppose it and Glasgow sort of balance out.

I mean, I am from Edinburgh, one has to keep up appearances.

Pint-sized essays

I've recovered my camera from the dark and noisome confines (I don't know what 'noisome' means, but I gather that it's not 'noisy' and that it is a common attribute of confines which happen also to be dark) of a discarded pair of trousers. Alas!: a day too late to record my rather delicious salmon-and-dill pasta. And you know what salmon costs, so some time this week you will be treated to the cheapest thing on our menu: the word-kitchen's Very Simple Pizza (Which Isn't, Strictly Speaking, Pizza). Think of it as the credit-crunch to my subprime-whatever boom. For now, though, I've got to rush off to see a show. Latecomers, my ticket informs me without any ambiguity whatever, Will Not Be Admitted.

So I'll skip on to the writing, which I prepared earlier. A new policy update had reached me from the powers that be here in Glasgow Uni. Apparently it has been determined that 1500 words including footnotes and bibliography is far too lenient a length for history essays; some students are still proving able to squeeze worthwhile analysis into a space which seedy internet dating services would consider insufficient and this will not do, it will not do at all. Therefore from now on all essays are to be submitted in strict haiku form.

Ah well: I must make the best of a bad situation. Here, then, are some prospective essays for the various questions according to the new rules. They can be purchased from me for £20 apiece.

Revolt and revolution


1. In what circumstance might common disturbances turn into violent revolt in Europe before 1850?

Customs violated;
Incorrect Christology;
Folk starving to death.

2. To what degree did the revolutionary movements in France between 1785 and 1871 share common grievances?

Lots; France was full of
Injustice; also, peace not
All that exciting.

3. ‘In the major European revolutions, violent repression by the authorities never worked as intended.’ Discuss with reference to at least two revolutions.

For the last bloody
Time: first you shoot and then you
Revoke civil rights.

Gender

1. ‘The Enlightenment created ideals of equality and individual rights.’ Why did it take so long for these ideals to be extended to include women?

How can I put this:
Well, recent research suggests
Men are huge bastards.

2. To what extent have concepts of masculinity gradually become more ‘civilised’ during the period 1500 and 2000?

I reject the term
‘Civilisation’; it’s a
Cultural construct.

3. In what respects did feminists of the ‘first wave’ (late 19th – early 20th Century) differ in approach from those of the ‘second wave’ (1960s-1970s)? You may focus on one or two countries.

Suffrage, good idea;
Equal pay, better; but best?
Essays on Jane Eyre.

The changing urban environment


1. How effective were the practical responses to the problems (social, administrative, environmental) created by urban growth EITHER in the period before 1800, OR after 1800?

Alcohol, smog, stench,
Child labour, overcrowding –
Glasgow’s not so bad!

2. Did the growth of cities enhance the opportunities for women in society?

Depends what’s meant by
‘Opportunities’, I guess.
(History’s like that.)

3. Why did urbanisation so often seem to make social inequality worse? Your answer should make specific reference to at least two cities.

The rich/the poor should
Have the decency to be
Rich/poor out of sight!

State-formation


1. Was absolute monarchy (before 1789) ever anything more than government by the elite, for the elite?

No, but then neither
Was anything else since then.
(Extra marks for Marx!)

2. ‘The transformation of “subjects” into “citizens” neatly represents the emergence of the modern state. Discuss with reference to at least two different parts of Europe.

In Britain we’re all
Apparently still subjects;
Ah well, never mind.

3. Why was democracy so fragile in twentieth-century Europe?

Raving demagogues;
Vast forces clash like glaciers;
Really not much fun.

Race and nationality


1. Is racism within Europe the inevitable outcome of the creation of colonial empires by the European powers?

Likely. As a white
Bourgeois, I am troubled by
Existential guilt.

2. Does the history of racism and of nationalism suggest the two are inter-connected?

Only as much as
Alcohol and drunkenness.
I mean, honestly.

3. In what respects have European concepts of ethnic identity and race changed since 1945?

Well, where I live we’ve
Chucked John Knox for Mel Gibson.
Shit idea, really.

War and Peace


1. ‘War made the creation of a well-organised state essential’. Discuss with reference to at least two parts of Europe before 1815

Clearly, Britain needs a
Strong army to defend our
Fleet, and vice-versa.

2. How successful was the ‘balance of power’ resulting from the Congress of Vienna (1815)

A century’s quite
Good, when you look at things in
The big picture, eh?

3. Why has Europe been involved in no major-power war since 1945, but has been implicated in a large number of other conflicts?

Because the Yanks are
A bunch of bloody cowboys
If you’re asking me.

4. How can the battlefield archaeologist contribute to our traditional historical understanding of warfare in Europe? (You may choose to discuss a broad chronological overview, or look at one conflict in particular such as WWI).

I hear if you do
This course in Honours you can
Fire a cannon! Yeah.

Spiritual and Temporal Power


1. Did the divisions created by Protestantism strengthen or weaken Christianity?

What with all the blood,
I admit maybe Gibson
Did less harm than Knox.

2. How substantial was the conflict between reason and religious beliefs in European cultural and intellectual life between 1618 and 1789?

Probably not more
Than that between flavours of
Religious belief.

3. How might the historian explain the declining role of Christian worship in some parts of Europe since the late 18th century?

Which parts? My gosh, you
Want pint-size essays, you should
Set full-size questions!

Eat yer parritch and wait for juistice!

Still lacking a camera, and worried lest my wide-eyed 1850s adolescents should get it into their heads that they own this place, I have produced something different, which happens to cover much of this blog's subject matter in a oner.

Recipe sonnet: a Scottish literary breakfast treat, as made in Scotland according to the traditional and sustainable method by craftsmen who care

A gnawing sense of guilt you can’t explain;
A mind tied up in dualistic twists;
Ancestral homes forever lost in mists;
A Gaelic air on lovers, drowning, pain;
Some nettle-water; tot of whisky; peat
Fresh taken from some Covenanter’s marsh,
A wild-eyed fear of Heaven’s judgment (harsh…).
Mix these ingredients on a medium heat
In equal parts, however much you need -
In this (one!) case, you needn’t be exact -
The oats must go in gradually, throughout.
Best sert wi sapsie Lallans bittocks, dried,
And with a jar of firm, grim faith in fact
(For best effect, include a nagging doubt).


This sonnet produced on behalf of VisitScotland with funds from the Scottish government. They paid for me to attend university, and as you can clearly see it was an obviously worthwhile investment.

Sonnet

Here is a sonnet. My, what a twist! It made me £12.50 and is thus, for so long as the capitalist system prevails, the best thing I have ever written.


'Sonnet: To Orkney'

The whispering wind makes waves across the moor:
Brown waves on land, and grey-green waves on sea.
In times of doubt and pain, how glad I'd be
To sit and watch them on your quiet shore,
Where I have sat so many times before.
You islands are a haunted place for me,
But yours are ghosts I'm ever glad to see:
The ghosts of happy times to come no more.
How strange to think that you have ever been
The world's last land, the seat of warlike kings,
The battlefield of clashing heathen hosts!
And now the bloody memories you've seen
Join with my own: all insubstantial things,
The windy, whispering voices of your ghosts


Something that came up the other night in pub-discussion with Prof. Riach, Chairman of Scottish Literature at Glasgow and, less impressively, the world, was the very local nature of much Scottish literature - two small examples of which I humbly contribute above. So many people following the trail blazed by MacDiarmid have belonged identifiably of a particular place. Edinburgh had Garioch and, in another way (though she'd be livid to be seen in this sort of boozy masculine company), Spark. Being a Glasgow poet is practically a profession of its own and I still can't believe Edwin Morgan's really dead! *sniff* Ahem. Orkney or course has Muir and Brown; Skye, and all Gaeldom, MacLean. MacCaig and Crichton Smith were both between Highlands and Lowlands, each with a particular bit of each.

Sue me if I missed your favourite, but the point is that these direct links with actual communities and cultures are a very effective antidote to the sort of ridiculous Victorian nationalism that Prof. Riach gives the splendid name of "haggis-vomit".

We thought perhaps that if the construction of Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land is ever to be finished (danger of burning gold; hard-hats to be worn by order) there will have to be a discovery of the local there, as a way of breaking the hangover of an imperial culture and literature. Scotland and England have both been distorted by that imperial legacy in their separate ways, for all that it has put us in touch with such a magnificent worldwide literature in the English language.

Scotland's problem is that, with Scotland such a recognisable brand (although to be fair many foreigners make the justifiable assumption that it's not really real) there is only one academic department studying literature made by Scots in Scotland in the world. England's problem is that, with English the common language of earth, there's apparently none at all studying literature produced by English people in England.

The word-kitchen

'Word-smith': not a brilliant metaphor, is it, when you think about it? 'Play-wright' is good: although it apparently began as an insult, it seems to me to capture the intricacy of writing for the stage, the requirement that everything precisely fit together; and of course it's also rather a good pun. But while 'word-smith' expresses an appropriate combination of heat and violence with creative skill, it doesn't ring true technically. Smiths turn one lump of metal into a finished piece of work, whereas writing is an act of assembly. But how about a chef? He combines things from all over the world, with care, craftsmanship, and an experimental spirit; and he also mutilates them in various ways before and after he does. This seems a very good analogy.

So it shall be the title of my official writing blog. Which may also from time to time show off the produce of my regular kitchen. Funny how these things just come together, isn't it?

My goals are several. In this one place I can bring together such of my existing work as is worth it; in this space I can think aloud and comment on it; and hopefully the existence of this blog will, by some combination of duty with vanity, induce me to get off my bum and actually do some writing now and again.

As I have today! This piece came about by two stages. I got the idea and much of the imagery looking out of the window as my train crossed Scotland from Edinburgh to Glasgow this morning; and scribbled it down for something to do, primarily as an exercise in pentameter. I wasn't very satisfied, so I thought no more about it. But this evening, at Glasgow Uni's Literary Society or, to use its marvellously Soviet-sounding shorthand, LitSoc, I and others got into a long chat with our speaker, Alan Riach. He is the chair of Scottish Literature (yes, the chair - for the WORLD) and we spoke about, among other things, the Scots language. I felt suddenly that my scribbling of earlier wanted to be put into Lallans: that would give it life, somehow. And indeed as soon as I got started I found not only that a dialect voice made the thing meatier and more vivid: it also furnished it, out of nowhere I knew of consciously, with a piece of folk-song for its central image to interact with and with a nicely ambiguous ending depending on the colloquial Scots confusion of 1st person singular and plural.

So here, to start us off (see what I did there?), it is:


‘Frae the laund o the gowden an green’

Sae gangs some auld ill-myndit sang; but nou
A see the laund o black an frostit white:
Snaw mizzlin aff yon mirk an riekie braes;
An scuddie trees; an empie furrit fields.
Aye, empie; but the wintry licht, sae cauld
An snell the sel o it, in leamin doun
Haes made the broun yirt juist sae wairm an bien
As gowd coud iver be. Ach, gowd! Whit’s gowd?
It’s trumphery an whirligig is aw!
Ay but thare’s mair o walth in gowden fields
O wheat an aits, nor in yer pailaces
An temples; still an on thare’s mair again
In snell an gowden licht that shiens an kythes
Whaur yon daurk nakit fields will growe again,
An growe again. Thare’s gowd eneuch tae mak
The hail warld rich an fouthie; gowd eneuch
For us.