Author: old_wp_importer

This passage by Oscar Wilde is rattling around my head for about five reasons, none of which I can properly explain without offending somebody. So I’ll let it stand alone:

the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives…..

For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No; a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.

— from The Soul of Man under Socialism

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I’ve lately been bingeing on German films (

why yes, I have been feeling homesick, how did you guess?

). Germany at present seems to be churning out a good number of decent films, although I’m not enough of a buff to say whether [claims](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-germans-are-coming-446519.html) of a golden age are more than hype.

_The Edukators_ (2004) is certainly a good film, albeit far from flawless. Roughly speaking, it’s a political take on the caper film, with a love triangle thrown in for good measure. Jan, Peter and Jule are young Berliners, embroiled in anti-globalization campaigning that they know is useless. Unbeknown to Jule, Jan and Peter have a second life as a team of anticapitalist pranksters, who ransack the homes of the rich, without stealing anything, in the hope of showing them the error of their ways.

Not the most direct way of fighting the system, perhaps, but in the world of the film personality always trumps practicality. Among ‘the edukators’, politics with the personal. If, as they daub on a wall at one point, “every heart is a revolutionary cell”, then simply wanting to “live wild and free” is enough to fight the system.

Naturally, this can’t last. Surprised by the owner of a house they have broken into, they kidnap him so he cannot turn them in to the police. This is when the real education begins, as the three youngsters lie low in a mountain village with their captive, Hardenberg. This latter turns out to be not just a businessman but also a disillusioned radical, a child of the 60s for whom the “long march through the institutions” led to becoming part of the system. The film just about manages to contrast the viewpoints of its characters: yes, they’re muddled and disoriented, but then so is their reality.

The director is fairly clear about his [propaganda aims](http://www.taz.de/index.php?id=archivseite&dig=2004/11/25/a0120):

>As you leave the cinema, you should have the feeling “if I, as a young person — and youth has nothing at all to do with age — have the feeling that something is wrong with the world — I am not happy, I am angry, then this feeling must come out, must be translated into action. Otherwise it could make me ill”

Incidentally, I can’t help giggling at the need for the faux-German title. The group in the film give themselves the far-less-sexy name of “Die Erziehungsberechtigten” (meaning something like “the guardians”), while the German title of the film was the uninspiring slogan “Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei” (the years of plenty are over). Phony ‘K’ or no, I think the international market got a better deal.

[This](http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/reviews/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000979975) is the best review I’ve seen; [Rotten Tomatoes](http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/edukators/) has plenty of others, and [here](http://www.filmz.de/film_2004/die_fetten_jahre_sind_vorbei/links.htm) are some links to German reviews.

Theodore Zeldin’s _Intimate History of Humanity_ is a book I adored — and then prompty gave away, so that I have only the faintest memory of _why_ I adored it. Zeldin is an Oxford lecturer on French history, and his book was a wide-ranging attempt to map the history of human emotions. [perhaps it has something in common with more academic attempts to track the “[mood music of history](http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n15/hobs01_.html)” — but Zeldin’s book, being aimed at the general reader, could draw connections and inferences in a style impossible within the academy].

Anyway, I recently looked online to see what he’s been up to lately, and was delighted to see he’s turned his life towards a program implicit in what he’d been writing. That is, attempting not just to bring people together, but to provide them with the tools to understand one another. He’s given it institutional cover under the name of the [Oxford Muse Foundation](http://www.oxfordmuse.com/), aiming to develop “less superficial conversations between individuals, families, work colleagues and communities”. It’s thus placing itself at that oddly-crowded nexus between primary-school teachers, political organizers, psychiatrists, couchsurfers and business consultants. Whether it’s really a good thing — well, that depends largely on execution. The things they’ve done so far — having people write descriptions of one another’s lives, and providing ‘menus’ of conversation topics as icebreakers — sound like decent, if hardly revolutionary, ideas. But, success or failure, I’m glad to see it happen — certainly it’s better than writing more books on French history.

Best way to find music: share a bedroom, share an office. Between people playing me their favourites, and the need to drown out background noise, I’ve probably spent more time wearing headphones these last six weeks than in the previous six months. Mostly the easy-to-ignore genres that are perfect background music to work to (psytrance, industrial, metal, and sometimes foreign pop). Also, though, things that demand more attention and then worm their way deeper into your body, until you need to pull them back out by naming them.

First among them, [Silent Shout](http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/knife/silentshout?q=silent%20shout) (2006) by brother-sister electronica pair The Knife.

Many reviews describe this as a ‘cold’ album. To me, it’s not so much cold as alien. The key is in the vocals, Karin Dreijer Andersson’s voice twisted, blended and echoed into a chorus of androgynous, even inhuman sounds. This is the the Midwich Cuckoos, telepathically linked and talking (almost) with one tongue. Most literally in

From off to on

, as menacing children:

When we come home, we want it quiet and calm
We want you to sing us a song
When we come home, we pull the curtains down
Making sure that the TV is on

But the same voices are present

We share our mother’s health

, this time as refugees from Eden (

We came down from the north, blue hands and a torch

). And in

The Captain

they emerge as grizzled sailors:

We are out of wind
We have pock-marked chin
We have lots of water
We turn the other cheek and we win

This is what makes the album — the aura of sinister closeness of the hive-mind. Its echoes remain even in a love-song like

Marble House

, as side-effects of Karin singing a duet with herself.

Not that this is a concept album; in fact, I suspect I’m reading in ideas that barely crossed the minds of Karin and Olof. Each song here is a piece by itself, with no explicit connections between them. The steadily-deepening nightmare soundscape of the title track contrasts sleepy, almost despairing vocals with an insistent background of synth arpeggios. After the end of that richness, it’s a surpise to be brought back down to the simple, panpipe-like opening of

Neverland

.

Most tracks on Silent Shout start something like this, taking an almost-familiar sound — a dripping tap on _Like a Pen_, clicking marbles for _Marble House_, or on _We share our mothers health_ what sounds very much like the Clangers — and quickly losing it under many more layers. The effect is most striking on Marble House, where the clicking is speeded up into some kind of crackling.

Lyrics are fairly unimportant for the first half of the album, the heavily-manipulated vocals contributing to the sound rather than telling a story. Towards the end, though, we have some more lyrically-driven pieces. In _Forest Families_ we hear a double-edged reflection on a back-to-nature childhood. It also contains a subtler form of the feminist anger which in _One Hit_ is brought to the fore (“

It’s manhood’s bliss / One hit one kiss

“), and powerfully combined with a worksong-like call-and-response.

Finally, _Still Light_ brings the album to a gloomy close. The singer, talking to her doctor, is facing the aftermath of — well, we don’t quite know what. A drug binge? A suicide attempt? Specificity would perhaps have detracted from the emotional landscape, which is one of bleakness, combined at the very end with faint hope and the need to continue:

Now where is everybody? Is it still light outside?

”

Other reviews of _Silent Shout_:

– [Stylus](http://www.stylusmagazine.com/reviews/the-knife/silent-shout.htm) (Fergal O’Reilly)

– [Adequacy.net](http://www.adequacy.net/2006/10/the-knife-silent-shout/) (Joe Davenport)

– [Pitchfork](http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4590-silent-shout/)

One of the big political to-and-fros in France this summer is whether the government should ban wearing the burqa. It’s a calculating political move by Sarkozy, whose general M.O. has always been to stir up fear and hatred of some already-marginalized social group. Since only [367](http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2009/07/29/la-police-estime-marginal-le-port-de-la-burqa_1223776_3224.html) Frenchwomen wear the burqa or niqab (love that official precision), this is definitely about principles and politics rather than practicalities.

Needless to say, I’m against banning any kind of clothing. I more-or-less agree with [Sam](http://lavendersparkle.livejournal.com/126232.html) — or for that matter with Obama, with his “[I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/obama-speech-in-cairo-vid_n_211215.html)”. Not out of any particular respect for religions, but because any organization that tells people what to wear leaves me in blood-boiling rage about petty cruelty and closed-mindedness. In my ideal world, Sarkozy’s plan would spark a revolt from punks, goths, nudists, transvestites, and every other group that takes continual flak for how they dress. The streets would turn black as subculture kids take to covering their faces in solidarity.

That won’t happen. Partly because France doesn’t really do subcultures — a fact which, like this attempt to police clothing, is somewhere connected to the national acceptance of centralised, state-supervised homogeneity. But also because Sarkozy has chosen a victim everybody is willing to join in kicking. Theres [the](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6565064.ece) [secularism](http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2903663) [angle](http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2009/06/a_few_words_abo), fruit of a longstanding and widespread wariness of Church meddling in politics. There’s the feminism angle, with [Sarkozy](http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache%3ARj1pOfvGVXUJ%3Awww.elysee.fr%2Fdownload%2F%3Fmode%3Dpress%26filename%3D22_06_Congres.pdf) saying that “it isn’t a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement”, as if the meaning is obvious and universal. Or there are groups like [Ni Putes Ni Soumises](http://www.niputesnisoumises.com/), putting the same line much more credibly. But below those expressible feelings, there’s also a strong undercurrent of fear and hatred of different cultures. As [Michelle Goldberg](http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=burqa_politics_in_france) writes:

>it’s hard for Europeans to talk about [immigration] without seeming racist or xenophobic. The one place where Europeans do feel confident about defending the superiority of their own culture is in sexual matters. Feminism and sexual liberation become tools of nationalism.

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I’ve taken advantage of my stay in Paris to unearth in a library a book of poems that for years have been nestling, half-remembered, in my head. These are the

Chansons des filles de mai

, produced by an Italian writer, Alba de Cespedes, who was living in Paris during ’68. They aren’t her personal story, but a kind of emotional documentary of the young women she met during that year’s rebellion, a patchwork of very simple poems constructed from their conversations and self-justifications. This lets her capture both the angry euphoria of the girls who know themselves to be at the centre (or the start?) of a storm — and also the uncertainty of those feeling isolated, uncertain, constrained by motherhood or shyness, by their parents of by their own depressive lack of interest.

My friend Sara dramatised the collection in 2003, in the immediate aftermath of failed anti-war protests, and the slightly more distant aftermath of the Genoa G8 summit. But while the connections between times are real, they are also oddly insignificant. The poems are infused with politics, but they aren’t political poems. Sara writes of them as about ‘the will to live out ideals through your own life’. For me, what is even more touching is the recognition that desire can be worthwhile, even when the dreams are impossible. Or when the dreams are failing: this poem, describing the end of the protests, is the one I keep on remembering:

30 Mai 1968




Ce soir, notre quartier,

sur la rive

gauche,

porte le deuil de ses rêves.

Derrière les fenêtres sans lumières

— orbites noires dans la pâleur des façads —

des yeux vides de regards

fixent les rues désertes.

Encore un soir,

le dernier,

nous serons entre nous:

les fous d’amour et de révolte.

Cette rive sera encore

la nôtre;

à nous seuls, prison, ghetto,

léproserie.

Ils resterons sur la leur.

Ils n’oseront pas traverser

la frontière

de la Seine.

Ils nous reconnaissent le droit

à cete veilée funèbre,

à cette liberté

surveillée — de loin —

par une armée qui veille

elle aussi,

qui épie

notre silence méprisant,

inquiétant.

Quartier Latin, les étudiants

veillent dans la cour

de la Sorbonne.

La place de l’Odéon

serre entre ses bras

ronds

cette belle nuit de printemps.

Les mots des graffiti

qui pavoisent les fac,

circulent comme des feux follets

parmi les tables des cafés-tabac

du boulevard Saint-Germain.

Dans nos rues, coupables

de complicité,

les pavés-munitions arrachés

ont été replacés hâtivement,

sévèrement.

C’est sur les mains de la jeunesse,

sur les pierres de son chemin

qu’ils rouleront demain,

de l’autre rive,

vers le week-end rassurant.

Dans leurs mansardes

autour de la Sorbonne,

dans des chambres de bonne

tapissées de posters

— le regard fier du Che –,

des garçons et des filles, armés

de poésie et de colère,

font l’amour avec un plaisir

désespéré,

mouillé des larmes.

Ces garçons aux cheveux longs,

ces filles aux jupes courtes,

sont les citoyens de nos rues

de la rive

gauche.

L’odeur âpre de leurs corps

d’écoliers,

est l’air même

de notre quartier.

Partout, dans le Sixième,

sont affichés des tracts

en forme de poèmes.

Demain matin,

de bonne heure,

on les recouvrira

avec des publicités

de machines à laver

det de frigidaires.

Les hirondelles du Luxembourg

poussent des cris d’adieu.

Des pranches amassées sur le boulevard

s’exhale un dernier relent

de gaz;

mais rien n’en restera

lorsqu’ils viendront de l’autre rive

se faire photographier,

sur les squelettes des voitures

brûlées.

O nos enfants de mai,

héros de nuits criblées d’étoiles

et de coups.

On oppose le fer et l’acier

aux roses de l’imagination.

Aux carrefours, le long

des boulevards,

les yeux perçants

sur les toits des voitures

de police;

les paniers à salade, les ambulances,

les hommes habillés, casqués,

masqués de noir,

les boucliers noirs;

toute la panoplie

sinistre

de la répression est prête

contre une révolution

qui n’aura pas lieu.

Les câbles du téléphone

traversent le ciel silencieux:

Littré, Odéon, Médicis

ne répondent pas

ce soir.

Derrière nos fenêtres closes,

près des téléphones muets,

des transistors éteints,

nous veillons en silence

nos espoirs matraqués.

Mais les gestes de nos enfants

de mai

restent — ineffaçables —

dans l’air le temps l’espace

de ce quartier,

sur la rive

gauche.



— Alba de Cespedes

Oh, Dresden. You never did have a great reputation for open-mindedness, but this story takes the biscuit. An Egyptian woman living in Dresden takes somebody to court for racial abuse. She wins, he appeals, then

stabs her to death in the courtroom

. Police in the court step in, and heroically

shoot her husband

, him being the only person trying to stop the murder in progress. It’s not much surprise that [Egyptians are pretty pissed off](http://mideasti.blogspot.com/2009/07/marwa-al-sherbini-case-and-outrage-of.html)

In somewhat more trivial news from the city, Dresden zoo has [come to its senses](http://www.thelocal.de/society/20090710-20513.html), and accepted that

naming a baboon after Barack Obama

might not be the best way of honouring the President’s recent visit to the city. Thank God for small mercies.

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