July 2010 – Pandora's Looking-Glass

The Colour of Magical Prose: Pratchett’s humour

I’ve loved Terry Pratchett’s Discworld sequence of novels for years, without really knowing why. I’ve always avoided trying to pinpoint exactly what it is about Pratchett’s prose that is funny: analysing humour is a bit like prodding a balloon with a pin – at some point, it’s going to burst.

But a moment of revelation struck me recently whilst reading Jingo, the twenty-first instalment in the prolific series.

People’s Exhibit A: Corporal Nobby Nobbs, a member of the City Watch, is so awful to behold that he has been given a certificate to prove he’s actually human. He is endeavouring to express some difficult sentiments – i.e. his lack of attractiveness of girls – to Sergeant Angua, a female colleague.

“What I’m sayin’ is, as you get older, you know, you think about settlin’ down, findin’ someone who’ll go with you hand in hand down life’s bumpy highway.”

“But I just don’t seem to meet girls,” Nobby said.” Well, I mean, I meet girls, and then they rush off.” (p.56).

Brilliant. Here, it’s what’s missing in the last sentence that’s the key to the humour. Left unsaid is the whole ‘I meet girls but they’re traumatised by my being hideous’ sentiment; what the reader gets is the first part and the last part, but without the middle section linking the two. This means that the bit about girls leaving in horror comes a lot sooner that we expect; and what a wonderfully concise manner of expressing it. ‘They rush off.’

People’s Exhibit B: two more officers of the City Watch, Commander Vimes and Captain Carrott, have just had one of their number kidnapped, and need to give chase in a boat. But they don’t have one, so they need to commandeer one from a disreputable smuggler named Captain Jenkins. Vimes, ever the figure of reasoned action, opens proceedings.

“Ah, Captain Jenkins! This is your lucky day!”

“It is ?” he said.

“Yes, because you have an unrivalled opportunity to aid the war effort.”

“I have ?”

“And also to demonstrate your patriotism,” Carrott added.

“I do ?”

“We need to borrow your boat.”

“Bugger off!” (p.217)

In this passage, it’s the juxtaposition of smooth legalese-speak and blunt coarseness that creates the humour; Vimes’ wonderfully articulate, law-abiding sentences offering the ship’s captain a chance to redeem himself, and the captain missing this completely, comprehending only what is expected of him when told directly – we need to borrow your boat – and his blunt response.

It’s the ideas of concision and conflation operating in Pratchett that gives rise to the humour: juxtaposing two ideas which imply an awful lot that is left unsaid, and expressing them in a brief yet telling manner. And often these two ideas collide because they are almost antithetical: articulacy and vulgarity, logic and confusion, grace and slapstick, great wisdom and downright stupidity (the latter usually, in Pratchett, The Law).

Pratchett’s humour also implies that his readers are intelligent and able to work out the parts that are left unexpressed; you admire his humour and are also able to pat yourself on the back for having worked it out (as he wants you to). Clever, eh ?

I’m fully aware that this brief examination of how the humour works in Pratchett’s writing may not have convinced you. It may not have worked At All. But the real way for it to get you, as with music, is to experience it for yourself. Read the books. They won’t let you down.

Posted by Daniel Harding, Deputy Director of Music at the University of Kent. Click here to view his Music Matters blog.

Does it matter who killed Caravaggio ?

I watched Andrew Graham-Dixon’s programme, Who Killed Caravaggio? on BBC4 over the weekend. Caravaggio’s life (and death) are shrouded in violence, mystery, and a good deal of moodily-lit art.

David and Goliath by Caravaggio — Keep your head: 'David with the head of Goliath,' Caravaggio

Whilst the programme was interesting, it did make me think: does it matter ? By which I mean, does it matter to an appreciation of his art, solving the mystery of how and why he died ?

What we can forget, especially in the presence of great art – music, painting, literature or poetry – is that artists are like us: human. Caravaggio’s life was peppered with incidents (according to the programme) of sexual jealousy, a duel in which he killed his opponent, periods on the run, and artistic creativity. Like most people, Caravaggio was prey to the same desires, phobias and emotions as all of us: he just happened to paint as well. And rather brilliantly.

Of course, knowing that particular pictures were painted during a time when he was a fugitive and had to paint quickly, or that they were created in order to establish a reputation amongst the plethora of artists competing for attention at the time, can enhance or widen your perception of a painting.

But, ultimately, a work of art is experienced by meeting it at a particular moment, on your own terms. What led to its inception, the circumstances under which it was created, or its original intended audience or display-space: these factors don’t necessarily impact on the moment you view a painting or your reaction to experiencing it. They may inform your understanding, but your visceral or emotional reaction to it is perhaps beyond the biographical accounts of the artist’s life.

Graham-Dixon thinks that, after ten years of research, he has finally solved the mystery of Caravaggio’s death: murdered by one of the Knights of Jerusalem after he apparently escaped being imprisoned on Malta for sodomy. That’s all very worthy: but humanising him and investigating the facts of his life won’t add anything to his work for me. Like the work of great artists, no matter how human his story, Caravaggio’s art transcends all the squalor.

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Posted by Daniel Harding, Deputy Director of Music at the University of Kent. Click here to view his Music Matters blog.

Lounge debrief #3: In Tents Comedy

Stand-up comedy tends to work best when people have paid to watch it. If you run a comedy night in a pub and let people come in for free, people don’t come especially to see it, they just wander in randomly. Rather than entertainment, the stand-up becomes little more than an unwelcome interruption to a quiet night out. If people don’t want to laugh they won’t laugh, even if the comedians are really good.

This makes stand-up at festivals a potential problem. The people who wander into the tent where it’s taking place are just generalised fun-seekers rather than punters who are actively seeking a good laugh. The comedy I programmed at the Playhouse at Lounge on the Farm last Friday night was exactly like that. People wandered in and out throughout the three hours of the show, and they were as likely to lie flat out on the rugs strewn over the grass as sit on the bales of hay provided for seating.

In this atmosphere, it’s near-impossible to establish the essential call-and-response rhythm of joke-laughter which stand-up relies on. The comedians are all ex-students from the stand-up course I teach as part of the drama degree at the University of Kent, and although they’ve all got at least twenty shows under their belts, I’m worried that they might not be able to adapt to this strangely spaced-out audience.

In fact, the show is fine. The audience response is ragged but respectable – a few solid but diffuse laughs followed by a quite patch, an isolated laugh from a punter at the back followed by a big laugh with spontaneous applause. Outrageous gags go down well, an obvious example being Carys Williams’ ukulele song about kinky sex. Jokes about the immediate circumstances are also enjoyed, but ask them too many questions and they get tired.

Perhaps my favourite moment is when Liz Page is about to launch into a routine about fellatio, and suddenly notices an angelic child with a mop of blond hair, hugging a red balloon, and staring earnestly up at her. Playing the dilemma brilliantly, Liz points the child out, wonders whether she’ll leave it with permanent emotional scars, then performs the routine by conjuring up appropriate euphemisms. Because we can see the fix she’s got herself into, we share her comic agony, and enjoy the way she wheedles her way out of the situation.

To be fair, the audience’s reaction comes and goes throughout the evening, but that’s no reflection on the comedians’ talent. The very good professional comedians who play the Playhouse the following night and Sunday afternoon get much the same kind of reaction.

The only exception is the excellent impro comedy show hosted by Phill Jupitus on the Sunday. The tent is simply packed, and there’s a big crowd watching from outside. The difference is that these people have definitely chosen to be here, drawn by Jupitus’s TV fame. Having said that, reputation might have brought them here, but it’s sheer talent that keeps them. Onstage, Jupitus is cheerfully aggressive, ridiculing someone’s hat here and telling someone to fuck off there, yet somehow still coming over as a big softie.

The improvisation is standard fare, but expertly performed – not just by Jupitus, but also by the excellent comics who join him onstage. Richard Vranch proves as able off the keyboard as on, Andy Smart exudes blokey charm even when taking on female roles, and Steve Steen has a rare comic delicacy which defies his short, round frame. While this show is on, the tent is longer holding a weird festival audience – it’s transformed into a genuine comedy gig.

Lounge debrief #2: Television Personalities in the Cowshed

One of the more intriguing acts to appear at this year’s Lounge on the Farm was the Television Personalities. Led by sole surviving original member Dan Treacy, the nearest the Television Personalities got to fame was the 1978 song ‘Part Time Punks’, which gently poked fun at the suburban and provincial punks who walked down the King’s Road where they ‘try and look trendy’ but ‘all look the same’. The part time punks are funny because they get being cool wrong.

They go to Rough Trade because ‘They wanna buy the O-Level single/ or “Read About Seymour”’, but end up buying a Lurkers record instead because it’s pressed in red vinyl. To translate, the O-Level were an obscure independent label punk band (which, amusingly enough, also featured Dan Treacy) and ‘Read About Seymour’ was a single by the then super-cool art-punk heroes Swell Maps – both of which were far cooler and more exclusive than the gumbie-punk band The Lurkers, who were kind of what The Ramones might have been like had they come from, er, Uxbridge.

32 years later, the Television Personalities are playing the Cowshed, the biggest stage at Lounge on the Farm, in an unpopular afternoon slot. The name of the stage is quite literal – it’s called ‘the Cowshed’ because it’s in a cavernous cowshed, which could comfortably fit two or three thousand people in to the see the band. Sadly, no more than about thirty have turned up to see Dan Treacy’s crew, including me, my wife, and my two sons. There’s a thin crust of us lining up along the barrier at the front of the stage, most of us with fond memories of ‘Part Time Punks’, and a few random punters who hang back from the stage, watching the band out of idle curiosity.

My wife Jacqui leaves after a few numbers, later describing it as ‘a bit of a car crash’, and takes our younger son, Tom, with her to find more suitable entertainment elsewhere. I stay to watch with our older one, Joe, who’s 13. I suspect he’s held more by loyalty to me than by the music.

At least one of the two guitars has at least one string out of tune, but that’s the least of the problems. Treacy looks simply bewildered on stage, confused but amused at being there. Wearing a faded shirt and a beanie hat, he gives the impression that he’s been living rough for the last decade or so, although the current bands he references in his between-songs banter suggests he’s at least been in a homeless shelter with internet access. It’s not so much that his voice is out of tune, it’s more that it’s not aware that there was a tune there in the first place. In their one almost-famous song, ‘Part Time Punks’, he forgets the words in the third verse and repeats some lines from an earlier one.

But there’s something curiously moving about hearing him sing a song based on an idea of cool that dates from a period of maybe two weeks in 1978. And there’s something curiously entertaining about Treacy’s bewilderment. He just seems to say whatever comes into his head. He notices one of the mechanised moving spotlights on the stage. ‘What’s that?’ he asks, grinning. ‘It looks like a monkey!’ Later, he goes up to it and holds the microphone up to it, as if expecting it to sing.

On closer inspection, the other three musicians in the band are extremely good, constantly watching him and timing what they do to accommodate his spontaneity and eccentricity. Treacy’s definitely singing to the desultory crowd semi-gathered in front of him. It’s unnerving when he catches your eye, because you can see he’s really looking at you with his hooded eyes, taking you in, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s real contempt that he’s radiating with his stare. Like Billy Childish, he seems entirely unselfconscious about the experience of being on stage under the gaze of a bunch of strangers.

Jacqui’s right about it being a car crash, but I’d modify her assessment and say it’s an entertaining car crash. At one point, Treacy breaks his plectrum, and throws it out for a lucky punter to keep as a memento. Fittingly, it falls short of the, for want of a better word, crowd, and lands behind the barrier. I wonder whether it’s just my prior knowledge of the band that’s making this entertaining, but at the end, Joe asks me to get the one bouncer assigned to the gig to retrieve the plectrum for his collection of special things, and when we get back from the festival he gets me to load ‘Part Time Punks’ onto his iPod.

Lounge debrief #1: Normal Service Will Be Resumed

I spent last weekend at Lounge on the Farm, a local festival that’s got bigger in each of the four years I’ve been to it. What I like about going to a festival is that it’s like a kind of alternative reality where everything is done for pure pleasure. Cynics might say that profit plays a role, but although some people undoubtedly make a tidy sum out of it – or given that it’s a festival maybe that should be ‘an extremely untidy, unshaven, smelly sum’ – they’ll only make profit if what they provide is enjoyable.

Thus, you walk about surrounded by happy people, some of them off their faces, while music drifts at you from here, there and everywhere – ska, blues, hillbilly, indie, jazz, prog rock, Motown, dance, reggae, folk, punk, whatever. At Lounge, they make a thing of the food on sale being locally sourced (although this year the presence of Pizza Express was a symptom of just how big this festival is getting). So the hungry festival-goer could enjoy anything from two different brands of locally-made ice cream to an organic falafel wrap, or for the meatily-inclined, a burger made from a cow that lived on the farm where the festival takes place.

Because everybody’s having fun, there’s no violence. There’s certainly some of the idiocy that comes with drunkenness – some sozzled fools broke our plastic picnic table by jumping on it while staggering back to their tent – but I’ve never seen anybody actually get hit. In spite of the fact that some of the punters are staggering drunk by early afternoon, with pickled eyes and bare torsos so sunburnt that they’ll have lost several layers of skin by nightfall, I’ve never even heard anybody issue so much as a threat.

Being a festival, the freaks dominate. Sights which would make you turn your head in the everyday world get no more than a passing glance. Hey, there’s someone dressed as a cow! Hey, there’s a guy with devil-eye contact lenses! Hey, there are eight 20-year-old girls with sombreros and Mexican bandit moustaches carrying inflatable flamingos! Meh.

In fact, as I have no piercings or tattoos, I felt like a bit of an outsider. Like Judge Dredd’s informer, Max Normal, being the one ordinary one in a world of freaks makes you the biggest freak of them all.

Larkin About: on inspiration

There’s a wonderful documentary from BBC Monitor in 1964, in which the poet Philip Larkin is interviewed by John Betjeman, and they are discussing the nature of poetic inspiration.

Larkin himself states, ”One doesn’t really choose the poetry that one writes.”” He reflects on some of his earlier poems, which he finds it uncomfortable to re-visit (calling it ”tripe”), and says that part of the reason he no longer likes it is because “”it seemed so unreal, and without any possible references to my own life as I was living it.””

Philip Larkin Both these ideas are crucial, I think, to understanding part of the nature of artistic inspiration: there is often little choice in the nature of the poem or music the artist is complled to write, and their experience is key. The composer Jonathan Harvey also picks up on this in his Music and Inspiration, where he writes that “only forms of experience that have a particular resonance for [the artist] will contribute to the artistic process” (1990:40).

In other words, artistic inspiration is linked to, or perhaps grounded in, personal experience, and the artist is at the mercy of being inspired, without necessarily having full control over the birth of suitable ideas. My own experience of the process of writing, either music or poetry, bears this out: inspiration comes directly from moments of experience, a phrase suddenly overheard suggesting a complete poem, or reading a poem suggesting a musical response to it. It’s almost akin to archeology: I’m not writing the work, simply unearthing what is already present.

The writer Elizabeth Bowen puts it brilliantly: ‘the poet, and in his wake the short story writer, is using his own, unique, suceptibility to experience: in a sense, the suceptibility is the experience”” (cited in Philip Larkin 1922-1985: a tribute, ed. Hartley, Marvell Press, 1988: 272). To this, I would add little other than “”and the composer.””

The documentary is also wonderful for the chance to hear Larkin himself reading ‘Toad Revisited’ in his dolorous tones. And as a meditation on poetic inspiration, it’s invaluable.

Event Horizon: the ubiquitous cigarette

One of the most recurrent motives throughout ‘Event Horizon’ is that of cigarettes and smoking. Set in a distant future world with heightened technology, nevertheless the cigarette still appeals as a basic human necessity, grounding all the developments of technology in a firmly human mentality, that of needing ‘a quick gasper.’ After Smitty successfully navigates the ship through turbulence to bring the Lewis & Clark opposite the Event Horizon, Fishburne’s character tells him “If you’ve got ‘em, smoke ‘em,’ at which point he duly does so.

The use of the cigarette has several functions. Apart from allowing the camera to track round the various crewmembers as it follows the passage of the cigarette from hand to hand, it contrasts feelings of ease with those of tension. DJ casually removes his cigarette to inject Dr. Weir in preparation for the gravity-tank, which contrasts with Weir’s apprehension as he admits suffering from claustrophobia. Smitty smokes as a relaxation after fighting to bring the ship through turbulence, but his smoking also betrays his nervousness on hearing the real reason for the mission in Weir’s briefing. It also forms part of DJ’s own character, combining with his reticence and underlying tension, to portray an individual on the verge of a breakdown.

The secondary function of the cigarette is to create contrast with the surrounding advanced technological environment. In an age when interstellar space-travel has apparently led to the construction of vast ships, gateway-opening gravity propulsion systems (the language Weir uses to describe its function is dazzling, impenetrable and certainly confusing), with advanced computer software and medical facilities, people still continue to rely on old-fashioned nicotine in paper wrappings. The constant visual reference to cigarettes grounds the almost bewildering world of technology in a tangible plane, to which most viewers will relate. The fragility of the rolled cigarette clashes with the heavily metallicised world in which the crew are accustomed to living and working, emphasized by a shot of the comparative sizes of the rescue vessel, tenuously clasping onto the ‘Event Horizon’ itself, which dwarfs her completely.

There’s a wonderful shot in Aliens, where the camera tracks up an elegant hand holding a cigarette: subsequently revealed to be Ripley’s, it looks rather like the skeletal hand of one of the alien monsters themselves – a brief but neat ambiguity.

In space, no-one can hear you smoke.

Posted by Daniel Harding, Deputy Director of Music at the University of Kent. Click here to view his Music Matters blog.