Against Individuality

 One of my recurring themes here, from time to time, is to celebrate that art that makes no claims to 'individuality'. I like to bemoan a number of things that come with 'Romanticism' but the way that the individual artist is made central to it is the main one. As below, Milan Kundera, in Immortality sees through this pre-occupation and goes further with,

Beauty, more than ugliness, reveals the non-individuality, the impersonality of a face.

Beauty, if one likes, is symmetry, classicism and the absence of idiosyncratic features. It is what Kundera is best at, overturning assumptions in his de-constructing, postmodern way.

He also questions novels that,

are much too obedient to the rules of unity of action

 

in which,

at their core is one single chain of causally related acts and events.

It is by way of a brief meditation on his own art, perhaps not unlike the play-within-a-play in Hamlet where Shakespeare allows himself some reflections on the theatre during his most personal and thoroughgoing piece of work.

Kundera, some might say, gives the traditional idea of the novel a wide berth but that only leads back to another theme that recurs here, that writing is 'writing' and which genre it is put into matters less. It makes little difference whether something is a poem, a sonnet, a sestina or a prose poem. All it has to be is 'any good'.

Writing is about the words, music about the notes, painting about the paint. Many years ago hearing a rapper insisting that their doggerel expressed their individuality was as absurd as the idea that denim jeans did anything similar in the 1970's, or the black polo neck in the Existentialist 1950's. No, they were all just other uniforms.

And, in the same way that, bringing together so many favourite ideas in so few sentences, I like to say that poetry can do whatever it likes and there are no rules apart from those one decides to acknowledge, there's quite a few dictums packed into that short space. It all folds back into itself. 

One issue with writing is that some readers might be familiar with much of what one's written whereas others might never have read anything you've written before. Whereas for some it's the same old song, others might conceivably never have read such devastating insights and find their freshness utterly thrilling. 

It might be applied more practically with some thoughts on the Goldberg Variations and Danny Driver in the Menuhin Room tomorrow.

One last busy spell before the onset of the dog days of summer begins there. Portsmouth Baroque Choir are in Gosport on Sunday afternoon, then it's end of term at Chichester and Portsmouth cathedrals on Tues and Thurs lunchtimes.

Which raises the question, had anybody wanted to ask, about Summer Reading.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, the two main features are scheduled to be Anthony Seldon's Johnson at 10 and Laura Cumming's Thunderclap. It is possible to look forward to two such different books in entirely different ways. One because one thinks one knows much of it but, in order to believe it, wants to see it set out yet again; the other because it's written by a great writer about a painter one wants to know anything there is to be known about him, Carel Fabritius, and they don't come much more compelling than him.   

Immortality and other stories

Reading six books by the same author in succession isn't generally advisable. They can merge into one and one can come away with the idea that Michael Henchard didn't treat Tess Darbeyfield very well. However, it wasn't obvious with what to take a break from the Kundera festivities with and so Immortality was next off the shelf because I did long ago once read The Joke and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

It might actually be an advantage with Kundera to read so much of him at once because, it seems to me, the books have more in common than they have that differentiates them. It becomes increasingly evident that he is in some ways akin to Jean Baudrillard, not least in his subversive deconstruction of the familiar.

Where Baudrillard suggested that the Gulf War 'did not take place', Kundera undermines 'individuality' by noticing there are far fewer gestures than there are people and thus it is gestures that have more individuality and that those making them, it is inferred, are reduced to vehicles for them.

Kundera remains highly readable and, I'm sure, brilliant at what he does but he's not so easy to love because cleverness can be admired but doesn't always bring warmth with it.

Such chic is only art deep.

--

Whereas, at 83, one very much does love Candi Staton and her Glastonbury appearance.

The whole idea of Glastonbury is very underwhelming for me for all the usual reasons. Anything counter-cultural or alternative becomes commodified and outlives its motives, usually sooner rather than later, and there is only really the 'mainstream' and its many tributaries.

I've always been slightly surprised by Elton John's megastar status. He's not much of a singer. There's a great album to be made of his best stuff but it's radio-friendly and hasn't ever demanded to be bought. He's nowhere near as good as Fleetwood Mac or George Michael but he's much, much better than Queen. I didn't think the guests he had on were quite as 'A' list as they might have been. I see that questions have been asked elsewhere regarding the whereabouts of Kiki Dee and Britney. And Rocket Man might have been his best song but it didn't lend itself to the big finish.

So, thanks all the more to Aunty Candi, a bravura run through of the greatest hits that gathered momentum and demonstrated that she's still standing after all these years, like a true survivor, with Diana Ross having been rubbish, really, on such occasions in recent years and Tina Turner of exactly the same vintage having departed this life.

Candi Staton was a better singer than either of them. Miss Ross was given all the best songs from the Motown hit factory by Berry Gordy and Tina hit the jackpot when re-invented with Private Dancer but she was always more raunch than soul. 

I'd no more want to go to Glastonbury than I'd want to go back to the office job. There is no reason to want to. As with the classic Chic performance some years ago, the telly means you don't have to.  

Candi Staton, Mr and Mrs Untrue

 To mark the appearance of Candi Staton, aged 83, at Glastonbury, there was plenty more to pick from than Nights on Broadway, Young Hearts Run Free and Suspicious Minds to represent this major favourite singer.

The same age as Tina Turner, and likewise achieving her biggest commercial success in the 1980's on something of a comeback trail, those successes didn't quite equal those of Tina's raunch but maybe she was actually a better singer.

I'm no fan of Glastonbury, which is more of an occasion than a musical event. Diana Ross was rubbish there but she was Diana Ross and that counts for a lot. Very few artists found themselves gifted with the quality of material that Berry Gordy put her way. So one is expecting Candi to be better than Diana was but she is 83 and the point is that she's Candi Staton, with a much under-rated back catalogue of passion, loss and hurt.

Get Happy for £219

 

Oh, for sure, I'd have it again but not for £219. Not even authenticity justifies such a price as it might for old Trojan or Northern Soul records. CD hadn't been invented when it was released.

It's here, for nothing,

Elvis Costello, Get Happy!!