This ain’t the Mudd Club

September 10, 2007 by Leave a comment

The first record I ever bought was the 7″ single version of “Heart of Glass“, back in 1979. This came to mind today when I read that Hilly Kristal, owner of CBGB’s in New York, had died, just a year after the club was forced to close as the neighbourhood around it gentrified. CBGB’s hosted early gigs by Blondie, and several other bands that I grew up with, like Television, Talking Heads and the Ramones, so the news of Hilly’s death produced the depressing realisation that a time that I had lived through was being consigned to the history books.

I visited CBGB’s a few times in the early 90’s, though by then the club’s glory days were long past, and the bands I saw were completely forgettable. At least the Bowery was still authentically scuzzy, and observing the street life was quite entertaining. I remember being tremendously impressed by the general grittiness of New York the first few times I visited – it was exactly how I had imagined it would be from watching Taxi Driver and Mean Streets. I hear that the city has been cleaned up a bit in the last few years, which I guess is good news for New Yorkers, if disappointing for Scorsese-loving tourists.

The last time I was in New York was 1992, for the CMJ. I saw some great gigs during the course of that event, notably The Flaming Lips and The Jesus and Mary Chain, both on the same bill at the Roseland Ballroom, and enjoyed some interesting social interaction with the local music crowd.

Now CBGB’s is gone, Joey, Johnny and Dee-Dee are dead, and the time when I would jet across the Atlantic to go to a music festival is nothing more than a fading memory. I keep meaning to go to SXSW or Burning Man, but at some point in the last decade my life became too complicated to do things impulsively, and I’m no good at planning ahead, so I don’t think it will be happening any time soon.

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Jerome update

August 28, 2007 by Leave a comment

Jerome hadn’t posted in his blog for a couple of weeks, causing me some concern, since if it turned out he had died my light-hearted comments about his health were going to look in rather poor taste. However he’s back now, and looking fairly fit in the photo he’s posted. No word on his scan results or job search though. Doesn’t he know that people are worrying about him?

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I fear to watch, yet I cannot turn away

August 22, 2007 by Leave a comment

Actually I take back what I said about the X-Factor. Having watched the first show of the new series, I have reverted to the view that they expect us to laugh at the hopeless losers, especially when they burst into tears during the post-rejection interview. To be fair to the producers they do leaven the cruelty with some sentimentality, by featuring stories like that of the girl who only entered the competition to realise her late father’s dying wish. Luckily she had a good singing voice, and the judges were spared the embarrassment of having to crush her dream at the first audition. No doubt they’re saving that poignant moment for a future episode.

It makes for morbidly fascinating viewing for a while, though it is best enjoyed in small doses. I always end up wondering why people are willing to subject themselves to humiliation on national TV (and worldwide via YouTube), when a moment’s reflection would tell them that their chances of success were close to zero.

Is reality TV culture blunting our collective discernment and self-awareness, or merely giving a platform to people who are already suffering from delusions of talent? A clue that the latter is the case comes from the observation that winning a TV talent show is far from a guarantee of lasting fame. Most of the acts that have emerged have been briefly tolerated by the public before slipping back into the limbo of Z-list celebrity. (For some the backlash comes with frightening speed – Steve Brookstein, winner of the first series of X-Factor, was reportedly booed off the stage at his first concert. People weren’t just indifferent, they actually paid money to go to his show and give him abuse). To me this suggests that the audience for these shows is tuning in to see the drama of success and failure (especially failure), rather than to appreciate the artistry of the performers. The alternative – that the likes of Shayne Ward really do represent the musical taste of the UK population – is too horrible to contemplate.

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My friend Jerome

August 13, 2007 by Leave a comment

Having jokingly linked to Jerome’s Unemployment Blog yesterday, I now find myself worrying about the poor guy. Not only is he out of work, but he’s sick too. Luckily he seems to have health insurance. His doctor sent him for a CT scan, which made me think that Jerome must be really ill, until I remembered that in the US the structure of the health care system encourages lots of expensive investigations, whether they’re needed or not. Here in the UK, with our socialised medicine, we only order scans for people who we think might actually have something seriously wrong with them.

Anyway, Jerome’s scan was clear (apart from some slight abnormality which he is going to get an MRI scan for – and Americans wonder why their health insurance is so expensive) so his doctor thinks he probably has a gastric motility problem. Obviously it’s difficult to diagnose things over the internet, but I would have guessed that from his original description of the symptoms, thus saving thousands of dollars, not to mention all the radiation he will have got from the CT scan. I would probably have ordered the ultrasound to exclude gallstones though.

I feel like I really know Jerome now, to the extent that I feel able to second-guess his doctor about what might be wrong with him. This despite the fact that he or she is presumably a reputable professional who will have carefully examined Jerome and considered all the relevant data before coming up with a rational plan of investigation, whereas all I have to go on is some scraps of information and my ill-informed prejudices about American health care (which I got from watching ER and Nip/Tuck). Completely absurd of course, but like I said before, the internet is great at producing the illusion of intimacy. I don’t know if Jerome will find my interest in his health a bit creepy, though I would hazard a guess that yes, he just might. That’s what happens if you put details of your personal life on the web for all to see though.

And, Jerome, if you’re reading, listen to what your doctor says, not what some stranger on the internet tells you.

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Some encouragement

August 12, 2007 by 5 Comments

There is some evidence that I am not the only reader of this blog – it gets a few views from people referred by Google, though most of them seem to be searching for something else. I also got a supportive comment from the writer of the blog Surface Earth (have a look, and see if you can figure out what it’s about), but he or she came across this page by accident too. My Technorati authority rating remains stuck at 1, with a ranking of 3,915,745.

Luckily, like most bloggers, I don’t need much encouragement to keep sharing my thoughts with the world. The main problem is finding time to sit down in front of the computer long enough to complete a worthwhile post. It would be a lot easier if I was unemployed.

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Blog Idol

August 12, 2007 by Leave a comment

I’m generally too much of an intellectual snob to lower myself to watching reality TV, but I will admit to making an exception for shows like X-Factor. Not the later stages, where they get the people who actually have some ability and ruthlessly extinguish any trace of originality or individuality, but the first few episodes, where the experts tour the country sifting through the hopeful masses to uncover some hidden nuggets of talent.

During these audition shows the cameras will invariably home in on several would-be stars, each one eager to proclaim their absolute faith that they are going to be chosen, because “I really want this, I’ve always wanted it.” We then see their acts, which reveal that they would be well advised to direct their creative urges into other projects. They are told as much, kindly by the kind judge, brutally by the brutal judge. Afterwards some appear defeated and disillusioned, but most retain their belief that, one day, they will make it to the top, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

I used to be sure that the program producers included these segments for their comedic value; that we were being invited to laugh at the losers who were deluded enough to think that a lame impersonation of Justin Timberlake or Britney Spears would be their passport to the golden realm of celebrity. Now I’m not so certain. Maybe we’re actually being asked to admire the way these aspiring stars remain true to their dreams in the face of the world’s cruel indifference.

That would certainly be in line with the general trend in our culture to favour emotion over reason, and to believe that the key to achieving a goal is to desire it with sufficient fervour.

Nowhere is the line between desire and reality more blurred than on the internet, particularly the wild frontier of Web 2.0. The barrier between inspiration and publication is so insignificant that anyone with any sort of half-baked idea can present their work to the world. This has generally been felt to be a good thing, representing as it does a major democratisation of the creative process, but the absence of external editorial control does call for a bit self-restraint, a quality that is not always associated with bloggers. So while there is a lot of interesting material in the blogosphere, there is also a not inconsiderable amount of self-indulgence.

I’d have to admit that this blog is not a great advert for the medium, consisting as it does mainly of my inconsequential thoughts on random topics, with very little that pertains to its ostensible subject. I could try to excuse this with reference to my other commitments, but the truth is that, like the X-Factor hopefuls, I am guilty of mistaking a wish to do something for the ability to carry it off. I still think the basic idea is good, and I am going to try to approach it a bit more methodically. Expect a few more weak columns before I get my act together though.

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Ah…sweet liquor eases the pain

July 31, 2007 by Leave a comment

I went to see “The Simpsons Movie” last weekend, and very entertaining it was too. It was more like an extra-long version of the TV show than a proper feature film, but in an age where most summer blockbusters are just glorified advertisements for tie-in merchandise that hardly counts as a criticism, especially when the TV show in question is one of the finest comedies ever broadcast. There was the anticipated high quota of visual and verbal jokes, the trademark sharp social comment, and moments of wild surrealism. It wasn’t perfect though; the plot seemed a little over-extended, and I felt that more use could have been made of the the broad cast of characters that for me has always been the great strength of the show. Most of Springfield’s residents did feature at one point or another, but, Ned Flanders aside, none of them were really integral to the story. These are minor quibbles though, and I doubt I’ll laugh as much at any other film this year.

I don’t think that I could write anything about the broader cultural phenomenon that is “The Simpsons” that hasn’t been said already, so I’ll just note that I concur with the general opinion that the show is not as funny as it used to be. My all-time favourite episode is “Bart’s Inner Child” from season five, but every show from the first eight years is guaranteed to have a host of quotable lines.

Intriguingly, the end of the Simpsons’ golden age (as I see it) coincides exactly with my 30th birthday…

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Endless Vacation

July 28, 2007 by Leave a comment

I’ve been reading reviews of the film Hostel 2, which was released in the UK the other week. Critics over here are fairly unanimous in the opinion that the movie is an unpleasantly misogynistic piece of crap. US film writers pretty much hold that view too, though a few do buy into director Eli Roth’s explanation that his film is not actually a cheap exploitation flick, pandering to the worst instincts of sick individuals who like to fantasise about torturing young women, but is in fact a serious work of horror, which performs the traditional role of the genre by allowing the audience to exorcise their subconscious fears through a cathartic experience of vicarious menace.

I haven’t seen the film myself, or its predecessor, so I don’t really have an opinion on whether Roth has a point or not. Whichever way you look at it though, the fact that there is enough of an audience in the US to make this movie a commercial proposition tells us something interesting about the current state of the collective American psyche. Either casual sadism is becoming more mainstream, or paranoia has become so widespread that people really worry that stepping over the border carries a risk of being kidnapped and murdered by sinister foreigners. Thinking about how this might translate into US foreign policy is the sort of thing that keeps faint-hearted Europeans like me awake at night.

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How long is too long?

July 21, 2007 by 1 Comment

In an early days of this column, I wrote a post comparing the experience of starting a blog to falling in love. Well now I’m at that stage of the relationship where the initial ardour has cooled, and I haven’t been in touch for a while. I’m wondering if I’ve left it too long, and if calling now is going to be so horribly awkward that I should just forget about it.

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The Fictive Personality Revisited

June 27, 2007 by Leave a comment

A couple of posts ago I mentioned a paper about grief reactions in response to the death of Princess Diana. The online archive of this journal (Psychiatric Bulletin) only goes back to 2000, so here’s a summary from my paper copy:

[Update: the full paper is now online here].

The fictive personality revisited
Psychiatric admission as a consequence of Princess Diana’s death
Jill Chaloner

Chaloner presents the case of a 45 year old woman with no previous
psychiatric history, who presented with symptoms of suicidal ideation and
depression which she attributed solely to the effect on her of Princess
Diana’s death. It became clear during her stay that she had significant
marital, financial and childcare problems, but she remained preoccupied with
the subject of Princess Diana, and was unwilling to discuss her own life.
Over the course of three admissions the ward team offered specific pieces of
support with her practical problems, and her symptoms changed to chest pain,
then resolved.

Chaloner notes that the patient expressed herself in the language of
bereavement, even though she knew the lost person only through the mass
media. It was evident that she was failing to influence or deal with the
behaviour of those closest to her.

Chaloner suggests that, instead of reflecting on her own life, the patient
was projecting aspects of herself into external phenomena – in Kleinian
terms projectively identifying with Diana’s situation, splitting good
(Diana) and bad (the Queen) – thus denying the adverse events in her own
life. After Diana’s death she strove for complete identification with the
good object in death rather than taking back the projected good and bad
parts into herself. The practical help provided reduced the badness of the
bad things, allowing the patient to abandon her projection, taking the
problem back inside herself (initially by somatising).

Chaloner cites Martin (1984) who described the “fictive personality” in
which “the self strives towards total identification with characters in
literary, historical or mass media fiction”, and described clinical
examples of people whose “own ego appears impoverished or absent”, to the
extent that they can only keep going by identifying with “available fictions
that fill up their empty selves and allow them to seem real”. Also mentioned
is Winicott’s concept of the transitional object, Chaloner suggesting that
images from the mass media may become transitional objects for adults.

Chaloner quotes James (1998) who points out that in modern life, the balance
between real and represented people in our lives is weighted very much in
favour of the latter. Media representations are often idealised, putting
people in a position of enforced subordination, generating depression. This
process generates low self esteem, increasing the pressure towards
projective identification with fictionalised, idealised, personalities.

Chaloner’s finishes by wondering if, “since projective processes are
continuously and actively encouraged by the nature and content of the mass
media, it may be that fictive personality disturbance has now become a
social norm which goes largely unremarked”.

Chaloner, J. (1999) The fictive personality revisited. Psychiatric Bulletin,
23, 559-561.

Martin, J. (1984) Clinical contributions to the theory of the fictive
personality. Annals of Psychoanalysis 1984-85, vols 12-13, 267-300. Beverly
Hills CA: South California Psychoanalytic Institute.

James, O. (1998) Britain on the Couch, 42-127. London: Arrow Books.

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