Having wrestled the wheelie bin of shame (empty bottles) over ice-crusted snow globs and then gone back for the bin of plastic containers, slipping and skidding on the bits where the snow had melted then frozen into ice slides, because Radio Orkney had assured me the Refuse Collectors would be out today despite having been missing in action for over a week - the chaps had been reassigned to snow shifting duties - much more fun, scooping up great swathes of the white stuff in the heavy equipment, and, I swear they must have had a snow blower on the job at one stage judging by some of the walls of snow - anyway, I was rewarding myself with a sit down, a glance through this month's issue of Apollo and a cup of tea. I was distracted and dismayed by the reproduction of the silver albumen photograph of three Women from Xiamen by Lai Fong (1839-1890)
Women as decorative collectable objects, unable to walk away, let alone run, on those tiny, crippled, bound feet. They couldn't have wrestled the wheelie bin of shame to the bin collection point. I read a searing account of a servant with healthy whole feet bringing a bowl of warm, rose-scented water to her mistress, together with fresh bindings, then withdrawing to give her lady privacy to unbind, wash and treat her deformed feet, while keeping herself away from the odour of those rotting feet. I hope it was made up.
I became aware of something rather marvellous being played on Radio Four's Desert Island Discs. The castaway was Val Wilmer, writer and photographer, born 1941. She has photographed and interviewed significant musicians, including this portrait of Louis Armstrong, made in 1965 and now in the V. and A.:
Her photographs are held in the collections of the V&A and the National Portrait Gallery. She is also a journalist and author: her book As Serious As Your Life examines the evolution of free jazz within the wider context of racial and sexual politics.
Her playlist for Desert Island Discs was exquisite:
Potato Head Blues - Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven
Black, Brown And White - Big Bill Broonzy
Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8 - By Kodaly, First movement performed by Janos Starker
The Weary Blues – Langston Hughes
My Lovely Elizabeth - S.E. Rogie
Criss Cross - Thelonious Monk
Dogon A D - Julius Hemphill
Love and Affection - Joan Armatrading
Here's Weary Blues:
I like this version of Langston Hughes' poem, recited by Allen Dwight Callahan, with Groovy Drums composed by Umberto Pagnini and ST James Infirmary composed by Paul Lenart and Bill Novick. The mad footage is taken from Moon Over Harlem - Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and Rhythm & Blues Revue - Directed by Joseph Kohn and Leonard Reed; and evokes the Harlem Renaissance - an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theatre, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after The New Negro, a 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke.
Langston Hughes (1901- 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was an early developer of the literary art form called jazz poetry, and a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Both of his paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved African Americans while both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners. He was raised by his grandmother, who was, unusually, a college graduate. Of his childhood, he wrote: "I was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother. Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books - where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas."
Hughes wrote about the struggles and joys of working-class blacks in America.
Joan Armatrading's Love and Affection could underscore the conversation I had with mr bungalow bill on last Sunday's Ishmael. Love, not sex. Raised, but not born, in Birmingham in the West Midlands, Joan's music is influenced by rock, folk, jazz, blues, soul, and reggae. Her songs have been described as "some of the most deeply personal and emotionally naked ... of our times". In a 2003 interview, she said: "My songs aren't about me at all. They're always about love, the pain and anguish of it."
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence."
Lord Byron, Don Juan, canto 1, st.194
Armatrading's voice is a rich, perfectly controlled contralto. mr ishmael had her albums.
Anyway, Radio Orkney was right - the bin men have collected my recycling and I must battle out to retrieve my wheelie bins before the storm takes them to Norway.
7 comments:
Lord George, the glorious, dirty dog:
And when convulsive throes denied my breath
The faintest utterance to my fading thought,
To thee—to thee—e’en in the gasp of death
My spirit turned, oh! oftener than it ought.
In the 80s I used to enjoy listening to Joan Armatrading. I recall I saw her live in London. She had a brief time in the public sunlight, but disappeared. Her talent deserved more. Just going to dust off the CD collection.
Mr BB: that's strong stuff.
Joan Armatrading never stopped making music, mr mike. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2001 Birthday Honours and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to music, charity and equal rights. She was a guest at the Coronation of Charles and Camilla last year. In 2011 she entered into a civil partnership with artist Maggie Butler in the Shetland Islands, the day after the Shetland Folk Festival.
Ah, mr bungalow bill, I had to look up the stanza you quoted - the internet tells me that the poem, Love and Death, was addressed to his page-boy, with whom he was in love. The boy was thought to be Loukas Chalandritsanos, and he did not return Byron's love, although he did enjoy the expensive presents. Byron died in 1824 and the poem was published posthumously. His gloriously romantic military career during the Greek War of Independence has caused some to speculate that had he not died he would have been made King of Greece.
gor-blimey, mrs ishmael, is this a byron-get-one-free offer?
well, it's all to deep for me.
in terms of his verbal virtuousity and proclivity for serial socio-political adventure, i suppose that rustle hand is the closest we have to a modern incarnation of lord byron, however in terms of style, there still exists a stark difference between the afore-mentioned pair of gallivanting artistes, namely that mr byron possessed two swords - one of which he wore outside his breeches - whilst mr hand owns just the one weapon - also habitually hung al fresco.
i should add, here - for the sake of limiting mrs ishmael's libel-exposure - that mr rustling hand denies all criminal charges levelled against him.
"...mr rustling hand denies all criminal charges levelled against him."
yes, mr ultrapox
well 'e would, wud'ne...
however, since in the sick circles of celebrity-land, the privileged members are invariably all beasts, bullies, bastards, and prone to the sexual exploitation of their establishment-untouchability at every opportunity, i really have to say that i find mr hand's possible prosecution, for very serious offences, to smack somewhat of a political manœuvre, directed as it is against a working class critic of the globalist élite, and rather desperately designed to distract public attention from the raw river of progressive genocide in which our nefarious neo-imperialist leadership wishes to bathe with naked impunity.
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