Blue Moon

You can have a religious argument about the definitions of "a blue moon".  Whatever, this month contains the novelty of two full moons in one calendar month.

As it was so cloudy at the first full moon I wasn't able to see it so I'm hoping for better weather on Friday night. The August moon(s) are my favourite; she floats over the fens and fields as if looking for her own reflection in the water and windows.  The great harvesters creep over the land late in to the evening, half-paddle-steamer, half-dragon, then they vanish improbably by daylight as if they went back to giant burrows.

Logically, everyone knows the moon is a faraway rock but when you look at that silver white disc - or a ruby moon which I've seen - it is impossible to think of it as merely subjectively beautiful; she's objectively, intrinsically beautiful and always was long before there were any humans to wonder if you could reach her.

In 2005 Andrew Smith published his series of interviews with the astronauts who had done more than just wonder.  Standing at the pinnacle of thousands of years of technological development they had been able to answer the question: what's it like to go to the moon?

"Moondust - in search of the men who fell to Earth" was updated in 2009 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.  It is now 40 years since the final manned Apollo mission and  Smith's book puts the programme in to its historical context. He secured interviews from the remaining moonmen, including email exchanges with Neil Armstrong who clarified many factual points about the mission.

Thank goodness Armstrong's mission was successful.  The emergency speech had already been written in case anything went wrong.  And yet, as Smith's book shows, there is curious sense in which the eulogy remains true; the moonmen suffered a kind of death because their old selves would not exist thereafter and nothing they would do subsequently could quite compare with those few days.

This full moon will not have Neil Armstrong beneath it. I believe she'll be looking for him.
............

Moondust - in search of the men who fell to Earth
Andrew Smith, Bloomsbury 2005, update 2009
ISBN 978 1 4088 02380

Summer Solstice 2012

A garden at Sunset, solstice evening 2012, around 9pm (sunset at Stonehenge at 9.26pm)

 Was that a face at the window?

That way

 Soft footsteps vanish down the mown path

 To visit a pet from long ago.

Let's hope the rain holds off in the morning for the sunrise at Stonehenge as the visitors will be camped out all night to see it on Thursday 21st June 2012  at 0452 hrs (4.52am)

Are you looking at my bird?

Police are arranging protests about cuts to the front line which they say will make their job impossible because they already have far too much to do.  Strange then that two uniformed persons - thought to be officers - were dispatched from Harrow police station for a word with a gallery owner.  (Note: contains an image some people may find shocking. Report: Evening Standard)

An officer happened to see a picture he disapproved of - apparently while he was on a bus - and was able to divert two of these furiously busy personnel from their normal work of catching murderers to argue about classics, or rather, to lean on the gallery owner to take down a picture of Leda and the Swan.  As it happens, they were packing up for a new exhibition anyway.

If the gallery manager, Jag Mehta, gives an accurate account, the visitors claimed that 'condoning bestiality' was illegal, which sounds more like a PCSO making something up on the spot. 

In general, you can condone what you like, providing you don't mind what people think of you. What you can't necessarily do is is carry it out (Sexual Offences Act 2003), distribute it (Obscene Publications Act 1959), or possess a depiction (Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008) without the law imposing a penalty. 

The legislation is dotted about rather than consolidated, but luckily the Crown Prosecution Service has written a  useful guide to these offences.  However, there have been cases which alter the matter, which means their guidance cannot be a definitive. Also, the 8 page pdf the Ministry of Justice wrote has vanished, or at least the online copy has. [Update: having trouble with this link which worked for a while and now does not:  Here it is,  maybe it will come back.  Many thanks to the researchers at Backlash.]

The following relies on the CPS guidance on extreme pornography.  They know all about Leda and the Swan

The painting "Leda and the Swan", another example raised during debates in Parliament, would also not be caught by the new [2008] offence, because it would not meet the "explicit and realistic" test.

Established photographer Derrick Santini was sailing very close to the wind under this definition.  His portrayal of the myth may explain why somebody going past on a bus may have got all hot'n'bothered.

Santini’s use of the lenticular process involves photographing a sequence of still images, using live models, which are layered and printed using a special technique, under a ribbed plastic sheet acting as a lens.  This results in a hologram-like effect where the figure within the frame moves as the viewer passes, although not an actual hologram, it is a form of animation where an illusion of depth is created.

Makes a change from those old nudie cards where if you tilt the picture, the lady's clothes jump off.

I'm assuming that the swan and the woman were photographed separately otherwise the RSPCA might have something to say about it - and I'm guessing that what is depicted is impossible. You try training a swan to land in that space.  There isn't a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Models. It says something that given a picture of a naked lady and a migratory bird, apparently in the act of congress, the police are worried about the one with feathers.

If you want to see the full set of pictures, they are on page two of Santini's gallery under the heading "lenticular artworks".  The website is full of slow-loading animations.  It might not be easy to explain them if somebody were to ask so they shouldn't be regarded as safe for work, which is a different question from whether they fit within the definition of an offence.

There are plenty of legal disputes to be had here; for example can a theme such as Leda and the Swan come within the second CPS heading?

 That the image is extreme namely grossly offensive, disgusting, or otherwise of an obscene character;

A little offensive, yes, particularly if it is the rape version of the myth but in general the theme of humans and swans getting it on is common. But one of them is only disguised as a swan i.e. at various times in the past it is more acceptable to show a human and an animal rather than two humans.  There are always  people who worry about the sexual nature of the motif in showing any intimacy but only the ignorant have ever misunderstood that it is about sex with animals.  

Besides, it is neither reasonable nor possible to go back through the museums demanding that all the Leda and the Swan versions are hidden in the archives, trying to decide which ones are merely ecstatically affectionate. 

In addition, it was only in January 2012 that a conviction was denied by a jury in R v Peacock.  The material being supplied by Michael Peacock was nasty and fitted within the guidelines of what could be regarded as obscene, so the CPS brought the case under the Obscene Publications Act. The jury did not accept the prosecution case.  Since we can never see in to the jury room, we don't know exactly why, but we do know that this signals that the CPS are mistaken in what the public are prepared to regard as likely to deprave or corrupt.

However, Alex Antoniou of the City Law School points out that all this means is that the Obscene Publications Act may be undermined.  The CPS now uses the newer extreme pornography charges as these are about possession of an image rather its than publication:

prosecutions under the new sections introduced in January 2009 (ss 63-7 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008) related to extreme pornographic images have dramatically increased in the last two years: according to the CPS, in 2009-10 prosecutions were brought in respect of 213 offences, whereas in 2010-11 the number of offences reached 995. It is noteworthy that these latest figures released relate only to possession of extreme pornographic images portraying bestiality.

A prosecution under s.63 requires the permission of the Director of Public Prosecutions.  An officer could be in a great deal of paperwork if they didn't check first that the CPS wanted to use a classical theme as a test case - especially the exact one which was quoted in Parliament.  This artwork tests the boundaries of realism by using photography but on the other hand, a moment's thought about swans tells you that you can't be looking at something realistic.

It is reassuring to know that when the Home Secretary cuts the number of police officers, it won't matter because we can just get rid of the two spare ones who go round wrangling with art wallahs. Until then, don't tell them about Europa and The Bull.

Here is a Leda and the Swan pas de deux. There are two things to note: firstly that the male often holds his arm in a swan form. This is to signify that Leda sees a swan but we all know he's really supposed to be a god in disguise.  Secondly, that the bodies echo each other the way birds court.

Happy St George's Day

Others:

A Day for England

That Darn Cat

SBML at Anna Raccoon

Max Farquar 

Brian Sibley 

Cranmer

Titanic at the Minack Theatre

 Last week I achieved a lifetime's ambition and finally saw a full-scale production at the Minack Theatre.

The Minack is that most English of things which rooted and blossomed in the magical kingdom of Cornwall; a private obsession which chimed with others and called them to itself. Miss Rowena Cade, an amateur producer, offered the use of her garden to the local players for a production of The Tempest. They had done well with A Midsummer Night's dream in a nearby meadow.  The garden of Minack House, however, did not readily offer somewhere to seat the audience.  Cade looked in to what was then a gully above a rock used by fishermen and wondered if a stage could be built down there, where the sides suggested a natural amphitheatre.   Where better to place Prospero's island but on a rock jutting out over the Atlantic Ocean?

Miss Cade and her gardener set about sculpting the theatre and in 1932 The Tempest was performed - by moonlight.  The Times noted the event and a dream became flesh.

That dream was nearly wrecked by WWII, but Cade, who had by now lived through two wars, set about re-building the theatre. She did not know the meaning of  "Give up" but the phrase "The Show Must Go On" was written on her heart and, in most cases, her own wallet.

The theatre is open air - although Cade had some ideas late on for adding bad- weather covers - and that means that you take your chances. All tickets come with a warning to wear suitable clothes and that umbrellas are not to be put up in the auditorium as it intereferes with the view.  In extreme weather they might cancel but normal rain is ignored.

On Monday 9 April the pleasant Cornish spring weather scuttled off to be replaced with bluster and sudden showers of extra-wet rain.  Stopping to pick up a picnic, the lady in the bakery said her friend was a producer and he had called her to say the Minack was experiencing winds sweeping the drizzle down on to the upper terraces, where by coincidence I had a seat to see "Titanic - the musical".   I bobbed over to the sailing shop and explained the situation to the lady behind the counter. She sold me a showeproof suit  and a Frosty Fox snood in a piratical stripe to keep my hair out of my eyes.

Sitting on a rolled-up mat on the terrace, in my survival suit and wrapped up in a waterproof-blanket, I settled down to watch the matinee performance of a lifetime and got it buckets.

The musical has been performed frequently around the world since its slow start in 1997.  This production was by the local Atlantic Theatre Company.  Using an amateur cast emphasises the ordinary lives of many who died rather than the extraordinary lives of  passengers such as the campaigning editor and journalist W T Stead, who perished on the night he might have written his greatest scoop.

An ingenious stripped-down set had been developed to create the bridge of the doomed ship and to focus on the poignant performances.  History records that the night of the disaster was unusually calm; the water was oily flat as the air, although freezing, was static.

The Atlantic was not having this.  This was its big chance to be seen in daylight instead of gleaming in the velvet darkness, and it wanted to be in the performance so it gathered itself in to swollen rollers and flung spray up over the Minack rock below the stage.  The wind hummed loudly over the orchestra,  tugging at our hoods and bringing us a taste of salt.

At the interval the rain started, through which gulls plunged in to the waves, fishing as the incoming tide brought a shoal close to the Minack rock and within reach.   The gulls circle lazily until they see where dinner is, then fold their wings and dive in to the water with a tiny ring of white to mark where they vanish, clean as an arrow.

In the second half the weather threw itself at the performers who continued, cold, soaking wet,  the wind plastering their clothes to their bodies.  This was not historically accurate but it conveyed a sense of impending shipwreck; the sea and the sky produced spectacular special effects but at the cost to the cast of them being only a little warmer than they would have been had they been dunked in the sea that fateful night.

It has been dismissed as grief-porn, this picking over of a century-old civil disaster but that is to miss what even Goebbels - who later commissioned a film about it - realized. The disaster was capable of being read several ways and has been over the century. Jared Poley tells us that in 1912 the dominant theme was that of nature triumphing over man but by the 1940s Goebbels used it to amplify what was true; much British self-confidence had gone down with the ship.

Equus

(c) London Classic Theatre

The London Classic Theatre production of Equus  is part way through its national tour; there is still time to catch it.

But has the nearly 40-year old play has escaped its age? Not every play travels through time, the hallmark of a classic.

The horrifying premise is simple: a teenage boy has blinded six horses to which he was devoted and refuses to say why he inflicted this appalling cruelty. The child psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Malcolm James) has to find out why.

Optimistically - or perhaps arrogantly - both he and the referring magistrate think that the psychiatrist can fix whatever has gone wrong in young Alan Strang's head (Matthew Pattimore).

 
The first sign of age is that in 1973 people apparently had faith in psychiatrists, or at least Sir Peter Shaffer wrote it that way.  I doubt if psychiatrists now would see themselves as quite so confident that they could fix behaviour just by unravelling motives and talking about them, if they ever did.  However, in 1973 such theories were achingly fashionable so an audience would not necessarily have spotted this as a theatrical effect rather than an accurate representation of what a psychiatrist does for a living.

The second difficulty is that one of the formative moments in Alan Strang's life hinges on a chance meeting. Spoilers sweetie - you need to see it because the staging is wonderful - but it is a victim of time.  An event which might plausibly have happened to Alan around 1960 could not happen to the infant Alan in 2000.  If it had, the parents would be shouting about something other than class war.  Our reality has shifted  too much in specific aspects to accommodate the assumptions underpinning the play in 1973.

These, however, are minor quibbles which could be got round by simply setting the play in the past, which as we all know, was another country.  It wouldn't take all that much; Alan Strang would wear flares and a hideous acrylic jumper,  Martin Dysart needs a kipper tie and the lady magistrate should wear a skirt rather than trousers.

Everything else works as it stands because the designer Kerry Bradley has done a bang-up job of  producing a flexible but monumental set which allows the meetings to happen with simple movements and careful lighting and not the slightest delay between scenes, whilst still clearly indicating where changes have happened.   These open sets carry a risk that the audience will miss the signal that a location or times has changed; never once does the set, the lighting or the direction trip over itself leaving the audience behind and thinking "Eh, where are we up to now?"  Moreover, the set is in units which allow it to fill various stage sizes, creating the illusion of a classical amphitheater even in a small space.

For the most difficult query I had to seek an opinion from a Yout of Today.  As Philip Larkin pointed out, sexual intercourse began in 1963 so there had been barely a decade of it by 1973.  A play about myths and sex had great power in those days.  Plays about myths still might, but sex? Can it really still be a credible dramatic motive in an age when you can't open an email account without immediately being offered dodgy products?

Da Yout of Today informs me that it can be, and moreover it has to within this play or else Strang won't play-off properly against Dysart who spends much of the time bemoaning his own arid personal life.

Dysart is the heart of the piece. Ultimately it isn't  the psychoanalysis of young Alan Strang which matters; that's only solving the headline puzzle.  The driving complexity is the aging, raging Dysart, chasing himself about the stage, able to see his own difficulties but unable to do anything about them. Malcolm Jones carries the demanding role with honour, never letting it tip over in to a cartoon shrink but depicting a man standing on the edge of insanity for a living.

Equus is already on the list of the 100 plays of the 20th Century as too are Peter Shaffer's "Royal Hunt of the Sun" and "Amadeus".  Both of those are in historical settings in which the audience automatically colludes with creating another time and place. Equus uniquely challenges the director to keep the play current, not let it slip in to a being a period piece.  This production manages that - it was only me who noticed that the audience had changed - and therefore grab the chance to see it in case we have to wait another 40 years for it to be staged competently.

Here is a surviving dubbed fragment of  The White Horses  (1965, aired in Britain in 1968) which the young Alan Strang was not allowed to watch. It gives a flavour of the aspirations of the time the character was formed in.