The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Independent Left: David Graeber’s Politics, An Appreciation September 6, 2020

Ciarán O’Rourke offers an appreciation of the late David Graeber on the IL site. And he starts the piece with this particularly pertinent quote from Graeber.

“Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics,” declared anthropologist David Graeber in 2013,

“it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.)

Statements in the media… good, bad and indifferent September 5, 2020

It’s not all about Covid-19. For example, a frequent commentator seen in these posts writes in the Sunday Independent on an all too familiar theme:

Eugene McCabe was the greatest writer of my generation and when I heard of his recent death I recalled something my late friend, Patricia Redlich, told me at the height of the Provisional IRA campaign.

Patricia, a woman so wise she would have been burned as a witch in the Middle Ages, said that of the two kinds of sins, commission and omission, the sin of omission was the worst.

She meant that while committing an IRA murder was bad, omitting to condemn the murders for the sake of social comfort was worse because it created a climate of moral evil.

This from Lucinda Creighton in the SBP, on the need for the government to govern, takes an oddly florid turn:

Symbolically, autumn is the season of change, as leaves fall and we harvest and prepare for winter. The government should embrace this symbolism and start to prepare the country for the challenges ahead.

‘We’ harvest, Lucinda? Surely not.

Michael Clifford in the Examiner notes, correctly, in a piece on co-living accommodation:

Co-living represents bedsits for the 21st century. Do we as a society really want to turn in that direction in order to sort out a chronic housing crisis?

Some would say worse than bedsits.

It’s not all about Covid-19. But a lot of it is. Breda O’Brien makes a good point:

Thus far, the Government has relied mainly on goodwill rather than enforcement measures when it comes to Covid-19. If that were to change and non-compliance with, for example, mask wearing, results in a fine of €20, it will be little more than a slap on the wrist. Nonetheless, it would mark a change in policy.

Mask-wearing should be voluntary and an act of solidarity. Imposing new, lower fines is an acknowledgment this can no longer be taken for granted.

The Irish Times health correspondent draws an implausible comparison in the following:

The hyped-up language might not be necessary if the public had a clearer idea of what was happening – where the virus is circulating, what actions are being taken to deal with outbreaks – and if a better co-ordinated and better explained response was in place.

Four people with Covid-19 died in August, compared to 15 on the roads. The only death announced last week actually occurred in June.

Difficult to disagree with a comment below the line on this piece here on the lockdown in Melbourne – which across thousands of words lamenting ‘one of the worlds harshest lock-downs’ and a ‘world of pain’ due to the lockdown, oddly doesn’t mention the numbers who have died there…

First-world concepts of ‘a world of pain’ are truly staggering.

Riley Gale September 5, 2020

Very sorry to hear about the death of Riley Gale of the thrash metal band Power Trip at the tragically young age of 34. He was a good one, who in interview came over as deeply sincere, engaged, politically aware and questioning. Not a lot of thrash vocalists unselfconsiously reference Zizek and Foucault et al. He and the band were also near brilliant at what they did. As noted on wiki they had a range of influences…

“Some of Blake [Ibanez]’s favorite bands are Killing Joke, Stone Roses, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Wipers”.

As a branch of metal that I’m not hugely fond of (though I do love my Kreator albums and unlike some whatever about Mustaine I do like Megadeth a lot) they brought a sound that was true to its roots – as well as being more than a little inflected by hardcore punk (and by the by Napalm Death and they are mutual friends and toured together) – while also moving forward. Crisp and reverby, no small achievement. And political too…

Rest in power.

Microdisney September 5, 2020

This was referenced before, at least in the audio version, but here’s an expanded history of Microdisney by Paul McDermott which as he notes:

…is a companion to the audio documentary: Iron Fist in Velvet Glove — the story of Microdisney. It contains many contributions from over 25 interviewees that due to time constraints never made the final edit of the documentary.

Great work by McDermott on a band who deserve this level of engagement.

This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… The Velvet Underground, Loaded September 5, 2020

What’s your favourite Velvet Underground album? I used to think it was their first. Moe Tucker is brilliant, Nico is great if forbidding. There’s so much to like about Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison’s and John Cale’s work too. But subsequently it never stuck with me as an album I wanted to listen to again and again. White Light White/White Heat, I’ve not heard in decades. Perhaps I should. But I liked that less than the first when I last heard it. And perhaps being overly contrarian I always preferred the covers of songs from it, not least Joy Division’s Sister Ray. I’ve no memory of ever hearing the third album which is good because it’s there to listen to (and What Goes On is a pretty amazing song).

But the one album I really love is Loaded from 1968. This is odd because in a way it is a most un-Velvet Underground Velvet Underground album. John Cale had blown the firetrap. Of the tracks, four are sung by bassist Doug Yule – a mixed pleasure, though Who Loves the Sun is pretty great. But then so many of the songs are great. Rock & Roll, Sweet Jane, Head Held High and the chugging Train Round the Bend. Tastes may differ on Lonesome Cowboy Bill, and it’s not my favourite but it’s a solid song, and the rest are pretty genius. There’s a joyousness to proceedings that is remarkable, as with Rock and Roll, that captures the emotion and contradiction of this most ephemeral cultural form. The discordant elements of the past are still in there, albeit no longer foregrounded – as in the guitar work on Train Round the Bend. But the vision is more… expansive.

It’s a remarkably well received album too, and I like this line in particular which I think sums it up neatly: Reviewing Loaded in Rolling Stone, Lenny Kaye wrote that “though the Velvet Underground on Loaded are more loose and straightforward than we’ve yet seen them, there is an undercurrent to the album that makes it more than any mere collection of good-time cuts”.

Rock and Roll

Train Round the Bend

Sweet Jane

Cool It Down

Who Loves the Sun

Bronagh Gallagher interview… September 4, 2020

Jason O’Toole interviews Bronagh Gallagher in the Mirror, and a number of things particularly stand out. Firstly that she managed to wear a Frames tee-shirt in Pulp Fiction. Also

Bronagh was far more interested in music when she was growing up on the Bogside.

“I used to carry around a big bag of tapes everywhere and I was mad about Motown and Atlantic,” she said.

Much much more seriously:

“…I have extraordinary parents and they’re very, very kind. My mother and father seen the most horrific things (during The Troubles) and they tried to protect us from it – and they really tried to steer us into the arts.”

Bronagh’s father Bert had even feared he was going to be shot dead during Bloody Sunday. He told the Saville Inquiry, “I tried to say a prayer. However, I could not even remember the words to the Act of Contrition I was so scared.”

As Bronagh pointed out: “We’re looking at a situation in the North where my parents’ generation – and you’re talking about the young people marching from ‘68 onwards, and the Battle of the Bogside and Free Derry – there’s a huge issue now with Post-traumatic stress disorder, I think.”

This is very much, entirely naturally, a phenomenon. This report here from the Commissioner for Victims and Survivors for Northern Ireland outlines some of the effects. This is from the Executive Summary, but there’s a lot more detail in the report of this and other issues.

An estimated 8.8% of the Northern Ireland adult population met the criteria for PTSD at some point in their life while 5.1% met the criteria in the previous 12 months.yWhile males were more likely to have experienced a traumatic event (see above), females were more likely to have PTSD.yThe prevalence of PTSD in Northern Ireland is the highest of all countries that have produced comparable estimates including the USA, other Western European countries and countries that have experienced civil conflict in their recent history.

Signs of Hope – A continuing series September 4, 2020

Gewerkschaftler suggested this recently:

I suggest this blog should have a regular (weekly) slot where people can post happenings at the personal or political level that gives them hope that we’re perhaps not going to hell in a handbasket as quickly as we thought. Or as the phlegmatic Germans put it “hope dies last”.

Any contributions this week?

What we have read this Summer September 4, 2020

Jim Monaghan suggested back in comments earlier in the Summer that we have a review post on what we read. So, here’s the original post and fire away with regard to how the books fell, good, bad or indifferent.

“The cultural values ‘we’ hold dear?” September 4, 2020

Few would argue there are no cultural commonalities between Ireland and Britain, though the idea that the cultures are identical (or three or four if we include Scotland, England and Wales as individual elements which arguably we should) appears wide of the mark. That there is shared television or some sports or indeed even a language and therefore little distinctiveness is reductionist in the extreme. It’s not that, again, no commonalities exist, but few would argue Australians and Canadians and South Africans and those from the United States are the ‘same’ culturally due to that shared language. Even simple proximity, as with Canada and the United States, doesn’t mean interchangeability. As someone born in the UK and with an English side to my family I’ve always been deeply sceptical of the notion of sameness. In some ways with social media one could make an argument that if anything even those commonalities that do exist with the Britain are diluting in the face of a global anglophone culture (and not just anglophone – I’m continually surprised by the degree of Asian cultural influences on young people now, something that in many respects seems to be quite positive, though that’s another discussion entirely).
But this rankles, from the IT this week and a discussion over ‘culture wars’ and:

It seems nothing of late can escape our fervour for mud-slinging and social media spats over the cultural values we hold dear. Most recently the BBC has found itself at the epicentre of the tedious charade – with the broadcaster’s new director general, Tim Davie, reportedly believing the BBC’s comedy output is too one-sided and in need of a “radical overhaul”, thanks to its supposed left-wing slant (pray tell, what is a “right-wing joke”?).

And:

And only weeks earlier, when the BBC announced an orchestral-only version of Rule Britannia! would be played on the Last Night of the Proms, an almighty row was triggered over the propriety of the anthems lyrics (“Britons never, never, never shall be slaves” is the line that draws the most ire).

…
In his first week on the job Davie reversed the decision and scrapped the orchestral-only version in favour of singers on the screen – in what has been gleefully described by right-wing pundit Dan Wootton as the “first major anti-woke move” by the new boss.

Continuing:

What is it with our inclination to reduce everything to a culture war? In the case of the Proms, what could have been a gentle dialogue about history, philosophy and patriotism is instead siphoned into a vituperative conflict between two groups: the anti-Woke brigade versus the enlightened progressives; the bleeding heart liberals versus the true patriots.

And concluding with reference to Boris Johnson and his intervention around the Proms…

If the case for engaging in the culture wars is so transparent when it comes to our politicians,why are we so quick to indulge the pantomime?

It would be an unusual Irish person in this state who would identify with that ‘we’ in relation to the Proms. Or consider Boris Johnson one of ‘our politicians’. And while I’ve no doubt that culture wars do figure in the political discourse(s) on this island I’m sceptical about the idea they play quite such a prominent role here as they do, say, in the US, whatever about the UK.

But wait, you might say, where does Ireland fit in this? Check out the mention of the statues outside the Shelbourne in the opening lines.

Tellingly the piece ends with the following:

It is unedifying at best, dangerously and myopically divisive at worst. But it seems the nation’s favourite pastime is simply too tempting (for politicians, pundits and the electorate alike) to pass up.

But what nation is that?

Remind us again how a viral pandemic works… a continuing series… September 3, 2020

From the Examiner:

(The chair of the Oireachtas Covid committee, Independent TD for Clare, Michael McNamra) said that Ireland had learned valuable lessons during the pandemic and “now we know that nursing homes need to be and can be protected.

“Maybe as a society we’re learning to live with Covid,” he said.

However, he was concerned that Ireland remained the only country that had completely closed down its hospitality industry.

If there was evidence that pubs were more dangerous places then people could make their own decisions about whether to go into one or not.

Mr McNamara said

he thought people should be informed of the risks “and let them decide.”