The relationship between Man and Animal

Both of this week’s choices deal with the animal kingdom and man’s relationship to it. I have to profess I’m no animal lover; I eat them with slavish regularity, nor was I brought up with much feeling for them: the closest I came to a family pet was a Tamagotchi that died frequently in my arms. It is therefore somewhat of a surprise that I have found myself entranced by two stories that deal with man's love for animals.

I buried it in the bottom of my garden.

The first is Helen Macdonald’s, H is for Hawk, a memoir that chronicles the author’s relationship with goshawk, Mabel. I picked up the book off the back of a plethora of plaudits, the most significant being The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Previously, the only thing I knew about falconry was gleaned from watching Kes. In that film Billy, the central character, bruised by humanity finds salvation in a kestrel; Macdonald’s work is not dissimilar: hurting from her father’s death, she finds purpose in training a goshawk. The two differ in that Kes’ title is a misnomer: the film’s focus is Billy - the kestrel plays a supporting role; H is for Hawk, however is more instructive, informing us of the ancient pastime, lifting the hood on its mystery, giving us a vantage on these enigmatic creatures.

Don’t be deterred into thinking Hawk is an instruction manual with adjectives though; it is far more than that: reading as it does like a Frankenstein thriller- a power struggle between man and beast- the book is a psychologist’s dream. For deep in grief, Macdonald comes to envy the bird she is meant to possess: she wants the trade places with it, so she can live a life unencumbered by human emotion, in the here and now, paralysed not by memory but free through flight.

Macdonald and Mabel

Her ability to write lucidly on the esoteric subject of falconry and descriptively on the chasm of grief is a real achievement. With a background in poetry, Macdonald has previous in capturing big ideas in tight formation; this experience means she manages to tame the big theme of good and evil in magical prose. In fact her language is much like the bird she trains: at times the thing soars, skirting and skimming the page with ethereal elegance; at other times its claws dig in and the horror of her descriptions peck grimly away at you. A passage that illuminates this beauty and beast dichotomy is when she muses on her own humanity, and whether the bird has vanquished it:

I don’t have sides. I only have wildness. And I don’t need wildness any more. I’m not stifled by domesticity. I have none. There is no need, right now, to feel close to a fetch of dark northern woods, a creature with baleful eyes and death in her foot. Human hands are for holding other hands. Human arms are for holding other humans close. They’re not for breaking the necks of rabbits, pulling loops of viscera out onto leaf-litter while the hawks dips her head to drink blood from her quarry’s chest cavity.

I love how the gorgeous romanticism of handholding melds with the cold stark gruesomeness of neck breaking to show the disparity between man and nature. The above passage shows how the goshawk provided a placebo for the soul; the true elixir though was realising grief could only be overcome through accepting love and compassion. As someone who isn't an animal lover, I found this message optimistic: embracing the isolation of nature offers only temporary succour but embracing another is where rehabilitation truly starts.

War Horse is the theatrical adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 novel. Like Hawk, it is about the bond between man and beast, in this case Albert, a farmer’s son, and his horse Joey. I first became familiar with the story on reading it with a school book group. I, along with the students, enjoyed the tale of the horse’s dispossession from the Devonshire countryside to the battlefields of France. It reminded us all of the sacrifice made by man and animal in the diplomatic failure that was World War One. Like the classic Black Beauty, the story is told from the horse’s perspective, which generates greater pathos when we witness the thoroughbred’s experience in battle. For all of that though, the story for me isn’t as good as Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful, another war story, centred on brothers in battle and the cost of fraternal loyalty. Both films were released two years ago with War Horse getting the Hollywood treatment, and Peaceful getting the British Film Council one. Peaceful again was the better of the two, but Britain’s reputation as a nation of feckless gamblers was corroborated by the box office receipts that proved they backed the wrong horse.

Spielberg: I prefer his earlier work.

The reason why War Horse became big box office cinema was because director Steven Spielberg had seen the theatrical adaptation of the book and wanted to transpose the joy he experienced watching it into a Hollywood re-telling of it. Spielberg's adaptation was too by-the-book though, something that could never be accused of The National Theatre's offering. Of the three mediums, the play is without a doubt the best incarnation of the story. To create a moving play about a horse is a brief only a fool would accept and fortunately Britain’s West End had the kind of creative idiots who can make it possible.

The horses are controlled by three puppeteers, two at the body and one at the head.

With Morpurgo’s novel adapted, co-directors Marianne Elliot and Tom Morris set about gathering the best puppeteers in the business to shape this equine adventure story. Despite the production being lauded as a British triumph, it is a South African success story, as it is their puppeteers who shape-shift into Blue Fairies to bring these Pinocchio puppets to life. In creating realistic foals and thoroughbreds through a combination of levers, pulleys and rods, the ‘Handspring Puppet Company’ of South Africa are the true heroes of the production.

Another bewitching element to the production is the artist’s Rae Smith’s drawings. Appreciating that the action of War Horse shifts too rapidly for stage changes, Smith was hired to create the backdrops for the fluid action. When the play begins in Devon these illustrations are fairly standard renderings of the countryside, however when the action shifts to the fields of battle the images become more abstract with lines and smudges projected to delineate the nightmare of battle.

'Explosion' by Rae Smith.

Given I’m more of a fan of drama than action, the first half of the play appealed to me more than the second. The second half has the spectacle – gunfire that makes you jump; blackouts that exacerbate tension and a tank puppet that beggars belief – but it lacks the cohesion of the first. The first has more story with the fraternal rivalry of Albert’s father and uncle contrasted nicely with the co-operation between Albert and his horse; the second half has Joey taken off Albert and sent to be a war horse, and with this bond between man and animal broken the poignancy of the horse’s travails lose their potency. For all of that though, doing a play about a horse is a dare no one should have accepted. The fact that is delivered with such aplomb is a testament to the people who work within our wonderful Arts industry.

Enjoying both Hawk and Horse has made me feel maybe I'm missing something in not having a pet. With that in mind I'm off to my mum and dad's to dig up my Tamagotchi. Hopefully the battery still works.

Declan Zapala at the Elgar Room

This week I went to see Declan Zapala at ‘The Royal Albert Hall: Elgar Room.’

Dec has been my friend for over half my life. We first bonded over a love of stand up comedy. After his 6^th Form Asda shift, he would bound up the hill to mine where we would talk Bill Hicks over tea. Both of us - like Bill - shared the dream of being artists, untethered by commercial interests, free to be who we wanted to be; free to be different. But was it possible to be an artist when your birthplace read ‘Watford’?

Years later, Dec and me are sharing a flat. On one side of the wall he practices guitar. On the other side of the wall I write comedy. Dec and me at this point are working part-time. (Our other flatmate Beth, Dec's girlfriend, is out at work as a Social Worker for the elderly, so not doing anything nearly as important as us.) Dec is committed to a career as a classical guitarist and I’m attempting to break into stand-up comedy. Having an artistic bent, being friends and living in close proximity, it wasn’t long before people were referring to us as the Wordsworth and Coleridge of Watford – by people I mean Dec and myself. You could argue with two ‘artists’ living under one roof, our flat was fast becoming Watford’s answer to Andy Warhol’s Factory. It wouldn’t be long before we released work as culturally significant as the Velvet Underground's first album; all we needed to do was unplug the kettle and hide the remote.

The Warhol Factory. Just like 24 Mayfair Court.

Eventually I would come to realise the artist’s life wasn’t for me (this was revealed to me in a bank statement). But it was for Dec. Dec is someone who didn’t play at being an artist – like me – but someone who truly committed to it. Much of the money he makes from function work and teaching is re-invested back into the true vocation of writing, recording and performing music. He has what all good artists need: the courage to take risks when it appears reckless to do so. So it came to pass, Dec booked the Royal Albert Hall for the first gig of his album tour.

Picking up my ticket at the box office and seeing the words: ‘Royal Albert Hall presents Declan Zapala’ was a huge thrill. Knowing this gig was achieved through a coalescence of talent, hard work and originality made the experience even more gratifying, living as we do in an age where TV talent shows ignore all three. As an aside, Dec was once asked to audition for Britain’s Got Talent; he turned them down on the grounds he wasn’t willing to use a stunt guitarist for his difficult Bach piece. (I can still write jokes.)

The Elgar Room gig began with Dec showing signs of confusion as to why so many people were there to watch him. Fortunately, these are typical symptoms of playing a historic venue and the patient soon declared himself fit to play. He opened with Awakening, the eponymous track from his debut album. Awakening is a fitting first album title, conjuring as it does the idea of musical birth and arrival. It is also an apt metaphor for the album’s aesthetics: the record reminds me of that feeling when you’re emerging from sleep, caught in a Neverland of sleepy dust and sun-dappled curtains, when you are neither here nor there; it is gorgeously dreamy.

Dec then launched into a percussive piece Crystal. I forgot to mention that Dec is a percussive guitarist. He can play the guitar like a drum. Witnessing this phenomenon up close is truly awe-inspiring: seeing his arms juggle between the guitar's fretboard and body appears impossible yet through a combination of God-given talent and superhuman focus the feat is achieved. It is this kind of multi-tasking that has earned Dec the moniker, 'the octopus of sound.'

After, Dec performed Angel, which is always a personal highlight for me. The late Eric Roche composed the song for his sister, and Dec’s playing really makes a statement of the piece’s understatement. If I wasn’t already in love, I could imagine falling in love to it. It really is a beautiful serenade of a thing; a twinkling, spine-tingling swoon that Patrick Swayze’s your soul. I rather like it.

Following this is Koyunbaba, a Turkish folk song by Carlo Domeniconi. Performed over four movements, the piece is an exercise in tension, building gradually to a frenzied finish. In fact it reminds me of an old western standoff: initially the combatants stalk one another, daring the other to act, only for the heat of inaction to prove too much as the thing folds into a supercharged gunfight.

Later, a dewy-eyed Dec introduced Philomena, a song written for his mum. Last year he raised over a £1000 for the Philomena project, a charity that attempts to right the wrongs of the Catholic church by re-uniting mothers with the children forcibly removed from them. Dec’s Philomena is so called because Judi Dench’s portrayal in the film reminded Dec of his own mother. Introducing Philomena we’re told that Dec’s mum plays the bodhran, an Irish drum, so in tribute he has built a section into the piece that replicates its sound. His ability to make the guitar malleable is illustrated again later when during the middle of Broken Rhapsody he detunes his guitar to create the sound of a double bass. This experimentation marks him out as a showman, and in an art-form that can be a little po-faced this is wholly welcome.

If you’re going up to Edinburgh this year, I recommend you see Dec. Last year, his show was so well received he ended up on Radio 3 and BBC 4. Witnessing his current show, I think his live performance is even better. If you can’t make Edinburgh, buy the album and listen to a true artist at work.

Declan Zapala’s album can be bought here: http://declanzapala.com/shop/

He can be seen live at the Edinburgh Festival, St Columbus by the Castle, August 8-31^st at 5.45.

My Mad Fat Diary

This week I've been enjoying My Mad Fat Diary.

On Monday E4’s My Mad Fat Diary will draw to a close. Spanning three seasons- two long, one short- the 90’s set comedy-drama was an antidote to the channel’s otherwise putrid outpouring. My Mad Fat Diary is no Made In Chelsea. This isn’t ‘aspirational tv,' instead it contains characters and values worth aspiring to.

Rachel ‘Rae’ Earl is the protagonist, the person who pens the mad fat diary. She has just been released from a psychiatric hospital, following her admittance for self-harming, and now wants to make up for lost time. Or as she puts it: “I’m 16. I weigh 16 and a half stone and I live in Lincolnshire. My interests include music, vegging out and finding a fit boy. Scratch that. Any boy. To quench my ever-growing horn.” Rae’s opening monologue sets the irreverent tone for what’s to come: this isn't going to be a naval gazing examination of self-harm so beloved by Year 9 girls, rather a raucous, riotous, up and at ‘em look at adolescence.

Rae's humour at play.

(Note: I’m worried the above comment about Year 9 girls is generalised, and therefore unfair. But as an English teacher, I’ve read more stories about self-harm than you’ve had hot dinners. And imaginary reader, you live in a contrived land where cold options don’t exist. That’s how many stories on self-harm I’ve read. For the record, I’ve also read too many stories by boys on gangsterism. My message to teenage boys would be: put the imaginary glock down and pick up your soul. Now you’ve picked it up, load the chamber and fire the page with musings on life, the universe and everything else. Teenagers, let's not live vicariously through a Daily Mail ‘yuff’ headline, reach higher for something purer and then write me a story. )

Sorry I had to get that off my chest. I'll continue now.

On leaving hospital Rae is re-acquainted with her school friend Chloe. She is Rae’s antithesis: conventionally pretty, conventionally popular and conventionally dressed. Through her, Rae meets a group of friends who don’t see Rae’s madness or fatness, but the vulnerable charm and rude eloquence we the viewer sees. As with all good shows, the secondary characters are pivotal to the programme’s success, and Mad Fat has them in spades. Chloe, mentioned earlier, is not the vacuous princess her appearance implies: she is vulnerability incarnate, concealing the pretty woman fear of being a woman of no importance. Archie is a homosexual in the 1990’s – an era of lad culture. His cowardly attempts to ‘out’ himself, although humorous, are played with an underlying sadness, recognising how society manacled gay men and women. And then there’s Finn, the apple of Rae’s eye; the man she wants to bite into, chew up and swallow whole- including the pips. (“His arse is so beautiful, sometimes I have to stop myself from crying when I look at it.”) Rae, overweight in body, underfed in confidence, is stuck in the “friends zone” with Finn, an intermediate state of limbo she longs to swap for sex heaven.  Her caustic response to this is both hilariously and horrifyingly relatable to anyone who has ever said ‘I love you’ in their head and not had the other person say it back.

The gang.

Over the three seasons, the course of true friendship never does run smooth as typical teenage infighting threatens to capsize hard earned camaraderie. Unlike the ephemeral relationships of Made In Chelsea though, wounds are licked, pints are raised and order is soon restored. As a secondary school teacher, My Mad Fat Diary is the kind of programme I wish students were watching. In an age where the ‘self’ is promoted through profiles, ‘selfies’ and (cough) blogs, we can sometimes spend too much time looking in rather than out at what’s around us. Mad Fat is a celebration of interdependence, of how our friends can make us stronger, happier and healthier. I’ll be very sad to see it go.

The whole of 'My Mad Fat Diary' is available on demand at All 4.

Grayson Perry: Provincial Punk

This week I went to see Grayson Perry’s Provincial Punk at the Turner Contemporary.

I was never one for art in school. Try as I might I never had an aptitude for it. This always disappointed me. I was academic in other areas of school. Always felt fluent with a pen; able to mix words into landscapes of horror, mystery and wonder. With a paintbrush I felt different. Dyslexic. The brush never sat right; never fell easy in my hand; I couldn't draw what I saw.

Sunday nights were the worst. I had put my Art homework off and now had to do it. My attempts to summon my muse had yet again proved unsuccessful (I have since learnt that muses only come on walks, in dreams, through strong opiates – not via the game Championship Manager 1997/98), so I was forced to acknowledge that with inspiration taking a day off I would have to sort the work out myself. Reluctantly, I would go to my bag, get the sketch book from the bottom, roll up my sleeves, grit my teeth, put my shoulder to the wheel, my nose to the grindstone  - and ask my dad to do the homework for me. Raj Theivamanoharan, my father, has got me out of many jams in his time but doing my art homework ranks alongside the best of them.

"I coulda had class. I coulda been somebody. I coulda been a contender, instead of a bum, which is what I am let's face it," if it weren't for this game.

Art is just something I’ve never been interested in. I mean I’ve been to galleries out of a sense of duty, made the right noises, affected the right stance, but I’ve never felt anything towards it. I appreciate the time and skill that has gone into it, but if ‘art’ is a conversation between strangers then too often I think it’s one-way one, a bus stop madman yelling 'apocalypse now' at you.

My feelings towards art have changed though, mainly because of Grayson Perry. Perry is an atypical artist in sound, appearance and work. He was born in a working class family in Chelmsford, Essex. With his mum and dad’s acrimonious split, his childhood was traumatic. Nor was he a typical boy: Perry preferred femininity to fighting; art to football. In a daring raid on conformity, the teenager came out as a transvestite. This brazen display of otherness was met by hostility, causing the young artist to leave for London, where he eventually sought sanctuary in the squats of punk culture. 

Claire (Grayson Perry's alter-ego) and Grayson Perry

Provinical Punk is the contradictory title for a contradictory man. It tracks Perry’s evolution from solipsistic experimentalist to inclusive social-commentator. The latter work on display is redolent of the great anthropologist, Charles Dickens. Dickens as stroller would walk twenty miles a day, breathing in the city before returning home to expel it on the page. Perry is the same, only his medium is different. On More 4 a few years ago, Perry did a programme on taste, each episode featured a different class: working, middle and upper. Over the course of the episode he would meet different characters (tattooist, boy racers, football fans) and then turn the class into a tapestry. At the end the subjects were invited to the gallery where their pride and astonishment was captured on camera. Seeing ordinary human behaviour captured in the glass jar of art was infinitely more interesting to me than any dull portrait in the Louvre.

The working class tapestry: 'The adoration of the cage fighter.'

Perry’s earlier work, however, is less Dickensian, more Salinger, with Catcher In the Rye identity and angst prevalent. One amusing work is a pot shaped in the style of the European Cup, decorated with a football shirt motif, on each a thing he hates about the beautiful game: ‘camaraderie,’ ‘lads,’ ‘Brylcream.’ As you move through the exhibit you note how the satire remains, but the scope has widened. A moving piece is a map with dominant feelings capitalised to symbolise the city (GREED) and dormant emotions lower-cased for the towns (irritation), on the fringes the seas wash in threatening to engulf the land (PARANOIA, JEALOUSY, DOUBT). These existentialist pieces demonstrate that beyond Perry’s colourful exterior a serious thinker rests at play.

"Map of an Englishman"

Most impressively for me is the final room. On the wall hangs a tapestry chronicling Perry’s view of Britain. Attributes, catchphrases, figureheads, brands, personalities and ideals typifying the nation are emblazoned across it. Being half-British but feeling completely British, I’ve always been fascinated by what it means to be English/ British. Looking at the piece, I feel Perry comes close to capturing the character of a nation. Indeed, the Conservative Party would be well advised to look at the piece to appreciate how multi-faceted the British character is and how pushing a prescribed set of ‘British values’ in the classroom may be a little reductive when compared to it.

"Comfort Blanket" - my favourite piece.

For me then, Perry is the intersection where art and literature meet. Every one of his pieces has an idea, a theme; it isn’t just art for art’s sake. As a book reader, I crave character and demand narrative; with Perry’s work you get both. He has made me, an avowed art atheist, go to a gallery through choice. If you too have ever doubted art’s worth in society, I assure you Perry will make you believe again.

Grayson Perry's Provincial Punk will be at the Turner Contemporary in Margate until the 13th September.