It's taken me long enough, but I have finally got into the brilliant sound and lyricism of Alt-J (∆).
The British four-piece met at Leeds university, and after a couple of previous, less Google-able names, settled on the command on a Mac keyboard used to produce the Greek letter Delta. According to guitarist and bassist Gwil Sainsbury, 'In mathematical equations it's used to show change.'
Ah, the thinking man's pop band.
Initially making success with suitably geometrically-titled single Tessellate from debut album An Awesome Wave, certain tracks have grown in internet stardom. My favourite, the beautiful Taro, has spawned an extremely moving National Geographic style video.
It's more moving when you understand the premise of the song: Like several tracks on AAW, Taro tells a somewhat tragic story. In this case, the love story of famous war photographer Robert Capa and revolutionary journalist/photographer Gerda Taro. (I previously posted about Robert Capa's photos, truth in media, etc, in THIS POST mostly concerning Susan Sontag's critical essay Regarding the Pain of Others).
They met during the Second World War, often publishing photographs under the joint name Robert Capa. They became lovers. Towards the end of the war, Taro was killed in a battle in Spain. Reportedly they were engaged at the time. Capa never married. Years later, he was killed by a landmine in Indochina. His work, which was highly provocative at the time for showing the truth and horror of conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War and WWII, inspired a generation of photographers and journalists and has left a powerful legacy. A few years ago I went to an exhibition at the Barbican featuring and inspired by his photographs and brutal, sensitive images of war.
The lyrics follow the moment Robert Capa is killed, thinking how he will soon be reunited with Gerda Taro. It is so refreshing to read/hear such moving lyrics/melodies that exist in fairly mainstream pop music, which are so un-egotistical. This story is not about the singer, the band, their image, etc. It's about the connection they feel to this story, to these remarkable people who were separated forever by the life they chose to live, doing what they felt was right. (Put that in your pipe and shake your arse to it, Nicki Minaj). The video is of course extremely appropriate given their professions, nicely edited to the song. Well done mysterious Youtuber.
I've read that a writer is only a reporter for what they have lived. In the previous post, the journalist becomes the story - part of the message. Perhaps a musician can be a camera, rather than a photo.
TARO
by ALT-J
"Indochina, Capa jumps Jeep, two feet creep up the road
To photo, to record meat lumps and war,
They advance as does his chance – very yellow white flash.
A violent wrench grips mass, rips light, tears limbs like rags,
Burst so high finally Capa lands,
Mine is a watery pit. Painless with immense distance
From medic from colleague, friend, enemy,
foe, him five yards from his leg, From you Taro.
Do not spray into eyes – I have sprayed you into my eyes.
3:10 pm, Capa pends death, quivers, last rattles, last chokes
All colours and cares glaze to grey, shrivelled and stricken to dots,
Left hand grasps what the body grasps not – le photographe est mort.
3.1415, alive no longer my amour, faded for home May of '54
Doors open like arms my love, Painless with a great closeness
To Capa, to Capa Capa dark after nothing,
re-united with his leg and with you, Taro.
Do not spray into eyes – I have sprayed you into my eyes.
Hey Taro! "
As I might have mentioned a few times, I signed myself up to do the Bristol Half Marathon. This image above is to confirm that I did indeed complete it. Of course you cannot tell that it is me and in any case you don't know what I look like. You will just have to trust me. 13 miles in 2 hours and 2 minutes. I don't know if that's good, bad or average. All I know is that I have been limping for three days but feel a tremendous sense of self worth.
Naturally I have been telling everyone I run into (that's an accidental pun) that I did this, how it felt, etc, etc. While most people politely smile or say, 'Oh, very impressive,' it is not hard to discern that beyond the veneer of perfunctory pleasantries - usually in the eye or the fumble of a disinterested wrist - that they are bored by what I'm saying.
I can conclude from this two potential answers:
1) They are bored by what I am saying and have no interest in me past this conversation and certainly no interest in running.
Or
2) That while they are genuinely lightly impressed by my brief necessity to brag, THEY have not just run a half marathon and THEY cannot really relate to what I am saying.
To me, the entire experience, in terms of profundity, was up there with realising my parents were fallible just like any other human being and that even if there is a god I will never know until it is too late. (Also, that Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan are still alive, despite the various social entertainment precedents that state it should be otherwise.)
This then sent me off on a series of thoughts relating to individualism vs collectivism, Id and Ego, exterior vs interior self, body soul and so on. Mostly it made me think about how, however hard you try to relay what you feel, what happened to you, what an impact it had on you, who you are telling will never actually be able to understand. Your experience is unique and completely solitary. Some might argue that this is true of everything, which I think to an extent is the case, but there is a scale, and some things rise high on that scale into positions of total isolation. (This could be a moment to quote Sartre but he's out of favor with me at the moment). In Regarding The Pain of Others Susan Sontag loosely concludes that despite ever increasingly disturbing and ubiquitous images of violence in the media, we the onlooker, the voyeur, will never actually be able to empathise with the subjects in the images - with the victims of the atrocities. It was the ten years since 9/11 the day I ran this race. Sontag mentions 9/11, its reproduced images, the ambiguous, amoral suggestions of beauty in images of such atrocities.
Her words, these images, and now, incongruously enough, this run, have compounded in me one idea I can only see as fundamental truth: In the most powerful moments of living we are invariably alone, and will always be alone with the memory of it. Even if someone has gone through a similar, even near identical situation as you, do you really 'share' the experience? Is it ever enough to share this closeness with someone who feels similar, but cannot ever feel 'the same'? Do we not feel betrayed when it transpires that a moment shared with another was actually felt differently on their part? We feel cut off from them, from all others, from the bond of the moment - suddenly we are coldly aware of our alone-ness.
A wonderful quote which has prompted these thoughts into a post comes from The Sea, The Sea, which I have so nearly finished. SPOILER ALERT! In order for you to understand the context I have to surreptitiously ruin the book for you. The protagonist Charles' cousin and only living relative, James, suddenly dies days after they have spent time together. He has always resented his cousin and only on this last meeting feels any kind of closeness or affection to him. Now he is dead he realises he is totally alone in the world:
"What an egoist I must seem in the proceeding pages. But am I so exceptional? We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through the secret viral busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason. Thus we must live unless we are saints, and are there any? There are spiritual beings, perhaps James was one, but there are no saints."
Perhaps Iris Murdoch, through Charles Arrowby's voice, is right. While we cannot fully always understand or feel what another has felt, may never feel, will never be able to feel, we only truly know what we feel - and then hope that another has felt something similar. We imagine, certainly in a social context, that we are linked into pockets by our similarities. That our sameness links us. But this, I am starting to think, is a kind of basic aesthetic illusion. Perhaps it is easier initially to relate to someone from a similar background with similar life experiences, but ultimately they are only similar. Our connection is still just that: a connection between two separate parts. (I could, of course, say 'separate halves,' in the Platonic sense of perfect love coming from a split whole that existed somewhere esoteric before birth. But as far as I can see that is really just a metaphor to describe an intangible emotion.) I suppose what I am trying say, much less articulately than many others, is that sometimes we really are alone, in every sense of the term. But this aloneness need not be cause for concern when the blatancy of our singularity is thought about more pragmatically. AKA yes, you are alone, you are an individual, no one else will ever think or feel precisely as you do. I feel like an advice counselor in a secondary school.While I mention this detachment I felt telling people about the marathon afterwards I have neglected to write about how incredibly unified I felt with every single person who was also running the race. Even those people I did not see, I still felt somehow bound to them. This in itself is a paradox (perhaps this whole thought process is a fallacy - perhaps humanity is continually dotted by fallacies??). I was aware of my singular sensation while remaining part of a silent, conglomerate feeling. Joined vs alone. I am Jack's raging bile duct.The only way I can make sense of this kind of troubling set of emotions is, in a wanky way, through literature. Don't do that face into your keyboard - you know what I mean. Reading a book creates an incredible connection that I still find startling - how close you feel to a stranger without ever meeting them or knowing anything about them. It is the polar opposite of Susan Sontag's justified (I think) concerns about voyeurism, spectacle, disaster and the media. Seeing an image of someone in distress, while appearing to present you with a closer 'realer' image of them, does not bring you as close as something as abstract as printed symbols in a book from Waterstones.This is a new phase in my judge a book by its cover debate. Metaphorical book, metaphorical cover. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
I'm reading Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag at the mo. It's really good. You should totally get your read on with her. It seems to be one of those theoretical books that will only become more relevant the more numbed we become to increasingly frequent and disturbing images of violence. One frame of reference for her is the below photo taken by Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War, which was also around the time that photo journalism was entering the media (especially photos of wars). She questions the true 'objectivity' of the camera's lens, pointing out its many potential bias' and discrepancies. These discrepancies, specifically, are what can lead to misconceptions or reinventions of the truth, when applied or backed up by a photo. AKA a photo can say what you want depending on how you shoot it and what headline you stuff it under. 
Falling Soldier, Robert Capa
The Casting, Omer Fast
It was a piece called The Casting by artist Omer Fast. It involved a double-sided screen suspended in a black room. On one side is a split screen where a story is enacted by actors who are standing still. The story cuts between two narratives that are narrated by a soldier. The soldier tells the stories of two traumatic days in his life: 1, the day he broke up with his girlfriend and 2, the day he accidentally shot a civilian in Iraq. The narratives are spliced together, yet make sense. It is only until you walk around the screen to see the artist interviewing the soldier in a studio, that you realise how easily you have been taken in. Here the cuts are inelegant and overt in their intent to deceive, the story clearly an invention of the artist, not the soldier. His two stories have become one and taken on an entirely new set of meanings. This, combined with Sontag and Capa, have made me super skeptical about everything I see on the news or read in the paper. It is an old phrase that we 'shouldn't believe everything we see in the news', but maybe we have become complacent, even with that warming lurking in our heads. Check out this video and keep the skepticism alive, i say. It's an incredible, thought-provoking piece.
