herbie hancock's 'river'/ ry cooder's 'i, flathead'

i rarely write about music here, partly because i don't feel qualified to do so, and mostly because i struggle to capture the meaning of sounds in words, but i've been so touched by two new(ish) albums over the past fornight that i had to mention them. herbie hancock's 'river' - a love letter to joni mitchell from the jazz pianist whose playing can be evoked but not circumscribed by images of eating chocolate, or lying in a hot salt spa, of breathing deeply on a balcony balmy night, or maybe just the words 'it's bloody amazing', and ry cooder's 'i, flathead' - an acclamation of youthful days when the most exciting thing in the world was driving a cool car and trying to get a cute girl to catch your eye ... hancock's music drove me home last night; cooder's made me think. i'm going to stop writing and listen to corinne bailey rae sing 'river', and leave you with the thought for the day i wrote for radio ulster last week.

"You know when you hear a wonderful piece of music for the first time, and it captures your attention so much that you just have to hear it again straight away? Last week it happened to me when I heard a new song by Ry Cooder, the slide guitarist and facilitator of the amazing band of elderly Cubans, the Buena Vista Social Club. Cooder has a new album out with the impossibly brilliant title ‘I, Flathead’, an older man’s love songs to the feeling of being young, and learning the romance of driving a really cool car.

The album is about the exuberant exhiliration of living completely free, which a friend of mine likes to describe as dancing like no-one’s watching. When you apply this idea to the rest of life – to the choices we make every day, from what to eat to what route to take to work, to who to live with, and what to do with the years we have on earth, it’s a useful corrective to the monotonous patterns many of us seem stuck in.

Research shows that when you ask elderly people about their regrets, they tend to agree that if they had it over again, they would take more risks. They might choose a different career path with less financial security because it would be more psychologically rewarding. They might take the trip they always avoided because they didn’t speak the local language. They might, as Shakespeare has Edgar say in ‘King Lear’, ‘speak what we feel, not what we ought to say’.

What would it mean to follow this advice, and ‘dance like no-one’s watching’? Some of us today need to be reminded that no matter what the circumstances of our lives, what has happened to us, or how we have fallen short of our own ambitions or values, we still have freedom to choose to get back in the game. We can take the risk we’ve always avoided. Today might be the day that someone listening picks up the phone and calls an old lover, who turns out to have been waiting for years to hear from them; or someone else quits the job that deadens their soul, and pursues the creative dream that has lain dormant since they were a teenager; or someone else decides to stop allowing the pain of past trauma to prevent them living a life where the only limit is their own vision of the possible.

Today, someone’s going to dance like no-one’s watching, someone’s going to speak what they feel, not what they ought to say, someone’s going to get back in the game – it doesn’t matter which metaphor you use: but if today is a day for someone to free themselves from whatever unnecessary restrictions they have allowed to hold them back, why shouldn’t that someone be you?"

the savages

'the savages' has a joke for a title, in that it implies we haven't progressed much as a race since the prehistoric times when throwing bones in the air was the height of creativity, or even more recently, when the european medieval homicide rate was 50% in some places (you had a one in two chance of being murdered by someone you knew in the days of the black plague, the early inquisition, and orlando bloom's inter-faith dialogue). 'the savages' is about siblings trying to care for the elderly father who didn't treat them well, and whom they don't like very much. in that sense, it is about living and dying, and, in the context of contemporary medical culture - which can keep people alive far longer than ever before, leading to the inevitable fact that one day, someone is going to have pull the plug. savage indeed. or at least potentially so.

there are dozens of movies about 'dying well' - from 'stepmom' to 'terms of endearment'; and even though these have a reputation for over-egging the sentimentality, i don't mind them that much. we all have to deal with the death of loved ones; this is hard enough without taking away the comfort that a 'soft' movie might bring to the bereaved. though, of course, in these movies debra winger and susan sarandon don't exactly die like we do in real life.

'the savages' wants to present something more honest; and in philip seymour hoffman and laura linney's brother and sister pair, and most especially philip bosco's father, portrays a painful little play. these are characters with whom you sympathise, rather than like. they make bad decisions. they are self-centered. they have a little bit of heart. it feels like real life.

no magic solutions present themselves; but facing the death of a parent does in some sense help the children grow up, if only a little. and the movie ends with a motif that some may find grating, but i think is one of the most honestly life-affirming images in the movies.

read more of my film posts and the ongoing conversation with jett loe at the film talk website

walker: the anti-wanted

alex cox is one of those film-makers with a committed following among people who have managed to discover his work against the odds: his movies don't get shown in too many multiplexes, and you're not likely to find a trailer for them on websites linked to 'people' magazine. most of us know him for the weirded-out sci-fi/property developer film 'repo man', but i just spent part of a cold and sunny saturday afternoon in the company of 'walker', his 1987 piece about the involvement of an early form of neo-con 'take over the world' impetus in mid-19th century nicaragua.

in this movie, massive-scale violence is the inevitable corollary of imperialism, and (bad) religion and (selfish) politics combine to produce a sorry mess; one whose legacy still unfolds today. william walker, as played by the mighty ed harris, is what james mcavoy's character in 'wanted' would become if he ever hired a spin doctor. and the difference between 'walker' and 'wanted' is that alex cox understands that it's possible to make an entertaining film about violent people without falling in love with them.

Wanted

well, now that i've seen it, certainly not by me.

this is one of the most grotesque, patronising, blunt-edged, monotonous films i've ever seen. the question of what kind of meaning we bring to our own lives is an important one; and movies of course can be as good as any other creative media at exploring it. but 'wanted' appears to suggest that the two options available to every ordinary bloke today are simply these: act out the role of vladimir or estragon, droning away at an office on stage at a theatre of the absurd, or to kill everyone you meet. 'what the f*** have you done lately?, asks james mcavoy before the hard electric guitars start over the end credits, underlining the nihilism he's just given his soul to. well, for one thing, i know something i'm not going to waste my time doing again.

hope and dealing with the past

A Thought for the Day that I gave on BBC Radio Ulster this morning

We talk a lot these days about dealing with the past; which in itself is a pretty deep concept. I’m convinced it’s far better to try to address the profound sorrow of our recent history than to bury it along with our dead. And yet, talking and thinking about the past can leave us trapped in it – we may find ourselves spiraling into a cycle of revenge in which our conversations are colonized by blaming each other for the pain with which we allowed ourselves to be defined. It brings to mind the image of a person tied to a waterwheel trying to stay dry, and managing to keep out of the water for a few moments at a time. But the wheel just keeps on turning, and the person never lets go.

Where does hope come from in a world where we remain fixed on sorrow? It’s easy to be superficial about hope. It’s easy to talk about the well-known figures of historic peace and justice movements who are held up as examples that we should follow. But, with all due respect to the Gandhis and Martin Luther Kings of this world – because God knows we owe them respect – sometimes I think they are not the most helpful icons of how ordinary people might live peaceably – and hopefully – in a difficult world. To start with, they were public figures, leading public lives. Most of us, naturally, are not scrutinized as they were. We have to get on with the business of finding meaning amidst ordinary work, family pressures, bad weather and mortgages.

So let me offer this story instead. A friend of mine once asked a Holocaust survivor what he feels when he hears a German accent. The man, who had nearly died in a Nazi concentration camp said, ‘It took days for the train to take me to the camp. In the early hours of each morning, the train stopped for a break. And every morning, German villagers came out of the woods, and put food through the slats of the train to feed us. So when I hear a German accent, before I allow myself to think: That person might be the son of the people who tried to kill me; I think: That person might be the son of the people who tried to feed me.’

The story should speak for itself; but if any interpretation is needed, to me this story speaks of how hope does not to have to rely on the future actions of our enemies, whoever we consider them to be, but on the fact that they had more in common with us to begin with than we may ever have realized.