Barenboim’s Three-ring Circus
If you follow me on Twitter, it should be obvious that I didn’t enjoy the last of Daniel Barenboim’s Beethoven Piano Concerto cycle at the Festival Hall.
My main purpose in going was to hear Schoenberg’s brilliant Variations for Orchestra, op. 31 rather than the piano concerto, which I expected to be lush, mannered and performed as though 30 years of work from musicians like John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood and co counted for nothing. Those fears were realised in the rendition of Beethoven’s third piano concerto, which reminded me powerfully, especially in the first movement cadenza, of Grieg.
The programme announced an “illustrated talk” on the Schoenberg following the break, by which they meant a talk with excerpts from the piece, rather than some kind of even more ghastly PowerPoint presentation.
Barenboim is extremely fond of his own voice, and he’s perhaps the most verbally incontinent maestro since Bernstein, as his Reith Lectures a few years ago and his appearance at the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert demonstrate. Here, he patronised an audience he blatantly accused of not knowing the piece by repeating the theme at least 20 times and then showing how it was transformed throughout the piece.
This is potentially an interesting technique, but was ruined by his insistence on treating us like a bunch of musically ignorant fools, which may be true of part of the audience but is certainly not so for all of it. The result for anyone who knows the piece was that it was ruined by an over-emphasis on the theme and by Barenboim’s characterisation of the other material as “irrelevant”.
The performance of the Variations was OK, and lacked the mannerism and inaccuracies of the Beethoven. But then, something almost unbelievably crass happened.
Normally an educated audience will pause before applauding until the conductor has signalled by relaxing his arms that the piece has concluded, not because he doesn’t think the audience knows the piece has finished, but in order to focus the audience’s minds on the music they have just heard. Abbado does this with Mahler, to the extent that he sometimes waits for a minute or more at the end of a symphony – especially the 9th – before allowing the audience to applaud. The effect of this is extraordinary; there is a very special sound made by 2,000 people trying to remain entirely silent.
Barenboim, on the other hand, waited perhaps a second before announcing “that’s it” over his shoulder. The audience, fully in thrall to his cult of personality, stood to applaud, despite the fact that for a majority of them it was the first time they’d ever heard the piece.
Incredibly, it got worse.
Schoenberg’s atonal music is very cerebral even though at its heart is a searing passion. It has a very specific aesthetic that is almost monk-like. It is pure intellectual music. It has no “story” (what musical academics would call a “programme”). It’s like a Samuel Beckett play, or an abstract expressionist painting. It’s at the junction between intellect and aesthetics. This is why I love it.
Barenboim returned to the podium and indicated that he was going to play an encore and, true to form, decided to introduce it with some pseudo intellectualising. He quoted Milan Kundera in Ignorance making fun of Schoenberg for expecting that people would whistle his music in the streets instead of Strauss waltzes. Kundera’s point is that intellectual art remains intellectual art and rarely if ever transitions to popularity. For an example, think of how many people can sing the start of Beethoven’s 5th symphony compared to the number of can sing the start of (or have even heard) the Grosse Fuge or the Missa Solemnis.
Barenboim’s reading of Kundera was so wrong-headed that he then announced that he was going to play “a Strauss Waltz” (in fact he didn’t play a “waltz” but Unter Donner und Blitz, which is a polka). It’s the most crass thing I’ve ever experienced in a concert hall. It’s like pouring hot chocolate sauce over beautifully prepared sashimi.
In another of his great books – perhaps his greatest – The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera rails against kitsch which he memorably defines as “the absolute denial of shit”. Strauss’s world is in utter denial of shit, set as it is atop the lofty, saccharine heights of kitsch. There is no music more opposite to Schoenberg’s works than Strauss. Barenboim’s reading of Kundera is so perverse that the only possible explanation I can think of is that he was deliberately insulting the audience, as if he were saying “look at this shit that you prefer”.
But I’m certain that’s not what he was doing; the public’s affection and adulation is too important to him, which can be clearly seen when he takes the podium for a solo bow, or stands out in front of the orchestra, blatantly courting a standing ovation. Contrast this with Abbado’s self-effacing behaviour on the podium, or with Salonen, or Boulez, or Mackerras, or any number of more modest maestros. Also, consider his bizarre programme at the Proms a couple of years ago where he paired Bartók and Ligeti with, wait for it, Kodály and Enescu (the only link being the composers’ Hungarian nationality), with an encore by Strauss again (which went catastrophically wrong and nearly broke down, if I remember correctly).
Barenboim is not a servant of the music, and is not an intellectual, despite his pretensions. He is a shameless showman who deserves to be treated as such. I don’t think I ever want to hear him make music ever again.
Why the Royal Opera’s New Tristan Should be Applauded, not Booed
Last night I attended the premier of the Royal Opera’s new production of Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Antonio Pappano and directed by Christof Loy. As has become routine with this most conservative of audiences, the production team was loudly, yobbishly booed.
First, it implies that Loy and his team have been less than honest in their approach to the production, that they are charlatans or impostors. But there’s nothing to support this view at all. You may disagree with their interpretation – for example you may think that Tristan is a tragic love story – but that doesn’t invalidate it.
Second, in contrast with Loy, Pappano received a standing ovation for his conducting, those cheering him conveniently overlooking that he is Artistic Director and that Loy was his own choice as director (which he acknowledges in the programme). Not only Pappano, but also Nina Stemme – the production’s Isolde – are on record as being of one mind on how Tristan should be approached from a ‘non-heroic’ point of view. So the booing of the director doesn’t make any sense. If you’re going to boo, boo the entire creative leadership of the project. (Stemme deservedly received a thunderous ovation.)
The conservative elements of the audience seem to want an entirely literal interpretation of Wagner’s stage directions, but that approach was comprehensively cast aside by his own grandson, Wieland, at Bayreuth in the 1960s. Literalism is dead, and long may it remain so.
The genius of Wagner’s work is that it can survive truly awful productions, and Loy’s is very far from that. In fact, pace the morons who booed, it is insightful and sheds new light on some important aspects of the work.
Tristan is the by far the most compact and consistent of Wagner’s works. It was conceived and composed over a comparatively short period of time, and its philosophical underpinnings are miles from the confusion of Feuerbach and Schopenhauer that plagues the Ring. It is a work of startling modernity, even to today’s ears. It is endlessly young, and as such requires a modern response. It is our duty not to allow it to become a museum piece.
John Deathridge has argued convincingly that Tristan is not a love story, but a death story. I repeat: it is not about love, but the longing for release from the torment of love. It is not about the social mores of the 19th century like some Jane Austen novel. It has universal and timeless relevance. This deserves to be brought out by the production. Strapping Tristan into some heroic plastic armour and slapping a Cornish castle on a painted backdrop are not a noble aim for a modern production.
Can we possibly imagine that if Wagner were alive today that he would have insisted on preserving his work unchanged? Wagner was more radical than perhaps any other composer in history – especially in his use of the most cutting-edge stagecraft available – and would surely have tried to bring his opera as up to date as it could possibly be. To suggest a literal interpretation is to go against the spirit of Wagner himself.
Loy’s production is minimal in the extreme. The stage is laid out exactly the same for each act. It is divided into two sections – upstage and downstage – that are separated by a large red velvet curtain. Nearly all of the singing occurs on a steeply raked grey platform downstage. Upstage, behind the curtain, there is what looks like a banqueting hall, with simple tables, chairs and candelabras. The outside world is only hinted at with large arched windows being sketched in. The walls of this part of the stage are entirely white. It is very strongly reminiscent of the designs for the Dogme film Festen.
The chorus remains in the rear half of the stage – i.e. behind the curtain – and characters only move into the front half when they enter the ‘onstage’ action. In fact, for long periods the curtain is shut, and when it is open the figures in the background are often frozen in place, as if ‘day’ has entirely stopped.
Far from being contrary modernism, this is Loy’s way of highlighting the divide between the world of day – the world that Tristan is tired of – and the world of night, the world of Tristan’s and Isolde’s love. Das Wunderreich der Nacht (roughly: “the wonder-realm of night”), as Tristan calls it.
Behind the curtain – in the world of day, where Tristan is expected to play the part of the Hero – it is boastful, egotistical, male, false. In Tristan’s world of night – in front of the curtain, where Tristan can be himself – there is only the truth of his love for Isolde and the torment it brings.
The curtain is not without unwelcome side effects. At the ‘Insight Evening’ for Tristan put on by the Royal Opera Education Department, Pappano’s musical assistant David Syrus remarked that they were having some trouble with it from an acoustic point of view (Loy didn’t look thrilled that Syrus had revealed the existence of the curtain), and this came out in particular at the start of Act III during the extended cor anglais solo which sounded like it was given from the rather cramped wings, rendering the sound rather boxy and too close to us. Consequently the joyous alarm that goes up when the shepherd sights Isolde’s ship was similarly lacking in resonance and visceral thrill.
There was also a detail which I wasn’t certain I picked up correctly: it looked as though Loy was suggesting that Brangäne failed to give the lovers enough warning of Melot’s arrival because she was having sex with Kurwenal. (Not that they give a shit; they are by that stage “consecrated to death” as Wagner has it.) An interesting idea, but the problem was that it wasn’t possible to be sure what was going on and at least half the house must have been unable to see it at all. Though how right Loy was to have Brangäne issue her warning from behind the curtain, from the world of day.
Loy’s conception of Tristan is as a high-functioning depressive. At the opening of Act III, Tristan – sung with incredibly delicacy by Ben Heppner – is slouched in his seat, mentally dead. His existential angst is the longing for death, for annihilation, oblivion.
Heppner’s performance is open to criticism, and I think most critics will say that the role – in particular in Act II – stretched him beyond his limits. His voice cracked several times – unintentionally – under the pressure of how quietly he was trying to sing. I’ve never heard an opera singer sing so quietly, and it wasn’t by accident: he did it with Pappano’s full support. For much of Acts II and III, the orchestra were often on the very edge of audibility. Heppner reserved the heldentenor voice for the moments that Tristan is playing the hero. Thrilling as Heppner’s voice is in full cry, it belongs to the world of day. In his performance, Tristan’s true voice is muted, almost internal.
This is brave singing indeed. Never has Tristan seemed more vulnerable, more on the edge of sanity. Where most tenors have Tristan tipping into madness only when on the edge of death in Act III, Heppner has him there from the very beginning. His arrogance in the face of Brangäne’s message from Isolde is mere show.
Stemme was a revelation as Isolde, her voice holding up under the intense strain of the first two acts, giving a luminous account of the part and a near ideal rendition of the Liebestod. Most important though was her acting, which was vital to Loy’s conception. Isolde is at times wrathful, haughty, sarcastic, tender, crazed, wildly in love, seductive and longing for death. To bring all these elements of the role through is an extraordinary achievement, especially when combined with vocal beauty, clear diction and highly disciplined rhythm.
Loy’s production is not just brave in stripping the staging back to the essentials – as I said before, this follows in the great tradition of Wieland Wagner’s post-war productions at Bayreuth – but also in small details.
I’ll highlight one here, from the opening of Act II. Isolde and Brangäne argue about whether the light that warns Tristan to stay away should be extinguished. Here the light is one of the candelabras from the banqueting hall. There are three candles. When Isolde puts out the light she actually only extinguishes two of the candles, and is burnt by the second of these. A telling detail: she is not yet sure of herself, and day (the light represents the last gleaming of day in their night-world) is still a part of her world. She longs for Tristan, yet an extended debate about their love is shortly to follow. Only once they have abandoned themselves to the night is the day banished. And so it is that Loy has Tristan extinguish the final candle as their argument concludes and they embark on the beautiful, ethereal duet O sink herneider. In a production of such restraint, these details are crucial.
Tristan is almost impossible to stage, so radical is its pared down dramaturgy, so challenging is the music to both audiences and performers alike. Loy and Pappano have given us a deeply intelligent and thrilling rendition of it with a brilliant cast (I’ve not mentioned how outstanding Michael Volle was as Kurwenal or how insightful John Tomlinson was as King Mark), perhaps the best Tristan cast assembled on stage in London for a generation or more. It is a triumph of thought, of singing, of orchestral playing and of staging. It deserves to be applauded and remembered. Keep your boos to yourselves.
The Wire, Season Five
This morning I finished my second complete viewing of The Wire, and I’m more strongly convinced than ever that it is the best TV ever made.
Enough has been written about how great the show is, and if you haven’t watched it, I urge you to do so immediately. It’s available from iTunes or on DVD.
What I want to write about here are some of the specific issues raised by the fifth and final season.
For me, although I’ve done so in the past, a ranking of the first four of seasons is pointless. Each of them is different, and each of them is brilliant. Taken together, they form an astonishingly moving and powerful picture of a modern city on the edge of collapse. They do it without ever resorting to the kind of flashy – or convenient – plot lines of a show like CSI. Much is left to us to imagine, and the hallmark of the show is ambiguity. Who are the good guys? Are drug dealers – like Bodie for example – necessarily evil? Are senior policemen to blame for the obsession with statistics rather than quality police work, or is it the politicians? Is it even the politicians, or is it us, the voters, who cannot see the system in the round?
For all of these reasons, The Wire is the most important piece of television I’ve ever seen.
But season 5 is nowhere near this level of quality. On the first viewing, it was a tremendous disappointment, and that feeling is only reinforced on the second go-round.
The BBC have now finished their screening of the complete show, so it seems reasonable to discuss details of the plot here. If you haven’t finished watching it yet, I should warn you that there are heavy plot spoilers in what follows. Seriously, don’t read the rest if you don’t know how the series ends.
I think it comes down to this. In the final season, the show relinquishes ambiguity and makes clear who the bad guys are. We are given at least one character – Gus Haynes, the city editor of the Baltimore Sun newspaper – who is wholly good. We are given at least four characters who are wholly bad – Scott Templeton, the Sun reporter who manufactures portions of the serial killer story, his two editors, and the Republican governor of Maryland, the last of whom we never see on screen.
None of these four characters is allowed to show why they behave the way they do. In Templeton’s case, it is overweening ambition and self-regard that makes him force the story. At no time is there ever an honest motive behind his deception. This sets him apart from McNulty and Freamon (who I’ll come to in a bit) who cross the line in the name of a perverted sense of justice. McNulty even gives voice to this plot flaw in the final episode when he confronts Templeton: “I know why I did it, but fuck if I can figure out what it gets you in the end”.
This weakness in the story inevitably comes across in the acting too. We are shown the same basic scene over and over again as Templeton petulantly reacts to Haynes’s rigour by snatching his keys and notebook and heading out of the office, leaving his swivel chair spinning. Templeton’s frustration is not justified, and so Simon can’t give him words to express it.
The Templeton problem is made worse because of the comparison with two entirely good characters: Haynes and Mike Fletcher, the young journalist who follows Bubbles around. Early on in the season, Haynes is shown waking up in the middle of the night and calling in to the paper to check that he got some minor stat the right way around in a piece he edited. He’s the uncompromisingly correct journalist. He serves his readers and the memory of his great, honest predecessors, and will not bend on anything. He has no flaws, beyond an admirable propensity to tell the management to go fuck itself.
Fletcher is a much more minor character, but again he’s given a preachy storyline. Having followed Bubbles around, he writes a highly personal story, but is reticent to publish it unless Bubbles gives his consent, much to Haynes’s approval, even though Bubbles knew that the story was the plan all along. There’s nothing wrong with this behaviour at all: it’s the right thing to do. But it feels so clunky next to Templeton’s transgressions that it feels unnecessary. Yes, there are ethical journalists, we get it, but we don’t need them to be saints. Frankly, to any British viewers of the show, the idea of a golden age of scrupulously honest journalists telling it straight is a ridiculous idea in the first place.
The problem is made still worse by the fact that we know that Templeton is making quotes and stories up all along. With what little ambiguity is left after the convenient quotes in his opening day story, we are left in no doubt at all once he manufactures a quote from Nerese Campbell on how Daniels has been sticking the knife into Burrell. We know for certain that he’s full of shit.
Templeton’s two editors are slimy, self-satisfied and amoral chasers of a Pulitzer prize, which they duly win. They are explicitly told by Haynes and the police that Templeton is a liar but they carry on regardless. Time and again, they ignore good journalistic practice for the sake of their own glory. Again, Haynes spells this out, when he explains that they’ll be gone from the Sun as soon as the prize is in their hands. While they’re at it, they let experienced reporters go in order to keep their own high-salaried jobs.
The governor is less of an issue, perhaps, but the problems Carcetti faces with funding the schools and his inability to provide adequate funding for the police are a direct result of his snub. It’s this funding gap that leads McNulty and Freamon to take the course they do.
I can’t think of a character in the preceding four series who is painted in these black and white terms. To take just one example of characters who would be painted as completely evil in any other show, Avon Barksdale and Russell “Stringer” Bell, as we are shown, are part of the drugs trade because that’s the position they’ve been forced into by their background, and it’s their only realistic chance of autonomy in their lives. They have a kind of code – one that falls apart in the denouement of season 3 – and a kind of honour. They do right by their people.
None of this is true of Templeton or the editors.
It’s perhaps idle to speculate about why this flaw exists, but I believe it’s linked to the fact that the show’s creator, David Simon, was once a Sun journalist (he makes a very brief cameo appearance in the final episode typing away at a computer). Simon’s recent pronouncements on the newspaper industry show that he is a believer in the golden age, and has a strong view of why the newspapers have come to be so weak.
Such opinion is to be expected from a longtime newspaper man, of course. But it doesn’t have a place, unless given a counterweight, in The Wire.
It doesn’t matter whether we agree with his analysis of the newspaper industry or not. His handling of the drugs business, one of the most controversial public policy issues of the day, is balanced. He does not demonise drug dealers, and he does not laud cops. In season 1 there are as many useless mope cops as there are decent ones. For every Wee-Bey there’s a D’Angelo.
He even examines the legalisation option in season 3 with ‘Hamsterdam’. But he shows us that, while it has positive aspects such as cleaned up corners, the legalisation area itself is a vision of hell. There are no easy answers, that’s what he seems to be saying. Maybe we’re stuck with the drug problem. There are people who want to get high, and there are people who will help them do so for a price. Given that fact, how is society to proceed? There are no answers in The Wire, except possibly that the war on drugs can never be won. As Carver says in a memorable line “this ain’t no war; wars end”.
Weak as the newspaper element of season 5 is, the gigantic flaw in the season is McNulty’s phantom serial killer storyline. It’s bad enough when it starts – quite abruptly, at the end of the second episode – but gets significantly worse when Freamon joins the conspiracy after a couple of minutes’ thought. He previously sat out years and years in the pawn shop unit wasting his detective’s talents, and all of a sudden he can’t hack it any more in major crimes and helps McNulty go even further over the top.
Apart from it being out of character because of his patience – think of Lester calmly looking over his half-moons with a worldly disapproval, a shot we see repeatedly throughout the series – it’s also far too dumb a thing for him to do. Lester, above all, is canny and understands how to build a careful case based on highly technical evidence. All of a sudden he’s willing to throw all of that away to make a case that he knows will be torn apart by a competent litigator, and for what?
As with Templeton and the key-clutching flounce, we’re also treated to multiple repetitions of Bunk Moreland giving Jimmy the ‘think about what you’re doing, motherfucker’ speech. Bunk is one of my favourite characters in the entire show, and it’s painful to watch him being given such flimsy material.
The difference with this storyline compared to the Templeton one is that McNulty and Freamon act out of genuine frustration. They know there’s a case to be made against Marlo, and they do the only thing they can think of to make it, even if it is completely flawed.
McNulty in particular is given a wildly incredible set of stories in season 5. He’s back on the drink again and screwing it up with Beadie, then inside an episode he’s apologetic and off the sauce even at his own “wake” at Kavanagh’s. He’s gone from being told that he doesn’t understand the implications of his fraudulent case to suddenly trying to put the breaks on it when he sees Keema and others wasting their time with his “bullshit”.
As with Freamon, McNulty is too smart not to have seen that this was the inevitable outcome of his actions. Certainly he’s been blind to consequences in his personal and professional life, but he’s never actually made it more difficult for real police to do police work.
I’ve been very critical of the season, and I think I’ve shown how I’m justified in doing so. But it’s not all bad and, even as a flawed season it is still way better than most other shows ever made. A few things save it from disaster, many of them just the little touches you come to expect from The Wire, like the FBI profile of McNulty’s make-believe serial killer that is a perfect character summary of McNulty himself. But for me the highlight of the season is in the trajectories of two characters: Duquan and Bubbles.
To me, Bubbles is the most important character in The Wire. His story affected me more than any other, from pity at his beatings in season four, to genuine horror when he attempted to hang himself after Sherrod’s accidental death, to joy as he finally walks up the staircase from his sister’s basement to share a meal with her. I think that one shot of perhaps three or four seconds in the final montage is worth everything.
Bubbles is at exactly the middle of the problem that Baltimore faces. He’s a victim of the system that has failed the city. He’s not innocent – far from it – but he’s in the position he’s in because it’s the only alternative he’s been given. That he finds a way to get clean and enjoy the semblance of a normal life is testimony to the humanity of the show, and of the characters who are trying to make a difference, no matter how small, to the lives of the victims. What hope there is in the show lies here.
Duquan is the most sympathetic of the children who appear from season four onwards. His relationship with Pryzbylewski is beautifully muted and free of schmaltz. It’s the kind of sympathy that we feel ourselves as we walk past a homeless person, or someone else we imagine ourselves helping.
The summing up at the end of season five shows us that life in Baltimore is a cycle. Michael is the new Omar, Valchek is the new Burrell, Fletcher is the new Haynes and, most affecting of all, Dukie is the new Bubbles. As our heart lifts at Bubbles ascending to normalcy, it breaks as we see Dukie injecting himself at the stables. His shy smile stays with us as we watch him resign himself to a life of scrapping and scraping his way to his next fix.
For all the faults of the final season, these two characters redeem it and round out the entire show. It’s difficult to imagine ever seeing anything as good on our screens. It’s just such a shame that the writers gave us two such comparatively weak storylines as the fake serial killer and Templeton’s creative journalism. They leave an unpleasant stain on an otherwise exemplary piece of drama.
GrowlMail on Snow Leopard: A Temporary Fix
[Update: Hunter Ford has taken the time to extend my very basic script so that it includes the details of the sender and an extract of the text of the mail in the Growl notification. Head over there and grab the new script: it's way better than mine.]
If you use GrowlMail, you’ll be disappointed to learn that it doesn’t work on Snow Leopard yet. Since I keep my dock hidden, without GrowlMail I don’t know that I’ve received mail unless I roll over the dock, which is frustrating and adds a little bit of background anxiety to my day.
While the awesome Growl team are working on a fix, here’s a small AppleScript that I wrote to give me a notification whenever a mail arrives. It’s less functional than the full thing because it doesn’t tell you anything about the mail other than it has arrived.
There’s no title, summary or who it’s from like there is with GrowlMail, but that’s good enough for me as a stop gap. If you figure out a way to include those details, I’d love to hear about it though.
Anyway, the script.
tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
set the allNotificationsList to {"New Email Arrived"}
set the enabledNotificationsList to {"New Email Arrived"}
default notifications enabledNotificationsList icon of application "Mail"
notify with name "New Email Arrived" title "New mail" description "New mail arrived." application name "Mail Notifier"
end tell
Copy that into AppleScript Editor (as it is now called in Snow Leopard), or you can download it from here. Save it somewhere sensible (I used /Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts)
Then, add a rule to Mail for every mail that arrives and have it run the AppleScript. Here’s a screenshot:
And that’s all there is to it. Hope you find it helpful.
Karajan’s Last London Concert
Just before Christmas last year, as I was putting the finishing touches to my family’s presents, I noticed a CD with Herbert von Karajan’s name on it. It was a
recording of his final London concert, given on 6th October 1988 at the Royal Festival Hall, in which he and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra played Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Brahms Symphony No 1 in C minor
To understand how much this concert meant to me at the time, it’s important to realise just how big Karajan was. We’re used to the idea that ‘classical’ is in terminal decline, and there are very few household names left, but at the time of his death Karajan had sold more records than Michael Jackson – 115 million of them. That’s a staggering statistic, even when you account for his vastly longer career (his first recording was made in 1938 and his last in 1989, so 50 years, give or take).
I became a Herbert von Karajan fan in the early eighties. At the time he was easily the most powerful and famous classical musician then living, and he released dozens of his recordings every year. He was reputedly responsible for Sony introducing the CD before they really wanted to, and Karajan announced that he would only record for labels that issued his performances in the new format. His wonderful live recording of Mahler’s 9th Symphony was a CD-only release, and the biggest reason I bought myself a CD player.
Towards the end of his life, Karajan conducted fewer and fewer concerts, and only a handful of those were outside Berlin, Vienna and Salzburg. He came to London in 1987 with an all-Brahms programme, but I was still at school in Somerset at the time and couldn’t think of a way to buy the tickets and get to London and back without getting into serious trouble. My friend Matthew (who sadly died a few years ago) made it because his brother Paul was at college and managed to get the tickets. I have no idea how he got permission to go to London. Maybe he went without permission, although that would have been an almost unthinkable thing to do.
By 1988 I was at Trinity College of Music in London, and once again there was a Karajan concert. I saw the advert in my parents’ copy of The Times but really there was no need to advertise – getting tickets was a near impossibility.
Matthew and I decided that we would have to sleep outside the RFH to get returns. We duly turned up at about 10pm with some pretty useless sleeping bags and tried to get some sleep. We were hassled throughout the night by people who thought we were homeless (this was Thatcher’s Britain), and somehow made it through to the morning. Shortly after 8am the next person joined the queue. The box office – which in those pre-refit days was downstairs – opened at 9:30 by which time the queue had grown considerably.
There was almost immediate excitement: they had some returns. Reluctantly, we had to pass on them: they were £80 each (about £150 in today’s money), and well out of our price range. We wondered if anyone would bother to return tickets that we could afford – if they were cheap enough for us to buy, maybe the people who had bought them would see it as too much hassle.
But we were wrong. At about 10am, three £10 tickets came in, the exact number we were looking for. Looking back, it’s strange that the RFH didn’t operate a one ticket per person policy, which is standard today, but it’s lucky for us that they didn’t. We handed over our cash – it was only a month into the first term, so I actually had some money – and didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. Standing there waiting for the assistant to hand us the tickets was like waiting to see if you’d been given a loan by the bank: that feeling of being totally in some else’s power for just a few minutes, with them having no conception of how important their decision is to you. There could be no real objection to us buying the tickets but, as students, we were very new to the idea of being adults, and used to being despised as spongers.
Suddenly we had the entire day to wait for the concert, which we hadn’t planned for. I think I went back to my halls of residence (such a grand term for a shithole) and slept for most of the day. Later, we met up with Paul and headed for the concert hall. We walked in through the ticket office entrance just to see if the queue was still going; with only an hour or so to go to the concert, it was coiling itself around the building. We found it within ourselves to have a little gloat.
Going up to the bar area, it became obvious that something wasn’t right. Eventually, there was an announcement over the PA system: the orchestra’s instruments had been delayed in getting through customs in France. They hoped that the instruments would arrive within the hour. Deflated, and convinced that I’d now never get to see Karajan conduct, we tried to think of things to do that didn’t involve talking about where the instruments were, with little success. At a loss, I went up to the hall itself to have a look at the stage, which was laid out for the concert, but without Karajan’s special rostrum that he had used since his back operations in the early 80s. I knew that with no special podium there would be no concert.
Gradually, there started to be some activity on the stage and finally, excitingly, Karajan’s podium was brought in and placed at the front. The excitement that had turned to despair returned at an even higher level, and there was an audible change in the conversations going on around the hall. A quasi-religious experience was about to begin.
I was fascinated by the idea that he was in the building. Here, in the same building as me, breathing the same air. It hardly seemed possible that Karajan would descend from his lofty Olympus to come to plain old London, never mind that I was about to set eyes on him.
Karajan was a phenomenon throughout his career. Always controversial, both on and off stage, he was reviled by a great deal of the music business and much of the press. His performances were ‘too smooth’, there was ‘no sense of the journey taken’, a ‘luxury view of a piece’. He was contrasted, unfavourably, with his predecessor at the Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler. The famous ‘Karajan Sound’ was too plush, too generic.
But Brahms was, whatever your attitude to Karajan, at the centre of his repertoire. He’d conducted the first symphony perhaps two hundred times or more. He always conducted from memory, which was comparatively rare at the time, and the Berlin Philharmonic were easily the greatest orchestra in the world. If there was a piece to hear Karajan conduct, it was this.
But, before the Brahms came the Schoenberg, a late flowering of romanticism before the great schism that was introduced with the tone row. Karajan had made a well-regarded set of recordings of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern (although today these sound almost unbearably lush to my ears), but he had not conducted any of these works for many years.
The orchestra had taken the stage – no stupid tradition of the concert master (i.e. leader) entering separately in Berlin – and all was quiet. But still he kept us waiting, waiting, waiting. Eventually, the curtain parted, and the tiny, crippled figure of my hero emerged, supported by two acolytes. The orchestra stood, and the entire hall stood and cheered. You very rarely see standing ovations in classical concerts, and I’ve never seen one before the concert started before or since. It was a tumultuous reception, not like for a rock star, but astonished, reverent, respectful, thankful.
Karajan eventually reached the podium, acknowledged the ovation, turned and schooched himself back onto the podium. Having obtained silence from the audience, he raised his arms and began.
The Berlin Philharmonic strings make an astonishing sound. It’s earthy, rich, precise and heartfelt. Even when they play quietly, their sound is intense, like a wonderfully smooth double espresso. This is true even today, when their sound is much less distinctive that it was, but at the end of the Karajan era it was at its most pungent.
Verklärte Nacht starts very quietly, with violas and basses to the fore. It was a thrilling sound, enough to give me goose bumps all over. I was very close to tears. Karajan’s interpretation had changed little from the recordings made in the 70s, but it had acquired a greater urgency and commitment. Surprisingly, it lacked the incredible polish and aloofness of Karajan’s recordings – at this stage there were almost no non-pirated live Karajan recordings available, so one took on trust that the sound in concert was similar to that in the studio. Not so: it was white hot, and often came close to spiralling out of control. The orchestra displayed an astonishing commitment to every note, with every member being fully engaged.
When you see orchestras today, you rarely see the back desks of the strings look like they care. Further towards the front, the commitment levels seem to rise, but even then, it’s nothing compared to Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic. They moved almost as one, each of them fully in command of their instrument, their instruments an extension of themselves.
The first half was over, and I have no idea what I did. No memory at all. Normally, I will stay in my seat during an interval because it helps to clear the mind for the second half, and is the quietest place you can be at the time. I don’t know if that’s what I did then.
The stage and auditorium filled up again for the second half. Brahms Symphony No 1: at the time, my favourite piece. It’s intensely serious, magisterial and noble. It’s also very beautiful. Musicologists will tell you that Brahms had made several unsuccessful attempts to write a symphony – one of which became his first piano concerto – and that he spent years writing and honing this one. It has a distinct architecture, with the two outer movements being of similar length and character and the two inner ones also being of similar, shorter length.
The piece starts with a portentous, doom-laden pounding on the timpani, with an expansive strings and woodwind accompaniment. In Karajan’s performance, this was like some pounding at the gates of hell: terrifying, intense and thrilling. After this introductory section, the movement continues into a conventional sonata form, but again seemingly weighed down by fate.
This is where criticisms of Karajan completely disintegrate. The idea there is ‘no sense of the journey travelled’ is nonsense. The first movement of Brahms 1st symphony was an emotional slog, the sound intense and immediate, the balance immaculate, the detailing perfect. But at no stage did it feel predetermined.
The inner movements are a haven from the weightiness of the outer ones, and the second in particular is of great beauty. As an oboist, I was driven mad wondering how the Philharmonic’s principle oboist, Hansjorg Schellenberger, could produce such an exquisite sound, so poised, so ethereal. I still have no idea.
The third movement, dominated by a theme in the clarinets, is more lilting and charming, but is extremely short. It ends ambiguously, as if scared off by the hulking mass of the final movement.
Like the first movement, the last begins in ominous fashion, again with timpani to the fore. Karajan’s timpanist produced an extraordinary power from his instruments, enough to cause physical recoil from the intensity of the sound. It’s a movement dominated by two themes – both very famous. The first of these is nearly always compared to the sun bursting out from behind a cloud, and is played on the horn. It’s a transcendent moment, and in Karajan’s performance it was a revelation. There was a sense of the sound blooming, as if the horn player was at the limit of his physical capacity.
For me, the most thrilling moment of the entire symphony is the entry of the trombones. They have sat idle for the whole of the piece to that point, and enter with a powerful, noble, poised chorale. It’s an earth shattering moment. It’s impossible to convey how awe inspiring this moment was – there was a sense of such retrained power, that one had a foretaste of what was to come.
The movement is episodic, and builds its tension by consistently refusing to turn to the darker theme when it seems it must. As the tension builds, so the pastoral string theme returns, and all seems well. But every time, the brass chorale reminds us of the coming battle.
For me, the movement kicks into gear with a beautiful, rasping entry in the violas. Suddenly it’s clear that this is the attempt on the summit, that there will be no more returns to easy, comfortable themes. Victory must be fought for with every ounce of strength.
How to explain the performance from here on? Music naturally makes my heart beat faster, but a great performance, full of momentum and power makes it go wild. I start to feel my pulse all over my body, and I become seized with a desire to move, as if I’m in chains. The music pins me to the seat, and my pulse rises and rises and rises. It’s a thrilling sensation, and not one that can be induced by recorded music, or just any performance. Sometimes it happens against expectations, at a concert I expected to be disappointed by, sometimes it refuses to happen when it seems that it must. I can only explain it as a direct physical connection to the music.
Maybe this is what people call ‘tunnel vision’. I become fixated on a point – usually the conductor’s back – and obsessed with urging the performance on in my mind. Only once – this concert – has the orchestra exceeded what I thought was possible. The frenetic intensity of the last few minutes of the symphony were, without question, the most intense moments of my life. I was crying uncontrollably, both with happiness at actually experiencing this unbelievable sound and with grief at the knowledge that I would never hear anything like it again.
I remembered an interview with an Olympic gold medal winning athlete in which she was asked what they were thinking as they stood on the podium to receive their medal. She said: “This is the most important moment of your life. Make sure you remember it.” This thought popped into my head. I was carried away in pure sensual enjoyment of the sound, and in that state I would forget! I had to remember what this sensation was like, and I would have to compare every moment of my future life to these moments.
The orchestra’s commitment, so impressive earlier, had now become utterly frenzied, almost self-destructive. There was a headlong dash for the end. The sound that a great orchestra produces is incredible. Bear in mind that every single player is a brilliant soloist, each capable of playing the hardest concertos in the repertoire. Each has performed, rehearsed and practised the piece for hours and hours on end. They have become practically unable to make a mistake. When they are inspired to play beyond themselves by a great musician like Karajan, the experience becomes incredibly intense. But when such a great musician lets them entirely off the leash, gives them their head, the result is indescribable. The sound became all encompassing, gigantic, oppressive, utterly thrilling. It felt like a physical weight had been placed on my chest, and the sound itself seemed to course through me. I was transported, delirious.
Only in the final few bars of the symphony is it clear that the result will be victory. The trombones are triumphant, and the entire orchestra blazes. One hundred musicians play as loud as they can, in complete abandon. It seems literally unbearable, and then, gloriously, triumphantly, it is over.
Even at a football match, I’ve never seen anything like the reaction that Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic received that night. It was sheer ecstasy, shouted out by two thousand people simultaneously. I said that standing ovations are rare, and that’s true. What’s also true is that they gather momentum. First one or two people jump up, then more join them. As the conductor leaves and then returns to the stage, more people stand and eventually a majority of the audience are on their feet. What happened for Karajan was quite different. The entire audience leapt from their seats immediately, and a enormous roar went up. As he slowly shuffled off his bike seat and turned to face the audience, the noise increased until it was an absolute tumult. People had their hands over their heads, applauding as though they’d just seen the greatest goal ever scored, their mouths open, their faces streaked with tears, astonished at what they had just seen and heard.
In the stalls, people started surging down to the front of the stage, throwing flowers into the orchestra, their flash bulbs popping relentlessly. Karajan stared into the applause as though he was standing on the prow of a ship in a massive gale, blinking slowly. He seemed slightly nonplussed. Maybe he had been so inside the music that he had forgotten there was an audience? It seemed plausible given the intensity he had achieved.
The ovation went on for several minutes, and Karajan made the painful journey off and then back onto the stage again. The noise didn’t abate for a moment, as if the audience wanted to keep the performance itself going. Eventually, the concert master signalled the orchestra that he’d had enough, and each member of the orchestra shook hands with his neighbour (they were at that time all men), and left the stage. In Europe, the audience frequently continues to clap and demands the return of the maestro, but in Britain, we give up as soon as it’s clear there won’t be an encore.
We sat in stunned silence. We had heard a miracle, an impossibility. I was seized by the certain knowledge that I would never hear anything remotely like it again. And that’s true today. I’ve been to some genuinely great concerts since – Abbado’s Mahler 7th in Berlin, his Mahler 2nd, 3rd and 9th at the proms, and the 3rd again at the Festival Hall, Simon Rattle’s Turangalîla at the Proms, Temirkanov’s Shostakovich 10th at the Barbican, and so on. But none of them has stayed with me like Karajan’s Brahms 1.
Listening to the CD now is fantastic, and gives me a picture of my mind twenty years ago. It’s an intense experience, and perhaps more brilliantly played than I remember. But what can never be recreated is the sense of overwhelming awe, or powerlessness in front of this astonishing sound. In one sense it’s gone – as Barenboim says, there is nothing left of music once it’s stopped – but in another it lives on inside me. It was an experience that can never be matched, and one that no other art can deliver. It’s why, despite all my reading, music is a fundamental part of my being in a way that literature can never be.
Karajan showed me what can be done, and for that I will be eternally gratefully to him. He was, despite his many faults, a great, great musician. A genius, in fact. May he rest in peace.
Here’s How the MPs’ Expenses System Should Work
It should be fairly obvious by now that the MPs’ expenses scandal is both a genuine and big story. In my opinion – for what it’s worth – it’s the biggest political story since Thatcher’s resignation in 1990.
The problem isn’t one that can be solved by simply paying a few of the questionable expenses claims back. Parliament needs to demonstrate that it understands the depth of public’s outrage and its desire for a fully open, accountable and honest legislature.
Here is how I think the system should work.
First, it’s clear that the majority of MPs have a need to be resident in two places: their constituency and in London in order to attend Parliamentary sessions. Their primary home should not be one they can designate; it should always be the one in their constituency.
Second, an MP who has a second income of any kind – salary, investments, rent received, whatever – should be ineligible to receive expenses. If they dedicate their life to being an MP, that’s fine. Second incomes are a blight on Parliament. First of all because they raise a clear conflict of interest, but also because they reduce the amount of time that an MP can dedicate to looking out for their constituents. MPs with second incomes should forfeit their parliamentary pay at 50 pence in the pound for each pound they earn outside parliament. So, if they earn £100,000 outside of parliament, their MP’s salary should be reduced by £50,000.
Third, Parliament should pass a law requiring MPs to have only one income after the general election after next. In the interim, none of the remaining provisions I mention would apply to an MP with a second income.
Fourth, Parliament should establish a pool of housing for MPs in the capital and apartments should be allocated by an independent committee that assesses each MP’s need. Furniture and fittings should be provided by the state and repairs undertaken in the same way. MPs should not be able to make a profit out of the way they use their expenses. MPs whose constituency is within a one hour train journey from Westminster should not be eligible for a pooled apartment. MPs should be free to opt out of this arrangement if they wish, but would not be allowed to claim any of the expense of doing so back.
Fifth, all MPs should receive an Oyster card valid for travel anywhere in London for the period of their tenure. They should also receive a standard class season ticket so that they can travel to and from their constituency by train without incurring expenses. Again, these benefits should not be available to MPs with a second income.
Sixth: MPs’ pay should increase every year at the same rate as the minimum wage.
Seventh: MPs should not be allowed to employ a member of their family or of the family of any other MP as an assistant or researcher or in any other capacity unless they are unpaid.
Eighth: Parliament should pay an MP’s assistants and researchers directly, so there would be no need to submit an expenses claim for them.
There are no grounds on which conscientious, hardworking and honest MPs could object to these proposals. And, frankly, who cares about the others?
The familiar, tired counterargument is that without large salaries and expenses, we’ll put the “best people” off becoming MPs. But, by that argument, we’ve already got the best. In which case, they’ll have no problem whatsoever adjusting their lavish lifestyles so that they can better appreciate the lives of the ordinary people they represent.
How Twitter Can Sort Out the #fixreplies #fail
Twitter changed the way that the @reply facility works overnight (UK time). Users are not happy, me among them. I can’t think how many people I now follow who I discovered through this mechanism. I’ve even met up with some of them face to face as a result of conversations started exclusively through Twitter. This is why Twitter is awesome and Facebook is not.
I feel like the electricity company has suddenly decided to change the current in my supply without telling me first.
They say that the setting is confusing and that only 2% of people use it. All I know is that every single person I’ve introduced to Twitter has found it baffling until they’ve turned the setting on. It’s not even the default option so, presumably, the 2% of people who do use it know that they’re doing so and want it that way.
Let’s also not forget that it was us – the early Twitter adopters – who invented the @reply mechanism in the first place. It’s our feature!
Here’s what Twitter have to do to sort it out:
- Restore the ability to set the value
- Restore it to its former value it for all users (the 2%) who had it on
- Consider moving it to some other tab in settings to make it clearer
- Consult on how to make that work
- Apologise for making the change in such a hamfisted way
- Let us get on with using Twitter in whatever way we see fit
If you haven’t already, join me in protesting by using the #fixreplies hashtag in a tweet.
Why Charles Arthur Should Read Things Before Slagging Them Off
Yesterday, my friend Shane Richmond sent me a draft of a blog post to comment on as he does from time to time. I thought it was excellent. Later, he published it on his Telegraph blog. It’s about how David Simon, creator of The Wire is an ‘amateur’ TV producer, in the sense that he didn’t train or do formal study to be one, and how he should be more willing to accept amateur journalism as a result. Simon writes about his early, somewhat fumbling, TV experiences on Homicide: Life on the Street at some length in a note in the UK edition of his brilliant book Homicide (which I reviewed on 26 Books last year).
Shane’s post got tweeted around on Twitter quite a bit and then, a few hours late to the party, super-troll Charles Arthur – technology editor at the Guardian – chipped in with what seemed to be a total misreading of Shane’s post.
Now, of course, David Simon is, in the strictest sense, a professional TV producer, which is to say that he gets paid to do it. But in another sense, he is indeed an ‘amateur’. Shane spells out what he means by using that word about half-way through his post:
But what puzzles me is Simon’s antipathy to the notion of amateur journalists. After all, he’s an amateur television producer. He wasn’t trained in the medium, didn’t work his way up from being a tea boy. Nor did his co-writer and co-producer Ed Burns. Burns was a policeman and teacher. Together they used their experience to craft a television show which explored the worlds in which they had worked. Their backgrounds were far more important than their training in the medium.
Here’s the timeline as far as I can reconstruct it (Twitter post times are adjusted for BST – the API reports them at GMT + 0, while BST is GMT + 1).
- 12:51: Shane publishes the post
- 21:21: Charles responds to someone retweeting it: “if @shanerichmond doesn’t know that David Simon has done utterly amazing journalism in his books, it’s his loss, not Simon’s.” – original tweet.
- 21:23 Shane replies: “@charlesarthur You haven’t read the post have you? – original tweet.
- 22:19 Tim Duckett says : “@shanerichmond @charlesarthur You two aren’t at it again are you? Do we have to send you both up to bed early?” – original tweet
- 22:21 Astonishingly, Charles reveals that he hasn’t actually read Shane’s post despite the fact that the original tweet he responded to contained a link to it. – “@shanerichmond send me a url, I’ll read it.” – original tweet.
- 22:38 Charles finally gets around to reading the post he’s been slagging off, and tweets the first part of his response: “Calling David Simon an “amateur” producer shows an astonishing ignorance of his earlier TV work, eg. Homicide; The Corner….” – original tweet.
- 22:39 Quickly followed by the second part: “…and on other points, the arguments aren’t complete. Is free is the best model, why don’t free papers suck up all adverts from paid ones?” – original tweet.
- Friday, 11:00 Charles responds to MJDodd (note that here, Charles has silently withdrawn his original accusation that Shane said David Simon was an amateur journalist, which was before he’d read Shane’s post): “@MJDodd yes, calling David Simon on The Wire an “amateur producer” indicates a quite astonishing level of lack of research.” – original tweet.
Before I get into this further, I have some interests to declare. A couple of weeks ago, I got so annoyed at the way Charles was gloating over the Telegraph’s embarrassment over their Twitterfall experiment that I tweeted the following:
I’m astonished at the arrogance, hubris, and all-round cuntishness of Guardian journalists. @charlesarthur, for instance.
That tweet was picked up by Private Eye and erroneously attributed to the Telegraph’s Assistant Editor, Justin Williams. If you want a full run-down of the argument between Shane and Charles, have a look at Malcom Coles’ post That Shane Richmond / Charles Arthur Twackdown in full…
Another interest to declare. The Telegraph was a client of the web agency I used to work for; we built their blogging platform for them. Later I did some contracting for them. On the other hand, I loathe the Telegraph’s politics and am a regular Guardian reader.
And one final interest. I’m close friends with Shane. I first met him in January 2006. He wasted no time in telling me that The Wire was the best show on TV and got me hooked on it there and then. Since then we have watched episodes of The Wire together, listened to podcasts about it in the car and talked about it almost every time we see each other. He’s also urged me to watch Simon’s earlier series for HBO, The Corner (I haven’t done so yet). We also watched several episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street together, finding it very disappointing and only a pale shadow of his later work, although to be fair, Simon didn’t have any real say in how the show was made. So, while I’m naturally sympathetic to Shane’s argument because he’s my friend, I also know how deeply he has thought about The Wire. Anyone who has read his blog knows how long he’s been making the opposite case to David Simon on newspapers – I’m not going to go into that side of his argument here.
If you want more than my word for how much research Shane has done into The Wire and David Simon’s career, then let me point you in the direction of a few of his posts and articles.
First of all is this article from the Telegraph of 22nd May 2007 (which, according to this post is almost a year before Charles even started watching the show). Shane’s article contains one of my favourite quotes about The Wire:
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love The Wire and those who haven’t seen it. Yet.
Then there’s his review of Raphael Alvarez’s The Wire, Truth be Told over on 26 Books from June 2007.
It’s also worth checking out Shane’s post on David Simon’s the ‘bible’ for the first season of The Wire.
I think that takes care of Charles’s claim that Shane’s research is faulty.
Now let’s look at Charles’s objection to Shane’s use of the word ‘amateur’. As Shane spells out in the paragraph I quoted above, and the fact that he placed the word ‘amateur’ in quotes in the title of his post, he’s not using the word literally. He understands that Simon gets paid for his work. He understands and acknowledges that he is supremely good at being a TV producer. He says in his Telegraph article that The Wire is the best show ever on TV, so we can assume that he thinks he’s better than all of the professional – i.e. career – TV producers out there.
Clearly, Shane uses the word ‘amateur’ in its original French sense. As Wikipedia puts it:
Translated from its French origin to the English “lover of”, the term “amateur” reflects a voluntary motivation to work as a result of personal passion for a particular activity. Among the thousands of amateurs who have made important contributions to science and technology are Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, and Gregor Mendel.
Edison, Darwin and Mendel are exalted company indeed. Describing someone as an amateur in the sense that Shane does is the exact opposite of an insult. It’s the highest compliment you can pay. Simon makes shows like The Wire because of his passion. Getting paid is a bonus.
Charles has form in confusing the meanings of words in the heat of an argument. During the Twackdown, he seemed unable to accept that he’d misused the word “eavesdrop”. Characteristic of the troll, he aggressively suggests that Shane doesn’t understand the meaning of the word – “Buy a bigger dictionary” – before later making the lame excuse that he was a bit tired in a comment on the Twackdown post.
When David Simon says that The Wire would be “something that Euripides might recgonise” you can trust that he’s actually read Euripides. Not so with Charles Arthur when he slags off a post. You also can’t expect Charles to accept when he’s wrong, unlike Shane. When challenged, Charles just ups the trolling ante.
It’s legitimate to take issue with Shane’s argument about the future of newspapers – assuming you’ve actually read the post of course – but you can’t accuse him of a lack of research or ignorance about David Simon’s work both in print and on TV, or that he misused the word ‘amateur’. I hope Charles will accept that and apologise. Maybe he should also consider reading things before slagging them off.
Sexism and Other Prejudices in the Technology World
I thought long and hard about whether to respond to Milo Yiannopoulos’s post about women in the technology industry. Mainly because I find his argument repulsive and I don’t want to draw attention to it. On the other hand, I get no traffic anyway, and there is a very clear argument to make in reply.
Here’s a snippet from a transcript of a panel discussion that he seems to have invited himself into:
Milo: Finds this discussion patronising to women. There are reasons which have nothing to do with prejudice why women are not more involved in the tech scene. Do we need to change the game? [...] No! We shouldn’t be apologising for having fewer women in a sector in which men naturally perform better
His argument boils down to “men and women are different, men are better at tech, deal with it”. This is bullshit. Here’s why.
Milo seems to think that technology is a pure meritocracy, and that we can therefore say that because there are fewer women in tech we can draw the conclusion that women are not as good at it as men. But this argument doesn’t fly.
While women are under-represented, there are also comparatively few people from ethnic minorities in programming jobs in the UK. However there are quite a lot of people from ethnic minorities working in more lowly (i.e. less well paid) technology jobs like first line support and so on.
Are we therefore to draw the conclusion that white people are genetically best suited to be programmers? Of course not. Descrimination is there at every level of tech, just as it is with so many other walks of life. Programmers in the UK are overwhelmingly white, male and under forty.
Over the course of my career, I’ve had discussions with colleagues about whether a candidate is “too old”, has “good enough English” (which is code for “white”) and more. I’ve had people ask me “did she have big tits?” after interviewing a woman for a development or project management job. I’ve been told that a candidate is “interesting”, with a coy little wink, which is code for “gay”. I’ve seen pats on the bum, “morning, beautiful” and other clearly sexist acts. These things have come from senior people as often as not. They are normally laughed off as being nothing harmful, just a bit of fun. If women can’t take them then “they don’t fit in”. These prejudices are there and they need to be attacked.
We also need to constantly remind ourselves that technology is, on the whole, quite shit. Large-scale software development is still incredibly hard and huge numbers, perhaps even the majority, of projects fail. We have no laurels to rest on. The technology industry needs to change, and increased diversity can only be a good thing.
Of course this is only my experience – nearly 20 years of it now – but I’ve worked with brilliant female developers as well as crap ones, just as I’ve worked with both brilliant and crap male developers. Brilliant developers are *very* rare, and the difference is not in the chromosomes.
It’s not that long since we debated whether “allowing” women into the Vienna Philharmonic would change the orchestra’s distinctive sound (it didn’t), or whether women were capable of running a marathon (they are). These barriers have been torn down and exposed for the simple sexism they were. The same needs to happen in the tech industry, and the sooner it happens, the better.
An Open Letter to Flavio Briatore and the Board of QPR
Dear Mr Briatore,
I’m not a lifelong QPR fan, but I’ve held a season ticket for several years, and for much of that time, the football has been dreadful. The facilities are no better: my seat has an obstructed view of the goal and the seats in front of me cut into my knees like razors. I’ve been to hundreds of games at Loftus Road, and I’ve travelled to Leeds, Manchester, Barnsley, Sheffield, Brentford, Southend, Gillingham, Swindon, Bristol and plenty of other places to support my team, often standing in the rain, more often than not seeing us get beaten. In the course of all this, I have spent thousands of pounds on tickets, travel, overpriced and low quality pies, access to the QPR World website, replica kit, car stickers, scarves, hats, gloves, mugs and matchday programmes.
Here’s what you might find difficult to understand: I loved it.
When, eighteen months ago, you and Mr Ecclestone announced that you would be buying QPR, I was cautiously optimistic. Here were people who were pragmatists, with a track record of success in sport, and a proven ability to turn also-rans into champions. I thought it was just what QPR needed if we (notice how I say ‘we’ – it’s my club too) were to ever get out of the stagnant position we were in. I could not have been more wrong.
Your decision to dismiss Paolo Sousa is the last straw and, as a result, I have taken the difficult decision to not renew my season ticket and to not attend any games next season. Let me be clear: I am, unlike many QPR fans, in the fortunate position of being easily able afford to buy the season ticket, I’m just choosing not to buy it because of your actions.
I’ve taken this decision because I believe it is the only message you will understand. Appeals to your sense of fairness, to the spirit of the club, to the faith shown by the supporters, all these things have no effect on you. What you will understand is empty seats, unsold tickets and a dodgy-looking P&L.
You’ve already suffered the embarrassment of seeing your new luxury seating area completely empty during recent games – seats you put in at the expense of long-time QPR fans with families. Now, I suspect will suffer the further indignity of seeing large parts of the stadium being empty as well.
In stark contrast to your own behaviour towards the various managers you’ve hired and fired in the last year and a half, I have publicly supported you and tried to make a case for what you say you are trying to achieve. But you have failed, because you have, with incredible arrogance, decided that the way to run a football club is whatever way you think is best, without any regard for the way other successful clubs are run. As a result, you have made the club into a laughing stock.
You act like a dictator, which is fine as far as it goes, but you forget that all dictators stand or fall on one thing: whether they can make the trains run on time. You are running a service that makes the bad old days of British Rail look like a model of efficiency.
None of this is helped by the way you refuse to address the fans directly, or to answer legitimate questions about the way the club is being run. That’s fine if everything is going well – people will put up with it – but not when things are going badly, or when your decisions consistently make things worse.
Let me be absolutely clear: my decision is based not on performances on the pitch. I’ve seen enough diabolical football at Loftus Road to put up with pretty much anything. No, I’ve taken this step entirely because of your highhanded behaviour towards fans, managers and players. I’d prefer it if we were rid of you and your friends, even if it meant us going back to the stone-age.
So: I will not spend one penny on QPR tickets or merchandise for the whole of the 2009-10 season, even if we make it to the playoffs or a cup final, and I will decide in April 2010 whether to extend my boycott for a further year. I urge all QPR fans to do the same.
Yours sincerely,
James Higgs
