Wonders of the modern world, number nine

A sign of summer (and neighourhood ethnicity statistics). Some look for swallows. In my part of north London, I look for parking spaces. The other day, I was driving south on Gloucester Avenue towards Camden Town and realised I could have my pick of maybe twenty spaces – which means there are now more Americans living in my neighbourhood than even the number of whole house rebuilds going on would indicate.

When the roads become clear and the parking spaces start becoming become free and easy, then I know summer is really here. It means the Americans have begun leaving. ASL in St John's Wood has closed till September. The mothers have taken their children home across the Atlantic to their mothers for the summer – while their investment banker (mostly) husbands sweat a few more weeks alone in the city.

Where the cars go, though, I've no idea. Maybe they put them into storage for the summer. All I know is that it will all be even clearer by the end of next week, when all the private schools will have closed for the summer. Then, the traffic is so light, you could have a half-hour kip in the middle of St John's Wood High Street.

It's always a shock when I go to another bit of London in late July or August. There are cars on the street. And people. What's wrong with them? Don't they have second homes to go to?

What is so funny about (What’s so funny ’bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?

The other night, I went to see Nick Lowe play, at the Royal Festival Hall, as part of Ray Davies’ Meltdown thing. (The first time I saw Nick Lowe play was as one of Kippington Lodge in Tunbridge Wells Assembly Rooms — or perhaps the youth club hut in Sparrows Green.)

He played (What’s so funny ’bout) Peace, Love and Understanding. (That’s the ‘correct’ title, by the way. No question mark, apostrophised ‘about’, variable use of upper and lower case. I just checked the original album sleeve.)

Of course, he did. He’s always played it, in living memory anyway. I’ve heard him play it in all kinds of different ways and in different places in the set. That night, he played it in the middle of the show, throwing it away almost but also fitting his approach to it that night. With his small band, he cast it as a simple matter of a few coherent facts. It is a truth universally acknowledged . . .

It hasn’t always sat there in his set — or in other people’s. Though I can’t recall him ever using it a barnstorming finisher, others certainly have played it that way. It’s one of those songs which contains multitudes — or ways to sing it anyway.

There is, I’ve come to realise, a whole long story about its journey from a piece of irony in 1974 (or, more precisely, an honest statement/heartfelt plea masquerading as irony) to a rant in 1978 (Elvis Costello) to a money-spinner in the early 1990s (Curtis Stigers’ cover on the Bodyguard soundtrack) to Nick’s own quiet solo performances (prayer-like sometimes) to its emergence as a quite unironic anthem in 21st century America (a left-leaning thing in the wake of the Iraq invasion, in particular).

So . . . some listening and watching . . .

One Elvis Costello goes bluegrassy country. It’s the second song in a two-part medley.

Two Elvis Costello tears it up, on Independence Day. A Brit succouring Americans?

Three Elvis Costello brings on Nick Lowe — acoustically, in Tokyo.

Four Nick Lowe goes Latinate — putting the clave in Kimmel.

Five Elvis Costello’s floppy hands on a beach — the original single version of his.

Six Elvis Costello does it star-style, with a Dylan and a Deschanel, among others. And two drummers, a father and daughter pairing.

Seven Elvis Costello introduces a visionary version by the handsomest man in show business (and Nobel-prize possibility).

Eight Bruce Springsteen and friends, in New Jersey, I think. In wobble-vision, from the loge.

Nine Brinsley Schwarz, the original, sound-without-vision. Ironic or not?

Ten A Perfect Circle, an American band on a 2004 anti-war trip — with suitably antiphonic images.

PS1 If you didn’t get an email link to my Peace & Love Dropbox, filled with other and more versions, let me know, either by email or posting a comment.

PS2 The one version I haven’t been able to include anywhere is Bill Murray singing it in Lost in Translation. A favourite, for many reasons — not least the disappointment and distaste on Murray’s face when he failed to win the Oscar for his performance. Which he probably deserved to win — if any lineal link can ever be drawn between the words ‘deserve’ and ‘Oscar’. So if you’ve got an mp3 or somesuch of it, I’d be obliged.

PS3 Another take on peace, love and understanding, courtesy of Tom and his Bernelli.

What I did at half-term, part two

So . . .

So this was the story the storyteller (at the pagan wedding, on a west Penwith hillside) told about why we ‘toast’ people . . .

Long ago, when giants and monsters roamed the land . . . Actually, he didn’t say that or anything much like it but what he did say did have that kind of Arthurian vibe. What he did say that was that once upon a time . . . Actually, he didn’t say that either, but he did set it in a semi-mythical past.

He did say: people used to put a piece of toast in a glass of wine then hand it around for everyone to drink; and when they had done this, the person being honoured would eat the toast.

When he told this story, everyone (myself included) went: ah-ha, so that’s where the word toast comes from, how come I haven’t wondered about it before, now I’ve got an answer to a question I’d never even posed. A truly shared moment. Honest.
Then, being me and in possession of an online Oxford English Dictionary account, I looked it up.

Ah. This is what I found . . .

A figurative application of toast n.1, the name of a lady being supposed to flavour a bumper like a spiced toast in the drink.

See the Tatler, No. 24, of 2 June, and No. 31, of 18 June, 1709, in both of which toast is explained as a new name, upon the origin of which ‘the Learned differ very much’. No. 24 says that ‘many of the Wits of the last Age will assert’ that the term originated in an incident alleged to have occurred at Bath in the reign of Charles II, 1660–1684. No. 31 is silent as to the incident, and gives the account cited below.

No. 31 is a citation from a piece by the man who, more than any other Englishman, invented journalism (and whose name was taken for a pub near my house — till very recently owned by friends of mine), Sir Richard Steele.

1709 R. Steele Tatler No. 31. K8 Then, said he, Why do you call live People Toasts? I answered, That was a new Name found out by the Wits to make a Lady have the same Effect as Burridge in the Glass when a Man is drinking.

There is another citation, in which the more modern meaning is given — the one in which it refers to the act of drinking, rather than a young (or not so young) woman.

1746 H. Fielding True Patriot 21 Jan. 1/2 A Toast, which you know is another Word for drinking the Health of one's Friend or some Person of Public Eminence.

So . . . a toast to the storyteller for his tall story.

What I did at half-term, part one

A first for me: a pagan wedding. It wasn’t actual pagans getting married, of course. It was a couple of artist-craftsman (and woman) friends of mine, in their garden on a sunny day in the hills of west Penwith. Still, I thought you might like to know what you’re letting yourself in for if you get invited along to a pagan marriage bash.

First, there was no sacrifice, either human or animal — even though there was something of a three-legged altar made out of large granite stones. (It usually earns its keep as a garden table.) I can’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed. Where is the spirit of Edward Woodward when you need it?

Second, there wasn’t actually a pagan priest running the thing from behind a hooded cowl, with a staff of correction in her hand. Rather, it was a part-timer whose day job is storyteller. It did help, though, that he looked (and dressed) like Steve Martin in The Jerk — or a more benign version of Brad Dourif’s pentacostal preacher in Flannery O’Connor/John Huston’s Wise Blood.

Three, there was an ancient (well, probably) saying something like ‘What once was, shall ever be’. (Something like that anyway.) It was engraved on a glass goblet, hand-blown by a friend.

Four, a toast was drunk by all from this goblet — which contained white wine and a bit of dry toast (rapidly getting soggy). The story-teller then got us to pass this round and all have a sip. He told us this was an ancient ritual*.

Five, there was no Whitney Houston I Shall Always Love You or anything similar. (Nor was there any Yvonne Fair It Should Have Been Me.)

Six, there was a ‘hand-fasting’ thing where their teenage son (this was a modern marriage) wrapped a strand of three coloured ribbons (white for cloud, green for earth, blue for sky — the pagan bits kept coming). Thus bound, they left the ceremony for a bit — with their best man and maid of honour so I don’t think it was a sex thing, though who knows? Then they came back, said some stuff to each other about how wonderful the other one was and how lucky they were to get married. Then the storyteller (kind of) pronounced them married. (The real legal thing was a couple of days before in a registry office.)

Seven, there was a gorse kissing sprig. (See picture.) It was a reference to a song with a line about kissing only being in fashion when the gorse is in flower. (Gorse is always in flower.)

Eight, we all had our picture taken inside a frame hung from a tree. See picture.
Nine, there was a vicar there. He was a good friend of the bride’s late mother. He began one of his bits with the phrase ‘If there is a god . . .’ Who can not love the Church of England, a religion which, where others have ritual, has jumble sales? For the record and census purposes, I’m a North London Jewish-ish (through marriage) Catholic atheist - and, to steal an old Nik Cohn line, not untypical of the sort.

Ten, it was all excellent.

* Knowingly or unknowingly, he wasn’t telling the truth. In the next posting, I’ll give his version. And the OED’s. You can take your choice.

What I did on my (Easter) holidays, part six

I went to the city that took my name . . .

What I did on my (Easter) holidays part five

This is a picture of a Druze village street in northern Israel. Why did I take it?

What would you think of it if I said a bomb had gone off there five years ago? And that it was the bomber's home town?

And what would you say (or think) if I told you I was playing at being either a new topographicist or a Becher, messing around with imbuing neutral landscape with existential dread?

What would you think if I invoked the hoary old paradox that I always lie?

What I did on my (Easter) holidays, part four

Two pictures of two walls, no more than a hundred metres apart.

One of an impressive but uncomfortably triumphalistic image on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.

One of an impressive piece of what Ruskin called 'honest repair' - from a shopping mall wall. An old building was taken to pieces for reconstruction. Each brick and stone were numbered. Then, when it was put back together, the numbering was deliberately left in view. (I used the basic Photo Fix on my Sony Ericsson phone to sharpen up the colours a little.) The building was by Moshe Safdie. It's the smartest shopping mall I've ever seen.