I read books

Albert Camus’ observations in his collection of essays “Personal Writings” is full of aphorisms and memories, overwhelmingly written in an impressionist style, almost painterly, but as immediately recognisable vignettes. It’s marvelous where he describes his body remembering the height of the steps in his childhood home so he would be able to climb them again confidently in complete darkness (“His very body is impregnated with this house”) – I remember that exactly as well.

His travel writing is similar, with details and impressions of sunlight and its effects in Algiers, Palma and Ibiza – the Mediterranean light having an effect on people who live on its shores everywhere. He is such aninveterate heterosexual (“There are women in Genoa whose smile I loved for a whole morning”) he is not aware of being chatted up (“Some sort of naval officer was belching alcohol-laden compliments into my face”).

I don’t have the confidence to read it in French but the English translation is such that you do not notice it is a translation, which is what a proper translation should be.

Being a tourist in Greece

Inspired by "The Light and the Poverty" article.

It's actually a challenge to find what you are looking for as a tourist in Greece. Maybe that is why I have never been. 

Nothing of what I would like to discover is there: no philosophical debates in the Athens stoa, no gymnasions to get fit in the proper way, no symposia to show off your wit and skills, no Olympic Games, not even a decent oracle at Delphi. 

Creating a theme park featuring all that would terrify any casual tourist (and today's Greek) as much as it did foreign visitors 2,500 years ago. 

But it would also be my favourite holiday destination. 

I read books.

Clive James puts to bed the oxymoron “Australian intellectual” with this hefty tome, “Cultural Amnesia – Notes in the Margin of My Time” (2007), a collection of over 100 essays on cultural figures he has come across in his lifetime of reading, book buying and globe trotting. 850 pages packed with references to and discussions of a swathe of Central European, Latin American and Russian (among others) writers, philosophers, film makers, musicians, activists, politicians and assorted dictators that don’t fail to dazzle and intrigue. 

I had not heard of many of them, so apart from his exhortations to start reading their output in the original language and thus you should learn French, Italian, Spanish, German and Russian, it was highly interesting to hear of all these (mainly) 20th Century personalities and their lives and works inspired and determined by, but also defied, that most lethal of centuries. 

He is especially good at pre-Anschluss Vienna’s coffee house culture. (k.u.k. Vienna even gets its own introduction. I always thought k.u.k. stood for Kaffee und Kuchen, but no, it’s ‘kaiserlich und königlich’, an abbreviation for the Austrian-Hungarian empire) with its large cast of geniuses great and small proclaiming upon the world. All essays are built around quotes of aphorisms and epigrams by their subject. His favourites are obviously (they have longest essays devoted to them) Egon Friedell, Georg Lichtenberg, and Arthur Schnitzler, with Jean-Paul Sartre as his favourite philosophical and hypocritical bogeyman popping up everywhere. The fact that they were mainly Jewish (just like many of the German entries) is a leitmotif but it must be remembered that they were not a separate category in their societies (only Hitler made them so, not before). 

James is an inveterate liberal democrat and thus rails constantly against the century’s dictators and totalitarianisms (be they Fascist, Nazi, or Communist – with some explicit criticism of multiculturalism too in the aftermath of Islamic terrorism at the time of writing). What they have done to destroy European culture is not just a Holocaust story, as Stalin and Mao also did their damnedest to root out intellectuals in their societies – this is always the surest and fastest way to genocide. 

A large number of essays are elegiac in tone because of the acute loss suffered for any country that was ruled or occupied by non-democratic systems. Stay or run and collaborate or resist were not always easy options and James is generous to the individuals and their choices they made (and lived or died by them). 

James almost never fails to mention where he got his books from during a lifetime of globe trotting to collect them in markets and second hand bookshops around the world. Detailed prescriptions of their paper quality, print, binding and covers get a bit tedious. Since he packed that massive volume of reading (and understanding) into his life of reviewing, broadcasting, interviewing and comedy routines, one has to marvel at when he could find the time to cheat on his wife! 

He posits that every book has its best page, and in this book it is page 400 where he exasperatedly admits that “male homosexual promiscuity is impossible to imagine” (for a straight male). It made me laugh out loud since his argument is that “it doesn’t sound like enjoyment” and “Can all these targets [male partners] be seen as beautiful?” He is genuinely puzzled by Christopher Isherwood being a sexual decathlete in the Turkish bath, and Constantine Cavafy’s poems are dreaming about nothing else. But he thankfully comes to the sensible conclusion that in a rational world, anybody could be attractive, even if he cannot imagine it.

LONG FORM TELEVISION

I took some time out from blogging and watched a couple of box set series on television.

SS-GB
Perfectly bilingual Germans running the UK, giving it the advantages of a European union 30 years early. I like alt-history. There was a little too much trying to be crammed into a 5-episode series. Murder, collaboration, loyalty, resistance, atomic research, House of Cards games, lust, love, betrayal, family, royalty, rivalry. And on the German side, cardboard cliche characters seen in every other British wartime series. Gripping thriller tale but ultimately quite disappointing.

WOLF HALL
What I watched instead of the rugby. "Last night I was in Spain." A true game of thrones where real heads roll. You really have to feel for the people then, afflicted by disease leading to sudden death, famine, lawlessness, poverty, and a lack of everything. And then being saddled by a class system and ruled by an intolerant religion. Nobody got a break then. Incredible acting and clever, thoughtful scripting. It's Mark Rylance's masterpiece as Cromwell, but Anton Lesser as Sir Thomas More plays him as the creepiest fundamentalist you do not want to come across. Highly recommended.

BROEN /THE BRIDGE
Swedish is definitely far easier to understand than Danish. With these Scandi-noir series it's hard to understand how the Scandinavians manage to be ranked the happiest people on earth. But I like Saga Noren, the Swedish protagonist, especially for her refreshing attitude to sex. (She's puzzled why an occasional shag wants to take her out for dinner since she always presumed that that was a prelude to and gambit for sex, not the other way round). Highly recommended, not just for the strong story and acting but the Swedish/Danish humour, which is very droll. The language games will appeal to your inner Aspie. And it was deep into season three before they realised you can draw curtains.

FORBRYDSELEN / THE KILLING
Cold, dark, windy, wet, wintry New Zealand, so what better time to watch a cold, dark, wet, windy, wintry Copenhagen doing its utmost to dispel that hygge trendiness in a superb scandi-noir Forbrydelsen series full of secrets, lies and political Machiavellianism. I just love the ribbing between the Scandinavians. Danish is pretty easy to pick up. Just mumble and they'll understand you fine. And what do I like about Denmark? The second-in-command at an army base showers with his troops in a communal bath house. When naked, the real men get sorted from the boys.

SPRINGFLODEN
Typical Scandi-noir gruesome murder case with quirky details, such as a police academy student driving a vintage convertible Mustang - in Stockholm weather! - and a sassy gay sidekick. That was a marvellously rich and surprising story. Highly recommended.

ÄNGELBY
Twin Peaks-esque Swedish mystery series, but probably a little too Catholic for Lynch fans, I think. Too much about the eternal fight between good and evil, but it has also a philosophizing police officer with a space cadet deputy, and witches and trolls (of the original Nordic kind). And pinetree woods, of course. I like a language that has the same word for 'hello' and 'bye'. Set in small town Sweden there are no traces of Ikea or H&M.

THE HANDMAID’S TALE
Time to take a break from Scandi-crime and move to the American dystopia of the Handmaid's Tale. The women get a rough deal, and the men aren't living in paradise either.
The politology. It's interesting to speculate how that dystopian society came about. I read the novel was written in 1986, way before the internet, cellphones and social media. It feels odd to have savvy strong female characters (before the change to the totalitarian regime) being totally unaware that a coup d'état by Christianists was in train.
The theocracy. Which religion actually rules in Gilead, and how did it get rid of its rivals? It seems a Protestant strand is dominant, not the Catholic Church. What happened to it, and how? What happened to the other sects, and other religions, and atheists? One executed prisoner wore a Star of David on his mask, so I presume Jewish people were part of the extermination, Nazi-style, alongside the gays and political resistance.
Gilead seems to have an excellent health service. How did they get there after Obamacare? Gynaecological services provided by men still?
It's mentioned that there are only two remaining states of the USA, with the capital (highly improbably, considering how Republican it is) in Alaska. I presume the other one is Hawaii. How did the Democratic east and west coasts get conquered? If Gilead covers all 48 continental states, I think this is a major flaw in the story, as the USA would have ceased to exist sooner and have split up along red/blue state lines.
The economy. Did the author seriously think the Gilead economy would not collapse when the whole female workforce was dismissed and had no access to bank services? (How do single females pay rent/mortgage/loans?) Where are the corporations and media? It is assumed they have had no power in stopping that economic suicide.
I like overthinking my dystopias. Dystopian visions are a challenge, like murder mysteries and crosswords. You want to unravel them, as a sport. All dystopian stories (like utopian and sci-fi ones) reflect the anxieties and hopes of the times they have been conceived in, be it More's anti-reformation dreams, Orwell's totalitarian nightmare in 1948, Star Trek in the hippie 1960s and beyond, and, in this case, Atwood's mid-1980s, before the Cold War ended, when digital technology still was in its infancy, and social control really needed brutal repressive force.
The gloryhole in the girls' toilet made me lol.
Aunt Lydia. She's a survivor too, just with a different strategy. She's straight out of "Mädchen in Uniform".  The overarching story is about hypocrisy: of the men, of the women, of the religion, of the ideology.

DEUTSCHLAND ‘83
From a hysterical dystopian breakdown in the US, now on to the good old days, when capitalists were confident and communists were too. Deutschland 83, a German twinky James Bond without the gadgets but with a terrific nostalgic early 80s soundtrack. And I never knew East German girls were that easy, skinny-dipping with their boyfriends' best friends! Absolutely enjoyable rollicking ride. I remember the Reagan-era deployment of Persching missiles in Belgium too, with all the attendant protests. Also the East German atmosphere was spot on. When travelling there in 1982, the border crossing was exactly like that - the angry-looking border officers welcome, the rifling through your backpack for forbidden literature, the enforced money exchange, the crumbling houses (very picturesque though, compared to the West German garishness). Another tale of deception and hypocrisy: everybody knew the DDR was fantasyland, everybody watched West German TV, and danced to the same pop tunes. The AIDS sub-story was poignant and a great reminder how terrifying it was.

ABER | BERGEN
Time to brush up my Norwegian with Aber | Bergen. Thankfully they got the joke about Bergen and the rain out of the way in the first 15 minutes.

LOCH NESS
Attempt at Scottish scandi-noir, complete with inventive murder motivations, but with over-bearing DCI in hock with trendy criminal psychologists, goes on and on a bit. A serial killer obsessed with body parts, bumping off gay and bi-polar characters, and you know he's had a lousy childhood and daddy issues. Gorgeous scenery, of course, but really not in the must-have-seen-this-before-you-die category. Hot trivia bit: the PC whom the camera often lingers over a little too often and too long is playing Prince Harry in a Windsor-Markle love epic.

MIDNATTSSOL / MIDNIGHT SUN
Back to Sweden/Sapmi, another gruesome serial killer series where the sun never sets. Written by the guys who brought us The Bridge, it has its customary cruelly inventive grisly murder scenes, police officers with issues, iron ore miners in underpants, cultural and political clashes between Swedes, French, and Sami. And best of all, five different languages spoken. The skies of Kiruna are magic. It never gets dark in the whole series, except when going down the mine. Recommended.

CODE 37: SEX CRIMES
Binge-watching is the current pastime, of course, so I chose a Belgian crime series set in Ghent, the city where I am from but don't have a huge link with since I had left it at age 5.'Code 37' is a fairly formulaic cop series featuring a vice squad headed by a female with a troubled past and her team of 'hardened' (but verging on gormless) males - so far so familiar. Cop show standard gruesomeness and humour ("Therrre's been a murrrrderrrr") are here replaced by rather gratuitous and superficial portrayal of the 'sex crimes' without much psychologising or illumination of motive, impact or consequences.But I learned a few things: who knew exhibitionism and voyeurism are a criminal offences (even when consensual)? Some marvellous guest roles - the skinny whore john speaking with a proper Ghentian accent had me in stitches - including my old friend Frank Vercruyssen playing a porn director.

MADAME K.
What an opportunity to watch a TV series with international appeal in the Estonian language. "Madame K" is set in an upmarket Tallinn brothel on the eve of Estonia being smashed between a very hard rock (Nazi Germany) and a very hard place (Stalin's Russia).
The series could be set on a single theatrical stage but the themes, politics and personal dilemmas are vast. Being in a small country about to be occupied, razed and dismembered, your choices and options to survive are vanishing before your eyes: either be deported to the Soviet gulags or enlisted into the Wehrmacht, with fleeing to either brave Finland or neutral Sweden, both across treacherous waters, not really on offer - and recently fallen France, Britain fighting for its own survival, and an America not really interested in another European war, are well out of the picture.
All a very fascinating backdrop to this charming, leisurely-paced series where they don't hold back philosophizing about love in a brothel and geo-politics (with both intertwining when entertaining American spies and Russian soldiers alike). And it's done on a shoestring budget, with their cash spent on charming period heirlooms, appliances, cars and costumes - who knew Estonians ate waffles so often for breakfast?

AMSTERDAM UNDERCOVER
Started watching Amsterdam Undercover but had to stop mid-way episode 1 when our undercover German cop arranged a meeting with his mole at the Rijksmuseum in front of Rembrandt's Night Watch. He was the only viewer. This kind of dissing Rembrandt (and the Dutch, for the whole cast speaks German, not a word of the native tongue is heard in Wunderschön Amsterdam) cannot be allowed.
And on a wider point: whole cop series drama tropes would be wiped out if the drugs trade was legal.

FENIX
Dutch-Belgian cop series so you know the language will be vaguely cross-border Brabantian. A bit noir-ish (maybe call it 'polderdark'), even Shakespearean, slow but often a terrific ride through travellers' blood-is-not-always-thicker-than-water families, drugs manufacturing and trade, Jewish blackmail and political corruption.
Pity Teun Luijkx never took off his shirt properly in this too-short series but there were some laugh-out-loud moments in very dark humour corners involving morgues, uncircumcised corpses, and diamonds (don't ask).

REKYL / RECOIL
Up north again, this time to monochrome, gloomy, overcast Oslo, where drug-smuggling low life meets corrupt police and the exploitation of the Norwegian version of the Resource Management Act, and where everybody is cynical and devoid of any trust. It has the obligatory digs at the Swedes, but who knew Norwegian men, even after scoring a hot date, always slept with their underpants on?

STANDING TALL
South this weekend, to Rome, Anzio and Ostia, with a refreshing if terribly sad tale that is not focusing on Italian crime tropes like the Mafia and corrupt policemen - although there are some references to them - but on forces that tear a society apart more effectively than those. I'm not giving away anything more because that would be spoiling the plot, just mentioning that using the victim as a Greek chorus to the whole plot is a wonderful dramatic device.
The series is gorgeously filmed, seamlessly jumping between cinematic scopes, drone vistas, hand-held camera close-ups and grainy flashback footage that actually looks 10 years old. And with Rome as you not often see as a backdrop providing grittiness and community.
It is a feature in many a series I've watched so far that urban icons, such as trams or trains, function as an identity for where you are supposed to be immersed in as a viewer, be it Copenhagen, Oslo, Ghent, or Rome, despite none of the characters ever taking public transport. Cars, roads, and motorways are simply too ubiquitous and nondescript to provide any socio-geographical information.

NåR STøVET HAR LAGT SIG
"When the Dust Settles" is about post-traumatic stress disorder affecting multiple direct and indirect victims of a random terror attack in Copenhagen. It's an ambitious and harrowing portrayal of how a random group of people from all walks of life, from homeless single mothers to justice ministers, from plumbers to Danish Muslims, from Swedish singers to Greenlandic chefs, are trying, failing and succeeding in coming to terms with both a collective and individual experience. Copenhagen seems like a small village where everybody is connected through almost random but also meaningful meeting points, it could be just like real life but here crystallized by a single central event. Not easy to watch people falling apart and putting themselves together again. The gay Muslim seduction scene was sweet and funny but you just knew that was not to be. The putting down of the dog was callous and unbearable.

MUSTA VALO
Time to brush up my Finnish with "A Good Family", a rather implausible but still amusing tale of cops, drug dealers, wayward sons, gangster dads and cop mums in Helsinki, which looks like Auckland but mostly in the dark (it also has a gorgeous harbour with little islands to go on holiday to). The city must be small enough for everybody to know each other, especially the baddies and the cops, which makes for interesting family politics combined with corruption. After the first episode you never notice it is barely ever not dark in the streets, guns are everywhere and illegal drugs are at the root of all social evils.

THE KING
When you read this, at this very moment, you are at the current endpoint of your life choices' stream options you have made so far. No matter who, what, where, how or why your are, there you are. You may be a prison governor or guard, or even an inmate a, drug dealer, an oncologist or a chain-smoking detective, a Moroccan Milanesian or a Quran-thumping fundamentalist. This is the premise of Il Re ("The King"), a superb series set in San Michele prison, which is but a stage for a condensed version of today's Italy. Picture it: theoretical but also theatrical 'rule of law' proponents set against an assault by corrupt or corruptible state officials with an the assortment of secular and religious criminals. Who ends up in what role on which side of the fence is completely dependent on the actions and choices the individual has made in their life so far. We're all born in a prison but some of us want to get out. Focus of this story is, naturally, the title character, Bruno Testori played by Luca Zingaretti, so we're largely asked to view everything while performing his job as King or Duce running the prison, keeping his team ("Praetorian Guard" - not the only reference to Roman times) onside, bamboozling police and secret service, and investigating escape shenanigans, on top of dealing with family affairs and a coke addiction. Why anybody would choose that life path is beyond me but I demand Zingaretti is cast as Mussolini in his biopic.

L'inconnu du lac / Stranger by the Lake

A film that should make people, who think there is such a thing as the 'gay community', think again. Stranger by the Lake is more a docu-drama than a fiction film, for its setting, feel, action, and atmosphere are ultra-realistic.
One hundred per cent filmed outdoors, with a cast which needed no wardrobe, it had the air of a nature documentary in which David Attenborough stumbles across a pair of gay men getting it on in the bushes, but instead of suavely narrating off-screen, being firmly told by the subjects of his voyeurism to go jerk off elsewhere, like the on-looking wanker was.
The story line is thrillingly Hitchcockian, complete with a shocking murder scene filmed in one take and from a far distance, but without a happy ending or release. But the real story is one of complete callousness and solipsism of all men involved, who have no regard or respect for the murder victim and blithely carry on as nothing had happened. As the main character said: "Life goes on."
Eros and thanatos, sex and death, are closely linked in this film, and not just from the amount of unsafe sex that went on. Having a psychopathic killer who thinks nothing of getting rid of a clinging 'boyfriend' by casually drowning him is one thing, but one that thinks he can get away with multiple murders without any consequences due to the inability and unwillingness of the 'community' present at the lakeside to intervene or co-operate to solve the crimes, is an indictment.
No names are known or mentioned until halfway through the movie, a familiar occurrence when you frequent gay cruising places or venues. I always thought how easy it would be for a murder to be committed at such sites without anyone, even witnesses, knowing anyone's name or business.
The policeman in the film, incidentally the only person fully clothed, had the unenviable task of piecing it all together, and, even more importantly, he is also the Greek chorus commenting on the aspects of cruising culture that many gay men willfully ignore. Being held a mirror to your own culture can be shockingly revealing.
Highly recommended viewing.

Alternative Ulster

In 1981, I went to Belfast on holiday. It was a dark November weekend and before boarding the ferry in Stranraer, I was questioned by non-uniform security personnel as to what my motives were to visit there out-of-season, only a month after the hunger strike in the Maze Prison was called off (Bobby Sands had died 6 months earlier). Not an auspicious time to go sightseeing, but I persevered. The atmosphere in the city was as depressing as the season. Checkpoints everywhere and body searches every time you wanted to enter the city centre. The highlight was the local anarchist club in a non-sectarian part of the city, where young people fed up with divisions could enjoy a stress-free night out away from the troubles. I remember feeling relieved to be in a welcoming place of kindness. This Guardian article brought back some great memories.