The answer?

I'm not sure it answers everything but this TED Talk by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains a lot.

Degrees of folk...part 2

Oh my, I've really done it now. I've turned the apple cart good and proper with my last post. I was expecting a healthy debate but not the storm that seems to have erupted in the comments pages. It's well known that you mess with the folk world at your peril. I ought to have known.

Correspondance and comments have fallen into two equally sized camps (I've deleted insulting ad hominem remarks. Not big and not clever). There are those who agreed with me wholeheartedly, who've commended me for saying something that needed to be said. As you'd expect, most of those comments have come from people who've not done or have no connection to the Newcastle Folk degree (though not exclusively); mostly, they've been posted on facebook (as you'd also expect).

Then there has been a spirited defence of the course, mostly, but not exclusively by students and ex-students, and mostly posted on this blog. It's heartening to see the passion and commitment with which they take their studies, a passion and commitment that seems equally shared by their tutors. If only all University departments managed such high levels of motivation. While the fantasy curriculum of my imaginary degree was just that, a fantasy, I've enjoyed reading about the actual Newcastle curriculum - we seem to be singing from the same page. I'm sorry that some people felt I was being unduly harsh by singling out the Teacups - that wasn't my intention at all, and in case you missed it, I praised their musicianship. I wish them every success in the world and have no doubt they will get it.

No, what I was hoping to do was raise two important questions about diversity and authenticity.

Leaving Glasgow to one side (as I think, Scotland is a separate case), Newcastle is currently the only University offering a folk degree. Not only does that restrict choice but it means that there is only one take on how to do folk music. However much they get it right (and students certainly seem to think that they do) I think this an unhealthy situation. A diversity of approaches is surely called for.

My second question about authenticity, about whether folk ought to be taught through the institutions of higher education at all, remains the more controversial one. There are those who say it puts folk on the map and affords it a badly needed legitimacy; others think this exactly the problem.

I may not have put the question skilfully but it's surely one that needs to be asked.

Degrees of folk

Just lately I've been listening online to what's been emerging from Newcastle University's Folk Music degree course. Here's a typical example of some of their third year students in action.

I worry a bit about endless cohorts of students forking out nine grand a year and thinking there's a living as a folk musician waiting for them at the end of it. (I worry about my Religious Studies students too, but at least they come out able to write an essay). But mostly, while the standard of musicianship is obviously high, I worry that it's all so excruciatingly nice. Wouldn't you rather go and see the old guy singing down the pub than something so...polished?

If folk music has a place in the academy then perhaps a bit of competition would be good for business, maybe somewhere down South. I've had some fun trying to think of what my folk syllabus would look like.

Obviously students would need to learn about the tradition and how to play their instrument. 

But I'd get them to read up on carnivalesque theory and go hunting misericords. I'd get them to see some traditional folk customs and write an essay about it. I'd get them to jam with musicians with whom they shared no language, and then try and copy the style of another instrument entirely. I'd send them to the Glastonbury dance tent with instructions not to come back until they'd fallen to the floor in a delirium of sweaty ecstasy. I'd get them to shut the fuck up and listen. I'd make them sleep a night or two under the stars. A passionate love affair and a heart-break or two would probably be character-building. And for their final practical, I'd pack them off to France for the summer with nothing but fifty quid, their instruments and their wits to see how they got on. A bit of enforced busking does wonders for performance skills I find.

Oh hold on a minute, that's what I did. Forgive me. I've committed the unpardonable sin of thinking that my life could provide a template for everyone else. Please accept my sincere apologies. Utter hubris.

But there's a serious point here. If folk music is as relevant as we claim then it has to have something to say. It has to have arisen, unbidden and insistent out of the sheer messy fact of being alive. It has to have come up through the feet, to have lingered in the loins, rolled around the heart and soared out from the belly. It has to give voice to what the Welsh call the hwyll and the hiraeth - loosely, joy and sorrow. That's not something you can teach, nor something you can buy. No wonder it all sounds so clean. The poor sods haven't had a chance to live yet.

Here's some folk music straight from the source. It's from Gyimes in Transylvania, and is I believe a style unique to that area. The wild intonation of their fiddles may be too tart for Western ears but for me this is the pure drop.

It makes my fingers tingle and my feet itch in a way that, sadly, nothing I've heard from the Folk Degree ever does. If I were eighteen with nine grand in my pocket, I know where I'd go.

[This post has proved, erm, somewhat controversial - you can read my response to some of your comments here.]

When a cigar isn't just a cigar

We awoke yesterday to discover that someone had graffitied the road outside. 

At first it was hard to make out.

Closer inspection revealed that it was, indeed, a 'spunking knob', as Charlie Brooker so aptly names this ubiquitous symbol. Actually, he's worth quoting in full on the subject:

'The rudest imagery appeared in schools – scrawled in the margins of exercise books. That iconic schoolboy's doodle – the puerile "spunking knob" – how did we know what that looked like? It's like a cave painting symbolising not fertility, but gleeful stupidity; an image hard-wired into the mind of every sniggering boy in Britain. Everyone smiles inside when they see the spunking knob scrawled in the dust on the back of a van, or scribbled on a poster. Is it a global phenomenon? Strikes me as inherently British. It should've been our logo for the 2012 Olympics.'

Well, I did smile, but placed right slap bang on the runway to the local primary school others greeted its, ahem, coming with a succession of pursed lips, angry scowls and tut-tutting. Naturally it didn't survive the day.

Like many, I simply love a good double entendre. Smutty puns are one of the great delights of life, and from Carry On films to Viz Comic's Finbar Saunders to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, they form an essential part of a very British sense of humour. It's just that when the double entendre becomes single and explicit we suddenly call it puerile and inane, a symbol of 'gleeful stupidity'. Why is that?

The double entendre is a kind of legerdemain. It allows us to laugh at sexually explicit imagery while pretending that we're laughing at the cleverness with which that imagery is insinuated. Of course the truth is we're laughing at both. A single entendre like the spunking knob breaks the rules of the game. It makes the implicit explicit, and gives us no choice but to distance ourselves by other means, usually a public display of disapproval. Ah Dr Freud - you were so right.

Interestingly, the artist Grayson Perry argues that the erect male member is one of the last great taboos, and I think he's got a point (fnarr fnarr). In his expert hands (don't!), the spunking knob has been given an altogether different twist (matron!).

No, seriously, it's become tender, vulnerable and even a little bit tragic.

Thankfully high art puts an insuperable firewall around embarrassment, one that trumps even the protective layers of the double entendre, so we can contemplate this image happy in the knowledge that there's absolutely no biology going on between our legs. None whatsoever.

What a relief! (Don't start...)

The Mayan Prophecy, Timewave Zero, and 2012...the Great Debate

On Tuesday November 27th I shall be taking part in a debate about 2012, organised by the indefatigable David Luke as part of his excellent Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness series of lectures (£7/5 arrive at 6.00pm for a 6.30pm start).

Also appearing will be Dr Cameron Adams, Gyrus, and (hopefully) Daniel Pinchbeck via skype. Booking is essential, and you can do it via the October Gallery website.

It may come as no surprise to learn that I'm - how shall I put it? - less than convinced by the flurry of predictions surrounding December 21st 2012. I'll be the first to admit that I'm wrong if we wake up on the 22nd to find that the UFOs have landed (I do hope not - I've got a lovely gig in Chagford on the 23rd), but it seems to me that this is just another expression of a very Judaeo-Christian concern with eschatology, the apocalypse, and the end of history. I prefer an altogether less linear view of time.

Don't get me wrong. I'm quite convinced that climate change is going to deliver us the mother of all shit storms, but obsessing about an arbitrary date in a calendar is just another distraction.

If you'd like to read more then why not download the latest edition of Paranthropology, where you'll find my article 'Get thee enhurued!': Magic Mushrooms, Time and the End of the World.

And while you're at it, check out Matthew Watkins mathematical dissection of the Timewave.

See you in London.

Shake yer bones

Last Friday the Whirly Band took to the streets of Oxford once again to mark the Day of the Dead. It was our most successful yet, with a large crowd of up-for-it people shaking their bones and generally celebrating this dark corner of the year. I was pleased to see that more people came in costume or with face-paint than ever before. It's starting to grow.

Kate Raworth was on hand to take photos - here's a couple. There's more on her website.

For bonfire night I finally made it to Lewes, whose November the fifth celebrations are somewhat notorious. Many thanks to Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm for putting me up and giving me the tour.

Things begin in the early evening when the seven bonfire societies, each of which have their own firework display, join together and process up and down the narrow High Street.

The standard costume of the bonfire boys is white trousers, stripey jumper and red neckerchief.

But many people parade in costume. In fact, so many eras and styles are represented that you're left wondering whether someone accidentally stumbled on the key to the fancy dress shop. I saw Romans, Elizabethans, flouncing dandies from the court of Louis XIV, pirates (lots of pirates), a green man, Gandalf, goths, steampunks, and priests (lots of priests).

The origin of Bonfire Night is, of course, the Catholic Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and an anti-Catholic thread still runs through the Lewes celebrations. People carry banners calling for No Popery, and seventeen burning crosses are held aloft to remember Protestant Martyrs burned at the stake in the sixteenth century. It's an image that carries some rather alarming cultural connotations. 

Indeed, at first glance Lewes Bonfire Night appears to be a deeply conservative, even reactionary, event, one sailing dangerously close to the unpleasant end of British nationalism. Many participants come in military costume; royalist sentiments are expressed; some people even 'black-up'. Oh deary me.

But I think such a reading is too simplistic. Amid all this order are some genuinely carnivalesque moments. The people dressed as priests are not having a pop at popery so much as mocking the pomposity of all organised religion. Yes, this is an expression of local pride and identity, but it's also two fingers to authority: try and stop us if you dare. Any councilor who tries to reign it in will find it's their effigy burning on the fires and that an election drubbing awaits. 

Yes, this is a carefully orchestrated fire show, one where the police are issued with safety goggles, a piece of managed disorder, but the pressing crowds, the drunkenness, the omnipresent smell of skunk, the flares and the strings of fire-crackers thrown at participants' feet, create  an exciting, even crazed, atmosphere. It certainly feels dangerous, as if anything could happen. 

And the Societies that dress as 'Zulus' or 'Red Indians' claim that they have always done so to raise awareness of, and show support for, oppressed indigenes (that may be spurious, I don't know, but it is at least a move in the right direction).

After the procession, each of the Societies make their way to their traditional pitches. I went to Commercial Square. First they lit their massive bonfire.

Then, in a truly carnivalesque moment, mock priests delivered mock prayers and mock sermons from a raised platform, replete with burning crosses, to the bonfire boys gathered below. The congregation responded with a hail of bangers and squibs. The priests shrugged off this barrage with a nonchalant sang-froid, an extraordinary image. And then the fireworks went off all around them.

The display was fantastic, perhaps the best I've seen, and was remarkable for its proximity. At times we were right underneath the rockets. Shock waves pummeled me in the chest. Burning debris fell all around.

In the end, I think that what makes Lewes so wonderful is that for just one night, the ordinary quotidian is shattered. Businesses board up their windows. People down tools, take to the streets and, work-be-buggered, have a party. Most municipal firework displays no longer happen on November 5th but on the nearest Saturday, as if a 'holy day' can simply be shunted out the way in the name of profit. Lewes reminds us that we have our priorities wrong. The agelasts want safety and order and things in their place. But we need somewhere to express our unruly selves lest they erupt unbidden. We forget this at our peril.

Wod - Live on Banbury

When Jim moved off his boat, Banbury, back in May, he decided to put on a farewell concert to a select audience of about twenty people. Wod played and we recorded the set. So here it is in its entirety for your delight and delectation. Enjoy.

Wod - Live on Banbury 2012-05-25 by Dr Letcher

I knew you were going to say that

A new study by psychologists at Northwestern University has found that we all might actually be a little bit psychic. The problem is, we don't know it, for if our bodies seem to have the unconscious knack of predicting future events - as measured through visceral changes in heart rate, skin conductivity etc - our minds seem rarely to listen.

None of this is news to me.

I've studied Tai Chi on and off for years, and the aim, as with so many physical arts, is to learn to listen to these bodily cues. They are remarkably effective. Clever monkeys that we are, we can literally lie through our teeth, but our bodies remain stubbornly honourable. We betray our intentions through physical tells, subtle clues and perhaps even chi. How else could people win at poker?

I play a little game with myself whenever I'm in a crowd to see whether I can avoid bumping into anyone. Often people look as though they're moving one way when their intentions betray they'll move in another, a trait that seems to get more pronounced in the elderly. Learn to see it, turn at the waist, and you can glide effortlessly down any busy high street. I've become reasonably good at sensing when people are about to change lanes on the motorway before they indicate, an essential skill these days. But I've also had some truly psychic moments. Here's just one.

Many years ago I was at Saint Chartier, watching a band, having a little boogie in front of the stage. I had one of those inklings, the sense of being stared at, and turned to see that a woman was indeed staring at me, quite intently, from up on the tiered seating. My inner voice was clear. 'She's going to come and ask me to waltz'.

I was alert to danger because she was beautiful and very French - my achilles heel - but I was attached. I turned quickly away to break eye-contact and avoid unnecessary confusion. Minutes later there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned and there she was. Oh bollocks. 'Would you like to waltz?' she said, in perfect English.

The researchers at Northwestern University have suggested that someone might invent a smart phone app to alert us to warnings from our bodily radars. Such a device is surely unnecessary. We have one already. It's called intuition or gut-feeling.

We've just forgotten how to listen.