À PROPOS OF NOTHING

As to education, I attended 9 different schools across the United States and France, and two institutions of higher learning in California. I attended a professional college for legal training in the UK and much later a College of Art and a University, also in the UK. I began university education in 1959 and finally, after 50 years of study and extramural activity, obtained a BA degree in 2009 and an MA in 2012 in Performance Writing.

 

In the late 1970s I managed to qualify as a lawyer and over some thirty years I was involved in English Criminal Law. I had dabbled in a number of endeavours prior to that, including sales, accounts clerk, delivery, import, export, exhibitions, manufacture, art and design. The most lucrative, in terms of minimal effort and knowledge, being valet parking. I have had what some might call a very chequered career.

 

One of the highlights, whilst working for American Express Traveller’s Cheques office in the City of London, I was put in charge of automatic replenishment of traveller’s cheques to various Banks in Europe and the Middle East. I once had one million dollars’ worth of cheques sent to the Bank of Bahrain in Qatar instead of the Bank of Qatar in Bahrain. An easy mistake to make, given that it made very little difference in the overall stocks held by Middle Eastern Banks at the time, but one that did not sit well with my superiors and eventually led to it being suggested to me that perhaps I should find employment elsewhere, on top of which I was told I “did not dress city”.  It was the time of ‘I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet’ and my surplus Guardsman’s tunic was not appreciated as respectable office attire. 

My interests are wide and varied. I have travelled quite a bit. I have some knowledge of films from the 30s, 40s and 50’s and have a great many favourites which are widely seen by many as favourites as well, so my views are not at all unique. I have limited knowledge of print making and book binding.  I have limited knowledge of the Scottish enlightenment and a soupçon of the writings of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous, Judith Butler, Martha Nussbaum and a few others. Richard Rorty and Charles Peirce also feature. Again, my knowledge and interest in these people is far from unique.

 

As to fiction, I rate the usual suspects, above all William Shakespeare, and, in no particular order, Evelyn Waugh, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, John le Carré, Graham Greene, Patricia Highsmith, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Antonia White and a number of others. Music is equally varied and eclectic, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Mose Allison, John Coltrane, Chico Hamilton, Beatles, Dylan, James Taylor, Carol King, Jesse Winchester, Emmylou Harris, Stevie Wonder, The Four Aces, The Andrews Sisters, Beach Boys, Paul Simon et al., Ravi Shankar, Nayan Ghosh etc. You get the idea. In brief, classical, jazz, swing, country and East Asia.  

 

For light relief, here is a short clip from Sun Valley Serenade, a 1941 film starring Sonja Henie and John Payne, with Glenn Miller and His Orchestra with Tex Beneke and The Modernaires. The clip contains a great bit featuring Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers. In the light of the current Olympic season, one must mention that Sonja Henie won her first Gold Medal in the Ladies’ Figure Skating at the Winter Olympics in 1928 at St Moritz, aged 15. She went on to win two more Gold Medals, in 1932 at Lake Placid in New York and at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936. Britain’s Cecilia Colledge won the Silver in the 1936 Winter Olympics. Neither Henie nor Payne appear in the clip, and whilst waiting for them to arrive the orchestra goes into a rehearsal of Chattanooga Choo Choo.

In short, I have led a life crowded in incident, yet I consider myself naïf, credulous and uninformed, which is why I tend to rant, am ill-tempered, full of resentment and stubborn notions. I can usually answer about 6 - 7 questions on University Challenge. As I have said, this is far from unique. 

 

So when it comes to my appraisal of the current situation as regards the American Presidential elections, I feel able to express an opinion. I have seen various pundits and conservative politicians on Newsnight shying away from expressing a preference and stating that it is up to the American people to decide and not for them to interfere in another country’s elections. This is spoken as if what they really have to say might be offensive to the American public, as if Newsnight was regularly viewed across the United States. I am quite sure that 99.9% of the American public have not the slightest notion what Newsnight is. Indeed, in 2020, the viewing figures in the UK were about 270,000 which is about 0.4% of the population. So why anyone would hold back on a point of view about Donald Trump or Kamala Harris on Newsnight is rather pointless. Unless, of course, they are delusional in their beliefs and supporters of the likes of Nigel Farage or Liz Truss. Somehow, they must realise, deep down within themselves, that such support is wrong on every rational level. The embarrassment and guilt would be too much to expose, and consequently dodging the question is the better course to follow.

 

How any western European politician can even suggest that a Trump Presidency would in any way benefit the planet is beyond sense. There is no rational thinking, or any thought at all, in proposing such an idea. To even ponder on whether a convicted criminal with chronic psychotic narcissism is fit for office, is itself a criminal act. It makes one an accomplice and as such, equally guilty.

 

At this very moment in time, the world is contemplating an extraordinary explosion of violence to be brought about by the primitive emotions of such men in power (I include Pezeshkian, Netanyahu, Putin, Trump, Kim Jong Un and other would be despots). It is beyond reason to think that any human being would contemplate such destruction, and yet just such a thing has happened before and will continue to happened so long as nationalists and isolationists harken to some deluded notion that they have more rights to live than anyone else.

 

You’ll feel better if you join in the dance with Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers in a clip from the film Stormy Weather from 1943. The Black Pepper Swing: