My Tulpa: How Post-punk Improved My Vocabulary

Whilst looking at my book shelf yesterday, my eyes were drawn to a book I own that I haven't read since I first finished it straight after purchasing it back in 2009: a biography of the Post-punk band, Magazine by Helen Chase. Flicking through its pages I read a page where the band's vocalist and superb lyricist, Howard Devoto, was discussing how he had come up with the idea for the song, 'My Tulpa.'

And almost immediately, I recalled how very much I admire this song, and had from that very first instant become fascinated by the word 'Tulpa,' a word that until then I had never actually seen or heard spoken before (this would have been about 1990, I would guess, when I bought the album it's on, Real Life, my first Magazine CD). For some reason it then immediately got me reminiscing about how exciting it was, back in my formative years, to discover words such as this, and, obviously not having Google immediately to hand, having to go and seek out their meaning in a dictionary.

This is the meaning of the word 'Tulpa' (sadly, from Google, not my old dictionary):

A tulpa is a being or entity believed to be created through visualization and focused will, often described as a thought-form or an imaginary friend that gains sentience and independence. The concept originates from Tibetan Buddhism, but has also become a popular idea in internet communities where individuals create and interact with tulpas as independent mental companions.


I loved discovering this fascinating and eerie concept, and the strange lyric of the song made slightly more sense for me knowing it. But it's also reminded me just how much I learnt about language and literature from those Post-punk bands that I first immersed myself in when I was 18/19. As usual, I was pretty much completely out of step with my contemporaries and the popular musical culture of the time. This was the beginning, then rapid growth and then near saturation of indie and Madchester, and apart from my idols, James (who were, and still are, so much more than indie), in the main, I couldn't stand it. It was almost all exclusively guitar based, synth-free, it possessed lyrical drivel, ("Have you seen my polar bear? It's that white thing over there," went one particularly dreadful one by The Charlatans), politically disengaged, and seemed a very dumbed-down, southern middle-class tabloid media notion of working class culture. The more this scruffy, stoner culture became all engulfing, the more I escaped to the past. The first Post-punk band I loved were Simple Minds, and although their high-Post-punk days were behind them at this point, their back catalogue was a joy to behold, and it was through reading an interview with their singer Jim Kerr that I first discovered Magazine, who Kerr namechecked in an interview and later described as being a big influence during Simple Minds' formative years. I still have that interview and the whole quote is quite interesting:

"Critics say we're Moderne lads with silly eye mascara, making pointless cold music - all alienated and everything. I should fucking well think we do feel alienated, coming from the Gorbals where, if you aren't totally into football and girls, there's something really the matter with you - and where it's really difficult for you to get involved with anything like music... I wish there was a decent genre, as much as I don't like them, for bands like Roxy, Magazine and us."
- Jim Kerr of Simple Minds

These recollections have had me thanking the stars that I had artists such as Simple Minds and Magazine in those days, as while most of my friends were taking vast amounts of drugs and becoming increasingly monosyllabic, probably in no small part aided and abetted by the lowest common denominator lyrics of the baggy, indie landfill bands they were losing their minds over, my attention was most definitely elsewhere, and these Post-punk pioneers not only sounded fabulous, but were also like a pre-University education in themselves. For as well as the highly literate lyrics, the entire aesthetic was artistic and sharp-minded, more post-war European than blissed out American psychedelia, and futuristic rather than retro. Furthermore, it wasn't only just discovering these fascinating new words and ideas through them, but authors such as Dostoevsky and J.G. Ballard also entered my world, as did the Bauhaus design museum and the philosophy of Existentialism. It was truly exhilarating stuff. 

- Gang of Four single artwork,

'At Home He's a Tourist'

It's fascinating to me to recall how the more that The Stone Roses dirge, 'Fools Gold', or 'Step On' by the Happy Mondays reverberated everywhere I went when I was out in public areas, like an annoying persistent housefly buzzing around that you can't get rid off, on my sanity-saving headphones I had the likes of The Comsat Angels and, of course, Magazine sound-tracking and educating my mind during each and every step. Here are some of the words and ideas that I first learned through the Post-punk bands that I was avidly listening to, back in 1989/90, when I was still a very young man.

'Cacophany':

This strange word first crossed my path as a piece of music and part of the title on Simple Minds' second album, Reel to Real Cacophony (1979). It also later surfaced on the James song 'God Only Knows' (I told you they weren't boring indie beigists), and it wasn't the only word that I learned from that early Simple Minds album either, as there was also another track on it, called...

 'Veldt':

On Simple Minds' next album, my favourite of theirs and an unquestionable masterpiece, Empires and Dance, one that had me scratching my head was a track entitled, 'Kant Kino'. These two words, infuriatingly, weren't in the dictionary and it wasn't until many years later that I discovered 'Kant Kino' was the name of an arty cinema in Berlin. I did, however, on opening my Pearls Encyclopaedia, having found nothing in the dictionary, discover that there had been a very influential eighteenth century German philosopher called Immanuel Kant, even though the song had nothing to do with him.

- Kant Kino Cinema, Berlin, 1980

As mentioned, Simple Minds had led me on to Magazine, and as well as the already mentioned word 'Tulpa', I very soon discovered a few other words via them, too, which fascinated my eager mind and imagination. Little did I realise it but the first one had connotations of murder, and potential government cover-ups, as I was to discover.

'Motorcade':

It's funny how a song can take hold of your imagination or world view, as, to this day, whenever newsreel footage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown or discussed, along with the possibility that it was an inside job by the CIA, the mere mention of the assassination and/or the motorcade that he was travelling in immediately reminds me of this extraordinary song. And what should be a pretty standard, descriptive term is now forever linked with secrecy and tragedy, as is the next one, especially given the heart-breaking fact of global warming that may make what it describes actually a thing of history, like the dinosaurs:

'Permafrost':

This has always been a controversial Magazine song, due to its lyrical content, but when I saw them live in 2009 and Devoto changed the lyric, "I will drug you and fuck you, on the Permafrost," to, "I will drug you and fuck you, on the remains of the Permafrost," it added a strange poignancy to what is already a Hauntology-drenched, mysterious song. And by the way, concerned readers, that lyric is anything but a sadistic male fantasy, which is what Devoto has sometimes been accused of, by music journalists who really should know better and who would be doing themselves a favour if they took a bit more time listening to the entire song and doing some background research before shooting their mouths off. Devoto himself explained that, "The song started from the line 'I will drug you and fuck you' and it evolved from there. It's supposed to be tender really. Trying to find a little pleasure, a little something, in a very difficult world."

Over time, I then discovered and fell in love with many more fascinating Post-punk bands, including Joy Division, The Pop Group, Gang of Four, Echo & the Bunnymen, among others, and then happily discovered that a few contemporary artists were now wearing their love and influence of those late 70s/early 80s bands on their sleeves. U2 released the Berlin recorded Achtung Baby in 1991, which of course meant I had to go and discover what "Achtung" meant (it's 'attention' in German), and the Manic Street Preachers released what remains one of the greatest albums ever recorded, The Holy Bible, in 1994, and which had words in the lyrics which I am still deciphering to this very day ("Zaprudau," "Lagerstrasse," "Shalom," "Horthys," just for starters). This, along with most Post-punk, was music that either presumed you were intelligent enough to understand it, or would at least have the curiosity to be interested enough to delve further and find out more about these subjects yourself. I certainly feel that this is one of the main reasons why this music means so much to me and has struck me on such a deep level. Music that takes real attention to listen to and is rewarding for that very reason, is always going to have a deeper resonance than the blank nothings that were the lyrical content of the multitudinous indie bands that were so popular at the time.

And I'm really pleased that I made this connection yesterday, as it has reminded me just how valuable those artists were, and still are, in many cases, in encouraging me to listen to music not only for enjoyment, but also for the enrichment of my mind and soul. And in those days of blanket indiedom in the 90s, where it seemed all the airways were taken up with their out of tune droning and dumbed-down lyrics, these Post-punk artists offered me an escape route via my imagination to a richer, more philosophical world that I was deeply interested in exploring. And I can still, in the autumn and winter, and early spring months, be often found, wearing my long coat as I have done ever since I was 19/20, strolling by the sea on grey, misty days (All Cats are Grey, wink wink), headphones on ears, savouring the sounds and words of these tremendous artists. And, incredibly, their bleak, post-industrial sound and razor-sharp lyrical outlook arguably has even more relevance now than it did back then. Which is actually quite terrifying to ponder.

Happy listening, dear readers. Enjoy your dictionaries.

Until next time,
I remain...

Your Nocturnal Butterfly.

Ghost Blogs

       - Gustave Dore, 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (Illustration)

Whilst clicking on some saved links to blogs that I used to follow a long time ago in a twenty-year old laptop folder, I noticed that some, indeed most of them, had been inactive for over fifteen years and hadn't had any new content posted. It suddenly got me thinking, how can this eerie phenomena be described? Likewise with content on pages that are long out of fashion, such as Tumblr, and Myspace. These webpages were a treasure chest of material, where people shared their music, art, photography, reviews, and interacted with each other. Whither have they flown? It also got me wondering about this page, my very own Nocturnal Butterfly blog, where so much of my heart, soul, intellect and thoughts have found a resting place. For some reason, the idea of Ghost Ships came into my mind, those ancient vessels, with no crew members, sailing the seas across an ocean of water and time. Is that what my blog will eventually become when I am no longer here, or if I am unable to continue adding to it? Perhaps, it will one day in the future find a reader desperately seeking for the words and pictures it contains, and prove to be a life raft for them? A Lost soul seeking harbour, glamorous escape or inspiration, and literary comradeship. In a way, it is not that dissimilar from how I imagine authors may have felt about their published books. For there are so many that are hardly, if ever, read by anyone any longer. It would please me greatly, when my psyche/soul resides somewhere in The Great Beyond, to know that somebody had stumbled upon what was now my very own Nocturnal Butterfly Ghost Ship Blog and found solace, or, even better, a love of life and inspiration contained within it. Maybe my words would encourage them to write, sing, or whatever their skill and passion is, to a greater height and achievement than they would have reached otherwise. Maybe it will inspire them to embrace their own style, and learn to ignore the naysayers deriding them, and put their doubter's ideas where they should belong, in the shadows. Maybe mine and Lydia's romance, so often and lovingly documented here, will encourage them to throw caution to the wind, and dare them to experience the deepest connection (for it is scary), with their own paramour? I imagine it would be similar to me when I found an old edition of Stendhal's On Love, first published in 1822, tucked away in a book shop on The Rows in Chester, and which reminded me how precious life is and how it must be grasped at every second, and that cowardice is no response to life's challenges or its opportunities, exactly at the very moment that I needed its precious words the most. But dear old, cranky Stendhal himself, become dust many moons ago, will have had no idea that his book would find me almost two hundred years later, and be aware that in his words I would find exactly what I was seeking at that moment. It would give me incredible pleasure to consider that my blog may be stumbled across by someone in similar need, in two hundred years' time, and find it was of similar importance to them as Stendhal's book was to me, which in itself was almost like a Ghost Book in the shop where I found it, hidden away at the back, unloved and practically invisible, struggling to make its existence known against a barrage of much younger, brasher and shinier distant cousins.

I have been very much put into the mindset of Hauntology whilst considering this strange phenomena, and particularly the great departed writer and Philosopher Mark Fisher's magnificent K-Punk blog, which has always been a treasured part of my online reading experience. The K-punk blog is a Ghost Ship that I am only too delighted is still around, just waiting to be discovered by people who will recognise the wonders it contains:

https://k-punk.org/

I also noticed that The Incredible Kulk blog, by one of my favourite music critics, Neil Kulkarni, who tragically passed away suddenly in 2023, is now empty of content, and this has saddened me greatly. 

Here are a couple of the links to olde Ghost Ship webpages that used to be a hive of life and creativity, but now appear to be simply floating around web-space, perhaps hoping that one day they will once again be appreciated by eyes and minds seeking the treasures they contain:

https://bowiesongs.tumblr.com/

https://chloevanparis.blogspot.com/

And a fascinating article on Ghost Ships...

https://www.abandonedspaces.com/wrecks/ghost-ships.html

Happy Summer Hauntings, my darlings.
Stay Haunted.
xx

Orpheus: Singer of the Soul

- Orpheus,
George de Forest Brush (1890)

According to my mum, I could sing before I could walk, and when I stop and recall my childhood, singing was a supreme constant during that time (and, when health permits, I still sing as much as I can to this very day, although most of that is confined to singing along with songs that I love on the i-pod around our home), and recently I have been recalling with greater intention and intensity some of the singing I used to do. I loved trains as a boy, especially steam trains (my favourite was the gloriously named, racing car green coloured giant Evening Star), and even travelled behind this majestic locomotive a couple of times on steam excursions in the late 70s, and two songs I can recall practically word for word to this very day, are 'Freight Train' and 'Canadian Pacific.' I have practically zero recollection of nursery rhymes or children's songs, as the songs I learned and sang were the songs my mum loved and played constantly, by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Abba, The Carpenters, and the present day contemporary 70s hit singles. It brings a smile to my face to visualise me standing on one of the tables in school, only around four years old, singing songs such as 'Nice 'n' Easy' by Sinatra, 'Jeans On' by David Dundas, or 'Oh boy!' by Buddy Holly, and how wonderfully crazy that actually is. Dear reader, your Nocturnal Butterfly's first school had less than 100 pupils, and when it was raining during lunch or breaktimes, the teachers would get me to stand on a table and sing for everybody. I thought nothing of it at the time yet it gives me a warm glow now. I would also sit on the doorstep of my Mum, Nain and Taid's little terraced house in North Wales where the four of us lived, and passers by would stop and ask me to sing, and in return I would be paid handsomely in items such as chocolate bars or crisps. My portfolio of songs to draw on also grew very quickly, and before long I was also bringing tears of joy/sorrow to my listeners, as I added poignant ballads such as 'Danny Boy', 'Amazing Grace', and hymns such as 'In the Garden' and 'There is a Green Hill Far Away' to my repertoire. Looking back, this astounds me, and I truly do wonder at times how different my life might have been if I hadn't been born with such a chronic, limiting and inherited condition as CF. Don't get me wrong, dear reader, for all its struggles, I adore my life and if one tiny alteration had meant that I wouldn't have met Lydia and/or we hadn't fallen in love with each other then I would never change a single thing in a million years, but in the interest of reflection and curiosity, it does give me cause to ponder. But it's pretty incredible to think that from those humble beginnings, singing for members of the public in a little village in North Wales , at the age of 4-7, were the first steps that led me to being the original Gavroche in the 1985 RSC/Cameron Mackintosh production of the longest running musical in the world, Les Miserables, at the Barbican and Palace Theatre in London, at the age of fourteen. It is quite a journey. And, although my professional singing career was taken from me by my CF, I am starting to realise, especially when I consider the incredible responses I have from audience members when I now occasionally sing at open mics, that my singing really is something unique, and that my voice and delivery genuinely touches many people on a very deep level. Consider this happening from a couple of months ago. I had been invited to sing a couple of songs at a local event that had a "Musicals Theme," and one of the songs I decided to sing was Nat D. Ayer's  'If You Were The Only Girl in the World' from the 1916 musical, The Bing Boys are Here, which opened at the Alhambra Theatre in London and ran for 378 performances. At the end of my performance, a lady came over to talk to me and, with tears in her eyes, said she hadn't heard that song for decades, and told me a very moving story about how her father had once recorded it as a message for her mother, when he was away fighting in the First World War.

As you can probably imagine, this meant a great deal to me, and I was deeply moved. I remember reading in a German Romantic Fairy Tale once that it is actually tears from the listener that the singer hopes to be paid in, not gold and silver, and I certainly felt the accuracy of that very profound truth at that moment. So, bearing all this in mind, it won't surprise you to know that one of my great heroes, and someone who has fascinated me ever since I first heard his name and his story, is Orpheus.

Frieze of Orpheus at Wightwick Manor

Orpheus's legend is well known to many. In the Greece of the ancient world, Orpheus was the person/demigod whose music and singing was so beautiful that even the trees, animals, and even the stones moved closer so they could hear him. Birds would flock round and listen, and he had an intimate connection with all that exists. Warring armies would put their weapons down and stop fighting when he sang and played, and he sang of his immense joy at all creation and celebrated the gods and the seen and unseen aspects of existence. He met and fell deeply in love with the dryad wood spirit, Eurydice, and by his kiss awakened her into energetic life.

Eurydice and Orpheus

But on their wedding day, Eurydice had to flee from an advancing Arsisdaeus, a horny satyr who was attempting to take her for himself, and was bitten on the ankle by a snake she had inadvertently trodden on. She died before anything could be done to help her, and, heartbroken and utterly crestfallen, Orpheus decided to try and make his way down to the Underworld itself in an attempt to persuade the gods to release her back to life. Orpheus's beautiful singing tamed Cerberus, the three headed dog that guarded the entrance, and all other manner of obstacles and finally found himself face to face with Hades, the god of the underworld, and his wife Persephone. His song, both in words and delivery, was so plaintive and heart-wrenching that they agreed to release Eurydice back to him, but only on one condition. He had lead the way and he must not look back at her until they were out of the caves of the Underworld...

Orpheus gets so close to fulfilling his task, but, at the last moment, mistrusting the gods, he glances back to check that Eurydice is with him, and in that instant, loses her forever...

From that moment on, Orpheus is distraught. Over time, he does sing and play his lyre again, but from now on his singing was more reflective and melancholy. Whereas before he had sung with abandon about nature and life, praising gods such as "Zeus Thunderbolt," even though the storms terrified him, and offering hymns of praise to "Laughing Aphrodite", born from the sea and who wove everything together, he now became more introspective, singing of his loss and longing. Where once his singing had produced blissful obliviousness in his listeners, now they also experienced remembrance. He still enchanted everything with his songs, until, one fateful day, he drew the furious ire of a group of intoxicated Maenads (female disciples of Dionysus), who, becoming increasingly outraged when he continuously rejected their amorous advances, eventually tore him to pieces, with Orpheus's head landing in the river, where it initially continued to sing before it fell silent. I was going to add 'forever' to that previous sentence but that wouldn't be strictly accurate. As it is my belief that wherever and whenever beautiful singing is heard and performed, Orpheus is present. His influence remains everywhere and it extends beyond music, as well. He refused to eat meat due to his love of animals, and preferred to fast rather than consume their flesh, and whenever a kindness or a feeling of love and appreciation to our non-human animal brothers and sisters occurs, Orpheus is present there, also. It was his singing and music that enabled his beloved Eurydice to be born from a tree, so he is present whenever love brings an individual(s) to a heightened life. He was a friend and believer in Dionysus, so whenever people gather to celebrate, dance and drink, Orpheus is there, and if the music playing is the very best, he will be the one emanating from the speakers. When great poets write their beautiful, haunting, majestic poems of love, longing, lust and memory, Orpheus resides in the words. He was in intimate contact with the moon goddess, Artemis, and for this reason he knew the allure and mystery of women, and whenever people notice the beauty of the moon, and take pictures of her to share on social media, or when lovers kiss with only that glowing moonshine to light up the scene, he is there, fondly smiling. But most of all, it is through the finest portrayers of the ancient art of singing that Orpheus is found, especially in the scintillating singers that "turn the soul-circuits in us", as Plato once described. You will probably have your own singers that do this for you, dear reader, and mine are my revered artists who bring that human, all-too-human, yet eerily otherworldly quality to their performances:

                                         
                                    Rufus Wainwright:

                               

                                  Billy Mackenzie:

                                   

                                     Meow Meow:

                                      

And, of course, whenever we hear a bird sing, whether that be a humble sparrow, a songstress such as a blackbird or a thrush, even the cawing of a crow or the screech of a seagull, through to the King of Song, the Nightingale, Orpheus is most certainly present.

It is said that when Orpheus was killed, every drop of his blood gave birth to a beautiful, light-coloured flower, which they called The Orpheus Flower, and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Sonnets To Orpheus wrote:

"Raise no commemorative stone. The roses shall blossom every summer for his sake. For this is Orpheus. His metamorphosis in this and that. We shall not take thought about other names. Once and for all, it's Orpheus when there's singing. He comes and goes."

"Gesang ist Dasein"

(This is singing as being)

Your Nocturnal Butterfly

xx

This post is dedicated to my greatly missed mum, who introduced me to music and taught me to sing, so many moons ago.

End of Year Ruminations

Well, what can one say. Some regular readers here might recall that I am most certainly tapped into the ideas around Hauntology, a philosophy that maintains that, as individuals but perhaps more importantly as a society, we are haunted by the ghosts of what could have been, along with another idea that seems to me to be becoming more evident with each passing year, The Slow Cancellation of the Future, and this philosophy pretty much sums up how I feel about our current society.

In 1994 the Manic Street Preachers released their magnum opus, The Holy Bible, an album that is arguably the most powerful ever recorded, and which will, in time, if humanity remains, I maintain be viewed in a similar light to Picasso's Guernica, and which has a devastating song on it entitled 'The Intense Humming of Evil.' I am a member of a Music League competition where the contestants submit a song for a different themed round each week, and the theme for the last round of this season is to submit a song that sums up the past twelve months. Is it any wonder that 'The Intense Humming of Evil' is the song that immediately sprang into my mind. The wars and carnage and intense cruelty and callousness our species has inflicted on each other and on the non-human world has been on a scale far beyond what I expected to see in my lifetime. And not only does the whole situation break my heart, but it also reminds me of why I am so interested in and almost soothed by the music, art and ideas of Hauntology, for it at least helps me make some sense of our insane, late-Capitalist world, but it also transports me back to when I used to watch programmes like Tomorrow's World, which promised us a glittering future where there were no diseases, technology did all the shitty jobs and chores, meaning that human beings would have more time that they could devote to the worship of art and beauty, for meaningful things and for solving problems. Space travel everything seemed to imply would be as normal as flying on a plane, and there would be no more war or hunger or starvation. And mesmerising new sounds such as this would sound-track it all, in a future that seemed like it was going to be the greatest place in the world:

But how different and precarious it all seems now.

And which brings me back to the Manics...
It is now five years since I last saw them in concert (the last time I was able to was in 2019 because I had to shield for so long because of the pandemic), and I missed their 2021 Ultra Vivid Lament tour (the first one I've missed since 1997), and I also couldn't attend this year's glorious double-header with my equally beloved London Suede, as outdoor venues are also a no-go for me. Thank the stars, however, that I was able to attend a very special, one-off additional screening of Be Pure. Be Vigilant. Behave concert film of their 2016 Holy Bible concerts that had a Q&A afterwards with the one and only Nicky Wire.

Being in the second row for the film was truly extraordinary, and the power of the music, the words, the Manics' delivery and everything around the performance was off the radar. I have a wonderful connection with birds - we have two gorgeous seagulls (Mr and Mrs. Kehaar) who nest each year on the roof just outside our window - but this year I think all three of their chicks fledged too soon and didn't make it, which is almost too distressing to reflect on in any depth - and when James Dean Bradfield was singing the terrifying and heart-breaking refrain, "No birds!" in 'Mausoleum', I literally thought I was going to shatter. Those lines hit me so incredibly hard, and I could feel the tears streaming down my face. But Mr and Mrs. Kehaar have taught me a vital lesson, for as I am writing this, right now, in December, I can quite literally hear them pretty much every afternoon arriving to inspect their love nest ready for next year's brood. And every time they arrive to inspect and tidy up their nest it is accompanied by the most exquisite sounds (if anybody ever tells me that herring gulls can't communicate with each other I'm afraid I will have to tell them to go and give their head a wobble), of excited cries, and the most wonderful, genuinely happy little chatter that they exchange with each other. It absolutely melts my heart. It is devastatingly sweet and romantic, and to my mind it is their version of how I feel when my fine lady and I are getting ready to go out on one of our occasional dinner dates, and we have our favourite music playing (The White Lotus soundtrack, for example), and my neurons are firing off rapidly in my brain making me feel decidedly tipsy and ecstatic even before a drop of wine has passed my lips. And for the past week or so they have done this every single day, and I can actually feel their love of life and their love for each other emanating from them. They did quite obviously grieve in the summer when their chicks didn't make it as it was very subdued when the nest was suddenly empty, but my goodness, they have shown astonishing resilience and are now as bouncy and energetic as they were when I first saw and heard them in May 2023. Mr and Mrs. Kehaar, you are an inspiration and a refuge from the insanity and cruelness of human society and I salute you.

As well as the Manics' incredible concert film I have also managed to connect with some very fine art this year, and going to the cinema or a theatre still seems such a novelty after four years of not being able to attend due to the pandemic, and this makes the occasional visits I can now make seem even more like a gift from the gods (which, it actually is, and always has been). 

First up were three quite incredible films that I was able to watch in our local, beautiful art deco cinema. The first one was Poor Things, and I loved every second of it. The storyline, the script, the performances, the very decadent (darlings!) Oscar Wilde inspired set, it really did tick all of my boxes. There was also The Zone of Interest, which was so immensely powerful it almost became too painful to watch, and was made all the more relevant by the horrific atrocities that are being visited upon people in far off places that seems to show absolutely no signs of abating. And then, saving me from complete misanthropy and despair, and giving me hope and belief in the species homo-sapiens when it had almost all but disappeared, there was All of us Strangers. Oh my goodness. Be calm my trembling heart. I am not going to say much more about this film right now as I intend to do an in-depth post on it in the near future, but what a searching, soul-shattering (and then putting it back together) film it truly is. Just extraordinary.

I have also had the immense good fortune to read some wonderful books this year, of which my favourites were Walter Pater's Sebastian Van Storck, which although only a short story, contained a wealth of meaning and symbolism, and I am still going through the very many articles and chapters that have been written about this strange and haunting story. And a sensational novella by Guiseppi de Lampedusa called The Professor and the Siren, which was utterly enchanting. If any of you faithful readers have a taste for exotic and decadent storytelling, I can recommend both of these works very highly. They have a world that you can disappear into, and I have found that very consoling during this year of, even by human standards, intolerably high levels of barbarity. I have also spent some quite glorious time with the poets John Milton and William Wordsworth this year, thanks to two utterly fascinating zoom courses. I have a love/hate relationship with Wordsworth (more like/hate, actually), due in no small part to his alleged betrayal of his one-time best friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and this course helped me regain some of my affection for Wordsworth's finest poems. And, what can one say about Milton? On every level, his poetry is searching and sublime, and his personal story is one of immense bravery pitted against terrible personal loss. An inspiring individual.

When I think of this year from a cultural perspective, however, the fact that I can now attend the theatre again has led me to explore more of a type of music and performance which I have always loved, but which has never quite been central to my aesthetic radar: opera! I started the year by finally reading a book I have wanted to read for what seems like a million years, aeons and aeons, in fact; The Queen's Throat by Wayne Koestenbaum.

If I had a tenner for each time this extraordinary book has been quoted or referenced in the many, myriad readings that are contained within my musical library - especially when discussing the truly great pop/rock/torch singers that I adore such as Freddie Mercury, Billy Mackenzie, Marc Almond and Scott Walker - I would be able to stay regularly at the Cafe Royal and take afternoon tea in the Oscar Wilde bar whilst I was there. It has been on my 'to explore list' for so long that it had taken on mythological status in my ever enquiring mind, and when I finally had a copy of it in my hands (a magical gift from another dear friend of mine, Phil, who also happens to be a musical maestro), I could hardly believe my eyes and senses, and hoped beyond hope that the actual book itself wouldn't be a crushing disappointment compared with how I had built it up in my imagination. Dear reader. I needn't have worried. Take a quick glance at these few quotes...

'For a diva, difference is power; she finds power in her deviance. For the non-diva, however, difference only leads to ridicule.' 

'In the auditorium, I seek refuge from the contemporary world, as I hide, immersed in opera, from life's failure to be operatic.'

'The diva's home, a stage, is a shrine to itself: it teaches the fan that home should be as grand as opera, that home is not a place in which one should tolerate diminishment.'

"Dorothy, in life that first impression is very important. So, always, at all times, exude confidence and let your bosoms lead you." (Veteran opera singer Mary Garden's advice to her niece, Dorothy Kirsten.)

These are just a few that I have chosen to share, but the book is filled with glorious, camp, moving, and hilarious passages about opera, opera divas, and the pains and joys of being an opera fan. It increased my knowledge of opera considerably, and then, to my great joy, my beautiful innamorata and myself were able to attend a live performance of Bizet's Carmen at our local theatre. I was in seventh heaven and to my eternal delight, a friend of ours who joined us at the theatre took this rather splendid picture of my fine lady and I on our way into the theatre. Not only is it one of my favourite photos of the two of us from this year, it is actually one of my favourite pictures of us altogether...

Which pretty much brings me to the end of this year's ruminations. 

Many thanks to all of you who have spent time reading my words this past year, and I look forward to regaling you with more thoughts and cultural ramblings next year. Here's to a more peaceful world in 2025 (as unlikely as that seems), but it's something I will never stop hoping for, and I very much hope that the year ahead will bring you much enchantment of the heart.

I remain, your Nocturnal Butterfly

xxxx

If My favourite Artists Were Painting in 2024

Ever since I first began to love and understand the pictorial arts, I have always dreamed about what my favourite artists would have painted if they were around today, and, especially, if they were in our circle of friends and acquaintances. And I have imagined intensely what these works might have looked like, and often let my thoughts meander dreamily into these realms of, "it's unlikely, impossible really, but how ravishing they would be." And now, thanks to an app that I have discovered, I can get a further glimpse into what these paintings might actually have looked like, if painted by these glorious artists of a different age. Dearest reader, these pictures are not to be taken seriously, but what a heart stopping joy they provided me when I saw them on my screen, as close to life as currently as I could possibly imagine.  

Welcome to my dream art gallery, darlings.

Enjoy!

The Voice: Richard Burton

The great Welsh actor, Richard Burton, died forty years ago today. I recall hearing his incredible, rich baritone speaking voice for the first time when I was about eight or nine years old, as he was playing the part of the narrator in Jeff Wayne's LP, The War of the Worlds. I can even remember asking my mum if she knew who he was as his voice did something to me, even back then. And I recall my mum's sense of pride when she replied to me, "That's Richard Burton, cariad. And do you know what? He's Welsh."

I have listened to The War of the Worlds album so many times since then that I could probably recite his lines, word for word. Some kind soul has edited the album so you can listen to all of his bits in one go. Here it is...



And even more fascinating is this collection of outtakes, which I am mesmerised by...



It may be a coincidence, although I'm pretty sure it isn't, that two of my all time favourite films, both of which I have so obsessed over that I could probably recite those word for word, also, Sydney Lumet's version of Peter Schaffer's Equus (1977), and Mike Nichol's version of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), both star Richard Burton. He is magnificent in both, and different qualities stand out in each film. In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, as George, Burton, although jaded, retains a deep and restless love of life and vigour, as he swings between total love and total war with his wife, Elizabeth Taylor's Martha, a woman who is most definitely in touch with the chthonic elements of her femininity (to paraphrase Camille Paglia). In Equus, he is equally magnificent as the world weary, yet still hungry for life psychiatrist, Dr. Dysarth, who has his beliefs turned upside down when he encounters Alan Strang, a young man who has blinded six horses with a metal spike and is sent to him for analysis and treatment. This is one of my favourite scenes in the film...



His life has been quite an inspiration to me, also. His interviews are staggeringly honest and vulnerable when compared with the anaemic, "I'm only here because I have a new film to promote" interviews with actors today. For unlike the timid, play it safe interviewees of now, Burton talks openly about his deep rooted insecurities, his struggles with alcohol addiction, his guilt at the death of his younger brother, and, of course, his passionate, fiery relationship with Elizabeth Taylor. He is also humble enough to admit his belief that his enormous success as an actor wasn't just down to his talent and himself, but also some mysterious kind of "diabolical luck," that he is too superstitious about to analyse in depth. Many of today's actors, in comparison, are crashing bores. He was a socialist, talked of the Welsh miners as being the "princes of people," and even wore red socks (the colour of the Welsh rugby and footy teams) for luck.

There are other films of his that I adore, too. He is magnificent in The Medusa Touch, devastating in 1984, and compelling in the very odd production of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. But, most of all, he was a lover with an insatiable desire for passion, and he and Elizabeth Taylor, just like Antony and Cleopatra, in real life and on a mythological level, too, reside with the immortals up there in the stars. 

gorffwys ymhlith y sêr (Rest among the stars).