Antony & Cleopatra (A Photo Essay)

 

"Antony and Cleopatra can be read as the fall of a great general, lured away by a treacherous strumpet, or else it can be viewed  as a true celebration of transcendental love."
- A. P. Rierner


"Here you shall make acquaintance with Cleopatra, 
that Being of Flame whose 

passion-breathing beauty 
shaped the destinies of whole Empires."

- H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra

"Since Antony clearly does not understand her, 
are we likely to do any better?"
- Harold Bloom


"Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra must needs be
 intolerable to the true Puritan."
- G.B. Shaw

Whilst studying some astonishing works of literature and art for my dissertation in 2012/13, which explored the question of whether the image of the femme fatale in mid to late 19th century literature and art was empowering or repressive to women, there was one historical and fictional character that began to emerge with increasing regularity in my research, and this person/persona soon began to take on mythological status in my ever enquiring mind: Cleopatra. And then, to my eternal delight, about seven or eight years ago, I was able to undertake a mesmeric in-depth study of Shakespeare's magisterial play, Antony & Cleopatra, and truly inspired, got the idea to do a set of pictures that I could use for my Artist of the Month series that I'd been invited to do at our wonderful, local vegan cafe. My exhibition piece was a great success, and, due to the huge enthusiasm with which it was received, I thought it would be more than appropriate to write an accompanying blog post to describe the relevance of  the pictures that I took, and discuss the extraordinary amount of criticism that has been penned, not only about Shakespeare's magnificent play, which will never diminish in power, but also the magnificent character/persona of Cleopatra herself. Dear reader, if you are unaware of this play, I can confidently assure you it is a mesmerising, glamorous, romantic, and utterly devastating piece of literature.

Shakespeare's version of Antony and Cleopatra (their story has been written by many other writers, too), tells, in principle, the story of the fiery, passionate relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, approximately dated as being around 30 BCE, with the backdrop being the unstable, tumultuous relationship between Egypt and Rome. Over different periods of history, Shakespeare's Cleopatra has been viewed in many different ways. In former times, she has been described as a gypsy, a strumpet, a slave, a royal wench, a boggler, and, my absolute favourite, "a lass unparalleled," which makes her sound like a Disco Queen from Dewsbury, swigging pints of Boddingtons bitter whilst driving all the boys (and ladies!) wild with her flashing, kohl-lined eyes, low-cut sparkling mini-dresses, and flirty dancing. But, over time, and especially in more recent years, Cleopatra has become something of a feminist icon. Instead of seeing her through some of those insecure, sometimes misogynistic spectacles I have just described, she is now often viewed through a different lens. Actors and artists now portray Cleopatra as a thoroughly modern woman, one who is sharp of mind and wit, resilient rather than soft, and one who is in possession of immense intelligence, and who is a skilled diplomatic communicator, rather than the one previously viewed as being little more than a creature dominated by uncontrollable and overwhelming passions. The more modern view also sees her as an exploration of sensuality as power, and I'm pretty sure James Brown would count her among those who he celebrates in his song 'Hot Pants', i.e., one of those fabulous ladies who are courageous and sassy enough, especially in a patriarchal society where the odds are already stacked against them, and who, just like our enchanting queen, "use what she got to get what she wants." Amen to that! This more favourable, contemporary view of Cleopatra also places her as a key player in challenging the notion of strict gender roles and of playing with identity. And, I would suggest, Shakespeare actually did even more than this. For in his play, what he is really demanding of the reader/viewer is that they take sides in what is primarily a struggle between two very different approaches to life.

 On the one hand there is the way of Imperial Rome. This is a male world, governed by strict rules, centred around the conquest of the natural world, waging war and invading other territories, and with an emphasis on individual discipline and duty. On the opposite side is the world of Cleopatra and Egypt: a soft, feminine space dedicated to the senses, the emotional and the playful. And unlike Rome, a space that is also closer to nature. This is a realm dedicated to euphoric pleasure, role play, and is a place (inner and outer) where life is oceanic and performative, and where performance is celebrated as eagerly as songbirds embrace with ecstasy their instinctive desire to sing.

"There's not a minute of our lives should stretch without 

some pleasure now. What sport tonight?"

- Antony to Cleopatra

Into this situation Shakespeare places Antony, a Roman soldier who has fallen deeply in love with Cleopatra and the lifestyle that she and Egypt offers, in opposition to the stern, conquer and rule business world of Caesar and Rome. He is torn between his duties as a Roman general and his wish to live his life with Cleopatra, and the glorious pleasures that Egypt has to offer. And it's not only Antony who is faced with this, for the play seems to demand an answer in the mind of the reader/viewer as well. For as the play unfolds, Shakespeare suggests that there can be no middle ground here, as the two value systems are simply too incompatible with each other to melt into one. You, as reader or viewer, must choose which one you side with. And Antony, despite his fierce inner struggles, already knows, beyond question, that his heart belongs completely to Cleopatra and Egypt:




I am actually of the opinion that Shakespeare, for all his gallant attempts at neutrality, without doubt sides with Cleopatra and Egypt. It is a thoroughly modern play, and many of the descriptions about Cleopatra are spoken by Roman soldiers and generals, who are quite obviously wracked with bitter resentment (Nietzsche's ressentiment in full flow), and soul crushing jealousy of Cleopatra, Antony, and Egypt, and spend much of their down time bitching for all their worth like Twitter/X or Facebook trolls on heat. In this famous description of the voluptuous magnificence of Cleopatra, however, Shakespeare has Antony's best friend, Enobarbus, evoke this extraordinary Egyptian Queen, to Maecenas and a gaggle of soldiers who are quite literally begging him to describe what she is really like. It is a passage that both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Oscar Wilde declared as being their favourite in the whole of Shakespeare's writings, and, dearest reader and companion in the search for beauty, it is truly sublime:

Maecenas: Now Antony must leave her utterly?

Enobarbus: Never; He will not: 
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 

Her infinite variety. Other women cloy 

The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry 

Where most she satisfies...

Enobarbus: "As for her own person... 
It beggar'd all description: she did sit 
In her pavilion..., 
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see 
The fancy outwork nature."

And as Antony travels back and forth to Rome from Egypt, pulled this way and that, both inwardly and outwardly, Cleopatra almost drives her messengers crazy as they too race back and forth as she constantly demands fresh updates on what he's doing. When he is away from Egypt during his travels to Rome she showers them with questions and it is obvious that this is no queen who is simply desired by others. She imagines what Antony might be doing at that very moment:

"Where is he now?

 Does he walk? Or is he on his horse?

Oh, lucky horse, to bear the weight of Antony!"

As the play unfolds, it is clear that Cleopatra certainly knows which of Antony's buttons to press, and she teases him mercilessly, egging him on continually to greater heights, and encouraging him to surrender to the true greatness in his soul, showing how playfulness can have profound affects as he experiences life in a different way than had seemed possible:

"You can do better!"

- Cleopatra to Antony

The sultry, luxuriating atmosphere that Antony finds himself in changes him imperceptibly. He embraces androgyny, and Cleopatra continually challenges him to understand life from her and Egypt's perspective, something to which he surrenders with relish. The gossips in Rome chatter and twitter, but, in Egypt, the serious fact of the matter is that Cleopatra is proving to Antony that she is every bit as powerful in her way as he is. And, of course, Antony proves a more than willing leading man, revelling in the gender fluidity and role play that Cleopatra teases out of him:

Cleopatra: "That time? O times!
I laughed him out of patience, and that night
I laughed him into patience, and next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed,
Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
I wore his sword Philippan."

I maintain that it is primarily in this area that Shakespeare's play has become a truly modern mouthpiece for our own times. For Antony and Cleopatra challenge traditional notions of masculinity and femininity to its roots. They show that these aspects of our lives are, in reality, performative, and not set in stone, and perhaps this can challenge our culture to explore and embrace what these notions actually are, and to be more open to the idea that a greater richness and variety of life, and a shedding of the ego and the personality, can be achieved by doing so:

"Cleopatra is voluptuously female and also robustly half-masculine. And both she and Antony appropriate the powers and prerogatives of both sexes more lavishly than any other characters in literature."

- Camille Paglia

"Caesar and his retinue call Antony effeminate, 
yet Antony is more masculine in the usual sense. 
Caesar and his Roman world view believers are essentially
 a bland, businessman type, who, 
compared to Antony, are sexually neutered."

- Camille Paglia

As can be already surmised, Antony and Cleopatra is a wonderful, hypnotising play. Cleopatra, as Shakespeare has written her, has become a feminist icon, a modern character who kept the Romans at bay by using both her quick intelligence and her sacred sensuality. For centuries, Cleopatra had been principally read as a scheming femme fatale, an example of why women on the whole could never be trusted: i.e., they are obsessed with passion, short on intelligence, inconstant, natural, mysterious and untrustworthy. But modern criticism has now, thankfully, moved beyond this, and she is now viewed as somebody who celebrates and personifies the feminine values of the land over which she reigns. Her passion and ardour, her "infinite variety", as Shakespeare gloriously describes it, becomes not just an opposite of Rome, but rather, reveals how limiting (and dull!) that masculine, Roman approach to life is. The Roman world of discipline, conquest and rules has no place within her and Antony's oceanic imagination, and, as the play unfolds, it is up to the viewer to decide which approach to life they are on the side of. Antony himself has been decried as a great general who lost his masculinity and gave up his duties for sensuous pleasures as the plaything of an enchanting queen. But, as with Cleopatra herself, Antony is also a modern character, caught in a ceaseless struggle between duty and pleasure, only too aware that Egypt offers a rich alternative to the limiting values of Imperial Rome. He is strong enough to let Cleopatra lead where necessary, and, as humanity faces up to perhaps its greatest ever struggle to date - the terrible threat and crisis of species extinction due to Climate Change - we may need to consider Egypt's approach to how we live rather than Rome, as this could well be a species and world saving matter. Antony proves that this can be achieved as he is able to blend the masculine and feminine within himself to a point where he becomes a far richer and life-affirming person than he was before, and which had personified the Roman ideal. And both Cleopatra and Antony emphasise just how performative the whole notion of gender actually is. Biologically male and female they both may be, but as they show, the rest, in terms of gender, is far less rigid.

I am severely reluctant to spoiler the outcome of this extraordinary play, so I'm going to finish my write up of it whilst allowing you, dear reader, if it is a play you have not read/watched, to follow it up yourself, should you desire to do so. But please enjoy and savour the remaining images and texts below, and, until next time, I remain, as always,

Your Nocturnal Butterfly. xx

"The personalities of Antony and Cleopatra

 constitute a great poem."

- Harold Bloom

"Cleopatra regularly and brilliantly bewilders readers and theatregoers alike, and Antony too, and herself. But to be more human in love is, in our time, to imitate Cleopatra, whose variety and playfulness makes staleness impossible."

- Harold Bloom

"Many unpleasant things can be said about Cleopatra,

 and the more that are said, 

the more wonderful she becomes."

 - A. C. Bradley

"But even then I knew that it was not in physical charms alone

 that the might and wonder of Cleopatra truly lay. 
It was rather in a glory and radiance

 that shone from the fierce soul within."

- H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra

"Antony and Cleopatra blur time, 
in the eternal now of the imagination."

- Camille Paglia

"Better to be Antony and lose

than to be Caesar and win."

- David Bevington

And a huge thank you to my wonderful models:

Cleopatra: Lady Lilith

Antony: Aaron Lowney

"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… 

they are made with the eye, heart and head.”

— Henri Cartier-Bresson

"We're all looking for a love, that's as strong as death,
That's equally heart, and equally head.

We're all looking for a love that takes away our breath,
That's equally heart, and equally head."
- Brett Anderson

A Horse with No Name

"Run your hands across the flanks of a horse,

Feel the pulse of blood, the heat & the force,

It's an antidote to a life spent on the beat...

That's the beat of concrete, the beat of machines,

Of mobile phones & plasma screens...

How much of that junk do we really need?"

- Tim Booth, 'Waterfall'

Spotify Wrapped

 

Well, it's been another very difficult year, and it didn't surprise me at all to see this reflected in the music that I listened to most on Spotify this year, as Spotify Wrapped was published yesterday. Previous readers will no doubt recall that I have issues with Spotify Wrapped, as it can never be entirely accurate, as music or podcasts that were available at the start of the year are obviously going to have more playtime than anything released towards the end of the year. But, of course, it's not meant to be taken seriously, it's just a bit of fun and an interesting talking point with acquaintances about their yearly diet of music and podcasts as well. Having been through a very traumatic year, which included my first bronchoscopy, a very unwanted new CF-related diagnosis, hospital admissions and having to move out of our flat for two weeks whilst work was done by the landlord on damp and mould problems in our bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, which caused my issues and led to the new diagnosis in the first place, it's little to no wonder that this year's list is what it is. As last time, here's a brief rundown.


My third most listened to song was, no surprise to anyone who has read my recent Roxy Music post, was their brooding and eerie 'No Strange Delight':



My second most played song on Spotify for this year was the Manics' glorious, beautiful, haunting, ABBA-kissed hymn to winter and nostalgia, Still Snowing in Sapporo. It's the opening track on their most recent album, The Ultra Vivid Lament, and I can remember clearly the first time Lydia and I listened to it, as we sat in the car whilst looking out at the sea as we continued one of our much treasured rituals of listening to any new albums by our favourite artists, together, in full for the very first time:



And, my most listened to song of this year was a new release, by the The xx band member, Oliver Sim, with a simply breath-taking cameo by Jimmy Somerville. It's hard for me to actually write why this song took such a hold on me as it deals with a situation that has such an uncanny, although very different in detail to mine, that it's actually pretty unnerving. For in the summer, I was made seriously unwell by the mould that I have just discussed, and the symptoms, without going into too much detail, were gross. And this song deals with Oliver Sim's struggles with his feelings of being hideous because he has been diagnosed with HIV. Our illnesses are different ones, but my CF symptoms in general, made so much worse during the mould flare up that made me so very unwell, are, well, to be honest about it, hideous.
But I didn't even realise this would be the song's subject matter when I first heard it, and it was Oliver's incredible voice that grabbed me initially, and I can even recall thinking, "wow, this fella sounds like a baritone Rufus Wainwright." But as I listened, the words also struck me like an arrow, and then when Jimmy Somerville came in at the end, like a falsetto angel replying to Oliver and ensuring him that chronic illness doesn't make him unlovable, and how he should "be brave, have trust, and be willing to be loved," I was gone. Floods of tears poured down my face and I could hardly believe that a pop song such as this, written in 2022, where everything is now surface and our culture almost demands that we constantly show only our sunny sides, or our cliched problems, could actually exist. It took me back to Queen's Innuendo album, which also dealt with illness and mortality and was another album that I took to my heart. As with Innuendo, this was a revelation:




As always, my most listened to podcast was Chart Music, which is pretty much untouchable in my podcast listening, and that is my main take outs from this year's Spotify Wrapped.

To finish, here's ABBA:

"And I say 'thank you for the music,
For giving it to me."

Amen, to that.

Until next time,
I remain...

Your Nocturnal Butterfly

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/sep/04/oliver-sim-hideous-bastard-review-raw-frankness-on-xx-singers-solo-debut

Camus

It would have been the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus's birthday today. I can still recall the rush of excitement, and even anguish that I felt on reading his books for the first time, due to the fierce but courageous nature of the questions that he poses to the reader. Camus was, and still is for me, one of those writers that ensures that when you finish one of his books, you emerge a distinctly different person from the one you were when you began it. His ideas about how many people live their lives in a kind of "Bad Faith" style has always felt like a warning for me, and something to be aware of at all times. In modern parlance, he would simply say that most people are phoneys, who say they believe something but their behaviour is completely the opposite. Or are dominated by denial. Either way, it's exhilarating stuff.

Below are a sample of some of his quotes:

"The slave protests against the condition of his state of slavery; the metaphysical rebel protests against the human condition in general."

"Some of us are left with the knowledge that love can never wait. A shared bed, a hand in yours, that's the only thing that matters."

"Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear."

A Dream Within a Dream

The Dark Season is upon us and now reveals itself. The air chills and sharpens, and our senses quicken and tremble.

It is the perfect time to share these beautifully eerie portraits I created for this poetic season, a season where everything is heightened, and where those happy few who are in touch with the strangeness of our existence, and who are more in tune to what lies beyond the veil of night, come to the fore and experience our mysterious world on a deeper, more sensuous level.

All of these pictures were taken before the end of 2019, before the world changed forever.
I have an extra appreciation for them now; their cinematic mystery and enchanting diaphanous quality evoke a feeling we desperately need to inhabit again. A portal, a magical realm, an escape from our perceived and binding "reality." After all, isn't our reality only what we choose to experience at any given moment? Perhaps it's time again to believe in something more. Such as they did in those times long... long ago... when people still believed in witches?

And with that, my dear Creatures of the Night, 

I hereby present...

A Dream Within a Dream
(Atmospheres and Apparitions)

"Is all that we see or seem,
But a dream within a dream?"

- Poe, The Raven

Part 1: 

Hauntology

Seul au clair de lune... au clair de lune serioux

"Let the moon shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty sea-winds be free
To blow against thee."
- Wordsworth, 'Tintern Abbey'

A Different Kind of Blue

"From here, So high,

We drift, We fly,

With twilight breakthrough...

A different kind of blue."

- Passengers, 'A Different Kind of Blue'

AlwaysForeverNow

"The distinction between the past, present and

future, is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

- Albert Einstein

 The Fortune-Teller

"You know, the people in these towns,

they're asleep. All day, at work, at home.

They're sleepwalkers. We wake them up."
- Sofie, 'Carnivale,' HBO

Rose Quartz

"The Divine is everywhere, all you have to do is look."

- Casper David Friedrich

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

"Everywhere there are spirits.
They are all around us."

- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Forever... and ever... and ever...

"I'm sorry to differ with you Sir, 

but YOU are the Caretaker.
You've always been the caretaker.
I should know, Sir, I've always been here."

- The Shining

The Science of Ghosts

"You know that Freud had to deal all
his life with ghosts? It's simply the art of letting the 
Ghosts come back. And it's the ghosts

who will answer you. Perhaps they already have. 

Ghosts are part of the future."
- Jacques Derrida, 'Hauntology'



Strange Neighbourhood

"But this place is too cold for Hell.

I'll Devil porter it no further."
- William Shakespeare, 'Macbeth'

Part II: 

Witchcraft, Wicked Witchcraft

Lilith

"Witches are always women who dare to be:

groovy, courageous, aggressive, intelligent, nonconformist,

explorative, curious, sensually liberated, revolutionary."

Kristen. J Sollee, 'Witches, Sensualists, Feminists'

The Hunter

"She is the Hunter,

You are the Hunted..."
- Brett Anderson, 'The Hunter'

The Ghosts in the Machine

"The modern technology of images and 

communication, the strange aliveness of the 

electric current,

all these energetic pathways have surely

enhanced the power of ghosts and 

their ability to haunt us. It is up to

us whether we have the courage to

allow their magic to illuminate

our lives that can lift us periodically

 from the dreariness of the everyday."

- Kafka

Only After Dark

"I feel my spirit fly,

Only After Dark...
Why don't you fly, fly
Fly with me,
Sweet elusive fate will
Be our company...
Only After Dark."
- Mick Ronson, 'Only After Dark'

Coffee & Poe

"For the rare and radiant maiden,

Whom the angels name Leonore,

Nameless here forevermore."
Poe, 'The Raven'

After Dark

"In her eyes, 

a distant fire light burns bright,

And I'm wondering why
It's only After Dark?"

- Tito & Tarantula, 'After Dark'

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

"You are so vulnerably haunting.
Your eeriness is terrifyingly irresistible.

You appear to be in touch with something

we mere mortals shall never know."
- Franz Kafka

The Double

"Mirrors on the ceiling,
Pink champagne on ice...

Living it up at the Hotel California,

What a nice surprise...

Bring your alibis."

- The Eagles, Hotel California

'Lebensfreude (Joy of Life)

"Real art must always involve

some witchcraft."
- Isak Dinesen

The Haunted Dancehall (of Paradise)

"Midnight, and the Stars & You,

Midnight... and a rendezvous.
Your eyes held a message tender
Saying, "I surrender all my love to you."
Midnight... brought us sweet romance,
I know all my whole life through,
I'll be remembering you,

Whatever else I do...

Midnight, and the stars and you."

- Irving King, 'Midnight and the Stars and You'

Happy Halloween, my Devilish Darlings.

Bites & Kisses!

xxx

"There are, in our times, many people on a low,

material plane of existence, quite incapable of appreciating

the symbolic value of sensuous phenomena.

How eternally thankful we must be if we are not one of them."

- Oscar Wilde.

The Twilight Hour

"Whether I believe in ghosts or not,

I say...
Long live the ghosts!"

"But They're not Martians, They're Tories!"

Through a recent long and sleepless night, caused principally by a combination of CF and CF-related diabetes symptoms, as well as the high dose of steroids I am currently on, I spent two of those early hours listening to The War of the Worlds album on my headphones, and what a strange and wonderful experience it was. It seemed eerily prescient, and I was also struck by just how bloody good it is. Richard Burton is, of course, sensational as the narrator. His voice just gets me every time. The depth, the richness, the faintest trace of a Welsh accent, and, of course, the melancholy. 'Forever Autumn' is a wonderful song, and hearing it in those ghostly hours on my headphones reminded me of another uncanny experience I had back in October 2019. For one morning, as the autumn sun shone a dazzling white through our window, I heard Lydia suddenly "shooshing!" me to turn the music down as it was too early to have it that loud. It wasn't me that was the cause on this occasion, however, it was the bin collectors outside. For they were playing 'Forever Autumn' at full blast from out of the cab of their lorry, and that was what we could hear reverberating around our flat. Words can't really do it justice but it was a strange, haunting sensation, almost as if the aliens had arrived and The War of the Worlds had suddenly become reality. The other thing that struck me was the piece that is called 'The Red Weed' actually sounds remarkably similar to Bowie's "Berlin-era" track with Eno, 'Art Decade', and even some Krautrock from a similar period. As The War of the Worlds could be seen as a prog rock nightmare to the punks and cooler types, this appeared to me as being a connection they perhaps wouldn't have anticipated (or desired).

But the main thing that has struck me is just how eerily The War of the Worlds tapped into my current fears of impending doom and disaster for our world and society. There is such an ominous atmosphere to the music and the storyline, from the very first moment when missiles start departing Mars, on their long journey across "a million of miles of void," and which then proceed to cause so much calamity to Earth, despite the astronomer, Oglebee, trying to reassure humanity that there's nothing to fear, as the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one. But... still... They Come...

But, of course, it's not Martians that are responsible for the nightmare we are facing today and who are threatening to destroy our entire social fabric, which was so painstakingly built up from post-war gains, such as the National Health Service, a nationalised railway and utilities, and a fully functioning safety net for our country's citizens known as the welfare system. Oh no, it's full throttle, cut-throat, extremist neoliberal capitalism that is on the verge of sending our culture and world up in flames. And this situation made me recall the scene where the Parson (a brilliant performance from Phil Lynott, incidentally) wrongly believes, in his delirium, that the Martians are actually devils, and that he must cast them out to save mankind. His wife, Beth, tries to make him see sense: 

"But they're not devils, they're Martians!"

- Picture of Nathaniel the Parson 

with the Martians on the

 War of the Worlds LP artwork

And that's when I remembered another, quite terrifying picture, also from the artwork on the LP, (see below) that I poured over for hours on end as a boy, but I would imagine that what Beth would be saying to the Parson now, and this picture could surely represent the naked truth, made visible, behind every decision that our government (and the right-wing think tanks behind the scenes that influence everything) is currently making around public services, public expenditure, and its insistence on torching any institution that represents the community or the poor, under the hateful, extremist ideology of free-market capitalism...

"But they're not Martians, they're Tories (neoliberals!")

 

Such is the feeling in my mind as we enter the beautiful season of autumn, with class war being waged and a palpable sense of dread and fear in the air. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way, despite Margaret Thatcher trying to convince everyone that there is "no alternative" to neoliberal capitalism. But H.G. Wells defeated the Martians in his story, and who knows, perhaps capitalism will be dumped in the bin, and one day historians will look back in horror at the mayhem and inequality it ravaged on the human and non-human world alike. Hope has to Spring Eternal. We shall see what unfolds during yet another winter of discontent.

"And the endless parade of old Etonian scum,

Line the front benches, "So what is to be done?"
All part of the same establishment,

So, I ask you again, "What is to be done?"

I ask you again, "What is to be done?"

I ask you again, "What is to be done?"

- Manic Street Preachers, '30-Year War'

"Till now myself and such
As slept within the shadow
of your power
Have wandered with our traversed
arms, and breathed 
Our sufferance vainly. Now the
time is flush,
When crouching marrow in
the bearer strong
Cries of itself 'no more'."
- William Shakespeare,
Timon of Athens