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n If there is one theme that I like to return to fromntime to time in this blog, it is the idea that things are not always as theynseem. Sometimes we are mistaken, sometimes we are deluded, sometimes we arenhoodwinked and sometimes we are cheated. There are times when this is fine -ngood even – for that’s how optical illusions and magic tricks work. Trompenl’oeil art is a delightful genre and an intriguing source of fascinating imagery.
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| Guiseppi Arcimboldo – Winter – 1573 |
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nOther times, it’s not so good, as when the quacks,nsugar pill sellers and other woo merchants roll up their sleeves and applynthemselves to separating us from our hard-won dosh. And there are times when it’snsimply harmless. Someone slips a little white lie, knowingly or unknowingly,njust to spice up a tale and make it a tad more titillating. Take the phrase, “Maynyou live in interesting times,” for instance. Use it, and it won’t be longnafter you’ve finished your cornflakes before somebody pipes up that it’s an Ancient Chinese Curse. Except it isn’t. The Chinese didn’t have a curse likenthat, never had, and certainly not the Ancient Chinese, but somebody, somewhen, tacked thenancient Chinese bit on to make it sound more inscrutable.
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| An Inscrutable Ancient Chinese Gentleman |
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nYou know, to make itnsound all double-edged and wise; you might think you’d like to live inninteresting times until you start to think what the interesting bit mightnentail. Then it doesn’t sound so great. Interesting means that stuff isnhappening, and that might include stuff like wars, disasters and upheavals. No,nit’s better to live in uninteresting times, when things just chug along nicely,nthere aren’t any nasty surprises, and you just keep on keeping on. It justnsounds better if it’s a Chinese curse, makes it sound all ironic and knowing.
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| A Scrutable 1930s British Diplomat |
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nIt probably comes from the 1930s, when British diplomats were doing whatever itnis that diplomats do, (separating the natives of some foreign field from their goods and chattels, innall likelihood), and one of them, wanting to sound like he’d been exposed tonancient wisdom whilst posted out East, dropped the description in, hoping tonimpress the folks back home in Blighty. And it does sound good. Since then,nother people have added a hierarchy of ancient Chinese curses to the phrase. “Maynyou come to the attention of the Government,” is one. Not nearly as subtle,nthough.
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| A Very Interesting Book. Terry Pratchett – Interesting Times |
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nBut what about uninteresting times? When, exactly,nwas the most uninteresting day in history? Well, some Cambridge boffins oncenwrote a computer program that analysed newspaper headlines and so on, and itncame up with the answer that the most boring day in the twentieth century wasnApril 11th 1954, (and they used this revelation as a publicity stuntnfor their program, so just out of devilment, I’m not mentioning any names here.nIf you are interested, then Google is your friend. And yes, I did call themn‘Cambridge boffins’. Just out of devilment.).
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| A Boffin Buffooning |
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nNothing really happened on thatnday. Sure, some things did happen, it’s just that they weren’t all thatninteresting. No really, really famous people were born (there was one Turkishnphysicist, Abdullah Atalar, who is undoubtedly a nice man and loves his motherndearly) and no really, really famous people died; obviously some people werenborn and some others died – Jack Shufflebotham, who once played centre half fornOldham Athletic, hung up his boots for the last time, for example, but nonreally, really famous folks. The Queen opened Parliament in Ceylon,nthere was an election in Belgium, Mike Hawthorn (the racing driver) crashed hisnFerrari and there was some local unpleasantness involving the Mau-Mau in Kenya.nBut that’s your lot.
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nSo, paradoxically, the most boring day is interestingnbecause it’s boring, thereby making it not boring and disqualifying itself fromnits only claim to fame.
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| The Daily Telegraph – April 11 1954 |
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nHowever, what about April 18th 1930? When it camento 6.30 pm, the BBC Radio newsreader read the following broadcast,
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n“Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is nonnews.”n
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nAnd that was that – they played piano music instead of reading any un-news.n
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| Most Featureless Place in England |
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nTalking of boring, the most boring place in Englandnis on a farm near Ousefleet, Scunthorpe. On the Ordnance Survey Landranger mapn112, grid reference SE830220, there is an almost featureless one kilometrensquare (I say almost, it is clipped in the bottom left corner by an overheadnpower line). But nowt else. No contour lines. No roads. Not a sausage. Zip.nZero.
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| John Cage (doing his infamous Alan Bennett impression) |
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nBut does the absence of something automatically makena thing boring? I’m thinking here of John Cage’s 1952 composition entitled 4′33″n(Four minutes and thirty-three seconds), which is popularly called ‘FournMinutes and Thirty-Three Seconds of Silence’. Except it isn’t. Well, it is, butnthere is more to it than that. I don’t know if Cage planned it, but fournminutes and thirty-three seconds is the same as 273 seconds in total, and –273ndegrees Celsius is 0 on the Kelvin scale – Absolute Zero, a point at whichnnothing happens (and which can’t, theoretically, be reached)(and I’m rounding,nso no snarky comments about –273.16 C, please).
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| Absolute Zero? Score of John Cage – 4′ 33″ |
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nThe point of the piece is thatnan audience is present before an orchestra and the circumstances are exactlynthe same as if they were about to play a ‘conventional’ classical work. Butnthey do not play a note. It is all about the circumstances, the occasion andnexpectations. The ‘music’ is the ambient noise that accompanies thenperformance. Basically, it’s a question of ontology – what is music? What isnArt? It is a very valid question, and it should be asked by everyone (not justnmusicologists or aestheticians). Without going off on a rant, the blandninsistence of the “I know what I like” brigade is simply not good enoughnwhen they are faced by ‘challenging’ art. All they mean is “I like what Inknow,” or, in other words, “I am satisfied in this shell I inhabit,”n– or –
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n“I don’t want to live in Interesting Times, thank you very much.”n
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