Silence with added jazz

Question: How can you tell the difference between good jazz and bad jazz?
Answer: You can't.

Just a little joke there to kick off the blog. After all, this is being written during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Putting re-worked, re-recorded and even contemporary music to silent films is nothing new. Indeed, a personal favourite of mine (rightly or wrongly because it was my first introduction to the film) is the 1984 Giorgio Mororder restoration of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, onto which he paired it with a pop soundtrack.



I watched the film weekly on my TV recorded VHS tape, bought the soundtrack on cassette and generally fell in love with Metropolis, if not quite the band Cycle V, over a summer.

This week I went to see a showing of The Cabinet of Caligari set to a live performance of a brand new jazz score by Graeme Stephen.

The venue was the Jazz Bar in Edinburgh. An underground room with splashes of soft spot lights on red and black décor and primary paintings of jazz bands. The film was projected onto the screen on the stage where the jazz trio (guitarist - Stephen-, drummer and multi-wind instrumentalist) performed.

The audience majority was probably more into the jazz than the old film filling the screen in flickers, going by the head-bobs and toe-taps and I might have been more interested in the film, going by my motionless intense staring at the film, but few could not be impressed at how well the two mixed.

The film, coming from an expressionist background, is the genre birthing horror movie. It contains classic horror elements - or elemenemenements - Monsters, Murders, Madness. The film rewards the viewer with a powerful and disconcerting story done with a joyous panache.

In much the same way, the jazz was at times monstrous, murder and mad and all the riveting for it. Although I am pretty sure the music score simply had "Do Jazz", "Do more Jazz" "Jazz" written in the bars instead of dotted notes, it was powerful and disconcerting and done with a joyous panache.

I guess what I'm trying to say is the cosmic sounding jazz fitted perfectly not only with the strange, slightly alien world shown on the screen but even (from the version screened) the rather beatnik styled font of the intertitle cards!

Early German expressionist horror jazz? I'm a fan.

"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari intertitle" by Robert Wiene(Life time: n/a) - Original publication: The Cabinet of Dr. CaligariImmediate source: http://archive.org/details/thecabinetofdrcaligari. Via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Cabinet_of_Dr._Caligari_intertitle.png#mediaviewer/File:The_Cabinet_of_Dr._Caligari_intertitle.png

The Vamp

It is perhaps of no surprise, dear reader, to you or me when I say I became rather besotted with the old photo. An attractive gothic woman highly stylistically posed, at once both protective and predatory over a human skeleton, her eyes - those eyes - framed in thick black shadow looking straight back at me, through the exposure, through time!

To my delight, a twitter conversation with the amazing @soniasuponia provided me not only with a name of the woman, but also a reason for the photograph. The woman in the photo is Theda Bara. The reason for its existence is as one of a set to promote the silent movie, A Fool There Was. With this information I now possessed the recipe of the potion still potent enough for an unsuspecting man to drink. Theda Bara was meant to besot me in this photograph.

A Potted Biography

Theda was Hollywood’s first sex symbol of the moving picture. Up to this film, Theda was already creating a small reputation as an alluring actress after two earlier films. However, Theda’s third production, A Fool There Was, is a watermark in cinema. A Fool There Was is regarded by some as the first ever Vampire film. From the moment the film roll whirred through the projector, a new type of actress portraying a new form of character was revealed to beguile audiences across America. It was culturally ground-breaking. The term “Vamp” was first coined for this, considered controversial, film and it was coined for the femme fatale character Theda was apparently born to play.

Theda was herself an early product of the Hollywood fame machine. “Theda” was pure creation of the movie industry. We recognise this easily today in enigmatic people such as Lana Del Rey who show how deliberate mystification is intoxicating to the imagination of the public. Her name was a stage name: although a few reasons are given, surely it is no mistake Theda is an anagram of Death. Her background was a back story presenting her as superlatively exotic: Egyptian born to a French actress and Italian sculptar. Theda entered the psyche as a ready-made sensuous, dangerous stranger.

In truth, Theodosia Burr Goodman was American, born in Ohio, to immigrant parents. Far from an accented drawl from the Old World, a rare radio interview gives Theda a crystal clipped, Anglo-American voice.




Theodosia would regret the typecasting roles sent for Theda, but they gained her mass popularity. It is a sad final fact that, despite starring in over 40 films (all from the silent era) due to a fire in Universal Studios consuming all but 6 of them, very little remains of her career output.





And so – to the film! *there be spoilers*

A Fool There Was (1915) is a horror of sorts: A grim fable.

Based on Kipling’s poem, The Vampire, Theda’s character is introduced formally on an intertitle card as “The Vampire”. A woman who holds sway over the dominion of men, we are quickly introduced to her powers to use men for the motive of her own self aggrandisement. The character metaphorically “sucks” the essence of her male victims and drains them of their wealth and will, leaving them destitute without means or rationality.

The vampire is only about using. She is attracted to status and money and seeks to sexually manipulate men with both to give it to her. She holds the men themselves with contempt, and this only grows as the men become meek and more snivelling around her as they seek an affection she will always refuse to them.

Once the film establishes the players, it centres on the story of a wealthy and happy family man who is destroyed by his (not so chance) meeting with the vampire.

It is possible Theda’s Vampire character could be the most fearsome of all vampire incarnations. She is not caged or curtailed by the trappings of folk-lore. She moves as easily in the sunlight as in the moonlight. Garlic and religious motifs give no defence from her. She is not undone by love or hesitates from compassion. She is a modern, real threat: her kind talked of and recognised in society. Her castle is a flapper bar. Her blood runs dollar-green. She is single minded, self-serving but worse than this, is also callous. We find her, when the husband is a drunken wretch and of little more use, once again seducing him to prove he will choose her over his wife and child even as they stand pleading in front of him to regain his senses. The Vampire revels in the scene: how she will pick over what remains of his carcass and he will let her, it seems, to show the wife he may have happily lived for his family, but he will gladly die for the Vampire.

Although, overtly, the Vampire appears to possess no supernatural powers, there are hints. In a brief scene, a husband takes leave of his senses (and his wife’s side) for a split instant when the Vampire brushes past not as much as noticing him – as if her thrall is a pheromone plume of perfume. We see the Vampire in an act of almost smelling out her pray in another scene. During the film the Vampire neither ages nor comes to harm. When threatened by a discarded, broken lover wielding a revolver, he still cannot quite bring himself to injure her and so in his final desperation instead takes the only option left, to shoot himself in the head to cure the madness she infects him with.

The Vampire, as she always does, moves on unchanged. And move on she does to the film’s downbeat conclusion. As you can see for yourself with the full film for your enjoyment here:




What of this fable’s message? Beware harlots? Beware the Vampires? Beware then the Vamps?

Maybe, like all good horror movies, there is no single message. Maybe, like all good horror movies, it is showing contemporary society a reflection of itself back from the warped hall of mirrors of a carnival side-show. Maybe, like all good horrors, the villain survives to strike again.

And so I go back to the photo. The mystery of it uncovered: a promotion still for a film so scantily melodramatic by today’s plot standards it would struggle to find an audience on the Hallmark Channel. Yet… and… yet… I still can’t quite take my eyes off it.

Greville Rules, OK!

I reckon I will be a good dictator. And by good, I mean very bad to my dictated to subjects. And they won’t be able to do anything about it because I would be the dictator over all humanity on the entire Earth!

I would be Greville Emperor of Earth!

I have loads of good ideas, too, to make the world a better place if I could only transplant them into all brains. The first good idea being: idea transplants.

I will give people the idea in their brains of not being annoying. This would include, though not limited to: no whistling and being polite. I will also give people the idea of thinking I am incredibly excellent.

And I will insist on plot line and character improvements in TV shows and Films I deem superior entertainment are implemented in real-time to whatever I am watching.

But beyond thought control and personality manipulation, being Emperor of Earth, I will need to make sure I am the grandest Emperor ever known: the most opulent, the most monumental, the most majestic. And for that I will need scale on a grand scale!

A huge citadel built to my personal specifications and dimensions is an obvious given here. No doorway too tall, every corridor just the exact length so if I chose to run down to the end of it I will never get out of breath no matter how fast I run or for how long, and there will be no wall which is not adorned by life-sized frescos of me and Gillian Anderson making love on different days of the year 1996. And the whole thing will be on wheels so I can have a different view out my windows every so often. Windows made of diamonds. Double glazed diamonds.

I will also need an extravagant entourage of an inner circle of trusted confidants. Get out of my life, friends! From now on I will only want to look at gorgeous people, talk with witty people and recline beside intelligent people in my vast library with an oculus ceiling so high trained exotic birds will circle silently overhead.



And I’ll enjoy the splendour of other exotic animals too: ligers and elks, polar bears and rhinos, butterflies and mogwai – in my Moon Zoo! Obviously I’m going to have a zoo on the Moon. As well as Greville Emperor of Earth I am Greville the Moon Duke. It is a title which came with the deeds for the Earth.

Although I am not a god – I couldn’t just magic up unicorns – I can insist on scientists mixing horse DNA with those whales with the horn. Or make every horse in 20 have a horn strapped to its head and they will be my imperial unicorn sentry. Either option – I will have my imperial unicorn sentry.

Hmmm… and mermaids. I will need to figure out a way to get women to be my imperial mermaids. Although I’ll need to check how well a swimmer each is first. Can’t have dead women in mermaid costumes floating on top of my palatial ponds. That would be a downer on my almighty ego.

Actually, being Emperor of Earth is already proving difficult with getting round the mechanics. Dead women in my pond is just the start of my dictatorship troubles. Having imperial unicorns, bespoke citadels on wheels and highly moisturised women to massage me each evening using the backs of kittens is all very nice – but I have not even considered the administration involved until this paragraph. If I controlled everything, I couldn’t simply demand people treat nature better or stop warring, for instance. I will need to give them something else to do. I could suggest everyone contribute to a balanced economy and food chain to eradicate Need – but that takes co-operation and dedication and there will be the inevitable meetings and conference calls asking for my wisdom which, given I want to have a LOT of leisure time as Emperor of Earth, might prove problematic unless I delegate. And delegation is no dictatorship at all. Oh by Great Grevilleseus! What have I become?! Within the space of 600 odd words I’ve gone from World Emperor with ultimate control of humanity’s thoughts to some Moon Zoo CEO with no clue how the internal moon mail system operates.

My idea of lacing the world’s water supply with champagne might backfire too.

Ok – forget all these grandiose plans for my Earth dictatorship. Let’s concentrate on the basics…

How about if I insist every earthling (or “Tomber” as I would re-term the noun) like me more than the Tomber next to them under punishment of “fight to the death in jelly”? That’s a policy which can’t backfire.

I would now ask for your vote, but I don’t need it.

Accepting space and everything in it

[This week I walked by Professor Higgs. Last year I was in a room with the Dalai Lama standing 5 feet away from me, and I caught the gaze of JK Rowling in 2011. I need only “Skype with a warmonger” to complete the set. Anyway, this event where I literally crossed paths with Professor Higgs led me to this blog tonight]

First, you must accept the improbability of Everything based on a set of universal constants.

The order of atoms coming together at this precise moment in all of the whole “Everythingness” which means I am where I am, typing the letter… “O”… in a blog on a site hosted by the internet, on Earth, is highly improbable. Very highly improbable. I am the only Greville Tombs doing this and may ever do this unless Everything lasts a very long time indeed and every permutation is played out eventually again and again in a cosmic loop until this actual moment is repeated.

Which would feel like if Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was re-released in an extended uncut version.

The chances of you reading this at the particular point you are reading this further multiplies the improbability of “It All”.

Why am I sentient now and not Robert Louis Stevenson? Why did Plato meet Socrates to discuss the concept democracy but will always be destined to miss the distracting concept of Candy Crush Saga? What am I going to not know immediately from the precise act of my death? What do I not know through reasons of the act of my living? Why am I to be here, in this place, during now?

Why was Helen of Troy claimed as the most beautiful woman in the human history when, thanks to FHM, we now can’t decide who is the most beautiful women in the next 13 months?
[It's always Winona]

Always Winona (RED April 2014, 3)

In essence, you, me, the invention of the personal pager, a funny looking cave, sound, water, asteroids, dinosaurs, leaves, annual FHM 100 sexiest women lists – Everything - All Of It - is a by probability product from a ridiculous set of probabilities adhering to base universal contestants. That is why I am here during now and not 333 years away still to be. That is why you are reading this and not being rock on a planet so distant it will reflect no light.

It is actually mindboggling. It might be the sole mindboggling thing.

Some say God made Everything. To prevent Anything becoming a god, Everything was denied the ability of the understanding of the meaning behind itself.

Now I can say this concept appeals to me. It could be the reason I can sleep at night. But then, the theory of when you get a weird shiver or jolt across your shoulder and down your spine for what seems to be no reason is actually you experiencing the death of a “you” in one of the infinite parallel universes [citation needed], each one created from every possibility, also appears to me a fair way of doing things. So, you know, I am not necessarily the person to come to for answers. Although I might be the best Greville to ask as, by my count, I am more successful at living than lots of me with every passing day. So far.

Second, you must accept humanity cannot create, but only manipulate and destroy what the universal constants supply. There is nothing more amazing and filled with intrinsic purpose than the eco-system – harmonizing, even on a brutal level, is what Nature is good at. The system is awe inspiring. Humanity is about breaking the system to its own limited inspiration and detriment. There is nothing as intricately gorgeous as a dragonfly about human development.

Except maybe Winona Ryder.

Third, you must accept humanity has the capability to simply put these huge concepts, ones which dwarf our importance and heighten it to beyond all reason simultaneously, to one side and get on with things. Things like watching Catchphrase on TV. And as a direct correlation of this, the third acceptance of the three rules you must accept, humanity invented the scam Cold Caller.

In the same week as walking by Professor Peter Higgs, a man who has rightly placed himself in the pantheon of humans who have raised themselves closest to understanding what's going on, I have been cold called by a human intent on scamming and scheming to their gain without a jot of care to my well being.

Thankfully I was sharp to their tricksies.

The cold call scam was abundantly see-through – which, as it was a phone call, shows how transparent it was.
[GT]: Hello?
[CC, noise of call centre which could have been a sound effect on a stereo]: Hello! Are you having a good evening?
[GT]: Uh-huh?
[CC]: We are a local company who has come into extra money and we’d like to share it among members of the local community like you!

Because this is exactly what nameless “local companies” do when they come into money. I actually think I read somewhere giving surplus money away was “local company” business strategy 101. Or did I see it in Die Hard 4.0?

[CC]: If you answer a couple of short questions, we can look to give you a share of the money tonight!

I presume the first question being my address since I am ex-directory and on the Telephone Preference Service List so you couldn't possibly have my telephone number by reputable means.

[GT]: Not interested.
[CC]: ARRRRGGHHHH! YOU...!

Click!

He actually yelled at me.

These cold callers, though, will get someone handing over their bank details, before you can press "go to checkout" on an amazon wish list. And they are often more sophisticated than this one. Some will even come up with a fake company name instead of "A local company".

Fourth, you must accept that because of the first three rules: a cold caller is contacting you because they want something, not because you want something. If you want a service then it should be on your terms. Check references, call the trade guilds, don't agree to anything or give details without a chance to reflect away from the situation for a day or three. Make sure you go and actively make the mistake, don't let the mistake passively come to you.

Cold callers, whether legitimate or not, on the telephone or at the door, are a scourge. Every cold caller is an irritation, unfeeling and (mostly) expert at taking money.

So, Cold Callers everywhere, remember how stupefying and awesome life is – you, like me, are made from tiny bits of Big Bang, still, if you can imagine it, we are imperceptivity exploding and expanding from a single point in the universe from every part of us. The universal constants, putting it all together from infinitesimal pulls and pushes capable of incredible force, have made atoms and placed atoms with atoms, formed cells, moved vast swathes of space, formed planets, a sunrise over Orion’s Belt, placed elements to carve details into the cosmos and developed almost impossible systems within autonomous systems. Over eons and (I cannot stress this quite enough) astonishing odds, a set of circumstances which, if understood, would make you a weeping God for the instant prior to your mind firing synapse burning lightening bolts with knowing It All, the immense, unthinking, unstoppable, and if it would recognise it: glorious, ultimate science has determinedly, perhaps execrably and if it would recognise it, beautifully, put you and I together in all our complexities and wonders and art and allowed us to exist in this too brief fleeting shared moment to appreciate it all and you chose to be motherfucking cold calling wank stain.

*slow handclap* Well fucking done.