So, Beyoncé’s song I Was Here, written by Dianne Warren in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York fifteen years ago…

The song has a circularity.  Someone appears to be looking back on great achievements, while also feeling that their success lies somewhere in the future.

Perhaps the spirit of the song lies in that grammatically beguiling line “I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted.”  “I did, I’ve done” recurs throughout the song as a kind of chorus. I did and I’ve done are not two ways of saying the same thing.  I did is the past perfect, used to talk about specific things in the past. “I did a number of great things.”  A list of achievements could then follow, detailed on a CV. But “I have done” is a construction known as the present perfect, used to talk about experiences without saying precisely when they happened, or even what they were: “I have done some great things,” said with a faraway look in the eye.  You get the sense that in summing up the significance of your life, any specific experience starts to become problematic.  If you’re a singer like Beyoncé, do you point to some particular song you sang, even though songs become unfashionable, and some people don’t think pop songs are worth much anyway.  Somehow, specific claims to fame fail to measure up.  In their place comes a vaguer yearning for distinction. In fact, the idea of achievement becomes so vague that you get the line “I want to say that I lived each day until I die.”  Well you could say everyone manages that.  In place of the self-aggrandising song of a famous singer wallowing in their greatness you get a much more humane reflection on how relative the idea of achievement is.  Even the humblest of people fulfil the hope of living each day until they die.

I Was Here is the song in which a celebrity culture reflected on itself and saw the bigger picture.

As a footnote, the music of I Was Here is in E minor, one of the most frequently used keys in pop music, since it suits the guitar very well.  Building on this, the song uses a variation of one of the most familiar chord progressions in popular music, known as the 50s Progresson, so-called because it was widely used in the 1950s and 1960s.  The 50s Progression is G-Em-C-D.  The chord pattern for I Was Here  is Em-C-D-Dsus-Em-C-Em-C.  The suspended D chord, or Dsus, is another familiar feature of pop music.  Technicalities aside, the point is I Was Here is quintessential pop music, using archetypal patterns familiar to everyone.  If there is something special here, it is a quality of the widest range.

(Thanks to Rob for recommending this song to me)

 

I wanna leave my footprint on the sands of timeKnow there was something that,

Meant something that I left behind

When I leave this world, I’ll leave no regrets,

Leave something to remember, so they won’t forget

 

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

I was here

 

I want to say I lived each day, until I die

And know that I meant something in somebody’s life

The hearts I have touched will be the proof that I leave

That I made a difference, and this world will see

 

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

 

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

I was here

 

I just want them to know

That I gave my all, did my best

Brought someone to happiness

Left this world a little better just because

 

I was here

 

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

I was here.

 

I lived

(I loved), I was here

(I did), I did

(I’ve done), I was here

(I lived), I lived

(I loved)

I was here

 

I did

(I’ve done)

 

I was here

 

Written by Diane Eve Warren • Copyright © BMG Rights Management US, LLC, DO Write Music LLC, Downtown Music Publishing LLC

Battle of Britain Day, 15th September, commemorates the most intense day in the aerial battle over Britain in the summer of 1940.  A memorial to pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain has been built at Capel le Ferne near Folkestone in Kent, an area where a great deal of heavy fighting took place in the skies overhead. There is a visitors’ centre, a Spitfire and a Hurricane aircraft, a flag mast which stood at Biggin Hill airfield during the battle, and the memorial itself, which consists of a huge representation of a propeller laid out in the grass, with a statue of a young pilot in the middle looking out to sea. I found walking around the memorial a moving experience. The pilot  looks reflective and peaceful, as though it’s all over now and he can sit back and think about the past. There is also a sense, however, that he is still watching the sky for enemy aircraft. He is in full flight kit, ready to go. If the call came  he would jump up and run to the Spitfire parked outside the visitors’ centre where people are having cups of tea. This is a thoughtful memorial, fittingly reflective, with an immediacy  which suggests the atmosphere of those months in the summer of 1940. The memorial is one of tranquility, and yet there is still a feeling that any moment now…

The overriding impression, however, is the peaceful one.  Some people, I fear, now scan the skies for illusory enemies. It is useful to reiterate following Battle of Britain day, that many of the pilots who flew with the RAF in 1940 were Europeans.  It is shameful that Poles find themselves the victims of attacks since the European referendum, when Polish pilots played a vital role in helping win the battle. There might not have been a Britain to take a vote on European membership if it hadn’t been for Polish, Czech, Belgian and French pilots.  We assume the pilot sitting at Capel le Ferne is British, when actually he could be Polish.  We should remember that.

 

I visited Whitby Abbey this summer, and found a group of youngsters willing to dress up in many layers of black in thirty degree heat.  They were paying homage to Bram Stoker’s Dracula which has scenes set at the Abbey. Admiring such commitment  I read the book, and found myself introduced to a very proper Victorian gentleman named Jonathan Harker. As he travels east across Europe, he notices the trains get later and later. He can’t even imagine what the trains are like in China. It is a bit of a shock, therefore, when our conventional Englishman falls into the hands of a vampire living in a brooding castle.

Meanwhile, back in England Mr Harker’s fiancé is a Victorian stereotype of what women should be. Mina does her best to live up to this crazy ideal. She looks after her traumatised husband, following his escape from Dracula, and cleverly takes disparate records of vampire sightings, and puts them together to produce a coherent picture of what’s going on. But despite this contribution, her husband, and his group of male vampire-fighting vigilantes, announce in the most honourable of terms that a weak woman can have no part in fighting the enemy. Excluded from events, kept in the dark for her own peace of mind, Mina finds it difficult to sleep, no doubt the result of a suppressed sense of injustice. She allows the men to offer her a sleeping draught to help deal with nervous insomnia. Tellingly, it is while she is vulnerable, sleeping her drugged sleep, that a vengeful Dracula arrives in her bedroom.

Bram Stoker quietly pulls apart the apparent morality of his society, and shows how ordinary, proper life can actually push people into the land of the living dead. This was the aspect of Dracula I admired, equivalent to that modern Shaun of the Dead irony, where zombies invade an English suburb populated by people who are pretty much zombies anyway. Bram Stoker’s sentimentality is cloying at times, particularly in the second half, but thankfully there is always that undercurrent of satire, showing that Dracula’s castle isn’t so far from the Home Counties.

The Bram Stoker fans I met this summer were from Birmingham.  They looked great and kindly allowed me to take a few photos.

This time last year I took out a subscription to Apple Music.  I then worked my way through Rolling Stone Magazine’s Top 500 Albums Of All Time, finally getting to their number 1 album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band a few weeks ago.

The fact that I could make this musical odyssey – or odessey as the Zombies would have it – really brought home to me how much has changed in the way we access music.  The advent of streamed music ranks up there with the shift represented by the development of records in the early twentieth century.   After growing up with LPs, cassette tapes and CDs, the ability to listen to hundreds of albums without taking out a second mortgage – and without covering my bedroom walls in shelving – was a revelation.

So as a memento to my long musical journey here is a list of  sixty tracks that I was glad to discover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finished Vanity Fair last night at about 1am, getting to the last page in a state of shock.  This morning I wrote the following review for Goodreads.

Novels originally developed from morality tracts designed to teach readers right from wrong.  In its own beautifully twisted way, Vanity Fair follows in this tradition.  The title of the book derives from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegorical Christian journey leading from worldly sin to heavenly virtue.  The difference with Vanity Fair is that when readers take its moral journey, they climb aboard a white knuckle roller coaster, with crazy loops showing up where down should be. The story’s virtuous characters find their good intentions leading to bad ends, while the vices of darker characters can ironically work to bring about good outcomes.  Make no mistake, this novel is unflinching.  People of a sentimental bent may feel that everyone always deserves the kindness of a second or third chance.  Well if you think that, read Vanity Fair. The portrayal of Rebecca will put you right, and persuade you that occasionally a person comes along who is constitutionally without empathy, who enjoys manipulation for the sake of it, and is adept at hiding their nature by aping the appearance of respectability.  To someone like Rebecca, the quality of seeing the best in everyone is a weakness to be exploited.  Reader beware.

 

These  books offer both practical advice, and a sense of friendship and support which is often lacking for a new writer.  Happy reading.

How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey

Wisecracking advice, support and tough love from one of America’s top writing teachers.

The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

A New York based literary agent explains the reasons why manuscripts are rejected, and offers solutions to common problems.

The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler

A classic of the how-to-write genre.  The Writer’s Journey is a study of mythological patterns informing story telling.  Don’t expect advice on adverbs. This is a book about basic plot patterns, with reference to Hollywood films.  It’s a fascinating book, interesting for what it tells you about the history of humanity, as well as for offering help with writing.

Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale

This is the place for your adverbs and many other nuts and bolts. The seemingly dry subject of grammar is brought to life with great examples of fine writing. There is nothing boring about a book that helps you to aspire to such work.

Writing from the Inside Out: Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within by Dennis Palumbo

A lovely, warm book helping a writer to explore their life experience for the raw material of writing.

 

Reading Room at the British Musem

When I first arrived at university, innocent and impressionable,  I talked to a glamorous third year who didn’t read much because she thought it would interfere with the uniqueness of her writing style. She also corrected the spelling of a note I put up in the kitchen.

I have to say, at that time it was easy to find myself persuaded by the girl’s view.  Apart from the fact that she was attractive, a third year, and good at spelling, this was a stage in my writing career when admiring a book would immediately make me want to write in the style of its particular author.  Perhaps literary quarantine was required.  Maybe the usual advice for aspiring writers to read all the time wasn’t the right way to go.  It didn’t, of course,  take long to abandon this idea  I enjoyed reading for one thing, and while I was willing to accept sacrifices to be a writer – career insecurity, lack of marriage offers and so on – giving up reading was a step too far.   I also quickly came to the conclusion that it was precisely the wrong thing to do, because it’s a simple fact that a writer’s work is not unique. Each genre is like a great big soap opera with many writers contributing episodes.  Individual writers might not all be together in a big room, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t  working together.    A successful writer is like a scientist who we associate with a breakthrough.  This individual, for all their fame,  in reality worked with many other people, both directly in their working lives, and indirectly in basing their work on the efforts of others who went before.  People like a clear picture, a good story which focuses on an individual.  But while Thomas Edison, for example,  is meant to have invented all kinds of things, he was actually a man who ran research teams, the combined efforts of which became associated with the name Edison.   Writing is like that. Finding your own voice does not involve avoiding other writers, but rather finding out how your voice fits in with them. People imagine a writer engaging in solo effort in their attic.  In reality it’s more like singing in a choir, getting the odd solo if you’re lucky.  At the minute I admit that I am part of the chorus.  But no matter.  The soloists depend on the chorus behind them, and one way or another, successful or unsuccessful, we are all part of that common effort.  I will keep going, and if you’re a struggling writer I wish you the best.  We’re all in it together.

 

Looking up the hill at Robin Hood’s Bay

During our summer holiday we visited Robin Hood’s Bay. The entire town, tumbling down a steep Yorkshire cliff, was once an eighteenth century smuggling machine. To avoid tariffs, goods would be unloaded at night in the bay, either to be clandestinely stored in wall cavities and under floorboards, or carried via a hidden route through the houses and narrow lanes to the clifftop, where carts waited to move them away to market. The rewards were considerable, as would be expected when all wealth ultimately comes from trade. The risks, however, were great. Smuggling was a crime entirely created by governments, for which governments reserved their severest punishments.

Today Robin Hood’s Bay is a charming tourist destination and smuggling is not what it was. This is because, until recently, the world has generally supported an international trading system which does not use protective tariffs. A survey of American economists conducted by Robert Whaples in 2006 found that 87.5% believed the general benefits to society of free trade considerably outweighed local disadvantages. The overwhelming opinion of professional economists is that society would have benefited if the people of Robin Hood’s Bay had been allowed to carry on their business in peace.

There are dark echoes of the past in the way today’s populist politicians are calling for protective economic policies. This is part of a general trend of people wanting to retreat behind the apparent security of various borders. Politicians who support the rational idea of free trade, basing their support on the advice of the world’s leading economists, are vilified.  Just as smugglers of Robin Hood’s Bay were deemed criminals, one of Hilary Clinton’s “crimes” as defined by the recent Republican convention, is her past advocacy of the North American Free Trade Agreement which established open markets in 1994.  Personally I think Robin Hood’s Bay works better as a tourist destination that a smuggling operation.  It is somewhere to remember the bad old days, and learn the lessons of history.

The balcony in Maidstone, Kent, where Benjamin Disraeli gave his victory speech when he first became an MP in 1837

Theresa May in her first speech outside Number 10 said that she was a one nation Conservative.  As it happened, I was just finishing Sybil, by nineteenth century Conservative prime minister Benjamin Disraeli – the book from which the One Nation idea derives.  Sybil, set in northern England, describes a calamitous divide between rich and poor, a division so dramatic that people live entirely different existences within one country.

Sybil certainly does not shy away from the iniquities of social division.  The descriptions of poverty, oppression and infanticide are comparable with Dickens.  Nevertheless, the complexity of the book comes from showing that the two nation divide is also an illusion.  There are all kinds of plot twists showing complex links between the two worlds.  Today Labour leaders like Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell cling to the illusion of worker solidarity; but as they face another day of rows, resignations and turbulence, perhaps they should read the following passage from Disraeli’s book as the lovely Sybil comes to realise that her cause is not as straightforward as it appears:

There was not that strong and rude simplicity in its organization she had supposed. The characters were more various, the motives more mixed, the classes more blended, the elements of each more subtle and diversified, than she had imagined. The People she found was not that pure embodiment of unity of feeling, of interest, and of purpose, which she had pictured in her abstractions. The people had enemies among the people: their own passions; which made them often sympathize, often combine, with the privileged.

As a story, Disraeli shamelessly uses that tried and tested Mills and Boon device, where a man and woman, though apparently hopelessly divided by wealth, find unlikely love – the worthy shop girl catching the eye of the billionaire idea.  This familiar plot becomes part of Disraeli’s bigger argument about the complexity of social divisions.

There are long nineteenth century sentences to deal with; and at some points Disraeli gaily abandons that good advice to show rather than tell.  But this is a great book, one of the most influential in the history of modern British government, with continuing relevance to the politics we see today.

 

Portrait of Harold Wilson by Ruskin Spear

Prime ministers are usually assessed historically by what they did. With the Chilcot Report giving a damning report on Tony Blair’s decision to support America’s invasion of Iraq, it is instructive to recall a prime minister who in a similar situation did nothing. Sometimes doing nothing is very difficult, and achieves more than any grand scheme. Prime ministers of the past such as Robert Walpole and Lord Melbourne were masters of doing nothing. But it is Harold Wilson’s success in holding off the people who wanted him to act which is most relevant at the moment. The best illustration of Harold Wilson’s cunning ability to do nothing is seen in his reaction to the Vietnam War. Wilson, like Tony Blair after him, came under intense pressure from the United States to commit British troops to a highly dubious foreign war. Unlike Blair, Wilson resisted the pressure. The situation was complex. Britain was relying on American aid to support a weak pound. So Wilson tried to give an impression of involvement. Foreign secretary Michael Stewart publicly defended the American position in Vietnam, and offered to mediate in peace talks. This was a lost cause, but it gave the impression of action, while keeping British soldiers from getting involved. Hopeless peace initiatives also helped keep certain aggressive elements in the Labour party happy. Wilson was to be heavily criticised for his seeming support for America in the Vietnam War. He couldn’t visit a university campus without students – supported by grants his government had instigated – calling him a fascist pig. Wilson it seemed had done nothing. Little did the students know the effort and resilience that had gone into doing nothing.