On Making my First Film

These are selected screen shots from my first film. I shall not do a 'how I made it' thing, in the style of Doctor Who Confidential, for I feel such things spoil the magic of a piece. However, a word or two on how it ended up looking as it does will provide some context to my other thoughts.

The image quality and the light were not especially good. I had intended to keep the film in colour, but I realised sepia tone on a very old style finish would neutralise the problems very effectively and create at the same time a wonderful, evocative sequence that could easily be pre-Great War. For the narration, there is only one passage that could so perfectly capture both the pastoral and the wistful that the film suggests and that is King Henry VI, pining for the shepherd's life as factions war over his crown in Richard Duke of York, aka Henry VI Part 3, II.5:

Ah, what a life were this! How sweet! How lovely!

Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade

To shepherds looking on their seely sheep

Than doth a rich embroidered canopy

To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?

O yes, it doth - a thousandfold it doth.

II.5.41-46 

The pre-war finish to the images and the mid-war context of Henry's anguish tie in nicely together and lead me to consider anew something which used to fascinate me as a boy. Looking at pictures in GCSE history text books and footage from commemorative documentaries on television, I always struggled to imagine life behind the colourless jumping frames. The tommies in the trenches seemed to fight a sepia war and the Second World war was a monochrome war. It is so natural to assume that life was this colour, so odd to remind yourself that it was not and so very difficult to grasp how it might have been instead.


I, however, captured these stills from footage which was colour, smooth in motion and correct in pace. Well do I know just how vast is the distance between the reality as it was yesterday evening and the representation that I have delivered to you today. Perhaps that distance is why the past feels like it is such a different country?


Imagine for a moment that these pictures are of a man who died in the trenches, the only three pieces of evidence remaining that he ever lived. How haunting would they seem? Take another look. How would you imagine the life that he lived before he lost it? Would you study his expression to see if he were a happy man? Whom might he be waving to from the harbour wall? - is this man in secret love? Did people fall in love before the war? Did they have affairs? 


It's easy to imagine, that because those times seem so very different to us from this distance, the people were equally different. But behind those three lonely pictures would have been a man just like me.

Click here to see the original film.

Reading Shakespeare on the Beach

Where I now live, a footpath runs atop the crumbling cliffs, down to a harbour called Charlestown. The bushes, tress and other undergrowth that line the way quite literally knit the path together. From beneath, on the beach, one may see the rock, how perilous and sheer it hollows, yet how solidly nature bears its upper lip.

It is here, upon a sunny morn, that I like to sit upon the empty pebble beach, listen to the waves and read Shakespeare.

The harbour shows little sign of activity. Were it not for shiny new holiday cars and well kept holiday lets, one would think the decay to signify two hundred years or more of idle neglect. Yet there sits there, currently at least, a tall ship. 

Over the way, across from the rusting relics of ancient industry, is an inn. Therebeyond the land snakes round to make a perfect bay, bearing paths which I am yet to explore, but as the cold sets in hence, I shall make it my Autumn endeavour.

The sea was perfectly flat today. No chops, no waves but gentle lappings at the pebbles and the harbour walls. Upon the cobs were fishermen, casting tackle in the crisp morning air, whilst a fishing boat quietly enjoyed the still freedom of the bay.

From all the turbulence I left behind, this felt like deliverance. The sun, the sea, the shakespeare by my side. I was free, nothing and no-one could possibly trouble me. Yet at points my mind did stray back, from a thing pleasant to contemplate to the one impossible to forget. I wished to share it with you; here it is.

Photographs by Ian O'Neal, 300811

Seeing Oneself in Someone Else's Words

Occasionally, even the most impenetrable of exteriors reveal their cracks, and when we peer through, we may glimpse a kind of fragility which we thought only to have resided in ourselves. One of my favourite tutors, John Roe, wrote a book called Shakespeare and Machiavelli, and in analysing Machiavelli's advice that a prince should not reach for the moral option when time permits no leisure to contemplate or reflect it, but rather do what is expedient, John has this to say:

It is difficult to resist the appeal of Machiavelli's argument at moments such as these: those of us who will never aspire to princely power still know what it is to be confronted with awkward choices, and find ourselves sometimes losing sight of the moral perspective because a moment of ethical blindness happens to be convenient. If only, we might say to ourselves, we could do this and get away with it - not just in the eyes of the world but also in our heart of hearts. (1)

Without reading too much into an admired tutor, I think it is fair to say that things weighed on John Roe's mind as he wrote these words. As a very majestic, outwardly gentle and unshowy man, it comes as some surprise to find a darker side must lurk beneath. That is what makes a man fascinating. It reminds me very much of something he once said in class, discussing Angelo in Measure for Measure:

We have all been there, haven't we? Where there's something you're thinking of doing and you say to yourself 'I want to do it...I shouldn't do it, and I know I shouldn't do it - but you know, I think I'm going to do it!' (2)

This approach is one of someone who responds to what he reads: rather than taking Machiavelli as pure theory, he allows the theory - the words - into his imagination, applying them to real life, and thereby bringing the ideas into life. What fascinates me is how we respond differently to different things. This idea of Machiavelli's clearly took life John Roe's imagination, but I have to confess it doesn't really take any in mine (though John's re-expression of it is certainly delicious).

That is not to say my imagination be barren, for it is not. I have found lately that something similar has happened to me, with Sir John Gielgud. It is so rare to find writing which makes one feel one really understands the thoughts and the feelings that have produced it, but that is exactly how I feel when I read what are the most intimate of all expressions: those he puts in a letter. This is to his lover, Paul Antsee on the 1st of August, 1959, London: 

Silly one - cruel one - you devestated me last night, and I couldn't sleep and you never rang even when you got home, dreading, I suppose, our usual fruitless arguments with the long empty pauses in between. Yes, of course, you know me only too well (but just not all that well as you think you do).

I shall always love you, but your sudden turns from sweetness to venom rather terrify me, though in a way I understand, being somewhat (and lamentably) senior. (3)

What strikes me is how the course of Gielgud's thoughts and feelings are so undisguised. He begins with anger, without making any accusations: Antsee has been cruel, but Gielgud only relates what Antsee's cruelty has done to hurt him, rather than trying to return any cruelty. Then he sounds the retreat, sharing in the blame for the awkward telephone calls, making Antsee's excuses for him. Then, he sounds an awkward peace, conceding that Antsee knows him well, yet denying him the full satisfaction of his own presumptions. The next line moves in much the same way, pointing the finger at Anstee's venom before retreating again, on account of his seniority. The tension is palpable, between the mix of self rebuke and hurt and anguish with tenderness, conciliation and love. How many of us have felt such a mix? Those of us who have will understand the conflict of feeling that lies behind each word.

Yet, I cannot pretend for a moment that I really understand what Gielgud was feeling as he wrote these words, just as John Roe has to concede in his response that he is not a man for whom such an idea was really intended. I have no idea what the fight was about, what kind of a man Antsee might have been or how the necessarily clandestine nature of gay relationships in the 1950s would have affected such a dynamic. Gielgud had been arrested and humiliated in 1953 for his sexuality, and never quite got over the shame of it: in how much fear, then, did such a couple exist? I cannot begin to guess. What I see in his words are not his feelings, but my own feelings grafted thereon, woven therein.

To be confessional for a moment, my little analysis above, though objective, is really how I feel when I feel a grievance: I want to say how much he has hurt me, yet I know the fault of it really to lie with me. Thus, Gielgud's words are not so much a portal into his soul, but a mirror for mine, someone else's words that I have found which perfectly capture something inside of me. 

That leaves me to wonder a moment. Most people who come across this letter will not really respond to it. That is for no reason other than that we all respond so very differently to certain things, and not at all to much else. By way of example, abstract painting leaves me absolutely cold but enthralls others. What is it, then, that I am actually responding to? Is it the feeling the words express, or the expression itself? If I found an abstract picture that expressed the same feeling, it would produce an entirely different one in me (I suspect one of disdain). Whatever the answer, as I began this piece by suggesting, sometimes one's reaction to something can be telling in ways one can never suspect. I wonder what John Roe would make of my response to his response? I suspect he would say that, though he is no prince and I am no 1950's closeted actor, we may still gain access to what lies behind the words. 

(1) John Roe, Shakespeare and Machiavelli (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), p. 16.

(2) In the same class, John showed amusing relish for the Duke's villainous gambit in the final scene, where he offers to kill Angelo on Isabella's command.

(3) Sir John Gielgud: A Life in Letters (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2005).

Embattled Old Bill

This is a very tender image, quite literally of two comrades upon the eve of battle, 9th of August 2011. Judging by some of the recent commentary, all that our officers have are each other.

But what do we want fromn the Fuzz? The Guardian has views one may already guess at: that the Coalition is to blame, quoting youths and a youthworker voicing grievance over cuts to services and the behaviour of the police prior to the action:

They cut our youth project by 75%. We used to work with gangs, run a workshop that brought police and young people together. Gone. (1)

This is, of course, precisely what the Guardian wants to push: Government culpability. There are some voices from the street referring to 'cuts', 'Conserva'ives', and 'rich peepol' but nothing that makes a coherent agenda, for there is none. With the exception of Tottenham, these riots are not communities defending themselves, as with Brixton in 1981. Eager not to be seen to condone them as political activists, the Guardian also includes locals who state that penury is no excuse for violence, and that the looters are simply opportunists. However, men like me find it difficult to accept the agenda of a newspaper that expects us to 'understand' the rioters' problems whilst people's homes and livelihoods burn to the ground.

The Telegraph have their own views, which can be guessed at also, expressed it in vociferous headlines which include 'The Long Retreat of Order' and 'Multiculturalists Turned a Blind Eye to Gang Culture'. The following view makes a neat summary:  

The police, bludgeoned by criticism for the way they handled the Brixton riots 30 years ago and the Stephen Lawrence murder in 1994, have become more like social workers than upholders of law and order. (2)

One will immediately note that the examples Philip Johnstone, the writer, provides for us are from a time when the Met was 'institutionally racist' (official verdict). Those riots of 1981 were sparked in a penalised community when a black youth died in Police custody. The Lawrence investigation of 1994 was the biggest shambles in recent CID history, and no one doubted, then as now, that justice would have prevailed had Lawrence been white - I may have been young at the time, but I do remember. Thus, it seems that the Telegraph is chafing at an old gripe here, which men like me had hoped was long buried: why do they have a problem with the Police reaching out to communities? Not only is it effective, it also accords with the right's wistful nostalgia for the days when locals knew by name their local 'bobby on the beat'. As Nick Robinson reminds us, Hestletine berated the Tory right in 1982 for expecting minorities which the state neglected then to go and fight and die for it 8,000 miles due south. It seems the Telegraph never listened.

In amongst this, as Police officers are fighting to protect us, they do so against a backdrop of the right declaring they are just soft social workers and are failing the public (3); the left having damned them for years for being heavy handed and socially insensitive but now declaring they must do more to defend the public; public corruption scandals decapitating their leadership; and imposed redundancies and reviewed pay and conditions. Just now, they are political pawns as the right and the left manoeuvre to appropriate the riots to their own purposes.

I am heartened, however, that in the public at large the Police are not the targets. Though I do not agree with all the criticisms politicians face, I would rather see them face attacks for not doing enough to support the Police, than to see the brave and sometimes injured bobbies berated for doing what we demand of them. This image is especially heartening to me, not only as a former resident of Clapham, but also as a sign that the public know who not to blame.

1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/09/london-riots-kids-parents-police

2) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8691363/London-and-UK-riots-The-long-retreat-of-order.html

3) The Daily Mail are espeically bad.

Broken Britain

Jack Cade hath almost gotten London Bridge,

The citizens fly and forsake their houses,

The rascal people, thirsting after prey

Join with the traitor, and they jointly swear

To spoil the city...

Henry VI Part 2, IV.5.48-52.

[3rd Pleb] Your name sir, truly.

[Cinna] Truly, my name is Cinna.

[1st Pleb] Tear him to pieces! He's a conspirator.

[Cinna] I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

[4th Pleb] Tear him for his bad verses, Tear him for his bad verses.

[Cinna] I am not Cinna the conspirator.

[4th Pleb] It is no matter, his name's Cinna. Pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going.

[3rd Pleb] Tear him, tear him!

Julius Caesar, IV.1.25-34.

Among the riots, the arson, the theft and the violence of the 'protesters' came a vivid scene which, for the BBC newsroom especially, summed up the disturbing mind of the mob.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14456065

Daylight: with a rucksack on is back, a young man in Hackney was standing beside a pool of his own blood. He had a head injury, and needed assistance. A group of youths approached him and, at first, it appeared they would tend to his distress. Within a few moments, the camera revealed they were in fact going through the injured man's rucksack, ransacking him of his possessions. Thereafter, they stalked off and left him, bereft, injured and alone.

Injured men have become acceptable targets for looting.

Of the victims, I most mourn the people of Brixton. When I lived in Clapham I used to go through Brixton each day going to work. I saw how much effort has been put into regenerating an area which is proud, troubled and trying to put a difficult past behind it. They were getting there, only to have youths who have nothing to do with Brixton descend upon it like a flying squad and trash it all.

Amy Winehouse and Performing grief

I must first state for the record two things: the death of Amy Winehouse is tragic. She burnt herself out, as the brightest flames often do, and although I bought none of her records, yet I well remember how she provided the soundtrack to life, everywhere I went in bars, clubs and living rooms, for many years.

The second thing I need to say is that 'performative' emotion is not really my field, so my views may seem underdeveloped, obvious and lacking maturity. Thus, I need to explain myself. The reason I am writing is because I found something today which really irritated me, on the BBC website:

'Close friend Kelly Osbourne paid tribute to Winehouse via micro-blogging site Twitter. "Cant even breath right my now im crying so hard I just lost 1 of my best friends. I love you forever Amy & will never forget the real you," she said.'

I don't wish to question that Miss Osborne feels grief, but I want to know how this 'tweet' is a 'tribute' to '1 of [her] best friends'? As far as I can tell, this 'tweet' is an advert for Miss Osborne: how close she was to this fallen star, so close that only she will 'never forget the real' Amy; how violently the news has affected her, to the point where she 'can't even breath' through her tears; and how, even having lost Amy in the undiscovered country, their bond endures into the next life, addressing her directly 'I love you forever Amy'.

No tribute to her talents, no thoughts for her parents and family, no mention of Amy's character, flaws and perfections - no, this is all Kelly Osborne, laying it on thick.

I take her as the example of the moment, but in this regard she is hardly extraordinary. I doubt, even, that it is a phenomenon unique to our age, the tendency to hijack other's tragedies for self publication. It is undeniably much easier to do and to spot now, for the social media has brought private thoughts and feelings into the public domain; this blog is a case in point. The difference now is not so much the medium as the audience: views are now news.

The first time I noticed this was with the recent attacks in Norway: I spotted the BBC had trawled the Internet for reaction tweets. Every news item can be 'shared' across the social networks. Every news item has a comments box; I can understand the comments facility on the editors' blogs, where opinion may meet with opinion, but why an item of news requires it is less apparent. Either way, news is now not news until it has been visibly discussed.

In this regard, it is hardly surprising that 'tweets', the immediate reactions on the ground, now form part of the story. To make a Day Today formula: events + reaction = news (which means fact into doubt now goes very well indeed). The discussion of news is nothing new, of course, and has always been the essential means of a story's dissemination and survival.

The effect, however, of so directly involving reactions, of consciously embedding into the very fabric of the delivered news the commentary of the people, is that there ensues a kind of anarchy: too many voices competing for your ears. How many hundreds of thousands of tweets are yet to tweet upon poor Amy? How few will be noticed? Here's the rub: people don't comment or tweet to be ignored, they wish to be heard. In order to be heard in such a noisy place, you have to scream.

The effect is, I believe, a certain presumption: of course people want to hear what I have to say! To return a moment to Miss Osborne, before the days of Twitter, she would have had to wait for the television crew to arrive at her house, or have had audaciously to make her way to the studio, in order to display to the world just how unique was her bond with poor Amy. It would have been worth the wait, too, for the cameras and sound equipment would have done the work for her, recording her struggling for breath through her tears. The problem is that that relies on others' consent: for example, the editor might not want Kelly's histrionics, he might want instead to feature Victoria Beckham paying tribute to a fellow artist. The tweet, however, is Miss Osborne giving us her grief sans invitation. It assumes that the audience is there, that the audience is waiting for her , that it will listen when she speaks and respond thereto. At no point was she asked, and at no point does that matter.

The problem that arises from this is, I think, really quite serious. Rather than waiting for someone to ask, 'what do you think?' Kelly started with 'here is what I think'. When that becomes the common starting point, the result is that conversation ceases, and the noise of the tweets, that white noise of cyberscreams, is really people talking past each other rather than to each other, not hearing yet expecting to be heard. Miss Osborne's misnominated 'tribute' is her screaming, and its republication on the BBC is her being heard, but only in the capacity of news - there is one speaker, and one listener, there is no interaction between two people, two ideas or two camps. As her strong hints of closed intimacy suggest, the voices of others will hardly matter to her. She isn't listening.

Well, we needn't follow her example, for we can help to break this spell by listening, even when we dislike what she says.

Chandos Portrait

Upon a recent stay in my home city of London, I felt the time had come to begin correcting a common wrong, that being, that the local inhabitants of a place are frequently ignorant of its treasures. True, I understand the current, the ebb and flow and the map of life in London better than the tourist with his guide book and check list of famous places to see, yet I see no excuse for never having been to the National Portrait Gallery before.

I grew up in East Dulwich, which is served by the 176 bus. It goes past Charing Cross, Trafalgar Square and the galleries themselves. How many thousands of times have I sailed past without even so much as offering them a glance? 

Upon a loose end this time, I went. It was a sudden decision, and a good one. The moment that I shan't forget, was of seeing Shakespeare.* I made a sketch of the scene as I found it, very roughly and possibly not accurately, but there it is above. One comes to the top of the stairs, and turns left, immediately to be confronted with this prospect. It quite took my breath away, for the signs had not prepared me that I was about to meet with my hero.

I stood awhile before, and took a moment to guage its relative size: not large, but respectable for a private portrait, I think. Beside him was Jonson, a little smaller as befits his place next to Shakespeare. I gently strode up, and looked closely into the Poet's eyes. He seemed almost wearied in his countenace, as though he would shrug his shoulders and say to me 'of course I'm the best, what of it?'. The dark aura that surrounds him seems the perfect shroud to this shrouded, mysterious man whom we chase, yet who eludes us.

I am content not to chase him. One can only access a poet's heart through the poet's words: rather than chasing facts to know him, we would do better to reflect on how he makes us feel. There we will have the answer; and if each man come up with a different answer, I say to them that that's how it ought to be, for if they strove to find a living man who is one thing to all men in all variety of circumstances, they would inevitably fail, for men are more interesting than that.

Jonson beside him had a pensivity in his countenance. Such pensivity beside cool self-assurance inevitably made me think he was shrinking from the other man. Of course, that was never the case - in his own day he was revered, and looked down his nose upon Shakespeare - but that's certainly how it felt when I saw them. It's amazing how the judgements if posterity can influence how one looks at a picture, even as one tries to resist.

I have replaced Jonson's image with mine, on the left. This is as close as I can ever come to the Poet. Please forgive my self indulgent folly.

*I know the identity of the sitter of the Chandos Portrait, portrait No.1, will never be proven, but sometimes in life, sheer belief is enough to overcome all doubt.

Byland Abbey, Yorkshire, Summer 2011

As we descended into the valley, the distant ruins on the far side nestled into the enfolding arms of Yorkshire’s land. It was not a grand or awe inspiring sight, but it possessed a different kind of power. We knew it when we saw it, by the crumbling Norman arches of the north wall, that this is what we had come for. As I stepped off the coach, I too felt as though the land embraced me, in this once holy place.

            In many ways, the ruins seemed peculiar as we stood beneath the west wall. The lower lip of the rose window ascended on the north side, to meet with a surviving small tower. It created the shape of a crescent moon, oddly like to a minaret, or to a design which otherwise belongs to a different tradition. The narrow, stumpy windows in the chunky stonework made the west wall into a dark impediment, stealing the brilliant sun’s light, hurling a shadow which permitted only minor intrusions of light to touch the ground. Even after so many centuries of decay, the abbey still imposed, seeming to dictate to the natural world around it, and to the people who huddled in its shadow.

            Nicola, our guide (host, tutor, what you will), told us that the abbey was the first of its kind in the Early English gothic style. Adam and I were slightly puzzled at this, for our own eyes had first registered the Romanesque of the heavy, lightless window designs, as frequently rounded as pointed. But for one stunning yet only half present space for a rose window, my imagination failed to conjure a will let, airy gothic place, but somewhere dark and brooding. Adam and I thought the abbey represented a first substantial effort of the Early English style, rather than a first achievement or realisation.

            But well. Nicola quite anticipated how we all felt about the place. A still and silent ruin beneath the undulating waves of the sunny English countryside was spiritual tonic to my soul’s gin, if I may allow my feelings to attest for all. We soon learned from Nicola that a large stone complex on carefully manipulated land would not have been a refuge from the modern world but rather, when medieval was modern, was the very modern world itself. It traded, it communicated, it had livestock, it had light industry, it produced, it consumed, men lived and men worked, men came and left, their numbers expanded and diminished. They went from greatness to ruin. Upon these tales, I reconceived the abbey. It was no longer a peaceful place for a perturbed, unquiet modern soul, but a graveyard, a chapter in history, a monument to something guessed at which was once vital, now dead.

            We went on a treasureless treasure hunt. Our mission: to seek out and record things outstanding, perplexing and unexpected. One particular aspect Nicola foretold us was the surviving floor mosaics. They were an indication not only of wealth but, crucially, wealth which the abstemious monks ostentatiously spent. Indeed, what we found was very precious, as I shall describe in one example which we found at the foot of a saint’s shrine. It is arranged into four circles, designed in stages as a narrower outer encircling a respective broad inner. The innermost is in the pattern of a flower, perhaps signifying the sun’s light emanating from a centre, reaching out to the second narrow circle of small diamonds, further encircled by a circle of circles, each according to a six-petal design, as like to wheels wheeling about a bigger wheel. The outermost circle is packed with sharp diamond figures, giving a prickly edge and limit to the circles’ aura.

            As the sun still hovered high due east, the north wall gleamed. There survived in a row, nine Romanesque windows, not very wide and only moderately tall. Between each, there flared out the exposed crumbled stonework which once would have vaulted upward to a canopy, parallel to the nave. I contemplated how high they might have gone, and my mind’s eye replaced the absent Romanesque rounded arches which might have made the galleries, running atop, looking down upon this solemn place. I wondered at the chants and the prayers which, long ago, would have resounded down these vaulted walls.

            When we moved out of the south transept, we came to a less holy place. On such a site, it would be appropriate, and easy to joke, that the open sewers were profane. My compatriots leapt straight in, and only Adam seemed to stand tall in the mire I conjectured for them. Mild amusement aside, we began to fancy ourselves as architectural detectives, pondering as we went: how do the vaults in the eating place ascend? Above which rooms would there have been another floor? Are there stairs nearby? Would this vast space over here have had one purpose, or several? If the second, were the monks keeping an eye on each other? Is this a private chapel? – quite unmeek. Is this the closet, or the water closet?

            Thereupon, the good shepherd Sherman recalled his flock to the bus. As I left, I thought of all the absent people I would love, one day, to bring to this place.

© Ian O’Neal, 2011. Thanks to Miranda Fay Thomas and Adam Bramhall for the images. This post was written for the University of York HRC website blog, following an outing to historic sites around the village of Coxwold. http://www.hrctreehouse.co.uk/