LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 17th – 1st APRIL

A third day of indifferent weather – something that should be of supreme indifference given what is happening in the world today, but in the confined ‘world’ that one inhabits at present, something that is of irritating importance.

     The daily morning tasks being completed (up to and including the Guardian ‘quick’ crossword) it was a pleasant surprise to have a phone call from a Cardiff friend, Hadyn, informing me that he had purchased one of Ceri Auckland Davies’s[1] paintings in a recent auction.  This hawthorn is one from a series Ceri painted of trees in bloom, and a good choice!  The tree fills the picture space and is set against a moody sky-filled background rising from a low horizon – a dramatic and lively painting.

     From where I sit typing I can see two more examples of Ceri’s work: an atmospheric print of a night view of a lamp lit façade of a Venetian palazzo[2] painted in a freer style than the meticulous detailed manner that he usually adopts, and a large charcoal drawing of a rock cleft in which the quasi-abstract depiction of the faceted rock face encourages pareidolia in a busy surface that always engages my attention as it is directly opposite where I usually sit. 

     As a striking contrast to the ‘face-filled’ rocks, the focus of attention is nothing.  Literally nothing, whiteness, blankness.  The far opening of the rock cleft is onto sea or sky and that is a patch of vibrant white, unworked and blank whereas all around it is the detail of charcoal sketching. 

     I am endlessly fascinated by this work and, like the best Giles cartoons (and that is a signal honour of comparison from me!) there is always something new to find in the detail of the draftmanship and the juxtaposition of light and shade.  Each time I look at it, I highlight different sections and let my eye slide through the confined landscape in alternative ways.

     What has all of that to do with the current crisis?  Everything. 

     Our lives have been thrown into total confusion; the economy of the world is in free-fall; our individual freedoms are being compromised; millions are being forced into greater poverty; domestic violence is on the rise; we are being turned into ourselves, a forced introspection; and survival, for most of us in the wealthy west, usually a concept rather than an ever present threat, has now become visible, palpable struggle.  It is exactly at times like these that one needs to consider the worth of a painted tree!

     It used to be said that a society could be judged by how it treats the poorest and least advantaged in a community: the disabled, the imprisoned, the dispossessed, the mentally ill, the criminal, the refugee, the old, the homeless etc.  The point being made is that it is easy to look after those who are already able and keen to look after themselves, but what about the others?  In the same way, bare survival is obviously essential, but we must, we have to be concerned with the quality of survival as well.  It is to the everlasting credit of the wartime government in Britain that, at the same time that it was struggling to keep the effort to free the world of the threat of fascism, it was also working to ensure that there were clear plans for the betterment of society after the conflict was ended.  The 1944 Education Act was a gesture, no, much more than a gesture, of defiance and belief that something positive must come from something so negative.

     The Arts in all their forms are the way that quality of life can be guaranteed, in a way they encourage us to believe that there is something beyond mere survival.

     I am not so idealistic that I believe that a painting, or piece of music, or a good book; a well composed photograph or a well directed film are protection against the vicissitudes of this world, especially when they come in microscopic form, but I do think that the creative arts are there to make the struggle to survive worth it and they do, sometimes, provide the solace to make it bearable.

     That all sounds much more apocalyptic than I meant it to sound: I am warm, comfortable and well fed; I am protected from the elements and media to amuse myself surrounds me; I can write and I can speak.  My ‘prison’ is well appointed and I can take exercise outside the walls (just); I can contact friends and read about others; I am freely confined! 

     And yet, especially in a country when the death rate is rising day on day I do appreciate that I am of an age group where my continued life is dependent on my adhering strictly to governmental guidelines and the following of those guidelines by others around me.  For almost the first time in my life, I am directly threatened by a very present moral enemy.

     But, having talked myself into a state of sombre seriousness and existential angst, I can get out of it by merely (and that word is surely justified here because of the ease with which I can do it) looking at a painting, reading a book, listening to a piece of music.

     And, as far as looking at paintings are concerned, my emails have been filled with various institutions urging me to take a virtual tour or plunge into the catalogues and explore the holdings.  Galleries around the world are offering lectures and guides; things to do; things to make; ways to get involved.  Opera companies are offering performances streamed on their sites; books are being electronically offered – to say nothing of the television shows and films that are freely available on line.

     Now is the time to explore, to take a whim and see how far you go and where you end up.  So much is available and only for the cost of the electricity that drives your Internet access.

     When arid introspection threatens; the digital world is available!

    

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[1] welshart.net; lionstreetgallery.co.uk; www.albanygallery.com

[2] https://www.redraggallery.co.uk/print-ceri-auckland-davies.asp

CASTELLDEFELS LOCKDOWN - DAY 9

The insignificant becomes important, or at least notable.

     On my rounds of the communal swimming pool my eye is always open to a photographic opportunity.  As my area of life has become more circumscribed, so my attention focuses more on the details of my surroundings.  I have had to try and limit myself from choosing a theme like ‘abstraction’ or ‘shadow’ or ‘line’ or something equally unimaginative and wondering if I could do a photographic essay based solely on my limited vistas.  Most of the time, wondering is enough in itself: I find say, a portion of bark on the gnarled trees that are planted at the edges of the pool and think that a decent photo could be taken of that; or I look at the edges of the tiles and see tiny wisps of grass that have escaped the attention of pool maintenance and think that a decent angled shot, with raked light might be effective – and then I walk on, the hard cultural work done by possible selection rather than concrete outcome!

     Still, I did take one short of a bird on top of a column with chain and lock which I felt did have some resonance with my present condition, but again, I didn’t take it any further.

     One short I could take from my little circular walks would be of a crayon sheath or sweet tube or something like that.  It would be perfectly incomprehensible to a viewer, such a mundane object being the centre of attention – but for me it is, if not a welcome sight, at least a point of recognition.  Each time I circle the pool I notice it; but it doesn’t stay in the same place.  And its movement interests me.  Was it the feral cats which infest this part of Castelldefels (kept alive by the ministrations of ancient ladies in expensive cars who leave milk and titbits for them); the wind, my feet, insects or what?  I have yet to meet anyone else on my solitary peregrinations, or indeed to hear anyone else during the time that I am not circuiting the pool, so it is either nature or cat.  And then I begin to wonder just how the isolation from my normal haunts are changing my attitudes!  If I can overthink something so trivial, and yet regard it now as a part of my recognized ritual of the day, then there is something seriously wrong.

     So let’s turn to something more normal.  Because most people are not used to being off-work and at-home for extended periods of time the electronic community has provided essential lists of Things To Keep You Occupied, ranging from lists of books that you might like to read; the best Netflix series to binge watch; chores that you have put off until a national emergency gives the opportunity to get them done; games you have not played since you were a child; how to clean the kitchen now you have no excuse not to; getting back in touch with those people who were, apparently too much trouble to keep up with, and music.

    And I would like to contribute my five pence worth to the suggestions. 

     I have a second ticket to the Opera in the Liceu in Barcelona and the crisis has meant that first one opera and then a whole slew of them have been delayed or possibly cancelled.  However, the Liceu has informed its subscribers that performances of past opera will be available online and we have been given a timetable of what and when.  I must admit that watching an opera outside the opera house and on a small screen is not something that I really enjoy, though I am more than prepared to ‘get my homework done’ by watching a performance of a future opera that I do not know well on YouTube, so that when I see my (expensive) performance I am at least partially prepared and able to respond with some knowledge to what I see and hear.

     I have no intention of making some sort of ‘Greatest Operas You Have to Listen To’ list, but I would like to suggest two and extracts from those rather than listening to the whole thing.

     To the question of “What is your favourite Opera?” I would have to answer, if it is to be based on the number of times that I have seen a live performance in the Opera House, with The Macropolos Case by Leos Janacek.  The libretto is based on a play of the same name by Carel Kapek (a man perhaps better known as the author of the play “R.U.R” from which we get the word ‘robot’!) and concerns an opera singer who was forced to take an elixir of immortality, but must continue to take the elixir to maintain her youth.  I first saw this opera in a production by Welsh National Opera with Elizabeth Soderstrom in the role of E.M. (the initials she maintained in all the names that she used in her long life) with amazing sets and costume designs by Maria Bjornson.  I loved it!  But, my favourite opera?  I wonder.

     The opera that I click on the most if I am ‘casual listening’ is Akhnaten by Philip Glass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSn_UAquOfw&list=PLv1nhJnfcwQJQG5vo39yDH3puJWLDiIpc

Set in ancient and modern times, the opera is concerned with the extraordinary pharaoh who dispensed with the hierarchy of gods and determined that all worship should be centred on one god, the Aten.  The course of the opera takes us through the turbulent life of the pharaoh and the eventual destruction of the city that he founded.

     I first heard this opera on a Radio 3 performance on a Sunday afternoon and I was instantly gripped by the music as I had no idea whatsoever what was going on in the libretto.  A friend called in to take me out and I had to switch on my cassette player (ah, happy days!) to record as much as the tape allowed in my absence.  When I recorded the extract of the opera there was no commercial recording available, but I listened to my ‘bit’ again and again.

Glass is a minimalist (or perhaps post-minimalist) composer and his music is recognizable by its tunefulness and by his use of repetition.  The languages of the libretto are ancient and contemporary, and I find it gripping.  If you have never heard any of it before then I suggest the opening ten minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PufT63ER0uY

or the Hymn to the Sun,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWdIzA1SuC0

which is the more usual extracted highlight, these will give you a real flavour of the musical style: if you these then you will like the full version!

     The other suggestion is less well known than Akhnaten (!) but it is an opera of which I have a great fondness.

     Like Akhnaten, this opera is by an American composer and like Akhnaten it is, in the widest sense, historical.

  The story of my liking of the opera in question started, though I didn’t know it at the time, with my reading a typically clever and witty article in the New Yorker published in a James Thurber Omnibus, “There’s an owl in my room”.  I was too young to understand exactly what was going on in the piece and the names of the characters meant nothing to me at the time.  The phrase that stood out for me was “Pigeons, on the grass, alas!”  Thurber was devastating in his demolition of what he saw as absurd pretention and something about the phrase stayed with me.

     The scene changes to Kettering Market and a second-hand record of “Four Saints in Three Acts” by Virgil Thomson (of whom I had never heard) with libretto by Gertrude Stein (of whom I had heard).  It was cheap and I bought it.  And in playing it I heard the words, set to music of, “Pigeons, on the grass, alas!”  An electrifying moment when juvenile reading and modern music came together!

     Virgil Thomson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_Mg2sEyxs

The extract is something you will either find fascinating or absurd.  Either way it’s worth listening to.  And there are other extracts in YouTube that might take your fancy.

     Another reason for my liking this opera is because it created one of my most memorable moments in Opera.

     I have only heard “Four Saints in Three Acts” once live, and that was in a double bill by ENO in London.  I listened spellbound to something I never thought I would ever have the opportunity to hear in the Opera House and at the end of the performance, I turned, with shining eyes to the woman sitting on my right and said, “Wasn’t that wonderful!”  And she, looking into my eyes, said, “No!”  Ah well, each to his or her own!

     So, these two operas, Akhnaten and Four Saints in Three Acts are my suggestions for passing the time to keep fear about the virus out of your minds.  I’m not quite sure what they will fill your mind with instead, but it won’t be virus!

Pleae consider visiting my 'new' poetry blog smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

 

Put it down to experience!

An underwhelming evening at the opera

I am constantly aware of how niche going to the opera is, especially sitting as I do in one of the more expensive seats in the Liceu, surrounded by the good and the great of the cultural scene in Barcelona.  I do my bit for egalitarianism by wearing sandals and jeans, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I am (generally speaking) surrounded by the white, the elderly and the middle class.  Count the number of balding men exiting a performance at the opera and you will begin to fear for the survival of this art form after another generation or two!

            It doesn’t have to be like this of course.  In some parts of the world going to the opera is a normal and relatively inexpensive experience.  But there is no way of producing good opera cheaply.  Think about it: there is an opera house, seats, a stage, sets, lighting, soloists, costumes, a chorus, technicians, an orchestra and so on and so on.  Opera is an expensive business and it is only ‘affordable’ with subsidy.  That subsidy is either via ticket prices or via public finance.  I am well aware that, expensive as my ticket might be, it would be a damn sight more expensive without government help!

            It all comes down to whether you think that opera as an art form is worth subsidising to make it more available to a greater range of punters.  As far as I am concerned, opera at its best successfully combines so many different art forms that the resultant melange is exhilarating.

            And sometimes it isn’t.

            And the performance of La Clemenza di Tito by Mozart in the Liceu last night was one of those underwhelming evenings that makes you question the expense.

            La Clemenza is an opera seria: a serious opera, historical and heavy with moral worth and interminable continuo.

            The legendary ‘mercy’ of the Emperor Titus was chosen as a subject matter to flatter Leopold II as part of the celebrations for his coronation as king of Bohemia.  Opera seria was the preserve of the nobility and played to their predilections, but it doesn’t necessarily play to ours.

            Even though the opera includes love, fidelity, betrayal, rebellion, arson, confusion and moral dilemma it is a fairly static piece with most of the real action being the inner turmoil of the individual characters expressed in recitative or decorated aria.

            At the end of the first act I understood why this opera had had a century and a half of obscurity before its modern rediscovery.

            The opening of the opera gave an opportunity for the Orquestra Simfònica conducted by Phillipe Auguin to show its ability in the playing of the overture and in this, as throughout the opera the playing was nuanced and authoritative.  While the orchestral playing was excellent the stage picture of the opening of the opera was less convincing.  The scenery was drab and literally clunky and the sombre, black uniformed figures of the praetorian guard formed a circle around a shrouded figure and did nothing else for minutes until, towards the end of the opening music they pushed the plinthed figure into an alcove up stage and allowed Roman architecture on wheels to form a frame for the opening numbers.

            Myrtò Papatanasiu as Vitellia had a good stage presence but I felt her voice sometimes lacked conviction.  She certainly rose to the occasion in her final aria, but I remained unconvinced.  Stéphanie d’Oustrac as Sesto moved around the stage well and had a dramatic presence, with a tendency to melodrama and a voice that was more than competent.  Annio, sung by Lidia Vinyes-Curtis, was always a lively presence and, although I found her voice a trifle too nasal for my liking, she played her part well.

            The eponymous role of Tito Vespasiano was taken by Paolo Fanale whose lightish tenor voice was pleasant within the middle range but became harsh at the top end of his register.  He lacked the commanding quality that would have made his presence on stage striking.

            For me, the stand-out voice of the evening was that of Anne-Catherine Gillet singing the role of Servilia, a voice that was thrillingly immediate.

            The chorus were their usual characterful selves, and it would have been good to have had more of their work enlivening this drawn-out entertainment.

            The end of the opera had a moment that I wished had informed more of the preceding couple of hours.  As the tediously magnanimous emperor walked upstage after forgiving everyone for everything, his praetorian guard suddenly turned on him and the last stage picture was of a suggestion of another rebellion.  This ‘false note’ runs counter to the thrust of the original intent of the piece but it did add a (tragically too late) indication of how the staging could have been more interesting.

            If this review seems unduly negative, then that’s how I feel.  There were good things in this piece, and some of the ensemble music was captivating – but recitative leaves me cold and I left the opera with a feeling of shaking the dust off my sandals and hoping that this is a production that will not see a revival over the next decade or so.

And I was ripped-off for the Indian meal that I had before the start of the performance.  But let it pass.  Let it pass.

The next opera is Lohengrin which I am ashamed to admit I have never seen in a full performance!

Janacek - Katia Kabanova - Liceu

Janacek, Katia Kabanova, Liceu.  Buy a ticket and see it tomorrow, it’s your last chance!

I know that is not the conventional way to start a review, but after the performance that I saw last night, I am not only going to start by review with that injunction, but also end with it as well!

With a stripped-back, sparse staging comprising intersecting planes enlivened by projection and lighting it becomes a gaunt setting to highlight the singing of what is one of the most complete ensemble productions of an opera that I have seen.

I have come to expect orchestral playing of the very highest order from the Orquestra Simfònica of the Liceu, but last night’s performance conducted by Josep Pons took their playing to another level.  They emphasised that the music for this opera is the equivalent of a concerto for orchestra and the whole band would have been fully justified in taking a bow on stage for the meticulous and nuanced playing that they produced.

The soloists were dazzling with the signal exception of Aleksander Teliga playing the boorish uncle Saviol Prokofievitx Dikoi, wearing an absurd furry coat with top hat and cane and failing to reach the level of professional fullness of his accompanying cast.  Perhaps his cartoonish appearance and stilted acting was intentional as many of the other characters appeared more suited to melodrama or Expressionism than naturalism.

A case in point would be Rosie Aldridge’s chilling portrayal of the domineering mother-figure Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova, presented as a stage villain in tight fitting black bombazine and sung with the sort vicious relish that meant that when she came on stage at the end of the performance to take her well deserved ovation there were boos for the Mother’s character mixed with the enthusiastic applause for her superlative singing and portrayal!  A true accolade! 

Her character had been fleshed out by an interlude with the Saviol character where she showed herself as a hard drinking, straight from the bottle dominatrix, at one point straddling Saviol, threatening him with his own cane and producing gurgles of delight from the prone character as the curtain fell!

In another staging detail, this production chose not to include the iconic moment at the end of the opera where, after the suicide of her daughter-in-law, with the drowned body at her feet, Marfa bows to the workers who had searched for the corpse.  In this production she remains still until her right hand shoots out, demanding the hand of her grieving son, whom she then leads away from his dead wife into the darkness of the wings.  An electric - and truly horrible moment too.

Tikhon, sung by Francisco Vas, as the ineffectual and mother-dominated cypher of a husband, was initially disconcerting because of his resemblance to William Rees-Mogg, another ineffectually destructive character: lean rectitude masking dark forces!  He sung the role with the confused passion exactly matching his confused, damaged character, expertly juggling the contradictory complexities that he is too weak to surmount.

But the evening belonged to Katia, sung by Patricia Racette, who claimed the role for herself singing with the sort of confidence and assurance that allowed her, paradoxically, to portray the self-destructive repression and lethal freedom, the sensitivity, sympathy rejected and half-understood, the full passion and hesitancy with a range of expression that was breath-taking in its scope and effortless delivery.

The recipient of her love, Boris Grigorievitx, nephew to Saviol, sung by Nikolai Schukoff, was presented as a spiv-like, gigolo, Latin lover, smooth, cigarette smoking, spoilt “rich” boy who can’t get his hands on his inheritance, frustrated and bored in a provincial small town – certainly not a man to lose your life over, but superficially attractive – and brilliantly sung and confidently acted.  The attraction between Boris and Katia was convincingly displayed and the scene of the assignation when Katia takes off her coat and reveals that she is wearing an evening dress with butterfly-like gauze ‘wings’ emphasised the incongruity of the match, and perhaps the inevitability of the fatal attraction as she was caught, insect like by her investment of the light of love in Boris.

Vania Kudriaix, the other lover in this opera, sung by Josep-Ramon Olivé, is a contrast to Boris.  Vania is a writer and finds beauty in nature and expresses himself in folk song, you feel that he has more authenticity than Boris will ever have.  Olivé possessed the role and through excellent singing, spirited dancing and a rounded performance made the character appealing and real. 

 

He was matched in singing and acting by his lover Varvara, sung by Michaela Selinger, who portrayed a repressed semi-adolescent at last breaking free from the tyrannical hold of her adopted mother with élan.  These two had some of the most lyrical sung moments in the opera and were a delight to watch and listen to.  Her first appearance, returning from Church, was accompanied by a (real) small dog on a lead – an interesting coup de theatre in a live opera, and I suppose it was to show that she was a more expressive character, to prepare us for the love affair that had already started.  But would Marfa have allowed a mere dog as a plaything, something so purely decorative and useless in such a regimented household?  I am not sure, and anyway, I think that for the dog to be introduced, it should have had some sort of continuing role as a living metaphor at other points in the drama.

The chorus has a small, but essential role in this opera and their spectral voices added to the music richness of the music.

As the sets were so stark, the lighting played an essential scene setting character.  At times the use of shadow reminded me to Murnau’s 1922 film of Nosferatu with characters throwing looming outlines, large and threatening.

The climactic suicide of Katia throwing herself into the Volga was a true spread-eagled jump – no walking down hidden stairs here on the far side of the set but a full body, break taking leap.

For me, this is the sort of production that justifies opera as an art form, a true combination of music, drama, spectacle.  The production played straight through with no intermissions, and lasted a doable one hour, forty-five minutes.  A triumph.

Janacek, Katia Kabanova, Liceu.  Buy a ticket and see it tomorrow, it’s your last chance!

Saying something trying to be nice

 

I am going to try hard, and do my very best not to be abusive as I write about Trump.

I let that sentence stand as a paragraph to remind myself of my starting point as I continue to type!  But, truly Trump has exceeded the normal bounds of political discourse and has put in place something new and, I am going to say, ‘exhilarating’.

On the positive side, Trump has shown that you need have no experience in politics or local, city, state or national governance to become Head of State.  He has shown, truly, that everyone has a chance.  For someone as seemingly unprepared and unqualified (no, I did use the word “seemingly” so I am still being sort-of polite) he illustrates graphically that the top job is not the reserve of those who have worked a lifetime to get there.  People must look at Trump and say, “There, but for the fact that he got there before me, goes I!”

Was it not Napoleon who said, “Every French soldier carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack”?   The clear implication being that everyone, no matter how ‘low’ had the potential to become great.  And those words were said by an Emperor - the Little Corsican, risen to greatness!

Trump’s speeches may be, let’s be generous, “free-wheeling”, but he constantly hits the spot with his base and, although he has very low approval ratings generally, he is still riding high with the people who originally voted for him.  He knows (even he knows) that he did not get a majority of the votes cast in his election, not by millions, but he is now the President and not Clinton.  The Electoral College may be an anachronistic absurdity, but that is the system and that system got him elected.  We have the same sort of result in some elections in Britain where the party of government did not win the popular vote, but they did get the greatest number of members of parliament – and that is the system with which we have to work.

So Trump knows that “The Liberal Establishment” (whatever that might be) can say and do what it likes because he knows that it will have little effect on the forces that elected him.  Rather like the Daily Mail for me: it may be the most read newspaper in the country and have a mythical reach in articulating the voice of the disturbed right, but it might as well not exist for me because I NEVER read it.  Even when it is given away free at airports I shun its rancid pages.  So, for me, the Daily Mail can say what it likes, it doesn’t actually touch me. 

 

Yes, I know that the pernicious influence of the rag constantly corrupts our political discourse, but I, a confirmed Guardian reader disdainfully ignore it.  And that is part of the reason that Brexit happened.  As I continue to live my arts-heavy, opera going, European life style I have failed to notice or to take proper account of those who do not have, and may never have or want, the luxury of sitting in a stalls seat in the latest performance in the Liceu in Barcelona These are the people who may never have, to get slightly more real than opera seats, the right to a decent pension, or education or health service.

If you see a bleak future in which you are probably going to be worse off than your home owning parents then you look around for someone or something to blame.  And history teaches that, in the short term, the obvious victims are The Others.  Those people who are different: skin colour; religion; sexuality; politics; language; nationality – anything that can be shown to be a threat.

In this respect Trump is an idiot savant – and I don’t think that is a real insult, even if it does have the word ‘idiot’ in it.  After all, I am well educated, articulate, reasonably intelligent and sociable, but the highest ‘0ffice’ that I ever had was the largely ceremonial post of President of the Cardiff branch of The National Union of Teachers – where the real work was done by the Secretary and the Treasurer.  I chaired meetings and had headed notepaper!  And Trump is President of the United States of America after inheriting vast sums of money and becoming a reality show front.  Whatever else he doesn’t know, he certainly does know what buttons to press.

A key exponent of button pressing was Enoch Powell, most particularly in his ‘Rivers of blood’ speech.  Yes, I have read the whole speech and, yes I know that the key phrase did not actually occur in the actual talk he gave.  The whole episode is extremely distasteful, though, taken as a whole the speech is more reasonable than the fabricated extract by which it is known.  But Powell was no idiot, even in those far off days he knew a thing or two about ‘soundbites’ and he knew which parts would be taken up by the press and he knew the consequences.  Or at least he thought he did.  He could defend himself from accusations of outright racism by reference to the speech as a whole, but he could not defend himself from the political consequences of such a speech, that such inflammatory comments for general consumption would be. 

For me Powell will, for ever, be associated in my memory with a particularly incisive caricature by Ralph Steadman in Private Eye, which, if anything flatters the man!  

It is said that every politician’s career ends in failure and perhaps that is true of Powell.  After his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, although he was a national figure and idolised by certain sections of the population he was not in government in the cabinet ever again.  Although listened to and respected and reviled he did not have his hands on the levers of power.  He paid the price for his calculated speech.

Trump has said many things that, in their way, are just as astonishing and outrageous as Powell.  He still has his hands on the levers of power.  He has survived and indeed thriven and his standing in the Republican Party is even more secure.  To a large extent the Republican Party IS Trump.  This is an amazing achievement for a person whose statements have been so divisive – and there is the clue.  Division is his stock in trade.  He is not, and does not pretend to be a President of the whole of America.  He plays to his base, and that base is astonishingly accommodating.  He knows that his grasp on power is dependent on that base staying loyal and voting and they have to be fed the right sort of sound bites on a daily basis.

The latest gift to his base is a masterwork.  Today Trump has said that he is minded to end the practise of allowing anybody born in the USA to claim citizenship.  Trump has framed his possible executive order as being one opposed to illegal immigrants who give birth and then their children become citizens.  There have been howls of outrage and assertions that such an executive order would be unconstitutional.  That may or may not be true but it is irrelevant because Trump’s base will have heard yet another strong statement from their champion showing that their views are being held at the highest level in government.  Whether this order actually ever appears is not the important element here, what is important is the timing, so close to the crucial mid-term elections.

This purported action, together with the ‘army’ sent to stop the caravan of potential immigrants making their slow way to the Mexican border and the possibility of a presidential speech on immigration a few days before the elections themselves are all elements in a masterful display of ‘strength’ to energize the base.

If this strategy is the sole idea of Trump then it is a remarkable achievement in inventive marketing.  Ethically dubious certainly, but politically astute.  The fact that it is transparently opportunistic is not important because intention is more real than actuality.  Trump speaks his own reality and if you have bought into his pronouncements then The Word is all you need to know that your concerns are being met.

I have absolutely no faith that the people of America will produce the Blue Wave that is being hoped for.  None.  Trump has not fabricated the zeitgeist though policy or ideas – he is not creative enough for that, he embodies the zeitgeist, he is the zeitgeist, and if that is true what he does is, and is enough.

God help us all!