Category Archive: LIFE
All Must Fall
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip…sneer of cold command, …And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘I am Rhodes, diamond king and white supremacist: Look on my works, ye begrudged, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. [Adapted from Ozymandias with apologies to P.B. Shelley] Shelley’s superb short 1818 poem, slightly cannibalised here, aptly…
Continue Reading →Vale David Bowie
(photo by Adam Bielawski)
David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016) He was a total original, part of the vanguard of the synthesiser revolution, a singer-songwriter of genius, an innovative producer and arranger (e.g. Transformer), a rather odd but always compelling actor (he is appropriately weird in The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Hunger), and, in the best sense of the term, a trend-setter. From avant-garde to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, through Young Americans, the Berlin trilogy of Low, “Heroes” and Lodger, and Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), he mesmerised with his masterful changes of style, change of persona, angelic…
Continue Reading →Inherit the Wind
Proverbs, 11:29 – “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.” ——- I watched this Stanley Kramer bag-of-wind With that pair of plump boiled hams, Tracy and March, In a hot and dusty courtroom, having a fine old time Debating whether a schoolteacher had sinned. Kids bit into the apple when their brains began to parch So he taught them evolution was no crime. Tracy, playing Darrow, fought the case upon the law, In other words he posed as legislator. But the facts were dead against him, so,…
Continue Reading →Happy New Year
The Varnished Culture wishes humans and wee beasties a Happy New Year, excepting mosquitos and humans that insist on acting like animals. As artist Francis Bacon toasted, ‘Champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends!’ And at midnight, when the moment hopefully arises, rather than croaking Auld Lang Syne, better to murmur to your loved one a good Robbie Burns poem: Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun: I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run.
Continue Reading →An Evening with Oprah
Oprah (photo by Alan Light)
Oprah Winfrey, Adelaide Entertainment Centre, 4 December 2015 (reviewed by Lynette Pugh) Advertised as ‘An Evening with Oprah’, there should have been no doubt that it would be all about Oprah, but in anticipating the evening I kept thinking ‘Oh God’ I hope she tones the narcissism down for the Australian setting – or she will face walk outs and tut tuts from the Adelaide crowd. I need not have worried! She had the delivery down pat, with the balance of celebrity, egoism and humble authenticity, exactly right. I was totally engaged for the whole 2 hours, with her story…
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