Triptych Conversations

• Triptych Ep 8 | A Rock, A Mother’s Yellow Wallpaper, and a Local Hero

  I can’t quite believe it. What started as a minute little thought-seed, during one insomniac night back in mid-2024, then evolved into an actual thing with a real-live team. Joel and Sophie were in pretty quickly after the thought was shared, and then Owen came up trumps as our techie. Now look! We have reached the 8th, and  final, episode of Triptych Season 1!  What a ride it’s been. But before delving into this week’s  show-notes, we would LOVE to hear from YOU. So here’s a link to a brief TRIPTYCH Listener Survey (it should only take 5-10 minutes, max) to help us develop and grow Triptych for Season 2 and even beyond! But for now, back to the show… We decided to take the masterpieces in chronological order this time. The Masterpieces 1. The Yellow Wallpaper (1890) Charlotte Perkins Gilman (as she became after her second marriage) suffered intolerable hardships in the lead-up and aftermath of giving birth in 1885 to her only child, Katherine. Today, she would be swiftly diagnosed with severe postpartum depression, but of course in the 1880s and 90s, the concept was light years from a medic’s vocabulary. She was given a ‘rest cure’, a strictly policed form enforced solitude and passivity: confined to bed, barred from social interactions, limited diet, minimal mental stimulation (so little or no reading or writing). If anything was guaranteed to aggravate mental illness, this was it. Highly unusual for the time, she finally divorced her husband Charles Stetson in 1894, although both had recognised that would be necessary as early as 1888. She wrote what would become her most famous  short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, in 1890, about a young mother’s ghastly plummet into madness in circumstances that clearly echoed her own. It is brilliantly paced but utterly chilling in its artful, unreliable narrative that manages to speak with piercing clarity. It’s easy to see why it became a staple of feminist literature, but it shouldn’t be confined to such labels.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (r) with her daughter, Katherine Beecher Stetson, ca 1897 (Schlesinger Library, Harvard) It is astonishingly good writing, pure and simple. Here are some relevant links: Read The Yellow Wallpaper (in various e-formats) Gothic Fiction The doctor who devised ‘rest cure’ therapy, Silas Weir Mitchell. Including women in Clinical trials before 1993. Mentioned in passing: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca M. R. James’ Ghost Stories (complied 1931) Aimee Byrd’s Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (NB cover!) 2. I am a Rock, by Simon & Garfunkel (1965) Paul Simon is one of the true greats of American popular music. I mean, who else living has both his creative range and longevity? A brief ChatGPT query offers only Willie Nelson and Dick van Dyke (!?, though he is 100 this year). Both great folks – but IMHO not a patch on Paul Simon. You mention Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock, or Johnny Mathis? But their careers are marginally shorter, believe it or not. He first came to global fame (as well as Sophie’s obsession) through his 10-year partnership with fellow New Yorker, Art Garfunkel.  It was hugely successful, but towards the end, became highly fraught; they formally split in 1970. This song, I am a Rock, was first released in 1965 but only in the UK. It would gain a global hearing when included in their 1966 album Sounds of Silence. Simon and Garfunkel, 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden 2009. (Kevin Kane/WireImage) Paul Simon’s official site In Passing: Meditation XVII (No man is an island) by John Donne 3. Local Hero (dir. Bill Forsyth) (1983) In an earlier episode, we shared our artistic proselytising failures: those things we loved that failed to impress anyone else. Mine was Local Hero. So we put it under the Triptych microscope, with interesting results! Bill Forsyth wrote and directed (on the back of his success with Gregory’s Girl), David Puttnam produced (fresh from Chariots of Fire Oscar glory). The film’s scale is simultaneously tiny and global. Its tone is light and quirky, almost absurd at times, but manages also to prompt serious questions. It’s nostalgic certainly, and perhaps trades in caricatures of a long-past Scotland. But it is a film with heart that really grows on you (though only perhaps, as Joel says in the discussion, once you have an idea of what to expect!).  The premise is simple. US megacorp oil company wants to buy remote fishing village on Western Highlands coast to turn it into a massive refinery. Agent sent from Houston to soften the inhabitants up for the deal. That’s it. But nothing goes smoothly. And that’s the joy of the whole. A wonderful cast (including Burt Lancaster in one of his last big roles; the great Fulton Mackay, Denis Lawson, not to mention Peter Capaldi in his very first etc), brilliant script, and dollops of wonder and natural beauty. Oh and Mark Knopfler’s gorgeous soundtrack. As several critics have pointed out, it is effectively a modern fairy tale. Lovely tribute to the film and to Pennan (where some of the filming took place), 40 years on. Oh, and I was wrong – they DID have, and STILL have a red phone box! The Bechdel-Wallace Test: a simple (and therefore not uncontroversial) means of analysing the portrayal of women in fiction (esp. film): does the work feature at least two women in conversation about something other than a man, and do they both have names? The legacy of Monty Python‘s absurdism? 10 fun facts about the movie! Other Mentions Our childhood artistic joys: The Doodler: The Poetry of Lord Byron. The Scribbler: Mr Benn. The Crooner: Drawing horses.

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• Triptych Ep 7 | Through Black Mirror to Lake Street Dive, pursued by Derek Walcott

  The Masterpieces 1. Black Mirror 3:5 "Men Against Fire" (2016) Black Mirror is both a phenomenon and an outlier, one that has gained cult status in some quarters (though perhaps there’s a generational divide there? You’ll need to ask our producer Owen for more on that. He has views…). It started life on the UK’s once quite edgy and adventurous Channel 4, the brainchild of journalist, arch-satirist and presenter, Charlie Brooker. He has either written, or prompted creative discussions for each episode, working with his producer Annabel Jones. Stripe’s commander Medina, played by the one and only Shiv Roy (aka Sarah Snook!!) But what makes it incredibly unusual is that it is an anthology show; in other words, one made up of a series of unrelated, stand-alone episodes. This is obviously much more expensive than a regular show because new sets, casts, designs etc are needed every time. The common thread is the impact of technology, socially, relationally, economically, and politically. Some gripe that it often piggy-backs on ideas that are developed at greater length elsewhere, but that does seem nit-picky when the production values are so high and the provocations so thoughtful. If that was not the case, it’s unlikely Netflix would have thrown huge budgets at it or so many A-list stars given their right arms to be in it.  That said, it is rarely comfortable viewing and sometimes incredibly dark. As this episode is… the discussion we had was very ‘interesting’! The premise of Men against Fire: soldiers are given neural implants that affects their perceptions, especially of enemies, so that they appear as lethal grotesques, or ‘roaches’. However nothing is as it seems. But what is interesting is that none of the ethical issues are as straightforward as they first seem. In this clip, psychiatrist Arquette (played by the brilliant Michael Kelly) explains the ethos behind the implants to protagonist Stripe (Malachi Kirby). Brooker was initially inspired to focus on propaganda by a British John-Pilger-made documentary about the Iraq war called The War You Don’t See. But his thinking was subsequently shaped by Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command by military historian S L A Marshall, and Dave Grossman’s On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. An intro to the concept of ‘Othering’ Finally, a flavour of Brooker’s less intense work (apols for some of the NSFW language) 2. Love after Love by Derek Walcott (1976) The total population of the 16 Caribbean nations comes to only around 44 million (so 0.54% of the world’s population). But just stop for a moment to think of its cultural impact: this is a region punching well above its weight: in music (eg mambo, calypso, dancehall, ska, reggae in international cuisine with the joys of things like jerk cooking or rum in sport (cricket and athletics especially) on many other cultures via its diasporas through its joyful festival and carnival culture in intellectual clout with the likes of CLR James (Trinidad) and Frantz Fanon (Martinique); not to forget the Nobel-winners: Sir Arthur Lewis (St Lucia) for Economics; V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad & Tobago) and Sir Derek Walcott (St Lucia) for Literature. [Plus I’ve not even MENTIONED our very own Carib genius, The Crooner — just a matter of time, surely — let alone anything to do with pirates] So it’s to Derek Walcott that we turn now (1930-2017). He won the Nobel in 1992 for his varied writing (plays, short poems, epic poetry, criticism), work that bridged all kinds of different influences making him one of the leading post-colonial writers of his generation. In this episode we discuss his beautiful, Love after Love, which was his publisher’s Poem of the Week only the other day. Receiving his Nobel in 1992 Some other connections George Herbert’s LOVE III Timothy Keller’s short book (based on a talk he often gave) The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. Joel even mentioned Calvin’s Institutes, so more on them here. 3. Making Do by Lake Street Dive (2021) Lake Street Dive is a highly talented and versatile band made up originally of friends who met at music college over 20 years ago (the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston). Since then, they have successfully experimented with different genres while the line-up has changed slightly. There is so much to love about their music, with its invention, virtuosity, flexibility and joie-de-vivre. This song, Making Do, is deceptively straightforward at first listen, though – and prompted a very interesting discussion. The core line-up on this 2021 album, Obviously, was: Rachael Price (original line-up) – vocals, writing Bridget Kearney (original line-up) – vocals, background vocals, bass, synthesizer, writing Michael Calabrese (original line-up) – drums, writing, background vocals, percussion Akie Bermiss (joined 2017) – vocals, keyboards, synthesizer, piano, background vocals, writing Mike “McDuck” Olson (original line-up, last album) – guitar, mandolin, strings, trumpet, writing Other Mentions The Guilty Pleasures (we were prepared to admit to…) Sophie the Doodler Killingley: Lloyd-Webber & Stilgoe’s Starlight Express Joel the Crooner Bain: Jerry Zucker’s Rat Race (mainly for Rowan Atkinson) Mark the Scribbler Meynell: Chris de Burgh’s 1975 album Spanish Train and Other Stories

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• Triptych Ep 6 | WH Auden, Wassily Kandinsky, Snarky Puppy

  The Masterpieces 1. Musée des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden (1938) Wystan Auden (1908-1973) was British-American and one of the most celebrated poets of his generation. He would emigrate from the UK to the USA in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War (something for which many in the British establishment never forgave him). But before he crossed the Atlantic, he saw his role as a form of literary journalist. After witnessing something of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, he travelled around Europe as many increasingly felt the inevitability of renewed conflict, a mere twenty years or so after the Armistice ending the previous war. In Brussels, he visited Belgium’s fine art museum, and found himself gripped by several works in the gallery’s Brueghel room.  Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c1525-1569) was a Dutch Old Master who specialised in complex group scenes and landscapes, often setting biblical or mythological narratives in the world of his contemporaries. In the course of his poem, Auden alludes to three such paintings, although it is the 3rd (Landscape with the Fall of Icarus) which held his primary focus. For follow up: The official website for the Brussels Old Masters museum Good engagement with the poem by Oliver Tearle (his Interesting Literature site is great) I enjoyed this discussion on the great Poetry for All about the poem (although I am not sure I completely chimed with Shankar Vendantam’s take) The W. H. Auden Society The relevant section of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in prose translation (Book VIII: 183-235) Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c.1555) detail 2. Kandinsky's Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles (1913) Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a pioneering Russian-born artist and theorist who emigrated to France in the 1930s after living in Germany (including a decade teaching at the famous Bauhaus). He was committed to finding ways to create ‘pure’ art through use of abstraction and colour especially. His first career was in academic law, and he was very successful, being offered a professorship in Estonia before he was 30. But he turned his back on it to concentrate on painting, beginning his studies in Munich in 1896. He moved back and forth between Central Europe and Russia even after the 1917 Russian Revolution, but he soon realised that his outlook was worlds apart from that of the new regime. Quite what his beliefs were is hard to pin down, but at the very least he was influenced by a unique cocktail of Russian Orthodoxy, Theosophy, Wagnerian theories of total art, and much besides. He was famously synaesthesic (as Sophie explains in the episode) which features in his extraordinary 1910, Concerning the Spiritual in Art.  Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles (1913) Kandinsky's journey to abstraction (clockwise from top left) I (Mark) absolutely loved Amor Towles’ wonderful 2016 book, A Gentleman in Moscow, not least because of a rather ghoulish fascination with the early years of the Russian Revolution. When I heard about its TV adaptation with Ewan McGregor, I was nervous, to say the least. Thankfully, I thought they did a really good job of it in the end. But I became totally obsessed with the Opening Titles, which clearly owe no little inspiration from Kandinsky! Simply beautiful… 3. Lingus by Snarky Puppy (2014) Snarky Puppy is a jazz fusion collective started by the legend that is bassist Michael League (right) in 2004. Since then over 40 musicians have played with them at various points, though they usually feature 10-15 players at a time in the studio or live. Their 2014 album We Like It Here was made while the band was doing a huge European tour, and was recorded before a live audience in Utrecht, Netherlands on four consecutive nights. The final track, Lingus, apparently got its title from the fact that League was jotting down parts for the different musicians while on an Aer Lingus flight! League explained the group’s membership ethos to All About Jazz. If a player could earn more for a gig outside the band … we’d get a substitute and if the substitute played well, then it felt like, ‘Well, they learned the music and played great, what a waste for them to learn all that for one gig…’ so we would kind of just keep them in the Rolodex, so to speak, and rotate them in and out. Then it became a thing where we started touring so much that guys couldn’t do all the dates, or didn’t want to, or whatever. That would change the way that they played the music. And then even when that new person left, that memory of that new relationship with the music would remain. So really we just kept building on the personalities of the new people that would come in, brick by brick. …in general, the guys understand what the band is – a rotating cast… But I don’t really think of Snarky Puppy as a collective. It’s just a large band and sometimes people aren’t there. It doesn’t feel like a revolving door, it doesn’t feel anonymous at all. The guys who have played gigs with us the least have still played several hundred gigs. That’s more than most people play with their own bands. So it’s very much a tight, familial unit. Everyone feels very, very close and very essential, also. Photos (r) ©Andrea Rotili (at the Fano Jazz Network) Also mentioned The episode’s opening gambit was our pet peeves: artistic endeavours that completely failed to convince. From Joel: dramatic song miming in churches! From Sophie: The Rings of Power From Mark: Carl André’s pile of bricks: aka Equivalent VIII which the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones called “the most boring controversial artwork ever”!

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• Triptych Ep 5 | Eternal Sunshine, Ghosteen, Achebe

  The Masterpieces 1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was first released in 2004 by French director Michel Gondry, having been written by Charlie Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth as well as Gondry (right, with  Carrey). The cast is uniformly good, led by Jim Carrey (in a significant departure from his previous zany roles) and Kate Winslet (7 years after Titanic) with a number of others who were well on their way to  much greater recognition: Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, and Kirsten Dunst. The film is a quirky and charming story about love, relationships, and memory. What sets it apart from standard predictable romcoms is the Sci-Fi premise at its heart: a neurological technique that enables a “psychiatrist” to probe inside a person’s brain to identify and then delete undesired memories. But as often, the technique is a mere plot device and so fairly marginal to the film’s heart. It is visually stunning but psychologically profound and thought-provoking. The film won Best Screenplay Oscar in 2005 as well as several other screenplay gongs, and Kate Winslet was nominated for an Oscar too. Other links: Severance TV series The film’s title was taken from the longer poem Eloisa to Abelard, by the Augustan age poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) using a phrase that reflects the potential bliss that comes from having no memory of painful experiences. The neuroscience behind Eternal Sunshine (though much of this is probably long past its sell-by-date). 2. Ghosteen by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (2019) Ghosteen is a double-album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, produced by Cave and long-standing bandmember Warren Ellis. It followed their 2016 studio album Skeleton Key, a work that was near completion when Cave’s son Arthur was killed in a fall while aged only 15. Despite that, that album as a whole felt strangely prescient of the coming tragedy with its themes of loss and grief. But by the time Ghosteen came out, Cave and his wife Susie, had processed much, though by no means all, of their pain. This perhaps inevitably was kneaded into this album, which unusually these days works best when considered as a united whole. The Caves’ very private tragedy had been exposed all too publicly. But the remarkable aspect of this music is how powerful it has subsequently proved for countless others experiencing their own grief. While never as concrete or explicit (not least because it is a musical and poetic work rather than a book), it is not surprising that some have responded to it as they have to C. S. Lewis’s poignant final book, A Grief Observed. A great review of the album by Alexis Petridis Sign up to Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, a weekly newsletter in which he answers one or more questions from people all over the world. Some are quirky, some blunt, some profound, some deeply pastoral. A weekly highlight for many of us! Faith Hope and Carnage: the wonderfully provocative and moving record of conversations between Nick Cave and his friend, the journalist Seán O’Hagan. A fascinating conversation between Nick and historian and podcaster Tom Holland for Unherd (though you’ll need to pay £1 to see more than just this teaser) 3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958) Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) was a Nigerian novelist and academic who pioneered, and thus helped to create interest in, African fiction in particular, and post-colonial fiction more generally. Things Fall Apart, coming out in 1958, was the game-changer, the first of what would become The African Trilogy. Growing up in British-ruled Nigeria as a proud member of the Igbo people group, Achebe was acutely conscious of how perceptions of Africa and Africans were shaped almost exclusively by white writers and reporters. And like that best morsel of writerly advice, if you don’t see the books you want to read on the shelves, then you’ll have to write them yourself. Here is another title taken from verse. In this case, its title is taken from W. B. Yeats’ highly influential poem (one we had to learn by heart at school, although I was always rubbish at that): The Second Coming, a poem that feels as relevant these days as it ever did. The book is full of wonderful character descriptions and gives a vivid sense of the complex social interactions of a whole host of different people. So to help navigate, we came up with a cast list of the key players: The Bain family's signed copy of Things Fall Apart Religious expression among Igbo men in 1920 (incl a Christian convert in the middle) For follow up: An Annenberg Learner introduction to the novel, including commentary and background information. Chinua Achebe’s groundbreaking essay on Joseph Conrad’s famous novel: An Image of Africa – Racism in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” Recent news that A24 are working on a new TV adaptation, headed by Idris Elba. Other Mentions Masterpieces we’re jealous of: Joel’s favourite painting (see below: are you able to identify it? Do let us know!) Sophie’s choice: graphic book The Trouble With Women by Jacky Fleming Mark’s choice: Graham Greene’s masterpiece, The Power and the Glory.

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• Triptych Ep 4 | Tamlins, Marina Abramović, Lives of Others

  The Masterpieces 1. 'Baltimore' by The Tamlins (1979) Baltimore was the first big international hit for The Tamlins, a Jamaican reggae group founded in 1970 and renowned for their remarkable vocal skills. The original lineup was Carlton Smith, Junior Moore and Winston Morgan. From small beginnings in nightclubs, they became highly sought after by producers and singers alike for their rich harmonies and superb musicality, working with the likes of Peter Tosh in particular, as well as with Delroy Wilson, Pat Kelly, John Holt, and Jimmy Cliff. The original song was written in by the highly influential composer Randy Newman for his 1977 album Little Criminals. But it took the legendary Nina Simone to nudge it into a form closer to The Tamlins’ version for her eponymous 1978 album Baltimore. The Tamlins’ line-up was originally made up of Carlton Smith, Junior Moore and Derrick Lara, each a remarkably strong singer in his own right. But a wonderful synergy occurs when they work together, such that the sum is greater even than its great parts. They have been described as “a cross between Bob Marley and Earth Wind & Fire, a combination that makes them definitely worth experiencing live.” However, it’s no longer possible to hear the original group as Derrick Lara sadly died of cancer in Feb 2020. For more information, check out the bio and recordings list here at Reggaeville. Oh an while we’re talking about Baltimore, here’s some info about the phenomenon that was The Wire that Mark mentioned. 2. 'The Artist is Present' by Marina Abramović (2010) Marina Abramović – The Kitchen – Levitation (still), 2009. c/o  Marina Abramović Archives, and Galleria Lia Rumma © Marina Abramović Marina Abramović was born in Belgrade, in the Serbian part of what was then Yugoslavia, a year after the end of the Second World War. Her parents had been very involved in Tito’s Partisans and so had a privileged place in post-war Yugoslav society. Their activities meant that she was largely brought up by her religious grandparents for the first few years of life. She has been a pioneer of performance art, presenting works with hair-raising levels of threat and vulnerability. Most celebrated / notorious / infamous (take your pick!) was her Rhythm 0 which entailed her standing for six hours in a Naples Art Gallery next to 72 objects (which included food and drink, scissors, a gun and a bullet). Visitors were invited to do whatever they wanted to her, using one of the objects. It started off gently, but by the end one visitor even held a loaded gun at her head. After her 20 year relationship and working partnership with Ulay (the West German Uwe Laysiepen), they devised a formal end by walking from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and meeting in the middle. When they did, they greeted one another, spoke briefly, and then each continued their journeys. The next time they would meet was in 2010 at ‘The Artist is Present’. She made ‘The Artist is Present’ at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York in 2010. A documentary about the process and experience was then released in 2012. This involved sitting at an empty table for around 730 hours in total, and visitors were allowed to sit with her for a minute. There was to be no speaking or physical contact, just being in one another’s presence. Many spoke of the extraordinary experience of sitting like this with a stranger. Marina Abramović’s official website The MOMA show in 2010 Page for the 2024 Retrospective at the Royal Academy in London. 3. 'The Lives of Others' (dir. Henckel von Donnersmarck (2006) This German-language film won Best Foreign Language Oscar and made a far greater impact on Anglophone cinema audiences than German films often get. It is set in East Berlin in 1984 (of course, it’s no accident that this was the year selected), under communist rule. The GDR (German Democratic Republic: ie East Germany) was constantly scrutinised and patrolled by the country’s security services, (the Stasi). And this fictitious account posits the possibility of one senior officer who finds himself swept up in the lives of those he is charged with surveilling. In some quarters the film was highly controversial, because of the sheer implausibility of a single individual having both  the means and the opportunity to do what Gerd Wiesler (played by the astonishing Ulrich Mühe) did in the film. There were just too many internal checks and ‘safeguards’ to prevent such unilateral action. This is debated, of course, but the wonder of the film is that it does find humanity in the bleakest of contexts. And that is what makes this such an inspiring work of art (perhaps naively, perhaps not). For here, see that art and humanity can pierce through the rigid constructs of a totalitarian state and make a difference. The film’s 92% score on Rotten Tomatoes is well-deserved. One of the film’s great sadnesses is that Ulrich Mühe (right) died post-production but before general release. So he never got to see the impact it made around the world. Synopsis: Gary KMcD (on IMDB) Other windows into the GDR world in all its complexities: The File: Oxford history prof Timothy Garton Ash’s astonishing reflections  after having access to his own Stasi file Stasiland: Australian Berlin correspondent Anna Funder meets people impacted by the Stasi and tells their stories. Beyond the Wall: Katja Hoyer is a  UK-based German historian who herself grew up in the GDR. Most will be (blissfully) unaware that Mark has been working on a novel about life in East Germany for almost a decade (!!) now. Here are some of his happy snaps from a research trip way back in 2018 (incl. visits to the former Stasi HQ and the Hohenshönhausen remand prison. Other Mentions Snarky Puppy official site (recommended by Joel) Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (by Sergei Rachmaninov), here played by Stephen Hough at the BBC Proms First Night in 2013 (recommended by Sophie)

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