Nina Simone's Gum - Warren Ellis

 NINA SIMONE'S GUM - WARREN ELLIS

Warren Ellis is most commonly known as the musical collaborator of Nick Cave in the groups the Bad Seeds and Grinderman as well as on various film soundtracks. In his own right he has also composed solo film soundtracks and has had eight albums released of his own band, Dirty Three. In 1999 Nick Cave curated the Meltdown Festival at the Royal Festival Hall in London and Warren Ellis was obviously there too. It was an eclectic line-up of artists but the biggest scoop was to have Nina Simone perform.

In 2014 the Nick Cave documentary 20,000 Days On Earth was released and in it was a short scene of Cave talking to Ellis about the Nina Simone performance where Cave mentions Simone taking some chewing gum out of her mouth and sticking it under the piano. To Cave's surprise, Ellis tells him he has that chewing gum, that after the show he had gone up onto the stage and taken it, wrapped up in a towel she had used to wipe her forehead with. 'Oh, fuck. I'm really jealous,' Cave says.

On the surface this is what Warren Ellis's book Nina Simone's Gum is all about. How a piece of discarded chewing gum gets elevated to a near religious status and the whole process of how this came about. The real story, however, is below the surface and is about ideas and how they're born and how they take on their own life once released into the world. It's about synchronicity and how one thing leads to another. It's about the magical and why not to be afraid of it. It's about the magic of life.

For good reason the book doesn't begin with Nina Simone at the Royal Festival Hall but with a story of when Ellis was five-years old and is woken up one night by the giggling of his slightly older brother sat on his bed peering out of his window.

'What is it?' Warren asks. 'Come and have a look,' his brother replies. So Warren joins him on the bed and when he looks out the window he sees the backyard is full of clowns. Bathed in light, eating hamburgers, climbing, doing somersaults, smiling, contorting, hanging upside down in the trees. The boys laughter wakes their father who calls out and asks if everything is OK? 'There's clowns in the backyard!' Warren yells to which his father replies sleepily: 'They'll be gone in the morning. And if they aren't, your mother will scare them away when she hangs out the washing on the clothes line.'

The boys grow tired and fall back to sleep and when they wake up in the morning and look out the window, all the clowns have gone. Such a scenario, of course, could easily be a nightmarish one for such a little boy but Ellis writes that he's been looking for those clowns/spirits ever since. Waiting for them to return.

Whether or not there really were clowns out in the backyard that night or was it dreamed or imagined isn't the question. Everything can be real yet unreal at the same time and that juxtaposition can often birth something other. Like a stone can be dropped into a pool of water and the ripples edge out forever. What we do in life echoes in eternity and likewise for a dream or a thought, or an idea once hatched.

Did the scene in 20,000 Days On Earth where Cave and Ellis first discuss the chewing gum really take place? Probably not or if it did then the scene in the film is just a reenactment but again that isn't the question. The important thing is the idea.

Nina Simone's Gum is a very wonderful book and Warren Ellis is certainly an interesting character. For all that, nothing can eclipse or be compared to the presence of Nina Simone who is there throughout like the sun in the sky even when reflected by the moon. The anecdote regarding her request for some champagne, cocaine and sausages backstage at the Royal Festival Hall when asked if there's anything she needs thirty minutes before going on stage is even worth the entrance fee alone.

John Serpico

The Art Of Travel - Alain De Botton

 THE ART OF TRAVEL - ALAIN DE BOTTON

Firstly, what exactly does it mean to 'travel' and what exactly is the art of it? As Alain De Botton points out in his book The Art Of Travel, if you say 'He journeyed through the afternoon' it's never quite as simple as that. It's never a straight, uncomplicated going from A to B, from one place to another. It's all the things in-between, all the unacknowledged if even tedious things that are done along the way whether it be on foot, by car, train or aeroplane. It's the showing of tickets or passports, the stopping off for a rest, a snack or for the toilet. It's the swatting away of a fly, an irritable itch, the sighting if even only briefly of faces and objects. Cursory glances, fleeting comments during brief encounters, and no end of thoughts, dreams and reveries passing through your head.

Then when you arrive at your destination, what is so very different about it from where you have left? Is it all just a shuffling of chairs, a movement of furniture and a change of temperature? As again De Botton points out when describing a holiday to Bermuda: 'I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.'

I'm not sure if it's still the same nowadays but when at the age of seventeen I set off on a trip around Europe and then down to Greece (a country then considered to be the half-way stop between the West and the East more than being European) it was whilst living on the island of Crete that I first came upon the notion that there was a difference between a traveller and a tourist. A tourist would typically have a date in mind as to when they'll be returning home, whilst a traveller had no such date and often no home to even return to. Would De Botton be aware of such a difference?

Alain De Botton is very well read and what he does in The Art Of Travel is to write about such people as John Ruskin, van Gogh, Wordsworth, Flaubert, Edward Hopper and Baudelaire in regard to their thoughts and relationships to travelling and then he applies his own thoughts and experiences to it. It's all good stuff without any question but there seems to be a certain element missing from it all and that's the lived experience of being a traveller rather than a tourist.

Has De Botton ever hung out with the hippies of Katmandu, or slept in the caves at Matala, or pitched up in Amsterdam looking for a squat to stay at with just the hope that it won't be too drug-devastated? Of course he hasn't. Not that there's any intrinsic value in these experiences but when you're writing about travelling rather than cheap holidays in other peoples misery then it probably counts for something at that point if no other.

De Botton has a background of wealth and privilege behind him alongside a healthy trust fund which means most of his life would have been a physically comfortable one. This doesn't of course make him exempt from having inner demons, in fact it's pretty apparent he has an abundance of them although one advantage of this is that they drive his writing. They're the engine behind his curiosity of the kind that gives him cause to wonder why he has a fascination with service stations, motels and airports? He finds an answer in the paintings of Edward Hopper. Why does the idea of travelling appeal? He finds an answer in Gaustave Flaubert. Apart from inner demons, what drives a curiosity about other places? He finds an answer in Alexander von Humboldlt.

A good education gives access to the art and the writings of such people whom De Botton discusses. A good education points you in the direction of where to look to both enhance or satisfy a curiosity. For those without that privilege, however, there is but the public library of old (or nowadays in more likelihood the Internet) and maybe a weeks holiday in Majorca to explore the world, sold by a picture seen in a brochure or on a web page of a palm tree on a beach. Or else there's the option of simply throwing yourself into the world to see what happens when you land. If you ever actually do land?

On reading The Art Of Travel, 'throwing yourself into the world' is something that may well have benefitted Alain De Botton far more than all the books he has read and all the paintings viewed. Or better still, to have combined both: For him to be well-educated, well-read and then to throw himself into the world with abandon. Letting go of his security and his metaphorical lifeboats. To sink or swim.

The Art Of Travel is a decent enough read but it's scraping the bottom of the barrel pickings when it comes to philosophical insights - and philosophy  is meant to be De Botton's forte. It's an assemblage of notions that aren't particularly earth-shattering, hung out and strung together between musings from various writers and poets and De Botton's interpretations of them in relationship to his own life. If travel is meant to broaden the mind then either De Brotten isn't doing enough of it or he's doing the wrong kind.

I'd suggest it was the latter and that he needs to shake off all this jetting off to the Sinai desert 'in order to be made to feel small', or driving down to Provence to spend a few days with friends in a farmhouse because he's not really getting much out of it when it comes to validity. Instead he should perhaps try a bit of hitch hiking, navigating the sexual advances of hairy lorry drivers and spending a few nights sleeping under hedges after nobody cares to stop to give him a lift when standing at the edge of a road at midnight. That would give him something to write home about, for sure.

John Serpico

It's The Truth - Making The Only Ones - Simon Wright

IT'S THE TRUTH - MAKING THE ONLY ONES -

SIMON WRIGHT

The Only Ones were a quintessential English rock'n'roll band and whilst vocalist Peter Perrett was so obviously influenced by Bob Dylan, that influence was thoroughly rinsed through deep layers of Englishness. In Simon Wright's book It's The Truth - Making The Only Ones, Perrett is quite open about his Dylan influence but he also mentions the influence of the Velvet Underground and their first album, on which Heroin is the first track on side 2...

Do you know those moments in conversations when there is sometimes a pregnant pause? Those moments when eyes meet and for a second lock on to each other as if the subtext of the conversation has suddenly been revealed and eyes are fleetingly meeting in recognition of this? Peter Perrett mentioning the Velvet Underground's first album with the first track (on side 2) being called 'Heroin' is one such moment. A moment when time suddenly stops and everything hangs suspended in mid-air. It's only ten pages into the book but it's almost as if the book should end right there.

When you think of The Only Ones you can't but help thinking of heroin and Peter Perrett's long love affair with it. The Only Ones were a functioning drug band with their most famous song, Another Girl Another Planet, being one of the most splendid odes to heroin ever recorded. Typically, Perrett denies the song is about heroin but then so did Lou Reed about Perfect Day and Hugh Cornwell about Golden Brown, although Perrett is happy to cite drugs as being the problem that led to The Only Ones breakup. Whatever. 

Heroin isn't cool, heroin isn't clever and taking heroin certainly isn't romantic but there's no denying that drug bands of certain denominations occupy significant places in the pantheon of rock'n'roll, and when it comes to The Only Ones their position is a pretty prominent one. 

Wright's book focuses on the formation and early days of The Only Ones up until the release of their debut album. It's a fan book, essentially, written by a fan for fans. I'm not sure, however, if it's been fully thought out as it comes across as not quite knowing where it's going and what its point is, though it does tend to make some interesting points and raise some interesting details.

Wright admits rather weirdly that the debut album on which the book focuses isn't even his favourite Only Ones LP and in his opinion the second album, Even Serpents Shine, offers a better selection of songs. So why not write a book covering all their output and the whole of their career rather than only up to the debut album? 

But back to the drugs. Prior to The Only Ones, Perrett played in a band called England's Glory whose debut album was made possible primarily due to the funds generated by Perrett's rapidly developing drug dealing business. So even before forming The Only Ones (inspired after witnessing the Sex Pistols at the Chelsea School of Art in December 1975) Perrett was not only a habitual user but an established dealer. 

Like calls to like, as any Zen Buddhist would know, and in their very early days The Only Ones caught the attention of Keith Richards who was particularly taken by their song 'Prisoners'. On hearing that Keith Richards rated them, Johnny Thunders paid them a visit and became friends with Perrett due to them 'sharing the same interests'. Richards was apparently interested in doing some production work with The Only Ones in the studio but in the end nothing came of it. Perrett did, however, go on to work with Thunders on his debut solo album, So Alone, providing guitar and backing vocals on some of the songs including You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory.

Keith Richards, Johnny Thunders, and Peter Perrett. A near-holy trinity of a very particular kind.

Whenever it comes to writing or talking about The Only Ones, the question always arises in regard to why they never achieved far greater commercial success than what they did, particularly with a song like Another Girl Another Planet in their roster? A song, of course, that some consider to be one of the greatest of all time. Simon Wright doesn't come up with any specific answers although in contrast to what Perrett says, he's in agreement with guitarist John Perry's assessment in that it had nothing to do with drugs. In comparison, he cites the Pretenders who have a variety of similarities with The Only Ones including not least the use of heroin within the band. Guitarist James Honeyman-Scott OD'd and bass player Pete Farndon was sacked for drug-related unreliability but this did nothing to deter or impinge upon the massive success the Pretenders achieved.

So why did The Only Ones split? John Perry suggests it was more down to maladministration, which is a bit of a boring reason but probably close to the truth. For all that, however, The Only Ones' legacy is a good one. Near-golden, in fact. Flawed but genius.

John Serpico

The Many-Headed Hydra - Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker

THE MANY-HEADED HYDRA -

PETER LINEBAUGH & MARCUS REDIKER

In the preface to Peter Linebaugh's and Marcus Rediker's The Many-Headed Hydra (and to give its full subtitle - The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic) its stall is laid out immediately as to the reasoning behind the title. During their research as Professors of History, the authors kept coming upon a huge variety of references to the myth of Hercules doing combat with the many-headed Hydra, where Hercules was the hero always on the side of those who in victory get to write the history whilst Hydra was always the enemy to be fought and vanquished. Over time, for Linebaugh and Rediker what began as a metaphor became a concept and a way of exploring vast class struggle. The sites for this struggle are posited as being the commons, plantations, ships and factories whilst the main players - as in the dispossessed - are awarded the description of being 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' as this is what the rulers of the world at that time deemed all those they ruled to be fit for.

'For the African, European, and American hewers of wood and drawers of water in the early seventeenth century, work was both a curse and a punishment,' the authors state, and it's a really good and important point. 'These workers were necessary to the growth of capitalism, as they did the work that could not or would not be done by artisans in workshops, manufactories, or guilds. Hewers and drawers performed the fundamental labors of expropriation that have usually been taken for granted by historians. Expropriation itself, for example is treated as a given: the field is there before the ploughing starts; the city is there before the laborer begins the working day. Likewise for long distance trade: the port is there before the ship sets sail from it; the plantation is there before the slave cultivates its land. The commodities of commerce seem to transport themselves. The result is that the hewers of wood and drawers of water have been invisible, anonymous and forgotten, even though they transformed the face of the Earth by building the infrastructure of 'civilization'.

The book begins with the story of the Sea-Venture, one of eight vessels sailing from Plymouth to Virginia in 1609 that is shipwrecked upon the island of Bermuda. Rather than trying to escape and to carry on with their voyage, the sailors along with all the other passengers decide to stay, it not taking them long to weigh-up their choices: To live in freedom and harmony on this island of unexpected abundance or to continue on to the wretchedness, labour and slavery awaiting them in Virginia and the tobacco plantations there. It was a no-brainer.

Based on this incident, William Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, with Caliban the slave, Trinculo the jester, and Stephano the sailor representing the 'motley crew' of the sailors and passengers. 'Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows', Shakespeare has one of his characters say, this applying not just to Shakespeare's cast but to those washed-up on the shore of Bermuda and indeed to great swathes of people back in England and throughout the world. These are the people of the many-headed Hydra, the likes of which being what others would call at the time 'the dregs of the earth': Dispossessed commoners, felons, indentured servants, religious radicals, pirates, urban labourers, soldiers, sailors, African slaves, beggars and vagrants.

Hercules, on the other hand, was a representation of the venture capitalists of that time, the merchants, the bankers, the manufacturers, the royals, the rich, and the landowners who had fenced-off the lands and ejected the commoners. It was these who were the architects of the Atlantic economy; a Herculean task of building trade routes, colonies, and a new transatlantic economy involving the production and transportation of sugar, tobacco and various other commodities. In Hercules they found their symbol of power and order whilst in the many-headed Hydra they found their symbol of disorder and resistance, and a threat to the building of state, empire and capitalism.

In such fashion the battle-lines were drawn and the battle joined, echoing down through the ages.

Come the end of the seventeenth century, tens of thousands of men, women and children from Ireland, West Africa and Virginia were being dispossessed by the mercantilist state and forced into servitude, making slavery the foundation of Atlantic capitalism. All kept in check by the constant terror of and punishment from flogging, hanging and gibbeting. Resistance and rebellion like hope, however, sprang eternal and The Many-Headed Hydra relays no end of stories of individuals and groups who would challenge the status quo and the quashing of freedom and the rights of the individual world-wide.

These are stories and interpretations of events that if not wiped from the history books have been altered to suit the narrative as dictated by those who have gained the most from their side of the story being the dominant one. This is history from below as opposed to history from above and the importance of these stories cannot be overstated.

It is the stories of pirates running their ships in a far more egalitarian and democratic fashion than the British Navy ever did at that time.  It is the stories of the Levellers, the Diggers, the New Model Army, the Anabaptists, the Ranters, and the Muggletonians. Stories of individuals such as Gerrard Winstanley, James Nayler, John Bunyan, Thomas Rainborough, Robert Lockyer, Edward Despard, Robert Wedderburn, Thomas Spence, and William Blake. Stories of Masaniello and the rebellion of Naples of 1647, the mythical land of Cockaygne, the New York conspirators of 1741, Tacky's Revolt and the Jamaican slaves rebellion of 1760, the Spa Fields riots of 1816, and the anti-pressgang riots in both England and America throughout the 17th Century.

These are stories that when collated together in bookform such as in that of The Many-Headed Hydra act not so much as a lifting of the veil to reveal hitherto unknown truths but as a reminder of what we already know but had perhaps forgotten? A reminder of that which we have always known.

The Many-Headed Hydra is in a way many books within one, so is actually a many-headed Hydra in itself. From the subject matter and the concept of which the authors write, they have created a model of that same concept. A representation of it in the form of a book. It's quite an achievement. And whether it be by complete accident or by design, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker have written, created and given us something very special.

John Serpico

Master Of The World - Jules Verne

 MASTER OF THE WORLD - JULES VERNE

First published in 1904 just one year before his death, Master Of The World by Jules Verne is of interest specifically because we are now able to read it from the perspective and vantage point of 2024. At the time of its publication it was probably received as another story of mystery and suspense from the master storyteller, the genre of 'science fiction' in which it now falls at that point not yet being fully defined. 

Is Master Of The World a science fiction book? I guess so but only because of one aspect of it, that being the invention of a machine - a vehicle - that can travel on land, sea and sky at speeds hitherto unknown. A bit like Transformers. And remember that date 1904, and remember that the first sustained flight by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk had only taken place just a bit earlier in December 1903.

The main body of the book involves the investigation by a US government agent into strange goings-on amid the mountain ranges of North Carolina, and reports of sightings of cars and boats travelling at great speeds in other States. Could all these things be connected, the agent wonders? Sure enough, they are. It's all the same vehicle, one that acts as a car, a boat, a submarine and an aeroplane. The invention of such a vehicle is a game changer and the US government want its engineering secrets for with the possession of such knowledge would come great power and huge military advantage. The chase is then on to find the inventor.

Master Of The World is essentially a metaphor and what it's saying is that who owns the science, owns the power. Militarily this has always been pretty obvious, borne out by any number of new inventions being adopted and adapted for the purpose of war be it land vehicles, boats, submarines or planes, all the way to atomic energy. Did the Wright brothers foresee that with their victory over flight that it would one day lead to the destruction of Guernica, Dresden and Hiroshima? Of course they didn't. Such things was not the prize in their eyes but to others it would have been. In fact it would have been their first thought.

And what of today's science and technology? What power does it bring? Well, you only have to look at the rise of such people as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg to see the shift that has taken place in recent years in regard to where power lies nowadays. Power is no longer in the hands of governments who in the past have always had leverage and control of the systems under which people live. Power has now been privatised and the end result of this is that there are new masters of the world who though having no control over production, have control of the marketplace. They are the landlords to whom we all pay rent. They are essentially feudalists by default and their yoke under which we all now live is a form of feudalism, aptly described by Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis as technofeudalism.

Jules Verne's Master Of The World is a decent enough read. It carries you along and it makes you want to find out what happens in the end, although that end is wholly inadequate. Not that it really matters because the point of the book nowadays is that it serves - whether intentionally or not - as a metaphor. A metaphor that's worth thinking about.

John Serpico