2005
December 2005
Despite the spread of transformationalism around the world this year, one feels that the message of Hammersley, Bingham et al has been distorted somewhat. And so, we end as we began, with festive greetings from Santa’s workshop, where trouble is apparently brewing.
November 2005
I thought this cover of the Guardian’s Saturday magazine of 22nd October could not pass without comment. The photograph is transformationalistic in nature, although it belongs technically in that grey area which penumbrates the transformationalist postcard. It is a photograph, obviously, not a postcard, and yet the subject matter is transformationalistic, although it is not of the classic variety. At first glance an example of the ‘one man variant’, the presence of the two women watching (both behatted in almost classic TP pose) makes this more of a hybrid. Since this was chosen to adorn the cover of the magazine one wonders whether the sex of the onlookers was taken into account. This is the Guardian after all, and the controversy over the rank of women in the Transformationalist Postcard rages on (especially among our American cousins).
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October 2005
Apropos of nothing really but in this age when comedy is seemingly king and I consistently fail to get the joke, I thought I would share the following from the 1944 edition of The Oxford Companion To Music since the article on ‘Ragtime and Jazz’ made me laugh. The piece as a whole exudes a wonderful English snobbery with such comments as - ‘The vigorous use of noisy instruments went along with and was a part of the negro dance-music traditions, and soon everybody was dancing to crazy rhythms, meanwhile deafened by grotesque noises’ - but I was particularly taken by this quote, included in a discussion about the origin of the word, ‘jazz’:
“However, Mr. Chas. Hughes, in The Gramophone (London), August 1937, alleges:
‘According to many of my coloured friends from U.S.A., the word “jazz” was originally used to describe anything of a zig-zag or unsteady nature, particularly the gait of a nigger who had been imbibing too freely of liquor.
‘Fifty years ago, James Bland, the darky composer and original singer of Oh, Dem Golden Slippers, used to sing a song which contained the following lines:
“Ole man Johnson’s jazzing around.
Don’t push him, don’t touch him,
Or he’ll fall to de ground.
He’s sure to be late
Kase he can’t walk straight—
He’s just jazzing around.”’”
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September 2005
And there it is again. In the Radio Times (27th August to 2nd September) an article by Stuart Maconie about a new BBC2 series, “It’s Grim Up North”, contrasting the different views of ‘the North’ concludes with the following:
“Grim or great, the battle will rage on. It could be worse, though. You could be in Stoke ..”
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August 2005
An article in the Observer (7/8/05) by Jason Cowley concerning the state of the modern English novel contained the following passage:
“ ‘The only way, it seems, that an English novelist can write satisfactorily about the English present,’ Sebastian Faulks, one of our leading historical novelists, told me at the time, ‘is to do so in a surreal way, as Martin Amis did in Money. If an English novelist writes realistically about the present the result is usually banal, uninteresting or reads like a style piece. For some strange cultural reason when, say, Saul Bellow writes about a professor in Chicago you feel he is going to take the temperature of the soul of modern man. If an English novelist does the same, you feel it is either going to be a campus novel or an embarrassment. Something in our culture is self-mocking. If you say the word “Stoke” everyone starts laughing; but if you say “Chicago”, they are impressed. Isn’t it strange that our most talented novelists, from Penelope Fitzgerald to AS Byatt don’t try to do the present?’ ”
I remember my father being annoyed that old man Steptoe had a sister who lived in Stoke - he felt it was a cheap way of getting a laugh. I also recall a sketch from one of the early ‘alternative comedy’ shows where the Americans and Russians both admitted that the prime target for their nuclear missiles was Stoke-on-Trent. I must admit that was quite funny at the time, but I do wonder whether the Transformationalists would have more cachet in the wacky world of the arts if they’d all moved down to Bloomsbury before starting their little experiment.
Maybe I should ask these guys - the newest inhabitants of our fair city:
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July 2005
Curious times in the capital. One minute we’re celebrating as Madonna and the rest give away all their money to little brown babies in Africa, the next we’re celebrating as three billion pounds are chucked away on half-a-dozen people donning vests and pants and running round in a field, and then it all gets blown up. Things fall apart and I feel rather unsettled - like this chap:
by Adrian Rollini and his Orchestra, 1934
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June 2005
Although the name of Robert Williams Buchanan has been mentioned before in these pages (and will no doubt be mentioned again), and although his links to Transformationalism are slight (nothing more than an accident of birth), I did come across a rather strange poem of his which I thought I should mention here. It is called ‘The Ballad-Maker’ and was included in North Coast and other Poems, published in 1867. It was not included in the collected edition of his poetry which appeared in 1884. I have no idea why. Perhaps he had sold the copyright, perhaps he had decided the poem was not up to standard, or perhaps the subject of the poem no longer appealed to him. It is too long to repeat here, and there would be no point printing an extract. The strangeness of the poem lies in that ‘aftertaste’, that feeling one gets when the book has been put to one side and the meaning rises to the surface of the subconscious mind. If you are interested, click the link below.
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May 2005
All my problems are solved. I received the following email (subject: You are blessed!) the other day from a Jesuit:
St. Anthony Of Padua Catholic Parish
4 Tetlow Lane,
Wimbome DORSET BH21 ILF
london ,uk.
e mail; revdmarion@i12.com
alternative;revmarion@mail2priest.com
TEL/FAX:
Dear,
On behalf of the trustees and executors of the estate of Late Sir. Dennis Thatcher, I wish to notify you that late Sir. Dennis Thatcher, made you a beneficiary to his Will. He left the sum of Nine hundred and fifty thousand Pounds Sterling (£950,000.00 BPS) to you in the codicil and last testament to his Will. This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true.
Being a widely traveled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were nominated to him by one of his numerous friends abroad that wished you good. Sir. Dennis Thatcher passed away peacefully in the Lister Hospital London, after a short illness at the age of 88 years. He was businessman and husband to Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister. He was Born May 10th 1915; died June 26th 2003, and his Will is now ready for execution.
Sir. Dennis Thatcher, until his death was a very dedicated Christian who loved to give out. His great philanthropy earned him numerous awards during his lifetime. In a tribute to him at a News Conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister Mr. Tony Blair said: "Sir Dennis was a kind and generous-hearted man, a real gentleman who had many friends here and abroad.
According to him this money is to support your activities and to help the poor and the needy in your country.
Please If I reach you as I am hopeful, endeavor to get back to me as soon as possible, to enable the solicitor executing the Will to conclude his job. You should forward along your telephone and fax numbers, including your present mailing address.
Looking forward hearing from you in no distant time.
Yours in His service,
Rev'd Marion Frankie, SJ
(Parish Priest)
So, that’s me sorted for life then, and the charitable work of the Transformationalists can continue. Hoorah!
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April 2005
Transformationalism Spreads
In my 1978 copy of the sixth edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary the word, “transformationalist”, does not appear; neither for that matter does “transformationalism”. This has never bothered me. The artistic experiment of Fredererick Hammersley et al was a miserable failure and Transformationalism refused to creep beyond the smoky borders of the Potteries. Strange then to see the word crop up in so many places these days. Maybe Mr. Hammersley knew a thing or two about the power of words, if not ideas. The latest group to adopt the label “transformationalist” are the Republican neoconservatives who currently rule the world. Why President Bush should align himself with the essentially socialist credo of Transformationalism is a mystery to me. But, stranger things have happened. Only the other week Sigourney Weaver made a flying visit to Burslem. Unfortunately we seem to be living in interesting times.
For further information on the new transformationalists of Washington I direct you to the London News Review and an article from May last year: The Long Dark Night of the “Struggle for the Soul of Republican Foreign Policy”.
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March 2005
There is an article about Transformationalism on the Answers.com website, taken from the Wikipedia entry. Apparently the Christians have adopted the term in recent years and that has overwhelmed its origins in the art of the Potteries. One would think that Frederick Hammersley is now spinning in his grave, but personally I think he’ll be having a wry chuckle to himself. There was no mystery in his adoption of the term ‘transformationalism’ to describe the work of himself and his fellow artists - it merely reflected his aim to transform the world through the power of art. Now the word itself has become mired within the age-old mystery of God. Transformationalism itself has been transformed. Or perhaps, one should use the term, transformationalised. Over to the linguists.
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February 2005
The recent series of programmes about the lost films of Mitchell and Kenyon on BBC2 threw up a series of grand images of a bygone time. It’s a pity they never made it down to Stoke, but one particular film of a golliwog dance was so startlingly transformationalistic that it made one wonder how far north the movement had spread. Unfortunately the golliwogs are not included in the still images on the BBC site or the BFI site. Although the latter has the Edwardian populace being menaced by a samurai - maybe a subliminal nod to the work of Godfrey Ho, but being of a toffish nature the BFI got it slightly wrong and substituted Toshiro Mifune for a ninja.
Although Stoke was not glimpsed in The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon, it did make a fleeting appearance in the first programme of the BBC4 series, Jazz Britannia. As some owd jazzer was moaning about Britain after the war being dark and grey and dismal, there was a brief panorama of the Potteries smothered by smoke from the bottle kilns. Since jazz, like all the other arts in Britain, only happened in London, it seemed a bit cruel to rub it in like that. Maybe next week’s programme when the jazz gets all noisy and goes a bit mental will mention the Stoke school of free jazz, but then again probably not.
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January 2005
Akim The Terrible wishes one and all a Transformationalistic New Year!
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