Cassandra Voices

Category: Society

  • A Monk Manqué II: Thaura Mornton

    Back to love and sex. Liking is preferable to loving – and less conducive to heartache. Youth is oblivious to that boring truth.

    The unbiddable first love of my life lived in Terenure, Dublin, a half a mile away from me and I called her Thaura Mornton. We were equally devoted to amateur theatricals.

    She was sixteen when I, returned from my first migration to London, standing in the wings of the Marian Hall, Milltown, first saw her onstage singing ‘Tony from America’, a number from Lionel Monckton’s ‘Quaker Girl’ musical comedy. In the middle of the song she grinned offstage and winked at me. I was smitten. She was an elusive butterfly and led me in a delightful gavotte during the years when I was a recidivist emigrant. Thaura was spirited, an only and over-protected child. Her loving father once warned me that whatsoever male harmed her would find a loaded shotgun lodged in his posterior. And discharged.

    At night, therefore, she would climb through her bathroom window, negotiate the roof of a rickety shed and make her way to the hop in Templeogue Lawn Tennis club, amongst whose hormonal boys and girls was the much-adored rugby international, Tony (later Sir Anthony) O’Reilly.

    Inevitably Thaura became pregnant, sadly not by Tony or me, had her baby adopted – in the nineteen fifties girls had little choice – and was taken on a grand tour of Europe by her maiden aunt. I still possess the single  breathless postcard she sent me from Rome; ‘Everything is so beautiful’, she wrote.

    When she returned she still led me in a merry dance of frustration and obsession. When I saw the film Carmen Jones – Hammerstein’s improvement on Bizet’s opera – I understood her better. She even looked like Dorothy Dandridge. For me she was that love which is ‘a baby that grows up wild and won’t do what you want it to’. But the chase was everything. I saw her as untamed, the perfect companion for my adventures.

    When the Betty Ann Norton School of Acting decided to put on an amateur production of Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ they cast Thaura and myself in the lead parts of George & Emily. My joy was unconfined: my romantic delusion and myself would be working closely together every night for a few weeks. The idyll lasted a single rehearsal when the director became ill and the show was cancelled. Life went frustratingly on, punctuated by hard-earned rendevouz which the lady in question often cancelled at short notice. I simply could not understand her.

    However, walking her home one evening after a film in the Theatre De Luxe cinema in Camden St., she demanded: ‘When are you going to get a real job and settle down?’ At twenty-one I had already been a bored civil servant, factory worker, failed student and aspirant writer, unemployed again.

    The penny dropped; she wanted security, had become broody. Her question made me realise that even her irrepressible spirit had bowed to the ambitions of muddle-class slurbia. It was like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. She had contracted ordinariness, had capitulated to respectability, to browbeating nuns and Christian Brothers, to frowning teachers and concerned parents to whose concerns I had never managed to pay attention – which fault  she had easily identified in me. I was not what she actually wanted in a mate.  So, as per usual I ran and as usual was wrong.

    In the following years Thaura and I had the occasional brief reunion. Years passed before she kissed me goodnight with the softest lips in the world. I was on the point of emigrating again, this time to Canada and here was my lost love suggesting I take her with me. I thought long and hard, regretfully said no.  Her reverse capitulation had come too late. By that time I had also shifted my sights, adopted a different ambition, that of changing the world. It was by now the nineteen-sixties and I was still baying at the moon.

    Even more years later, each well married to strangers, Thaura and I together polished off a bottle of whiskey in one sitting. We laughed and mocked our younger selves until tears came to our eyes. I lost touch again, forever. I heard that she died sitting alone in her armchair, aged fifty something. We had never become, in the biblical sense, one.

    Bob Quinn, pictured in 1952.

    There always is, or should be, somebody like that in a life. James Joyce got it right in ‘The Dead’: a might-have-been love against which no subsequent union can compete.

    The need for the ‘one’, a real or imaginary at-onement, is a powerful urge springing from our time as protoplasmic life forms which reproduced themselves. They can’t have had much fun four million years ago… they merely split in two. Once those simple organisms were divided we were lost, like garden worms bisected by a spade, wriggling frantically to find our other half, condemned to seek a soulmate who would spiritually complete them – and  satisfy basic drives.

    ‘All man’s miseries’ wrote Blaise Pascal, ‘derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’

    Gradually, the  most elemental  human instinct was romanticised and called love. Worse, for us naïve Catholic youngsters the delightful illusions of romance were transubstantiated into a spiritual straitjacket. In Christian circles it was called ‘atonement’ and cleverly channelled into a guilt trip about sins to be atoned for. What a joke! We would have been better left to our own devices, even if it meant being Tom Eliot’s ‘ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas’. The psychic wounds acquired in that battle between religion and libido left scars forever unhealed and unsuccessfully ignored.  Ask any celibate priest.

    Religion was the first and most successful multinational industry in Ireland. The only native entrepreneur who could compete with it was Arthur Guinness. My father and one brother each spent forty years in St. James Gate Brewery constructing barrels for Uncle Arthur’s brew. This aversion therapy meant that neither died of the free beer or ruined livers, the fate of many of their fellow tradesmen.

    Before Guinness arrived the  Irish Bishop seems to have made an unspoken pact with the Irish Politician: ‘You keep ‘em poor and we’ll keep ‘em ignorant’. Soon he made another treaty, this time with Arthur Guinness: ‘We’ll keep ‘em ignorant and you keep ‘em drunk’.

    The Bishop would never tolerate earthly aspirations. His and the brewer’s captive imbibers of Faith ended up as guilt-ridden, frustrated, self-flagellating, unhappy topers. Many intelligent Irish males suffered this fate and justified silent movie star Louise Brooks’ description of us as ‘the worst lovers in the world’. Some did their best to avoid emasculation. They became entertainers, poets, novelists, journalists, fast talkers, hustlers, petty criminals, moneylenders, politicians, bankers and other drunks. But they kept on wearing the green jersey  and going to mass on Sunday.

    My father was a lifelong teetotaller because his own father – also a cooper, as were all his forefathers back to 1798 – had died young and alcoholic. In my long life I may have consumed beer  enough for all three of us.

    Drunkenness was a sin; but did you know that the respectable business of banking was also once a sin, worse, a ‘mortaller’, as we knew it. In more frank times  banking was called usury or money-lending and was damned by the major religions. Now the innocuous term ‘banking’ covers a multitude of heinous crimes in comparison with which drinking  is akin to being in a state of grace. Banking is no less than usury in a collar and tie. At least pawnbrokers were a service for the poor. On Fridays, on my way home from Synge Street school in the No. 83 bus queue at Leonard’s Corner I would notice weary Kimmage housewives bearing their husband’s good suits home, having redeemed them from the pawn shops in Camden street where the  precious garments had lain since Monday morning as security for borrowed money.

    Up to medieval times the only people forced to dirty their hands with lucre and commit the sin of lending at exorbitant rates were Jews because they weren’t allowed do anything else. When that talented people demonstrated what an excellent way it was to make money, the Christians (notably the de Medicis in Florence and the merchants of Venice) took over the business – ‘How odd of God to choose the Jews’ – damned the unfortunates as God-killers and respectabilised their own unscrupulous moneylenders by calling them bankers. As Gore Vidal pointed out, human beings are enemies of all vice that is not directly profitable.

    Historical, anti- Anti-semitism’s roots may be a perverse symptom of Christian guilt. i.e. embracing the sin, hating the sinner.

    Read the first installment of Bob Quinn’s memoir here.

    We rely on contributions to keep Cassandra Voices going.

     

  • Building the Book: Cassandra Voices Volume I

    ‘This is madness’, two friends chimed one night upon hearing I planned to bring out a book, reminding me I had no marketing strategy or distribution network. I would lose a fortune they maintained, consigning good paper to land fill.

    I was at least reassured by the designer’s, Distinctive Repetition, insistence on the most stringent environmental standards; meaning, whatever else, the book would not be expensive on the Earth.

    Perhaps I should have listened to my friends’ heartfelt remonstrances, and issued a countermanding order. But I held a strong attachment to the idea of bringing out a hard copy in time for the Christmas market after a year working online.

    For convenience Cassandra Voices is now a limited company, but we have always had more of the character, and pitfalls, of a rock band. The money required by participants is just one constraint among others including time, technical abilities and mental health.

    Short-term financial reward is only one metric for success; providing a platform for progressive writers and artists not ordinarily present in the media landscape brings its own rewards. Salaries will hopefully follow diligent application.

    Anyway, so far we have managed to shift over half of the editions and will continue to flog them over the next few months. The investment has cut a swathe through what small capital I held in reserve, but in return I feel Cassandra Voices is more relevant having made its print debut. I may have little business acumen, but am familiar with the saying that ‘you must speculate in order to accumulate.’

    Our economic system, predicated on the fiction of money, ascribes little reward for writing, particularly journalism that bites, so it was never going to be easy to bring to life this publication, fostering views that go against the grain .

    Bringing out digital monthly editions over the course of the year required a lot of persuasion from an editor without a cheque book, but we managed to attract excellent contributions nonetheless. I had a strong sense that many of these articles deserved to be cast in the relatively permanent form of a book, which minimises distraction and imparts information more effectively than online reading.

    It would also offer a showcase for my photographic partner Daniele Idini, and an award-winning graphic design studio. I was determined to bring out the print edition, even if it did not make short-term business sense. In so doing I hope we are performing an important role in our democracy.

    Since publication our friend Sé Merry Doyle of Loopline Film has made a short documentary on our efforts to sell the book,featuring a number of quirky Dublin characters, and a dying world of independent bookshops.

    Finis.

  • A Monk Manqué

    PROLOGUE

    ‘The reverend Judge leaned over and addressed the defendant’

    ‘I have taken your spotless record into account.’

    ‘However…by the power vested in me I am obliged to sentence you to three score years and ten, maybe more, maybe less.’

    ‘You will serve this time in an open facility.’

    ‘Allowing for the normal remission for good behaviour as well as dungeon fire and sword, flood, war, illness, acts of God, built-in obsolescence and unforeseen accidents, you will enjoy a limited amount of personal freedom.’

    ‘As soon as you have interiorised the rules you will be left to your own devices.’

    ‘May the Lord have mercy on your soul.’

    The newcomer beamed up at the man with the dog collar and gurgled happily.

    ‘Goochy goochy,’ smiled the Judge as he dribbled icy water from a chalice, down onto the infant’s head.  The victim’s face contorted in shock at this first betrayal and its bawled protests echoed and re-echoed round the cathedral walls.

     

    A MONK MANQUE

     

    1/  Birthday

    The recommended way to tiptoe through one’s eighties is to move as appropriately, delicately and prudently  as possible.

    But Oscar Wilde knew that ‘the tragedy of old age is not that one is old but that one is still young.’  Picasso agreed: ‘It takes a long time to grow young.’

    Therefore, as the sun sets over your absent-minded yardarm there remains a sliver of light and life, a tincture of  your compos (or, if you prefer, compost) mentis, implying the detritus of a long life. In the face of imminent extinction an extra birthday should be less a celebration than an act of defiance, a flinging of caution to the winds. What have you to lose? A dribble of sand in your hourglass? A narrowing shadow on your sundial, a mark on the wall of your cell, an acceptable stay of execution – anything but the conventional wisdom of decrepitude. Just face the fact that life has lived you, rather than the reverse.

    On such an occasion avoid the liars who say: You’re Looking Great, Haven’t Changed a Bit. Translated, they are saying ‘you’re fucked.’

    My exact contemporary, holocaust survivor Ben Barenholtz, who produced Coen brothers films and brought bread and vodka for he and I  to ritually consume at the Galway Film Fleadh, told me he had an ex-friend, another liar who had said exactly the same thing to him every year for the previous twenty years.

    The amusing thing about this compliment is that we ancients can’t help believing it. We skip and dance down the road – a pathetic, not to say gruesome image until we are forced to pause for breath. We then resemble the attitude of the nun in Elizabeth Jenning’s poem who was breathless with adoration. The cruel realisation is that we have simply run out of puff. In a Copenhagen pub not long ago that truth dawned on me in the company of two of my sons when I couldn’t resist dancing a hornpipe with a lovely young stranger. My legs needed  a rickshaw taxi to get me back to the hotel while my fine sons continued their frolics until morning.

    My actual state of health – fit  as a trout in the opinion of doctors – is ironic. The pair of elderly Jehovah Witnesses who used call to my door, assuring  me I could live to be one hundred and fifty if I accepted Jehovah, stopped visiting when I rejected their kind offer by quoting George Gershwin –  loudly and in song

    ‘Oh, Methusaleh lived 900 years, but who calls that livin’ when no gal will give in to no man who’s 900 years…’

    There’s the rub. As many of our faculties slither into the wings, the biological imperative insists on slyly hanging around, hoping like Lazarus for stray crumbs. When he was in his fifties actor Rod Steiger blamed his manic depression on those unreliable faculties. Myself, twenty five years younger than Steiger, had already intuited the tragic side of the human comedy.

    But then I had the accumulated experience of  three centuries – the 19tht, 20tth and 21stst – and five generations of my tribe. Three of my late grandparents – I never met the fourth – were born in the eighteen eighties and are as vivid and present to me in this room as their great-grandchildren when the latter noisily visit me. I can see all their faces, hear their voices, remember their gestures as well as I do those of my parents and my own children and grandchildren. Assuredly as their DNA, much of their experiences must lurk in my consciousness, co-exist in my eyes and ears – through which, after all, come my only perception of reality – and are as real to me as the screen before my eyes or the billion-celled stew of cells bubbling in the cauldron of our shared genes. This room is crowded and can be disturbing  to one who always fled the proprietary demands of the tribe. To age is not to run out of ideas but to acquire a confusion of ghosts amidst the living.

    They, young and old, are all here and not here, as simultaneously as Schroedinger’s cats. They so vividly exist, so demanding of my attention, that my direct and indirect human experience amounts to nearly one hundred and fifty years, just as the Jehovahs promised! So why am I not yet a wise and quiescent old man, nodding by the fire?

    The reason is that I am male.

    Females are blessed. They may suffer in our coming and going, but in time most of them lose interest in things libidinous – their body instructs them so – and they achieve a kind of equilibrium. Their vanity takes a different form – pride in their home, their children, an inside track to God and love of cats. They live longer than males by ceasing to chase windmills, by settling for less: security.

    In my experience males were once listened to and females could safely be leered at. This was disastrous for both. The former became bores, the latter withered under the stares. Suddenly everything is reversed. Males are tentative and silent; females are garrulous.and assertive, to me an interesting evolutionary experiment.  Mature, compliant females are an oxymoron but, as with unicorns, males still believe in  the myth.

    Such creatures must exist somewhere. Otherwise life is not worth living. Males are condemned to this poetic possibility ad infinitum or longer, a lifetime. Patsy Murphy diagnosed us as having ‘too much libido’. The libido is the killer, nature’s trick to keep the species going. A person can die of it.

    Fifty years ago they conducted an experiment in the University of Berkeley (named after an Irishman, wouldn’t you know!) in California. They immersed a healthy male human specimen in a saline solution at body temperature. He floated as lightly as if he were in the Dead Sea. They doused the lights and plugged his ears. He was rendered sense-less, devoid of all stimulation. The outcome? Involuntary erection. I’ve read that it also happens to hanged men. Is that what Dylan Thomas, at nineteen, intuited when he wrote of  the force that through the green fuse drives the flower? The French writer Michel Houellebeq is obsessed with the phenomenon, gaily mixing philosophy and social commentary and ending up with with sheer pornography. I would guess it has made him a Franc millionaire.

    The fading of the faculties, the sense of impending annihilation, is the greatest imperative since Henry Kissinger boasted about the aphrodisiacal qualities of power. Hence the epithet: Dirty Old Man. Kurt Vonnegut jr. was more charitable when he wrote to me (always in block capitals on postcards): OLD MEN ARE OBSCENE AND ACCURATE.

    Mr Vonnegut was my late and great penfriend who, like George Bernard Shaw conducted his correspondence by postcard. One of them was emblazoned: LIFE IS NO WAY TO TREAT AN ANIMAL.

    When Pandora’s box is opened and releases all evils into the world the only thing left is Hope. During the conquest and annihilation of Berlin in 1945, all ages copulated desperately and publicly. Innocent courting games like ‘spin the bottle’ were discarded. Adolescent boys, knowing they would soon die defending their city sought a first and last joyful petit mort. For the girls it was to pre-empt their inevitable rape by a Russian soldier. War has that effect. The youngster were like rabbits transfixed in the headlights of tanks and they grew up faster than Margaret Mead’s famous teenagers in Samoa. They followed their first and last instinct: make love not war – but with somebody suitable. The few remaining active adults led by example. Threatened German cities were like chaotic brothels and all for free. I did not see the city of Munich until a dozen years after the sale was over. My timing is always haywire. Firebombed cities were inhabited by cripples, widows and orphans, many of the latter with high-boned Tatar faces, although starvation must have aggravated  the effect. It is estimated that at the end of that last spot of European bother fifty percent of all surviving German females were raped. I read that in a book. I get all my real information from books. If the internet kills the printed book, my mind will go blank. I often quote Thomas Moore, the Irish balladeer: ‘All my books have been woman’s looks, and follie’s all they’ve taught me.’

    Kurt Vonnegut happened to be in Dresden at the height of its firestorm so he was well qualified to have an opinion.  He briefly summarised the calculated destruction of cities like Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and Pforzheim with the pithy: ‘So It Goes’.

    So far this seems to be all about love and sex and death? Pretty much. Next to food, what is more important than our driving forces, especially love, the engine room of the ship? We are all Darwinians now. Young optimists believe that love is an experience that is, has been or will be as neat, orderly, delightful and well conducted as ordained by someone called God, a part-time Hollywood producer. I remind ye who keep this faith (while all others are losing theirs)  that ye are not paying attention. The bottle does not spin forever. A love affair is a mini-life: it begins in joy and ends in despair. Roll on the next one. We are a cosmic ditty, accompanied by a honkytonk piano in a sleazy bar.

    Socrates put it more gracefully: ‘much of what men do is a desperate attempt to immortalise themselves; sensible women take the more direct route of having children’. Socrates regarded founding a family as a terror management strategy. The only simple reaction I have to these ponderous considerations is to keep singing and dancing  provided, in keeping with subtle requests, that I do so in the privacy of my own kitchen.

    The truth of that great platitude, ‘yourelookingreathaventchangedabit’ is simply this: you are decommissioned. Writer Joe MacAnthony has described our generation as tourists in the departure lounge.  We are in our anecdotage. Who would have thought that ‘Riobárd’, the child in the frontispiece to these words would survive so long?

    How can I be the same person as  that innocent four-year-old pencilled in my teetol father’s 1940 portrait?

    Riobárd, as the child was named, must have had some intimation of what was ahead of him. How else could innocence survive the tripwires of life? Noam Chomsky said that there is an inbuilt matrix for complex language in a baby. Is there also an inbuilt preparedness for the hard truths of life?

    It is a fact that my Uncle Jim Toner– who had run away from his home in Dublin to join the British Army and survive the slaughter of WWI – long afterwards described me, the child in the portrait, thus: ‘He may be alright but he has the head of a bloody rogue.’

    I overheard that remark and worried about it, but nobody reassured me. Maybe Uncle Jim, a teenager in the Royal Army Medical Corps who had collected body parts of youngsters on the killing fields of Picardy – where the roses bloomed – was reminded of something unbearable in that innocent portrait?

    Back in Dublin from his war service, Uncle Jim married what was known as ‘a servant girl’, begat no children of his own, endured public resentment at his fighting for the Old Enemy and sometime in the nineteen fifties decided to dull his pain with the aid of a gas oven. Post-traumatic stress syndrome was not then recognised. I have looked him up in the British Military Archives. He was awarded  the DCM, abbreviation for Distinguished Conduct Medal, meaning he was immature enough to do something foolhardy in the midst of carnage.

    Conferment of the D.C.M. gallantry award was announced in the London Gazette (1920) and accompanied by a citation.

    Award Details: 61586 Pte. J. Toner.  During the period 17th September to 11th November, 1918, while acting as a bearer, particularly at the capture of Bohain. There being a congestion of wounded, he repeatedly led forward squads of bearers over very difficult country during the night and greatly assisted in the evacuation of them

    This had never been revealed to us children by our nationalist father although my mother, who concealed guns under her dress when céilís were raided during the War of Independence, often said  ‘We were better off under the British.’

    There were other military associations. When the British army abandoned our sacred soil in 1922, my mother’s sister Kathleen ran away with a British Tommy who, like her own father, my grandfather, reared pigs at their home in Berkshire. Their son Sydney, my uncle, became a teenage frogman in WWII and my hero. Years later I enticed Sydney’s daughter Kathy to elope with me to Ireland where we were known for a brief interlude as ‘kissin cousins’. Kathy later married a Red Devil, one of those RAF types who put on daring aerial displays. Admitting these connections makes me wonder if I am not an honorary member of that suspect class, a West Brit or Shoneen.

    For a start, I was born in the Pale. My childhood radio listening consisted mainly of the BBC Home Service because Radio Éireann was broadcast for only a few hours per day. My first language was English, albeit in a dialect light years from the received pronunciation  of the Home Counties BBC accent. My early reading was what we called the comic cuts: The Rover, Hotspur, Eagle, all published in England.  My favourite authors were Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, G.A. Henty, Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse, John Wyndham, Leslie Charteris and so forth. Even the Irish language detective story writer Reics Carlo,  who was obligatory reading in school, turned out to be English.

    Among our official heroes, Pádraic Pearse was half-English, James Connolly was half-Scottish and James Larkin was a Liverpudlian. No wonder I am ambivalent about nationalism, both Irish and English. The last night of the Proms in the Albert Hall with its sea of Hooray Henrys roaring out ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ fills me with dismay and not a little envy. Filming American children reciting their oath of allegiance with hands on hearts every morning in school amazed me. Nationalism has become a dirty word in Ireland. How do the English and the Americans get away with their jingoism?

    Perhaps because they are, respectively, past and present empires and Ireland’s only imperial achievements were spiritual and vanished into the ether.

    As very soon must I.

    This started off as a note on my birthday but could end up as a memoir, the grandiloquent lie. Every act of memory is an act of imagination, As all lives end in failure, my guess is that an honest memoir would produce in the reader a depression as deep as Killary Harbour.

    Therefore this must, de facto, be another fictional memoir, a scrapbook, an anecdotal antidote to a life. Fortunately I am a magpie and keep the evidence: love letters, photos, notes, theatre programmes, membership cards, birth, marriage and death certificates, diaries, expired passports, manuscripts, film scripts, and so on and so forth. How I have kept them together after a peripatetic life is a wonder, but such memorabilia may keep me relatively, at least chronologically honest. They may raise an occasional giggle or even a sharp intake of breath in the wrong places.

    I am past caring, one of the few benefits of ageing.

    Bob Quinn is an Irish filmmaker, writer and photographer. His documentary work includes Atlantean, a series of four documentaries about the origins of the Irish people.

    Did you know that Cassandra Voices has just published a print annual containing our best articles, stories, poems and photography from 2018? It’s a big book! To find out where you can purchase it, or order it, email admin@cassandravoices.com

  • ‘Don’t let me stop you from going for a swim’

    Picture this scene. Next to a Martello tower, a grimy concrete shelter below which a motley crew, ranging from whooping lads to fragile ladies, make their way, often daily, into the ocean at Seapoint, Dublin. Some swim significant distances – measured in buoys and other landmarks – others simply ‘take the waters’. There are New Irish here, while native Dubliners mix easily with country friends, in the collective gasp before wading in.

    I have visited the sea most days so far this winter. It is the dread of the cold, not the cold itself that holds the most fear. Once enclosed by the water my limbs thrash a course, and I am no longer conscious of the temperature. That is as long as I go in every day. If I leave it for any length, the cold will sting, even in the summer months.

    Is this a sport I wonder? There is no zero sum game of winners and losers. No match reports. No fandom. But there is conviviality, life affirmation, fitness and even a boost to the immune system I have been told. But something deeper motivates my immersions, and any health benefits are tangential.

    I am dreading the months of January, February and March. It is hard to contemplate temperatures that will have dropped a further three or four degrees to eight degrees.[i] Remarkably, the average sea temperatures in December is higher than in May, when the difference between air and water could be fifteen degrees. This month the water is often warmer than the air, although you lose heat a lot quicker without your clothes on.

    Also this month the solstice coincides with a full moon. I have no idea if this has a symbolic significance. What I do know is that swimming with a crowd during a full moon is great craic. I have attended these lantern-lit gatherings for the past two months, and am hoping to brave it again on the 21st. One trick to stave off hypothermia is to bring along a hot water bottle to pour over extremities afterwards, making sure to avoid giving yourself a scalding.

    I have just started wearing protective gloves – which I found on the street – into the water. It makes quite a difference to my hands on the twenty-five minute cycle home. I am thinking of acquiring booties that I see other people wear, but that would involve a financial investment in this lowest maintenance of sports. Really all you need are togs, towel and a good dollop of madness.

    I take pleasure in seeing an array of birdlife by the seashore: there are the usual suspects of gulls and cormorants – which I now see are colonising the River Dodder near where I live as fish numbers decline in the sea – but also Brent Geese along with Waders some of which make their way from Iceland, so I guess they find our waters positively balmy! It is shocking to hear that shards of plastic are affecting these migrants’ welfare.[ii]

    Most days I take a picture from the same spot overlooking the Poolbeg stacks. I do wonder about posting these on social media, but I have available to me the superb technology of a telephone, which takes fine pictures of sky, sea and land converging. Obviously in the process I am selling the platform of an irresponsible multinational, but cannot the same be said of any author whose book is on display in a chain store? I just want to convey the beauty of my city and its hinterland, and how we should treasure the wildlife, and examine carefully issues like the emissions coming from that eerie incinerator by the stacks.

    This summer my mother died. Losing a parent is generally a seismic life experience. I think my dedication to the swimming has had something to do with that. Cycling to and from Seapoint I pass by places I associate with her. It is sad, but I don’t want to avoid it.

    When my mother went into a hospice I immediately returned from the UK where I had been working. The following day she said: ‘don’t let me stop you from going for a swim’, much to our amusement. Two days later she passed away.

    The other landmark near where I swim is Dun Laoghaire pier. It is so much a part of the geography of this place that it seems timeless, but it was built on the initiative of a private citizen, Richard Toucher, a Norwegian sailor who settled in Dublin, passing away in 1841. He provided, at great personal expense, most of the granite for the building of the harbour. This philanthropic enterprise saved many lives, and now provides a bit of shelter as we swim at Seapoint, where it can still get quite choppy.

    This is an extract from one of his letters:

    I write not for fame, but for utility. It is my aim rather to be understood than admired. To elegance of composition I aspire not. But I have some nautical experience…and…the idea of an Asylum Port at Dunleary is ever first in my thoughts.

    The Merchants, Ship Owners and Ship-Masters of Whitehaven, Workington, Maryport, Harrington and Parton, are also preparing a petition to be presented to His Grace The Duke of Richmond, praying his aid and support for the erection of this much wanted pier at Dunleary. This I am not astonished at, when I reflect how many of their relatives have been lost on the coast of our Bay, the numbers of widows and fatherless children that are left to bemoan that this pier had not long since been built, which would have saved to them what was in this life most valuable.

    For his troubles Richard Toucher died a bankrupt.[iii] We recall his great legacy today, this Cassandra Voice, who devoted his fortune to the continuing benefit of others.

    Did you know that Cassandra Voices has just published a print annual containing our best articles, stories, poems and photography from 2018? It’s a big book! To find out where you can purchase it, or order it, email admin@cassandravoices.com

    [i] ‘Dublin Sea Temperature’, Global Sea Temperature, https://www.seatemperature.org/europe/ireland/dublin.htm, accessed 13/12/18.

    [ii] Tim O’Brien, ‘Plastic shards from Dún Laoghaire spill found in Donabate’, Irish Times, 12th of November, 2018.

    [iii] Tom Conlon, ‘Richard Toutcher – the case for a memorial’, Dún Laoghaire Harbour Bicentenary, January 23rd, 2018. http://dlharbour200.ie/richard-toutcher-the-case-for-a-memorial/, accessed 13/11/18.

  • Review: Adventures in Philosophy: Stories & Quests for Thinking Heroes, by Brendan O’Donoghue and illustrated by Paula McGloin

    I think that Adventures in Philosophy – Stories & Quests for Thinking Heroes is a brilliant book. If you are a curious person who loves short stories then this is the book for you, and you learn all about philosophy and philosophers without even realising it.

    The book is divided into three sections: Part 1: Step into the Unknown, Part 2: Discover New Trails of Thought, and Part 3: Return Home to Begin Again. Then the three sections are divided into smaller sections which include a beautiful illustration, then a mythical story, then a conclusion to the story with a couple of questions to make you wonder, and after there are the thoughts of lots of famous philosophers on the subject. The illustrations are amazing and make me almost want this book to be a picture book, almost. I hope you enjoy this book immensely if you read it, and have great adventures in philosophy.

    Part 1: Step into the Unknown says it all in the title, as the heroes set off into the unknown, on the start of their adventure. The introduction to it is very touching and really makes you feel confident. The heroes are all different but are all courageous and confident in their own way. I really liked stories 6. Plato’s Cave which is all about reality and 7. The Brain in the tank.

    Part 2: Discover New Trails of Thought is the part when you’re really starting to ponder on all these questions. The stories that I love lots are 1. A different kind of Hero: Theseus and the Minotuar, which is a very confusing story but very enjoyable all the same, and 6. Artificial Intelligence (AI): Opening Pandora’s Box which really makes me wonder whether humans are doing the right thing or not. I really like this part because it is very questioning and amazing.

    Part 3: Return Home to Begin Again… is when the heroes come back to their homes. My favourite stories are 8. The Animals Return: The Coming of the Buffalo Dance because it’s all about animals but it’s sort of a sad story too and of course 9. Adventuring Home to Earth. I think this story is actually my favourite one out of all of them because it’s linked with the very first mythical story in the book The Frog in the Well but I won’t spoil it for you!

    This book made me think of a lot of questions such as:

    • What life is there after death?
    • What is death?
    • What is good and bad? And how can we live a good life?
    • And what is art and why do we make art?
    • What should we do about the planet and the environment?

    Finally, the question came up a few times – should we eat animals? Is there a respectful way to live with animals but still eat animals without being greedy? Such as the way it is discussed in some of the stories such as “The Animals Depart: The Hunter and the Fox-woman” or “The Animals Return: the Coming of the Buffalo Dance”. And do these questions help with today’s problems with the environment?

    These are hard questions and there is probably no right or wrong answer. We need to think about questions like these and I think that philosophy can help us. Some of the stories even show us how to be in harmony with nature and the environment which is really important nowadays with climate change and environmental disasters. Philosophy can seem a bit strange and useless on its own, as we’re not used to thinking like that, but this book shows us how to use philosophy to look at everyday problems.

    I hope you enjoy this book and have a great adventure in the forest of your mind. I loved this book and I hope you will too.

    Lena Muzellec is eleven years old, and in sixth class in her primary school in Dublin. Her favourite hobbies include playing camogie and chickens, reading and hanging out with friends.

    Did you know that Cassandra Voices has just published a print annual containing our best articles, stories, poems and photography from 2018? It’s a big book! To find out where you can purchase it, or order it, email admin@cassandravoices.com

  • Redefining Opportunities for Female Architects in the Post-Recession Era

    Architects … are better able than many other professions to ride out recessions … They will use the lean times to think hard about the directions architecture might take when the good times roll once again.
    (Glancey, 2009)

    In August 2008 Ireland was the first EU country to declare itself officially in recession. The economic downturn was swift, and in the succeeding years the country found itself in the grip of a sustained economic depression, occasioned by the convergent demise of the banking and construction sectors.

    The collapse of the construction industry ‘hit the architect profession at a faster rate than other professions’[1] with almost one third of architectural firms laying off between 61% and 100% of their staff.[2]  The constriction of the profession was seismic, disproportionately affecting marginalized and vulnerable constituents of the workforce; notably female architects.

    Despite almost gender parity in architectural education, women compose just 28% of registered architects in Ireland.[3] Burdened by unsuitable working practices, lower pay and a general deficiency in numbers, the practice of architecture can be an unforgiving topography for many women. While this predicament may seem embedded within the industry, it is clear that ‘the harsh economic climate has … undercut the conditions which are conducive to gender equality,’[4]  leading to the enduring phenomenon of highly skilled female architects disappearing from the profession.

    There has been a paucity of research in recent years on the relationship between the struggles women face and the economic factors that contribute towards them, and it is within this context that a debate on redefining the profession and production of architecture for female (and male) architects is required. Using the recession as a catalyst for change, it is essential that architects ‘recognise the importance of continuing to challenge the labour market disadvantage that women…face,’[5]  by acknowledging the factors that unduly affect them, principally: the outdated, gendered image of the architect; a pervasive long-hours working culture that disproportionately affects those caring for dependents; the profession’s intolerance toward flexible working; and the general deficiency of senior positions available to women within mainstream practice.

    In this study alternative forms of working – such as flexible, part-time working and the creation of more female-led practices to inspire the next generation of architects – will be explored as a means of fostering a more inclusive and equitable profession for all.

    The scope of this study is consciously narrow, its aim is to ignite a wider discussion on the vital contributions women make within the industry, and the efforts that must be taken to prevent the continuing trend of women leaving it.

    In recent decades the number of female students entering architectural education has risen steadily year-on-year, with female enrollment now on a par with that of male students.[6]  Despite this encouraging trajectory, women’s participation stagnates as they progress through the profession with the ‘percentage of women (falling) at each ascending management tier.’[7]

    In 2006, research conducted for the Architect Journal’s ‘Women in Architecture’ campaign highlighted the attrition of female architects from the profession, noting that while 35% of undergraduate students were female, women accounted for only 4% of retiring architects.[8]  The spectre of this missing 31% is damaging to the future of the profession and it is therefore essential to call attention to the structural issues that motivate it.

    1.1 The image of the (female) architect

    (a woman’s) intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision.
    John Ruskin

    That Ruskin’s indelicate stance on the capacity and worth of creative women so closely typifies prevailing contemporary attitudes towards female architects is not surprising. Indeed, clichés abound about women in architecture today, ’many of which are destructive and detrimental…entrenched assumptions about what it is to be an architect.’[9]

    These ‘entrenched assumptions’ appear to be borne out of engendered prejudices of what an architect is and what they do. Certainly throughout history architects have been many things – artists; philosophers; master-builders – but only recently have some been women. Women’s involvement in – as Ruskin would characterise – ‘invention or creation’ has therefore been largely overwhelmed and diminished by the vast contribution that male architects have made before them.

    This, coupled with the architectural establishment’s casual misogyny in the erasure of pioneering female architects’ achievements, has done little to recast the image of the architect as anything other than male. Most notably, the awarding of the 1991 Pritzker Prize to Robert Venturi, but not his wife and practice co-founder Denise Scott Brown, led a chorus of voices to question why Scott Brown’s equal contribution and authorship were not similarly honoured. Furthermore, the removal of Patty Hopkins – co-founder of Hopkins Architects – from promotional material for the BBC’s ‘The Brits Who Built the Modern World’ series does little to foster the idea that architecture is anything other than a male domain.‘’

    This airbrushing of the contributions women have made to the profession has rendered them invisible, allowing enduring prejudices of what an architect should be to persist and encouraging female architects to feel that their efforts are not worthy of the same recognition as their male counterparts.

    1.2 Children

    While there are various factors that contribute towards the attrition of female architects at different stages in their career, maternity appears to be a principal factor.

    Having children impacts the careers of women considerably more than men,[10]  and a recent survey conducted by the Architects Journal found that 92% of female architects believed that having children had hindered their career prospects.[11] Women have commented that after having children they were ‘not taken seriously, were sometimes demoted, passed over for promotion or were seen to have failed to give the art of architecture the full attention it deserved.’[12]

    As soon as I started working part-time my employers treated me differently and assumed I was less committed. I was overlooked for promotion twice when I was on maternity leave and not even informed that structural changes were being considered.[13]

    1.3 Long hours: time-discipline in architecture

    ‘An important factor in the flow of women from the architecture profession is the family-hostile, long hours working culture that still prevails’[14] within mainstream practice.

    Long-hours have become an accepted and pervasive element of being a salaried architect, indiscriminately affecting both men and women in the pursuit of making a project the best it can be. Evening meetings, project deadline, and the over-servicing of projects beyond the negotiated fee, can prolong the working day, significantly encroaching on an architect’s personal time. ‘’Theoretically ‘work devotion’ is gender neutral, but the long working day … relies on a social foundation of gender norms that disadvantages women’[15]  more than their male colleagues.

    Consequently, flexible working is often favoured by women ‘as a strategy to reconcile the competing time demands of paid work and family life.’[16]

    Unsurprisingly, architecture is often considered to be more intolerant of part-time work than other professions, with one of the strongest barriers to flexible employment being the established long-hours culture within the profession.[17]  Periods of economic and employment uncertainty encourage this culture of working by creating ‘a climate where it is necessary to demonstrate high commitment’[18]  and ‘unfailing availability’[19]  to the job. This has led to what Karen Burns, in her chapter for the recent RIBA publication, ‘A Gendered Profession: The Question of Representation in Space Making,’ describes as ‘‘competitive overstaying’, as employees contend with each other to demonstrate loyalty and devotion to work,’[20]  in an effort to stymie possible redundancy.

    Consequently, many women forced into redundancy following the 2008 recession have commented that their inability to pursue long-hours working meant they were considered easy targets due to a ‘two-tier system where part-time and flexible workers are seen as less legitimate or committed workers.’[21]  In this context, women are unfairly disadvantaged by having responsibilities outside of the workplace, which are incompatible with working beyond contractually agreed hours with no or little remuneration.

    1.4 Career advancement

    In recent years Parlour – the Australian gender advocacy group – has challenged the long-hours system in architecture arguing that the ‘culture…retards the retention of female architects, and hinders women’s progression to senior levels.’[22]

    The growing chasm between men and women as they advance up the architectural ladder has been highlighted in research conducted by the Architectural Association, which notes that only 20% of partners in architectural practice are women, this figure dropping to just 5% in large practices.[23]

    While it is clear that women possess the same motivation and skill to succeed in senior roles, employers remain largely unsympathetic towards family life, perceiving full-time work as the only means of servicing projects, and conveying dedication to the often unrelenting and demanding expectations of the highest echelons of the profession.[24]

    Indeed, part-time working is a key factor in women’s under-representation in senior architectural positions as ‘women are more likely to have ‘atypical’ or flexible career paths, with multiple breaks, different levels of intensity and changing roles over the course of a career.’[25]   In contrast, men are more likely to follow a ‘traditional’ career model – that of unbroken and unwavering devotion to the profession via unpaid overtime – and be ‘active in the conventional areas of influence and power in the profession. (It is clear) the structures of the profession are still geared towards (the) linear, rising career trajectories,’[26]  favoured by men.

    As women are often unable to meet the loyalty and dedication that many employers expect, senior roles often appear unattainable for the majority of women. With little hope of career advancement in a profession that openly favours a ‘traditional’ working model, it is unsurprising that a significant number of women choose to leave the profession.

    It is clear that within the architectural profession a system persists that works against the specific needs of women. It is essential, therefore, that the contributory factors to this system are no longer viewed merely as accepted inconveniences, but rather as opportunities to reduce the current rate of attrition. Indeed, ‘women architects’ commonly interrupted career history, and need for flexible working conditions can be reframed not as an aberrant or problematic work pattern, but as the model for innovative new professional paradigms in architecture.”[27]

    2.1 The case for meaningful flexible working

    If the practice of long-hours is ‘read as a signal of productivity and commitment, flexibility can be perceived as a conflict with an organisation or profession’s norms.’[28]  A recent survey conducted by the RIAI has reinforced the low levels of support for part-time work in architecture, identifying 10% of architects as working part-time compared with 38% for all professions. ‘This is a particular problem for women (as) 27% of all women professionals work part-time, while only 16% of women in architecture do.’[29]

    The stigma surrounding flexible working has stymied the adoption of part-time and non-standard working methods for decades, encouraging entrenched negative perceptions of alternative working models to fester.

    Changing these attitudes is crucial if more meaningful part-time arrangements are to be developed.[30]

    Positively, flexible working policies are inherently responsive, allowing both employers and employees to react to specific needs at particular times.[31] For employees meaningful part-time work can provide a balance between external demands and the rigours of professional practice, while for employers it allows quick responses to ever-changing workloads. Practices can explore the potential of flexible working simply by cultivating job-sharing arrangements; coupling part-time and full-time members of staff on projects; and providing staff access to new technology to facilitate home working. Many practices report that implementing these measures has ‘reduced amounts of overtime required while increasing productivity and maintaining the quality of their work.’[32]

    It is important that practices make a virtue of these working arrangements as ‘a forward-looking, equitable … firm is attractive to clients and new staff.’[33] Furthermore, in the context of the recent recession ‘introducing flexible working options … in workplaces where there is a history of reducing hours or changing patterns of work in response to demand, could prove a valuable means to retain jobs … and (provide) greater flexibility for workers now and as the economy recovers.”[34]

    2.2 New (role) models of practice

    As non-traditional, flexible forms of working have increased in recent years, the notion of what constitutes a ‘career’ in architecture has been queried.

    The recent influx of equitable practices such as Assemble, Fluid and earlier pioneers such as Muf have consciously positioned their work on the fringes of the profession,[35] putting greater emphasis on social rather than financial rewards. Entrepreneurial in nature, these practices have boycotted the traditional forms of working in favour of ‘non-standard’, inventive modes of practice that have proven to be more innovative and diverse in form.

    Research suggests that the last recession encouraged the adoption of more ‘non-standard’ working as architects sought to find relevance within an industry decimated by construction inactivity. Consequently, the success of practices such as Assemble must motivate architects to embrace new, more loosely architectural ways of working as a means of adapting more easily to ever-changing economic and work/life balance conditions.

    2.3 A Practice of One’s Own

    The embrace of new working models in recent years has largely been borne out of necessity. For those made redundant and unable to find work following the 2008 recession “a trend, common to all recessions in the construction industry, for the unwaged or unemployed to form new architectural practices, reoccurred.”[36]

    This trend follows an increasing pattern of women who ‘end up in small practice, or starting their own practice, not because they actively choose to…but because they find themselves with few other options.’[37] Indeed, according to a recent survey published by the Architects Journal, 16% of female architects become self-employed after having children due to the complexities of carving a rewarding career in mainstream practice whilst caring for dependents.

    One of my main reasons for working as a sole practitioner was for the flexibility. I have small children, and running my own practice has allowed me to juggle motherhood and my work. [38]

    That female sole-practitioners report ‘remarkably high levels of job satisfaction’[39]  should, however, encourage us to reconsider self-employment not merely as a necessary response when times are hard but an effective means of reclaiming personal autonomy and organising levels of project engagement around external demands. Moreover, for many young female architects, who cite a lack of female-run practices ‘as a factor leading to (the) under-representation of women in architecture,’[40] seeing more women subvert the established routes of career ascension and actively counter the pervasive negative stereotypes that cast doubt on their ability to perform in the profession will ‘increase (their) motivation for career advancement and success.’[41] The effects of encouraging more female role models within an overtly male-dominated profession like architecture should not be underestimated.

    Conclusion

    Recessions are a time for architects to rethink their game. They need not despair – but, rather, regroup for the next boom.
    Glancey (2009)

    Prior to the 2008 economic crisis Ireland possessed one of the highest levels of workplace gender parity in Europe.[42] This changed however as an entire framework of statutory and public bodies promoting equality endured drastic budget cuts and closures.[43] The seismic withdrawal of gender policy in the aftermath of the recession is indicative of the large-scale marginalisation of issues that affect women in the workforce, specifically in architecture.

    For a profession that claims to be concerned by societal inequalities, the recession highlighted ‘a major discrepancy … between the egalitarian rhetoric of architecture and its backstage realities.’[44] Indeed, the recession exposed a myriad of pervasive and deeply rooted inequalities within the profession that disproportionately impact women, and have contributed significantly to their decision to leave the profession over recent decades.

    Central to the inequalities experienced by women is the long-hours culture that permeates all aspects of mainstream practice. The persistent misconception that those who are unable to commit to long-hours are less committed to the profession has become a significant impediment to women who predominately undertake the majority of dependent responsibilities. This, coupled with the view that those with children are unable to undertake managerial positions, has ensured women’s career advancement has stagnated with a minority of women currently occupying director or partner positions. Consequently, the under-representation of women in leadership roles has ensured the dominant image of the architect is still male, effectively rendering women’s significant accomplishments in recent decades obsolete.

    As frustrating as this pattern may seem it is within our power to change it. Encouragingly, Ireland has a wealth of extraordinary and internationally-renowned talent, with female-led and co-led practices such as Grafton Architects, Heneghan Peng and O’Donnell and Tuomey proving that women can create meaningful change if they challenge the structures that work against them. The growth of more female-led practices could help slow the current attrition rate of women from the profession as more women ‘put themselves forward and become visible and influential.’[45] Furthermore, by implementing new strategies, such as flexible working, that ‘mediate between the day-to-day activity of producing architecture and each woman’s individual needs’[46] both employers and employees can respond better to work/life demands.

    The propositions put forth in this study are consciously simple solutions to the larger problem of inequality within the profession. While the case for more appropriate and flexible working practices is unlikely to constitute a sustained assault on the profession-at-large, it may, at least, encourage an incremental erosion of the problems that have been allowed to fester for too long.

    In short, it is clear the profession needs to retain ‘more people who think (and work) in diverse ways, not fewer’[47] if it is to deliver better working environments for all architects – not just women – and if it is to survive the next, inevitable recession.

    Did you know that Cassandra Voices has just published a print annual containing our best articles, stories, poems and photography from 2018? It’s a big book! To find out where you can purchase it, or order it, email admin@cassandravoices.com

    [1] Prescott, J. and Bogg, J., Gendered occupational differences in science, engineering, and technology careers. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, pp.49-52., 2013, p.49
    [2] Hays.ie. (n.d.). Architectural firms have shed an average of 60% of employees in two years. [online] Available at: https://www.hays.ie/press-releases/HAYS_163705 [Accessed 25 Nov. 2018].
    [3] RIAI Membership Survey 2017. [online] The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland. Available at: https://www.riai.ie/uploads/files/RIAI-Membership-Survey.pdf [Accessed 5 Nov. 2018], p.2
    [4] Fowler, B. and Wilson, F., Women Architects and Their Discontents. Sociology, 38(1), pp.101-119. , 2004, p.117
    [5] TUC (2009). Women and Recession: How will this recession affect women at work?. [ebook] Available at: https://www.ictu.ie/download/pdf/womenandrecession.pdf [Accessed 27 Oct. 2018], p.8
    [6]  Clark, J., Six myths about women in architecturre. In: J. Benedict Brown, H. Harriss, R. Morrow and J. Soane, ed., A Gendered Profession: The question of representation in space making. London: RIBA Publishing, 2016, p.18
    [7] Fairs, M. (2017). Female architects respond to gender survey: “It’s getting better but far too slowly”. [online] Dezeen. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2017/11/17/female-architects-respond-architecture-gender-survey-worlds-biggest-firms/ [Accessed 27 Oct. 2018]., 2017
    [8] Duncan, J. and Newman, V., Women in architecture: stand up and be counted. In: J. Benedict Brown, H. Harriss, R. Morrow and J. Soane, ed., A Gendered Profession: The question of representation in space making. London: RIBA Publishing. 2016, p.61
    [9] Clark, 2016, p.15
    [10] Stead, N., Redesigning practice. [online] Parlour. Available at: http://archiparlour.org/setting-our-own-house-in-order/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2018], 2012.
    [11] Brown, et al., 2016, p.7
    [12] Manley, S. and de-Graft-Johnson, A., Why women still leave architecture? A research report. Women & Environment International Magazine, [online] 62(63), pp.19-20. Available at: https://search-proquest-com.ucd.idm.oclc.org/docview/211604807?accountid=14507&pq-origsite=summon [Accessed 5 Nov. 2018]., 2004, p.20
    [13] Burns, K., The Hero’s Journey: Architecture’s ‘long hours’ culture. In: J. Benedict Brown, H. Harriss, R. Morrow and J. Soane, ed., A Gendered Profession: The question of representation in space making. London: RIBA Publishing., 2016, p.66
    [14] Humphryes, J., Redesigning the profession. In: J. Benedict Brown, H. Harriss, R. Morrow and J. Soane, ed., A Gendered Profession: The question of representation in space making. London: RIBA Publishing., 2016, p.121
    [15] Burns, 2016, p.66
    [16] Rose, J., Hewitt, B. and Baxter, J. (2011). Women and part-time employment. Journal of Sociology, 49(1), pp.41-59, p.41
    [17] The Parlour Guides to Equitable Practice: Long-hours culture. (2014). [ebook] University of Melbourne and University of Queensland. Available at: http://www.archiparlour.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Guide2-LongHours.pdf [Accessed 27 Oct. 2018], p.9
    [18] Craven, V. (2004). Constructing a career: women architects at work. Career Development International, [online] 9(4/5), pp.518-531. Available at: https://search-proquest-com.ucd.idm.oclc.org/docview/219290042/fulltextPDF/358285285D7E4C03PQ/1?accountid=14507 [Accessed 5 Nov. 2018]. p.524
    [19] Mark, L., Women in architecture survey 2017: Pay gap widens between male and female architects. Architects Journal, 244(3), pp.1-30., 2017, p.30
    [20] Burns, 2016, p.64
    [21] Parlour, n.d., p.3
    [22] Burns, 2016, p.64
    [23] Humphryes, 2016, p.120
    [24] Clark, 2016, p.25
    [25] Clark, 2016, p.27
    [26] Clark, 2016, p.27
    [27] Stead, 2012
    [28] Burns, 2016, p.66
    [29] Clark, 2016, p.26
    [30] Parlour, n.d., p.4
    [31] Parlour, n.d., p.4
    [32] Parlour, n.d., p.4
    [33] Rubery, J. and Rafferty, A. (2013). Women and recession revisited. Work, Employment and Society, 27(3), pp.414-432., n.d., p.426
    [34] TUC, n.d., p.9
    [35] Hamer, S., On age and architecture. In: J. Benedict Brown, H. Harriss, R. Morrow and J. Soane, ed., A Gendered Profession: The question of representation in space making. London: RIBA Publishing., 2016 p.45
    [36] RIAI Annual Report 2007. [online] The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland. Available at: https://www.riai.ie/downloads/annual_reports/2007_Annual_Report.pdf [Accessed 27 Oct. 2018].The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, 2007, p.16
    [37] Clark, 2016, p.22
    [38] Clark, 2016, p.22
    [39] Stead, 2012
    [40] Humphryes, 2016, p.119
    [41] Stratigakos, D. (2016). Where are the women architects?. Princeton: Princeton University Press., 2016, p.35
    [42] Barry, U. and Conroy, P. Ireland in crisis 2008-2012: women, austerity and inequality. [ebook], 2013, Routledge. Available at: https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/handle/10197/4820 [Accessed 27 Oct. 2018]., 2012, p.1
    [43] Ibid, 2012, p.29
    [44] Fowler, B. and Wilson, F., 2004, p.114
    [45] Duncan and Newman, 2016, p.59
    [46] Pepchinski, M., And then we were the 99%: Reflections on gender and the changing contours of German architectural practice. In: J. Benedict Brown, H. Harriss, R. Morrow and J. Soane, ed., A Gendered Profession: The question of representation in space making. London: RIBA Publishing, 2016, p.245
    [47] Clark, 2016, p.29

  • Review: Rather His Own Man by Geoffrey Robertson

    In his autobiography– in itself an unusual exercise for a lawyer – Geoffrey Robertson QC, refers to himself as a ‘Baby Boomer’, and devotes a chapter to that generation. Although of Generation X myself, we share similar career trajectories in our commitment to human rights, which is probably why Geoffrey kindly sent me this biography, Rather His Own Man, for review.

    The title is revealing on all sorts of levels. First, there is no doubt that he has ploughed a creative and perhaps lonely furrow on legal and societal issues, enhancing the cause of human rights in the UK, and throughout the planet. Compared to other Baby Boomers his contribution has been largely positive, which could not be said for his birthfellow Mr Clinton.

    Secondly, though every inch a hard-working scholarship boy from an ordinary school in Sydney, it may be argued that the opportunities he was afforded, notwithstanding his obvious dynamism and drive, were not commonly allocated to Generation X. With fewer aspirants in the 1960s it was easier to forge the path of an international human rights lawyer. He might concede that to achieve his level of dominance and fame would be impossible now for anyone starting from a lower rung on the social ladder. More to the point, the cause of human rights, something I will return to, is dying. Thirdly, and I think most importantly, in the present age – more so than ever – remaining your own man or woman is increasingly difficult, or even nigh on impossible.

    At one level the autobiography is a unique insight into a fading life experience of a somewhat gilded age. He is, as he intimates several times, at the end of the Biblical cycle of ‘three score year and ten.’ The death of his parents at the end of the book are engendering in a personality – one suspects of huge warmth and decency – intimations of mortality. The dying of the light.

    As the great chronicler of our age, and perhaps the foremost Baby Boomer Bob Dylan put it ‘It is not dark yet but it is getting there.’[i]

    There are many aspects of his upbringing which startled me in the realisation that they were similar to my own. We are both bibliophiles, with a love of the great works of literature. Omnivorous in that respect. The first few chapters of the autobiography offer an immersion into the great fictional and non-fiction books he has absorbed. This very defined liberal arts background is no longer typical of lawyers, but is surely crucial to his eminence.

    Elsewhere among his corpus of works there is strict legalism, such as his textbook on Media Law, but he has also put the whole justice structure under a microscope, and has placed law in a sociological and philosophical and indeed historical context.

    He epitomises the paper-giving public intellectual practitioner, which are increasingly being replaced by robotic technocrats. To speak and write as mellifously, and occasionally orotundly, as he does might invites caricature and ridicule among the dominant philistinism of today.

    He is a non-conformist in the best sense and has represented far from popular people. In this respect, Alberto Moravio’s novel The Conformist (Secker and Warburg 1952) shows how the bureaucratic conformity evident in many lawyers leads to the endorsement of fascism. As a cosmopolitan London QC, something one senses he is hugely proud of, he had the protection and freedom to remain a non-conformist, immune from parochial pressures. He flew the coop and in hindsight is quite prescient about how scholarship decisions, which reading between the lines were marginally in his favour. Expatriation gave him a distance from, and perspective on, his native land; about which he writes with a tint of nostalgia and doe-eyed remembrance, in common with Irish Americans recall of their ‘old country’.

    It should be stressed it cannot have been easy to ascend to his level even in more informal times. He tells an interesting anecdote of his first appearance at Knightsbridge Crown Court, representing an indecent t-shirt seller, where his ‘irritable vowels’ of Australian slang lead a snobbish judge to rebuke him. The t-shirt my lord he intoned ‘Says Fuck art, let’s dance.’ To which the judge responded with a reference to his Australian inheritance you surely meant to say: ‘Fuck at, lets drance.’

    Elements of the English establishment may have embraced him but one senses he is still a quintessential outsider.

    As an aside, just as Geoffrey Robertson aspired in his childhood to appear before the Old Bailey so did I, managing to do so very recently. I recall saying in front of my peers when I was sixteen precisely what he had: ‘I want to be a barrister at the Old Bailey in England’, and being greeted with the same jeering laughter and bemusement.

    Now I doubt suburban Sydney is as bad as suburban Ireland in its contempt for that particular courthouse, but I recognise that he had many barriers of prejudice to surmount. It should be stressed that his affectionate evocations of the Australian bar are quite different from my view of the Irish bar.

    He makes the point several times and he is absolutely right, that all true change comes from troublemakers, dissenters and muckrakers and that the bland technocratic and compliant conformity of our new world order needs to be resisted.

    Yet the vanity, though not in a bad way, of the narrative is quite breathtaking. It is almost like reading Katherine Hepburn’s autobiography, simply entitled Me (Knopf 1991), as if everybody should know who that is. Well of course they do, and there is nothing wrong with subjectivism, or an element of personal vanity as long as it leads to the whole series of achievements and good deeds he has accomplished.

    One is dumbstruck at the litany of the high profile representations, and wonders how he has done it. Not least physically. Leaving aside enormous ability, other aspect of his personality emerge, which might be open to censure. He is a total social butterfly and name dropper, and his friends and associates are all glittering examples of the chattering classes, as are many of his amours. Now I would imagine this pronounced maven-like networking ability is a huge asset and he has effortlessly glided between different worlds in the cosmopolis. Is he a lawyer? Is he a  public intellectual? Is he a media don? Is he just another part of the culture of solipsism and celebrity?

    I do not mean to be dismissive and am not. That maven-like ability and his ability to interact at different cultural levels, I suspect, is why he has achieved as much as he has done. Like all great advocates he is an everyman, and complex creature. But to be this unclassifiable is now no longer, in my view,  an asset, but a liability. The lawyering caste, and the world at large, is now populated by arcane specialist, not generalists, however Olympian.

    Robertson is clearly the thinking woman’s lawyer. The alpha-male-minus of the Baby Boomer generation. Man, the very man, but not a caveman. A feminist success. He is very critical, as am I, of corporate lawyers and the vast wealth they accumulate doing no good at all. I think he is very proud in hindsight that he has fulfilled his potential and has been a conventional success by pursuing a less than conventional path.

    There are little clues though to the alpha-male-minus that I must say I do not like. He sees nothing wrong with academic Stalinists no platforming people. But I do. His fellow Baby Boomer and Australian Germaine Greer was no platformed for saying that a man who becomes a woman can never truly understand what it is like to be one.  He is rightly indignant, as am I, about Catholicism and how its institutions have covered up child abuse, and in fact wrote a beautiful crisp book on that theme called The Case Of The Pope (Penguin, 2010). What he neglects to deal with is that now in Ireland this specialist knowledge base on child abuse has been used by a corrupt state to make false accusations and frame people. Thus the sins of the clergy are recast to target those who dissent and challenge the cosy consensus, led by lawyers often religious in orientation.

    I attended a CPD session run by his chambers. Most professional it was, but one was not oblivious to the anti-corporate corporatisation. The slick presentations, the office marketeers and managers. Doughty Street Chambers is in many respects a factory for the good, and he presides over it all like a latter day Friedrich Engels. And he is very proprietorial. At times the CPD was so slick I wanted to holler. But that is too trite a judgment and perhaps reveals my own parochialism.  Doughty Street Chambers, of which he is rightly enormously proud, is a totemic achievement and he presumably knows in this age of advertising and soundbites that in order to take on corporatisation one has to adopt their methods, or at least know a bit about branding. Robertson has been brilliant at marketing himself and his product.

    I applaud him for this, but I doubt the backbiting Australian legal community are quite so approving. From reading this book I do not think he is anything other than a deeply humane man with an acute and developmental sense of justice, along with a terrific eye for detail, nuance and erudition. He is very prescriptive that a lawyer needs to know the hard data, know his onions before grappling with the ethereal world of human rights. Hard Graft. Sydney scholarship boys grow up harder, and are less tolerant of those that have had it handed to them on plate.

    He is very interesting on the nature versus nurture question, having been been given opportunities to grow and develop, thereby escaping the shackles of his background. He has not blown these chances. By contrast, by and large Generation X has had to make more sacrifices and often settle for less. Much less.

    He writes  with great precision about the secular religion that is human rights as an ethic for our time, but it sounds like the lilt of a dying generation, or generation a their song. It is fin de siècle and the new zeitgeist, which I imagine troubles him, as much as me, is resurgent fascism, the decline of pluralism and multi-cultural tolerance, along with the utilisation of surveillance, which he eloquently conveys in his analysis of his client Julian Assange, under an increasingly oppressive state. Human rights lawyers are the new subversives, as defined by state criminals. The dangerous rise of what Chomsky captured as a triage of evil: postmodernist relativism, neo-liberalism and religious fundamentalism; our post-truth universe, so alien to the truth-telling barrister.

    He does mention the word postmodernism favourably once, and such intellectual artifices have probably influenced him unduly, as indeed has an overly-attuned political correctness, but he has had to, and done so brilliantly, navigate some choppy waters.

    He defines himself as a Gladstonian Liberal and a Cromwellian Puritan. I am with him on the former, but not the latter. Puritanism far too easily morphs into Brahmin self-righteousness. Also, dare I say, to define oneself in such sonorous terms, is an echo of a different age. Based on his positive ambivalence towards Lord Denning and enthusiasm for U.S. Legal realism as well as the Harvard Socratic method he seems to be a pragmatist, like myself. Castles in the sky, I would imagine, he has always resisted.

    The most interesting part I found was his analysis (pp. 446-447) of the ‘banality of evil’ – to appropriate Hannah Arendt’s phrase – among government, judicial and state officials, which I witnessed in Ireland. Bean counters absolve themselves of responsibility for evil deed by claiming they had to feed their families. Evil is incremental and increasingly apparent in our times.

    Just as Eichmann saw himself as only putting people on trains, and a mere functionary in Hannah Arendt’s description, so austerity cost-cutters render a decent existence for many people a huge struggle, if not an impossibility.

    I think Robertson accepts he – and I hope he does not take offense – is now a  banger, a cab rank tart and a gun for hire, even for the right reasons. I doubt he has ever considered himself anything else and there is underlying the ego a deep-seated modesty, and acceptance indeed, of the absurdity of the human condition.

    He is prescient about knowing when enough is enough. Experience and judgement are all assets, but not if mind and body are failing.

    It is a remarkable life, and for a lawyer almost unique. He is also still fresh and childlike and a real force for good. In this day and age that is a huge achievement.

    To revert briefly to Irish, or Australian, begrudgery, it just shows how far you can go with the gift of the gab. But the light is dying for the good. It as if we have stepped into Jean Renoir’s 1939 film La Regle De Jeu, on the precipice of an environmental and economic collapse that collectively we are sleep walking into. Robertson has stood bravely resisting the subversive tide. But the tide is high, and what can this King Canute or Rumpole of the legal profession do apart from

    Rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas: ‘Let us Not Go Darkly Into That Night’ (1952)).

    Did you know that Cassandra Voices has just published a print annual containing our best articles, stories, poems and photography from 2018? It’s a big book! To find out where you can purchase it, or order it, email admin@cassandravoices.com

     

    [i] (Dylan: Not Dark Yet from Time Out of Mind (Columbia 1997).

  • Don’t believe the Autonomous Car Hype – It’s a Sequel!

    Earlier this year, The Economist (March, 2018) published a special report speculating on the potential for autonomous or self-driving cars to solve the countless problems associated with today’s gasoline-powered, human operated vehicles.  Autonomous cars, they and other tech-enthusiasts argue, will virtually eliminate road accidents, revive suburban areas, solve the problem of parking, and reduce traffic in our cities.

    The naïve claim is that a single technology will solve a host of social, cultural and environmental problems, while allowing the economy to keep growing, never questioning whether the endless pursuit of autonomous mobility or economic growth is good for the planet, let alone urban regions.

    I – Appropriation of Critiques

    Ascribing commodities with magical powers is nothing new. Marx called it the fetishism of commodities. A commodity, he wrote, is a mysterious thing that achieves mystical properties, not due to its use value, but from ways in which it objectifies social relations. It is much easier, and profitable, to address the urbanizing planet’s profound socio-ecological crisis with a new technology than to question the social and cultural desire for automobile-propelled mobility.

    Like the rhetoric of the sharing economy, which appropriates the collective idea of sharing in the monetization of everyday life — driving, dwelling, and eating — the rhetoric around the autonomous car appropriates critiques of the automobile that have long been made by environmentalist and anti-car activists.

    The fantasy of this fetish object begins with its very naming as somehow autonomous (literally, outside of or beyond the law). All new technologies, be they cars or smartphones, pencils or paper, alter the existing cultural and social matrix of technologies. The question is how do they do so, who in particular will benefit from them, and how are they sold to the public because, today, all technologies are developed within the laws of capitalism — they have to make money and be profitable, and in the case of the autonomous car, further rather than overcome, the individualism that is at the core of the system of automobility.

    Critics of the car, activists and academics alike, have long pointed to not just the physical violence that mass automobility brings out, but the conceptual violence of automobility as the symbol of autonomous mobility.

    Automobility, in this sense is fundamentally contradictory. The ‘auto’ in automobility implies a coherent self, someone composing her biography in motion. Driving is the ultimate pursuit of the autonomous self. If freedom is motion, forever moving forward, then the car on the open road is the ultimate expression of autonomy.

    At the same time, the ‘auto’ in automation, automaton, and automobile implies a machine, not a human, and a seemingly autonomous machine that is, however, utterly dependent on an infrastructure for it to express the driver’s autonomy, often at the expense of other non-car drivers.

    Critical theorists of automobility have pointed out that automobility is not at all autonomous, but radically dependent on a host of infrastructure systems.  They suggest that the vast system that makes automobility both possible and desirable, ironically, if taken as an intrinsic part of automobility would call into question the very idea and practice of autonomous mobility. Their point is that it is not necessarily the individual in the car that expresses autonomous mobility, but that it is rather the infrastructure, the vast network of highways, gas stations, traffic lights, licensing and insurance systems, that fosters the illusion that movement is autonomous. Thus, the editors of a 2006 edited collection called Against Automobility write, ‘the complex infrastructure of automobility produces, as one of its effects, the appearance of independent automobility.’

    II – ‘Energy Crisis’

    Ivan Ilich, the theologian and radical activist, made the same claim when he criticized the term ‘energy crisis’ in the 1970s in his landmark essay ‘Energy and Equity’ (1974). There was only a crisis, he wrote, because of the number of ‘energy slaves’ that needed to be fed. His point was that the energy crisis revealed the opposite of autonomy: our radical dependence on networks of infrastructure and energy. Autonomy, in his sense, could not be found with a technological tool, green or otherwise, but with social and political liberation.

    If automobility as autonomous mobility is impossible on conceptual grounds, attempts to resolve such antagonisms will always fail.  In his last book, the sociologist John Urry wrote that even the car manufacturers are beginning to realize that automobility’s antagonisms might be ‘impossible to ‘solve’ in any simple sense.’

    The Economist said as much itself back in 2012. To address ‘peak car’ – saturation of the automobile market in the rich countries – car manufacturers had two options: either flood the economically poorer countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and India with more gas guzzling combustion engines; or bring technology and car companies together to offer rich countries the autonomous car, a ‘highly profitable innovation.’

    The autonomous car, far from overturning the system of automobility that became dominant in the twentieth century, will only perpetuate it and fuel expectations for increased personal mobility, rather than collective, public mobility on public transit. The expectations that we should all have access to a private car to go, where we want and when we want, were in part produced by the infrastructure of automobility.

    III – Uber-flawed

    Uber’s former CEO, Travis Kalanick, argued that Uber was not, as might appear, in competition with taxis, although that is the most visible aspect of the clash (and the associated labour disputes of Uber’s drivers). Rather, Kalanick said that they were not competing in an existing market, but producing an altogether different one. Uber was competing against car ownership. The goal? To make, in Kalanick’s words: ‘car ownership a thing of the past.’

    Kalanick’s claim points to a key aspect of the discourse of the autonomous car: its proponents have appropriated long-held knowledge about the damage cars do to society, in order to sell autonomous cars.

    For years anti-car activists have pointed to a number of antagonisms. The response: autonomous cars will ease the antagonisms of automobility by reducing traffic, ending the over one million fatalities that occur on the world’s roads every year, cutting back carbon emissions (when the cars become self-driving), reduce parking and supplementing public transportation, or in some areas, offering a more cost-effective form of quasi-public transport. With autonomous vehicles, we find what The Economist describes as the possible saviour of both the system of automobility and the dispersed suburban form.

    For decades, anti-car and environmental activists have been drawing attention to these problems with cars. Their point was not to find a technological alternative that could, in theory, provide the same pseudo-freedom of mobility that the car provides, but to question radically that pursuit, and support collective solutions in the interests of the common good: safe and effective public transportation, cycling, and an urban and suburban form conducive to walking and hanging around.

    Today criticisms of the car are recycled by the industry because a technological alternative has become viable that does not call into question the economy of infinite growth. Those who for years persisted in supporting conventional cars because they were still profitable (and as such willingly sacrificed human lives in exchange for personal mobility and profit), now conveniently reach for the anti-car arguments.

    IV – Unsustainable Growth

    Autonomy (2018), is a book co-authored by Lawrence D. Burns, former vice-president of research and development at General Motors, and a key proponent of self-driving cars. The introductory chapter is entitled ‘The Problem with Cars’, and introduces a litany of problems associated with the ‘personally owned, gas-powered, human-operated automobile.’

    These cars he writes are inefficient. Cars are usually occupied by only one person, and in city centres cars rarely travel faster than 12 mph (3). Cars are heavy, and so dangerous, killing 1.3 million people per year, and they contribute to American dependence on oil. And given all that, they still spend 95% of their lives parked.

    ‘Years from now,’ writes Burns, ‘we’ll regard as incredibly wasteful the way we got around in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries….The system is completely irrational.’

    Adam Jonas, a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley, claims that the car industry is the ‘the most disruptable business on the Earth.’ ‘Happily,’ writes Burns, ‘the solution also happens to be better for the earth’. This is telling because it is economics, not an interest in climate change, that, in the end, drives such innovations. If it happens to pollute less, all the better, but the ultimate goal is infinite economic growth, which in today’s climate, cannot be sustained.

    There are, however, two glaring omissions in Burns’s account: no mention of the vast sums of money spent on highway building and maintenance, particularly in North America, much to the detriment of public transportation, and not one mention of public transportation as an already available, collective option to much of the problems he discusses.

    The bus does make an appearance in his narrative: co-founder of Google, Larry Page, while an undergraduate in Michigan in the early 1990s, was forced to wait in the freezing cold for buses that never arrived on time, if at all. While stuck waiting, writes Burns, Page wondered ‘how poorly we as a society had solved the transportation problem.’ The solution, was not to make public transportation more effective, but to come up with an idea for personal rapid transportation, which would lead to the race to build self-driving cars.

    Most remarkably, The Economist’s 2018 special section on autonomous vehicles, claims they will save the suburb from the car by reducing or eliminating driving and the amount of space given over to cars, thereby, ‘updating the 20th-century dream of garden cities.’ Garden Cities, they write, can again become self-sustaining, producing their own power through solar, and growing their own food. Since autonomous vehicles can be parked elsewhere and roads narrowed, car spaces can be reclaimed as gathering spaces for people.

    V – Suburbs without cars?

    Is it possible to conceive of the dispersed suburbs without privately-owned cars? The lack of sidewalks will turn into a bonus as the playing field between cars and pedestrians is levelled. What about the demise of car ownership? If car ownership is part of the debtscape of suburban neo-liberal automobility (Walks, 2015), how might the de-privatized self-driving car change this?

    For Wendell Cox, one of the staunchest supporters of neo-liberal automobility, the idea of suburban dwellers not only giving up car ownership, but sharing rides with their fellow suburban dwellers in self-driving cars is unthinkable. In other words, self-driving transportation services should not resemble in any form public transportation.

    In all of these cases, radical alternatives that were about a right to the city, are commodified and sold to us as saviours of the city. And it is unlikely these self-driving cars will benefit the places that need them most: suburbs and peripheries lacking in good public transportation.

    The current mood around self-driving cars places them in the increasingly exclusive central cores of cities like Google’s proposed smart neighbourhood, Quayside, on the Toronto waterfront, which will make use of self-driving cars.

    If the current forms of ‘tech mobility’ (Henderson, 2018) are any indication – like the privatised Google buses in San Francisco ferrying workers from the downtown to their suburban tech campuses – so-called sustainable forms of liveability that are associated with self-driving cars, carbon-free mobility, and bike lanes, will exacerbate rather than overcome the infrastructural inequities between the central city cores and the periphery, enhance the autonomous mobility of the few, not the many.

    References

    Steffen Böhm, Campbell Jones, Mat Paterson, and Chris Land (Eds.), Against automobility. Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2006.
    Jason Henderson, Google Buses and Uber Cars, The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics, Routledge, New York, pp. 439–450, 2018.
    Alan Walks, Stopping the ‘War on the Car’: Neoliberalism, Fordism, and the Politics of Automobility in Toronto, Mobilities 10 (3): 402–22, 2015.
    Lawrence D. Burns and Christopher Shulgan, Autonomy: the quest to build the driverless car–and how it will reshape our world, HarperCollins, New York, 2018.
    Evelyn Rusli and Douglas MacMillan, ‘Uber Gets an Uber-Valuation’, Wall Street Journal, 6 June 2014, <http://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-gets-uber-valuation-of-18-2-billion-1402073876>
    Wendell Cox, ‘Driverless Cars and the City: Sharing Cars, Not Rides’, Cityscape, 18, 197–204, 2016
    Ivan Ilich, Energy and Equity, London : Calder & Boyars, 1974, http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/EnergyEquity/Energy%20and%20Equity.htm
    ‘Seeing the Back of the Car’, The Economist, 22 September 2012 <https://www.economist.com/briefing/2012/09/22/seeing-the-back-of-the-car>
    ‘Special Report: Autonomous Vehicles’, The Economist, 1 March 2018 https://www.economist.com/special-report/2018/03/01/self-driving-cars-will-profoundly-change-the-way-people-live

  • Dating a Narcissist is no Tea Party

    In nineteenth century England, ‘erethism’, or ‘mad hatter disease’, was an occupational hazard for hat makers. The work involved repeated exposure to poisonous mercury vapours, which neurotoxically damaged their brains. Personality flipping, irritability, apathy, depression, memory loss and delirium were the price paid for the debonair upper-class tea-party, where guests relied on lavish hats and extravagant evening gowns to demonstrate grace, formality and decorum.

    Appearances of sophistication and elite living were produced through the sacrifice of human spirit and mind. In many ways sharing life with a narcissist is like a Victorian tea party. It is a sham, a show, a veneer masking a pit of perverse and senseless suffering. It is a curated paragon of romantic union, an enviable promised land of relationship bliss. Happiness promised but never delivered.

    The Hatter in the story of Alice in Wonderland is trapped in time, in punishment for failing to impress the queen with his song. He had tried but was not good enough, a self-esteem-shattering-back-story all too familiar to those who eventually lose their way in life. He is eccentric, critical, charming, welcoming, exclusionary and at times, a wonderful host to Alice, who quickly finds her ‘in’ by flattering him for his singing.

    All ears, he draws Alice close and encourages her with a big smile to tell her story. Then suddenly he bellows, ‘Those are the things that upset me!’. He interrupts her, reprimands her, twists her words and angrily blames her for upsetting the mouse. In just a moment, his mood switches, and he is once again hospitable and engaged. He recites nonsensical prose and delivers unanswerable riddles, and when Alice repeats his own words back to him, he points at her in terror and labels her insane. On a whim, he demands that the whole party move their seats so that he can drink from a clean cup, he being the only one who deserves the privilege. Meanwhile Alice, though repeatedly promised tea, gets none.

    I feel like a fool when I look back on the dynamic between my ex-boyfriend and I. Of course it wasn’t normal, of course I should have left him, of course I should have recognised what was happening. The reality is though, when you are in love with someone your brain becomes a masterful tool of self-deception, and it can take forever to see that which does not match your own model of the world.

    Even now when I hear about friends meeting him at social occasions I imagine the serene, affable, friendly, popular gent that people love, and I question whether I over-dramatise it all.

    It seemed worth enduring the pain of arguments three times over during the times we spent in our blissful joy, and I did not have the strength to remove myself from the nourishment of his love, when he chose to show it to me. I felt that we were so close to happiness, and he was working on himself. If we could just mend the holes as they appeared then perhaps soon there would be no more. I believed him when he told me that, because what we had was almost perfect. Almost.

    I thought that my true boyfriend was loving and kind, and that the demon infiltrating his body when he ‘went dark’ had nothing to do with him. What I realised (far too late) with horror, disbelief and sadness, was that I had it the wrong way around. It was his narcissism that played the lead in his life, at least when it came to me, and though he had likable sides, his charm was mainly a means to an end.

    Unless we travel through the looking glass and see for ourselves that our world is reversed, backward and upside down, it is natural to believe in the illusion of the Tea Party.

    Nobody has prepared us for the madness of the truth. And the truth beckons an unwelcome question: if opening up to love can bring such pain, does seeking a partner make us all just lambs for the slaughter? How could I have protected myself from what I could not detect?

    When I reflect with what I know now, I can see with a sense of dismay (and of relief) that his behaviour was not as random – or I as powerless – as it seemed. I simply did not know what I was looking for. For there were signs, a dozen signs, that this would be no ordinary adventure.

  • Archaic Oscars Find no Place for Millennial Fantasies

    This August the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a new award, honoring outstanding achievements in ‘popular’ film. They did not, however, reveal any criteria for how the award would be made. A month later, after a sustained backlash, they backtracked, declaring the new category was no longer being considered.

    Among the criticisms of the ‘most popular category” was the uncertainty around what makes a film ‘popular’, and how this would differ from the criteria applied for the Best Picture category. Last year’s Best Picture nominees, including Dunkirk and The Shape of Water, raked in a measly $63 million. Not one of the top five grossing films last year (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, Wonder Woman, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) were included

    Was the ‘Popular’ category a way to placate moviegoers of arguably more niche, comic-book or fantasy films, who could not care less about the Oscars, because their favorite films are never acknowledged? It seems the Academy was endeavoring to increase viewership, and reverse a dwindling relevance in the popular culture zeitgeist.

    They have failed to accommodate films inspired by comic books – with the rebirth of the genre coinciding with Marvel’s 2008 release of Iron Man – which have been dominant over the last decade.

    It is evident that genre movies, like the Marvel films or Star Wars series, generate the big bucks, but do not gain recognition beyond the MTV Movie Awards.

    One alternative to the category of ‘achievement in popular film’ would have been to award a special Oscar to the year’s box office champ, along the lines of the existing Honorary Awards, while saving the Best Picture category for typical Oscar-bait, which in recent years have tended to be so-called ‘indie’ films, but are really films with a stuffier audience in mind. The Academy had stated films nominated for the Most Popular category could be nominated for other categories, like Best Picture, but would they have been?

    Many fantasy films are feats of storytelling and world-building that have found an extremely receptive audience. But they are invariably excluded from nominations for Best Picture. Although The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, did sweep up eleven Oscars, including Best Picture in 2003, in 2010, ‘Avatar’, by far the highest grossing film that year, surprisingly lost out to the somewhat propagandistic The Hurt Locker for Best Picture. There is a precedent for fantasy films being nominated, but it is a rare occurrence.

    Other new categories have been created in the past, for instance Best Animated Film. As animated films became more popular, and skillfully made, the category was added to draw attention to the quality of work and craftsmanship in that sphere. Before it was introduced in 2002, just one animated film had been nominated for Best Picture, Beauty and the Beast, in 1992. Since then, only two animated films have been nominated — Up in 2010 and Toy Story 3 in 2011 – despite the wealth of good, if not great, animated movies being released over the years.

    The leading candidate for Most Popular this year, combining critical acclaim with box office haul, was probably Black Panther (apologies to Avengers: Infinity War). Indeed, the plucking of the ‘Most Popular’ category out of thin air, might have been born out of fear of a backlash if it had not been nominated for Best Picture.

    When blockbusters are good, like Black Panther is, they should be nominated for Best Picture. The film built an entire nation, language, traditions, and introduced some new players into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), to be revisited in Infinity War. It is a self-contained story of a power struggle between the heir to a throne and outcast royal (harking back to the Shakespeare-inspired, Kenneth Branagh-directed Thor), offering an alternate reality of a wealthy, technologically-advanced African nation untouched by imperialism or colonisation.

    At the same time, the characters and setting are weaved seamlessly into the MCU. Failing to nominate this film for Best Picture would be an injustice, but the Oscars are full of injustices; just look at Get Out losing out to The Shape of Water this year.

    The new category would have been a way for the Oscars to draw in more viewers, especially younger ones, by nominating more ‘popular’ movies, which would have their own category. But it was a poorly thought out approach.

    The Oscars are a lavish extravagance, an opportunity for aging celebrities to pat one another on the back. It is doubtful if a popular category would have halted that slide into obscurity. Once the highest accolade for anyone in the film industry, and most anticipated award show of the year, the Oscars are an increasing irrelevance, especially to millennials.