Cassandra Voices

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  • Ode to the Christmas Pub

    – A seasonal riff on the opening paragraph of Moby Dick –

    Call me Andy. Not long ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me amongst mortal company, I tended to sail about a little in Dublin City, brought hither and thither on impulsive winds to see the more ignored though not necessarily unexplored taverns of this dirty old town. It’s a way I have of driving off the spleen, of regulating apathy, of cracking through the thin yet heavy crust of my autopilot’s baked-in habits. Whenever I feel myself grown grim about the spiritual loins; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; when I find myself involuntarily pausing before a coffin warehouse, or randomly bringing up the rear of every Stag or Hen party I meet (before being politely asked to leave); and especially when my temper gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a Herculean moral effort to prevent myself from deliberately stepping out into a road of oncoming traffic, or to move myself on from idling beneath a city crane’s precariously borne weight of 50 tonnes of devastating concrete, or methodically pushing people’s children into the street – then, I account it high time to retire to the nearest, most obscenely and prematurely festively decorated Irish pub, as soon as I can: least I be, gentle reader, the tragic cause of some senseless tragedy done. The Christmas pub is my substitution for the poison and the noose. With a philosophical flourish I can throw myself upon the white rails, on the mirror and the razor-blade. And I quietly take to the drink. For I hunger and I thirst not for the brittle unconsecrated words of the Living but for the grave-bitten guidance and the admonitions of the Dead; for those same words with their different sense are only spoken to me from the lipless mouths of the ghosts of my Christmases past, future and present. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men, in their degree, sometime or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the fairy-lit darkness of this time of year.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

     

  • “We Bury the Funsters” – Lethal Weapon Revisited

    With Christmas fast approaching, a familiar debate will resume in homes, offices and their Zoom equivalents as to what constitutes a legitimate Christmas movie. Much of the banter will centre on Die Hard as the preeminent example of an action movie which has legitimately crossed into the holiday season category. Some may even cite it as the film which kick-started the whole sub-genre.

    Nobody could deny Die Hard’s success in this department or its undoubted brilliance as an action film but the honour of first Christmas action movie belongs to another.

    A full year before Lieutenant John McClane dragged himself resignedly into that ventilator shaft in Nakatomi Plaza, Lethal Weapon exploded onto our screens in a hail of automatic gunfire, launching the concept of the Christmas action movie, while also providing the template for the modern video game (waves of anonymous baddies dispatched prior to a showdown with the end-level boss).

    This is the film which cemented the use of the 9mm as the weapon du jour for all self-respecting action heroes. In one audacious set-piece, the character Riggs pours bullets from his 9mm Beretta into a disappearing helicopter containing an enemy sniper; a scene which no anachronistically-red-blooded male can fail to mentally re-enact while awaiting his photo call in the white-pillared, lavishly-terraced hotel garden of a friend’s Spanish wedding reception.

    As it approaches its 38th anniversary, the original Lethal Weapon is a film worth re-visiting as a snapshot of 1980s American chutzpah (or, perhaps, hubris) and a keystone in the development of the modern action movie; particularly what would become that genre’s relentless dedication to bullet-fuelled narration and the many bizarre justifications the makers of these films contrive to sustain the destructive pace.

    The ostensive plot of the film revolves around an investigation into the death of a young woman called Amanda Hunsaker, a “troubled teen” (to borrow that oft-used tabloid phrase), who, over the opening credits, snorts cocaine, disrobes and leaps from a penthouse balcony in downtown LA, smashing into a parked car below; all to the jaunty accompaniment of “Jingle Bell Rock”.

    The investigating detective is Sergeant Roger Murtagh, played by the wonderful Danny Glover, a veteran LAPD detective approaching retirement and already planning the many fishing trips he will partake of when he finally hangs up his trusty six shooter.

    It quickly emerges that Miss Hunsaker was poisoned, therefore, even had she not taken her ill-advised naturist leap, she would have died anyway. This seems a curious waste of bacchanalian ammo but 80s action movies were nothing if not bracingly steadfast in their observance of the twin pillars of liberal excess of that era: toplessness and cocaine. The new evidence means the case has suddenly become a murder investigation. At this point, old-school action movie fans may worry that this early plot twist portends cerebral challenges to come but, rest assured, The Mousetrap this ain’t. No mystery will be conceived between the credits which cannot be solved by copious rounds of automatic gunfire or by ploughing a hastily commandeered vehicle into it.

    Murtagh’s professional woes are amplified by the introduction of his new partner, Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson, eyes still swiveling from his tenure as Mad Max and sporting a mullet which, even in 1987, seemed extravagant). Riggs is a recently-widowed burn-out case who the police psychiatrist—in what, these days, would amount to a serious breach of data protection regulation and client confidentiality—has warned may be a suicide risk. The scenes depicting Rigg’s breakdown are actually rather moving but, this being the 1980s, are wholly in service to the plot. Accordingly, an encounter with “a jumper” in a later scene is barely empathetic, serving only to highlight Riggs’ cold-eyed efficiency. This brutal sense of purpose will come to the fore as the story introduces Amanda Hunsacker’s father, who served in Vietnam with Murtagh and took a bayonet in the lungs en route to saving Murtagh’s life (“That was nice of him,” deadpans a suitably unimpressed Riggs).

    “Have you ever met anybody you didn’t kill?”: Danny Glover as Murtaugh and Mel Gibson as Riggs.

    The Vietnam war casts a hefty shadow over proceedings. 1980s viewers would have been more than a little familiar with that particular conflict, having— by that point—been subjected to a veritable barrage of ‘Nam movies and would, therefore, possess the requisite shorthand to follow Hunsacker’s various references as he informs Riggs and Murtagh of his involvement with a group of ex-military operatives called “Shadow Company” (the US military really ought to give more consideration to the naming of their units; one can’t imagine “Rainbow Unicorn Company” getting mixed up in this sort of illicit activity). Shadow Company have organised a shipment (drugs of course since this is distinctly pre-Amazon, when it seemed the only thing anyone shipped anywhere was kilos or “keys” of cocaine) only to find that the police may have already been informed of the planned exchange.

    You see the problem (or, more accurately, a problem) with Shadow company, as highlighted by their main (possibly, only) customer, is that they are using mercs (mercenaries, not German cars). Clearly Shadow Company’s pre-sales brochure could have been clearer on these matters but this appears to be something of a red line for the customer in question, having, it seems, gotten used to dealing with regular street criminals who are, presumably, a more reliable breed and less given to prostituting their skills for the sake of a quick buck.

    The customer’s distress produces a wonderfully wacky scene in which the head of Shadow Company, General Peter McAllister (played with relish by Mitchell Ryan’s eyebrows) demonstrates the trustworthiness of his merc employees by having one of them, Mr. Joshua (a perpetually snarling Gary Busey), suspend his forearm stoically above the customer’s flaming cigarette lighter.

    “Mr. Joshua, your left arm, please…”: Shadow Company take their accreditation very seriously.

    Some clients might baulk at employee torture during a business meeting but this was the 1980s, before HR and concepts of workplace safety had gotten completely out of hand. Suitably reassured, though a little PTSD-ed, the customer departs to presumably close out the paperwork.

    The client’s concern about mercs, however, is rather borne out by Shadow Company’s response to the knowledge that the police may be onto their shipment. It seems Shadow Company are not the sort of agency to treat delivery dates with flippancy. If only more suppliers were so committed; imagine how many LUAS lines, Rainbow Gardens or National Children’s Hospitals we might be sitting on now (though contract negotiations of the Shadow Company kind may be a little too intense for your average junior minister). It also quickly becomes apparent that these mercs take a similarly blunt approach to InfoSec. By way of keeping everything mum, Shadow Company proceed to blow up a prostitute’s house using mercury switches (“Gaflooey! That’s heavy shit!”), embark on a drive-by assassination of Hunsacker from a passing helicopter (Mr. Joshua inexplicably dressed in cricket gear for his shift on sniper duty) and kick off a war on the LAPD by shooting Riggs and abducting Murtagh’s teenage daughter. This provocation merely galvanizes Murtagh and Riggs who embark upon the cerebrally direct plan to “bury the funsters”, to borrow the wonderful substitute phrase used in the censored version of the film when it was aired on terrestrial television in the 1990s (the golden era of television censorship; the art form reaching a pinnacle with the fabulous reinterpretation of Midnight Run, containing the excellent “I’m going to stab you through the heart with this broken pencil”). It seems the solution to the endless paperwork and unreliability of the American justice system is to shoot all the bad guys before they can lawyer up. There is, of course, a long tradition in American action movies (and increasingly, in real life) of police officers conveniently “forgetting” their badges; a legal loophole which allows them to more efficiently eradicate unwanted sections of the criminal underworld. The Lethal Weapon films take this to a spectacular new level. At the end of the film, LA’s finest cordon off a crime scene so that they can stage an embryonic version of the Ultimate Fighting Championship between Riggs and Mr. Joshua. In the second installment of the series, shrewd application of this technique allows Riggs and Murtagh to bypass the tiresome diplomatic immunity privileges of their South African antagonists.

    “Gaflooey!”: Riggs and Murtagh deal with the aftermath of Shadow Company’s somewhat robust approach to InfoSec.

    It’s worth mentioning that Shadow Company represented an “America First” approach to villainy at a time when home-grown talent more than held its own in the “bad guy” market—a situation soon to be undermined by an abundance of cheap foreign imports (see “Gruber v. McClane, 1988)”). It will be interesting to see if the new direction for American politics ushers in a return to home-produced miscreants.

    What really makes Lethal Weapon tick is the chemistry between the leads. Gibson (before he adopted a more method approach, which somewhat seeped into his personal life) is all frothing angst and distemper while Glover is brilliant as everyone’s dad trapped in a cop movie, muttering lugubriously to himself (quite possibly about the immersion being left on), attempting to rap and beat-box at the dinner table (to the mortification of his kids), making crude Dad jokes and showing off so much for his new alpha male partner that he forgets to take the bins out, earning a chiding from his eldest daughter. Yet, there is an obvious warmth between the mismatched pair which carries the film along and is a big reason for the success of the movie franchise. The lack of a similar rapport between the leads is probably a good reason why the more recent television reboot didn’t work. That, and that the world had moved on and what worked in the 1980s doesn’t necessarily work anymore.

    Indeed, much has changed since 1987 and this makes the original Lethal Weapon a fascinating re-watch. It’s not surprising that there are many areas where it strays beyond what would be acceptable today but this was a film and a franchise which always seemed displaced from reality even when reality was the 1980s and that tonal weirdness is even stranger looking back from a modern world in which, it seems, more-and-more so-called leaders would prefer we all travel backwards in time.

    It’s particularly interesting to see Lethal Weapon’s foreshadowing of the faux-disassembling of macho male culture. In it we glimpse the beginnings (and, given what’s happening now, possibly the endings) of men’s reckoning with their emotions, including a detective who confides his belief that he’s an “80’s man” because he cried in bed, adding that he was not with a woman (“Why do you think I was crying?”); the faltering baby steps towards some sort of male introspection (“Do you want to hear that sometimes I think about eating a bullet?”); the commodification of male culture hinted at by Riggs when he suggests their putative reward for dispatching the bad guys will be “shaving head” commercials. Side note: Why men’s apparel never embraced the bare-torso-with-denim-jacket look (sported by Riggs in the final act) is beyond me (though it remains a summer wear staple in some parts of Dublin).

    In subsequent sequels the Lethal Weapon franchise will, in its inimitable way, wrestle with Apartheid (“Free South Africa, you dumb son of a bitch!”), wildlife preservation (“Mom, Dad killed flipper!”) and — laughably — gun control (being careful to ensure that said control doesn’t extend to its gun-toting heroes). The writer Shane Black confessed he fretted daily about what the director, Richard Donner, would see or hear on his drive to the set which he might suddenly decide to include in the plot.

    For anyone questioning why sexism isn’t on that list of inclusions, I would propose that the whole Lethal Weapon franchise is collectively a powerful argument against men being allowed to run anything remotely mission-critical for the human race.

    Yet, for all its apparent moral probity, Lethal Weapon conserves its wagging to a single finger lest anything disturb the main task of depressing the Beretta’s trigger while spent cartridges spew from its belly with the metallic effervescence of a jackpotting slot machine. The screenwriter, Shane Black, is far too savvy for all of this to be taken completely serious and Lethal Weapon is a film which becomes more enjoyable the less seriously it is taken.

    So, as we count in another Christmas, there is no better time to revisit the OG in what has become a burgeoning movie subgenre. Modern audiences have embraced the concept of non-traditional Christmas subjects so what better way to shatter the hegemony of saccharine Santa Claus films than by watching a scowling Gary Busey unload his clip into a television set showing a reforming Ebenezer Scrooge.

    This holiday season, I invite you to a 1980s genre-crossover feast where we shall follow the spicy starter that is Gremlins with the palate-cleansing Lethal Weapon before closing out the seasonal fare with the hearty Die Hard. But, as you marvel at John McClane’s heroics in Nakatomi Plaza, remember that none of this would have been possible if Riggs and Murtagh had not “buried the funsters” in that first high-octane offering.

  • The Greatest Troubadour: Jacques Brel

    In search of the my favourite troubadour all roads lead to Flanders, Belgium, then on to France and French Polynesia. There, in the obscure cemetery of Atuona Hiva Oa – alongside the impressionist Paul Gaugin – rests the mortal remains of Jacques Brel.

    Aged just forty-seven, Brel had been under a settled expectation of death for some time, as a legendary smoker, and been commuting back and forth to the French mainland to finalise his last album.

    Belgiums regularly hail Brel as their greatest fellow citizen in opinion polls. For good reason.

    I greatly admire the French chanteuse tradition from Maurice Chevalier to Edith Piaf, and on to Juliette Greco. There’s Serge Gainsbourg too, and the recently deceased Charles Aznavour. Yet I regard Jacque Brel as the culmination of that tradition.

    It is the sheer volume of great songs that is most remarkable about Brel, and, unlike Gainsbourg, they translate easily, although they are often traduced.

    Thus, Les Moribund (1961) is about the ruminations of a dying man: ‘I want them to dance when it’s time to put me in the hole.’ In the Terry Jack version, however, which sold five million copies this becomes: ‘Goodbye my friend it is time to die when all the birds singing in the sky…. We will have joy, we will have fun, we will have seasons in the sun.’ Westlife even covered it. Yet it is a Brel song translated word-for-word with an identical riff. One can only assume copyright was secured.

    David Bowie was a huge fan of Brel, and most notably covered the iconic song Amsterdam (1964), as did Scott Walker who penned an album in English called Walker Sings Brel (1981). Brel was above all a performer. Thus, with sweat dripping and emotional grotesquerie to the fore, nothing in performance art history is quite like his live version of Amsterdam at the Olympia Amsterdam 1964. Ms Abramovich eats your heart out.

    Brel did live long enough, through terrible illness, to see worldwide acclaim. Many of his songs were respectfully produced through his involvement in one of the great Broadway musicals. Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris (1968). It is a brilliant and haunting introduction to his songs, and an essential purchase for any music lover.

    Brel came from Flanders and chronicles the travails of the Flemish bourgeoisie, often with a full frontal attack, as in Les Flamandes (1958) – equivalent in its power to W. B. Yeats’ great poem September 1913, but also filled with charity, tolerance, and humanism.

    The apogee of his love/hate relationship with his homeland is the track Fils de or Sons of (1967), beautifully sung in the Broadway musical by Elly Stone. It is a kind of paean to all God’s children. I consider it one of the greatest songs about human aspiration and failure, jaw-dropping in its simplicity and clarity.

    Brel migrated to Paris at the age of twenty-four to work in a cardboard box factory, but was quickly lionised for his musical gifts. There was no fall from grace, as he became the totemic figure in French performance culture, and a national icon both in Belgium and France.

    Amsterdam is his most famous, although not in my view, his best song. It’s certainly one of the most disturbing renditions of human debauchery and self-destruction ever written, set in that city of contradictions, lovely and decadent in equal measure. Home to Rembrandt’s Night Watch and The Van Gogh Museum, as well as to the drugs trade and prostitution.

    Preferably it should be listened to in tandem with a reading Albert Camus‘ novel The Fall (1956), in which the apostate lawyer confesses his sins to all and sundry in a seedy Amsterdam bar. The lyrics are incandescent. Particularly in French and the song builds to a crescendo.

    Finally they drink to the ladies
    Who give them their nice bodies
    Who give them their virtue
    For a golden piece
    And when they have well drunk
    And pin their nose to the sky
    Blowing their nose in the stars
    And they piss like I cry
    On the unfaithful women
    In Amsterdam’s port
    In Amsterdam’s port

    Many of his songs build in a similar fashion fashion. Tempo is crucial, particularly in my personal favourite La valse à mille temps (1959). Here, Brel is ruminating on a park bench about life and love’s failings beside a giant Ferris wheel. Imagine The London Eye or The Riesenrad in Vienna. As the song unfolds it mimics the rotation of the Ferris wheel and gathers pace. Incredible, or incroyable.  I defy anyone to listen to it and not consider it as beautifully a conceived a song as has ever been written! It is as great as one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets or Love Minus Zero (1964) by Bob Dylan or Dance Me to The End of Love (1984) by Leonard Cohen. Greater in in fact.

    Brel like all troubadours, was a great romantic chronicler and penned an enormous amount of great love songs. Ne Me Quite Pas (1959) is one great hush. Although some of its power is lost in translation, that never stopped Frank Sinatra, Dusty Springfield, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond to name but a few recording it in English as If You Go Away.

    The English title is in fact deceptive, and conditional on some future whim from the object of desire, whereas ‘do not leave me’ is very much an expression of fear of imminent desertion.

    The other famous plaintive ballad is Quand on n’a que l’Amour (1957) which became an easy listening classic covered in English by Engelbert Humperdinck (If We Only Have Love).

    Yet, in my view his greatest song of unrequited love is Madeleine (1962). The Godotesque conceit is incredible, as the protagonist awaits Madeleine, who never arrives, outside a cinema. I believe it influenced Kaurismaki 2023 film Fallen Leaves, and is beautifully sung by Ellie Stone and Mort Shuman in the Broadway production.

    Brel’s relationship with Flanders was complicated throughout his career. On the one hand he sang lovingly of his flat country homeland, particularly in the extraordinary love ballad Marieke (1961) about a woman and indeed Flanders, but he also poured scorn on what he perceived to be the parochial nature of the Flemish, much like Flaubert’s dictionary of received ideas (1911) pouring scorn on the French bourgeoisie.

    So, consider this interview in which Brel said: ‘We have been conquered by everyone, we speak neither pure French nor Dutch, we are nothing’

    Les Flamandes, (1958) is a visceral masterpiece, a ribald and derisive music hall number about dancing Flemish women. Brel was unrepentant about its offensiveness , and on his final 1977 album – when at death’s door – he upped the ante with an even ruder song, Les F…, which accuses the Flemish of being ‘Nazis during the war, and Catholics in between.’

    It should be said that some of Scott Walker’s versions, Jackie (Jacky) (1959) and My Death (La Mort) (1965) are richer texturally and in many ways more enjoyable than the Brel versions, but when Walker has to reach for dark humour his Next/Au Savant (1963) does not reach near the mordant and sardonic Brel heights of the version.  A song about sexual abuse is also covered by Gavin Friday.

    Brel was also an expert in pathos and compassion. Consider the wonderful La Chanson Des Vieux Amants. ‘Of course we’ve had thunderstorms,’ goes the first line. ‘Of course, you took a few lovers,’ And candidly in the second verse, ‘time had to be spent well.’  One is reminded of the great French chanteuse Maurice Chevalier and his old muse in Gigi (1958).

    We dined at nine.
    Not it was eight.
    You were on time.
    No, you were late.
    Oh yes, I remember it well.

    Brel was an incurable romantic and indeed a quixotic figure who staged a French version of the musical Man of La Mancha by Cervantes, translated all the lyrics, directed the production, and played Don Quixote himself. Brel’s version of The Impossible Dream takes the mundane words and stokes up the intensity – not unlike Amsterdam – to the point of madness.

    His hopes, as he shuffled off this mortal coil, that his final album would slip out with little fanfare were dashed when it shifted 600,000 copies in its first few days. The generally begrudging French literati welcomed him back in a similar fashion to how they had once welcomed Voltaire before the French Revolution. In both cases death followed shortly thereafter.

    Commuting between France and French Polynesia, given the perilous state of his health, was hardly ideal. His final work Brel (1977) unsurprisingly deals with themes of death; he had sung enough about it even before he developed terminal lung cancer,

    In JoJo, a reflective and tear-stained tribute to an old friend, features the line: six feet under but you are not dead.

    ‘Of course there are wars in Ireland,’ he sings in the opening line, following up with everything else that is wrong with the world, ‘but to see a friend cry…’ he offers at the end of each verse, as if unable to finish the sentence himself through emotion.

    Well know there are wars going on everywhere, but to see a friend cry, a lover depart, someone who fails to meet you outside the cinema, that is the human condition. The focus is on the particular, not the general. He is ever the humanist.

    The songs are so incredible lyrically and musically only Dylan with almost four decades more longevity or arguably Paul McCartney or Cole Porter has written as many great songs in the history of popular music. In my view, he is the greatest troubadour of the 20th century, and the Belgians know it.

    Feature Image: Jacques Brel in 1962 by Jack de Nijs for Anefo

  • America The Bisected

    Like most of us, I spent the past week in a state of deep reflection over our collective national fate. Like some of us, I mourned. The American political sphere seems to have reached an anti-zenith, one culminating in some dystopian rhetorical Babel tower built and sustained by hatred. What have I seen in my life and times? The death of nuance and curiosity. The death of (real) tolerance.

    I spent the past week reading status after status beginning with the words ‘Go fuck yourself if you_____’ regarding the election results—a decisive Trump majority. Trump himself engendered—I imagine because he had so much to gain, and now enjoys the fruit of his labor—this exact brand of vitriol, something like near-total dismissal from the left of the humanity of the right and vice versa. He now rules supreme over our fragmentation, the sole beneficiary. I cannot emphasize the extent to which I am certain the ‘go fuck yourself if’ approach to our fellow Americans—as sympathetic as it is, frankly—will keep men like Donald J Trump in power forever. I cannot emphasize the extent to which the left’s patent refusal to acknowledge a single human quality in the right* decisively lost what appears to be the entirety of the working class,* once a democratic bastion, and catapulted Trump to victory.

    I’ve been thinking about stereotypes, which served as the oil-slicks upon which we’ve slid rapidly down to where we are. The left’s general profile of the typical Trump voter is this: uneducated, uncultured, evangelical/fundamentalist, nationalist, and white. I hope they’re now asking themselves why Trump won 45% of the Latino vote, the highest for a Republican presidential candidate in history. Stereotypes run a troubled livewire between truth and untruth. Thanks to my up-bringing in a tiny conservative Midwestern town, I know many Trump voters personally, although few from my own inner circle voted for him (with some exceptions) – they are not, by and large, toothless xenophobes.

    They are—if you’ll allow me to generalize—rural, religious, and educated, but not to a standard that approaches the left’s quote unquote elite. Many of them remain in the small towns of their origin, and are proud to be there sustaining those communities. They pay attention to their money, hopeful for Trump’s promised economy, which is also the issue that solidified his Latino percentage. I’m speaking of people I actually know, people I grew up with, people worth understanding and—here’s something subversive—people worth learning from. Is their perspective on 21st century life in America smaller than or inferior to that of their left-situated counterparts? I’d say sometimes it is, and attribute this reality directly to the narrowness of perspective that’s nearly inevitable, should one never venture meaningfully away from one’s place of origin—meaning one receives any and all education (including four years of college) in that very place alongside—this is key—the same kinds of people and ideas they’ve always experienced, and the same norms they’ve always inhabited. Rural Americans typically can’t experience the demographic diversity (and this kind implies many other kinds) urban dwellers take as a matter of course. There are fewer ways of seeing and being, and more assumptions, therefore, about the ‘right’ ways to see and be.

    The curled-lip sneer of the left-elite for the entire right—its steadfast refusal to attribute any moral integrity whatsoever to no less than half of America—will take us from Trump era to Trump era. It’s only a prediction, but let’s see. The Trump supporters I actually know (and I assume many of those I don’t) are not only NOT going to go fuck themselves, but continue to show up to the polls and vote for whatever powerful person that allows them to feel—however deceptively, however crudely—valued, seen and understood.

    The grief and pain of marginalized communities in view of a new Trump era makes more sense to me than I can rightly convey—the queer and trans communities, POC communities, immigrants. So let me be clear about those to whom I make this appeal. If, like me, you are white, privileged, educated, and generally able to tolerate and engage true ideological diversity and diversity of lived experience/identity, part of the ‘work’ to be done now may be disabling your elitist gag-reflex long enough to sympathize—not with racism, sexism or fascism—but the human beings to whom you hastily and even lazily ascribe these isms from your ivory tower. The more deeply we cling to our ‘fuck yous,’ the more robust Trump’s victory becomes—he has successfully deafened his supporters—your fellow Americans—to any condemnations you now choose to apply. ‘Fuck yourself’-style public engagement has led to two separate waves of Donald Trump. Can we agree it’s categorically failed, and will continue to fail?

    Trump (and men like him) are only in trouble when we award the status of full humanity to the opposing party. I’ll be more radical—it’s actually when we reawaken to that immutable status. I admit my hope is small, but I’ll do what I can. If you voted for Donald Trump, you won’t hear ‘fuck yourself’ from me, or see me stare down my nose. But if you want to participate in meaningful dialogue about why many people—specifically many oppressed people—so fear and despise him, please, let’s talk about that. Let’s open each other up and see what new things we can find. The old things have ceased to serve us well. If you are celebrating the incumbent POTUS, I guess I leave you to your victory. But I question whether any of us—any of us—should celebrate the completely bifurcated America we’re now forced to accept for four years…don’t you?

    Feature Image: ATC Comm Photo

  • Poem: The Oath

    The Oath

    The little hand he holds
    Is all they could find to give him:
    Wrapped in blue plastic,
    A hand once brown, now bloodied and black,

    The hand of one too young for school,
    The hand of his daughter,
    Riven in the charred rubble
    That had been her room,

    The hand he held so often
    To guide the child in safety
    Through Gaza’s streets in blistering heat
    For the cooling waters of the Med,

    A hand he cannot hold much longer,
    Nor can he stay with his wife and weep.
    His oath won’t release him
    To surrender to his grief.

    He must return to his hospital.
    He must attend to children who live,
    No matter where the next bomb falls,
    No matter if it falls on him.

    Feature Image: Victim of Israeli airstrike in Jabalia (wikicommons)

  • Musician of the Month: Caterina Schembri

    On November 14th I am releasing my debut album Sea Salt & Turpentine on the Ergodos label with a launch concert at the National Concert Hall. The album is a collection of chamber and vocal works I composed over the past two and a half years for Ficino Ensemble and Michelle O’Rourke in rotating subsets. It also features original lyrics and text written by me.

    The music is an intimate portrait of my inner landscapes and explores some of my main creative interests: a focus on colour and nuance, rich soundscapes, naturalistic imagery, obnubilated symbols, connections with the written word, and literary allusions translated into music. With this music, I want to create a sense of suspension, spaciousness, and introspection.

    And with water printed unto my bones
    I break asunder from the flock…

    Out of this light,
    Into this dusk.

    The title piece, Sea salt and turpentine, plays last and it carries the soul of the album. Written for string quartet and two voices, Sea salt and turpentine is about finding a sense of refuge in nature and creativity. It is mapped as a ritual of individual affirmation and sensorial connectivity with the landscape. I find solace and moments of deep reflection and stimulation in proximity to the ocean; this piece condenses in one moment a constellation of rebirths. Its germinal idea alludes to Virginia Woolf’s poetic novel The Waves, a work that has been very influential to my creative work and perception of the world.

    I decided to open the album with a solo viola piece for Nathan Sherman, creative director of the ensemble and key collaborator in this project. Soft charcoal over moonstone is the opening gate to the sound universe of the album. It explores the idea of chiaroscuro through the viola, contrasting light versus shade and all possibilities in-between. The title establishes a visual reference, the charcoal as a dark drawing tool over a shiny luminous material, the moonstone. These two opposing forces emerge in many shades providing the palette and arc of the piece.

    Nathan Sherman recording Soft charcoal over moonstone.

    When light bleeds out of the day.
    To see your gestures blur,
    Deform,
    Wolfsbane blue, underwater
    Screams cross a long distance
    Embellishing themselves.

    These eyes, these hips, these hands
    Clothes spread wide and mermaid-like
    Let the light flicker mercurial…
    Let the light flicker and fade.

    There is a willow for voice, viola clarinet, and harp is the first piece I composed in this collection, written in 2022 as part of the Ficino Ensemble Composers Workshop it was also my first link to Ficino Ensemble. Depicting Ophelia’s death, the text of There is a willow opens with a quote from Hamlet and then evolves into original text. I wanted to explore her experience first-hand, things her eyes might have seen, but also thoughts that could have crossed her mind. I am fascinated by the timelessness of this character and her representation of the feeling of surrendered disembodiment that a first heartbreak can generate. The text is scattered with images of flowers that carry a symbolic meaning, a secret message.

    This idea of floriography (the meanings of flowers) was the main inspiration for the visual aspect of the album, flowers and trees that carry a symbolic meaning are found in the lyrics of three of the pieces. To create the cover, I made cyanotypes using flowers I collected around Dublin, the dry flowers were then organised on top of the finished cyanotype and beautifully captured in photo by my dear friend Néstor Romero Clemente.

    Sea salt & Turpentine – album cover.

    Cold storm pines tangle and expand
    Tracing maps of empty cities,
    Empty palms.

    My fingers follow scarlet roads
    Of chins, of ears,
    Of mouths that turn to stone

    If I wake up slowly,
    I’m off the shore.

    The third track of the album, I wake up in the night when I dream in black and white explores the elusive nature of dreams and the arrested rhythms of broken expectations. The musical gestures trace blooming lines that crest and die out traversing the liminal space between reality and dream, disclosing fragments of the darker corners of the mind often ignored during daytime. The visual idea of an unknown silhouette coming in and out of focus without fully revealing itself, beautiful and slightly unsettling.

    This piece was written for String Quartet and speaker, it features a segment of spoken word. I loved working on this element as it was the first time I wrote a piece of standalone text in this context. The text was brewing in my head for a while and came together on a winter afternoon in Paris.

    This piece is one of three in the album that include vocal elements, I was very lucky to work with vocalist Michelle O’Rourke on all three of them. Her care for nuance, her versatility, and her understanding of intention and meaning elevate the text and the music.

    Paris, winter, 2023.

    The full instrumental ensemble comes together for It was only half as far.

    In the twenty-first poem of Pictures of the Gone World (1955), Lawrence Ferlinghetti opens up with the line: ‘Heaven // was only half as far that night // at the poetry recital…’ and proceeds to describe a scene that to distant eyes could seem simple or mundane, but that encapsulates an instant of bliss to him. I always loved this image of the wide distance to the ether shrinking, a vivid and clear representation of those moments of fleeting elation that often come unexpectedly, in ordinary scenarios, leaving deep imprints behind. It was only half as far echoes the times in which this sentiment shone a light on me.

    This album is the result of a collective effort, it has been a great joy to work with a team of exceptional musicians; Ficino Ensemble and Michelle O’Rourke gave the richest and most soulful performances I could have wished for. The care and artistry in the capture and production of the record are all in the hands of co-producer Garrett Sholdice and sound engineer Edu Prado, with the final touch from mastering engineer Christoph Stickel.

    Sea salt & Turpentine found its perfect home in Ergodos. The label, founded by composers Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Garrett Sholdice is a beautiful ecosystem of careful curation for music projects that I have long admired and that has been a very active part of my creative life. I am proud to see my music there and always grateful to the two powerhouses in this operation Garrett and Benedict.

    Link to Album Launch at the National Concert Hall on Thursday November 14th.

    Feature Image: Néstor Romero Clemente

  • The Missing Link in Draghi’s E.U. Plan

    This article is the first in a forthcoming three-part series by Cillian Doyle on the role of the state in a mixed economy.

    Last month there were two seemingly unrelated events which in an Irish context can be connected. On September 9th Mario Draghi’s published his 400-page report on improving E.U. competitiveness. The report provides a series of recommendations for how the E.U., in the face of changing geopolitical realities, can acquire new industrial policy tools to deal with its ‘existential challenge’.

    A day later the Irish government was given the awkward news it had lost the Apple tax case. Despite its legal advisor Paul Gallagher describing the Commission’s case as ‘fundamentally flawed, confused and inconsistent’, that’s not how the ECJ saw it. Its punishment – €14 billion in additional tax revenue. As a result, it now has a financial war chest available for investment, but a dearth of policy ideas.

    This series deals with each in turn.

    Europe at the Crossroads

    Draghi’s report was intended to provide some harsh truths to E.U. leaders, by making them confront the reasons for Europe’s decline. Placing this within the wider geopolitical context, his report stresses that the E.U. continues to fall further behind the U.S. and China, whose successful innovation is being driven by ‘subsidies, industrial policies, state ownership and other practices’.

    Writing in the Financial Times Adam Tooze argued that the report’s real target was ‘not China but the U.S.’. Perhaps Draghi and other E.U. policymakers felt catching China was a step too far but that matching the U.S. was a more realistic prospect. When we look at the share of global growth over the last ten years (2013-23) accruing to China, versus that of the U.S. and the E.U., we can see why (Figure 1).

    Figure 1

    % Share of 10 year global growth: China vs U.S. vs E.U. (2013-23)

    Source: World Economics Database

    Speaking shortly after the publication, Draghi seemed to underscore Tooze’s point, stressing that the E.U. was not only looking to defend itself from China, as much of the media commentary suggested, but also from the U.S..

    This recalled the discussion around the need for ‘strategic autonomy’ that was flirted with during the Trump administration, when it was argued Europe was best placed serving as a third pillar and bridge between the U.S. and China. Something hastily forgotten with the election of the Biden administration and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    Since then, the von der Leyen Commission has stood firmly behind the U.S., so much so that even Foreign Policy magazine stated she ‘Might be too pro-American for Europe’. The world is increasingly bifurcating into two blocs; ‘Team Unipolar’ led by the U.S. along with the E.U. and other G7 members, and ‘Team Multipolar’ led by the BRICS group, the relatively new intergovernmental organisation, which is growing in confidence and size (see figure 3).

    Figure 2

    % Share of 10-year global growth: the West vs BRICS (2013-23)

    Source: World Economics Database

    This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the E.U. institutions. The E.U. engages with BRICS, although it stresses on an ‘individual basis’. Last year the E.U. Parliament’s Committee on International Trade as part of their engagement with the Commission ‘underlined the need to keep an eye on the group’s expansion, especially considering the effect of a potential BRICS+ currency and the consequences for E.U. trade policy.’

    Figure 3

    BRICS expansion 2023-2024

    BRICS encourages members to transact in domestic currencies for bilateral trade, as opposed to transacting in dollars and to a lesser extent the euro. They’re also trying to develop an alternative payment system to Belgian-based Swift. The dollar and Swift are key to the U.S. sanctions regime, and hence seen as posing risks.

    The Washington Post pointed out that the U.S.’ is currently subjecting around one third of countries in the world to some form of economic or financial sanction. Many of these are developing countries now looking towards BRICS as an alternative to the U.S. Rules Based Order, and Western dominated multilateral institutions (IMF/World Bank).

    Earlier this month U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stated that through its ‘human rights’ based foreign policy, the U.S. succeeded in rallying ‘the international community’ behind its Russian sanctions policy. However, as the Quincy Institute pointed out, ‘the large majority of countries around the world that have refused to join in sanctions and have called for an early peace — a call that has been repeatedly snubbed by Washington’.

    It was primarily the other members of Team Unipolar which rowed in behind the leader, with the von der Leyen Commission being particularly enthusiastic. As research by Thomas Fazi has shown, she used this exercise to assume more competencies for the Commission at the expense of E.U. Member States.

    Some portray this growing global divergence as one between democracies and autocracies. As Joseph Borrell recently acknowledged, however, this framing is used for political reasons. As he said himself, the West is allied with plenty of autocracies on the basis that they’re aligned with Western foreign policy.

    Super Mario World

    Where the E.U.’s future lies in all of this remains to be seen. But in the meantime, it must confront its challenges which are real, severe, and somewhat self-inflicted. Draghi’s report sets out in stark terms its relative decline in output and productivity growth. The latter singled out as a primary cause of its sagging growth. His report couldn’t have been published at a more appropriate time with the likes of Germany, Austria and Sweden falling into recession.

    Figure 4: GDP growth rates Q2 2024

    % Change over previous quarter (seasonally adjusted)[1]

    His report attempts to shift the E.U. away from what’s often seemed like a single-minded focus on competition policy, toward a new focus on industrial policy (hereafter IP). Whether such sweeping changes are possible in the absence of significant E.U. treaty change has been debated by legal scholars (see here for one critique).

    I’m more concerned with its proposed economic reforms, and in particular one which was curiously absent. It’s true these present something of a departure from established E.U. policy thinking and the conventional (neoclassical) economic philosophy which has generally underlain it.

    It’s also worth noting that up until quite recently, IP was described as ‘the economic practice that dares not speak its name’. Or as one leading member of the profession once said, ‘the best industrial policy is none at all.’

    Yet with the success of China’s IP and the U.S.’ recent adoption through the CHIPS Act and the hilariously misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, the E.U. had to act in kind. For students of history, those with an interest in development economics, or a general disdain for market fundamentalism, this move may have seemed long overdue.

    Every major power that developed did so through successful IP. The rapid recovery of Western Europe after WW2 was built on the back of it. The East Asian Tiger economies managed rapid industrialisation and technological advancement through a developmentalist approach, which often shirked the dictates of the Washington Consensus.

    But if you were thinking Draghi’s proposed ‘new Industrial Deal’ portends the return of state capitalism in a ‘post neoliberal’ world – not so fast. It was as interesting for what it didn’t say, as much as for what it did. The five most common tools of IP are (1) state-owned enterprises (SOEs), (2) trade policy, (3) public R&D, (4) long-term financing and (5) targeted supports for business.

    Table 1: Key recommendations of Draghi Report

    Industrial Policy

    Instrument

    		 Draghi Report? Recommendation(s) Comment
    State-owned

    enterprises

    		 No N/A N/A
    Trade policy Yes

     

    		 A new “Foreign Economic policy”.

    Coordinate purchases based on the European Union’s large internal market.

    Greater focus on need for E.U. Strategic Autonomy

    		 Use of preferential trade agreements to help facilitate direct investments in resource rich countries. More E.U. common procurement.
    Public R&D Yes

     

    		 Creating a European Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), suggests increasing R&D spending, investing in research infrastructure, and fostering a more innovation-friendly regulatory ecosystem Says there’s a need to tackle fragmented public R&D spending. Increase public R&D spending. Streamline multi-country trial management to make the E.U. a more attractive location for clinical R&D
    Long-term

    Financing, investment

    		  

    Yes

     

    		 Common E.U. borrowing framework,

    Need for additional investment (€800m p/a)

    E.U. Capital Markets Union,

    Banking Union

    		 Common borrowing could be a powerful tool but likely to draw resistance from certain E.U. states (i.e Germany). Desire to shift E.U. away from bank-based finance to market based finance (shadow banking).
    Targeted business

    support

    		  

    Yes

    		 Replacing state aid with European aid, simpler and more flexible regulation for SMEs, reduced administrative burdens GDPR legislation to be re-examined in the context of companies working on AI. Increasing computational capacity dedicated to the training and fine-tuning of AI models for innovative E.U. SMEs

     

    As we can see above, there’s a glaring omission from ‘Super Mario’s’ toolkit. Any serious discussion of the role of SOEs was absent. But we’ll return to this in part 2 and 3. First let’s deal with some of the report’s big takeaways.

    The headline figure which stands out was the call for increased investment of around €800 million per annum to ensure the E.U. meets its key competitiveness, climate and defence targets. This equates to the E.U. investing around 5% of its income on an annual basis. There’s something of an historical irony here.

    You might recall a certain former Greek Finance Minister proposing this very measure. Yanis Varoufakis once proposed allowing the European Investment Bank (EIB) to issue bonds which would have been purchased by the ECB to fund a Green New Deal. Despite presenting his proposal to E.U. Finance Ministers and Central Bankers, he was given short shrift.

    Whether such a measure is now possible seems unlikely. As Varoukafis points out, the disillusionment with the much smaller sized issuance of bonds by the Commission – as part of its NextGenerationEU – means there’s unlikely to be much appetite from investors or member-states at the more ambitious scale outlined by Draghi.

    Investors doubt the Commission’s ability to sufficiently expand its fiscal powers, and member states – particularly groups like the German ordoliberals – are cautious that such borrowing would be a Trojan Horse for the Commission to massively expand its tax competencies.

    In terms of trade policy, it argues for a new ‘foreign economic policy’ explicitly described as ‘statecraft’. This would marry decarbonisation with support of direct investments in resource rich countries. Preferential trade agreements could serve as bargaining chips to encourage such resource rich countries to open up to E.U. investment.

    It doesn’t hide the sense of urgency behind this, stating bluntly the E.U. has ‘lost its most important supplier of energy, Russia.’ It’s less the case that the E.U. has completely lost access, and more that due to sanctions it’s now purchasing Russian energy at a higher price via secondary countries (Turkey, Azerbaijan, etc), albeit at reduced levels.

    This coupled with rising tariffs on China (e.g. from 10% to 45% on EVs over the next five years) means the German economy – the E.U.’s workhorse – has, on the one hand, been starved of cheap energy inputs. On the other, its main trading partner (China) is demonstrating less demand for its high-quality outputs (cars, chemical products, etc).

    Germany is thus undergoing deindustrialisation. The U.S., thanks to its new IP turn and the manufacturing subsidies it’s now providing, has been one of the main beneficiaries. Deloitte found that two thirds of German companies had moved some of their operations overseas. That’s good news for the U.S., but bad news for Germany.

    Member states are also incurring high costs from the construction of LNG infrastructure (terminals, storage, and regasification units). Over 50% of LNG imports are from the U.S.. Again, good news for the U.S., but bad news for member states bearing the higher costs associated with LNG, placing it at a competitive disadvantage.

    One thing that seems to have been lost on the E.U. Commission is that they’ve replaced the energy risk associated with one overly dominant supplier (Russia), with that of another (the U.S.), whilst locking in higher prices for supply. If some future U.S. administration were to tax LNG exports to the E.U., then it could find itself at an even further competitive disadvantage.

    The report sets out various recommendations to boost public R&D and thereby help E.U. companies to innovate, particularly those in the tech sector. As we can see from table 2 of the top 10 public research institutions according to Nature Index Research Leaders 2024, seven of these were Chinese institutions, with just two from the E.U. and one from the U.S..

    In terms of the top 10 technology companies and banking institutions the situation for the E.U. is worse again. It’s not represented in the top 10 in either category. Draghi thus wants to allow for greater ease of mergers between E.U. tech companies which it’s hoped would see them rival their U.S./Chinese counterparts.

    Table 2:

    Top 10 Research Institutions, Tech companies and Banks

    R&D (2024)[2] Technology (2023)[3] Banking (2024)[4]
    Rank Institution/Country Company Financial institution
    1 Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) Apple

    (U.S.)

    		 JP Morgan Chase

    (U.S.)
    2 Harvard University

    (U.S.)

    		 Alphabet

    (U.S.)

    		 Bank of America

    (U.S.)
    3 Max Planck Society

    (E.U.)

    		 Samsung

    (South Korea)

    		 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China

    (China)
    4 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

    (China)

    		 Foxconn

    (Taiwan)

    		 Agricultural Bank of China

    (China)
    5 University of Science and Technology China

    (China)

    		 Microsoft

    (U.S.)

    		 Wells Fargo

    (U.S.)
    6 Peking University

    (China)

    		 Meta

    (U.S.)

    		 China Construction Bank Corp

    (China)
    7 French National Centre for Scientific Research

    (E.U.)

    		 Dell Technologies

    (U.S.)

    		 Bank of China

    (China)
    8 Nanjing University

    (China)

    		 Huawei

    (China)

    		 Royal Bank of Canada

    (Canada)
    9 Zhejiang University

    (China)

    		 Sony

    (Japan)

    		 Commonwealth Bank of Australia

    (Aus)
    10 Tsinghua University

    (China)

    		 Tencent

    (China)

    		 HSBC Holdings

    (U.K.)

     

    Financialisaton: Problem or Solution?

    Draghi sees a ‘lack of finance’ as being at the heart of the problem, unsurprising given his former roles in investment banking (Goldman Sachs) and central banking (Italy/ECB). He thus stresses the need to complete the E.U. Capital Markets Union (CMU) as a remedy for this.

    The CMU is intended to bring about an E.U.-wide union for market-based forms of financing (think asset managers, hedge funds, private equity, pension funds, etc), to provide an alternative to what has been traditionally, predominantly bank-based finance in Europe. This could allow for more equity-based financing as E.U. companies choose this over initial public offering (IPO) their stock.

    But it will also mean a single European market for the alphabet soup of obscure acronyms which denote the various complex, opaque, and risky financial instruments that got us into trouble during the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008. Essentially, more shadow banking. Is this really what the E.U. needs? It’s certainly taken as axiomatic that it is.

    The assumption is that the CMU would help to drive capital to SMEs and the real economy, which they see as overly dependent on bank finance. However, in the run up to 2008 U.S. capital markets had become highly developed, and it’s not clear at all that this led to increased lending to their SMEs or the real economy.

    What’s clear is that it led to huge levels of debt, the risk of which was masked in the system through opaque and poorly understood financial engineering techniques. And when it went sour it led to massive contagion effects, which brought down many financial institutions leading to costly public bailouts.

    One of the main problems the E.U. faces, although not alluded in the report, is that it’s allowed itself to be turned into (to a varied extent among member states) a high-cost, financialised economy with declining public provision, largely privatised primary health care services, high-cost housing, and childcare, and poor and deteriorating public infrastructure.

    Financialisaton has rightly been criticised on the basis that it can lead to increased financial fragility and the risk of financial crises. But it’s also identified as shifting the ‘orientation of the non-financial sector towards financial activities ultimately leading to lower physical investment, hence to stagnant or fragile growth, as well as long term stagnation in productivity’ (Tori and Onaran 2017).

    Figure 5: Growth of Financialisaton in Europe

    Total Financial Assets (TFA) as a % of GDP (2000-23)

    Source: ECB Data Portal

    The Fingerprints of Institutional Investors

    Another issue with financialisaton is that it provides financial elites with more power.

    It’s interesting to note who Draghi consulted as part of the research that fed into his report. The economist Isabella Weber pointed out the list of stakeholders consulted lists four pages of “trade and business associations”, “professional consultancies” and “companies and groups”, but just a single trade union.

    There was a total of 82 companies/corporate groups which fed into it. These ranged from large PLCs, to established private companies, to even newer start-ups. But they also included some current or former commercial SOEs (25), which makes the lack of consideration of public enterprise even more noteworthy.

    These companies/groups covered a broad range of industry sectors including: finance, extractive, transport, pharma, tech and so on. Table 3 examines 72 of these, for which some or all data could be compiled, and looks at that their level of institutional ownership, notable institutional owners, and state-owned shareholdings.

    The reason for doing this is simple. Over the last few decades, the ownership landscape of companies has changed radically. Whereas in the past large companies were owned by individuals, pension funds, insurers and indeed states, today they’re overwhelmingly owned by asset managers. These are financial intermediaries investing on behalf of wealthy individuals, pensions funds or other financial institutions.

    Today they’ve extraordinary levels of assets under management (AUM). By one estimate they own €1.8 trillion worth of real estate in Europe. Brett Christophers’ book Our Lives in their Portfolios highlights how asset managers have also become major owners of public infrastructure throughout Europe. He describes our current juncture as being one of ‘asset manager society’.

    Many Europeans have some sense of this, but may be unaware of the extent to which they’ve come to own such large shareholdings in companies across most sectors. This explains their description as ‘universal owners’: their portfolios are so large and diversified that they represent a chunk of the entire economy.

    Of the companies that fed into the report a significant level of institutional ownership is observed, with the highest being NXP Semiconductors (95.37%). Excluding those which had no institutional ownership (5 cases), the average level of institutional ownership was 40%. As we can see Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street feature heavily.

    Table 3- Ownership structure: Institutional owners vs state owners
    Corporate body group % shares held institutional investors Notable institutional

    Shareholders (Big Three italicised)

    		Former SOE? % shares held state investors[5] Notable state

    shareholders
    Airbus 32.80% Amundi, State Street Yes? 25.7% France, Germany, Spain
    Air France KLM 6.08% Vanguard Yes 41.7% France, Netherlands, China
    Alstom 71.20% Vanguard Yes 25.04% Canada, France
    Amazon 50.81% Vanguard, Blackrock, Fidelity, State Street No 0% N/A
    Amundi 6.08% Vanguard, Blackrock, Fidelity No 0.47% Norway
    Ariston Group 34.76% Schroder Investment Management, Vanguard, Blackrock No 9.94% Norway
    ASML 21.10% Capital Research and Management Company, Blackrock, Amundi No 0% N/A
    BASF 43% Amundi, State Street 0% N/A
    Bayer 44% Blackrock, Vanguard, Oakmark No 6.67% Norway, Singapore
    BMW Group 17.61% AQTON SE, Vanguard, Amundi No 1% Norway, Australia
    BNP Paribas 82.60% Blackrock, Amundi, Vanguard, Oakmark, iShares (Blackrock) Yes 7% Belgium, Luxembourg
    Bolt 26.00% Fidelity, Sequoia Capital No 0% N/A
    Clarios 30% est. Brookfield Asset Management No 25% est. Canada
    Deutsche Telekom 69.40% Vanguard, Goldman Sachs Yes 27.80% Germany
    DHL Group 0.04% Altrius Capital Management, Amundi, State Street Yes 17% Germany
    Dompé Farmaceutici 0% N/A No 0% N/A
    EDF 0% N/A Current 100% France
    Enel 58.60% Vanguard, Goldman Sachs Yes 23.6% Italy
    ENGIE 21.18% Blackrock, Vanguard, Capital Research and Management Yes 23.64% France
    ENI 51.35% Morgan Stanley, Blackrock, Natixis, Goldman Sachs Yes 30.50% Italy
    Equinor ASA 6.60% Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street, DNB Asset Management Current 71% Norway
    Ericsson 9.30% Hotchkis & Wiley Capital, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard No 0% N/A
    Euroclear 21.47% Fidelity, Citibank No 32.50% Belgium, France, NZ, China
    Euronext 61.02% CDP Equity SpA (Private Equity), Amundi, Capital A Management BV, Vanguard No 8.03% France
    ExxonMobil 57.82% Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street No 0% N/A
    E.on 60% Blackrock Yes 4.90% Canada
    Ferrovie 0% N/A Current 100% Italy
    FINCANTIERI 4.20% Vanguard, Blackrock Current 71.44% Italy
    Flix 35.00% EQT Future. Kühne Holding, Vanguard, Fidelity No 0% N/A
    Glencore 41% Blackrock, Vanguard, EUROPACIFIC GROWTH FUND No 8.60% Qatar
    Google 61.98% Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street, Morgan Stanley No 1.83% Norway
    Iberdrola 77.80% Blackrock, Vanguard, Fidelity No 12.15% Qatar, Norway
    Infineon Technologies 24.70% iShares (Blackrock), Blackrock, Amundi No 0% N/A
    Investor AB 25.42% Vanguard, Blackrock, Fidelity No 2.65% Norway
    Leonardo 50.30% Vanguard, Dimensional Fund Advisors LP, Capital World Growth and Income Fund Yes 30.20% Italy
    Lufthansa Group 54% Vanguard, iShares (Blackrock), Goldman Sachs Yes 0% N/A
    LyondellBasell Industries 73.18% Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, Dodge & Cox No 0% N/A
    L’Oréal 37.33% Amundi, State Street No 0% N/A
    Maersk 25.19% Vanguard, iShares (Blackrock) No
    McPhy Energy 17.14% Global X Hydrogen ETF No 19.14% France
    Mercedes Benz 45.95% Amundi, State Street No 15.50% China, Kuwait
    Meta 79.06% Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street, Fidelity No 0% N/A
    Meyer Burger Technology 19.52% Vanguard, Scupltor, Credit Suisse No 2.99% Norway
    Neste 31.69% Vanguard, iShares (Blackrock), Fidelity Yes 44.77% Finland
    Nokia 6.17% DANSKE INVEST FINNISH EQUITY FUND, Blackrock, Goldman Sachs No 5.7% Finland
    NovoNordisk 71.80% Jennison Associates, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Vanguard, Fidelity No 0% N/A
    NXP Semiconductors 95.37% Fidelity, JP Morgan, Vanguard, State Street No 0% N/A
    Orange 16.52% Vanguard, Blackrock, Thornburg, UBS Yes 22.9% France
    Ørsted 10.71% Blackrock, Amundi, Vanguard, iShares (Blackrock) Current 50.1% Denmark
    OVHcloud 12.62% KKR, Towerbrook Capital Partners No 0% N/A
    Renault 29.04% Vanguard, Blackrock, Paradigm Asset Management Company Yes 15% France
    Repsol 33.61% Blackrock, Vanguard, iShares (Blackrock), Fidelity Yes 3.20% Norway
    Rolls Royce 32.16% Vanguard, Blackrock, Causeway Capital Management Yes 0% N/A
    RWE 88% Blackrock, Fidelity, Vanguard No 9% Qatar
    Ryanair 48.38% Capital International Investors, Fidelity, Vanguard No
    Safran 41.90% Europacific Growth Fund, Aristotle Capital, Vanguard, Fidelity No 11% France
    Sanofi 77.80% Dodge & Cox Stock Fund, Morgan Stanley, Blackrock, Fischer Asset Management No 0% N/A
    SAP 6.30% Blackrock, Dietmar Hopp Stiftung GmbH, Vanguard No 0% N/A
    Shell 11.73% Fidelity, Vanguard, Morgan Stanley, Blackrock No 3.03% Norway
    Siemens 67% Blackrock, Vanguard, EUROPACIFIC GROWTH FUND No 2.98% Qatar
    Sobi 77.25% Investor Aktiebolag, Morgan Stanley, State Street No 1.24% Norway
    Spotify 62.07% Baillie Gifford & Co, Blackrock, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard No 0% N/A
    Stellantis 47.88% Blackrock, Vanguard, Amundi, JP Morgan No 7.29% France, Norway
    STMicroelectronics 14.85% Blackrock, Goldman Sachs, Grantham Yes 27.51% Italy, France
    Telefónica 1.26% Blackrock, Morgan Stanley Yes 9.9% Spain, Saudi Arabia
    TenneT 0% N/A Current 100% Netherlands
    Thyssenkrupp Steel E.U. 85% Amundi, Merill Lynch, Vanguard, iShares (Blackrock) No 3% Norway
    TotalEnergies 6.94% Fischer Asset Management, Morgan Stanley partial
    Uber 83.54% Blackrock, Vanguard, Fidelity, State Street No 0% N/A
    Vodafone 17.27% Vanguard, Blackrock, Legal & General Investment Management, UBS No 18.01% UAE, Norway
    Volvo 54% Vanguard, Oakmark iShares (Blackrock) No 0% N/A
    ZF 0% N/A No 0% N/A

     

    According to Braun (2020), ‘Asset Manager Capitalism’ is dominated by the ‘Big Three’; Blackrock ($10tn AUM), Vanguard ($9.3tn AUM) and State Street ($4.3tn AUM). The Harvard Business Review points out ‘One of either Blackrock, Vanguard, or State Street is the largest shareholder in 88% of S&P 500 companies’. They’re also some of the largest shareholders in each other. Institutional investors (passive/active funds) now own 80% of all stock in the S&P 500.

    In a study of the Britain’s FTSE350, the 350 largest companies in Britain, the authors found a 20% of its total value was controlled by just ten investors, 10% of which was controlled by Blackrock and Vanguard. The largest foreign owner of the Milan Stock Exchange is Blackrock. According to the OECD in Ireland, Sweden and Poland just three institutional owners control around 20% respectively.

    Naturally, concerns have been expressed that such concentrations of economic and financial power leads to a concentration of political power. With the sector today managing an estimated $100 trillion or so in assets (about two-fifths of the world’s wealth) – how could it not?

    The Big Three have been described as the “most powerful cartel in history“, with journalists from Bloomberg describing Blackrock as the ‘fourth branch’ of the government. Some have even described asset manager capitalism as an entirely new corporate governance regime. However, the source of this power and the way its wielded is still a matter of contention amongst legal scholars, economists and political economists.

    There’s no question that the Big Three want to influence politics at the highest levels. Blackrock has been pouring record amounts into U.S. political campaigns. The same applies in the E.U., where by one estimate they spend an annual €30m lobbying E.U. institutions to ensure their voices are heard.

    What the Asset Managers Want, they Get

    What do they want when it comes to a new IP approach? In a word, they want assurance of ‘investability’. But not just any kind of investability. To quote Mark Blyth, the want the state to operate as a kind of ‘insurer of first resort’ whereby it uses the public ‘balance sheet to insure private investors against losses’.

    Accordingly, this is done by ‘tinkering with risk/returns on private investments in sovereign bonds, currency, social infrastructure (schools, roads, hospitals and houses, care homes and prisons, water plants and natural parks) and most recently, green industries’ (Gabor 2023). This is what political economist Daniela Gabor terms the ‘derisking state’.

    A practical example is public private partnerships (PPP). Here private investors commit to finance public infrastructure projects (hospitals, schools, accommodation, etc) and manage them for a long-time horizon, in return for the state bearing certain risks stipulated in the PPP contract. Risks like an increase in the minimum wage, higher taxes, some new regulation, emissions reductions, etc – anything which might negatively impact cashflow.

    You see with higher institutional ownership of companies comes higher dividend pay outs. In a study by Buller and Braun (2021) of the largest companies listed on the British stock exchange, they found shareholder pay-outs as a proportion of profits rose substantially ‘reaching nearly 80% of pre-tax profits at the end of 2020’, but productive investment fell.

    Asset managers have also engaged in, and rightly been criticised for, extensive efforts at ‘greenwashing’—misrepresenting investment products as more environmentally sustainable than they really are, while refraining from enforcing ESG principles at their portfolio companies. So, I’m not sure how helpful they will be with Draghi’s decarbonisation efforts.

    As should be clear from the above, the investability relationship forged between the state and capital is one where capital dominates. It’s certainly not the kind of arrangement witnessed during the ‘golden age’ of capitalism, or what was seen in the East Asian Tiger economies, when capital was disciplined and directed toward the industries thought most productive.

    As Gabor points out; derisking and capital discipline are fundamentally at odds ‘because the former relies on private profitability to enlist private capital while the latter forces capital into pursuing the strategic objectives of the state even where these may be at odds with changing market conditions or profit calculations.’

    The latter occurred during periods when states were willing and able to do so through means such as nationalising banks to regulate their financial markets, and having their Central Banks impose credit quotas to drive bank lending to what were deemed strategic sectors, often in the presence of capital controls.

    The only real prospect of E.U. member states nationalising banks today would be to bail them out in a crisis, I’m not sure whether credit quotas have ever been employed by the ECB’s constituent Central Banks, and capital controls violate one of the E.U.s four freedoms (free movement of capital).

    There is, however, another way to take a more direct approach: through the capitalisation of new SOEs. Although Draghi is famed for his ‘whatever it takes’ approach from saving the euro, he clearly doesn’t apply this to IP, as demonstrated by the absence of any serious discussion on this.

    Despite the large wave of privatisations that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, and indeed the more recent reduction in the number of SOEs in places like China, the relative importance of state ownership has actually been increasing. As the OECD points out, ‘the share of SOEs in the list of the top 500 global companies tripled’.

    Part 2 takes a closer look at this missing tool from Draghi’s proposed new toolbox, with part 3 considering what possible options Ireland could have with the €14 billion additional tax revenues it now enjoys, some of which could be used for such investment.

    [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w/2-06092024-ap#:~:text=In%20the%20second%20quarter%20of,by%200.3%25%20in%20both%20zones.

    [2] Nature Index 2024 Research Leaders

    [3] Tech companies ranked by total revenues for their respective fiscal years ended on or before March 31, 2023

    [4] 10 biggest banks as measured by market capitalisation.

    [5] These shareholdings are variously held by government Ministries, Central Banks, state pension funds, Sovereign/Public Investment Banks, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Sovereign Development Funds and SOEs.

  • Musician of the Month: Greg Clifford

    I was born in Dublin in 1987, and grew up 5 kilometres west of the city centre in a village called Inchicore. Since birth I’ve been completely enveloped by music and creativity. My father, Dave Clifford, was involved in the counterculture performance art scene of the late 70s / early 80s in Ireland. Additionally, he played in the original line-up of Thee Amazing Colossal Men and was the editor of Ireland’s VOX music magazine (1980-83). My mother, who in fact typed the VOX articles, is also innately artistic and adept in crafts such as tie-dyeing and jewellery.

    David Clifford performance art, live at A Dark Space in the Project Arts Centre in 1979.

    My brother and I were privileged enough to have parents that valued and prioritised creativity, curiosity, application and dedication. We grew up in an art rich household. The walls displayed, and still do, works of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, abstract sculptures and my father’s photography. This environment naturally piqued my interest in the alternative and the absurd.

    The VOX music magazine.

    My grandmother once declared ‘you’ll ruin that boy’! Maybe what she was really inferring was they would awaken me to the point of no return? Musically I was mesmerized by the sound of the 60s. The Beatles, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Small Faces all gripped me. Witnessing Hendrix burning his guitar left me spellbound. There was no going back from that incandescent display. I was changed forever.

    My talent and proclivity for music was always fostered, never stifled. For this I am truly grateful. I began music tuition at the age of 7 and started guitar lessons at 9.

    Greg Clifford aged 9.

    ELEVATOR

    I later founded a 3-piece blues / indie rock band called ELAVATOR in 2006 (intentionally spelt incorrectly, something we later regretted). We disbanded in a most Spinal Tap-esque blaze of glory in 2012 – quite literally breaking up on stage, mid gig.

    ELAVATOR

    ELAVATOR served as my musical apprenticeship; honing a writing style, exploring effects pedals, learning to navigate and control the live arena, while embracing the intricacies of collaborating with others. During this time I also studied music in university; graduating with a Bachelors of Music and Masters in Contemporary Classical Composition. I also toured nationwide and internationally with the Diversus Guitar Ensemble (a 20+ classical guitar group).

    After ELAVATOR I became something of a solo singer-songwriter, by circumstance rather than choice. This, however, was liberating and permitted me to embrace my musical eclecticism.

    I released a number of albums, EPs and singles over the next 10 years. The standout offerings being the Quodlibet LP of 2017 and Lines of Desire LP (2022) which was accompanied by a 40-minute making of the album documentary (filmed by my father) and a 13,000 word book that reflects on the sources of inspiration, studio anecdotes and music theory.

    My Dad and I regularly create music videos and independent documentaries. Our current project is ‘Outsider Artists: The Story of Paranoid Visions’, which delves into the world of Ireland’s longest serving punk band – Paranoid Visions (who formed in 1981). The film provides an insight into the conditions that spawned punk and the subcultures in Ireland. It’s a DIY endeavour about a DIY underdog band made by bloody-minded DIY filmmakers.

    MANA

    Musically my main focus for now is MANA – based primarily in Berlin. For this project I collaborate with musicians Shane Byrne and Niclas Liebling. I enjoy being involved in a band again, both for the sonic landscape and general camaraderie. Style wise we’re a fusion of post-punk and indie rock. Shane’s guitar tones are reminiscent of the late 70s and early 80s, while the lyrics allude to how polarized, cynical and fragmented the world has become. Our songs embody communal disenchantment whilst also offering a sense of solace and solidarity. Melancholy imbues the work, but hope is always present too. In the words of Albert Camus ‘a man devoid of hope and conscious of being so ceases to belong to the future’.

    MANA – image Stephen Golden.

    Our latest release is entitled Nauseating Me. I deliberately wanted to deliver something urgent, unapologetic and relentless; a visceral soundtrack of frustration that reflects society. The track considers themes and notions such as romanticizing recalcitrance, wanderlust and liberation, while staring into the inescapable abyss of a world strung out on fake news, quotidian click bait snares, spam, fraudulent authorities and relentless terms and conditions.

    Future Projects

    As for future projects and releases, that’s anyone’s guess. I am interested in some day returning to instrumental music and investing time in film scores. In reality, there are not enough years in a lifetime to explore and develop all the artistic ideas I have. However, I endeavour to remain receptive to stimuli and glimmers, and move towards what inspires me.

    Early 2025 the plan is to focus my attention and energies on songwriting. I feel recently I’ve dropped the ball on that front. It seems these days being a musician is less about actually interacting with your craft and more about posting on social media, graphic design, writing press releases, admin, video editing, booking shows, promoting etc. I abhor social media, but rely on the very thing I resent, for without it I’d be rendered anonymous and redundant.

    There are times I flirt with waving the white flag and embracing security away from music. I wonder if I’m ignoring my better judgement and doubts that scream ‘time to step into an acceptable paradigm’. However, this would be spiritual suicide.

    I have a deep undeniable urge to create and fight the good fight. In a self-devouring world, increasingly conditioned by AI and instant gratification, for me art is the only answer. Artistic expression is a form of survival and revolt. It doesn’t always provide answers, but it asks the right questions.

    Aside from its cathartic qualities, art binds, creates communities and transcends cultural divisions and boundaries. Art is life, purity and hope. Creating helps me understand the world around me, and my position in it. My goal ultimately is to illuminate myself and be as authentic for as long as possible before slipping into the big sleep.

    Feature Image: Stephen Golden

    https://www.youtube.com/gregcliffordmusic/videos

    https://www.gregcliffordmusic.com/

  • Poem: The First of February

    The First of February

    Well, here’s a pile of puke on a bank of snow,
    Yoga-pants-purple, budget-cocktail-blue,
    Lava lurid as a toy volcano,
    Day-glo confetti frozen stiff as glue.

    The fire hydrant’s calked in hardened gum.
    A Phillies Blunt’s in a bottle of Pepsi
    Inside a purple Shark Week Slurpee,
    And it looks like someone pissed all over them.

    A ghost-ship umbrella is partway jammed
    In the snow heap’s side; its tattered black sail
    Of nylon flutters; a stroller is crammed
    Into a dumpster nearby. I’m stuck, a snail

    Inside a crusted, slowly draining tank.
    The chill in me is deeper than I’d like,
    My pockets packed with lint, the blue snowbank,
    Spiked with pink spokes of a Barbie bike.

    Lingerie spills from a cast-off backpack.
    The neon tubes are dismal, dark at dawn:
    DRAFT BEER now drab, the BAR sign simply black,
    Latimer Deli’s knife-steel grate still down.

    The stained-glass windows of McGlinchey’s Bar
    Are dead. The only thing that holds a light
    That’s real is melting snow, the run of bright
    Rills altering to echoes in the sewer.


    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • The Nascent Age of the Self -Involved

    One must begin by asking a begging question: is literary criticism, in Ireland, dead?

    Recently, reading Susan Sontag’s 1966 essay ‘Against Interpretation’, this reviewer noticed the absence of the pronoun ‘I’, which has become ingratiated in the ‘I’ singular, the most fantastic, the singular phenomenological self-view.

    The singular ‘I’ – the Me, Myself, and I routine. This reviewer sees this everywhere due to social media. Me, Glorious Me, forever Me, and Me. Like some demented character from Roald Dahl’s children’s book adapted into a musical.

    In Susan Sontag’s piece, in the essay’s opening channels, she discusses Mimesis – Mimetic theory from the Ancient Greek world, and how Western consciousness has since seen all art as a representation of the past. This is a fair and accurate point. Some musical pieces of the modern era are inspired by what has gone before – take Poculum Harlem’s A Whiter Shade of Pale – some of the music was borrowed from Johanas Sebastian Bach (Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major (BVW 1068), movement II, better known as the ‘Air on the G String’) and Intertextuality and other forms of tweaked reproduction for the public, consuming sphere. In other words, capitalism.

    Has the woke agenda razed the literary Towers of Babel to hark on with their overt, aggressive liberalism so that anyone with a rational, logical mind with an understanding of a particular subject outside their, the philistines’, own parameters are pillaged and vociferously vilified if they dare have a masculine view/take on, in, a broader sphere?

    Oh, if we could be visited every day with the dove of learning or visit Borges’ library to select another book after returning the one we have read back to its endless shelves.

    Or will they, the literary critics, routinely be ignored and silenced into oblivion as to engage in something outside of their (the braying rabble) comprehension – is to admit concession to something?

    Susan Sontag.

    Bonfire of the banalities

    Social media has helped create agentic and situational narcissists by the acreage, who are self-involved, selfish, and unable to challenge themselves to see a world beyond the digital screen in front of them with scrolling videos. On and on it goes … like a long narrative poem dedicated to the self.

    The era of banality is thrust upon us. There is, no doubt, a proliferation of mainstream publishing content waxing lyrical about this and that, but when you question writers on what and who they have read they shy away from answering. Why?

    Mainstream mediocrity is part of the problem.

    They are fearful of criticism. They cannot contend with criticism because its connotation is ‘not to like,’ which impacts their overt sensitivities and victimisation mindset(s). Fear is integral to them being found out for the half-baked, badly-read charlatans they really are.

    In the Irish Literary Scene, Wokeism is a dominant model the media has embraced.

    The Philistines’ rendering of Art toward annihilation through their immaturity and blind-sided emotionality sees a casual shift towards to a lesser formulation in production and the end product. The celebration of the banal – the cumulation of a taping a banana to an art gallery wall. What is this tokenistic, attempted gesture or symbolism? A chimpanzee’s take?

    A middlebrow mediocrity has taken most of the literary, mainstream positions and loves nothing more than to espouse its own form of ‘I, I, me myself and that of my friends’ view.

    They do not really serve literature – the thing itself, Art; instead, they serve the din and hype spin for the work they are trying to publicise.

    It is tonal naïveté due to a lack of maturity. Instead of seeking logic, they seek out an entirely narrow pedestal upon which to place themselves. This is their desire: to be talked about, admired and adored. It could not be any less further from the childhood pages The Princess and the Pea or The Emperor’s New Clothes, straight from the Fairy Tale Rule Book. Rule No.1: Take an arrogant, self-involved, aggrandising trait and go through many tribulations to finally learn humility. And peace of mind. I see it playing out in real time. Facetiously.

    Humility is a great virtue one may have to learn in life’s travails. This is the paradigm I see time and again in life and on the socials.

    All works of Art should speak for themselves. As in, the work should speak for itself.

    Silence by maturer, and should know-better, enablers who stay mute. To take a stand is to raise one’s head above the parapet, and who wants to be dog-piled or cancelled by the braying rabble once they start?

    RDNE Stock Images.

    Nepotism in Ireland

    This is not complex—we do not have to draft in hermeneutics to examine the Nepotistic biases. Nepotism is an unutterable word in Ireland, North and South, but it is dominant. It is so dominant that those in positions of power live in a kind of comfortable, headstrong, warm denial that there is no Nepotism in the literary Arts in Ireland. Ireland and Irish people have a way of not looking at the end of their introspective fork … why?

    What they forge on the bow of their ship, without foresight, is the transitory nature of the imbued self in the nectar-sweet plateaus, which they seek to ascertain and commandeer for their greed – the promotion of the self.

    They seek to publicise their own and only agenda – themselves. It has become entirely predictable and wholly pedestrian.

    They do not read critical literary theory – therefore, they are not considering critical literary theory. If you do not read or consider theory, how can you know what a logical take with substance is, and what it is not? To weigh up literary theories and ideas help enshrine the mind’s understanding of prior accepted literary texts, never mind toward growth and maturity.

    Ireland, North & South has always had nepotism and nepotistic biases – you have to be ‘someone’ to get published. Where does this way of prejudicial thinking come from?

    The perfect image represents the proposed product displayed, but the product is a much inferior facsimile. It has crept into the literary world, too.

    Overrated Novels

    A lot of mainstream novels have a naïve bluntness in terms of tonality. In terms of literary Art, seeking out relational emotionality, as the model for the plot is overrated – there, I said it.

    The predictable chatter and babble that encompasses spin are endless. It is senseless. It has no basis in logic, and this hyperbole operates in a moral vacuum with tendrilled emotionalism as its core foundation.

    Take any mainstream novel, the college-girl mentality has read this work and resonated emotionally. The formula is predictable: the girl meets the boy and falls in love with the boy. Falls out of love with the boy. The developing mind relates so much with the story and the characters that they overrate the novel. It has been heavily publicised by the capitalistic dyad of agents/publishers to make money and profit, and it appeals the sensibilities of young women who have their own money to purchase it.

    It is not, however, Art. Again, it is a novel, verging on the YA formula, to reiterate this point, to drive it home: sells an easily digestible plot that is relational and has relatable characters of young types to readers within its flimsy paragraphs. The writing is wooden and clichéd, and it runs along the vein of ‘Sam sat down, uncorked the wine. Then he tried some…. While Michelle munched on a croissant.’

    This prose is immature, tiresome, wane, and tedious to the committed reader. These clauses and sentences are flat. Where along the way did well-written prose lose its pomp, jolt and creative juice to arrive at this stale juncture? A good, sturdy breeze would blow its walls and roof away.

    Like taking a gondola down the Tigris. Like sending a bowling ball skirting along a millpond.

    They soon lose their gloss these books. Once braced around the work, when the PR scaffold is taken away and is no longer there, it is sent plummeting to the depths.

    To spell it out plainly for the Philistines, they diminish Art. They admonish themselves.

    This has descended into a cultural ‘war’, pitting defenders and lovers of Art against the emotionally-led, shallow comprehension (not yet developed in an emotional sense) Philistine(s).

    And then others have dictators in the wheelhouse, and what they say goes…

    To be a literary critic in 2024 is to be an exile. To scratch out a meagre existence in the swampy fens while within the walled citadels of comfort – on the internet – poets, flunky wizards and flaky white witches dwell with their immature poetry and mulchy sentimentality.

    Syncretism and Neoplatonism are required. Over time, what is needed is based on a hegemonic principle – and it happens without much effort. The strongly composed works hold up, and others, the ones that were once regaled with great infinity, now have a wilderness of non-plussed minds that do not engage at all. Shameless!

    Criticism leads to Censorship

    The reviewer of this piece dealt with some of the mentalities above, but it did not go well.

    One well-known literary magazine editor in Ireland had asked for articles on homelessness, and I had a piece ready and fired it off. I received an initial email response saying it had been received, but then there was nothing. Silence. I emailed again, and eventually, after about four or five months, I received a reply which stated, ‘This was the best piece out of them all, but I cannot publish it due to possible legal reasons down the road.’

    I had changed names in the piece. No one was identifiable unless the main culprit involved became prissy, but they are not a literary lover, and why deny a person’s literary voice? The editor patronised me with a tardy sign-off, talking of homelessness generically as a terrible thing, while I was currently experiencing it, probably unbeknownst.

    I was annoyed and let loose a volley of sentences criticising some of the work I had already read in Ireland, saying he was, in a way, silencing me and my work. He did not reply and continued to refuse my submitted work. I did not know the guy, but after viewing some videos of him online, I realised that he comes across as an individual in a position of power and, in my experience, cannot take any criticism. Petty then.

    On reflection, my response was immature, yet here was an editor who was not brave enough to take a chance on a ‘new Irish writer,’ and continued to ignore any work I submitted to their magazine. I ceased all contact as it is a waste of energy competing with such a narrowminded, selfish mentality. This is censorship, pure and simple.

    An individual I met at university bravely stood up and questioned the selected nepotism. They are now part of the tiny, elitist cabal in ‘literary’ Dublin, and once told me in a private message on social media that they ‘deserved it’ – to be part of the select few. I couldn’t help but notice they were in a relationship with someone running a literary magazine.

    If your face fits. If you are ‘someone,’ you are in. That is, if you are fulfilling an Ireland Ltd PR spin function. You are censored and ignored if you are intelligent, rational, and well-read, because being well-read strikes fear into the philistine. They respond with a snarl because you may be ‘better’ at something than them, and they cannot have that. In the depths of their rotting psyche, the insecurity bubbling away in the pitch of their being, they really know that they are the better. This is how immature and petty these scenarios roll. Awful.

    But they won’t engage with the criticism because engaging is a way of dealing with it, and they don’t want to. They want gloss, spin and saccharine nonsense – here today, gone tomorrow.

    Some more rational and democratic literary outlets will see the literary merit, but … those are rare. Support goes to the mainstream, as that’s where the money is.

    Literary Art will always outlast the mediocre after the rabble stops squabbling and the dust settles.

    Feature Image: Lukas Kloeppel