Graeme Archer's Diary: “If a man is tired of New York, he must be tired of walking in a grid pattern”

Where does one person end, and another begin? Such was the preoccupation of that great lady, Iris Murdoch, whose novels had a very powerful effect on my adolescence. Since she was also preoccupied with swimming – many of her characters spend a lot of time in the water – and since most of my mornings begin in the London Fields Lido, her fundamental question often forms itself in my head, as I make my stately progress from one end of the pool to the other, under the lowing greyness of the East End sky.

She didn’t mean, of course, that we all run into one another in some sort of biological mish-mash. I think she meant that all our actions have the potential to impact on everyone else. You see this very clearly in a swimming pool. So long as all the swimmers take care not to get in the way of the people close by them, the entire pool ‘works’ as though under the guidance of a supra-physical observer. By concerning yourself with your near neighbours, a harmonious steady-state is induced across the entire pool even though that is not your personal objective. By contrast, swimmers who think only of themselves induce a chaotic pattern of interference over the whole pool that spoils the experience for everyone.

There’s actually a mathematical under-pinning to this, known as the Hammersley-Clifford theorem, which I made great use of in writing my own utterly rubbish Ph.D. thesis (on parameter estimation in hidden Markov random fields, since you ask, about a hundred years before most of you were born, and subsequently read by precisely nobody). Well-defined neighbourhoods have the property that they can induce a global optimum. (God, as Iris may have been suggesting, is in the machine; but that’s another article.)

Not to stretch the analogy too far: but isn’t this what we mean by Social Responsibility? And isn’t it why left-wing people, for all their good intentions, don’t “get it”? Conservatives understand, on an intuitive level, that when you take care of your neighbourhood (either a physical or emotional neighbourhood), everyone helps to create an ordered society. When those local neighbourhoods break down, chaos will reign – everywhere – even if the neighbourhood breakdown is not universal: anarchy in the UK. Left-wing people, though often individuals of great kindness, cannot believe that optimum global conditions can arise from undirected local behaviour. To return to the Lido, the left-wing replacement for the good neighbourliness of my fellow morning swimmers would be a chap on a high chair, barking into a megaphone, issuing instructions: “You there! Middle lane! Red shorts! Wait at the end for her in the cap to pass you! Hey – matey with the tattoo in the slow lane – this is a pool not a social club”. Of course this wouldn’t work (but it’s an amusing thought, and I’m surprised that Hackney council haven’t tried to implement such a system).

**
Well I’m away from the London Fields Lido this week; I’m in New York. I’ll resist the temptation to write about Zero Tolerance and How Much Safer I Feel Here, because you know it all anyway, and because I don’t really like New York and spend my days (and jetlagged, wide-awake nights) yearning to be back in Hackney. “If a man is tired of New York, he must be tired of walking in a grid pattern”, as Dr Johnson nearly said. Something I really detest is the grid system in Manhattan. Walking anywhere takes the rhythm: shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, pause (at traffic lights); shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, pause (etc times a thousand). I get boringly nostalgic for the organic medieval streets of home, curving to their own rhythm. Travel is supposed to broaden your mind, but since mine is so narrow it would fit through a keyhole, I think it’s beyond expansion (it’s more a singularity). Except under the influence of the dry martinis that the hotel bar provides. OK, not everything in New York is less good than London.

**
I saw a ridiculous article in the Sunday Times about Long Distance Relationships, and how sexy and post-modern they are, perfect for today’s jet-setting, post-industrial, urbanised and individual population blah blah blah. Having wasted my 20s attempting to keep such a non-starter alive, can I just say “B*ll*cks to that”? If anyone tells you that they love you, but don’t actually want to live in the same country that you do, smile fondly, say ‘thanks for the memories’ – and move on. When I met Mr Keith he was living in Saudi Arabia (no really). I pestered him by phone on a daily basis to move back to Britain, to get out of that unsafe climate. About six months after he moved to London, homegrown terrorists tried to blow up the no.26 bus we take daily to Liverpool Street. Is that, finally, a real definition of ‘ironic’?

**
It’s quite frightening to write a column for ConservativeHome. One is in the company of people who’ve actually done things with their lives, many of whom would appear to have brains slightly larger than Jupiter. So I hesitate to take issue with Andrew Lilico of this parish, who wrote last week about the dominance of right-wing thinking in policy-making. I think he’s right, economically speaking. But I don’t think there’s a similar dominance in the fields of culture and society; and I think it’s in these arenas that the next election will be fought. I wonder if we call it ‘right-wing’ to denote ‘right-brain’. Certainly what we need politically is more left-brain empathy to go with the right-brain problem-solving.

**
Back in London (hooray). Am exposed to two art experiences in the same day, of radically different types. In the morning we go to see the BP Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery, something we do every year (it’s free!) (OK, I know it’s not strictly speaking free, in the right-brain right-wing sense). The talent is breath-taking, but I don’t think this year’s field is as strong as last. Can someone explain to me why I’m so drawn to the paintings which most strongly resemble photographs? (Without insulting me).

In the afternoon we come home and visit the Vyner Street Festival, a “manifestation” (street party) put on by the motley crew of Hackney artists round the corner from our flat. Groovy chicks of a skinniness unfathomable bop away with tattooed and shirtless East End indigenous, while a mock heavy metal act perform on stage. Quite a sight. Somewhat more lively than the National Portrait Gallery, and quite unlike, I’m sure, the home-life of our own dear Queen. There are more artists in Hackney than there are tea-spoonfuls of water in the Atlantic, or some such statistic. All adding value to raw materials, and all working for themselves, unsupported by either state subsidy or massively endowed private patron. They should vote Conservative. Someone should tell them. 

Comments

[Tony Makara]

Graeme, You are not the only one who prefers art with form and structure. The more abstract a work of art becomes the more it divorces itself from reality. We all feel far more comfortable looking at something we can relate to. I see photography as an art form in itself. I could look at photographs for hours, they are a facinating because they freeze time and make us focus on the moment in hand.

On the subject of New York, I have to say that Broadway has always been a kind of spiritual home for me. I collect Hollywood musicals from the 1930-1960 era, and the concept of 'Putting on a show' and 'Making it on Broadway' are key themes in many of those movies. So New York has a certain magical facination for me.

[Annabel Herriott]

Oh I do so agree with you Graeme. When faced with "modern art" I am always drawn to the image of a little chimp, paintbrush in hand, blank canvas in front of him/her, contemplating the universe. Shall it be a red dwarf today? Where are my bananas? I need to feed my talent.
My great grandad was a victorian artist who painted folk about their daily grind. Pasting up posters with Newcastle Cathedral in the background. Little kids and their mum, hanging about outside the pub, waiting for dad to fall out. Schools, paper boys, boat builders, country folk.Baking bread. Whatever. Thats Art. Not squiggles.

[Tony Makara]

I find it facinating how most of the left-wing seem to like a certain type of art, usually works without structure or pretentious surreal trash like Andy Warhol. His famous pop-art representations of Marilyn Monroe are truly dreadful and just look like painted over photocopies. Yet one of these went for a huge amount of money recently. Art mirrors the age and in a decadent era art refelects the social decay that we see all around us.

[Graeme Archer]

Ooh no! I love Andy Warhol!

[Tony Makara]

Graeme, it seems decadence has set in. May I recommend you school yourself in romanticism at your earliest convenience. If you enjoy photography may I suggest, corbis.com , just visit the site and type in a subject you are interested in and you can enjoy some really great photography. I like to type in a given year and see what it throws up.