Exit Music Played Through Tired Speakers
The news recently has been full of endings, near-endings and everything after...the main story on many fronts has been the end of Ellen MacArthur’s round the world trip and how the media have reacted to her victory. The navy has been lavishing strange honours on her, whilst some newspapers have been sniffing haughtily, rolling their eyes and complaining she didn’t have a hard enough time because she didn’t circumnavigate the world in a leaky barrel, or whatever. But overall the response has implied that we are celebrating this because we are short of better things to celebrate.
Much of that is media waffle, stories by Phil Space and Philippa Column...the curse of finding an angle no matter what. Meanwhile, the few people in this country who haven’t got a newspaper column are offering restrained applause and are not being shackled by hours of useless discussion regarding her motives for sailing round the world. I don’t care, personally, what she does and why she did it, but that does not mean she did not do something of which she can be proud. And hell...she was attacked by whales, for god’s sake.
Elsewhere, nobody stood watching from the shore as the IRA steered their boats away from dry land at the last minute, bypassing an ending and circling back into the bad waters of shitty chest-beating, taking offence at whatever tiny insult has been levelled at them recently. We are used to this situation and there is little wonder the IRA thinned their lips and complained nobody was taking their statements seriously. As if they expected the world to collectively spit out their tea and scream “surely nobody could have predicted such a thing!” in abject surprise when they heard the statement.
Also...the Israel / Palestine agreement...it may be an ending but whether it has any practical importance or not will not be proven for many months. There is still a lot of story to play out here, as we all well know.
There are few endings from my perspective at the moment. One thing that remains perpetually buzzing around my little world is a series of strange conversations that I feel are foreshadowing some kind of imminent doom. These conversations happen every few days.
Well...it happened again yesterday. This time whilst I was eating lunch in the office.
“So where do you live?” the manager asked.
“New Cross Gate,” I said.
“Oh my god.”
Indeed. His answer was brutal in its scalpel-like precision and I decided to change the subject to something less ominous. But I brooded on this conversation, and the many others along the same lines, for the rest of the day. In the evening I walked to the shops, and outside electrical retailer Curry’s my path was crossed by a man in a blue coat. I considered greeting him, but noticed he was too busy being bundled into the back of a police van by an unsmiling copper to respond to pleasantries. The van roared away from Curry’s...I peered in the window, but there was already no trace of whatever bad noise had gone down. Jesus. So is this damn area safe or not? My flatmate would say not, of course.
Curry’s...Curry’s...hmm. A strange shop with weird advertisements. At present they are running a promotion whereby they knock out “last season’s stock” at reduced prices, which puzzles me. Do washing machines, therefore, go out of fashion? Is Jean Paul Gautier weeping into his sarong because the white goods in my flat are no longer in Heat magazine’s “what’s hot” column? Perhaps this seasons’s washing machines have the “new black” programmed into their circuits so they can shred the clothes into whatever style the most fashionable new guitar band is wearing.
Jesus...honestly. Either a washing machine gets your clothes clean or it doesn’t, but this is a screamingly obvious statement that advertisers would give their grannies a rim job to make people forget. It is the same with any product. New is better. Remember the washing powder we launched last year that promised to get rid of 100% stains with its 3-in-1 cleaning action? Bollocks. This year we’re up to 105% with a 5-in-1 powerball that tells you your future whilst sucking you off. And you won’t even have to wait until next year’s even better washing powder because we confidently expect it to be clever enough to travel back through time.
Then reality comes crashing back in. No matter how much you buy into the commercials, that suspect stain on your shirt lapel just ain’t coming out.
Another ending I noticed last night was the snapping of the last thread that held up the idea that international friendlies are of any interest. The game was England vs Holland at Villa Park, a game that finished goalless, and a game that was in Danny Baker’s words this morning “the dullest football game in history, official.”
Quite so...I wasted an entire can of Generic Lager on that game. Both sides were solidly unspectacular; Michael Owen continued his game plan of spending 90 minutes sitting under a dark blanket and muttering to himself about how he could score if given the chance, Beckham scratched his arse as he waited for a chance to take the inevitable curling free kick, whilst Rooney looked as happy as a long distance lorry driver with piles in his new position. Hmm...we do seem keen on players that sparkle like an expensive firework for a year or so before landing on a field nearby and lying there uselessly in the darkness for the next ten years.
So in this match, nothing happened with surprising frequency. The only moment where the game was shot with electricity was in the first half where Holland hit the post. Neither team could finish anything. Eriksson wasted his opportunity to try out several new players. What a waste of time.
Ah, but there are enough reports out there to cover those ninety minutes without my two cents in the meter. All I can do now is calm down and conclude this thing. After all, to shy away from an ending in a post about endings would be...well, absurd.
So...what makes a good ending. A sunset? A postmodern false ending? A neat reflection of the beginning of the story?
I am most fond of the ending that happens without any ceremony at the precise moment you know the story has been told. Keep it concise, let no slack word escape the knife...the Lord of the Rings forgot this and meandered on forever...whilst conversely the Neverending Story didn’t. A grand, puffed-up ending feels false and, whilst perhaps feeling more rewarding at the time, is never quite as enduring on reflection as something a little more natural that resonates with real life. The much-lauded “down” ending is often no better than the Hollywood ending. Both can feel just as artificial and smug as each other...although on this score the Empire Strikes Back got it right. But then it did have the luxury of knowing there was a third film to bring forth the toe-curling victory scenes.
Of course, some people write entire films, or indeed books, that could be classified as “down”, and this can result in some great storytelling. Clark Ashton Smith wrote a whole pile of fantasy short stories in the first half of the twentieth century in which the mortality rate frequently hit 100%, and in one notorious story managed 200%. (The latter case was a merry yarn in which the entire cast drowned before being raised from the dead on an island by a necromancer, only for them to all die again at the end. You don’t get that in a Mills and Boon.)
Some films end for practical reasons...the abrupt termination of Monty Python and the Holy Grail came seemingly at random not through some characteristic silliness but because they ran out of money at the crucial moment.
Casino Royale meanwhile (a film I have discussed previously), ended by throwing the entire cast into a room and then blowing it up, which under the circumstances was probably the most humane thing to do. But Casino Royale shall return...the front page of the Guardian last week reported that the twenty first Bond film, yet to be shot, will be...er...Casino Royale. Surely the first time a film spoof manages to predate the film itself by about twenty years...
Ye gods, I am ignoring my own advice about timely endings. There are bad rumblings coming from the next office...the boss is fed up and about to leave...a hundred stories seem on the verge of beginning, but this little story, for now at least, is going to end...right about now, in fact.
Much of that is media waffle, stories by Phil Space and Philippa Column...the curse of finding an angle no matter what. Meanwhile, the few people in this country who haven’t got a newspaper column are offering restrained applause and are not being shackled by hours of useless discussion regarding her motives for sailing round the world. I don’t care, personally, what she does and why she did it, but that does not mean she did not do something of which she can be proud. And hell...she was attacked by whales, for god’s sake.
Elsewhere, nobody stood watching from the shore as the IRA steered their boats away from dry land at the last minute, bypassing an ending and circling back into the bad waters of shitty chest-beating, taking offence at whatever tiny insult has been levelled at them recently. We are used to this situation and there is little wonder the IRA thinned their lips and complained nobody was taking their statements seriously. As if they expected the world to collectively spit out their tea and scream “surely nobody could have predicted such a thing!” in abject surprise when they heard the statement.
Also...the Israel / Palestine agreement...it may be an ending but whether it has any practical importance or not will not be proven for many months. There is still a lot of story to play out here, as we all well know.
There are few endings from my perspective at the moment. One thing that remains perpetually buzzing around my little world is a series of strange conversations that I feel are foreshadowing some kind of imminent doom. These conversations happen every few days.
Well...it happened again yesterday. This time whilst I was eating lunch in the office.
“So where do you live?” the manager asked.
“New Cross Gate,” I said.
“Oh my god.”
Indeed. His answer was brutal in its scalpel-like precision and I decided to change the subject to something less ominous. But I brooded on this conversation, and the many others along the same lines, for the rest of the day. In the evening I walked to the shops, and outside electrical retailer Curry’s my path was crossed by a man in a blue coat. I considered greeting him, but noticed he was too busy being bundled into the back of a police van by an unsmiling copper to respond to pleasantries. The van roared away from Curry’s...I peered in the window, but there was already no trace of whatever bad noise had gone down. Jesus. So is this damn area safe or not? My flatmate would say not, of course.
Curry’s...Curry’s...hmm. A strange shop with weird advertisements. At present they are running a promotion whereby they knock out “last season’s stock” at reduced prices, which puzzles me. Do washing machines, therefore, go out of fashion? Is Jean Paul Gautier weeping into his sarong because the white goods in my flat are no longer in Heat magazine’s “what’s hot” column? Perhaps this seasons’s washing machines have the “new black” programmed into their circuits so they can shred the clothes into whatever style the most fashionable new guitar band is wearing.
Jesus...honestly. Either a washing machine gets your clothes clean or it doesn’t, but this is a screamingly obvious statement that advertisers would give their grannies a rim job to make people forget. It is the same with any product. New is better. Remember the washing powder we launched last year that promised to get rid of 100% stains with its 3-in-1 cleaning action? Bollocks. This year we’re up to 105% with a 5-in-1 powerball that tells you your future whilst sucking you off. And you won’t even have to wait until next year’s even better washing powder because we confidently expect it to be clever enough to travel back through time.
Then reality comes crashing back in. No matter how much you buy into the commercials, that suspect stain on your shirt lapel just ain’t coming out.
Another ending I noticed last night was the snapping of the last thread that held up the idea that international friendlies are of any interest. The game was England vs Holland at Villa Park, a game that finished goalless, and a game that was in Danny Baker’s words this morning “the dullest football game in history, official.”
Quite so...I wasted an entire can of Generic Lager on that game. Both sides were solidly unspectacular; Michael Owen continued his game plan of spending 90 minutes sitting under a dark blanket and muttering to himself about how he could score if given the chance, Beckham scratched his arse as he waited for a chance to take the inevitable curling free kick, whilst Rooney looked as happy as a long distance lorry driver with piles in his new position. Hmm...we do seem keen on players that sparkle like an expensive firework for a year or so before landing on a field nearby and lying there uselessly in the darkness for the next ten years.
So in this match, nothing happened with surprising frequency. The only moment where the game was shot with electricity was in the first half where Holland hit the post. Neither team could finish anything. Eriksson wasted his opportunity to try out several new players. What a waste of time.
Ah, but there are enough reports out there to cover those ninety minutes without my two cents in the meter. All I can do now is calm down and conclude this thing. After all, to shy away from an ending in a post about endings would be...well, absurd.
So...what makes a good ending. A sunset? A postmodern false ending? A neat reflection of the beginning of the story?
I am most fond of the ending that happens without any ceremony at the precise moment you know the story has been told. Keep it concise, let no slack word escape the knife...the Lord of the Rings forgot this and meandered on forever...whilst conversely the Neverending Story didn’t. A grand, puffed-up ending feels false and, whilst perhaps feeling more rewarding at the time, is never quite as enduring on reflection as something a little more natural that resonates with real life. The much-lauded “down” ending is often no better than the Hollywood ending. Both can feel just as artificial and smug as each other...although on this score the Empire Strikes Back got it right. But then it did have the luxury of knowing there was a third film to bring forth the toe-curling victory scenes.
Of course, some people write entire films, or indeed books, that could be classified as “down”, and this can result in some great storytelling. Clark Ashton Smith wrote a whole pile of fantasy short stories in the first half of the twentieth century in which the mortality rate frequently hit 100%, and in one notorious story managed 200%. (The latter case was a merry yarn in which the entire cast drowned before being raised from the dead on an island by a necromancer, only for them to all die again at the end. You don’t get that in a Mills and Boon.)
Some films end for practical reasons...the abrupt termination of Monty Python and the Holy Grail came seemingly at random not through some characteristic silliness but because they ran out of money at the crucial moment.
Casino Royale meanwhile (a film I have discussed previously), ended by throwing the entire cast into a room and then blowing it up, which under the circumstances was probably the most humane thing to do. But Casino Royale shall return...the front page of the Guardian last week reported that the twenty first Bond film, yet to be shot, will be...er...Casino Royale. Surely the first time a film spoof manages to predate the film itself by about twenty years...
Ye gods, I am ignoring my own advice about timely endings. There are bad rumblings coming from the next office...the boss is fed up and about to leave...a hundred stories seem on the verge of beginning, but this little story, for now at least, is going to end...right about now, in fact.
posted by Jamie at 8:28 PM
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