Heads Held at Arm's Length

 

 

 

 I'd not noticed the Medusa outside Tate Britain before. Henry C. Fehr's The Rescue of Andromeda isn't the only depiction I've seen in which Perseus and the woman's head he brandishes look identical – I don't know the reason for that (and I haven't bought Natalie Haynes' new book yet, so it might get explained there) – but it's the only depiction I've seen in which Medusa's hair is bound. I suppose that's a sensible precaution, although it's possible Fehr just couldn't be bothered with all the snakes. It's odd that Perseus is also holding a sword though: he's about to turn a sea monster into stone, what was the plan?

 Similarly bound and held at arm's length, I realised, is the head in the centre of Francis Bacon's Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. Not "the Crucifixion" I now note. According to Bacon they're Furies: raging demons from Greek Tragedy broken into the Christian Iconography of a triptych. The artist decided in 1944 that pity was no longer enough I guess. Every time I walk into that room of the Tate I'm fifteen again, seeing those girning horrors in that orange boom for the very first time, and recognising the one in the middle from Swamp Thing's first trip to Hell. "Flutch" Alan Moore called him in that. Pencils by Stephen R. Bisette. Inks by John Totleben. Outside of comics I suppose it's odd for a drawing to have two artists, but I looked at those drawings a lot.

 

 Another triptych was playing in the dark round the corner: John Akomfrah's gorgeous The Unfinished Conversation, a study of the immigrant intellectual life of the Stuart Hall who didn't present It's A Knockout. And thread through the whole building, Hew Locke's mighty Procession. Two new highlights. I can't remember when I last spent as long there – I went Monday; it might be where I picked up the bug – I really recommend going.

Horniman, Presepe, Gorgon and Queue

 Today I returned to Sydenham Hill. 

 Here's a video. See if you can find the white triangle to press to make it play...

 

 

 Bella (real name unknown – originator of the "Woodlouse or Moth?" round) had invited me the Horniman Museum, to be among butterflies.

 I am an idiot for never having been in a butterfly house before.

 The pyschedelic antiquarian decadence of these animals' final act upstages any flame, and made me want to redecorate. 

 I also loved the remains of a "gorgon's-head brittlestar" in the Horniman proper, and took a picture to celebrate Natalie Haynes' new book.

 

 Elsewhere, in the newly re-de-othered World Gallery, an Italian nativity scene – or presepe – showcased foot-high likenesses of the late Queen flanked by Michael Jackson and Silvio Berlusconi...

 

 It was getting quite cold by the time we took the train to Blackfriars to see The Queue. After all, it was there.

 I'd been told it moved fast, but I was still surprised how fast, and genuinely envied those in line. I would have loved to know what it was like to be in a queue that fast. Maybe not for the full twenty hours, but I couldn't say when the excitement would wear off.

 However nothing about it struck me as "uniquely British", apart from the accents. Isn't lying in state quite an international thing? Don't they all have queues? Does this not happen at Mecca? I wonder if what's actually uniquely British is mistaking community spirit for patriotism. Probably not even that. Parliament Square was closed to traffic. As people had reported, a lot of "just being there together" was happening, which is what I like to think should happen in a public space. I love a good pedestrianisation.

 

Tight Lipped of Troy

 Helen, whose abduction famously precipitated the Trojan War, was one two daughters born to the mortal Leda after Zeus came onto her in the form of a swan. This heritage is subtly alluded to by the feathers round Helen's neck in the above still from Troy: Fall of a City, and less subtly alluded to in this illustration from Larry Gonick's far less trashy Cartoon History of the Universe:

 

 

 One thing I didn't know about Helen though until I read the Odyssey, was that she had known all along about the Greeks' plans to conquer her adopted city with an army hidden in a huge wooden horse. According to her account to Odysseus' son Telemachus a decade later, she had bumped into Odysseus when he sneaked into Troy disguised as a beggar, immediately recognised him, gave him a bath and then, somehow, managed to get him to tell her the whole plan. But she let him go and didn't tell anyone because she was sick of this now ten-year-long siege and just wanted to be taken back to Greece. Wait, I thought, why had I not heard his before? Was this the normal story? If this was the case, why didn't Helen just sneak out of Troy with Odysseus and end the war there? Happily I was able to ask Natalie Haynes all this, and here is Natalie's reply:

 "Ten points for reading the Odyssey, but you lose a point for thinking there is any such thing as the normal story. So, net gain: nine points... The version of Helen in the Odyssey does say/do that (there is a much madder bit, at least to my eyes, in some versions where, when the Trojan Horse is found and the Greek soldiers are suspected of being inside, Helen does a sort of Mike Yarwood thing and impersonates the voices of the wives of the Greeks. She's so convincing she reduces several horse occupants to tears... HOW MAD IS THAT?) I think the important thing to bear in mind with Helen is that you can't necessarily believe what she says - I think she probably did want to go back to Greece, but the insult of her kidnap/abduction/adultery wouldn't be removed if she just snuck off with Odysseus - the Greeks would still want revenge on Paris and they'd still want to loot Troy, which is the only reason a lot of them are there... So she might as well wait it out in the city than in the Greek camp. But that's just my reading... Also, Homer's Helen is a real plaything of the gods, esp Aphrodite, so she may not have had the option of bailing with Odysseus - Aphrodite threatens her quite pointedly in Iliad 3, when she says she's not that into Paris anymore..."

 So there you go! I now need to find out exactly what Helen did that made Odysseus talk. Might it have been her Mike Yarwood bit? If you have any mythology-based questions of your own, you can ask Natalie here.

 

 How many things can YOU name that have nothing to do with either horses or Troy?

Perhaps you'll see them in this video.

"I'm Famous. Give Me Presents." (Another Odysseus)

 

Finally, what a cyclops looks like from the front, 

at least according to Jacobus Sluperius.
 

 I've finally started reading The Odyssey, in the translation by Emily Wilson that I was hearing such great things about, and it's terribly good. I haven't met the Cyclops yet. I'm only on Book Five, so I haven't even met Odysseus, but I'm also glancing at the eighteenth-century translation by Alexander Pope to compare accounts, and I feel you're missing out if you've only read Pope. He makes no mention, for example, of Calliope's island being covered in celery. 

 Another account I'd like to draw readers' attention to however – in addition to the three film adaptations mentioned back in October - is this hour-long radio Odyssey penned by my landlord David Reed for his gang "The Penny Dreadfuls", all of whose comedies have now been put online for ever, it seems. In allowing himself to dwell on the more absurd qualities of Odysseus' heroism, David's adaptation unwittingly, but beautifully, illustrates not only the many niggling questions Natalie Haynes would later let Odysseus' wife Penelope voice in A Thousand Ships, but also Emily Wilson's reasons for working on her own translation. Robert Webb plays Odysseus in this one, and Elpenor - the crew member he meets as a ghost in Hades whom he hadn't even realised was dead - sounds pleasingly like Jim Howick's Pat from Ghosts. Finely focused comic adaptations rather than spoofs – although they spoof the clichés of adaptation very well – I recommend the whole "Penny Dreadfuls" oeuvre. They might make you cleverer. They make me miss writing.

Gods, Men and Monsters. And Snakes... Oh, and Women!

   For centuries, it seems, the defining characteristic of a gorgon was actually her tusks. This two-and-a-half-thousand year old antefix from the island of Thasos for example doesn't even bother with snakes in the hair. I hadn't realised not having snakes in the hair was an option. I wish I'd known that when I was nine.

 I just assumed you really had to commit to the snakes. I also thought you had to give a gorgon breasts, which as a nine-year-old I would definitely have found harder to draw than snakes; but the Medusa in Clash of the Titans had breasts, and the Medusa on the front cover of my school's copy of Gods, Men and Monsters clearly had breasts, so in the best traditions of Classical Sculpture, room was made. And speaking of grotesque misrepresentations of women from Greek Mythology: my friend and teacher Natalie Haynes has a new book out to set the record straight called Pandora's Jar, which she talks about on a very fun Book Shambles HERE! 

 Here's another misrepresentation: the Pythia at Delphi, showing a lot less skin than Medusa, and surrounded by big, scary Dangermouse eyes in tunnels. I've clearly misunderstood "Pythia" to mean "half-lady-half-python" which it didn't at all. It just meant "priestess". Still it gave me a chance to draw more snakes. And here are more: the giant cobra that apparently guards the Golden Fleece, facing Jason in his Speedos over on the right...

 And one of the heads of the magic deity Hecate up in the centre, whom I have also given hairy legs, knee windows and a nighty. On the bottom left is Medea, single-handedly taking on the bronze giant Talos. Not Jason at all. I'd forgotten this, but Natalie mentions it in the Shambles so I'm happy to see this was also the version I was taught. And fuck it, here's a slime monster.

 Now a plug: On Friday I'll be one of seventy-two actors reading The Odyssey aloud in its entirety on the Jermyn Street Theatre's live stream here. I'll be on around 4pm, I think (after Mark Corrigan's mum!) telling of Odysseus' conversations with ghosts in Hades, including the ghost of Agamemnon who sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia and was in turn murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. "She has poured down shame on her own head," Agamemnon moans, "and on all other women, even good ones." The italics are mine, but I'll be the one reading it so they're staying. Natalie also talks about Agamemnon. She says her next book will be a novel about Medusa. I can't wait.

A Chair Is a Movable Raised L-Shape For Supporting Your Bum and Back. What?

From Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe. This and youtube and Carl Sagan and Natalie Haynes are how I know history. And books.

 Hot on the heels of Carl Sagan's take-down of Plato, Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics has a wonderful episode on Western Philosphy's first poet, inventor of Atlantis, founder of an Academy that lasted nine-hundred years, and preserver of the Socratic dialogues, here just for balance. Being less familiar with the Socratic dialogues than the show's contributors I have maybe a happier and certainly a more ignorant take on the old guy's hair-splitting. "That's just like your opinion, man" can be a valid contribution I think. Socrates doesn't seem like a nihilist to me, more like Lebowski. And I was never attracted to "Fatso"'s idea of abstract perfection, but listening to this I realise how priviliged that makes me: When the talk turned to advertising I immediately thought, no that's not right, there's no Platonic subtext in advertising, ads aren't selling an idea of perfection, if anything - like politics - they're selling us an identity. But then I suddenly remembered the perfect Mitchell and Webb sketch below (I think written by Joel Morris and Jason Hazeley) and recalled that advertising treats men very differently to women.

 Men are spared the Platonic ideal. There's toxic masulinity and machismo, sure, but there are so many other options too. We still get to be the default. The fact a priviliged layabout like me can find Platonism - the idea that reality's just an imperfect imitation  - so alien a concept perhaps gives ammunition to Sagan's argument that it was always an inherently oppression-friendly philosophy. And I adore Edith Hall's theory it all came from Plato just being very short-sighted.