WITH SO MANY LIGHT YEARS TO GO, AND THINGS TO BE FOUND [177]

On 30^th May 2016, I published the first article of “Leigh Spence is Dancing with the Gatekeepers,” and while I have largely kept to the “nostalgia culture crisis” theme, I have been impressed by ability to lurch from one subject to the next.

The plan has always been to plug the gaps in my own knowledge, report my findings, and improve my writing ability. I just wasn’t expecting culture wars, Brexit and Donald Trump to flare up at the same time – hell, David Cameron was still Prime Minister when this site began. If you have dropped in along the way, wondered where this was all going next, and took a second look, you have my thanks.

For the first time, I present the top ten most read articles from the first three years and 176 articles – it turns out one trademark of this site is my ability to lurch from one subject to the next!

1. THAT’S A BEAUTIFUL SPEECH, BUT NOBODY’S LISTENING [link] (published 21/09/2017)

As “Dada” is an art form that needed its own word to reject one way of seeing the world, I needed a word for when “alt-right” people call themselves “performance artists” – the random word turned out to be “jackanapes.”

2. JUST A DREAM AND THE WIND TO CARRY ME [link] (published 05/10/2017)

The story of the ocean liner SS America, later to take “Ten Pound Poms” to Canberra as the cruise ship Australis, and ultimately shipwrecked over Fuerteventura – more famous as a wreck than it could have hoped as a floating hotel.

3. NOR ANY DROP TO DRINK [link] (published 25/02/2018)

I received a free packet of water with a magazine - I later discovered micellar water works just like washing-up liquid. The French knew what they were doing all along.

4. WHAT THE WORLD WANTS TODAY IS THE REAL THING [link] (published 18/02/2018)

Coca-Cola once advertised itself with a woman in a beach suit, and the word “yes” – perhaps they should have put speech marks around it, like I just have.

5. I’VE GOT PAC-MAN FEVER [link] (published 25/06/2018)

My review of the Nintendo NES Classic Mini, having never owned or played the original - the Sega Master System was more popular in the UK than the NES.

6. TRUE BLUE, BABY I LOVE YOU [link] (published 26/03/2018)

With British passports to change from red to blue covers following Brexit, the contract to make them went to a French-Dutch company, causing the “Daily Mail” to implode with jingoistic bile. The paper has since found a new editor.

7. THERE’S A MAGICAL PLACE, WE’RE ON OUR WAY THERE [link] (published 02/04/2018)

The rise of the “dead mall,” when closing stores create nostalgia for the big, empty spaces left behind. It comes with vaporwave, its own electronic, alienating soundtrack.  

8. WHO SAYS A MISS WAS MADE TO KISS? [link] (published 21/11/2016)

I’ll just leave this here: “Donald Trump will be President of the United States from 20th January 2017, and the weight of that office demands respect. However, the holder of that office cannot afford to be given the benefit of the doubt, especially when Trump has never appeared to need it before. He will be given the opportunity to govern in the way he sees fit, but he will be under constant scrutiny, for every single decision, for every public utterance, for the rest of his life...”

9. I AIN’T GONNA STAND FOR IT [link] (published 05/08/2016)

“Ain’t” is a real word, appeared from two different places, and can be written down - Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell did not sing “There Is No Mountain High Enough.”

10. WATCH OUT, BEADLE’S ABOUT [link] (published 11/11/2016)

A portrait of Jeremy Beadle - fact collector, writer, broadcaster, concert promoter, charity fundraiser - through a series of “did you know” facts. I am sure he would have approved.

OH WHAT WILL I BE BELIEVING [58]

Logo #1

Firstly, a big thank you to you all for reading what has been quite a bewildering year’s worth of subjects. When I began “Dancing with the Gatekeepers,” on 30^th May 2016, my intention has always been to understand each subject that came to mind each week, and to learn something from it, confirming why the most popular articles so far range wildly from David Bowie to Donald Trump, from Quorn to the Futurist Cookbook, from big data to “legal names,” from George Orwell to word puzzles, and from the art of telling a joke to the history of the word “ain’t.”

If anyone has sought to find out more, or ask a question about something, or someone, having read my work here, then that is the best possible outcome – I only write because I am happy to admit I don’t have all the answers.

However, the first subject I featured, on how John Lennon’s flippant remark to a journalist’s question became, at the insistence of Yoko Ono, the inspired dream of a man on a flaming pie, telling Lennon to name his band, “The Beatles, with an ‘a.’” Once you know something is untrue, the persistent insistence that “ceci n’est pas une pipe” becomes a deranged fantasy. When it comes to cold facts, those that mean the world works on a base level, you should not the use joke in René Magritte’s painting “The Treachery of Images” as a way to live your life or, even worse, assert your point of view over those of others.

The two words of the last year have been “Brexit” and “Trump.” Even if I look back on this article in twenty, thirty, fifty years, I will not need any further explanation than that, and I don’t expect you may not either. I have tried not to advance a particular view about either of these – politically, I am in the centre, so if the world is substantively better for everyone after Brexit and Trump, then that is fine by me – but the one thing I should not have to be, if I did say anything about either subject, is afraid to say anything at all.

Freedom of speech is paramount in this world – all opinions should be able to be heard, then we can decide on their merit. I am not the type of person who tells people that the truth is being kept from them, or that they are blind to it, because I would need to have concrete evidence to prove that, unless I wanted to engage in conspiracy theory. When certain voices think they have been silenced, because one outlet decides they don’t want them there anymore, they should think whether that place has its own voices to protect, or whether they might have been in the wrong place to begin with. Every voice has its own place and, if requires, what it says can be tested, in a court of law.

I wrote a great number of notes for what I wanted to write about here, and quite a few of them could become their own discussion here in future weeks. It is a febrile time for thought about our own places in the world, having felt that everything has been turned upside down. However, I feel safe that things will work out better for everyone in the end, even if I don’t know why - that might just be me.

The dream that gave me the name “Dancing with the Gatekeepers” was my having recorded an album, rock and/or electronic in nature, in which one song led to my shouting “all you have are words” over and over again. Despite what others may choose to do with their words, they are all I have too.

Good luck, everyone.

I AIN’T GONNA STAND FOR IT [11]

For my own sake, I once had to check that “ain’t” was a proper word, thinking I discovered a blind spot in my ability to speak and write. I’m still not sure - even when typing that last sentence, Microsoft Word thought I wanted to say “isn’t,” “aren’t,” or “am not” instead.

“Ain’t” first appeared in the mid-eighteenth century as a development of “an’t,” itself a contraction of “am not,” or “is not,” with the original “amn’t,” having appeared in around 1610. It is a simple case of words blending over time, with “aren’t” also popping up in about 1675, before “ain’t” became an alternative for that word too. Like the verb “to be not,” “ain’t” can also mean “to have not,” but it took until the nineteenth century for “han’t” to become “an’t,” before the vowel was rounded out in different parts of the country.

Having asked around, there appears to be an active dislike of the “aaaaaiiiiiinnnnn’” sound of “ain’t,” with one person reacting like I had threatened to hit them. With the idea of a standard English dialect, devoid of regional differences, being spread by the introduction of regular radio broadcasts in the 1920s, perhaps the sounds of some words no longer fit how English was expected to sound.

Having a word that so easily replaces others also gives the impression it is too easy to use when speaking informally, leading to a generally accepted rule that “ain’t” ain’t to be written down. The website lexico.com advises “ain’t” is not to be used in a formal or written context precisely because “it does not form part of standard English” – well, punctuating sentences with swear words is not standard English, and I know what reaction I would get if I said that to someone.

However, as someone who used “knackered” in a secondary school writing exercise over twenty years ago, describing a particular kind of tiredness, only to see a red line put through it, and “tired?” written above it, “ain’t” can be shown to be the perfect choice of word, without resorting to dredging up examples of when Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope used it.

Taking lexico.com at their word, are song lyrics not an example of formal writing? Using lyrics as titles for my articles here meant that, this time around, I was spoilt for choice – instead of the Stevie Wonder song I chose for this article's title, I could have chosen “Ain’t Nobody,” “Ain’t That a Shame,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” or even “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother.” No-one would ever criticise these songs of sloppy diction, in an art form where choosing the right word is as crucial as hitting the right notes, as the single syllable of “ain’t” can be used to provide a powerful punch.

Following this reasoning, formal writing cannot deploy language in as strong a fashion as a song, due to the rules we insist on imposing. Daring to correct the chorus to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” will only dilute the impact of its carefully chosen words – or, if you like, it becomes knackered.