Two Boys

[Guest]

The Nico Muhly opera, 'Two Boys', which opens soon at the Colliseum has given rise to some interesting debates. One of these is to be seen here http://vimeo.com/24359442 and I thought some of you might be intersted in some of the issues raised.

Austin

[Flosshilde]

Charlotte Higgins' blog entry in the Guardian in 2009 is challenging -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/oct/20/nico-muhly-english-national-opera

[hackneyvi]

I see that ideas now have their own institute to shelter Shirley Dent, Simon Belt and Dr Tiffany Jenkins.

Is the plump man blowing off at the beginning ever going to stop introducing the subject, format and guests?

Has Will Self actually been beaten in the face with an electric fire?

I think when Self says that the supposed advantages are insignificant then he's saying that nothing's changed in which case it doesn't matter that the medium has. It's a pretty lame debating position he starts from and I don't believe he means a word of it. If he's really so illiterate in the 'net that these short-winded cliches are all he has to offer, he lacks the necessary information to comment on it; one stout quote from J G Ballard doesn't authorise this tepid stew of pap.

I suspect what he doesn't understand is the miraculous provision of knowledge, art and information for those with limited education and limited geographical or political access. The impact for the bulk of the world. He may dismiss the 'banalisation' of the world but that has come about, in part, by giving most of the world a voice. He may not, we may not wish to hear what the bulk of the world has to say but I don't find the bulk of the world is any more banal on the net than they are on the bus.

We turn our ears where our interest leads us. Self's own statements were a series of banal declarations, delivered in the unnatural speech of prose in a monotone by a blank faced man. I use the internet a good deal but I was able to concentrate long enough on his almost Tibetan drones but was still able to reject his litany with basic lucidity at the end.

His accusations of mindlessness from net usage were said of TV, rock and roll, radio, cinema and no doubt music halls before all of them. It's also almost burried us in an inescapable mindfullness of the rest of the world and made the rest of the world mindful of us. It's a marvel with vicious uses, like the atom and the plane.

[ardcarp]

OMG Because of this debate's being flagged up here, I've just watched the bloody lot and it's WAY past my bed-time.

I wholeheartedly disagree with

Self's own statements were a series of banal declarations, delivered in the unnatural speech of prose in a monotone by a blank faced man.

'The unnatural speech of prose'???? Did you expect him to spout iambic pentameter?

I thought Will Self spoke fluently and cogently ..with little reference to notes...and whilst I don't agree with all he says, he made some very valid points in a professional and often entertaining manner. Likewise, I thought Clare Fox argued from the opposite camp extremely well. They both made LeBrecht and Muhly look like rank amateurs in the art of debate.

[hackneyvi]

'The unnatural speech of prose' I meant, I suppose, read speech rather than spontaneous so that it aims for the force of the spontatneous outburst but sounds read, delivered, I thought. Such substance as it has, is a jumble of affected resentments more than an argument either of or for anything. A traditional Self-spout on automatic, he talks like a man pacing the house, working up an agitated letter to the council.

[ardcarp]

Phil

I think Self's style is to be a bit dead-pan, rather in the way comedian Jack Dee rarely smiles. Actually the points he made about the www all resonated with me...but I wouldn't go so far as to be without it. We wouldn't be having this chat for a start!

ardcarp

[Serial_Apologist]

Will Self's OK . The main division in the debate - which I enjoyed v much, thank you to the op - seemed to me to fluctuate between Clare's optimism re inborn capacities for distinguishing fantasy from reality and thus remaining untainted, and those of Will's heavily proscribed pre-net vintage being led unprepared into areas of transgressivity.

Advertising could be instanced as pre-net ideological programming, so we already have enough evidence of what can happen to "personal integrity" when peer group pressure is imposed on growing minds "non-virtually"; so what happens longterm to kids cooped up still has to roll. On Clare's rose-tinted differentiation of adult from child/adolescent, skimping over the sourcing of the latter into the former, I remain to be convinced, I think the jury will be out for some time.

S-A

[austin]

There are some interesting references in this article about the inlluence of Anglicanism on the music for the opera.

http://tinyurl.com/6egygav