TraceyMeagher.com

I’m a late comer to Richard Hawley (of Pulp fame.) Six albums and I’ve only just discovered him. On the bright side though, it seems that I’ve discovered him just at his peak and having listened to his latest album “Truelove’s Gutter” many times now (too many Anthony might say!) I have fallen in love with his beautifully poetic lyrics and hypnotic melodies! “Open Up Your Door” which features on his latest album was used recently in a Häagen-Dazs ad, and I imagine helped many, including me, discover Hawley’s great talent.

Hawley has an amazing capacity to take the mundane and turn it into a beautifully poetic sentiment. The simplicity of the opening song “As the Dawn Breaks” sets the mood for the rest of the album. The song depicts such a private moment, the witnessing of dawn over a cityscape, romanticised by the early morning songbird, it is almost begs us to partake in the intimacy. No, there are no bells and whistles with this album, though there is a saw and a glass harmonica! The odd choice of instruments and the non-intrusive orchestrations create a haunting and almost hypnotic simplicity. Without meaning to trivialise these gorgeous compositions, think meditative whale music … Hawley’s music takes you to the quietest part of your inner self and making the journey is more than worthwhile.

That’s why this album needs to be listened to … not just as a backdrop when you’re tidying out the filing cabinet … but given the attention it requires to work it’s magic on you.  Sit back, close your eyes and enjoy!

Share on Facebook

How many times do you hear down the pub “If I was running this country I’d ….  blah blah blah!”.  Eveybody in Ireland seems to think they could do things better than the politicians , which is a justifiable feeling given our current state of affairs! Well, at last the people of Ireland are being given the opportunity to make a difference with an intiative called Your Country Your Call.

The idea, the brainchild of Martin McAleese (that’s right, Mary’s husband) is to come up with something so radical that when implemented it could create jobs and prosperity for Ireland. After all the recession doom and gloom over the past year, Mr McAleese is hoping for something that will really boost the mood of the nation.

I love the idea. When do people ever really get a chance to make a big change. I’ve already got two ideas in and before the competition closes at the end of April,  I hope to have a few more.

There’s no denying it is difficult to come up with a plan that creates jobs and prosperity for the nation (hundreds of politicans and civil servants have yet to do it!) and some of the ideas submitted are completely off the wall. One proposal suggests creating a Lough Ree monster because once people hear of this mythical creature (validated with a confirmed sighting by a politician or other respectable member of the public!) they would flock to the area and boost tourism there. What???

There are, however, plenty of other worthy ideas and some of the less imaginative, ‘expected’ ideas, such as making the unemployed work for their payment.  I’m really excited to see what comes out of this. I doubt that my ideas are radical enough to win the competition but I am certain the winning idea will be something to get very excited about!

With a prize of €100,000 there has been no shortage of entries. It stand at over 3200 as I write this so if you haven’t already entered, feed your brain some thinking juice (a coffee?), get out your pen and paper and make your call for your country.

Share on Facebook

What is it with women and Mr Darcy? He’s rude, arrogant and anti-social. Not the kind of thing most girls look for in a guy, right? In fact,  if he came up to you in a club, you’d probably hit him with your handbag, then stamp on his foot before pouring your drink over him … and yet he is one of literatures most enduring fictional romantic icons, capturing the hearts of women from 1812 right up untill now.

He hardly seem ‘relevant’ to us modern ladies, and yet he has survived the centuries, having had many incarnations since his debut on the pages of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice!  You remember Rhett Butler,  what about Mr Big or even James Bond?  Yes, they all have that something that makes them irresitable to women (and I’m talking more than money here!) while at the same time being less than perfect.

So what is it that makes Mr. Darcy so attractive? Surely, it doesn’t come down to the high collars and cod pieces?

I have my own theories and here are just a few of them.

1) The Fariytale Never Gets Real

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”

Pride and Prejudice ends with the promise of marriage but we never get to see Mr Darcy five or ten years into marriage. And probably just as well, because I’m sure if we did, he wouldn’t be so alluring. Part of what we love about Fitzwilliam Darcy is the adoration he has, at first secretly and then openly, for Elizabeth. Ending the novel as she does, Austen leaves us with a Mr Darcy suspended in a perpetual state of adoration for Elizabeth. So, we love our Mr Darcy because we want him to adore us.  A pretty selfish reason, I know!

2)  We want to Save Him From His Emotional Pain

We love him too, because we want to be that special woman who has the power to deliver him from his angst. There’s no doubt, Mr Darcy is a man who is shy and struggles with it, his stand-offishness being a ruse because he is  scared  to reveal the more vulnerable part of himself.  There’s the promise for us of something softer beneath that hard austere exterior that makes him very hard to resist. We want to be the woman who can win the battle over his conscience. We want to be bigger than his principals, so desirable that he would sacrifice all he believes in for us. Now that would make us very special indeed! Still being selfish!

3 ) He is A Good Old Fashioned Man

Dare I say it, but we love Mr Darcy because he is a good old fashioned man! For us romantics the age of chivalry is not quite dead and gone.  Mr Darcy is rich and successful! He is fabuously good looking (yes, I’m thinking of you Colin), morally upright and would likely make a devoted husband, since his principles, at the very least, would dictate it.  Money, looks and devotion … the perfect package!

At the end of the day, what makes Mr Darcy so desirable isn’t necessarily his gentlemanly-ness.  It is his battle with his self-expectations and the norms of his social class. This coupled with the intense shyness that he struggles with as he tries to recognise this new feeling of love for Lizzie endears him to us;  as he gradually opens himself up her, we see the great changing love of an already great man, and that makes him adorable.   Mr Darcy is the perfect romantic hero.

If you’re still not getting what all the fuss is about …..

And if you are wondering hy Mr Darcy is so befuddled in this scene …

Do not remove your waistcoat, Mr Darcy!

To be seen in shirtsleeves was considered positively indecent; a shirt, after all, was the man’s last undergarment. Poor Mr Darcy, he completely lost all composure on being discovered positively nude!

Share on Facebook

Man-love, bromance, male-lationship, whatever you like to call it, Denny and Alan have it going on.  Can you believe that the famous balcony scene  (where most of the serious man-loving goes on) wasn’t written into the original script for Boston Legal?  Rather, at the end of filming, somebody realised they hadn’t made use of the balcony part of the set and lo and behold, David E Kelley, wrote the first of the balcony scenes that have come to define the show.

They are not first TV male couple to have a bromance (I’m thinking Chandler and Joey!) but probably because of Kelley’s amazing writing and skillful character development, Denny and Alan do it best.  Why does it work and why is it so captivating? I imagine it’s because Denny and Alan represent the impossible, two people worlds apart  (one  a Democrat and the other a Republican) and on completely different moral planes (one  a hotshot lawyer for the money, the other in it to fight injustice) who despite their differences still come together at the end of the day to bear witness to each others lives.

These two guys shouldn’t ever get along, but they do so maybe it’s a case of opposites attract. I think it’s more complex than that. Despite those differences Denny and Alan have many similarites. Both are irreverent when it comes to authority and are self-assured  about their own greatness, which Denny shows by repeating his name regularly and Alan more subtely with a silent stare complete with chin in the air.  Both are skirt chasers, and the irreverence they show for authority also spills over into their attitudes to women, which probably explains why they can never manage to keep one … and here comes the clue to why their man-love works so well for them.

Strip away all the politics, the money, the misadventures with women and what’s left  is two people sharing their humanity.  It’s like, if you can accept me for all our differences, well then you deserve to know me and here I am on the balcony sharing myself with you. It’s a remarkable gift Denny and Alan give each other. Together they witness each others lives without judgement.

They have the perfect relationship, uncomplicated by sex.  In fact, their adventures with women are often short lived or unfulfilling. Their womanly liasons are akin to the extra marital affairs -condoned and encouraged by each other. At the end of the day they do the important stuff, they come together as perfect soul mates to laugh together, affirm each other, hug, dream and smoke cigars. Now, who wouldn’t want that?

Share on Facebook

Most of the men in Vettriano’s paintings look like characters who have walked straight out of the pages of an F.Scott Fitzgerald novel.  Any one of them could be Jay Gatsby or Dick Diver, with their impeccable suits and sleek combed back haircuts.

Being a huge fan of Fitzgerald and his flawed heroes,  it’s not surprising that Vettriano is a favourite artist of mine (not that I know too many. The other is Ed Gorey … so that should give you some insight into my range when it comes to artists!) I discovered Vettriano years back when the Sunday Times did a feature on him and not long after that Anthony bought me one of his books.

Vettriano is probably best known for The Singing Butler, a painting which sold for three quaters of a million pound back in 2004. I knew this painting as a print, long before I ever heard of Vettriano ( born Jack Hoggan bye the way, not quite as ‘arty’ is it !!!) While his beach and seaside paintings drum up a whole load of romaticism and nostalgia for the lost days when ladies and gents picnicked at the seaside, these aren’t my favourite at all!

His work has a far edgier side and when he is not painting the Vettriano beachscape, he is painting  almost fetishly, voyeuristic glimpses into very private worlds, inhabited by broken and fragile people. The characters in his paintings are usually couples (sometimes threesomes!), portrayed either as very tactile and/or romantically connected (often with suggestions that they shouldn’t be as in Words of Wisdom) or distant but sharing the same space while separated by an emotional tension, as in A Very Married Woman, below.

"A Very Married Woman" … and a very mixed up man!

Let's go back to my place … "Words Of Wisdom"? I don't think so!

Vettriano takes you into the kind of worlds that other painters typically don’t bother with where adulterers and prostitutes, dancers and mistresses, all struggle through live,  sharing that unspoken secret … that in private we know that life is what it is, when nobody else is watching there are no lies.  I think this is what Vettriano does best. He exposes the fabrications and pretensions and presents what often lies behind the lie of the normal, happy life;  adultery, desires, prostitution, desperation, fetishes. It’s all there in Vettriano’s work and that makes it all the more interesting.

He is a very contemporary and relevant artist despite the old time feel to his art.  The balance works brilliantly and I admire him for taking on subjects just not considered ‘worthy’ enough by many other, artists, who often remain snobby about their subject matter!

Here is a couple of my other Vettriano favourites …

What's got her all bombed out … Oh it's "The Letter"

Looks like Mr Anonymous just stepped into the … "Parlour Of Temptation"

Share on Facebook