Having written at length about why I'm not persuaded that a strike is a good idea when it comes to university pay disputes, I've just learned that Goldsmiths, and maybe a couple of other places, are diverting the money that would have been paid to striking staff to the student hardship fund.
Now that's the sort of thing that might win me over. Staff would still lose out in the short term - that's part of the nature of a strike - but students would get some kind of benefit that'd begin to offset any inconvenience; and employers wouldn't be rewarded for making staff angry. (Not all inconvenienced students would benefit, but some would; and a benefit to the student body in abstracto doesn't mean that every student in concreto would have to feel it. That's probably all that matters.)
If I hear from my employer that there's a comparable scheme at our place, then I think I'd be persuaded. I'd still probably work, but that's because I've got nothing better to do with my time; but I'd be much more likely to register as being on strike.
25.5.16
To Strike or Not To Strike?
Officially, the UCU is on strike today; the headline is that the dispute comes down to being about pay. According to the UCU website, the real value of academic salaries has fallen 14.5% since 2009; the latest pay offer is 1.1%. I'm not sure how the 14.5% figure is calculated, but I'll take the Union at its word. (I don't doubt that Universities UK would dispute the figure; but even if it's mistaken, there's no reason to suppose that the UCU is speaking in bad faith.)
To be honest, when it comes to pay levels, I'm personally not all that fussed. Larger pay rises are nicer than small ones, but academics at my level are not poorly paid by any stretch of the imagination. But it's not about what I get personally. What's much more worrying is the dual trend of the demands placed on us in return for that pay, and the casualisation of HE. Everyone I know works evenings and weekends; I've had five days' annual leave in the past two years, and I worked during that; I'm not taking any holiday this year. The idea that one might take a couple of days away from the keyboard to read and get to grips with a new book, or longer to get up to speed with a new but important topic or sub-field on work time is risible, even though doing so would obviously contribute to teaching and research. There's no time or incentive to step back and look at how courses work and how the might be done differently. If you're casual, you can flit between sessional gigs for years - and increasing numbers are casual. Pay at my end of the scale may not be bad in absolute terms; but if you're starting out, it can be awful. It isn't always; but it can be.
In many ways, the UK system is beginning to look like the US system, with all the grotesqueness that that entails... except that here (with a very few exceptions), we don't have the Prince-Bishop professoriate. Senior academics are in pretty much the same boat as a newly-appointed junior lecturer.
We do have our Prince-Bishops, though: Vice-Chancellors' pay has gone up by quite a bit more than academics' - in one case, by about 25%. (Falmouth has a university. Who knew?) The Wolverhampton VC's pay went up by 19.6%, apparently as a reward for exceptional leadership - whatever that may mean - and reflecting the "size, complexity and performance of [the] university" - as though academic staff have nothing to do with that performance. On that basis, the hypocrisy of the 1.1% offer is stunning.
To be honest, when it comes to pay levels, I'm personally not all that fussed. Larger pay rises are nicer than small ones, but academics at my level are not poorly paid by any stretch of the imagination. But it's not about what I get personally. What's much more worrying is the dual trend of the demands placed on us in return for that pay, and the casualisation of HE. Everyone I know works evenings and weekends; I've had five days' annual leave in the past two years, and I worked during that; I'm not taking any holiday this year. The idea that one might take a couple of days away from the keyboard to read and get to grips with a new book, or longer to get up to speed with a new but important topic or sub-field on work time is risible, even though doing so would obviously contribute to teaching and research. There's no time or incentive to step back and look at how courses work and how the might be done differently. If you're casual, you can flit between sessional gigs for years - and increasing numbers are casual. Pay at my end of the scale may not be bad in absolute terms; but if you're starting out, it can be awful. It isn't always; but it can be.
In many ways, the UK system is beginning to look like the US system, with all the grotesqueness that that entails... except that here (with a very few exceptions), we don't have the Prince-Bishop professoriate. Senior academics are in pretty much the same boat as a newly-appointed junior lecturer.
We do have our Prince-Bishops, though: Vice-Chancellors' pay has gone up by quite a bit more than academics' - in one case, by about 25%. (Falmouth has a university. Who knew?) The Wolverhampton VC's pay went up by 19.6%, apparently as a reward for exceptional leadership - whatever that may mean - and reflecting the "size, complexity and performance of [the] university" - as though academic staff have nothing to do with that performance. On that basis, the hypocrisy of the 1.1% offer is stunning.
3.5.16
Repeating a Success is Still Repetition
Review: Nerissimo
Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld (Specula)
.....
"Hope."
One shouldn't read anything much into the lyrics to pop songs. All the same, it sounds like it's asking for trouble for people who'd been waiting expectantly for this followup to 2013's Still Smiling. They - oh, all right: we - would have had no small amount of hope invested in the project; Still Smiling is a great album, and between that and this, Bargeld had overseen a brilliant return to form for Einstürzende Neubauten, in the form of Lament. So there was every reason to be hopeful. Yet, one can be too hopeful; as the lyric suggests, there might be times when hope ought to be kept in check. Hope might be the kind of thing upon which we oughtn't to get too dependent.
After all, getting the Lament project together, and then touring it alongside a sarcastically-titled "Greatest Hits" set could easily have meant simply that there wasn't really time to get the new album to succeed as well as it might. Faced with that kind of pressure of work, it's equally possible that a person would fall back on tried-and-tested formulae rather than doing anything all that new; and any innovations attempted, by the same token, may not have the fullest realisation. On reflection, it's this more downbeat assessment that is the more appropriate when evaluating Nerissimo.
Bargeld has been happily ripping off his own back catalogue for almost as long as he's had one to rip off. Hence we shouldn't really be surprised to find that it's not only the last Teardo and Bargeld collaboration that is pillaged/ revisited (delete as appropriate), but Bargeld's contributions to the other bands with which he's been associated. The lyrics to the titular opening track hark back to "Sabrina", the opening track of Neubauten's Silence is Sexy; "Ich Bin Dabei" has - alongside another hint of "What If?" - a clear echo of the Bad Seeds' "Stranger than Kindness". He's even gone so far as to include what is pretty much the same song on two albums in the past: "The Garden" is more or less the same track that appeared three years earlier as "Salamandrina". The pattern, of course, is itself copied from musicians through the ages: there's any number of composers from the classical tradition who quote themselves (and others) freely. Yet it's one thing to be expected to churn out yet another Mass or cantata for an Esterhazy on a weekly basis - I'm guessing here, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover that a significant portion of what we take to be the musical canon either started out as hack-work, or informed hack-work shortly after its composition - but it's quite another to approach album-making in that way; the context is very different. Not the least of the differences is that the album is released on Teardo's own Specula label, so there should have been no pressure on that front. Hence it is perhaps pushing things a little to include two versions of the title track - once in English, and once in Italian - to top and tail what is anyway only a nine-track album. It's one thing to want to return to a theme or idea to work it out as fully as possible; but I'm not sure that there's really that much of a new angle being taken here. For what it's worth, the Italian version is preferable, but that's because I don't speak Italian; Italophones may prefer the English.
In passing, there's the odd moment when Bargeld's voice seems to be feeling the strain - "The Empty Boat" really could have done with another take.
Lest this sound like an attack on the album, it's really not meant to be. Is the album any good? Yes: it certainly is - with the possible exception of "Ulgae", which... um... well, you know that Simpsons Tree-House of Horror episode in which creates a whole civilisation in a petri-dish? Yeah. Let's leave it at that. But if you ignore that, and the double inclusion of the title track, you're left with a long EP as much as a short album. A good one, for sure, but - well, is it enough, and good enough?
The nagging suspicion is that if Nerissimo is a good album, that's because Still Smiling is a very good album, and Teardo and Bargeld have taken some of its component parts, spray-painted them, and released them again. Control your hope.
Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld (Specula)
.....
"Hope."
That single word constitutes the first refrain of "DBX 2", the second track on Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld's second full album, Nerissimo. The second time we hear the refrain, it's changed. "Hope," it now goes, "Should be/ A controlled substance".
After all, getting the Lament project together, and then touring it alongside a sarcastically-titled "Greatest Hits" set could easily have meant simply that there wasn't really time to get the new album to succeed as well as it might. Faced with that kind of pressure of work, it's equally possible that a person would fall back on tried-and-tested formulae rather than doing anything all that new; and any innovations attempted, by the same token, may not have the fullest realisation. On reflection, it's this more downbeat assessment that is the more appropriate when evaluating Nerissimo.
The basic problem is that, although there are elements that build on the last album - there's a use of steel guitars gives the album an almost country-rock undertone ("Animelle" having hints of REM's "Airportman", for example) - the bulk of the record is rather derivative. Much of it relies on extensive recycling of material heard on Still Smiling: "The Beast" clearly fits the same mould as "Buntmetalldiebe"; "DBX 2" is a close cousin of "What If?".
Bargeld has been happily ripping off his own back catalogue for almost as long as he's had one to rip off. Hence we shouldn't really be surprised to find that it's not only the last Teardo and Bargeld collaboration that is pillaged/ revisited (delete as appropriate), but Bargeld's contributions to the other bands with which he's been associated. The lyrics to the titular opening track hark back to "Sabrina", the opening track of Neubauten's Silence is Sexy; "Ich Bin Dabei" has - alongside another hint of "What If?" - a clear echo of the Bad Seeds' "Stranger than Kindness". He's even gone so far as to include what is pretty much the same song on two albums in the past: "The Garden" is more or less the same track that appeared three years earlier as "Salamandrina". The pattern, of course, is itself copied from musicians through the ages: there's any number of composers from the classical tradition who quote themselves (and others) freely. Yet it's one thing to be expected to churn out yet another Mass or cantata for an Esterhazy on a weekly basis - I'm guessing here, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover that a significant portion of what we take to be the musical canon either started out as hack-work, or informed hack-work shortly after its composition - but it's quite another to approach album-making in that way; the context is very different. Not the least of the differences is that the album is released on Teardo's own Specula label, so there should have been no pressure on that front. Hence it is perhaps pushing things a little to include two versions of the title track - once in English, and once in Italian - to top and tail what is anyway only a nine-track album. It's one thing to want to return to a theme or idea to work it out as fully as possible; but I'm not sure that there's really that much of a new angle being taken here. For what it's worth, the Italian version is preferable, but that's because I don't speak Italian; Italophones may prefer the English.
In passing, there's the odd moment when Bargeld's voice seems to be feeling the strain - "The Empty Boat" really could have done with another take.
Lest this sound like an attack on the album, it's really not meant to be. Is the album any good? Yes: it certainly is - with the possible exception of "Ulgae", which... um... well, you know that Simpsons Tree-House of Horror episode in which creates a whole civilisation in a petri-dish? Yeah. Let's leave it at that. But if you ignore that, and the double inclusion of the title track, you're left with a long EP as much as a short album. A good one, for sure, but - well, is it enough, and good enough?
The nagging suspicion is that if Nerissimo is a good album, that's because Still Smiling is a very good album, and Teardo and Bargeld have taken some of its component parts, spray-painted them, and released them again. Control your hope.
2.5.16
The Slow Death of Printed Newspapers, and why it's a Problem.
There was a piece in The Guardian the other day about switching from print to digital newspapers... and then back again. It's rather Proustian and elegaic in its tone: Stephen Curry writes that, having bought a paper copy of his newspaper,
I think he misses something, though, which occurred to me as I was reading his article (online, natch). What you don't get with digital newspapers is serendipity. It's easy to search for things that you want to read; but that means that you're less likely to read things that you didn't want to read but were glad you read - things, I susppose, that you didn't know you wanted to read.
You don't have as much control with the dead-tree press. That's a good thing. The alternative is that one is much more likely only ever to read things that confirm one's view, or that are "relevant" to one's life; one stays in one's own information bubble. (This, incidentally, also provides a defence of the library and the bookshop, both for leisure and academic purposes: giving students the URL of a paper will take them directly to it, and so reduce the chance that they'll look at the table of contents of different editions of a journal and read something out of sheer interest; providing a scanned chapter from a book, or typing a search into Amazon, saves everyone from reading the book that's on the shelf next to it - and so condemns them to not reading it by the same token.)
So when Curry says that, with the newsprint version of a paper, "you have more command of the content as the eye ranges," I think he's wrong - and I think that it's good that he's wrong. (Or, even if he's correct, I reject the value he imputes to that control.) In leafing through an actual paper, you eye can be caught by an interesting headline, or picture; you take in half a sentence and follow it up, and sometimes you learn something about the world that you wouldn't have learned otherwise. It's not impossible to browse an electronic version - but it's harder. And in having to work for it, you lose the serendipity that is the whole point.
One of the things that I miss with the decline of the Indy, which I only ever bought on a Saturday, was reading the book reviews over a slow breakfast on a Sunday. I've added any number of titles to my wishlist on the basis of that that I would never before have considered, or even encountered, otherwise. And you can put a hot plate of oatcakes on a newspaper without having to worry about the damage that might be done to it by molten cheese, too.
What goes for book reviews goes, pari passu, for the parts of a newspaper that are probably quite a lot more important than books. Of course, exposure to things that one would not otherwise have read is imperfect even with an actual newspaper, since the editor does preselect them for you - in choosing the Indy over, say, The Times or the Express, I narrowed my focus a little - but, still.
I am not the first person to worry that internet searches may only tell us what we want to hear. But it'd not occurred to me that the printed press might be at least part of the solution to that problem. An imperfect one, to be sure, since one chooses one's newspaper according to one's tastes; but a part of it.
If the printed press is in decline, we shouldn't mourn it (just) for Curry's essentially sentimental reasons. We should be concerned in other ways, too.
I sat at the kitchen table with the paper spread out and immersed myself. The pleasures are simple and deep and have yet to be reproduced on any screen that I have used. Browsing is easier and feels more natural than with a… browser. Despite the ease of search that computerised versions offer, you have more command of the content as the eye ranges across a double-page spread, skimming the headlines and noting those stories that you will return to read in full. And you know where you are with a paper newpaper. By which I mean you know where you are in the story and how far you have to go. I was relieved to escape the seemingly endless scolling that disorients digital reading.
There was also pleasure in the physicality of the interaction. I had not lost the skill of whipping the wide bundle of sheets to initiate a fold, or the knack of pulling out creases and shaping the page to frame the article selected for attention. And those muscle memories brought to mind other recollections – an instant reconnection with a childhood in Ballymena that bears the imprint of newsprint. My father, a dentist in the town, picked up the Irish Times and the Guardian on his walk to work, to peruse in his lunch break and bring home at the end of the day. In the evening the Belfast Telegraph would thud onto the mat at the front door.Told you it was elegaic, didn't I?
I think he misses something, though, which occurred to me as I was reading his article (online, natch). What you don't get with digital newspapers is serendipity. It's easy to search for things that you want to read; but that means that you're less likely to read things that you didn't want to read but were glad you read - things, I susppose, that you didn't know you wanted to read.
You don't have as much control with the dead-tree press. That's a good thing. The alternative is that one is much more likely only ever to read things that confirm one's view, or that are "relevant" to one's life; one stays in one's own information bubble. (This, incidentally, also provides a defence of the library and the bookshop, both for leisure and academic purposes: giving students the URL of a paper will take them directly to it, and so reduce the chance that they'll look at the table of contents of different editions of a journal and read something out of sheer interest; providing a scanned chapter from a book, or typing a search into Amazon, saves everyone from reading the book that's on the shelf next to it - and so condemns them to not reading it by the same token.)
So when Curry says that, with the newsprint version of a paper, "you have more command of the content as the eye ranges," I think he's wrong - and I think that it's good that he's wrong. (Or, even if he's correct, I reject the value he imputes to that control.) In leafing through an actual paper, you eye can be caught by an interesting headline, or picture; you take in half a sentence and follow it up, and sometimes you learn something about the world that you wouldn't have learned otherwise. It's not impossible to browse an electronic version - but it's harder. And in having to work for it, you lose the serendipity that is the whole point.
One of the things that I miss with the decline of the Indy, which I only ever bought on a Saturday, was reading the book reviews over a slow breakfast on a Sunday. I've added any number of titles to my wishlist on the basis of that that I would never before have considered, or even encountered, otherwise. And you can put a hot plate of oatcakes on a newspaper without having to worry about the damage that might be done to it by molten cheese, too.
What goes for book reviews goes, pari passu, for the parts of a newspaper that are probably quite a lot more important than books. Of course, exposure to things that one would not otherwise have read is imperfect even with an actual newspaper, since the editor does preselect them for you - in choosing the Indy over, say, The Times or the Express, I narrowed my focus a little - but, still.
I am not the first person to worry that internet searches may only tell us what we want to hear. But it'd not occurred to me that the printed press might be at least part of the solution to that problem. An imperfect one, to be sure, since one chooses one's newspaper according to one's tastes; but a part of it.
If the printed press is in decline, we shouldn't mourn it (just) for Curry's essentially sentimental reasons. We should be concerned in other ways, too.
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