"Hello, Goodbye".
What a great Beatles song. And while of course, like any self-respecting pop tune worth its mettle, it's about a romantic relationship, in a nutshell, its title encapsulates our lives.
That's two "its" and one "it's" in one sentence, and I got them all right - it's not rocket science! There you are. If others disagree, they're entitled to their own opinion, but no more. Couldn't resist.
Hello, Goodbye. You arrive somewhere, you depart eventually, and in-between, you live adventures. Realising any self-respecting adventure of course by definition can't be organised.
"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans." (John Lennon)
Or in other words, equally immortal:
"Relax, said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can check out anytime you like
But you can never leave."
Eagles, "Hotel California", Hotel California (1977)
And then, every ten years, we get to say "hello" to a new decade and bid "goodbye" to another one completed.
Well, actually, it's appropriate first to say "goodbye", as I do think we owe it to ourselves to reflect on those ten by-gone years, not least because they also made up a substantial part of our own microcosmic lives - and the older I am the more significant it becomes.
So no "ghosting". I am a historian after all.
And speaking of which: This eponymous novel is a great read, published in 2010, especially if you're into all things Carpathian.
But I digress. In the field of saying "goodbye", we have of course known for a while there are "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover" (Paul Simon, 1975). But how do you move on from a whole decade that may, along with other things, for many of you have well included more than one romantic relationship?
Just for myself, I have decided I will attempt here a thoughtful (yet humorous) farewell to these past ten years, selecting some highlights (and lowlights) that stand out to me, very subjectively. If you're up for it, I hope you will find my musings interesting, relevant, and - ideally - even entertaining. If at the end you are moved to embarking on your own personal reflections along similar lines, I will consider my effort a success.
So here's my farewell to the ten years gone by. A Look Back In Anger? You decide for yourselves.
I saw a very interesting movie about half way through this past decade - Arrival (2016). Directed by Denis Villeneuve, it stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker. It won an Oscar in February 2017 for Best Achievement in Sound Editing. It was also nominated for Best Motion Picture of the Year, losing to Moonlight.
Do you still remember that incredibly embarrassing moment when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were handed the wrong envelopes and pronounced La La Land as Best Picture instead? Not a great day for PricewaterhouseCoopers, nor for the two ageing stars who were given the honor of presenting the winner in this most important of all categories in celebration of the 50th anniversary of their own great film, Bonnie and Clyde.
"Envelopegate" must have been a truly remarkable screw-up of memorable dimensions if we still recall it years later. And as if there wasn't enough other stuff that happened over those now elapsed ten years.
Another winner:
During a state visit by the leader of China to India in September 2014, a poor news reader at the state-run TV station Doordashan News referred to the guest as "President Eleven Jinping", mistaking Mr. Xi's name for the Roman numerals XI.
The unfortunate presenter was instantly removed from the panel of newsreaders. A commentator with more sense of humour than her bosses quipped: "Fired? She deserves her own show!" And we do hope she has meanwhile gone on to a successful career in comedy.
Coming briefly back to The Oscars, I'm rooting this year for The Irishman, regardless of who won the Golden Globes. Declaration of interest: Ever since their first film together, Director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert de Niro have accompanied me through the decades of my adult movie-going life. It was of course Taxi Driver (1976). Unbelievably, it didn't win a single Oscar, while nominated for four. Go figure. Best picture voted instead that year: Rocky. - And how about not nominating Robert de Niro for Best Lead Actor this year?
And my third winner is.... a very recent public gaffe.
On 7 September 2019, France hosted Albania (flag right) at the Stade de France in a qualifier for the 2020 European Championships. As the two teams lined up before the game for the national anthems, the visiting players, officials, and supporters were surprised, and definitely not amused, to hear a catchy piece of music altogether alien to them - the loudspeakers were blasting out the anthem of Andorra (flag left). After a few minutes of embarrassing confusion, the right tune was eventually played, but to add insult to injury, the well-meaning stadium announcer introduced it with an apology "to the Armenian fans" and asked everybody to respect "the national anthem of Armenia".
Quelle catastrophe!
So, having meandered as I will, Arrival tells the story of twelve extraterrestrial spacecraft landing simultaneously in different locations around the globe and how a linguistics professor (Ms Adams) is tasked with interpreting the language of the visitors, thereby facilitating communication with them. Watch it - well worth one hour and 56 minutes of your time.
One of my key mantras is this: Communication is not what you send out. Communication is what is received.
And while I have never even (so far) had to try talking to aliens, I have indeed had to interact professionally with individuals who might just as well have been from a different galaxy.
Plus, of course, I have been married for a very long time...
Exasperated wife to stonewalling husband: "But I told you!" Stonewalling husband to exasperated wife: "Well, maybe you did, but that's not what I understood."
Communication is not what you send out. Communication is what is received.
Both verbal and physical. The latter element is much underestimated, by the way, as psychologists will tell you. In fact, I recently found in a study that the content of spoken messages makes up only 7% of their impact. 38% depend on voice and speaking technique, while a whopping 55% are derived from body language. Other researchers may arrive at other numbers, but they all confirm the same principle: Posture, mimics, and gestures speak far more than words.
Do you remember this picture from July 2017? The gentlemen on the right were trying to display plucky English "bloody mindedness": I say, Chaps, we've got this! What people took away was the image of three woefully unprepared fools who had no idea where to start, who they were dealing with, and what was about to hit them.
The body language, front right...
The delegation leader, at the center, has long since "moved on", and I will let every reader form their personal assessment of the eventual outcome of this particular mission.
Perception is Reality.
Which now obliges me to present two more body language nominations, thereby completing the winners' list in the second category I have created, The Top Three Most Unfortunate Postures Displayed In Public During The Past Decade (By Somebody Who Should Know Better). Please do play along and make your own selection.
Number Two: This unfortunate incident happened on 15 October 2015. At the time Mayor of London, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson who prefers to go by his second Christian name, bulldozed an eleven-year-old Japanese kid during an impromptu rugby game at a school on what was probably intended as a goodwill visit.
What does the picture tell us? Let me give you my own take in a nutshell:
Mr Johnson views life a game, he feels entitled to make up his own rules that do not include the concept of fair play, and you stand in the way of his naked, boundless ambition at your own peril.
And here is my Number Three, in no particular order or ranking:
The fawning way the current Resident at The White House looks at this pathetic, corrupt, murderous dictator from the side makes you wonder about pretty much everything, all the more so as we rest of the world know the current POTUS is consistently being led up the garden path by this unsavoury character. It's bromance, we are told by apologists.
A few days ago, Trump sent his happy birthday wishes to Kim Yong Un on 10 January. For he's a jolly good fellow? Bromance!
To me this one picture from 20 June 2019 sums up Number 45 and why he must leave the office asap. The Leader of the Free World?
Which unofficial title, looking back on the "Teens" of the 21st Century (and then some), brings me to another gesture that encapsulates the person involved:
Angela Merkel has been German Chancellor for more than fourteen years, having acceded to the office on 22 November 2005. In her tenure, she has dealt with, in a random order, French Presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande, and Emmanuel Macron; British Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson; Italian Prime Ministers Silvio Berlusconi, Romano Prodi, Silvio Berlusconi again, Mario Monti, Enrico Letta, Matteo Renzi, Paolo Gentiloni, and Giuseppe Conte; U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump; Russian Presidents Vladimir Putin, Dmitrij Medvedev, and again Vladimir Putin; and China's Presidents Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping.She must have done something right to be voted in democratically four times, and this now world-famous gesture of hers sums up Angela Merkel for me: thoughtful, deliberate, and unassuming. Oh, and did I mention she holds a PhD in Physics. The kind of person you want to be in charge, especially when the wheels go off in so many other parts of the world as they have over the past ten years or so.
While a lot of commentators declare Dr. Merkel in the twilight of her career (she has announced she will not run again in the next elections scheduled for September 2021, making her a "lame duck" in the eyes of many), rest assured she will be sorely missed. And I have a hunch she may take on another, this time international role after leaving the Chancellory, perhaps in the context of Climate Change policy. But that's really just me musing - and wishing.
Finally coming back to Ms Adams' aliens, they arrive and ultimately depart - and the film is about the adventures in-between, mostly to do with communication or the lack thereof. No spoilers, in case you haven't seen it yet!
Statistically, in all likelihood we can safely assume they will have traveled widely across the Universe, been elsewhere, and found it as rewarding when they stayed for a while on other planets as they did on Earth.
In other words, we must consider them Citizens of the World.
This is just too cute not to include here, I hope you agree.
Within more modest, purely terrestrial confines of course, given the life I have been privileged to lead so far, I proudly consider myself a Citizen of the World too. And so are our three children, grown-ups now, and currently living in three different foreign countries they are "making their own" [sic!] - working hard, contributing to GDP, paying taxes, observing the laws of the land, making friends, and never once "jumping the queue at the NHS" [sic!]. And this quote is symbolic - none of them resides in the UK.
All of which I hope serves to explain why I took such personal offence, living in that country at the time, with what Theresa May infamously said in her widely publicised Conservative Party Conference speech over three years ago on 5 October 2016, feeding flesh to the hounds:
"If you believe you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what the very word 'citizenship' means."
A statement so asinine that for it she should really get a full screen picture... But no, that would be unfair to the next two luminaries I will shortly recognise.
Because, as you will no doubt have guessed, this unfortunate quote brings us elegantly to the last contest, the verbal content category, as it will to me always be in The Top Three Most Stupid Things Said In Public During The Past Decade (By Somebody Who Should Know Better).
Or maybe she really didn't or even still doesn't know, in which case I should maybe consider redefining the category by dropping the qualifier within brackets. But Top Three it still remains regardless, and that's quite a feat considering the myriad of competitors - maybe even more crowded a field than in the two previous competitions.
For clarification: The likes of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, enter Stage Right, are not in the running - whatever they say can't be taken at face value anyway. Likewise, don't bank on anything Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban, or Matteo Salvini will ever tell you. And the list goes on.
Our joint serious problem being that they seem to have been proliferating in the past ten years.
These then are the short-list legitimate candidates for the other two spots - digging deep, in chronological order, and in my humble opinion only:
"I'd like my life back."
BP CEO Tony "How not to say sorry" Hayward at the height of the Freshwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico
(1 June 2010)
"I don't want to be President in a country where you can't borrow money from friends."Christian Wulff, President of the Federal Republic of Germany when faced with allegations of corruption dating back to his prior tenure as Minister-President (Prime Minister) of Lower Saxony (4 January 2012)
In case you are now wondering whatever happened to Tony and Chris: Shortly after their unfortunate remarks, Hayward was fired and Wulff had to resign.
And Theresa May? She is the odd one out as her infamous remark did not in any way cause her downfall - to the contrary, it made her look much stronger than she was, for a while that is.
We all know how things nonetheless eventually went south for her, now safely filed away in the footnotes of History. Theresa Who? Maybe, as a parting gesture and to show I don't bear a grudge, I should have dedicated a full-screen picture to her after all....
You see, I do believe at least she meant well within her own limited world view, personality, and capabilities. Authentic you could call it. Which is much more than can be said about other politicians so much en vogue currently.
But let's not let her off the hook so quickly. After all, by endorsing and promoting that narrow nationalistic sentiment suddenly becoming so openly popular in (Little) England back then, ultimately, three long and hard years later, she ushered in her successor as the new Occupant to Number 10, Downing Street. The man who is not just the nemesis of innocent (foreign) eleven-year-old rugby playing boys, but also The True Champion of The English People if ever there was one.
Well, at least since the glorious days of World War Two of course. Have you noticed how he affects the Churchillian stoop in his posture? Consciously displayed body language at its best!
Like this hero of the day, any effective Populist manages to market that (false) Champion-of-the-People image to a sufficient number of voters to bring him into power: "I understand you. I feel with you. I am on your side. And on your behalf, I will rid you of all those that stand in your way and prevent you from fulfilling your true potential and getting your just deserves." The Oxford English Dictionary defines Populism as "a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups."
By the Experts, the Deep State, the Liberal Fake News, the European Union, the Remainers, the Enemies of the People.
And those grudges held by large sections of the electorate are deeply held, painfully felt, and built up over time. Populism appeals to "those whose experience of modernity was bound up with loss and hardship, and who proved to be open to a politics of nostalgia and score-settling. The point is to make America great again, and to take back control". (John Harris, The Guardian, 26 November 2019).
No doubt quite a lot of things must have gone wrong for quite a lot of people over quite a long time.
Many factors contribute to the current success of this type of politician. Not least, they hugely benefit from majoritarian election systems.
Think of it like how scoring is done in tennis.
You can win the majority of points played, but you may well still lose the match. As you can win the "popular vote" in an election, but still not end up in power.
Of course, as long as everyone accepts the scoring system, including you yourself having entered into the competition knowing the rules of the game, you are a sore loser if you whine about the majority of points or votes you won but still lost overall, as did Hillary Clinton in 2016. She wasn't a first by the way - in fact, in five presidential elections the winner of the popular vote did not end up in the White House.
Clinton had three million more votes than Trump. She also came within about 77,000 votes in three States - Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania - of prevailing in the Electorate College. If only she had just once set her foot in any of these States during the long presidential election campaign...
And in the 2019 elections in the UK, a mere 1.2% gain of the popular vote resulted in a landslide victory for the Conservatives while by a margin of more than one million, more British voters backed parties calling for a second referendum than supported those arguing for withdrawal without a confirmatory vote.
The fact simply is, however, that both the American and British electorate seem to be happy with their system and like the way tennis is scored. Game, set, and match!
And anyway, as the English would say: it's not cricket!
So much for the quotes remembered from ten years for all the wrong reasons. But ever the optimist, and realising I've become overly serious at this point, I will close on a positive note, as I did for the regrettable postures section.
So finally, here's one gem of a "bumper sticker" Joe Biden quip from the Presidential election campaign in 2012. When asked why Barack Obama should be returned to office, his Veep formulated the shortest, most concise, and therefore memorable election platform ever:
"Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive."
I love Biden and wish only he was younger. Still, I have a hunch he's the only one that can make Trump a one-term aberration. You see, voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania like him.
But then, what do I know.
After all: "It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."
One of my favourite quotes from long-ago decades, attributed to very different sources: to the Danish mathematician Niels Bohr and to Yogi Berra, that bottomless fount of American wisdom. Great minds think alike!
And now so much for the "goodbye" part you will be relieved to read at this point (assuming you still are reading of course).
Except for one afterthought: While technically the years between 2010 through 2019 were "The Teens" or "The Teenage Years", I don't really recall anyone much calling them that way. It's almost always "The 2010s" (that's right, no apostrophe). What does this tell us about them - if anything? Was that decade simply "Teenage Wasteland" (refrain from The Who, "Baba O'Riley", Who's Next, 1971)?
Discuss. Only half-seriously though.
So let us now greet "The Twenties". And each other on this threshold:
"It is fun to be in the same decade with you."
Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill (January 1942)
I don't know how you feel, but it definitely does have a ring to it, "The Twenties". Just that I find it hard to associate the term with the coming ten years of this century. Instead, I always think of the 1920s.
The Roaring Twenties. The Jazz Age. The Era of Excess.
"Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." Mae West (1893 - 1980)
And she knew what she was talking about. Her first success as an actress on Broadway was in the starring role of the play Sex in 1926 which she also wrote, directed, and produced. Ticket sales were strong, and after complaints from religious groups the theatre was raided by the police, with her and the cast arrested. The rest is History...Other equally delightful lines by Ms West:
"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
"Fasten your seat belt. It's going to be a bumpy night."
And my personal favourite (quote and drink):
"I have to get out of my wet clothes and into a dry Martini."
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956) - journalist, essayist, satirist, and someone else who knew what he was talking about - famously called the Martini "the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet". I rest my case.
While not having been around at the time to sample the spirit [sic!] of the age personally, from all I know it does seem that folks generally had a great time. Until it all of course ended with a big Crash, but that's another story...
Still, probably a good period to be alive. And "All That Jazz" playing out in spite of Prohibition kicking off on the first day of that decade. Or rather, as it turned out, probably because of it. Never in the field of human consumption was so much drunk by so many people in such a short period of time. It lasted until December 1933.
Well, one hundred years on, no such counter-productive spoilsport legislation standing in our way to inebriation. Humanity has evidently progressed.
Instead, we now rely on our own good sense, rigid self-restraint, and enlightened health consciousness. And when those are still not enough, having learned from failed Prohibition, other mechanisms and processes have been developed. Ever heard of "Nudging"?
But certainly not something to be further elaborated here and now, if only out of deeply held respect for Ms West and not to jinx our own coming Twenties!
There is one other silly custom, however, we should aim to jettison altogether in the course of the next ten years, our self-Prohibition.
You have guessed what I am referring to - that misguided impulse known to all of us, induced by bouts of bad conscience, occasional or habitual, making us commit to an altogether more wholesome lifestyle, unrealistically and against better knowledge. A ritual to be observed most frequently on that magical date, 1 January, but occurring on the other days throughout the year as well. Either way, these self-imposed regimes tend to have a short shelf life, doomed from the beginning.
Which begs the question, in the interest of a fun decade, why go through the motions in the first place. Right?!
I spent the New Year holidays in what its residents call "Upper Left, USA" - Washington State, with an add-on visit to Portland, Oregon. And I do encourage you to take Amtrak from Seattle to go there!
Viewed from the other 49 States, it is probably the most "liberal", in the American sense of the term, place in the Union (sorry, Californians). The locals celebrate this reputation by espousing the patriotic slogan, "Keep Portland Weird" - as good a USP as you will find. Unrelated, a very useful note to visitors: The State does not levy any Sales Tax. Nothing weird about this in my view. So shop 'til you drop!
Even more importantly, this is the home of craft beer brewing, and on many street corners in this altogether delightful town you will find a small brewery and its adjoined outlet. In addition to their delicious tastes, these beers tend to have very imaginative, often humorous names. A couple of days into the new year I sampled one that I liked especially.
It was called "Abandoned Resolutions". A man of my word, I had more than one and made sure to get a promising head start to the new decade.
What a great way to say "hello" to our Twenties!
"Blogging is akin to taking dope. The more I blog, the more I like it."
In memoriam Harold Burson (1921 - 2020)
