Dance writing advice

March 17, 2018 Ben Yeoh

Public Domain, Martha Graham (Source: Public Resource Org)

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”

Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer, as said to Agnes De Mille (on her disappointment that Ohklahoma was so popular yet she considered flawed work).

Quoted by Zadie Smith as some of her best advise for writers. Her article on how dance can inform writing is here in the Guardian and also in her latest book of Essays.

Aphorisms, poetry, 95 Reminders by Rishi Dastidar

February 23, 2018 Ben Yeoh

An amazing unexpected gift of poetry. I'm not a critical reader. But, I feel I should respond. I put some weight on the line of thought suggesting art, poetry, performance is not complete without a viewer, reader, audience. And if that reader can respond, that’s all the better.

Aphorism | A pithy, instructive statement or truism, like a maxim or adage.

The word comes from the Greek aphorismos, meaning “to delimit” or “define.”

From what I read, The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, a series of proposals concerning the symptoms and diagnosis of disease and the art of healing, around 400 BC.

The first sentence of this work (see wiki Ars longa, vita brevis) or a full text here is:

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience deceptive, judgment difficult.

To highlight the nuances of translation, I put the Greek, Latin and some English below (from Wiki)

This was written around the time of The Tao, which is threaded with aphorism and literature through the ages has been full of it.

It hones in to poetry at certain times, for instance 16th century Japan and the haiku of Basho. I see many haiku as both poetry and aphorism.

Basho's Haigo painting with his calligraphy

An old pond Furu ike ya
A frog jumps in — kawazu tobikomu
the sound of water. mizu no oto

Or in my version

Ancient pond

A frog jump

plop-splash in the water

And so fast forward until today and it's still a heavily used form. Not only the terse maxims that spread like pollen on social media, but by writers from risk philosophers to poets still.

The mathematician risk philosopher I think of is Nassim Taleb (commencement speech here, a thought on Greek ethics here and climate change risk here) who wrote a book of aphorisms, riffing from Greek thought;

I digress back 50 years and note that Wittgenstein wrote a set of remarks, under the heading Aphorisms – to my mind showing the continued use of aphorism form for philosophers over the last 2000 over years.

Witt: " 11. Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a ruler, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screw.—The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.)

Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not presented to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy! "

Zipping forward again, I've read the work of Sarah Manguso. She calls her aphorisms, arguments in her work 300 Arguments. (cf Wittgenstein's remarks, James Richardson’s Vectors is “Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays.” Jenny Holzer uses the word “truisms.”) Manguso answers some questions with MIchelle King here.

It seems along with the notion of aphorism, it has many second meanings.

Coming to my gift, Rishi Dastidar has written 95 Reminders. These reminders are aphorisms and are rooted in Martin Luther (the original priest of Lutherans).

Rishi writes:

On 31st October 1517, Martin Luther, a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg in Germany, posted 95 theses on the door of All Saints Church. They were his arguments against what he viewed as corrupt practices in the Catholic church.

wiki source, By Martin Luther, Public Domain — wiki source, By Martin Luther, Public Domain

This act is now considered the start of the Protestant Reformation.

500 years on, the following reminders are offered in a similar spirit: indulgences to help you avoid sin — or not.

You can see his 95 Reminders here,

https://medium.com/@betarish/95-reminders-be2d9fd2ae91

but I have to admit the book is more beautiful to me.

The reminders are less opaque than Mancini on average but still full of wit.

The overall thread is coherent. It has limited caesura (cf Mancuso), some jaunty juxtaposition for wit but seldom competing ideas.

That on some level puts it into the sphere of Taleb. Mancuso and Taleb compound their aphorism arguments, Rishi is lighter than that but perhaps that brings his points across more cleanly and accessibly.

I’m not a full time reader of poetry or literary form. I do flit across many fields but it seems to me Rishi’s addition is worthy and a delightful read to me.

More thoughts:  My Financial Times opinion article on the importance of long-term questions to management teams and Environment, Social and Governance capital.

 How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man.      

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here. 

Farewell, Ursula K Le Guin.

January 28, 2018 Ben Yeoh

One of my favourite authors, Ursula K Le Guin passed away this week. Amongst many things, she showed me that you have good books and you have bad books, the “genre” of the book doesn’t really matter. So Le Guin is famous for Science Fiction and Fantasy, but mostly I simply treasure her wonderful books. I posted on her writing craft book here, and her on literature as a manual for life.

In her later life, she kept a blog (recent interviews here) which is still a treasure trove and much better than my blog. If only mine could be so rich over time. If you are a fan of cats, then you should read through her blog as though she didn’t write books in her last years, she wrote extensively about her cat. The Annals of Pard.

“As I see it, writing and the arts (and the sciences, and all learning) don’t play a role in ensuring our freedom; they are our freedom — the heart of it.” — UKL. 30 September 2017.

David Mitchell (of Reasons I Jump fame and father of an ASD child, and more famously a novelist) writes about his encounter with her and her influence.

I leave you with her reply to George Zebrowski, who asked her to blurb an anthology of science fiction that contained precisely no women:

"I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of the series, which not only contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. That would not be magnanimity, but foolishness. Gentlemen, I just don’t belong here."

And her “A Few Words to a Young Writer”

Socrates said, "The misuse of language induces evil in the soul." He wasn't talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

Zadie Smith. Questions and Answers.

January 22, 2018 Ben Yeoh

Zadie Smith’s essays are some of my favourite writings. She takes an idea and pursues it with thoughtful care.

On social Media: “My worry is narrower: myself, my family. I can’t stand the phones and don’t want them in my life in any form. They make me feel anxious, depressed, dead inside, unhinged etc. But I fully support anyone who finds them delightful and a profound asset to their existence! Different strokes for different folks.”

She attempts to never self-delude: “I’m not delusional – I don’t envision people casting their devices en masse into burning bins any time soon. (And I’m as addicted to my laptop as any user of an iPhone.) “

And offers no quick fixes:

“Do you have any secret techniques for overcoming self-doubt?
As you know, there isn’t really any solution to self-doubt. In the end, you just have to write and doubt simultaneously”

And gives insights in to how things practically are with no magical techniques or insights: Are creative writing MAs a waste of time for talentless saps, polish for the moderately talented or a way to invigorate the literary tradition?

None. In my class, we spend 14 weeks reading works of literature and philosophy, mostly by long-dead people, and then my students write essays about what they have read and then we discuss these books, trying to understand how each one works. In between times, a smaller group of students will show me the novel or stories they’re writing and in a series of meetings we discuss their work, try to edit it and improve it, just as my best editors do with me. I never imagine that I am, by doing this, either saving literature or destroying it. It’s just a group of people appreciating and analysing literature – and also hoping to write it.

This echoes with my experience of creative classes.

To me, she is rightly concerned about the local and narrow. Her family. Her friends. Her students.

But she is a writer. She engages with the world (she comes to writing through writing and reading).

On the one hand, she’s like to be known as herself in the way Don selling can. Rather than a voice of a black female writer.

But as I have often thought we hold multi personalities all at the same time:

“I’m a black person, also a woman, also a wife and mother, a Brit, a European – for the moment – a Londoner, a New Yorker, a writer, a feminist, a second-generation Jamaican, a member of the African diaspora, a Game of Thrones-er, an academic, a comedy-nerd, a theory-dork, a hip-hop-head and so on.

I am delighted to be all these things and everyone, no matter where they are from – if they really think about it – will find themselves with a similar plurality of communities. At different moments, you’ll feel the pull of certain commitments more strongly, especially if an aspect of your identity is particularly embattled.

But the whole debate can fall into a kind of trap. I know the argument: no one calls Don DeLillo the “white American author Don DeLillo”, so why should I put up with being called “the black British author Zadie Smith”? But by that logic, the rhetorical pressure falls on this idea of neutrality, as if to be white is not to possess a race or an identity – is simply to be “the author” – whereas to be black is precisely to have an identity. And then from there you are forced into the corner where you find yourself arguing that to be truly great, truly “the author”, you must have your blackness forgotten, you must aspire to people seeing “beyond” it, “past” it.

It’s a version of that backhanded compliment I sometimes heard as a child: “Honestly, you’re just my mate, I don’t even think about your colour. I’m colour blind!” I think you have to reverse the concept to see how strange it is: “Oh, Don, I don’t even think about you being white any more, I just love your books!” No, I don’t desire this supposed neutrality. I am all the things I am – and also an author. It’s all inseparable, as Don and his whiteness are inseparable.”

What song lyric best describes you?

“And I just blame everything on you/ At least you know that’s what I’m good at” – Kanye West

Read more in the Guardian article here. I found the answers sometimes illuminating and pretty entertaining.

Read my earlier post on Zadie’s writing tips here plus some video of her in conversation.

Read more tips here - top writing style tips - some thoughts from Ursula K Le Guin - and some tips from Philip Pullman.

Or Ta -Nehisi Coates on the Black American experience.

How to live a life, well lived. Bernie De Koven.

December 20, 2017 Ben Yeoh

Bernie (Blue) De Koven is a fun theorist. A shaman of fun and play (Wired Interview). He is also terminally ill. Through supporting a game of legacy, I asked him these questions:

“How do you live, a life well lived?

If you would do life differently - what would you do?

What would you tell your 40-year-old self?

If these are the better days of an early nation, what should I do?”

To understand Bernie’s life’s work, read the start of the introduction to his book: A Playful Path (free ebook available here) his website on his life work and collection of games.

"When you are playful, when you are feeling, being playful, you are walking a playful path. When you are having fun, when you are graceful, when you are in harmony with your self in the world, when you feel alive, when you are delighted and delightful, surprised and surprising, loving, caring; you are dancing on a playful path. When you are playing, when you are at play, in play, when you are fully playing, when you are playing playfully, you are creating a playful path.

When you stop playing, stop being playful, when you become inflexible, unresponsive, insensitive, humorless, fearful, frenzied, you are on some other path entirely.

For adults, following a playful path is a practice, something you put into practice, and then practice some more. When you were a kid, it wasn’t a practice. It was what you did, always. You had to be reminded not to be playful. And you were. O, yes, you were. But now that you have become what you, as a kid, called “an adult,” you find that play is something you have to remind your self to do, playful something you have to allow your self to be.

And once you again take up that playful path you knew so well, you discover that it’s different, you’re different. You can play much more deeply than you could before. You are stronger, you understand more, you have more power, better toys. You discover that you, as a playful being, can choose a different way of being. A way of being as large as life. A way of being you, infinitely.”

You can listen to Tassos Stevens and Bernie discuss my questions here.

You can read more about the Game of Legacy (kickstarter here). And see a piece of it here: http://www.alegacyofplay.net/

You can see the questions on the site here.

The very short answers would be:

A life well lived...

It’s a life that brings joy to the person who is living it and to those who are living it with her

Believe in the truth as you discover it - let go of the truth that no longer serves you

Celebrate while you can - prepare while you can’t

Be inspired at what lands at you - follow that as far as it goes…

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude or investor Ray Dalio on on Principles.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.

Never a wrong time to do the right thing. Free Speech.

December 16, 2017 Ben Yeoh

There is never a wrong time to do the right thing. If you think you’ve made the wrong decision, but you are very much in the public eye then reversing it can be a hard thing to do. The Royal Court led by Vicky Featherstone have reversed such a decision. Regardless of one's own opinion, listening and responding is a mark of a considered leadership and should be congratulated.

“Written when Andrea Dunbar was just eighteen, Rita, Sue and Bob Too was presented as part of the Young Writers Festival 1982, in a double bill with Bows and Arrows by Lenka Janiurek. The play caused a sensation with its frank look at teenage sexuality and became notorious for its opening scene where two schoolgirl babysitters take it in turns to have sex with their employer in the back of his car. In 1986, the play was adapted into a film of the same name, and attracted a cult following.”

The RC at first thought it was too difficult to stage the play at the RC putting more weight on keeping the RC a safe space and the conflictual overtones of having a director (accused of multiple harassment incidents) previously involved with the production.

Yet the RC puts the writer’s voice at the heart of its work. Not directors not actors. So, as writers might say, silencing a working class female voice because of who the original director was, would be untrue to the RC mission.

A wider ranging examination of the difficulties of separating art from artist is looked at here by Claire Dederer in The Paris Review. Can we look at Ezra Pound’s work as separate from his poetry or even harder can we take out what we know of Woody Allen from his masterwork that is Manhattan as discussed in the article.

“....They did or said something awful, and made something great. The awful thing disrupts the great work; we can’t watch or listen to or read the great work without remembering the awful thing. Flooded with knowledge of the maker’s monstrousness, we turn away, overcome by disgust. Or … we don’t. We continue watching, separating or trying to separate the artist from the art. Either way: disruption. They are monster geniuses, and I don’t know what to do about them….Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, William Burroughs, Richard Wagner, Sid Vicious, V. S. Naipaul, John Galliano, Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound, Caravaggio, Floyd Mayweather, though if we start listing athletes we’ll never stop….”

Those of a libertarian angle or fierce defenders of speech freedom will mostly conclude that primacy of voice and freedom of speech comes first and anything else would be censorship and censorship is mostly or even always unwelcome.

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude or investor Ray Dalio on on Principles.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.

Testimony. Charles Reznikoff.

November 22, 2017 Ben Yeoh

Charles Reznikoff created two unique works of poetic art of the 20th century. To my mind, these works are amongst the greatest by an American poet, yet he is hardly known.

Perhaps, this should be unsurprising. Most are unable to name the greatest living British (female) playwright, and very few can name an artistic director of a theatre, who is a also a person of colour.

Increasing this awareness of Reznikoff’s work by a drop, I highlight this biographical essay from the Poetry Foundation by Milton Hindus.

Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, Robert Creely were admirers, as were George Oppen and Louis Zukofsky.

Perhaps like JH Prynne in England, he is a poet’s poet.

I’ve read Testimony: The United States, 1885-1890: Recitative.

And Holocaust, both once and have dipped in and out since. I can not say they are easy works. Both are unique in American literature.

“Drawing on actual US legal records between the years 1885 and 1915 (Reznikoff read “thousands” of such cases), the poem dispassionately, in a minimum of words, generally with all names and hence personality and individuality removed, records accident, injustice, disaster: Reznikoff’s great concern for man’s inhumanity to man, and for sheer ill-fortune, makes Testimony both a painful book to read and at the same time a profoundly moving assertion of human worth, dignity, nobility, and promise.” (Hindus)

This editing to its essential bones, the closing and the finding of the gaps between hits a deep and true level of poetry.

This has cousin work in what I have been writing on found art (see Tony Matelli post), found sound and verbatim theatre.

The extract is notable that there is a poetic thread on the lives of black Americans running throughout the work. This makes the work the most significant on the black American experience by a white (modernist) poet – I do not know of another white poet to portray black America of that time in this un-adorned poetic fashion.

With the exception of Holocaust, it has no parallel in American writing.

Reznikoff distils, concentrates and crafts the essence of holocaust survivor testimonies into Holocaust. He used the Nuremberg Trials and the Eichmann Trial as source material.

There is no opinion. There is no observed outcry. The voices speak for themselves.

He self-published much of his work or had small print runs. Unassuming, self-deprecating - it seems - his is a poetry which has passed us by. Eliot Weinberger writes:

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.

Interested in some more found art, I have some thoughts on watching Dickie Beau and his found sound. The found sound of drag fabulist Dickie Beau.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.

Annie Proulx acceptance speech

November 19, 2017 Ben Yeoh

Annie Proulx (wiki here, Brokeback Mountain author) 2017 acceptance speech for lifetime achievement (Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters). I like this from it

"The happy ending still beckons, and it is in hope of grasping it that we go on." Full speech below. The video below is her take on the publishing industry from a 2014 speech.

This 2016 Telegraph article is also insightful reading:

"Proulx doesn’t like to talk about her personal life, and sharply deflects enquiries about her three marriages and four children. When I ask how long she has lived by herself, however, she responds enthusiastically. ‘Like many older women, I have discovered the absolute luxury of living alone, and being master of one’s time – important if you are a writer.

'Freed from the tyranny of table and closet, there is time to observe and think. If one longs for company, there are friends and relatives. Nothing and no one could persuade me to give up voluntary solitude.’"

....

"‘Curiosity is what drives me,’ she says. ‘I am interested in everything, and all the people I know and like have fierce passions for places and things. I never thought it was peculiar or abnormal to be this way when I was younger, but I’ve learnt differently. Most people are remarkably incurious.’"

...

I agree. I wish this for my children. S. has an idiosyncratic curiosity - sometimes narrow, but often quizzical, and I'd love for him to keep it as a strength not a weakness. Same for O. I wsh they could teach curiosity, empathy and creativity more at school; and rote learning, less or even not at all.

...

Although this award is for lifetime achievement, I didn’t start writing until I was 58, so if you’ve been thinking about it and putting it off, well…

[ ]

We don’t live in the best of all possible worlds. This is a Kafkaesque time. The television sparkles with images of despicable political louts and sexual harassment reports. We cannot look away from the pictures of furious elements, hurricanes and fires, from the repetitive crowd murders by gunmen burning with rage. We are made more anxious by flickering threats of nuclear war. We observe social media’s manipulation of a credulous population, a population dividing into bitter tribal cultures. We are living through a massive shift from representative democracy to something called viral direct democracy, now cascading over us in a garbage-laden tsunami of raw data. Everything is situational, seesawing between gut-response “likes” or vicious confrontations. For some this is a heady time of brilliant technological innovation that is bringing us into an exciting new world. For others it is the opening of a savagely difficult book without a happy ending.

To me the most distressing circumstance of the new order is the accelerating destruction of the natural world and the dreadful belief that only the human species has the inalienable right to life and God-given permission to take anything it wants from nature, whether mountaintops, wetlands or oil. The ferocious business of stripping the earth of its flora and fauna, of drowning the land in pesticides again may have brought us to a place where no technology can save us. I personally have found an amelioration in becoming involved in citizen science projects. This is something everyone can do. Every state has marvelous projects of all kinds, from working with fish, with plants, with landscapes, with shore erosions, with water situations.

Yet somehow the old discredited values and longings persist. We still have tender feelings for such outmoded notions as truth, respect for others, personal honor, justice, equitable sharing. We still hope for a happy ending. We still believe that we can save ourselves and our damaged earth—an indescribably difficult task as we discover that the web of life is far more mysteriously complex than we thought and subtly entangled with factors that we cannot even recognize. But we keep on trying, because there’s nothing else to do.

The happy ending still beckons, and it is in hope of grasping it that we go on. The poet Wisława Szymborska caught the writer’s dilemma of choosing between hard realities and the longing for the happy ending. She called it “consolation.” Darwin: They say he read novels to relax, but only certain kinds—nothing that ended unhappily. If he happened on something like that, enraged, he flung the book into the fire. True or not, I’m ready to believe it. Scanning in his mind so many times and places, he’s had enough with dying species, the triumphs of the strong over the weak, the endless struggle to survive, all doomed sooner or later. He’d earned the right to happy ending, at least in fiction, with its micro-scales.

Hence the indispensable silver lining, the lovers reunited, the families reconciled, the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded, fortunes regained, treasures uncovered, stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways, good names restored, greed daunted, old maids married off to worthy parsons, troublemakers banished to other hemispheres, forgers of documents tossed down the stairs, seducers scurried to the altar, orphans sheltered, widows comforted, pride humbled, wounds healed, prodigal sons summoned home, cups of sorrow tossed into the ocean, hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation, general merriment and celebration, and the dog Fido, gone astray in the first chapter, turns up barking gladly in the last. Thank you.

Check out Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude and JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.

Tony Matelli, Marlborough Contemporary Art London

November 16, 2017 Ben Yeoh

Tony Matelli showing at London Marlborough Contemporary Art Gallery, 6 Albemarle Street
London W1S 4BY, until Dec 16, 2017.

Several impulses strike when looking at Tony Matelli's work. To touch - to wonder what the work is made from - does the food smell ? - are the statues found ?

I'm interested in found work across mediums. The found sound of drag fabulist Dickie Beau. The found verbatim theatre of My Name is Rachel Corrie and Alecky Blythe (an aside, even my own Lost in Peru which is also probably my worse review ever (so far, hah! Alienation and poetic naval gazing, but at least pushing the boundaries of form and style!) but it did find me love). The found poetry or heightened poetry of the likes of Charles Reznikoff.

What transforms an object found into something more? How can it reveal a deeper truth? Does it need to?

Place and performance transform.

As does juxtaposition or enjambment.

A sandwich. In this case almost literally except the food is painted bronze.

Work like this will often produce a superficial response. How hard is it to place a urinal on a plinth? (Duchamp’s famous found art icon / practical joke) Much of where art today provokes such a response. That may be your truth.

I like to judge art differently. Intentionality. History. Thought. The viewer all wraps up in this.

I'm not studied in art. I've read a little. John Berger and Susan Sonntag. The interviews of Francis Bacon. But I reach across several mediums of expression.

So to me. I see this. I immediately recall Di Chirico's Uncertainty of a Poet. (Artist says not influenced by).

There is an absurdity. The impermanent made permanent. The fragile cast into bronze. The real and hyper real being not what you see.

The permanent being found. Made and remade. The old made a new. Sandwiched and juxtaposed.

When I think of Di Chirico I always recall Wendy Cope. And her beautiful funny absurd word play of a poem of the same title (see left)

This takes me to the theatre of the absurd. And where life or found art or #realnews over #fakenews seems more strange and bizarre than the strange and bizarre.

And so here, I am. A playwright of no recent plays. An investor attempting sustainability in a world dominated by short term profit. A multiple parallel identity - husband, son, father being an obvious initial three -

Looking at a banana which is not a banana on an old statue that is not old found in a place where it is not found and as the absurd builds on the absurd - that’s part of the human condition as expressed in art.

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.

Interested in some more found art, I have some thoughts on watching Dickie Beau and his found sound. The found sound of drag fabulist Dickie Beau.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.

Clinton. Blair. Transcript on Diana's Death.

November 12, 2017 Ben Yeoh

On hearing about Princess Diana’s death. President = Bill Clinton. Prime Minister = Tony Blair. September 1, 1997, 11:29 -11:54 am (US ET) Confidential words redacted. Papers can be seen from Clinton Foundation here. Clinton is calling from Martha's Vineyard.

The President: Tony?

Prime Minister Blair: Hi, Bill. It's a grim business, a very grim business.

The President: It's awful, it's really awful. We're up here on Martha's Vineyard vacationing, and we're with a lot of people who knew her.

Prime Minister Blair: We saw her again just weeks ago when we hosted her for lunch with Prince William, he's a great kid. ~

The President: Yeah, I worry a lot about those kids now.

Prime Minister Blair: She was such a rock of stability in the sense she connected them with the outside world. The eldest boy, William, is quite like her in a way, he is very "feet on the ground," he does things kids his age do.

The President: Well, I just feel so bad for her. She was just basically getting a hold of her life. ~

Prime Minister Blair: Thanks for your telegram yesterday and your kind words. The problem was the way she lived, in a press frenzy. It's impossible to contemplate how intrusive it was, into every single aspect of her life. The last time I spoke with her, she said that were it not for the boys, she'd be off the board. The country is stunned.

The President: They liked her a lot, didn't they. ~

Prime Minister Blair: She was not the royal family but she was liked by ordinary people, it gave her problems with the royal establishment.

The President: Well, I know it's a difficult time for you. just wanted to let you know I was thinking of you.

Blair: I will personally miss her, it's like star falling. She was a star for them.

The President: What do they know? Is the British security guard who was with her still alive?

Prime Minister Blair: Yes, he is. And he may be able to offer some more information. There has been some talk this afternoon. They went to the hotel and thought they would be left alone. The Embassy and the French government did not know they were there. The media turned up, they decided to go to dinner then on to one of al-Fayed's houses. When they got to their car, it did not start. They called someone from the hotel and the hotel provided a car and driver. Apparently he'd been drinking.

President: That's what I was afraid of. Those guys were chasing them?

Prime Minister Blair: Jumped on them as they left the hotel, yet I can't believe some of the reports of how fast they were going though. It's just not possible they were going 100 mph I mean, I know Paris. They wouldn't have to be going that fast in those tunnels, though. They must have hit a rim in the road and turned over and smashed into a wall.

The President: It's a sad thing, I tell you. ~

Prime Minister Blair: Yes, someone we knew and liked. She had a remarkable gift. She was beginning to get her life together.

The President: Yes, Hillary had a nice visit with her a few weeks ago when she was here. We liked her a lot. ... anything you can do for I just think those boys, I don't know how ...in a situation like this, about the challenges they will face. ~

Prime Minister Blair: I'll try to keep in touch and have them over.

The President: What about her sisters? What are they like?[ Redacted]

Hillary and I just wanted to tell you all we were thinking of you.

Prime Minister Blair: Your words yesterday were greatly appreciated. Thank you. So you are on holiday now?

The President: I'm having a good holiday. It's the longest vacation we have had in ten years. We're getting ready to send Chelsea: off to university.

Prime Minister Blair: Are you looking forward to that?

The President: She is, but that's all part of it, it's what you raise them for...

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude or investor Ray Dalio on on Principles.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.