Vivienne’s Diary – December

I begin this month’s diary with a reply I promised to Dimitri who I met at a Chelsea Manning demonstration. He thinks we could do something together on the need for true culture.
Dimitri, you’ve just sent me this concept of an Empathy Museum, dreamed up by Roman Krznaric – I don’t think it’s got anything to do with culture but everything to do with popular culture = consumption:

• What happens inside?
•  Cheap thrill, major flood – “Together with a half dozen others, you will be placed in a sealed chamber and watch the waters gradually rise around you. There are options of constructing a quick-assembly boat from corrugated iron or clambering into a rubber dinghy which is too small to hold you all. Life jackets must be worn.”
• It has this hippie touchy-feely thing which nobody really likes – “Throughout the museum there are Conversation Booths where you can talk to other visitors about hope, friendship, love and curiosity…There are facilities for visitors and special guests to make an audio recording of their own empathic experiences which will become part of a publicly accessible archive.”
• Democratic nonsense – “Once a month a well-known expert in method acting, such as Daniel Day Lewis, will run workshops on their art” . Do you think an actor would spend a day doing this? You would have no more than 10 people and, even if they’d spent all day, nothing much would be achieved. Then they’d go home. A museum of daily visitors is not the place to do this.
• This could work, except I don’t think people would want to do this for two hours.  “Cut-Make-Trim: In this room there are twenty sewing machines and a team of former sweatshop factory workers from Viet Nam who will teach you how to make a shirt under the working conditions of your favourite fashion label. At the end you will be paid the average amount that a textile industry employee in a developing country receives per shirt. Unfortunately it will not be nearly enough for a cup of tea in the café and might leave you wondering about whether you should really buy cheap clothes from discount stores that have been produced by low – wage labour.”    No time to learn to make a shirt. Give the visitor a square of cloth and tell her to race at breakneck speed, sewing along every bit of space on the cloth. Then you can enforce the rules – no going to the toilet etc.  Health and safety – hope they don’t prick right through their finger. A new job for Vietnamese workers?

Dimitri – you’d better put some time in if you want to discover true culture.

1. Read again our definition of culture taken from Matthew Arnold.   You need to know the BEST which has ever been thought or said; therefore you must also explore the past. What Krznaric proposes indulges in SWEETNESS (See Sweetness & Light) and is unaware of LIGHT. You need both to find Culture.
2. Get down to the V&A. Go to see the Chinese Masterpieces. It could be the most important thing you’ll ever do.

Friday, 1 November: We do our publicity campaign with Juergen Teller. The idea is Leslie Winer. This is Leslie.  I knew her when young; she first came to Paris and immediately became a top model (We were hanging out at the “Bains Douches” the first night it opened). Andreas saw her now in Paris and was struck by her and the power of her beauty. She agrees to do it. Juergen is so excited. Wait and see.

Leslie is doing music. She knows what’s going on in the world. Political. She seems to have lived a hard life. She’s cool. She lives outside of Paris; she has five daughters.  This is a sample of Leslie’s text

 

Saturday, 2 November: Andreas flies to Vienna – coming back Wednesday, the 6^th. He will do interviews on the costumes he’s designed for the ballet interlude of the News Year’s concert of the Viennese Philharmonic, viewed by 50 million people and also check on how we’re doing to support the running of the new shop in Vienna.

Monday, 4 November: I am filmed taking a shower for the animal rights charity, PETA, the point being that it takes the equivalent of 50 baths full of water to produce just one steak. I am a vegetarian; I love it so much more than any other diet and we want to encourage others to embrace it.

Monday, 11 November: The new website, Climate Revolution, is up. It begins with the most important article I’ve ever written, “Who are our Rulers?”. They are the central banks – all private, including the Fed. It’s ridiculous how fragile the global financial pyramid scheme is. It’s all a question of when and how it will collapse.

Most of my days are, of course, taken up with preparing stuff for the website, with the Gold and Red Label collections.

Wednesday, 13 November: I meet my son, Joe. Joe has lived for many years within walking distance of the British Museum and goes often. We go to the museum to see “El Dorado”, an exhibition of golden treasure from the tribes of Peru living at the same time as the Incas. The name “El Dorado” = “The Gilded” and refers to a legendary rich king – or his kingdom abounding in gold. This idea might have come from the event where in one tribe they performed a ceremony each year in which the king was taken on a raft to the middle of a deep lake in the mountains and gold objects were thrown onto the lake as a sacrifice. No one has retrieved the objects. (Anyway, the Europeans found that there was very little gold to be got from such precious objects as they were gilded, not solid).

The larger objects such as crowns and masks and breast plaques were beautiful. The exhibition was so incredibly researched and resourced that the presentation was able to display the different methods, crafts and interests between the tribes. Also, it has collected from all the tribes examples of the same animals – so there were glass cases full of gold bats, frogs, snakes, fish, birds, crabs, spiders, most were 6” high or less; these and small spiritual/magical figures were powerfully intense. Jewellery! Methods of making the artifacts made it fascinating.

Afterwards, Joe and I walked through Soho and he took me to Andrew Edmunds club in Lexington Street. Andrew is a print expert, especially on Hogarth and his premises comprise a print shop, club and restaurant.

The interior is old which makes you feel comfortable. How nice to sit down with a soup and a glass of wine and sit and talk without distraction. We talk quite a bit about Climate Revolution. Joe is really good on strategy.

Thursday, 14 November: In the evening we go to the King’s Head in Dalston (since then, two or three times people have mentioned to me, do you know this club where there are all these stuffed animals – it seems to be the latest place to go). Picador books are introducing the books they will launch in late summer/autumn.

Ian Kelly is writing my biography. He gives a good speech and I think he will do a good job. He wants to be true to who I think I am.

Then I speak and, of course, I talk about fashion because the book has to be about fashion – but first, I crash right in telling everyone about “Who are our Rulers?” because it’s so important to get this fact of the fragile economy clear to everyone – and that we’re letting it (it’s a pyramid scheme that must collapse) destroy life through climate change.

I enjoyed listening to the other authors and one in particular could interest me but I have such a queue of books I want to read first.

Then we came to the end and Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate, read some of her poems. Read some of her poems from her coming book. We liked very much the one about English counties but it needs a little explanation, so the one we chose is about the person whose job it is to pollinate because there are no bees, “The Human Bee”. Carol Ann has a great voice; she’s one in a million who can connect things and put them into words.

Friday, 15 November: We are having a busy week. On the next night we go to the opening night of Barry Humphries’ farewell tour (We hope it’s not.)
I was once on the Dame Edna show and I wore a red button-up cardigan and a pair of flesh tights with an applique green mirror fig leaf at the crutch. Barry wasn’t quick enough. He told me after, if only you’d told me I could have checked my lipstick in the mirror – Whah!

The show was so original. I’ve never seen Les Patterson before and the characters who are part of his life – part of him. The main sketch was “Les Get Cookin’!” – a supposed pilot for TV – and with the help of four dancers, two men, two pin-up posing women – “The Condiments”. It took place on his back garden lawn and he was often rushing into the toilet with chronic diarrhoea then back to his hamburgers. Yet it was so astonishingly lewd (“it made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes”) and so fast that he got away with it. Andreas had a pain – he hardly stopped bending up and down, rocking with laughter; the same behind us where Siegfried and Roy, the lion tamers from Las Vegas sat – Roy, who had his face repaired after it was mauled by one of their lions – too impressed by the in your face daring of it all to laugh, just telling me and others how amazing it was. I didn’t know the audience but they were really dressed up well and looked like they came from all walks of life.

The first half ended with a man who was dead. Was it a relative of Les? I heard somebody say it was Les’ dead alter ego. Anyway, he sat on a sofa which was lifted into the night sky. He told the story of the happy home and sang, “Just Molly and me, and baby makes three, I’m happy in my blue heaven”. But baby was Junie who, soon after getting a tricycle for her her fifth birthday, died of “poliomyelitis” (I love the Australian accent); the tricycle rode riderless across the stage: the old people’s home, platitudes and unthinking racism, but all so poignant.

I can’t tell the second half. That was Dame Edna – I couldn’t do her justice and anyway, she works with the audience and it changes every time. Her confidence in her petty (non)talent and achievement is so monolithic it’s exhilarating. It tells us so much about what the spoilt little child inside us would like to be.

I ought to introduce her to John Pilger. When she tours Australia she might like to mention more the first Australians.

Saturday, 16 November: My friend, Fernando, invited Andreas and me to the Royal Ballet to see him dance Romeo and Juliet. He looks after us, he’s so generous and it can’t be easy for him to afford. I compensate by sending him our square t-shirts. He loves to practice in them. Champagne and sandwiches then supper in between acts; we imbibe the festive atmosphere of people coming together to celebrate the arts in this big beautiful space of glass architecture. It really is a grand occasion.
This is the greatest love story in the world and the most tragic. There is nothing greater than this music by Prokofiev. The phenomenal Rupert Pennefather was Romeo and a beautiful one. Fernando was one of his mates, Benvoglio. The opera are giving him the roles. We all believe in him.

Thursday, 21 November: Greenpeace pick me up at 7.30 am at my house along with iD, who are making a film about whatever it is we’re going to do – secret up until now. Cynthia and Laura, who does our press, come along too.
In the car John Sauven tells me we’re going to the Shell building at the Southbank to protest the arrest of the Arctic 30.
John is on the phone to someone called Rachel who I think is in the Russian court and to Nina, Frank Hewitson’s wife, trying to get a copy passport so Frank can ask for bail. I know Frank and he is one of the 30. John suddenly tells me “Frank is just before the court” The image comes at me. Emotion!
As we arrive the Greenpeace team are unloading 10 foot high wooden boxes covered with portrait photos of the 30 – from their van – they practise beforehand. They line up the boxes along the front of the Shell Building to create a display. The idea is to hand out leaflets to the Shell workers as they arrive. So they know the full implications of what their bosses are doing. The press are there and I do some interviews. I am chatting to Frank’s colleague when we get the news that Frank got bail. After 2 months with two Russian chain smoking prisoners. I say, “I don’t think he even had a book.” “Oh that’s alright, he can’t read,” his friend jokes.

It’s very interesting, it makes sense: the Shell security people don’t try to stop the demonstration. It would cause more publicity. It’s cold, Cynthia is blue. John says we should get a coffee as we have to wait. Meanwhile I answer some questions for the iD film. (Young people always want to know about punk. What was I fighting for then?)
John is on the phone, whatever we’re waiting for, it’s taking ages. Another ten minutes. He points through the window to a space in the short distance between where we are and the river. “Do you see that flag pole – we’ve been waiting for a security person to move out of the area. Emily is going to climb it to a point where we can fix our flag to the rope.” Now he tells me – I’m gonna hoist the flag!

We go over. Emily is smiling down at us. It’s taking more time, longer than we thought. She has to throw the rope, which is fastened to a belt at her waist, around the tree and catch it, and the bole of the flag pole is really fat so she keeps missing. But she gets the hang of it and hitches up high enough throw by throw and attaches our flag to the rope belonging to the flag pole. They get me a ladder, two men, hidden behind me let out the rope, the wind is too strong for one person (me) – I hoist the flag. Done!

That evening, Andreas and I went to listen to Bianca Jagger who was giving the “Longford Lecture”. Her subject was Violence to Women. She became aware of the unfair treatment of women when, as a child growing up in Nicaragua, she experienced the opprobrium meted out to her mother – a divorcee with three children. This gave her the courage to fight for justice.

Her speech was one fact after another, backed up by statistics. What a work it must have been for her to collect all this! The facts just ramped up; it was overwhelming. At the end you were in no doubt that violence to women is the biggest killer on earth.

Friday, 29 November: Andreas and I were invited by Julian Assange to the Ecuadorian embassy to see John Pilger’s latest documentary film about the Australian first nation people: “Utopia”

There were few of us including 3 of my heroes, lawyer Gareth Peirce whose work and latest book, “ Dispatches from the Dark Side” I have talked about before, (Gareth is a woman); Julian and John, both Australian. I really appreciate the impact on British society and the world some of these Australian personalities have had, Richard Neville in the 70’s (“Oz”, The little Red Schoolbook), Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Julian of course and John who worked as a war journalist in Vietnam and elsewhere, analysing the facts, documenting – film as well – witness to unbearable horror and mounting atrocity. He revealed the crimes of Pol Pot in Cambodia to the world. He has continued since the 70’s to bring world attention to the plight of the first nation people of Australia.

Andreas was impressed with John, his clarity and humanity – no ego. I’m glad Andreas came, we have been able to talk about the film at home.

The film is fair and very well done. John interviews white and aboriginal people who are trying to deal with the problem, the neglect and inhumanity, the absence of justice. To the minister who said he was proud of certain incentives (I don’t remember what they were supposed to be) John insisted how in all the long years he’d had the job, he could be proud when nothing, absolutely nothing had changed; not since John got involved in the 70’s (John includes some footage from this time) has anything improved. And this is the really shocking thing: What are we doing on this earth if we continue these abuses unabated? The first native people are a small percentage of the population, it would be possible to restore them their rights; on the other hand it’s easier to ignore them on the part of the general public.

John cites the fact that where he grew up in the paradise which is Botany Bay he spent his education never learning that this had been a major battle ground. The colonisers had fought thousands of indigenous people who lived there and killed them all – they had guns – it was their policy to kill them all.

The film begins with an official person, I think a politician who says he can tolerate the ones who fit in – not the others. When you see the conditions in which some of the people live- in extreme heat in the desert, in self-built shacks or concrete cells with an old toilet and a mattress, it must be hard for a baby who is born with nothing to fit into consumer society. But here you have it, the real problem that no-one can solve: the right of people to be different, have different values; not the values of our civilization whose ethic is leading to self-destruction.

This difference I think is what the white Australians are afraid of, why they ignore the problem.

Recently there was a press campaign against the first nation people falsely claiming that they were paedophiles. Why? – To prove that these people are different and therefore barbaric? – To harden people in preparation for future abuse?

Other ways to deal with difference: there is a gross disproportion of first nation people in jail and John cites examples of  complete lack of caring which has caused shocking deaths in custody and for which no-one has been prosecuted. And I mention one last fact which you won’t believe could happen today: mothers have their new babies snatched from them in the hospitals by government forces without explanation, never to see them again.

The film will be shown on ITV on Thursday 19th December 10.35pm and in Australia. The whole world needs to rise up to help the people of Australia to address the outrage against her first nation people. I think once we realise how important Australia is in the global financial scheme which will destroy us all –very important for America to have its bases there and important for the vast amount of minerals Australia has, then we will feel more connected to Australia and more responsible for the suffering we impose.

I told Julian about the article “Who are our Rulers?” from the Climate Revolution site. He wants a print out and also of the Diary. He said it’s more relaxing for him to have it in this form than reading on the computer. He said our real rulers are probably the secret services who are a law unto themselves though they serve the highest bidder.

Sunday, 1 December: Iris arrives for a week. Our resident pattern cutter, Barbara, has also become a real tour-de force. Both she and Iris were trained, both German – you can still get this training in Germany. Their capabilities would not be possible without this training. They really know tailoring.

Andreas is getting very excited by the Gold collection. He’s so happy with the fabrics – they’re so odd! Inflation is rocketing; the main fabrics for this collection were up to £20 a meter a couple of seasons ago, now they are from £20 – £50. Andreas saya he wants to make clothes that nobody can wear; meaning, I hope, that whoever does choose something will look beyond special.

Tuesday, 3 December: We bought a table to support “Reprieve”. It’s a quiz night. Jon Snow was there supporting. He’s a man who knows what’s going on in the world and does what he can. (He also presented Bianca at her lecture).  The questions were good last year but this time they were just popular trivia which I know nothing about; indeed the team who came second was Harper’s! Sarah Stockbridge (“such naff questions but I’m so competitive”) and my son, Ben, took it seriously.
However – it was in the Serpentine Gallery – there was an exhibition of puppets by Egyptian puppet master, Wael Shawky, and his film using puppets who were more riveting in the close ups, as they spoke, than people.

Friday, 6 December: Our Christmas party. Entertainment: Northern Lights Symphony Orchestra, Abigail Iverson, The Carnabys, Fernando Montano – Royal Ballet, Nadine Shah really all good. Nadine Shah is really good looking, masculine, powerful, sexy; good voice, own material. Fernando – very classy, a tango – and he’d combined two pieces of music; his own choreography fast and furious, riveting and ravishing. Amazing the stamina these dancers have.

Saturday, 7 – Wednesday, 11 December: Andreas and I to Italy. We stay with Rosita and Paola, our best friends who are our partners for production – and we work on Gold Label. I would never have been able to pin down the knitwear and communicate the ideas in time if I hadn’t gone. The knitwear is “unisex”, done for the men’s collection in mid-January and for the Gold Label which is end February.

It looks good on a woman – I like the look of wearing your dad’s or old man’s sweater. It’s a good trick because now from this base I can just add a few garments exclusive to women for the coming Gold.  It’s lovely to stay with our friends and Rosita’s mother who lives in the country nearby and cooks for us. She grows and makes everything herself. Foggy – flying and coming back took time.
After this, things slowed down and I’ve had time to see some of my friends.

I’ve been back to the Masterpieces of Chinese Painting three times. If you’re only going once – because it’s expensive – start at 10.00 am when, for an hour, it’s not so crowded. Take all day and take breaks. Be sure to read the accompanying texts.  I have been in bliss reading and looking at the catalogue. I am so interested in the scholar-officials, the literati. Every painting tells the story of the painter’s life.
Bertrand Russell’s book, “The Problem of China”, gives the background. For 4,000 years China was an empire until western depredations finally sabotaged it.
China – so unlike any other civilization! Respect for others and for learning was already embedded in the culture when Confucius (c 700 BC) edited the mythical annals of the Golden Age (supposed to be c 3,000 BC). They tell of the legendary emperor, Yao:

“He was reverential, intelligent, accomplished and thoughtful – naturally and without effort. He was sincerely courteous, and capable of all complaisance. The display of these qualities reached to the four extremities of the empire, and extended from earth to heaven. He was able able to make the able and virtuous distinguished, and thence proceeded to the love of the nine classes of of his kindred, who all became harmonious. He also regulated and polished the people of his domain, who all became brightly intelligent. Finally, he united and harmonized the myriad States of the empire; and lo! the black haired people were transformed. The result was universal concord.”

I find this incredible. I’ve never heard anything like it. Think of Homer’s “Iliad”, another mythical story written down at the same time – it’s mostly a catalogue of gory details of how heroes killed each other.

By the time of the Tang dynasty (c 600-900 AD), the scholars (literati) administered the country (I don’t know if this also happened much earlier as the Emperor’s did have academies for scholars).

The scholar painters were either administrators who painted in their spare time or they were professionals. What I love about them is that they lived by the Confucian ethic. They had pride in living an honourable life; this made them true to themselves, they lived up to their own standards. Painting was a means of telling the truth, it affirmed and reflected back to them their own value in living the best life possible to them. Often the subject was a personal metaphor representing individual circumstances. This is really clear when circumstances changed dramaticallyas when the Mongols overthrew the Song dynasty. The Mongol dynasty is named Yuan (1271-1368).

Zheng Sixiao was a man of exceptional literary talent and was on the way to high office; he was 32 when the dynasty fell. He refused an invitation to serve at the Yuan court and as a yimin (leftover subject) remained loyal to the fallen Song. He retired to a monastery.

He wrote many poems raging against Yuan rule. He collected these in an anthology called “History of the Heart”, which he sealed in an iron box and threw into a well at a temple. They were discovered 350 years later when the well ran dry.

He painted the orchid over and over again to express his bitter feelings – elegant and fluid, without roots (which show above ground in the orchid). When asked about this he replied, “The soil has been taken by the foreigners. Can you bear it?” He wrote in the poem accompanying the orchid in the exhibition: “I opened my nostrils before making the painting, And there, floating everywhere in the sky, is the antique fragrance undying.”

Wang Mian. “Fragrant Snow at Broken Bridge”, a painting of a plum branch which flowers in the snow. Together with the pines and the bamboo, the flowering plum was celebrated as one of the “Three Friends of Wintry Weather” – emblems of longevity, endurance and renewal. Under the Mongol rule the flowering plum had become a symbol of purity and endurance in adversity.

I have seen this branch so many times in real life on the trees on Clapham Common and I have sat in front of this painting before – I recognize it from the NY Metropolitan Museum. This is representation, it’s not life.

But: “Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real where the unreal’s real.” (The Story of the Stone)

This is my favourite painting from the exhibition. That’s not true – I love them all.

Wang Mian – poet, painter, scholar and would-be military tactician – was determined to fulfil his responsibilities as a man of talent despite the dangers of life under Mongol rule. He failed the civil service exam. But at the age of nearly 50 he journeyed to Beijing to seek patronage. Sensing that the dynasty was about to collapse, he returned south and stayed a recluse in the mountains planting plum trees and writing political treatises. After 11 years he offered his services to the future Ming leader who had laid siege to a certain city, but his plan for capturing it failed. He died soon after.

Gong Kai’s emaciated horse represents himself, now living as a yimin, once a state commissioner under the Song.

The scholars lived a secluded life, but because of the general respect for art and learning they were famous. They met other colleagues.

We watch the clouds and daub with our
brushes;
We drink wine and write poems.
The joyful feelings of this day
Will linger long after we have parted.

Ni Zan (1306-74)

The Chinese enjoy getting drunk. Some of them prefered to paint whilst drunk.

Until the 20th century progress was a concept unthought of by the Chinese, as it was to us at the time of Elizabeth I. The concept runs parallel with the emerging aggressive trade of the 17th century and locks in with the Industrial Revolution. What is progress then but the art of war and aggressive trade. And it brought climate change. I don’t want it either. I just hope the human race can survive. Growth is nothing to do with us – only for banks, business and governments. In my company, I want to grow less but still make beautiful clothes.
I’ve been worrying dreadfully about fracking. I did a graphic for CR.

Why is it the big fight for us here in England? The first and last fight! Not just because water is more precious than gas or it adds to atmospheric CO2 but because we have to stop the daily death-dealing, in denial, in your face undemocratic deeds of the government. I don’t think we’ll win. Why not? Says Andreas, Bianca is collating facts on health risks – it’s a killer – we had dinner with her the other night.

Because the normal press self-censors in the government’s interest and the government does nothing but lie, and they ignore public opinion when it turns against them (eg  Blair/Iraq war). But I’ve cheered up because I said to myself, even if you’re the only one fighting it, you have to fight. And I’m not the only one, there are millions who are against it. The battle begins in the new year.These are the stamps on my friend Frank’s latest letter. Father Christmas Forever. Frank crossed it out. He’s part of our national identity. Every country owns him – and it’s important to our rulers that we believe in him just as we believe the propaganda that the world will carry on as normal. Well, “normal” means death. Not only will Father Christmas die but our whole way of life.

Christmas Eve: I’m at home writing up this diary and I’m going to carry on right now with December.

I think it’s cool to write the diary after the events – the events are just as important to me now as the original experience, in fact it’s a bonus to live them again. And it’s in keeping with the CR website; our news doesn’t switch from one thing to another like the daily media. We hold onto our facts and our aims, selecting the most important and urgent matters.

A note on the Arctic 30: My guess is that Putin painted himself into a corner with the arrest of the Arctic 30. Whether they were convicted or freed on the charges that were brought against them it would have been bad. He had to free them – and quick because of the coming Winter Olympics. They are not Russian so you have more international pressure. Therefore, to cover up, he freed the Russian oil tycoon and the girls from Pussy Riot (Fucking brave, aren’t they just?) as well.