Postscript to yesterday’s thoughts on Julian Barnes and ebooks: I also wrote an email to the Evening Standard making roughly the same points, and they printed it.
Actually, I only wrote it because the Standard asked me to, on Twitter, after I Tweeted about the subject. I obliged, partly because I thought what I had to say re ebooks helping dyslexics needed to be spread to counteract a lot of knee-jerk negativity, but also because I just like to be helpful. I don’t know if this is how letters pages now work, with staff actively soliciting contributions, but at least it was my own words. There’s a sense that people are satisfied Having Their Say all over the internet – Twitter, Facebook, comments boxes, forums – and the idea of writing such comments in an email to a newspaper now seems curiously redundant.
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Today: to the NFT, or the BFI Southbank as it’s now rebranded, even though the actual screens are still called NFT1, NFT2 and so on. I pay my first visit to its Mediatheque, a wonderful drop-in area where one can book a session at a booth with headphones and watch a rare film or programme from the BFI’s archive. I choose a superb Angela Carter ‘Omnibus’ documentary from the early 90s, and a bit of  Inappropriate Behaviour, an intriguing 80s TV film by Andrew Davies, with Charlotte Coleman as a troubled lesbian horserider (of course). The BFI’s Mediatheque is absolutely free – no membership or deposit required.
Then: to the afternoon screening of Lawrence Of Belgravia, the full length documentary about the eccentric, surname-less frontman of the bands Felt, Denim and Go-Kart Mozart. Beautifully made, if rather sad. The central theme is his lack of commercial success and life on benefits in a council flat (when he’s not being evicted), despite decades of critical acclaim and endorsement by The Smiths, St Etienne, Belle & Sebastian, Pulp and so on. The film itself, however, has already done well: its three screenings at the London Film Festival have sold out, with a fourth added due to demand. The festival’s programmer introduces the film, and it turns out he’s a serious fan of Lawrence’s music. A woman in front of me confesses that she had no idea who Lawrence was, but saw the film in the festival brochure and was interested enough to buy a ticket.
It certainly has the Captain Scott factor – the British love a tale of failure (or of success tinged with sadness, eg Kenneth Williams), added, perhaps, to the Syd Barrett factor – the image of a crazy old cult rock icon moping around the shops.
As one of the interviewers in the film says, maybe the film will finally make Lawrence a proper star. Or at least get him off the dole.
I say hello to Bob Stanley (and tell him that my degree course is studying the St Etienne film Finisterre), Tim from Baxendale and Harvey Williams, who says he saw my brother playing in Roddy Frame’s band.
Lawrence still refuses to do the most obvious thing of these reunion-saturated times – reform the now much-revered Felt and perform all the old songs – even though it would make a lot of people happy and – surely – would finally enable him to make a living from his talent. Â Still, I admire his defiance, and make a note to buy the new Go Kart Mozart album when it comes out. Jan 2012 apparently.
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Evening – lecture on Oliver Twist at Birkbeck, followed by workshop on literary research – at UCL’s medical lecture hall, for some reason. Large painting of what looks like a Victorian vivisection class on the wall. Also: at one side of the blackboard is a working dentist’s chair.
Memo to self: always eat before a lecture. Rumbling stomachs take on an embarrassing level of amplification in a big room with only one person speaking. Particularly ironic during a talk on the little boy who asked for more.
Tags: dickens, felt, lawrence, NFT dammit it's still the NFT
