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Lynda.com is an online tutorial service providing access to over 3,500 instructional videos on computer software, business and creative skills - including music composition and recording techniques. The courses are delivered by tutors who are both experts in their field and know how to teach. Added features, allow for searching across courses, curated playlists and individual access enabling course progress to be saved. Lynda.com can be accessed both within the library, or from outside.Find out more.
Naxos Video Library
Naxos Video Library is an extensive streaming video library of classical music performances, opera, ballet, live concerts and documentaries. Watch the world's greatest opera houses, ballet companies, orchestras and artists perform on demand! All you need to do is logon with your WCL library card.
Naxos Video Library can not currently be accessed from the public computers in the library - logon from home or ask a staff member for help. As there are a limited number of sessions available at any one time, please log out when you have finished listening. Logon now
Get streaming access to around one million recordings of classical, jazz, world and American music. This online resource includes:
American Song: Music from America's past right up to recent additions including Motown, Jimi Hendrix, Mamas and the Papas and other artists from the rock era.
Smithsonian Global Sound: Music and spoken word from Smithsonian Folkways and other legendary music labels, including Fast Folk, Paredon, Cook, Dyer-Bennet and Monitor Records.
Classical Music Library: Over 120,000 classical music recordings from EMI, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion, Artemis- Vanguard, Sanctuary Classics, Vox and many more.
Jazz: 130,000 tracks make this the most comprehensive collection of jazz available online. Includes the most renowned jazz artists, performances and record labels: Verve, GR , Impulse! and more.
Alexander Music Online
Alexander Music Online can be accessed both from home and in the library, however as there are a limited number of sessions available at any one time, please close your browser or the relevant browser tab when you have finished listening. Start search
Logon to listen to streaming audio of more than 276,000 tracks from over 19,000 CDs, with 500 CDs added monthly. Includes almost all the standard classical repertoire, as well as other genres such as jazz, blues, nostalgia, new age, world music, some pop and rock, and music and information aimed at children.
Naxos Music Library
It includes the complete catalogues of Naxos, BIS, Chandos and others, plus selected titles from other independent labels such as V2 (At The Drive-In, Datsuns, Stereophonics), and New Zealand labels Atoll, Rattle, and White Cloud. Contains liner notes plus opera synopses and libretti, composer and artist biographies, and other useful information. Naxos Music Library can not currently be accessed from the public computers in the library - logon from home or ask a staff member for help. As there are a limited number of sessions available at any one time, please log out when you have finished listening. Logon now
Naxos Jazz Library
Logon to listen to streaming audio of classic jazz sourced from the OJC series, including iconic works by Chet Baker, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane in full album content. Also includes classic Soul & Blues from the Stax/Fantasy vaults, from Isaac Hayes to Albert King. Thousands of albums to choose from. Naxos Music Library can not currently be accessed from the public computers in the library - logon from home or ask a staff member for help. As there are a limited number of sessions available at any one time, please log out when you have finished listening. Logon now
Oxford Music Online
This database is the leading online resource for music research and features more than 50,000 articles on musicians, composers, musicologists, instruments, genres, terms and much more. Information is supplemented by links to related websites, illustrations and sound enhanced music examples (music examples can not currently be accessed from the public computers in the Library). Oxford Music Online is a combination of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., (2001, 29 vols), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, (1992), and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd ed., (2002) along with The Oxford Companion to Music (2002) and The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed., Revised (2006). Other Grove titles and resources will be added over time. Start search
All Music Guide
This excellent resource provides searching ability for artists, albums, songs, styles and labels. Extensive biographical details for artists are included, as are reviews of albums. A handy feature is the ability to find similar or related albums. Start search
Gale Biography In Context
This comprehensive database contains biographical information on more than 185,000 people including artists and musicians from throughout history, around the world, and across all subject areas. It combines award-winning biographies from respected Gale Group sources and also includes full-text articles fromhundreds of periodicals. You can search for people based on one or more personal facts such as birth and death year, nationality, ethnicity, occupation or gender, or combine criteria to create a highly-targeted custom search. Start search
Music on MasterFILE Complete
There are a number of full text music magazines available through this Ebsco database, including those listed below.
Clicking on the links above will take you directly to the holdings of each magazine. If you have not accessed the Ebsco site in the last 30 days you will need to validate your library card access first, and then the links above will work for you. Login now
Earlybird Youth three day tickets have officially SOLD OUT! And we have less than 200 earlybird adult three day tickets left... once they're gone, they're gone and tickets will rise to the standard price.
"Skiffle is a music genre with jazz, blues, folk and American folk influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was associated with artists such as Lonnie Donegan, The Vipers Skiffle Group, Ken Colyer and Chas McDevitt. Skiffle played a major part in beginning the careers of later eminent jazz, pop, blues, folk and rock musicians and has been seen as a critical stepping stone to the second British folk revival, blues boom and British Invasion of the US popular music scene." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiffle
Told with joyous vigor, this book tells the story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthy witch-hunts. Billy Bragg traces how the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s.
This is quite possibly the first book to ‘properly’ explore the short-lived Skiffle phenomenon in any really depth. On the surface, it’s a musical style that could easily be brushed aside as a post war hillbilly revival – A last gasp for Britain’s vaudeville performers whose careers have been swept aside by the tidal wave of Swing, Big Band Music and Jazz brought to UK by American troops stationed there during the war. On the other hand, author and musician Stephen William “Billy” Bragg argues skiffle was the first and possibly the best example of British youth’s DIY ‘punk’ attitude which sparked a revolution that shaped pop music as we have come to know it.
Billy Bragg
It’s no surprise that Bragg chose this topic because for nearly his entire 30-year recording career he’s been involved at the grassroots of political and social movements. As he’s told the UK press on multiple occasions: “I don’t mind being labelled a political songwriter. The thing that troubles me is being dismissed as a political songwriter.” And even more than before, he’s still searching for a New England.
Skiffle, as a style, if that’s the right word, emerged from the trad-jazz clubs of the early ’50s. Initially it was another vehicle for novelty songs, skits and old time music hall – a tradition that British performers longed to revive but it’s simple style, often played on guitar, washboard, harmonica and piano meant that nearly anyone could pick up an instrument and play. So skiffle was adopted by kids who growing up during the dreary, post-war rationing years. These were Britain’s first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a pop culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. With a reinvented version of a Leadbelly tune Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of Rock Island Line. And soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year. It was that simplicity, Bragg argues, that likens the style to the punk rock that would flourish two decades later because, at the end of the day, skiffle was a do-it-yourself music.
Way back, before BREXIT, the country had another identity crisis. As Orwellian Britain was recovering it desperately needed some kind of release from the blandness and drudgeries of a post war concrete-grey world. Victory was not sweet. It was harsh. There were ration cards and shortages, laws and restrictions. America had exported its glamour to Britain but it was all still black in white in Old Blighty. And for the youth of the country, who’d grown up with the scars of the previous decades they were wanting to escape with nowhere to go. As Johnny Marr wrote in his own biography, his play ground was the rubble of a bombed-out Manchester. Not the glam of the Hollywood Hills.
Lonnie Donegan
The hit parade dominated by ‘Old Men’ – crooners and novelty songs. Music was for grown -ups. So it was refreshing when that was all disrupted not just by Lonnie Donegan’s Rock Island Line (1954) but by the equally homespun Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O by the Vipers and the Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group’s Freight Train (feat. Nancy Whiskey). Skiffle was the natural replacement to the exotic Calypso styles. Although it drew its roots from Blues it was ideally suited to British working class accents and certainly struck the right chords with the audiences.
As far as Bragg is concerned Donegan is the hero of British skiffle but it all starts earlier with trumpet play Ken Colyer who boarded a ship in 1952 as a galley cook and landed in New Orleans. There he gigged with local musicians. Eventually he was kicked out of the USA, when his visa expired and for ‘consorting’ with black musicians, he set up shop in London with his own new sextet playing New Orleans-style jazz, with Chris Barber on trombone and Donegan on banjo. Colyer also played guitar with a subset of the band – including his brother, Bill, on washboard – performed interval sets featuring folk, blues and country songs. Ironically Colyer and his brother were eventually sacked from their own ensemble. Re-labelled the Chris Barber Jazz Band the group recorded their first album in the summer of 1954, including the add-on Rock Island Line by the great blues singer Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly). The record company pretty much ignored this tune for over a year until finally released, almost by accident. And the rest is history.
Ken Coyler
For players, the appeal of skiffle was immediate. All it took to create an approximation of the sound heard on a song like, say Rock Island Line was a bass made from a tea chest and a broom handle; a zinc washboard and a set of metal thimbles; and a guitar, uke or piano. Someone also had to sing, of course, roughly in the southern blues and country styles. Because there was no amplification rehearsals could go ahead in front rooms of terrace houses without annoying the neighbors. Because it was a cheap and easy music to learn and play, guitar sales soared. On a different level this was the parlor music that was once a vital part of British social graces, but perhaps more lively.
Overall, Bragg acknowledges, the significance of skiffle is subject of heated debate. For our hero, Lonnie Donegan, it probably became an albatross as much as an eagle’s wings. It took him from obscurity to fame. He didn’t do himself any favors, though. Recording tunes like My Old Man’s a Dustman and Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight? relegated skiffle back down to the ranks of novelty music. Although many bands and performers chose to return to the style later on. Paul McCartney and John Lennon returned to their roots and borrowed heavily – You can hear it on When I’m 64 and Rocky Racoon, for instance.
Bragg rounds off his book with a kind of Post-skiffle chapter, bringing the connections of Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, The Who, The Bee Gees, all who owe their careers to their early interest in skiffle and it’s motivations to get them playing. He then leaps ahead to remind us that the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned and many others of the 70’s all played London’s 100 Club in 1976 with the same brazen attitude to “set out to democratize popular culture”.
Skiffle was a working-class music at best and even could be egalitarian at times, especially when the BBC got hold of it. Many of Britain’s best rock musicians came from the streets. You can see how Bragg makes the connection. Not bad for a working-class kid who failed his 11-plus and missed out on a place in University. His work, life and now this book speak volumes more than any professor, and with more colour and relevance than some tedious talk in a dusty lecture.
From mashers to milk bars, flappers to factory girls, larrikins to louts – this intimate and evocative look at youth culture offers insights into the true lives of teenagers and the history of New Zealand.
Teenagers is a ground-breaking history of young people in New Zealand from the nineteenth century to the 1960s. Through the diaries and letters, photographs and drawings that teenagers left behind, we meet New Zealanders as they transition from children to adults: sealers and bushfellers, factory girls and newspaper boys, the male ‘mashers’ of the 1880s and the female ‘flappers’ of the 1910s and ’20s, schoolgirls and rock’n’rollers, larrikins and louts.
By taking us inside the lives of young New Zealanders, the book illuminates from a new angle large-scale changes in our society: the rise and fall of domestic service, the impact of compulsory education, the movement of Pākehā and then Māori from country to city, the rise of consumer culture and popular psychology. Teenagers shows us how young people made sense of their personal and social transformations: in language and song and dress, at dances and picnics and social clubs, in talking and playing and reading.
Teenagers provides an intimate and evocative insight into the lives of young people and the history of New Zealand.
According to popular myth "In the 19th century, the American world consisted of children and adults. ... adolescents were displaying traits unknown among children and adults. Although the word teenager did not come into use until decades later, the teenage mindset dawned in the 1920s." And we tend to think of teenagers as an invention of America, of the rising automobile culture and the post war era, especially after the dawn of rock'n'roll. Not so, says Chris Brickell, author of a new book on the subject: Teenagers: The Rise Of Youth Culture in New Zealand. His narrative chooses to follows the development of distinctive tribal subcultures of the youth in this country, proving that 'teenhood' started much earlier, as far back as the mid 1800s, in fact, when that period of adolescence didn't even have a name, lest an identity. Yet it existed.
Associate Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Otago, Chris Brickell knows his stuff but unlike many other academics he's resisted the temptation to cloak his findings and research in complicated extrapolations and dull, structured prose. Instead he's peppers his snappy words with plenty of photographic evidence and informative and effective asides. In fact half the book is photos, so it makes for a helpful browsing book but is also really informative and educational when you choose to dig deeper.
Of course, it's not an an exclusive club. we've all been card carriers at some stage. Brickell was once a teenager himself. He writes a little about his teen years, but doesn't focus too heavily. That'd be an autobiography. He does acknowledge that every teenager's experience will be different. "When you're a teenager, you can only see one little part of the elephant," he says, Essentially he reckons that every experience is very much down to social class, family context, friends, sexuality, personality. And I would add historical setting. The world of pre-war teens, war and post war adolescences and then the 70's, etc, and now are all different. Teens today have social media and digital devices. Teens then had telephones and letters, telegrams home. Technology was important and essential to keeping social relationships alive - more so than adults. More intense, perhaps. That is different in every era but really, similar. And yet still, no two experiences were exactly the same. Confused?
Brickell looks at it this way: There are some major shifts in our society from the 1800s and he follows through fashion, music, slang, courting rituals and social gatherings like dances and the all present 'coming out balls' and of course, weddings. He also looks at the opportunities for jobs and the freedom our youth had, within the social confines and rules of the day.
Brickell's images show the very same people decades before hanging out together, as distinct groups - cliche's even (pre-1950's Heathers). One example is of three likely lads photographed in the 1930's with their bikes, in a the 1940's. Mostly these photos were of sports events, youth clubs, Scouts, Boy's and Girls Brigade''s and dances but they definitely show what the cool kids were up to back then. One classic is some teenagers at a dance at Upper Hutt Youth Club during the 1960s. Don't they look hip? Observe below:
Revelle Jackson
The teen terms are even more important. You've got "Straights" and "Rebels", "Bushfellers" and "City Slickers", "Factory Boys" and servant girls. "Mashers", "Larrikins", "Flappers", "Bodgies", "Widgies", and "Cissies", "Jazz Boys" and, my favourite, "Milk-bar Cowboys". Brickell gives us insights into all these gangs. But, somehow he misses the really big one. The army. Half of our teens were duped into joining the biggest gang of all. the biggest bullshit gang. Their still telling the same lie to teens in the USA. Hell, half the the country are 'serving' it seems. But here we choose Peace and self obsession over oblivion. Thank God for that. Rant aside, it seems that it's the one thing Brickell has missed. Yet Military service really did have a big part in the shaping of the Kiwi teen. Male, and even females, to.
Apparently Brickell spent more than eight years collecting photographs and recording plenty of key local youth styles. He snuck away their diaries (slightly creepy) and snatched choice lines from outraged editorials in newspapers like The Truth and our or upstanding Evening Post. He couldn't resist.
But, he argues, this is a book about changes in New Zealand society - with a youth lens. True even Michael king's journalist eye ignores the youth history of our country and focuses on the big events. there's an exhibition at Te Papa, in Wellington called Golden Days. it may well be the only time you actually see youth of any age in NZ history and their regular pastimes.
Naturally, Brickell focused on the look, poses, attitude, the rebellion. He says that even in the earliest photos you get a 'dandy' emerging. A style, particularly with the young men who are trying to establish their own uniqueness, a separation from the old fogeys. Take a look at rugby players or even warriors - they a youthful rebelliousness and masculinity. An attempt within the confines to show their own burgeoning power in spite of their parents and their peers. "Gesture, pose and attitude - the larrikin's slouch, the masher's smirk, the flapper's swearing, the bodgie's sneer - all reflected a desire to dissemble and transgress". Check these two out:
Auckland University Press
However, it wasn't just men. In the late 1800s, a large number of girls spent their teenage years working as domestic servants, under the thumb of their wealthy employers, both morally and financially, and, of course, that influenced how they behaved and expressed themselves. By contrast, many young men had financial power, working in factories. there was a very specific working class youth style called the "Larrikin", and a more middle class style called the "Masher". They were still miniature adults but they grew up fast. Women, teen women didn't get that independence until they became factory workers and 'Land Girls" in the years of WWII. Or did they. Brickell shows a few incidents where they have some freedoms. In church groups, in social settings and universality life.
He also notes the development of youth interests, the slow but steady development of teenagers' own tastes like in 1920s, a lot of young Kiwis were interested in of jazz, way before their parents. And, of course there was finally the Brando entrance. "But by the 1950s, there was a much more visible and distinct youth culture. You had rock'n'roll music, teen-focused films like Rebel Without A Cause and Blackboard Jungle, and certain clothes young people were adopting that their parents would never wear." Of course. Somehow, that was when teen hood got boring - predictable McDonald s and Walmart cloned styles and culture. The strength in this book is the undercurrent. Before the introduction of the Teddy Boys, and the Motops. There is a brilliant blurry pic of some punters from Lower Hutt's Stokes Valley doing their best to outraged the 'Olds' with their shaggy Beatles' mop-tops.
Naomi Highfield, Glenys Taylor and Beverley Nicholson near the skating rink in Paraparaumu, early 1965.
Auckland University Press
The Beatles made it here in 1964, and you had local young-un's with mop-top hairstyles and the whole she-bang showing up New Zealand as a really backward and boring place. I had noted that just about every photo prior to that was an old grey haired bloke in tweed or a woman with a turban hat and cats eye glasses (always over 50 and nearly always some Mayor's wife). Squaresville, man!
Although his book finishes abruptly in the 1970's, before my own teen hood really got going, he notes that there is no more a "typical teenager" today than there was in the 1880s. Obviously he chose to ignore 'Punk' and "Goth' and New Romantic'. I could have argued these were far more influential than the Teddy Boys and the Widgies. He'd just say it was history repeating itself.
Teenagers: The Rise Of Youth Culture in New Zealand, Chris Brickell, AUP, $49.99, is on sale on July 24.
Cult band The Bombay Royale are set for a triumphant return with their third studio masterpiece ‘Run Kitty Run’. A Retro Bollywood fuelled rampage through Psyche-Surf, 80’s Electro-Pop and Desert Rock, ‘Run Kitty Run’ is, like its predecessors, conceived as the soundtrack to a lost film. The music conjures into life a devastated futuristic landscape peopled by robotic horsemen, killer satellites and grinning sadhus. Overlaid with vocals in Hindi, Bengali and English, the resulting soundtrack is one of love and betrayal, hopeless escapes and unlikely salvation.
The first single ‘Ballygunge’ has an angular 80’s vibe, infused with gated snares and the spirits of Talking Heads and David Bowie and it’s a love song set in a dark sci-fi vision of Kolkata. Familiar landmarks like Gol Park are dwarfed by aerial highways and transmitter towers framed by the plumes of departing spacecraft. Despite the odds love blazes defiantly – whether it can survive is another question Recorded between Hope Street Studios in Brunswick and Soundpark Studios in Northcote, ‘Run Kitty Run’ was co-produced by Tristan Ludowyk (The Putbacks, The Cactus Channel) and The Skipper aka Andy Williamson.
With the announcement of the highly anticipated new album, The Bombay Royale also launch a national Australian tour as well as a run of European festival spots including Sziget in Hungary and Brittany in France.
During the massive 7.8M earthquake that hit New Zealand in November 2016 two cows and a calf were stranded on a two-metre high 'island' when their paddock slid and buckled 80 metres from its original position. Sensibly they stayed put and were rescued by farmers a day or so later. This story attracted huge media attention locally and around the world.
It's an iconic story of bravery in the face of great adversity, and of helping others and protecting those around us. It's also emblematic of the laconic Kiwi sense of humor and the strength of the New Zealand spirit when faced with chaos and extreme challenge.
That was an earthquake is very clearly etched in my memory. As a Wellingtonian I well remember being shaken from my bed, grabbing the emergency kit, bundling the kids in the car and heading to the hills whilst all around the tsunami warnings screamed out across the Hutt Valley. For me and other adults it was a nervous night but for our youngest it was an adventure. That's how she'll remember it. Getting up in the middle of the night, camping out in the car and devouring service station chippies and soft drinks. She had a wonderful time and is still quite gleeful about it when I ask her, even now. So it was no surprise when the courier package arrived. She tore open the cover and exclaimed loudly "The Earthquake Book! Yes!"
I should explain. Emily is my youngest, just six and learning to read. Not only did she learn about the November, 2016, earthquake at school but also about some of the bizarre things that occurred on that night including the raising of the land around the Kaikoura coastline and how it left stranded three sheep on a tiny island of land over 2 metres high created by the the extreme buckling of land around their coastal paddock.
From Moo and Moo and Little Calf Too by Jane Milton / illustrated by Deborah Hinde (Pub. Allen & Unwin)
The story captured the public and international media's attention so much that they, these three wonderful creatures became world famous in New Zealand. The unusual situation coupled by their daring rescue by local farmers is a story in itself and like the legend of Shrek the wild sheep was just begging to be made into a book or film.
Quick to capitalize on the even Jane Milton, who actually lives on the very same Clarence River farm in Kaikoura has chosen to make the most of this crazy situation. Like Jane Bowron (Old Bucky and Me) who wrote about her experiences and learning to live with the the Christchurch earthquakes Jane Milton has also chosen to embrace her situation, even as the land outside her window twist and turns like a distorted body. Jane and her husband Derrick live at her childhood home of Waipapa. They raised three children on the farm, two of whom are also farmers: Ben runs Waipapa and Willie runs Glentoi at Ward. Although Waipapa’s idyllic house and garden were tossed around on November 14, the house survived relatively unscathed. However, the family’s 1400ha hilly, coastal farmland took a massive hit. When the day after the quake dawned, a news crew shot images from a helicopter of two cows and a calf stranded precariously on a newly formed, grass-topped island with no obvious means of escape. A hill had collapsed, the land had moved 80m, and steep cliffs and deep ravines now criss-crossed the landscape. that became her story.
It could have been a story of devastation and loss. But instead Jane has made this a really fun story in 20 punchy, quick witted stanzas. Comprised mostly of short rhyming couplets the story flows easily and naturally like a song and has a very familiar feel to it. As a first time reader, Emily found the vocabulary easy to read and rhyming also helped her to anticipate not only words but the story, too. Like all her favorites (Jane Dodd, Dr Seuss, etc) it was an effortless read for her. Yet Jane does not avoid using 'adult' words when needed. Try this one on for size:
"On and on, past the trough and the tank,
Past the Totara and the tussock
And their favourite grassy bank.
Then down,
down,
down,
down
with a rumble and a roar,
Until their ride ended at the valley floor.
It's a very Kiwi story with plenty of references to the local landscape. Jane makes sure she includes the limestone cliffs and Totara trees (spelling it with the macron). There's even mention of a famous helicopter pilot - Richie - Yes, the former All Black! And she name checks the real farmers that rescued the cows, too She also uses a few geological terms such as 'rupture' and 'rubble', but down plays the noise and horror of the quake, thankfully.
Deborah Hinde was the one responsible for the brilliant book A Kiwi Night Before Christmas. As an illustrator she works in a simple pen, ink and watercolor style. Her style is gentle and calming. She shies away from gruesome details or awkward accuracy but still manages to capture the scenes as if she has really been on this farm. Perhaps she has.
In this image made from video, three cows are stranded on an island of grass in a paddock that had been ripped apart following an earthquake near Kaikoura, New Zealand Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. (Daily News/ Newshub AP)
Deborah's challenge, as was Jane's, was to turn all that was chaos and crisis into a bit of fun. After all, you gotta laugh sometimes when things like this happen and I think they've managed to do that. Emily laughs at the silliness of three cows stuck on a platform in the middle of a beach to mountain. "How will they go to the toilet or watch TV? " She asks. She's imagining them escaping one by one by diving off a board into the sea and swimming across to Wellington. "Why not? They could stay in my room."
While there will be no bovine borders in this house, there is plenty of room on our book case and I really hop that when the dust settles and the cows are once again lowing in the fields that Jane Milton will find time for another adventure installment. I can't wait.
Children's Book - Suitable age group - 3 - 7yrs
Moo and Moo and Little Calf too - Written by Jane Milton, Illustrated by Deborah Hinde
Published by Allen & Unwin - RRP $19.99
We are supposed to be slim, prosperous, happy, extroverted and popular. This is our culture’s image of the perfect self. We see this person everywhere: in advertising, in the press, all over social media. We’re told that to be this person you just have to follow your dreams, that our potential is limitless, that we are the source of our own success.
But this model of the perfect self can be extremely dangerous. People are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy. Unprecedented social pressure is leading to increases in depression and suicide. Where does this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? Is there any way to break its spell?
To answer these questions, Selfie by Will Storr takes us from the shores of Ancient Greece, through the Christian Middle Ages, to the self-esteem evangelists of 1980s California, the rise of narcissism and the selfie generation, and right up to the era of hyper-individualistic neoliberalism in which we live now.
It tells the extraordinary story of the person we all know so intimately – our self.
Infatuated with his own reflection in a pool, Narcissus pined away and died of self-love. Our friend Freud, always vigilant about self obsession diagnosed this as a perversion. Or more aptly he saw it as a neurotic choice of sterile solitude. The warning was futile. According to Author Will Storr, it was the beginning of the 'me' generation - the obsession of 'self'. It's nothing new. Anyone who's had small children will know all about this phase of life. But look at it like this. You can't know about the world until you learn about yourself. And, extrapolating out, everything you do is retaliative to you, or more accurately, yourself because despite a 1000 self-help manuals we, as humans are hardwired to take everything in through two eyes (or ears, or touch) and those belong to us. Ourselves.
So through history human kind had always pointed out the folly of self. But with technology, especially cameras, hand held devices and the always-on of social media the pool has got bigger. The iPhone has created the platform for mechanized narcissism. Once a gadget meant to facilitate communication with others it has, instead led the most addicted users to behave like long-lost Kardashians, grinning away as they document their unexceptional everyday events. Facebook, Instagram and twitter are the current platforms for their tedious and obsessive postings of cats, boring lunches and museum visits. Ok, we all d this from time to time. But how did we become so ensnared?
In his book, Storr takes the 'phenomenon' apart and to task. This is wild-side anthropology and psychology with out a safety net. Or, sometimes without an ethical backbone. He interviews a young woman who has hundreds of thousands of selfies stored on memory cards, hard drive and in the iCloud. She frequently works overtime to edit and filter her daily quota of new images so that she can update her social media channels. Sure, the unexamined life may not be worth living, but do all lives matter once they live in the public realm? A place like facebook? Actually, aren't they already living, as they walk the streets? Do they deserve to be examined in such redundant detail? If we do this online, do we do it with such vigor in the street. After all we pass judgement (i.e. swipe right) on every person that passes us in the street: too fat, thing, tall, ugly, bad hair, not enough, nice smile, et,etc, etc. Only now we have it all on one page, like a book - like a children's book. Big pictures. Bold captions. And the occasional mysterious slur. In this case Storr’s interviewee confessed that it's not the online 'fame' that brought her alive. No, indeed. She says she feels most alive when slashing her flesh with a razor blade. Storr was trying to create some kind of picture of narcissistic addiction here. But instead what I saw was a person with mental health issues and a real need for quality care. I felt that while he had valid points, he was, himself, exploiting her predicament, to raise a point. She was a number to him. Ironic, given that she'd spent so much effort trying to express her personality and to be unique.
Self-obsession, Storr argues is a reflex of self-dissatisfaction or self-dislike, a symptom of “social perfectionism” that pushes some of its victims towards suicide. He introduces a book with a cliche case of a woman who attempts suicide because she can't be the perfect wife or mother, like she'd planned to be. His lack of empathy for the issues his subject is going through is astounding. All he can see is her reaction to her own failings to live up to the model in her head. He doesn't spend much time considering the influences that helped shape that model or her own mechanisms to embrace change. I suspect that his subject would have behaved this way, no matter what the drivers - whether social media or Jane Austin was behind the motivation.
His 'survey' traverses centuries, challenging our so-called 'progress' to show how we reached this psychic dead end. Selfie begins in the tribal wilderness of an urban jungle. Here, he's encountering a contemporary version of the alpha chimps that roared and brawled their way to dominance in the jungle. In this case a bouncer and gangland enforcer, and learns about how we can be so easily shaped by peer pressure and the desire for acceptance. No matter how that's achieved.
Next is classical Greece - “the long story of the human” begins here. Aristotle separated the individual from the rest of nature. And as a consequence, the idealized the 'self' became a living work of art.
Christianity then endowed the Greek body with a soul and forced it to chasten the sinful flesh. The Romans, on the other hand celebrated the flesh and possibly created pornography in the process. And so, Storr, conscientiously works his way through the eras. He even learns about the process by suffering a week of medieval self-mortification in a dank Scottish monastery.
And then, like a movie that's run out of plot lines, we jump to modern day California. On that last frontier, western individualism arrives at its most extreme and absurd development: the old-fashioned idea of what novelists call 'character'. This, in effect is the sober amalgam of virtues and defects. In legal terms, its a wish list of acceptable or unacceptable behaviors. A man or woman is often accepted due to good character. Society determines what that list should look like. For instance earnest, honest, virtuous, reliable, etc. Or unworthy, viscous, ruthless, ambitious, loathsome, untrustworthy. Our character is a blueprint or template overlayed onto the individual. In olden times it was a reputational calling card. But with the advent of Hollywood and fame it's become a glitzy notion success. It's the driver behind of personality, projected in all those self-made, self-congratulating iPhone images. Simply put, why do something to earn fame when you can be photographed or blog like the famous. And there are many examples where complete nobodies have become famous for projecting their fame, despite a lack or evidence of talent or skill.
Whilst in California, he tries on the self-awareness cult of therapy for size. Through various hippie mumbo-jumbo practices, the state has developed the world's largest industry of alternative self-awareness therapy practices. Storr has a go. He signs on for a course of “humanistic alternative education” in a yurt on a cliff beside the ocean at Big Sur. He's ordered by a bossy therapist to shed his adult inhibitions and return to being the juvenile delinquent he once was. The experience, as he reports it, is hilarious. Therapy bull shit in elephant sized droppings he concludes.
Storr finishes in Silicon Valley, where the current infliction of self-awareness was hatched. It's a natural location, given how many slick entrepreneurs have transformed the computer from a bureaucratic machine into a plaything for the self. Promoters babble about “the Synthetic Age”, predicting that we will soon evolve into a post-human species, although not everyone is ready for the future. They stay silent on the realities that we'll all be replaced by their robot minions in the space of our lifetime.
Speaking of his time in Silicon Valley, Storr recalls a geeky genius with a scheme for biohacking our DNA. Rehearsing to play God, he devised a means of synthesising probiotics to waft away vaginal odors. He called his formula Sweet Peach, and sold it as a means of “personal empowerment”. Not surprisingly, angry feminists turned on him, unready to have their private parts 'refreshed'. More like sanitized. They argued that by doing this the product removed yet another human quality. It was also yet another way of creating self awareness and then turning what is a perfectly natural function into something evil. Women the world over have already been 'shamed' by the stigma of using feminine hygiene products and breastfeeding in public. This was the last straw, apparently. The story does not end well for the product's inventor. He hanged himself in his lab.
You will find this sentence as absurd as it is true. But Selfie is surely as much autobiographical as it is a woolly cultural history. It transpires that Storr was prompted to write this book by a pile of personal problems - all leftovers from a troubled adolescence combined with a middle-aged body revulsion. Mostly self inflicted by hi-cal beer and pizza. To that I can only say - get off the couch buddy and deal with your middle age spread the way the rest of us do it. By moaning all the way to the gym and snorting up quinoa and wheatgerm and every other diet fad by the bowlful!
True, he finds no remedy for his self-dislike, instead concluding that the 'self' is a false divinity. Worshipping the 'self' at the peril of more profound truths, he claims. Put another way. There's no 'I' in 'team!. But we already knew that. “We’re connected,” he writes, “we’re a highly social species”. So, why have we eveolved into these units that have become so insular? Whay are we cocconed in our own self importance? Why are we so disconnected in a 24 hour digital world that always on? I think Narcissus died because he forgot he was human, too. that he belonged to the human family.
Now, if like me you've come on Storr's journey and a nay-saying and laughing and tsk-tsking at all the right points, then you'll agree. The 'Self' in the modern sense is a destructive cannon of self loathing and must be diluted. That can only happen with humility and sharing, right. we teach this to our children and in society all laws are based on the common good. Yet This all-seeing book has failed to see the cult of Trump. As if this exception to the laws of humanity can exist in some Asimovian parallel universe. Trump’s electoral success, Storr mentions only in passing. He ignores the twitter-king, brushing off his blip on history as “a sumptuously narcissistic self-publicist” with a liking for Ayn Rand’s neofascist fiction. If only! Be that as it may jolly orange ogre with the golden quiff still merits closer inspection because Trump personifies the psychological and moral malady that Selfie investigates. I suspect Storr is already collecting material for his second book. Watch out. That one's thicker than a phone book!
One of the experts consulted by Storr refers to a “dark power… immensely powerful and concerned solely with pursuing its own interests at the expense of everyone else in the world”. That quote is a generalised account of the ego; scarily, it also serves as a description of Trump, a puffed-up primate with a nuclear arsenal at his disposal. Storr even indirectly explains Trump’s chronic mendacity: at our most crassly selfish, we act on irrational urges or fits of pique that we – or brown-nosed apologists such as Sean Sphincter – try to justify after the event by “confabulating”, inventing pretexts for our behaviour that are convenient but patently phoney.
A therapeutic industry caters to the self-esteem or self-delusion of such egomaniacs; it cossets them, Storr suggests, because their competitive frenzy masks an inner hollowness, a noisy “denial of their own weaknesses or incompetences”. The president’s current state of flailing mayhem could not be more pithily summed up. Trump is obsessed with winning: the worst he can say about jihadis is to insult them as “losers”, even when they have catastrophically succeeded in slaughtering the innocent.
Politics, for Trump, exemplifies what Storr rather awkwardly calls “the gamification of human life”. He viewed the presidential campaign as a game show and, after the wonky arithmetic of the electoral college awarded him the prize, assumed that he could look forward to eight years of victory laps and ego-boosting pep rallies, punctuated by recuperative spells watching alt-right rants on his panoramic TV screen. He didn’t expect to be exposed to scorn rather than acclaim. Still less did he reckon on having to do an arduous and uniquely complicated job. His former life, he now complains, was easier and more enjoyable: as a celebrity, his sole obligation was self-display.
It remains to be seen whether the superego, policing quaint old-fashioned concerns such as ethics and honesty, will manage to restrain this monster. Surely Trump’s permatan isn’t armour-plated? On the evidence of Selfie, the world is suffering from a bad case of the DTs and we urgently need detoxing.
The minute this arrived Mum grabbed it and snuck away to a warm corner to begin reading it. My review is coloured by her account. She sits at my shoulder and corrects me, lest I get it wrong. "That Karen deserves more", she tells me. "A fine writer."
This novel is also close to home, being a ‘a novel of love, lost memories & rediscovering dreams’. My father suffers from Alzheimers, so we know this tale well.
I first met Karen McMillan about 6 years ago and she's supplied me with many great books for the Groove Book Report. This is her second, for us. She's a North Shore, Auckland based writer. Her previous two books, set in WWII in Poland and America, The Paris of the East and The Paris of the West, received popular acclaim but are significantly different from this one.
I know it's a little tired but there's still much to say. Karen taps into the well of 'losing memory’ when she tells of Rebecca, who loses ten years of her life, from her 32nd birthday to present day. Her memory simply vanishes. Now 42 years old she wakes up in the infirmary, recovered from concussion to find she's still married (to Daniel – an aging rock star). Apparently she lives in Browns Bay and works in the city as a graphic designer capacity. But how did she get here? In the missing ten years many things happen to her and Daniel – deaths, illness, heartaches and good times. But like the loss of a hard drive, her data banks are missing the files.
So the novel is an exploration of those years, and the consequences as the results finally start to dawn on Rebecca. Karen writes a well crafted book with tensions, curve balls, even a strange 'stalker' and a bitch of an unsympathetic boss. But at the heart is her marriage which has, hidden under surface many secrets.
Although the story is straightforward, Karen offers some very insightful writings on grief, loss and the nature of memory. You have to wonder about how it protects itself in order to process trauma. one such is Rebecca's brush with breast cancer, based on the author’s own experiences, and the way her memory chooses to file away that incident.
Mum says she learnt a lot about the physical experience of cancer and of the emotional steamroller it brings with it. But for her, it was the journey that mattered. She's always after a few good yarns. The unfinished threads bothered her a bit and she found Rebecca and Daniel a little wooden at times. If it had been an American novel, she said, then she would have suspended the belief. But in New Zealand such people can not exist - not in her imagination. She thought Daniel was a bit limp. Why didn't he fight back or become more emotional. He was too - accepting. And, unlike any Hollywood lead he couldn't bring himself to tell his wife of one terribly tragic event, or even that they were on the verge of separating when she experienced the memory loss. Such a book would have saved that up for the inevitable bombshell.
She loved the gutsy friend Julie for endlessly berating Daniel for his inability to tell his wife what was happening and spends her time as Rebecca's protector.
It was also very annoying that this was, yet again an 'Auckland' novel. There are so many TV shows from Filthy Rich to Westside that just seem to forge the rest of us are here. Bring back Crumpy and his rural tales, I say. The love affair with real estate, cafes, transport woes and such is tired and the gloss fades quickly - cliched and cringing.
But don't read to much into all this, Karen's created a good read for a quiet Sunday afternoon or a plane journey. Isn't good to escape into another world. It took mum out of the retirement village for a few days, at least.
‘I consider myself lucky to have survived the global carnage still myself – a reluctant soldier who had to go to war, who only ever wanted peace for everyone.’ Brian Hennessy
Brian Hennessy was originally born in Cologne. His father was in the army, like his father before and his before. And as such, his father was stationed in Germany as part of the fallout from WWI. He, 19r all intents and purposes and Army Brat. His heritage also included a relative who was part of the Wild Geese, the infamous British troops stationed in Ireland from 1700 and his ancestor James Hennessy was gifted a vineyard in France where the famous Cognac was made. In early life he had an accident involving a pram and was hospitalized for long periods of time. It taught him about patience and survival and stood him in good stead for the future. And what a future it was.
He didn't want to go into the army but at the war came to him. He was just seventeen years old and living in London when war broke out. He experienced the Blitz first-hand. He volunteered as a ‘roof-spotter’, trying to establish if the planes flying over were German or English. Brian joined the British Army and upon graduating, he became the youngest armament artificer. This book tells in a very matter of fact way the true adventure story of how Brian journeyed to the remote jungles of Burma via South Africa and India and then finally Down Under. It's a memoir of World War II, the Blitz, Burma, and the devastation of Hiroshima.
His tales of skirmishes are the best. Like the time he was caught out by Chinese troops (on the Allies side at the time) and stuck in a village with enemy on every side. Or the time he was covered head to toe by ants, a consequence of fording the wrong river in the depths of the Burmese jungle. At one time he was in charge of maintenance of all instruments issued to 26,000 men in 7 Divisions in Burma. There are many other facts like this scattered through the book. War promotes us to incomprehensible levels of responsibility, sometimes. Each chapter is like a short story - that takes as long to read as to drain a cup of tea. And in that they are punchy and compelling.
But this story is not a dry account, nor a lesson from an old man wanting to cash in on the current War fever surrounding the Anniversary on WWI. It's action packed. Danger was always present. It opens with Brian hiding in the bushes surrounded by enemy, cowering under a rock. It picks up the story a few chapters on as he manages to escape the impossible. He does this many times over. But this is not just another Commando comic. In there are also Brian’s love of nature and his interactions with the local people – stories that are sometimes humorous, at other times poignant. At the end of the war, he took advantage of the chaos at the time, and he boarded a ship and went to Japan. There he saw first-hand the devastation at Hiroshima. he made friends and lost friends. There are one or two heart breaking moments when he describes visiting after the fall out.
"I visited Hiroshima in April 1946," he says in his almost audible prose, "so that was some eight months after the atomic bomb had been dropped, and it was clear the devastation was immense. There was really nothing left around ground zero.... (it was) terrible and undeniable .. But I also noticed there were green shoots sprouting from the ground and where there had been concrete framework...I didn't see any 'shadows' of the dead, but instead evidence of life."
But life did not end when Brian immigrated to New Zealand in after the war in 1952. He married, had three children and continued to serve in the army until the mid 1960's. He ran a dairy farm and owned a repair shop in Queens Street, Auckland. He invented a meat grading system, currently used by twenty on EU countries in their production and quality standards. He lived to ninety-two, but he never forgot his extraordinary war adventures. This is his story, published for the first time. With the help of the wonderful Karen McMillan, Brian, at his advanced years, put this book together. It is a remarkable feat.
FROM THE BLITZ TO THE BURMESE JUNGLE AND BEYOND
A Memoir by Brian Hennessy
Founded in 2013, McKenzie Publishing is an independent publisher with a catalogue of books by bestselling New Zealand author Karen McMillan, with the view to publishing other authors in the future. Publishing both non-fiction and fiction, books by McKenzie Publishing are life-affirming books that aim to enrich, entertain and uplift. https://www.karenm.co.nz/
As we mark the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter book, let's consider the massive influence and worldwide appeal of the series. Here a 46 considerations.
The first book in the JK Rowling series, Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone was published on June 26, 1997.
Harry Potter first came to life on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990 when Joanne Rowling dreamt up the young wizard and his friends, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley.
Over the next five years, the author developed plots for seven books – writing mostly in note form and longhand – set partly in the wizarding world and partly in a somewhat fictionalised modern-day England. The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry houses – Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin – were created on the back of an aeroplane sick bag.
Moving to Edinburgh with baby daughter Jessica in 1993, Joanne Rowling, who was living on benefits at the time, began writing in a café as she expanded her story. She sent the completed manuscript to a number of publishers – and at one point received 12 rejection letters in a row.
Publishing house Bloomsbury saw the story’s potential. The chairman gave the first chapter to his eight-year-old daughter to read and she immediately demanded the rest of the book. Just 500 copies of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone were initially printed.
Since 1997, the seven books have sold 500 million copies worldwide and been published in 79 languages, making it the world’s best-selling series.
Breaking every kind of literature record, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows became the fastest-selling book ever, with more than 2.65 million copies sold within the first 24 hours in the UK alone in 2007. If you own a first-edition Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone in hardback, you’re in luck. One sold in 2016 for £43,750.
The first film adaptation, Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, was produced by Warner Brothers in 2001. Seven more followed, concluding with the release of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2 in 2011, making a reported $6.5 billion at the worldwide box office. It shot all three of its stars to fame, with Emma Watson, who played Hermione, now on track to be the highest-earning actress of 2017.
The franchise has spun into theme parks, with the Harry Potter worlds seeing thousands of visitors a day. The franchise alone is reported to be worth an estimated $25 billion.
JK Rowling went from not being able to afford to photocopy her manuscript to becoming one of the world’s wealthiest women, worth an estimated £650 million.
The author has 10.5 million followers on Twitter, which she uses to air her views. She is known for being very outspoken and often ends up in high-profile spats.
The editorial team advised her not to publish under her full name as they feared boys would not read a book written by a woman. She doesn’t have a middle name so added a K, in tribute to her grandmother Kathleen, to her own initial of J.
She based quidditch on baseball. It has now become a sport with teams at many universities and its own world cup tournament.
Harry Potter’s birthday is July 31, 1980. His creator’s birthday is also July 31, but she was born in 1965.
While playing schoolgirl ghost Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, actress Shirley Henderson was actually 37.
To become better acquainted with their movie characters, the three main actors were asked to write essays about them. Emma Watson wrote 16 pages about Hermione, Daniel Radcliffe wrote a single page on Harry, while Rupert Grint, who played Ron, didn’t even turn his in.
Rupert Grint dressed as his female drama teacher and rapped about Ron Weasley for his audition tape. His rap began, “Hello, my name is Rupert Grint, I hope you don’t think I stink.”
Contrary to popular belief, the “t” at the end of Voldemort is silent. The name comes from the French and means “flight of death”.
Rowling based 11-year-old Hermione on herself at the same age. She made Hermione’s patronus (wizard’s spirit animal) an otter, which is her own favourite creature.
The idea for Sirius Black’s tattoos came from those used in Russian prison gangs. The markings identify the person as someone to be feared and respected.
Dementors, the deadly phantoms that guard Azkaban Prison, represent depression and were inspired by JK Rowling’s struggle with the condition after her mother died from multiple sclerosis in 1990.
“It’s so difficult to describe (depression) to someone who’s never been there, because it’s not sadness,” she has said. “I know sadness – to cry and to feel. But it’s that cold absence of feeling – that really hollowed-out feeling. That’s what the Dementors are.”
One of the flying cars used in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets was stolen from the set. It was discovered seven months later after an anonymous caller rang to tell police they’d found it.
In 2007, when asked by a fan whether Hogwarts’ headmaster Albus Dumbledore had ever been in love, JK Rowling responded,
“I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” He fell in love with Gellert Grindelwald.
Michael Jackson once approached the author about making a musical based on the books. She turned the idea down.
For a long time, JK Rowling planned to have “scar” as the last word in the series, but she changed the last sentence to read, “All was well.”
Rowling killed Hedwig (Harry’s owl) because it represented the loss of innocence and security. Her fate marked the end of Harry’s childhood.
Two alternative titles for the final book were Harry Potter And The Elder Wand and Harry Potter And The Peverell Quest. She decided against the latter because she thought it sounded too corny.
There are 700 possible fouls that can be made in the game of quidditch.
Some of the original names of the books’ characters – before JK Rowling changed them – included Hermione Puckle, Neville Puff, Draco Spinks and Lily Moon, as an alternative to Luna Lovegood.
Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy, originally auditioned for the roles of Harry and Ron.
Having written half of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, the author realised she’d created a “giant hole” in the plot which she had to go back and fix, which is why the book is so long.
While filming Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, the pockets of Tom Felton’s (Draco Malfoy) Hogwarts robes were sewn shut to stop him sneaking food on to the set, meanwhile other cast members asked for pockets for cigarettes.
Dumbledore is an Old English word for bumblebee. JK said she chose the name because she pictured Dumbledore humming to himself around Hogwarts.
The writer almost killed the character of Ron Weasley halfway through the series when she “wasn’t in a very happy place” in her life. She now believes that she wouldn’t have been able to go through with it, but at the time considered killing Ron off “out of sheer spite”.
When asked by a fan how she chose the shape of Harry’s scar, JK Rowling replied, “Because it’s a cool shape. I couldn’t have my hero sport a doughnut-shaped scar.”
Richard Harris – Dumbledore in the first two films – only took the role after his granddaughter swore she’d never speak to him again if he didn’t.
Magic potion ingredients toadwax and mugwort may sound like made-up words, but in fact Rowling got most of them from a real book, Nicholas Culpeper’s The Complete Herbal.
While filming the series, the actors weren’t allowed to play contact sports in case they were injured. Dominoes anyone?
JK Rowling said she frequently saw crying girls in bathrooms when she was younger, hence the inspiration for Moaning Myrtle.
“If I had any power, I would have the power of invisibility,” says the writer. “This is a little bit sad but I would probably sneak off to a café and write all day.”
West Ham is the only real football club mentioned in the books. One of JK Rowling’s oldest friends is a West Ham supporter.
The seeds of a relationship between Ron’s sister Ginny Weasley and Harry were subtly planted throughout the series, such as during the quidditch match in which she beat rival Cho Chang.
While filming on set, the young actors did real homework to make the setting more realistic.
To mark the 20th anniversary, Bloomsbury has published new Hogwarts house editions of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone; Saturday sees a Harry Potter Trivia Tournament in 20 bookshops across the UK and on Friday in Greater Manchester there will be a Guinness World Record attempt for the largest gathering of people dressed as Harry Potter.
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