A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Earlier this year I succumbed to a particularly annoying strain of COVID. Energy-wise it wiped me out, but as an added little lurgy bonus, it made my muscles ache so much I couldn’t sleep. Feeling permanently tired, I started looking for distractions to get me through the night. My brain had reached a level of mush that actual books were too demanding, my ears had become too sensitive that watching films was uncomfortable – but short articles on the internet? Perfect.

This inevitably led me to go back to some of the articles I’d written for this very column. I’d been contributing from the outset, and writing these were a good way to keep occupied during the COVID lockdown. So it seemed fitting that, in my current quarantined state, I would go back to re-read them. Whether it was exposing the lies at the heart of Singin’ In The Rain, a salute to a TV performance that still deserves accolades or even a look back at a famous cartoon it was to read it all again.

Actually it was the latter that triggered a spark in my brain – a memory of the time of writing it. Because two weeks before Julie had written a great column on the brilliant Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and well, I’d been meaning for a while to write something on this film. And Julie had beaten me to it! I knew I could have followed it up with my own personal take on the film but, well, Julie had covered all the stuff I liked about it so it would effectively have ended up being a four-word column consistently entirely of “see two weeks earlier”. But the act of thinking about that brilliant movie, and the wild anarchic cameos mentioned in the following week’s column from Sam reminded me of another Hollywood cartoon I loved.

Of course, if I had something different to say, I’d have been more than happy to have written another column about it. Which is pretty much what happened when Sam wrote his excellent column about Billy Wilder’s Fedora. As I wrote a week later, I’d been wanting to write about this weird mess of a film but whenever I tried I felt bad about giving the whole project a bit of a shivving. However, it felt inherently less mean of me to write a prosecution a week after the eloquent defence counsel had submitted their argument.

Back through the columns I went, revisiting not just what I wrote but why I wrote it. When Mege was to review the extreme noisefest that was a Biffy Clyro gig it gave me an opportunity to talk about the Divine Comedy gig I had just seen in London. Truth be told it would not have crossed my mind to write about it had I not read his gig review the week before.

Columns have also inspired me to get active. When Julie wrote about the era covered by the film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, the need to write a follow-up was the motivation I needed to finally track down a copy of the much-written-about studio release cut of Once Upon A Time In America. And while the experience of watching this studio hack job was not the most enjoyable one, I’m very glad I finally got round to doing something I’d been intending to do for years.

It’s fair to say that sometimes trying to follow the week before presents something of a challenge. Reading the column inevitably leads to worry if it doesn’t quickly inspire an obvious follow-up that you feel able to write about. When Matt wrote his excellent column on about classical reinterpretation of Metallica I had an anxious few days trying to think about what I could write. I don’t really know much classical music, or heavy metal and, if I’m honest, the genre of classical takes on rock music always reminded me of teachers trying to desperately appeal to Da Kids. The Friday deadline approached until, quite by chance, the shuffle on my iphone played “The Model” by Kraftwerk. Suddenly synapses connected – and I remembered an old CD I had that would fit a column. Written, if I recall correctly, that Friday morning – each track written about pretty much as I listened to them.

This isn’t – by the way – the latest I’ve written something. I once forgot completely I had agreed to do a column when a message arrived from Matt on the Friday lunchtime just checking whether the draft was finished. Oh yes! The Draft. The completely unstarted Draft. I was wondering whether I should not actually say which column was my Friday afternoon right-to-the-deadline composition thrown together – to see whether it was obvious at the time. (But if you do want to know which one it was – click here.)

Being on my sickbed did give me a chance to work my way back from the latest column, all the way back to the start. Most columns had links to the previous week, but I ensured that they all now did. This led to the fun of spotting the links as I went back. Some scream out at you – there’s a whole run of Werner Herzog columns that fit together nicely (with one minor detour). Whereas there’s three Psycho-related columns that come at it from all angles! But I enjoy the more esoteric ones – Julie making the leap from my own nerdy numismatics to Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead. Or Sam turning Adams into Addams. Did you think it would be impossible to go from respected BBC presenter Magnus Magnusson to an early single from Kasabian? Think again! Although I sometimes wince at my own efforts – deciding to write about my own theory that its best to watch the Thin Man movies backwards to follow Matt’s exploration of distorted time in movie storytelling only to much later realise the more obvious link of Jimmy Stewart was staring me in the face the whole time.

Looking back my favourite trio of links took in the very different ways that we all took when dealing with the name Khan. Three very different columns with a very clear throughline.

I enjoyed my time ensuring that all the columns were now linked together, so anyone can go back through the entries to the start, a journey deeper into a rabbit hole of fascinating, short, esoteric writing. Just look for the link in bold in any entry to leap back to the one before.

But it also reinforced for me the idea that the less proscriptive we all are in how we link the columns the better. It can be word, or a person, or an artform. Or even just a general vibe. The weirdness and the tenuousness of it all is all part of the fun. Don’t even worry about ensuring there’s a clickable link – I can fix that when I’m next on my sickbed. It was such fun to do, like completing a cryptic crossword for the online culture nerd.

Click here for the next link in the chain