Find Page One on APPLE PODCASTS or STITCHER.
Episode image is a detail from the cover of The Making Of Americans by Gertrude Stein, published in 2006 by Dalkey Archive Press.
Recorded in Hove during the amazing heatwave of earlier this year (2013), Charles Adrian sits down for this 35th Second Hand Book Factory with Swiss theatre-maker and performer Marcel Schwald. They talk about the importance of celebrating imperfection and of reading Gertrude Stein aloud, exhausting Charles Adrian’s knowledge of Civil War battles on the way.
The show Let’s Pretend To Be Human, mentioned in this episode, was directed by Marcel and featured Charles Adrian as a performer, along with Ariane Andereggen and Susanne Abelein. The music was written and produced by Matthias Meppelink. You can find out more about it here.
The Making Of Americans by Gertrude Stein is also discussed in Page One 169.
This episode was recorded in Hove for London Fields Radio.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 26th August, 2013.
Book listing:
The Book Of Tea by Okakura Tenshin
The English Civil War, A People’s History by Diane Purkiss
The Making Of Americans by Gertrude Stein
Links:
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening... you're listening... to London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 50th Page One, this is the 35th Second Hand Book Factory, I'm Charles Adrian and this is London Fields Radio. In honour of our 50th podcast and because it's unbelievably hot and sunny at time of recording here is On The Sunny Side Of The Street from Peggy Lee's Gold Collection.
Music
[The Sunny Side Of The Street by Peggy Lee]
Charles Adrian
So, as the sound of Peggy Lee fades out - I've no idea who the man is - I'm in Brighton today with Marcel Schwald. Is that right?
Marcel Schwald
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Marcel. Hello.
Marcel Schwald
Hello.
Charles Adrian
So we've been driving around in my car for the last couple of days feeling quite warm.
Marcel Schwald
Yes.
Charles Adrian
The first thing I want you to do is to describe yourself.
Marcel Schwald
Describe myself? Okay. I'm... Yeah, I was born in Switzerland and I come from a family... a Swiss Family but my granddad came from the Black Forest. That's what my name means in short. Like, Schwald is short for Schwartzwald. And yes, I'm a theatre director and performer and dramaturg and writer and I do just about anything you can do to earn money with theatre. I'm also very interested in performance art. And if I had to describe myself... Oh, I think it's really hard to describe yourself and I think we're in times of describing ourselves all the time or having a profile or a Facebook or I don't know... like, putting yourself in the foreground in some way. And maybe I will describe myself the best in the coming minutes when we just talk and you will learn more about my thinking and my being.
Charles Adrian
That's fair enough. Yeah.
Marcel Schwald
Good.
Charles Adrian
So the first section of this podcast is for the book that you like. I asked you to bring a book... some book that you like.
Marcel Schwald
Yes. I really brought two of the books I like the most. And the book that I like - which I also brought to have a new look into it again because I haven't had it in my hands for a long time [and] now I do again - is The Book Of Tea by Okakura Tenshin.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Marcel Schwald
Okakura Tenshin. Have you heard about the book before?
Charles Adrian
No.
Marcel Schwald
Okakura Tenshin was a man who was... he was a master of tea ceremony in Japan but he was also living in the States for a very long time and he could speak English perfectly and he wrote this book in Japanese and in English. And I really like this book because I... you can hear his voice and you can hear his choice of how he wants to describe things in English, which is always a problem when you have translations from Japanese into English - like The Book Of Rings or something has, like, lots of translations and none of them are readable, actually. And this Book Of Tea, I think, is really elegantly written book. And it's also dealing with tea ceremony in a way but also it keeps on talking about questions of communication and understanding between the Japanese culture and the Western culture. And, yeah, I really like it. I think it's full of humour. And it's a very special book. And it's also, of course, an advocative book somehow for understanding between cultures.
Charles Adrian
Oh, wow. It sounds wonderful.
Marcel Schwald
Yeah. I love it.
Charles Adrian
Read... Read the first page for us.
Marcel Schwald
Yes. I will.
Charles Adrian
Are you going to try the Japanese page?
Marcel Schwald
No.
Marcel and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
I wish you would. I wish you would.
Marcel Schwald
It wouldn't make sense for any of us.
Marcel and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Marcel Schwald
Okay, here we go.
The Cup of Humanity
Chapter One
Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism - Teaism. Teaism is a cult funded [sic]... founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.
The philosophy of tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy being [sic]... by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste.
The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conductive [sic]... no [sic]... so conducive to introspection has been highly [...]
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Wow. That's great. I find that very interesting. I've never seen a tea ceremony performed and I have to admit I didn't know anything about the philosophy behind the tea ceremony. But I love hearing that it has to do with accepting the flaws in the world we live in, in a way.
Marcel Schwald
Yes...
Charles Adrian
At least, that's what I take from that page.
Marcel Schwald
Yes, it's also what I would... it's underlined a lot in my book.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] That's what we look for inside it.
Marcel Schwald
Yeah. I mean, I... I also... What sprang to my attention this time was also the romanticism of the social order. [laughing] I love the romanticism of the social order. But, yeah, I also like this worship of the imperfect. Because I also wrote my final thesis - my Bachelor, at the University of Utrecht, for theatre - I wrote about the imperfect because I wanted the stage to be a place where people carry out or celebrate imperfection and not the thing that they are training at and other things they're good at. Because I think that's what we're doing all the time. And I don't think it delivers a good surface for people to identify with. And so I was totally fascinated by it.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's interesting because I think from afar Japanese culture can sometimes look like a quest for perfection. You know, in terms of the manners and the the dress. You know, the Japanese people I know who've explained to me how you're supposed to prepare a kimono, for example... It's very precise. All of those kind of things. And they're... I love... I've loved the tea ware that you see in museums in Japan. And I love the idea that you spend fifty years perfecting your technique of just this one type of bowl, for example. But then that this bowl might look like... it doesn't look perfect, necessarily. They often look quite haphazard, don't they?
Marcel Schwald
Yeah, they need to be asymmetrical. It's very important. Almost everything needs to be asymmetrical, I think, and you have to find the perfect balance in the asymmetrical, or in the thing that is missing, or... Yeah. So, I mean, I do agree. I think that becoming a master of tea ceremony is still a thing which is trained much harder than any thing we do here. Or, like, you have to train harder and with more discipline to become a tea master than to become a top banker, I guess.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Marcel Schwald
But still, at least they talk about imperfection. I think that's already a step.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [indisctinct] And discipline is not necessarily a bad thing at all. But yeah, opening the door to fallibility is just... it seems to me so important.
Marcel Schwald
Yeah, I think so too.
Charles Adrian
Wow. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that. I might well have to get myself a copy of that.
Marcel Schwald
Yes!
Charles Adrian
I'm really inspired by that page.
Marcel Schwald
It would be nice. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Tell me about the first piece of music that you wanted to play. You've been a bit coy about it. You haven't told me what it is.
Marcel Schwald
Yes, it's a piece that I don't know who it is by. And it's... In my collection of music it's called Comfort but that's just what I call it. And I think it's a song which is radiating a lot of comfort. It's... yeah, it's a comfort song. And it has something circus-like about it, I think. And I saw that, on your website, when you listen to the podcasts you can write down comments and maybe if somebody recognises the song they can write it as a comment because I'd love to know whom it is by. I think it's a very famous song. Maybe even you know whom it is by.
Charles Adrian
Let's play it and we'll see.
Marcel Schwald
Yeah.
Music
[‘Comfort’ by unknown]
Charles Adrian
Okay, so that was something comforting that we don't know the title or the musicians. But it was... it was very comforting. I enjoyed it. Thank you.
Marcel Schwald
[muffled] Yes, wasn't it.
Charles Adrian
Now, in this section we're going to talk about the book that I'm going to give to you. And perhaps unsurprisingly, I've chosen to give you...
Marcel Schwald
Ooo! Really? Can you...?
Charles Adrian
The English Civil War, A People's History by Diane Perkis?
Marcel Schwald
Can you spare it?
Charles Adrian
Yeah, yeah. I think you should have it. I'm not going to reread it...
Marcel Schwald
I love to get this.
Charles Adrian
... anytime soon but I loved it.
Marcel Schwald
Thank you so much.
Charles Adrian
I loved it. It was a real period of history that I knew nothing about and this was a very, very good introduction to it. So I'm giving you this partly because of Lukey and his English ancestors, partly because of... you know, there's a bit about the Diggers inside it so you'll find out about the Diggers. And partly because... We've been talking a lot, listeners, about kings and queens of England and Scotland, recently, and there was a lot about Charles the First that I couldn't answer today. All of that is in here.
Marcel Schwald
Oh right!
Charles Adrian
So you'll find out...
Marcel Schwald
So, why he was he was beheaded.
Charles Adrian
... why he was beheaded and what he did during the war and... You'll find out a lot of stuff about him. Inigo Jones is mentioned in here, whose...
Marcel Schwald
[speaking over] Ah! Inigo Jones! Yes.
Charles Adrian
... whose Oberon house we saw today in Arundel. And so on and so forth.
Marcel Schwald
Okay. Great. Thank you very much.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] But it is really... it's a very good broad history, very readable and very interesting. So I'm going to read you... While the seagulls reel overhead I'm going to read you the beginning, which is An Epistle to the Gentle Reader. So this is from the author to us.
If this were truly a seventeenth-century book or pamphlet, it would be likely to include an epistle to you, the reader. In the seventeenth century, with which this book is concerned, authors and readers approached each other more formally and courteously than is now customary. A book usually began with a polite letter to the gentle reader, a letter which asked for the reader's attention, apologized for the book's shortcomings, and explained what benefits patient perusal of the work might offer. The tone was often self-deprecating, and it was usual to deprecate the book itself as ‘my poor book’. The poet Robert Herrick thought his book was likely to be used for toilet paper when his readers were tired of it; Milton repeatedly asked God to fix his awful weaknesses. In addressing the reader as ‘gentle’, the author invited him or her to be so; to be courteous and polite in turn. Gentle also has a class meaning; it implies wealth, and with it education, power and discernment.
I hope it is not too self-conscious for me to emulate this charming tradition and thus to offer tribute to it. In reviving a good custom and addressing you, gentle reader, my chief purpose is to welcome you to a story that greatly concerns you.
Frankly, I am in hopes that you may be among those to whom the words ‘The English Civil War’ have always stood for an unsolved mystery. The Civil War is perhaps the single most important event in our history but for rather complex reasons many of the very intelligent readers who abound in these isles know little of it. The great battlefield sites of Edgehill, Marston Moor, and Naseby are difficult to find and poorly marked. The siege sites of Basing House and Donnington Castle are ruins dotted with picnickers rather than sacred memorials to heroic endeavor and ideas. We have no Fourth of July comma [sic] [...]
There you go, Oh, you'll also read about Turnham Green, by the way, which is where we caught the bus after you arrived on Tuesday...
Marcel Schwald
Yes. Okay.
Charles Adrian
... back to my flat.
Marcel Schwald
Wow.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. It's an important Civil War site. [laughs] So there you go. Enjoy it. Read it.
Marcel Schwald
Thank you. Would you have visited this site, the Civil War site? Have you visited it?
Charles Adrian
No. I haven't visited any Civil War sites.
Marcel Schwald
[speaks over] Not yet.
Charles Adrian
Oh, do you mean Turnham Green?
Marcel Schwald
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Oh, yeah. That's where I... it's where I live, more or less.
Marcel Schwald
But you went to see it, or you stood there, or...?
Charles Adrian
It's just a bit of grass. Yeah.
Marcel Schwald
Oh. Okay.
Charles Adrian
It's now... It's that grass that we were standing near.
Marcel Schwald
Ah, right. Okay.
Charles Adrian
But it was bigger. It was more... It was fields. And there were no houses there. So it was really the edge of London and Charles was trying to get back into London, I think, at that point and the Parliamentary forces stopped him. And that was really the moment when he lost the war, according to this woman. I think. I think. I may have got all that wrong. So read it and find out.
Marcel Schwald
I will. Thank you very much.
Charles Adrian
Now we're going to move on to your second music choice, which I'm perfectly happy to play because it's one of my favourite tracks by one of my favourite people from one of my favourite films.
Marcel Schwald
Yes and in the scene you have exactly the same again as in the English - uh, not the English - in the Japanese tea ceremony in a way. Like Liz... Liza Minelli - [laughing] not Liz Taylor, Liza Minelli - is playing perfectly a performer which is not perfect so it's a tribute to imperfections somehow.
Charles Adrian
Yes. Indeed it is.
Marcel Schwald
And that's why I chose it!
Charles Adrian
And this is...
Marcel Schwald
It's linked to my first page.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] So this is from Cabaret. This is Cabaret.
Music
[Cabaret by Liza Minelli]
Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
It is, it's London Fields Radio. I'm Charles Adrian. I'm here for the 50th Page One in Brighton - or Hove to be more precise - with Marcel Schwald. And now, Marcel, what is the book that you're going to give to me?
Marcel Schwald
Yes. The book that I'm going to give to you is probably going to be a problem for you because I've seen the heap of books you have already...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Don't!
Marcel Schwald
... which was given to you and I'm going to give you a book of eight hundred and eighty pages.
Charles Adrian
Oh my god.
Marcel Schwald
But you gave me a book of [indistinct]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yeah, I've offloaded quite a substantial book on you.
Marcel Schwald
It's six hundred pages, I see here. So it's a book of eight hundred and eighty pages but the clue about it is that it probably only consists of about maybe a hundred pages but that's just repeated on and on. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Okay!
Marcel Schwald
It's The Making Of Americans by Gertrude Stein.
Charles Adrian
Oh, I've never read any Gertrude Stein.
Marcel Schwald
Yes. It's a very specific one. Like, there's there's some books which read like... like The Cosmopolitan... like The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is her most famous. It's just about... it's a bit gossip about Matisse and his wife and about Picasso and about herself - Gertrude Stein herself, of course - and about everything there, which is a very interesting book but it's very, very easy to read. And then there's the really hardcore stuff to read like the poems - like Tender Buttons and so on - which I myself have not found any entrance yet to read them. But this - Making Of Americans - I think is really interesting because it's really like... it's really going in circles. It's a very circular thing. You see how she builds up motives and she keeps on repeating them. It's sometimes a bit nerve wracking and you have to read it aloud to yourself.
Charles Adrian
Oh. Okay.
Marcel Schwald
You have to read it aloud. I love it, though. I think it's interesting and I came to the conclusion to read it aloud myself by myself. And later I started reading more and more about Gertrude Stein and I found out that they themselves have been reading them out loud all the time - her literature. Her and her circle of friends. So, yeah, it's good to read it for a... [indistinct]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Yeah definitely. Read the first page.
Marcel Schwald
A problem I have with the first page is that the very beginning I don't like.
Charles Adrian
That doesn't matter. It's in the rules of this exercise.
Marcel Schwald
[speaking over] And then comes... And then comes the part I like. I know. I've accepted it.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] All right. Well, if you want... No, cheat if you like.
Marcel Schwald
No, I won't. And the very beginning, I'm afraid, I can also not explain yet - which is yet again a good exercise to read it now and today because I might understand more of it after I've read it for you. Okay. I'm starting.
Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. “Stop !” cried the groaning old man at last, “Stop ! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.”
It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves ; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character and so our struggle with them dies away.
It has always seemed to me a rare privilege, this, of being an American, a real American, one whose tradition it has taken scarcely sixty years to create. We need only realise our parents, remember our grandparents and know ourselves and our history is complete.
The old people in a new world, the new people made out of the old, that is the story that I mean to tell, for that is what really is and what I really know.
Some of the fathers we must realise so that we can tell our story really, were little boys then, and they came across the water with their parents, the grandparents we need only just remember. Some of these our fathers and our mothers, were not even made then, and the women, the young mothers, our grandmothers we perhaps just have seen once, carried these our fathers and our mothers into the new world inside them, those women of the old world strong to bear them. Some looked very weak and little women, but even these so weak and little, were strong always, to bear many children.
These certain men and women, our grandfathers and grandmothers, with their children born and unborn with them, some whose children were gone ahead to prepare a home to give them ; all countries were full [...]
Charles Adrian
[musing] mmm. That I... Yeah, okay. I think that's going to interest me a lot. But we're not going to be able to talk any more about it because this is...
Marcel Schwald
The end?
Charles Adrian
... The end. [laughs]
Marcel Schwald
Don't worry, you can talk with Gertrude while you read it. [laughs] You can call me at night.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] But I love... I actually really enjoyed particularly that... not the first section so much but that second section when she starts talking about the history being contained within me, my mother and my grandmother. I think that's fantastic.
Marcel Schwald
Yeah. She will repeat exactly that for the next hundred pages. So you will read it until you...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Superb. Until I get the point.
Marcel Schwald
Exactly. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
But I think I'm going to like it. I will take a sabbatical and go and live on an island somewhere and read it aloud to myself.
Marcel Schwald
That's a good idea. Do that.
Charles Adrian
Now, this has been so great. It's been wonderful to have you in England and travel around with you.
Marcel Schwald
Thank you! Yes.
Charles Adrian
And I'm going to play us out now with a song that will mean a lot to you as it does to me, I think. It's a [laughing] song... It's a cast recording of a song... I think the title is Let's Pretend To Be Human. [laughs]
Marcel Schwald
Ah! Really? Great.
Charles Adrian
But I don't know what the title is actually. It's by... It's written and engineered by Mattias... what's his surname? Meppelink? And performed by Susanne Abelein, Ariane... you're going to have to tell me...
Marcel Schwald
Andereggen.
Charles Adrian
Andereggen. That's right. And Charles Adrian Gillott. This is Let's Pretend To Be Human from our piece, Marcel, Let's Pretend To Be Human.
Music
[Let's Pretend To Be Human by Mattias Meppelink et al]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]