OK, I'm probably biased. I have sat with the new Culture Minister Mike Russell for hours on countless boats to Rum and there's no doubt he's a very entertaining and well read man. And today, it showed. I was one of around two hundred artsy luvvie types crammed into the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh to hear the new man in charge of Scottish Culture demonstrate a fairly exhaustive knowledge of Scottish culture. There were 15 literary references in about 20 minutes – I suppose that sounds kinda pretentious, but it felt like rain after a long, long drought.
Instead of a lecture about the need to just get on with it, there was a Thomas Hardy quote; "I know 20 men who would write. I alone sat down to write."
Angus Farquhar of NVA sounded a warning note – "We've become great form-fillers in Scotland, not great artists. When artists feel they are just there to deliver government policy, they act like people in strait jackets." Which prompted a John F Kennedy quote from the Minister about the duty of the artist to be true to himself, or to be precise; "the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man."
At the close of play, a member of the audience remembered the final line of that JFK quote about Frost's "hired man" – who has "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope," and concluded "Hope deferred maketh the heart grow sick."
An elegant way of saying, don't let us down. Mr R nodded sagely and said "Quite".
I think the Minister got the message. And I certainly had an unexpectedly educative day out.
Meanwhile, I'm hoping Mike will do a reprise of today's meeting in July as an audience programme for Riddoch Questions before we go off air for the summer. Watch this Space. And finally, talking of spaces, many thanks to Paul and the security team at the South Gyle car park who walked round looking for my car last night when I was convinced it had been stolen. It was, of course, a few yards from where I thought I'd left it. No-one crowed, teased or would even accept the fiver I'd bet them that the car was truly gone! What diamond geezers. Or in the spirit of the day, "Cometh the hour, cometh the man."
"Don't worry, men. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist.."
(Gen. Sedgwick 1864, )
Posted by: bru | February 20, 2009 at 12:56 PM