Simply Red Say Farewell & Britain’s Got Talent

I got a ticket alert from O2 the other day on the email whose subject field read:

Simply Red say farewell & Britain’s Got Talent

Coincidence?

Another one from Itunes said “Alerts for this week: Madonna.”

Is that generally, or is it a national security threat level somewhere above red. There may be different scales of Madonna. Sniffer dogs would sweep the transport hubs for threat level Rain, but mobile networks would crash if it were raised to, say, La Isla Bonita.

The O2 alert went on to mention the Australian Pink Floyd Show. Now, this is just a pipe dream, but how cool would it be for the ACTUAL Pink Floyd to come out and do an “Australian show”?

All the people who turned up to see the antipodean tribute band would be treated to Mssrs Gilmour and Mason and co demostrating skills in bushcraft and sporting excellence.

Speaking of talent, if you’re not doing anything tonight and happen to be in London Town, go down to the wonderful Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street and see Don McCullin. I saw him speak in Manchester in 1992 and it was very moving. He’s known as a war photographer, which sits poorly with him, as he’s generally brilliant.

He took many great pictures including the famous one of a shell-shocked US Marine in Vietnam. McCullin spoke about the battle they had both experienced, which he describes with painful eloquence. He said he himself was so traumatised by it that he stayed in his clothes for two weeks after.

“The next morning, I felt like I was one hundred years old,” he said, “and none the wiser.”

I feel bad now that this was a joke post slagging of Simply Red and it has turned into a critique of the greatest living photographer this side of Sebastião Salgado.

Ah well, it’s just an observation. The role of the next wave of bloggers is to simplify. Good luck with that, kids.

I have been manipulated, and I have in turn manipulated others, by recording their response to suffering and misery. So there is guilt in every direction: guilt because I don’t practice religion, guilt because I was able to walk away, while this man was dying of starvation or being murdered by another man with a gun. And I am tired of guilt, tired of saying to myself: “I didn’t kill that man on that photograph, I didn’t starve that child.” That’s why I want to photograph landscapes and flowers. I am sentencing myself to peace. – Don McCullin