I like Jodie Foster, but...

Late Saturday night I broke one of my own rules for life. I was wide awake, waiting for the flush of alcohol to dissipate – after a Mojito, half a bottle of a decent NZ Pinot Noir, topped off with several shots of a Guavita, a Cuban liqueur, sweetening a fine Monte Cristo cigar. When I drink too much these days, which is rare, I have to wait for my head to clear before going to bed. It’s a dangerous time. What do I do with this intoxicated me that isn’t me? Read? No, impossible. Listen to music? I seemed to require something visual. So the mistake I made, and the rule I broke, was to switch on late night TV, instead of watching a favourite film. It could have been Blue Velvet, or Rumble Fish, Wings Of Desire or any of Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns, even something from the Marx Brothers. But no, it was TV – which is always a mistake for me, whatever my state of sobriety. For, at this time of night, or any time of night for that matter, all there is to watch on TV is crime. I have not yet fathomed why the entertainment providers (that TV companies are) have decided to force-feed us crime. People do not like crime. Everything is about the human short-cut that is crime: the worst side of human nature. First, I watched Flightplan, an unlikely but compelling tale of a woman whose child is ‘stolen’ on an airborne plane by a hijacker and secreted in the hold. It was the ‘one person against the world’ scenario that Hollywood regurgitates constantly, with Jodie Foster playing the female Bruce Willis. Jodie Foster excels in such roles. I always stick with her films because I find her very attractive. It would, however, be good to see her in something that didn’t involve rape, murder or some other form of grisly violence. But my negative force field wasn’t sated yet. From this, I went on to watch Wallander, the original Swedish film of a TV series that Kenneth Branagh has recently starred in over here. Incest, religious bigotry, insanity, murder, the lot, in yet another police detective drama. The whole thing only redeemed by a performance from the female lead, Johanna Sällström. There was always the off button, I can hear you saying. But these dynamic women kept me watching. And I always wonder about women and crime. How crime is, by and large, such a man-made thing. How, by and large, women are caught up in it. Different chromosomes. But I was there, still watching, waiting for burning alcohol to escape my body, feeling acutely sensitive to such subjects. To watch them is to feel vulnerable and, eventually, desecrated. And to realise that there is a need for an intoxicated part of me to watch them is what makes me sad and depleted. When I finally went to bed it was 2am. Wary and weary of humankind, I went into the spare room, having a need to be alone. I slept badly, awaking at 8 to the enervating sound of barking dogs, let out by our anti-social neighbours. I felt that there was something I had to attend to, but could not bring my mind around to it. I felt dizzy, nauseous. Our own dog needed walking. Eventually, I knew I would have to spend my day undoing the damage I had done to myself in the late hours of the previous night. I had left myself wide open to a virus from the world of entertainment. At such times, I know only one tool that works. Music. I keep coming back to that thought. The one invention of humankind that justifies the species. So, after walking the dog, a long, difficult, hot walk with a humming in my head, we eat breakfast. But there is the joyful Sunday morning sound of Jazz FM. I hear something that reminds me of Steely Dan and sends me off into a reverie of how much this band saved me in my nervy mid-teens back in the 70s. When I’ve made a mistake and broken my own rules for life, there is always somebody to help in the world of music.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk