Third: Ben has campaigned for Shaker Aamer. He has just been released from Guantanamo after all those years – just picked up with no evidence because he happened to be in Afghanistan doing charity work. Ben collected signatures from all our work people – on a very big Christmas card (even though Shaker is Muslim) saying, ‘Welcome Home’.
Vital: Our task is to form Intellectuals Unite.
INTELLECTUALS UNITE
We are student intellectuals spreading IoU (I owe you the world) through the colleges of the UK.
Intellectuals Unite. The world suffers from the isolation of intellectuals. During the Renaissance, intellectuals were the most influential members of society. I am an intellectual; I am a reader and an art lover. I need to understand the past to understand the present. As an activist, today I spend more and more time on the problem of climate change and how to save ourselves. I must therefore give a very broad view of what is an intellectual: even a kid on a demonstration who has had little education is already an intellectual – the reason he’s on the demo is because he wants the world to be a better place. An intellectual is someone, like me, who wishes to understand the world as it is, and his place in it.
We have already begun to form a movement; in six colleges and schools young people are forming active cells to oppose governments and fight climate change. They will ask their professors and visiting speakers to join, they will expand the movement to other colleges and link with intellectuals from all walks of life. The beauty of such a movement is that it is inclusive, open to everyone.
If intellectuals reunite they will lead public opinion; this would enable democracy to protect the public interest. Otherwise we have Donald Trump. Britain will lead by example.
It is time to swap the old myth of fossil fuel for the green revolution.
2016
JANUARY 2016
MON 4 – MON 11 JAN HEAVEN AND HELL
To Los Angeles. We agreed to do the concept for a charity event, Art of Elysium, for critically ill children. Our theme was ‘Heaven and Hell’. The floral decorations were really something – the florist had spent three days foraging for wild plants and branches to make a Paradise. And our friend Stewart’s band, Wild Daughter, really rocks – and is to dance to – not just boringly bob about, like most stuff. We met some nice people and I talked about Leonard. I hope some of them will support his request for presidential clemency. Won’t know until Christmas. Be brave/stay strong, Leonard!
We also went to dinner with James Costa and guests at his vegan restaurant, Crossroads, in support of Sea Shepherd. Paul (Watson) spoke to everyone live by video link, and Pamela, his close friend for many years, was there to welcome us all.
THURS 14 JAN BE SPECIFIC
To Milan for the MAN show on Sunday. Fantastic casting. Lots of models letting their hair grow. Our unisex look is Punkature (punk couture/puncture). ‘Be Specific’ is the title of our show. I got the idea from Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd.
New punk look at the Milan MAN show.
Be Specific: Save Venice – Stop the Cruise Ships weareherevenice.org Be Specific: Save our Rainforest – Cool Earth coolearth.org
Be Specific: Save our Ocean – Stop $ubsidies to Industrial Fishing seashepherd.org
Be Specific: You – Switch to Green Energy ecotricity.co.uk
Jane da Mosto came – Save Venice being part of ‘Be Specific’ – and we put Italian PR Emanuela Barbieri in touch with her organisation.
I also went through the Red Label (women’s) collection, which had just been delivered to the Milan showroom. It is the first time we have seen everything made up in the right fabric.
TUES 19 JAN BABY BAMBOO
Back home in the morning Ben phoned to tell me Bamboo had arrived. We went to see Tomoka and her baby, just down the road in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. I love him. We ate sushi in a nearby restaurant, then cycled home.
SUN 24 JAN THE NEW PARIS SHOP
To Paris. Andreas had just caught a cold and he had quite a fever. So we waited and in the afternoon he felt better and we just turned up at the Eurostar, though our tickets were now no good. What a lovely woman the supervisor was. She knew we were telling the truth and she checked with someone and took us through. She seemed to have a cold, too. Bless her!
Next day, we met the architect for the interior of the French shop, Simona, and her assistant Caterina. We worked all day and for me one particular decision happened. The walls were painted grey and Andreas pointed out that whereas some of the walls were walls others were plasterboard just so as to box in the wiring and infrastructure. These he hated. I am not sensitive enough to my surroundings to have noticed this, but then I understood and completely agreed.
Andreas said it would help if the cold grey could be a warmer tone and he indicated the colour of a piece of plasterboard: ‘What do you think?’
‘I would like it if they could actually be plasterboard,’ I said.
The next day Simona told Andreas that that’s what they would do – real plasterboard with ordinary builders’ screws showing. I am excited.
LATE JAN T-SHIRTS AND MATHS
Still spending lots of time streamlining the structure of our company and edit our products. For this reason Andreas and I have decided to clarify the collections. Gold Label will become Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood. He designs it, I assist him when I have time. Red Label will be Vivienne Westwood. Andreas said that when he was last in Italy he went with Rosita to this special doctor she has. The doctor told Andreas, you have a completely mathematical mind, were you good at maths at school? ‘Absolutely not! But I know what he meant!’
I collect everything. I have to have everything there – I set it all out. You see how I behaved to get these T-shirts. Six graphics pulled out from all this rubbish. I like them. Plus colours and fabrics. First I have to decide the forms. I decided on three shapes (one normal classic, one long-sleeved with gussets, one oversized with long sleeves puffed up at the sleeve-head). Then when I have decided which graphics match the shapes, I edit, reduce, change it around. There are endless possibilities I and when the possibilities really are endless I go mad. (I know about endlessness; if you want to know endlessness listen to Mahler – we did the night before.) Then at the end I took the paper bag which had the print of ladybirds on it. I love ladybirds. I needed it for the sleeves of one T-shirt. Then I added another T-shirt – the classic one all made in this same jersey with the ladybirds print and that gave me the chance to use my OM graphic on top. I don’t care how it’s printed – it can be a mess. And then I will stick on the bee patch. I love the yellow bee with its blue wings against the red ladybirds. I am happy.
FEBRUARY 2016
MON 1 FEB A MODEL COMPANY
Catherina, the daughter of my American friend Frank, came for work experience. I gave her a special task. We are fusing our Climate Revolution website with the main Vivienne Westwood site. This will happen in July. Meanwhile, we double up on what we post. I believe our website is the motor for everything I want to promote. We promote quality.
I asked Catherina to analyse the structure of the marketing and digital marketing team right up through to the people who sell. Obviously my main reason for asking this is because I want to know. (Though I direct the sites, I don’t use a computer. I write by hand and tell people what I want.) But also because otherwise I will never get round to doing this. These people work for me and most of them I haven’t met until now. And that’s what I want to do – link personally. I read some of her report: short, concise and really so well done. With Catherina, we have begun to talk to the people concerned. I really want to be sure that the message is my message.
My aim is to have a perfect company, a model for the new Green Economy. Efficient in every respect, efficient in happiness and job satisfaction. Our people are skilled and their work is labour intensive. To our customers we say, ‘Buy less, choose well, make it last’. I believe this is a company of the future.
THURS 4 FEB MONTHL
Y VISIT TO JULIAN
My monthly visit to Julian. There were lots of photographers outside the embassy because he was waiting for the decision of the UN who next day ruled that he was illegally detained. I was really glad to be photographed on this important day because I support Julian and I feel privileged that people know that.
I don’t want to say anything until I have been back to talk to Julian, other than that the government and press response thrives on libellous lies. They don’t care because at the moment they are getting away with it. And though one refutes the lies, once the lies are out, for the moment they stick.
SAT 6 FEB SUPPORT THE JUNIOR DOCTORS
To speak at the rally for the junior doctors. Vanessa Redgrave spoke and also my son Ben spoke as a member of the public who is grateful for the National Health and for the stand the junior doctors are taking to protect the NHS from government sabotage and sell off.
Lauren, one of the organisers, started to tell me some of the stuff that’s going on. How can somebody have so much information and remember all that detail? I said, does she work? Yes. She works as a specialist registrar in adult psychiatry in London. I’m astonished by how clever she is. Cindy has asked her to talk to some of the groups of intellectuals she is helping to form.
WEDS 10 FEB GOLDFINCHES
For some months I have seen only one or two loyal birds in my little back garden. There used to be so many. Either they weren’t there or I missed them. Today the mimosa tree is full of goldfinches and the tomtit and the lady blackbird have got partners. The best time to catch them is 8.30 in the morning.
WEDS 17 – SUN 21 FEB INTELLECTUALS UNITE
Our fashion show – which will soon change name to Vivienne Westwood (from Red Label) – is on Sunday. Its title is ‘Intellectuals Unite’ and I have written a rap about this – which I did to camera. I also used it for the press release and Mic Righteous wants me to do the rap as a guest on his next album.
All this week I will be working on the show, choosing outfits, fitting models, fixing the running order. Andreas will help. Yasmine is here, staying in my home, already casting. Tomorrow we try out the hair and make-up. I knew the tailoring worked well. It is classic – it would have been as fashionable ten years ago as it will be ten years from now. But to put a fashion show together is such a big job; it took me and Andreas three days (afternoon and evening). It is not until we start cross-styling that we get the looks. Exciting.
MARCH 2016
THURS 3 MARCH FRANK AUERBACH AT TATE BRITAIN
I have been to see Frank Auerbach at Tate Britain twice and I shall go again. It is a life-changing experience. Its power is so profound.
William Feaver, one of the people who sat for him, writes in the exhibition notes about how he did sessions every Monday evening for twelve years, ‘changing position every nine months or so’. The reuslt, he says, is ‘something marvellous: an image hatched, a sense of animation perpetuated and let out into the world. These paintings give such a sense of being alive that I for one am pleased that here, whew, I’m still breathing.’
Perhaps Frank Auerbach painted layer on layer because he saw fresh every time. The paint is thick! Auerbach himself says that in dealing with ‘the problem’ (we don’t know what the problem is) he sometimes stopped finally out of frustration.
It is so well exhibited. Auerbach himself hung all but the last room. I could not leave the first room – heads; they just held me there. Then I continued. I was so pleased to meet the landscapes because I felt I knew them. You just know, that’s real, that’s true.
I went again and this time I ‘got’ one of the landscapes which had puzzled me on the first visit, titled The Origin of the Great Bear. You see the constellation thrown up over the hill into the sky, the stars are bluish. The whole surface is acid yellow – sky and earth, except for a patch of night sky torn through the clouds which looks like a dark-blue giant bird. I suddenly felt I was seeing the whole of creation, back beyond civilisation, back beyond the Greeks yet including that, and forward to the end of our time on earth: the world seen through human eyes.
I said this to Cynthia. She said that was exactly what happened to her. This does not mean anything. We don’t believe our experience is mysteriously embedded in the painting. We don’t know what Auerbach saw, but we believe it is something primary.
SAT 5 MARCH PARIS SHOW: ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VW
Andreas presented our top fashion, which he designs in the main, under his own name: Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood. We are trying to make ours into a model company and this is a way of clarifying what we do. It was great.
The photo opposite is of my favourite outfit, which I call ‘Medea’. She was the barbaric princess who helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece and later killed their two sons when he married another woman. See the amazing film with Maria Callas by Pasolini.
WEDS 16 MARCH OPEN LETTER TO DAVID CAMERON
I sent an open letter about fracking to David Cameron, also signed by Mark Ruffalo, Colin Firth, Livia Firth, Bianca Jagger, Taron Egerton, Rupert Friend, Aimee Mullins and Felicity Blunt. We noted that ‘fracking in the US has caused thousands of cases of groundwater and surface water contamination, made many people sick, has been linked to infant health issues, serious air pollution problems, and more.’ But the main point is that Cameron had said that communities would have a voice in whether fracking would happen near them – but now these local decisions are at risk of being overturned by central government.
The government actually intend to force-frack – the whole country – with the help of the big energy companies (not Ecotricity). But eighty per cent of people don’t want fracking.
The government = antipeople.
‘Medea’ from the new ‘Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood’ collection.
SAT 26 MARCH THE ST MATTHEW PASSION AND CLEANSED
Easter. We were invited to the Barbican by Isabella Gardiner to see the St Matthew Passion, with the Monteverdi Choir conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.
I am glad I was brought up to believe in God. Our village life centred round the church (and school); the sense of community, the rituals and the singing, the feeling of being at one with oneself and with the world (spiritual cleansing). I was religious until age twenty-three, after that, not; though I agree that one’s spirit or soul is a fact of experience. I like the Christian concept of God: made in our image (or vice versa), a symbol of our perfection; the idea that by becoming more human we can evolve into better creatures.
When I went to the St John Passion – I’ve said it before – I flew. The music carried me away. The St Matthew Passion is longer, with a large choir. The arias are soul-wrenching and full of guilt. It was a triumphant and perfect performance. Yet afterwards whilst we were having a drink, John Eliot came up to me and I said, ‘The Matthew Passion is more sick than the St John.’ That was rude of me and he came right back, ‘No it’s not!’
I’d like to explain. Leading up to my rejection of the Christian religion, we Protestants had found the Catholic religion morbid and kitsch – flaming medical hearts, blood, agony, bones, God on a cloud – it made me think of the Spanish Inquisition. But then I began to think that all Christian religion was sick. That’s what turned me off, and it came crashing down like a house of cards. The Bible says: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ Rubbish! If God wanted to save the world, why didn’t he just do it if he could? No need to torture and kill his son. I expect the implication is that we must suffer too if we want everlasting life.
Yes, I do think the Christian religion is rooted in morbid superstition and causes a confusion of unhealthy emotion: a mixture of love and guilt. By killing Jesus we become cleansed of sin. He is the chosen sacrificial victim, the redeemer king, who dies for the love of us, so that we might be forgiven. We perform the necessary magic by having killed him; we now eat his body and drink his blood so that
we may have eternal life. He led the way.
Religion comes from magic ritual. Lord Raglan, in his small book Jocasta’s Crime, tells us that myths are the stories that accompany the ritual – the myth tells them how to perform the rite properly – and which are still passed down the generations when the ritual is forgotten. He refers to the diffusion of culture: an invention (e.g. stone axes) occurred in one place only and passed slowly over the years from one tribe to another. In the same way this happened with magic ritual. The same rituals passed all over the world and some of them must have done so as far back as when the continents were connected. That is why the myths of the world tell the same stories.
In the days after the Passion I was still thinking of a play I had seen earlier that month, because they each left me with some of the same feelings. My friend Susan came to stay the weekend and we saw Cleansed by Sarah Kane at the National Theatre. The play was full of violence. I was worried about that, especially that somebody was going to have his tongue cut out with a pair of scissors. It happened early on. Was that it? Thank God for that! I can cope. It was all done matter-of-fact. The victim didn’t scream.
Patients/victims, sometimes hands tied, or gagged, were bundled around or pushed down into chairs. Black-clad orderlies, their heads covered by thick black stockings, passed back and forth. Two men were pushed into chairs seated at a small table and supervised whilst they argued over their commitment to each other. They promised, like the lovers in Orwell’s 1984, never to betray, whatever happened. One man said ‘I love you’. He was the one who had his tongue cut out. This was the longest piece of dialogue; there was hardly any other. A thrum-thrum of music and beat was continuous except a few times when a pop song was broadcast, when someone would dance madly and fling his or her arms like a windmill. Everything was stage direction. Now and again a striptease dancer was wheeled on in a portable shower for the benefit of the man who seemed to run things, to wank. She came out of the shower box and said she loved him and he hated her.
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