EDITORIAL

The intention of this 40th issue of The Drouth is to revisit some topics which have appeared in our pages over the Decade. Some five years back Rodge Glass examined the relationship between Word and Image in the life’s work of Alasdair Gray. That essay was ultimately reproduced as a chapter in Glass’s Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography (2008). If however, Gray’s artistic mission is an endless remaking and reimagining of Glasgow in word and picture then Miller takes here one step further in another endless task --the redescribing of Alasdair Gray.

The excerpt from Thomas Reid’s Inquiry of course has a direct relationship to Gray the visual artist, as in that piece Reid analyses the work of painters. But Reid’s chapter is also germane to an ongoing concern we have with the painters of the Enlight- enment like Raeburn (we reproduced Stevenson’s critique of a Raeburn exhibition in issue 20 too) and their connection to the writers and writing of that era. Raeburn painted Reid when the latter was already an old man.

The inclusion of an excerpt from The Red Cockatoo: James Kelman and the Art of Commitment enriches the nexus further. Kelman --another hardy perennial at The Drouth-- is, like Gray, examined in his relationship and his interaction with --even in his demiurgical creation of-- the city. The City of Glasgow, by the way. Reid was professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, and Kelman has written many times of his admiration for the thinking and preparation for moral action found in Reid’s ‘Common Sense Philosophy’. Kelman has also written that his ambition as a child was to be a painter: could it be said that the congeniality between him and Reid is further strengthened by their shared visual, as well as their intellectual/ philosophical awareness and engagement? The posing of these works together leads us to further meditation thereon...

Culloden moor, site of a terrible massacre and point of no return in Scottish – and British – history is on the surface flat, uninteresting and bleak. Yet no single space or landscape of Scottish history has been so emotive. In issue 8 we examined hero worship from the point of view of the panegyric in Gaelic culture from John MacInnes and a long appraisal of the withering scepticism of filmmaker Peter Watkins, maker of the Culloden mockumentary. The poetic force of Michail Mersinis’ beautiful, silvery prints of the moor stems from the fragility of the images he has made, which will inevitably blacken and fade over time.

The return of Chris Leslie, whose images of Haiti graced issue 38, ‘Foundation’ to Bosnia over a decade after his third visit returns us to the 11th issue and its theme of ‘Monument.’ As does in some sense, Johnny Rodger’s continuation of his series of Animals stories that permeate our 40 issue run so far. A question for you though; does his silenced, and allegedly invisible elephant really represent the limit of the statuesque? War and memorial was a central theme of issue 11 and attracted Important contributions from the late Angus Calder and Adrian Welsh, the latter addressing the Daniel Libeskind plans for rebuilding New York’s Ground Zero.

The Drouth was only an issue old when the towers fell. Our second appeared in October 2001, by which time its seemingly abstract theme of ‘translation’ became desperately urgent in a world of clashing civilisations and idiot presidents. It is sobering to note that political infighting and economic mismanagement means that Ground zero remains a building site to this day, but in Bosnia Leslie finds that bullet-ridden border posts and killing fields have been covered with concrete and parked cars. We wonder whether the architects who rebuilt Sarajevo purposefully sought to dull the tortured landscape, or if, as with Glasgow’s Lauriston district, theses spaced were to be treated as ‘found territory’.

Leslie’s images force no conclusions or judgment, but we might wonder whether if, as Thomas Reid argues, sight is the beginning of measurement and understanding, there is surely something risky about the relatively quick, tasteful and ruthless occlusion of killing fields behind banal (but peaceful) environments. It is apparent however, that radicalised Bosnian clerics were seemingly instrumental in reviving Jihadist activism in the years preceding the 2001 attacks.

Lastly, we come to two specialist topics that have been revisited time and again over the past ten years. Owen Dudley Edwards has appeared in almost every one of our forty numbers since he considered the ‘Change?’ of a newly devolved Scotland in issue 1. Alex Rex IV and a looming third referendum (this time on the BIG question) replaces the sceptical ? of issue 1 with punctuation much larger, less terminal and arguably more urgent. Here Edwards speaks of Edwin Morgan (published in our fifth issue, and guest editor in our 7th, ‘Complexity’) and the Scottish Romantics (see our various issues on Burns, Ramsay, Ferguson, Geddes (etc, etc) and ODE’s recurring notes on Sir Walter himself). From the Romantics to the Morgan is in itself a potted progress through the long, difficult journey our perceptions and collective imagination has taken towards our newly punctuated proto national status.

Which brings us to Ruth Paxton who continues The Drouth’s abiding interest in travelling communities. Drouth editor Mitch Miller opened the debate in issue 12 (the green n’ orange coloured ‘Bigotry’ issue – still the all time bestseller) and continued it in issues 14, 23, 29 and 33. Some 27 issues later artist Ruth Paxton shows us in her travelogue that Travellers remained cooped up in a virtual sink-estate of no fixed abode or point of resolution.

Guided by her intuition and sense of fair play, Paxton describes meanness and division indicative of much wider problems, of much greater failures in perception (and of consequentially poor judgment) than who gets to use an overnight campsite. Set against the context of banker-robbers and the recent Arab Spring, the breaking of old Scottish Labour and a new socially mediated form of city riot emerging in London it might seem small indeed, but it is depressingly easy to imagine the same conditions prevailing should the Drouth make it to its 20th birthday cake. To borrow a borrowed phrase, we must continue to work as if we were in the early days of a better nation.

Mitch Miller and Johnny Rodger, Glasgow 2011

The Drouth has had the great privilege of working with a diverse range of writers and artistsin its first ten years. We would like to thank all of them, below;

Chris Deans, Owen Dudley Edwards, K.D. Farquharson, David Harrower, Georg Buchner, Bill Webster, Shara Johnston, Agnes Williamson, Yusef Szafki, Gerry Carruthers, Frank Kuppner, Pauline Goldsmith, Giacomo Leopardi, Ralph Dunning, Rab Feenie, Angus Calder, Edwin Morgan, Gowan Calder, Colin Affleck, Mark Brown, Carl MacDougall, Ritchie Robertson, Harriet Wright, Jonny Murray, Lotta Djupsund, Stephen Davismoon, Burhan Wazir, Patrick Walker, Jeni Calder, Monica Germana, Ronan O’Donnell, Murray Grigor, Sileas na Keppoch, John Cook, John MacInnes, Roberto Fabbriciani, Gavin Stamp, Eddie Campbell, Tony Kelly,  Noel Whitty, Lindsay Farmer, Sir David Lindsay, Cahrles Baudelaire, Franz Kafka, Prosper Merimee, Judge Roy Moore, Guilhelm Alandry, Anna Kari, Howard Davies, Prof. Robert Black, Miles Glendinning, Diane Watters, Sarah Neely, Willy Maley, Juana Ponce de Leon, George Monbiot, Mestra P. Della Bella Monte Bassania, Keith Mears, Adrian Welsh, Horace, William Shakespeare, Pat Donald, Sherien Sultan, G.E Lessing, Ian S. Wood, Andrew O’Hagan, Derek McLuckie, Constanze Stratz, Joseph Bradley, Christopher Harvie, Jake Mahaffy, Eduardo Reck Miranda, Dorian Grieve, Raymond Burke, David Shrigley, Carol Rhodes, Illana Halperin, David Bellingham, Ruaridh Nicoll, Dalziel + Scullion, John Calcutt, Howard Gaskill, Donald MacLeod, Hugh Miller, Christina Jaremko-Porter, Jem Cohen, Erik Gandini, Yoav Shamir,  Andy Wightman, Ashley Shelby Benites, Margaret Tait, Sarah Dunnigan, David Stenhouse, Elke Weissmann, John Gray, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Paul O’Keeffe, Wynhdam Lewis, Henry Kissinger, Justine Gordon-Smith, Andreas Kaiser, Simon Manfield, Diane Periton, Toby Paterson, Henry Corra, Graham Weinbren, Ken Currie, Michael Coyne, Prof Tom Gunning, Simon Kovesi, Peter Mullan, Robbie Edmonstone, Mark Neville, Lars Kristensen, Emily Munro, Bill Griffith, Carol Baraniuk, Alasdair Gray, Rodge Glass, Mark Cousins, Robert Louis Stevenson, Nahid Rachlin, Gauti Kristmanson, Sheila Dickson, Achim von Arnhem, Stephan Klenner-Otto, David Archibald, Aaron Valdez, Stephen Moss, Douglas Thompson, James Boswell, Jeremy Inglis, John McShane, Ken Simpson, Stuart Murray, Michael John McCarthy, Neil Mulholland, Eldridge Cleaver, Louise Galea, Pauline Gray, Martin Stewart, Craig Richardson, Robert Davidson, Agnes Owens, Alan McCoombes, Nick Broomfield, Adrienne Scullion, Robert A. Davis, Euan Sutherland, Nick Barley, Michael Longley, Andrew Lee, Ryan Shand, Claire McCallum, Malcolm Dickson, Alan McMunnigal, David Morgan, Vicky Price, John Goodridge, Nigel Leask, Murray Pittock, Robert Duffin, Dave Rushton, Mags MacInnes, Gareth Vile, Ralph Richard McLean, Matthew Lloyd, Thomas Keith, Molly Maguire, John Hails, Louise Rodgers, Steve Ovett Effect, James Clegg, Ellie Herring, James Kelman, Noam Chomsky, Jerome de Groot, Gideon Calder, Danielle Sutcliffe, Megan Coyer, Bill Breckenridge, John Knox, Iain Matheson, James MacMillan, Rhona Brown, Miriam Ross, Ruaridh MacIver, Justin Mellette, Alexandra Demenkova, Alan Knight,  Jen Birks, John Hewer, Stephen Healey, James Kloda, Bud Duane Clark, Corey Gibson, Ken McNab, Emma Lennox, Chris Dooks, Tom Nairn, Colin Kidd, Frank Shaw, Robert Crawford, Charles McKean, Iain McCulloch, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Sean Aardvark, Richard McLean, Roderick Buchanan, Graham Fagen, Helen Wright, Patrick Tobin, Clark Innes, Gavin Dunbar, T.Blair, Patrick Nabarro, J. S. Mill, Ross Sinclair, Chris Leslie, , Alan E. Williams, Katrina Burton, Andrew Stevenson, Ron Judger DJ,  Marta Sorenson, Jessica Copsley, Bruce Peter, David Kerr, Artemis Manouki, Chris Bragg, The Mackintosh School of Architecture, Michail Mersinis, Ruth Paxton and Thomas Reid.