Television bosses in England have apparently been surprised recently by the success of "feel-good drama". They were astonished at the huge viewing figures for the screenplay Goodnight Mr Tom, which had the gall to feature a happy ending, and they have been recalling the major success some years ago of The Darling Buds of May, the series which portrayed an idyllic and carefree way of life in rural Britain.
Not surprisingly then, senior TV bods are being castigated for being out of touch: "It's considered fashionable to be gloomy," says one unnamed TV executive, "and present the world as populated by serial killers and detectives looking out of rainy windows." However, it is reassuring to know that a firm stand against cheerfulness is still being taken in more elevated areas of the arts world.
Composer Gerald Barry believes, according to an interview in this paper on Tuesday, that we live in a bleak time. Not only does this belief inform his music, but going by what he has revealed, Gerald is doing his best to stamp out joy wherever he sees it. Even for an artist, this seems above and beyond the call of duty. In the interview, Gerald recalled a visit to a room in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, with large paintings on three walls by Rothko, Barnett Newman and Frank Stella: "There were people in the room as well, being cheerful. I hate that. I hate this kind of bonhomie in public places like galleries. It sometimes gets in the way of the work. So I tried to look as glaring as possible to crush their mood and I finally forced them to leave . . . "
He did indeed. I ought to know, because I was one of those people, the naively happy little crowd that so upset the eminent composer. None of us have quite forgiven ourselves.
We were a small party in Cologne that particular weekend, there to limber up for the upcoming beer festival in Munich by means of a little light lager-drinking. I think one of us had actually misread a description of Cologne being in a "hub position" in Europe as "pub position". Anyway, none of us knew all that much about art, though we certainly knew what beer we liked - Kronenbrau Export. Embarrassing as it is, I must admit that we were in the gallery only to escape the biting cold, and warm up a little before hitting the nightlife. But there we were, showing rather naive joy at the glorious abstract expressionism of Mark Rothko, when we gradually became conscious of an extremely odd-looking stranger glowering at us from nearby.
It was only the innocuous Gerald Barry, of course, but unforgivably, we failed to recognise him. And when he began to glare, one of our party thought she recognised him as a serial murderer on the loose in Cologne at the time, and ran screaming from the gallery, much to Gerald's apparent pleasure. We all left quickly, but watched Gerald's peculiar behaviour from the doorway. Just as revealed in Tuesday's interview, he went to each painting, laid his cheek on the canvas ("which is, of course, a terrible thing to do"), then left the building immediately, looking at the floor all the way out.
We did not know of course that he was "feeling somehow that I had touched a part of the Grail". In fact, we thought he looked like he had touched a drop too much of hard liquor, but of course none of us were as expert as Gerald on the tangible and the intangible. Indeed our grasp of the tangible that particular weekend extended little further than a stein of foaming lager in one hand and a jolly fraulein in the other.
We are all a little wiser and more circumspect now. I myself am particularly careful in galleries, because as the interview revealed, if Gerald is there he becomes absolutely at one with a painting, so that he and the painting become indistinguishable. The danger is clear: a friend of mine who recently visited a private gallery ended up accidentally buying, not a composition, so to speak, but a composer. Yes, there was the little red sticker, on Gerald himself, on the wall. Deeply embarrassing, and even worse when my friend demanded his money back. It pays to be careful how you dress when entering a gallery too, lest Gerald is there and you upset his delicate sensibilities. He leaves galleries with his eyes downcast, "lest I see something disappointing . . . or some unattractive person wearing a duffle coat". Just as well then that his hero Samuel Beckett, whose favourite outer garment was a duffle coat, is no longer in danger of crossing the eminent composer's path.
