I first came across the ex-Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks a few years ago, in discussion with Richard Dawkins. Here he made the wonderfully unflinching statement that “without faith there is no hope”. It’s always impressive when people are prepared to say things which go against the grain of society and this, I think, counts.

It’s perhaps hard to argue that The Dignity of Difference is literature as such, but it is an incredibly important book, written with great clarity, and with radical ideas from the unexpected source of Orthodox Judaism. Published in 2002, Sacks is inevitably driven by 9/11, a fact apparent in the book’s subtitle, which declares that it will explain “how to avoid the clash of civilizations”.

Sacks’ book deals with the problems of globalization and he argues that the only way forward is to make space for difference – to see that everyone has a story and a faith just as valid as the next man’s.

In fact, the first edition of this book caused uproar in the Orthodox community. Sacks made a distinction between religion and God, arguing that, “God is universal, religion is particular.” Thus, he is in effect said that all religions are different expressions of the same God, or, as he put it, that God “has spoken to mankind through many languages, through Judaism to Jews, Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims”. Here we had an important religious leader, of a strongly traditional faith, taking the line of a universal God – that every religion is, in its own way, right.

Unfortunately, this enlightened text was not to remain unmolested, and later that year a reprint was issued, modifying the ‘of- fending’ passage. He still admits that other faiths can find their own relationship with God, but the language used is very much toned down and less paradigm-shifting.

Speaking about the incident, Sacks says that changing the passage was one of the hardest decisions he has ever made, but that he in the end felt duty-bound to listen to his Orthodox advisors. In a sense, Sacks’ message is no different to that which we hear all the time: love, compassion and forgiveness all bring peace and happiness. But he presents it here in a new, far from wishy-washy way, facing directly the issues of faith which define our global world.

It is the blandest cliché to state in a conversation about art that in its contemporary form, it has little to offer a viewer. However, Martin Creed’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery proves that generalization correct. Unfortunately Creed would be delighted by this view. Even the exhibition’s title questions, ‘What’s the point of it?’. Shamelessly imitating Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’, Creed’s work is supremely unoriginal. It asks the interminable question of “what is art?”, while offering no new answers. The exhibition is enjoyable, especially for those who like complaining, but it is unimpressive.

Creed gained national notoriety in 2001 after winning the Turner Prize. His winning exhibit was an empty room with lights turning on and off. Unsurprisingly, it won few fans. Educated at the Slade Art School and University College London, he has received an impressive artistic training. Sadly, this pedigree is visible in very few of his works. Since his Turner Prize win, Creed has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions across Europe and the United States. Over his career, he has won fans and critics in equal measure, with his provocative questioning of art and its contemporary impact proving a divisive.

According to the press release, “his art transforms everyday materials and actions into surprising meditations on existence and the invisible structures that shape our lives”. That is an extremely generous view. Painfully smug in its attempts to provoke the viewer, it does so in entirely the same fashion as the Dadaists in the 1920s. Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ issued a provocative challenge to the art establishment. It declares that, due to his status as an artist, what he produces, even if he had not made the work itself, was art. It was ground breaking and, ironically, intrinsically original. Now the idea has been done to death. ‘Work No 79’, a piece of Blu-Tack attached to a wall, does not provoke precisely because it is following an extremely well established art trend. In a way the exhibition’s most outstanding feature is Creed’s inability to move beyond Duchamp and break new ground. It is unsurprising that so many of the works are supplied ‘courtesy of the artist’. It seems art buyers are gullible, but not that gullible. Pleasantly, ‘Work No 268’ is a notable exception to the dross. The infuriating smugness of many of the other exhibits is blissfully absent, as the work embraces an honest sense of fun.

This installation lacks pretention; it consists of a room of the gallery that has been filled with balloons in which the viewer can, and is invited to, get lost in. Covered in hair, presumably unintentionally, and piled almost high enough to cover the ceiling, this single work offers the immersion and amusement which the whole exhibition is intended to provide. Some visitors have left their own messages on the balloons, including “I got naked here”. They probably did.

It works precisely because this installation is devoid of pretentiousness. It is fun, engaging and amusing, bearing a strong similarity to some of Anthony Gormley’s installations without losing a sense of originality. An exhibition of more similar installations would have been a marked improvement on what is actually presented.

Admittedly this isn’t an unanimous view. Some have lauded this exhibition as the greatest living British artist’s return to form in a playful and masterful display. I found little evidence to support this. One can see meaning in anything, but there is a certain clumsy laziness in exhibiting scrunched up pieces of paper. For particularly enthused fans, this work can be purchased in the gift shop for over a hundred pounds – there did not seem to be many takers.

In parts the exhibition is listless. An erect penis and footage of women vomiting are the clumsiest, most unoriginal works on show. They are an attempt to shock the viewer, but images such as these have long since lost their cultural stigma. Considering Creed’s reputation, this exhibition could have truly innovative; it is a shame he felt no such impetus, offering instead an unimpressive collection of jumbled, unoriginal rubbish, which carries little more than an impression of his smug sense of self satisfaction. As it seems he is an artist who can get away with anything, perhaps that was his intention after all.

Drunk. Disorganised. Unprofessional. Three of the reasons why the Augustines’ concert at the O2 Academy in Oxford this week is one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen. There’s something different about small venues. They’re more intimate: the band are preaching to the converted. For this reason, it didn’t matter when there were technical issues, the band just got up on stage and did crowd sing-alongs, sometimes unaccompanied.

In fact, crowd interaction was what made this gig so special. Augustines are renowned for their passion on stage, particularly frontman Billy McCarthy, who had enough charisma alone to make up for the solid, if uninspiring, support act and his own band. However, no matter how good a band are with their fans, after a 100 show tour, halfway across the world from home, no-one was expecting the band, feeling their curfew was too early, to descend onto the streets, fans in tow, to finish the gig with an impromptu acoustic set. As the band wandered through throngs of adoring fans, it was a feeling you simply don’t get watching a band at Wembley Stadium or even the o2 Academy in London – you couldn’t get within 2 metres of the band if you tried at one of those venues, never mind the band actively choosing, bottle of Jameson’s and cigarette in hand, to come and stand in the middle of you and play requests.

As if this weren’t intimate enough, the band proceeded to lead us to the Library pub down the road (with Billy as the proverbial Pied Piper), where they played a final couple of songs, before thanking the bar staff for being so accommodating and hanging around to have a pint and a chat with fans. You could be forgiven for thinking, if you’ve made it this far through the review, that this gig sounds a lot like a succession of gimmicks, and perhaps to a certain extent that is true. It didn’t matter though, simply because, even all that aside, it was a phenomenal musical performance. The mark of a great performer is often that they seem to be enjoying the concert more than the fans who’ve spent their hard earned money on buying tickets, and this was evident in the case of all three members of Augustines.

Anyone who knows their music at all will know that it is incredibly emotional, and is often semi-autobiographical, so the sight of Billy McCarthy on the verge of tearing up on stage only added to the performance. In terms of the setlist, their concerts have only been strengthened by the release of a second album, which transfers incredibly well to live performance (Cruel City and Weary Eyes especially), since they can now devise a setlist devoid of any filler. All in all then, this concert was unique, like something from an age gone-by, and whether it would have had the same effect on an ambivalent observer I can’t say, but for any fan of Augustines, this was an incredibly special and unforgettable evening.

When Gabriel Prokofiev’s Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra was performed at the BBC Proms back in 2011, it raised a few eyebrows amongst the classicalmusic establishment. Incorporating hip-hopbeats, record-scratching, and live remixes oforchestral sounds, it isn’t something that youwould expect to come from the grandson of Sergei, the celebrated Russian classical composer.

Gabriel’s background as a producer of electronica, however, means that he is entirely at home challenging the limitations of genrelabels. “The idea of groove and rhythm that has a really exciting energy to it – has definitely found its way into my classical music – it’s a natural way for me to compose”, he tells me from his cluttered Hackney studio, surrounded by keyboards, mixers and audio equipment. We talk about the reasons why today’s classical music can sometimes be perceived as elitist. “A lot of it is just to do with people not really thinking out of the box and sticking to very traditional, outdated concert formats. A lot of classical events stay within a very formal, oldfashioned mode of presentation – even down to the flyers, the language used, the colours, the typeface, everything – you always feel like you’re going back in time”.

To try and counteract these stereotypes, Gabriel founded the ‘Nonclassical’ record label. Since its inception in 2004 it has gone from strength to strength, with its ‘classical clubnights’ becoming an increasingly prominent feature of London’s alternative clubbing scene. The musicians are amplifi ed, DJs remix the music between each set, and everybody has a drink in hand. “The format of the club night I think is unique. We have these short, live sets interspersed with DJ sets… we’re trying to put on concerts where your average music-lover feels comfortable: hence putting stuff on in clubs and bars.

“My friends who weren’t musicians wouldn’t come to recitals. It just didn’t fit into their lifestyle. So it’s really about finding new directions for contemporary-classical music”. Part of the key to the night’s success is the sheer diversity of acts that perform (the most recent event featured everything from music by Dutch minimalist composer Andriessen to a satirical opera about Boris Johnson). As Gabriel explains, “More and more we’re discovering that it’s good to have some kind of theme or narrative that connects the works being played, something that will get peopleintellectually interested and inspired.”

“Everyone who turns up is really impressed by the standard. They’re like ‘my god, I didn’t even know this existed’. We’ve had people come to our gigs who have never seen a string quartet before”. So what’s next for Nonclassical? “The most fundamental aim is to get more performances and to increase its presence in contemporary culture – for young composers to really get their work out there”. Nonclassical is helping to redefine classical music’s image and promote young musical talent in London, across the UK, and beyond. Long may it continue. The next Nonclassical event takes place on the 5th of June at the Shacklewell Arms, London.

Backpfeifengesicht

In first year, my best friend went out with a boy who was known to all of us simply as “the boy with the punchable face”, because he had a face that seemed, for some reason, to just cry out for a slap. In Germany, they have an actual word for this phenomenon. ‘Backpfeifengesicht’ is a typically German compound noun meaning “a face that cries out for a fist in it”. This is also a word in Queubec-French (“face à claque”), Chinese (“Qian Zou”) and Hungarian (“tenyérbemászó”). Violent languages, clearly.

Mamihlapinatapai

There is something both beautiful and satisfying about having a word to express a lack of need for words. Considered (by Wikipedia) to be “one of the hardest words to translate”, ‘Mamihlapinatapai’ is derived from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego. It can be roughly defined as “a wordless yet meaningful look between two people who both desire to intiate something but are reluctant to start.” Another possible definition is simply an “expressive and meaningful silence”.

Tingo

Have you ever walked into the room of a close friend and felt, strangely, as though you were in your own room? A few of the items of clothing on the floor look familiar… and that book you took out of the library last week that is now overdue is on the desk… and all of those DVDs are yours… ‘Tingo’ is a Pascuenese word meaning “to gradually steal all the possessions out of a friend or neighbor’s house by borrowing and not returning” or “to borrow from a friend until he has nothing left”. Oxford life.

As any English student will attest, the Oxford English Dictionary is really, really great. It is an endless treasure trove of historical information, essay inspiration, general geeky interest, and above all, of words – over 600,000 of them. 

As lexicographer James Howell remarked, “Words are the life of Knowledge, they sett Free / And bring forth Truth.” In Oxford, particularly, most of us live and breathe words – we revel in them, manipulate and analyse them. And dictionaries are their homes. They are safe havens where humanities students can find something concrete – a solid, objective definition amongst the airy fairy what-does-it-all-mean-ness of literature and literary theory. 

Yet the earliest dictionaries were far from objective. They were a snapshot of the language used in a particular era, each word selected specifically to try to control the language we use. Dictionaries began in the Renaissance as multilingual works intended for teaching the classical languages, which at that point were considered much more literary than English – the language of the common folk. 

The birth of the monolingual dictionary caused what can best be described as a ‘lexicographical shitstorm’ as everyone tried to decide precisely which words should be listed and why. Should a dictionary be reserved for “hard usual words” to help said “common folk” understand their own language? Or should dictionaries be reserved exclusively for more eccentric words specific to the vocabulary of the time? 

Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language is often considered the first ‘modern’ dictionary. In the preface, Johnson wrote that “dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true” – one of the many pearls of wisdom from the man who defined “Monsieur” as “a term of reproach for a Frenchman”. Johnson’s musings do, however, provide us with an interesting parallel: dictionaries and watches. Can dictionaries be seen as an attempt to capture language in a particular instant – and as such, as an attempt to control time? What makes the OED special is its status as a historical dictionary, providing examples of how the meaning of words has changed over time, as well as giving sources, categories, word – maps and timelines. 

Yet we are and have always been terrified by language change. There is continual controversy about the use of the word “literally” to mean exactly the opposite of literally – “I was literally starving”. Perhaps change in language threatens our illusion that listing words and their definitions gives us some sort of control over language – and therefore over time. 

Or perhaps we are just put off by the idea of someone in 100 years looking through the OED at words introduced in our generation and seeing the 2006 example, “lol. i know what ur hintin at.”  

Recent events in Oxford, and their coverage in the media, have shown the power of words, both in presenting the truth in a certain way, or even ignore it entirely. With the advent of online social media and instant news, now more than ever it is true that the pen is mightier than the sword. 

In Eminem’s ‘Sing for the Moment’, he remarks “words are a motherfucker, they can be great/Or they can degrade, or even worse, they can teach hate”. With these lines, he recognizes what any writer should be aware of: the divergent potential of words. 

Words shape our entire being: they form the method through which we describe our experience of life, navigate our daily existence and interact with the ones we love. Words are all around us, defining us, shaping us, enchanting us. 

One of the first significant moments in any person’s life is their first word. I’m rather unreliably told that my first word was “cake”. While this would certainly provide a nice preface to my later obsession with baked goods, one might prefer a slightly more dignified and mainstream “mama”. Still, from this moment, every human being becomes enamoured with the word. 

We learn from a young age that we can use words to our advantage; trying to get things we want using flattery or demands. Many people spend all their lives using words to try and get things from other people, or get into positions of power. Lawyers, politicians, news anchors, spokespeople, lecturers, religious leaders and many more actively use the spoken word in their everyday life in the pursuit of some goal or achievement. Many universities now offer ‘Public Speaking’ as a degree, and some public speaking courses can cost in excess of £100 a week. 

This is nothing new. 

The art of rhetoric has been valued since ancient times, with lawyer and rhetorician Marcus Tullius Cicero becoming one of the most powerful men of his day thanks to his exploitation of the power of the spoken word. These days, rhetoric has something of a sinister reputation. We are suspicious of people who we think can change the way we think with their voice alone. 

However, in essence, all words fundamentally have the power to change the way we think. They are extremely powerful, especially in capable hands. It is for this reason that we need to be responsible with them. In the ancient Roman law courts, the explicit truth didn’t matter as much as it does today. Cicero claimed that “shame, no less than fear, keeps the citizen from doing wrong”. The law courts operated under a sort of ‘no smoke without fire’ policy, so that if a lawyer could show that someone was guilty of one crime, they were probably guilty of another. 

This shows the extreme power of words in the form of rumour. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he talks about a “house of rumour”, a great tower “from which everything the world over can be seen, however far away”. 

Here, so the tale goes, Rumour lives. The sounds of voices fly in from all over the world and resound and echo off the brass that makes up the structure. The sounds fly off again in a different direction like magical Chinese whispers, spreading half-formed stories and confused murmurs. 

In Jake Arnott’s 2013 book The House of Rumour, he describes this image as an ancient representation of the Internet. Sure enough, technology has made it possible for our words to reach out over a greater distance than ever before. 

Since our range has expanded, it seems to follow that we need to adapt to our changing environment. The power of our very own house of rumour has been shown time and time again, organizing revolutionaries during the Arab Spring, challenging for information control in the form of WikiLeaks, co-ordinating aid efforts after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. 

It is not uncommon for people to be irresponsible with the power that social media affords them. Joey Barton joked that giving him Twitter was like “giving an arsonist a box of matches”, and it seems a little ridiculous that a man famous for being good at kicking a ball should be afforded an audience of 2.5 million people. 

Of course, freedom of speech is very commonly cited in response to arguments like this. The key thing here to remember is that ‘freedom of speech’ is a legal term, and legal terms are not necessarily applicable in everyday life. Just because one can legally say something, doesn’t mean one should. 

When the things we say in certain circumstances, or the things we write in certain media, can have such a great effect, it would be severely remiss of us not to consider this effect, and try to use judgement and compassion.