Jazz standard: “In a Sentimental Mood”

“In a Sentimental Mood” as performed by Duke Ellington (its composer) and John Coltrane is one of my favourite pieces in jazz. It’s tender, melancholic, and just wonderful.

Ellington and Coltrane are 2 of the greatest figures in jazz, and we also have Elvin Jones on drums. I’m a peasant, but even I can hear that the drums are great.
Here is the song with lyrics, performed by Ella Fitzgerald.

Much as I love her silky voice, nothing beats the John Coltrane version.
Today, I’ve just heard for the 1st time the original, performed by Duke Ellington and the orchestra. Here it is, if you haven’t heard it.

I mean, what happened? How is this the same one?

Emma Bovary’s boredom

Look at these lines—Flaubert describes the people at the Marquis’s party that Emma Bovary looks at: 

“Their clothes, of better cut, seemed to be of softer material, and their hair, gathered in curls at their temples, had the sheen of finest pomade. Their complexion was that of wealth, the shade of white that enhances the pallor of porcelain, the watered shimmer of satin, the shine of beautiful furniture, maintained in the peak of health by a simple and exquisite diet.” (P.1, Ch.8) 

It has been quite some time since I read a Flaubert novel, I forgot how rich, how thick with details Madame Bovary was. He doesn’t describe everything a character does, the way Tolstoy would, but like Tolstoy, he describes everything there is to see in a scene. But this is not a neutral, objective description, it is description of the rich people through Emma’s eyes. 
Madame Bovary is about boredom, but it’s never boring. I love the metaphors and similes. 

“... deep down she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, her desperate eyes stared out across the isolation of her life, searching for a white sail in the mist on the distant horizon. She didn’t know what this stroke of fate would be, which wind would blow it towards her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it would be a rowing boat or an ocean-going ship, filled with worries or enough bliss to make it sink. But each morning when she woke up she hoped it would be that day, and would listen to every sound, leap out of bed, be amazed that it hadn’t come, and then at sunset, unhappier than ever, she would wish it were tomorrow.” (P.1, Ch.9) 

Isn’t that such a wonderful passage to describe boredom? 

“But nothing ever happened to her: it was God’s will! Her future was a long dark corridor, and the door at the end was locked.” (ibid.) 

And then this bit: 

“But it was at mealtimes particularly that she thought she couldn’t bear it any longer, in the little dining room on the ground floor with its smoky stove, squeaky door, walls that streamed with damp, its dank flagstones; all life’s bitterness seemed to be heaped on her plate, and along with the stream from the boiled beef it rose from the depths of her being like so many other insipid odours.” (ibid.) 

Delicious. 
Now and then I can understand. I know boredom—when we moved to Norway, it was Kristiansand that we first lived in, for some time, so imagine moving from Saigon to Kristiansand. The quiet and uneventfulness could have driven me mad if not for the IB. Being busy helps. Still, we moved to Oslo after a few years. 
But Madame Bovary is not only about boredom. As I reread the novel, it’s amusing to think about the readers who see Emma as a heroine who is stifled by marriage and constrained by the patriarchy and defies social conventions and breaks free by having affairs. It is obvious from the start that she is doomed and would cause her own downfall. Her main fault is that she identifies with characters in books and expects life to be like books—she wants luxury and romance, she wants something grand, romantic, and tragic, she is sentimental and needs something to fill the hollowness of her own soul. In a sense, Madame Bovary is a book about a bad reader, and the book itself becomes a test for readers. 


About 2 years and a half ago, I read Effi Briest. These were my blog posts comparing the 3 adultery novels: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/01/effi-briest-anna-karenina-emma-bovary.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/01/effi-briest-anna-karenina-emma-bovary-2.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/01/effi-briest-anna-karenina-emma-bovary-3.html

Rereading Madame Bovary: 1st notes

I’m rereading Madame Bovary after 6-7 years. The translation is by Christopher Moncrieff. This is a read-along, everyone is welcomed to join and discuss the novel. 
Guess what, I’ve just realised that I never blogged about it before. Strange. 
Some thoughts: 
1/ About Charles Bovary’s early years: 

“… As a result of applying himself he was always around the middle of the class, once he even got a certificate of merit for natural history. But at the end of his remove year his parents took him away from school to study medicine, convinced he would be able to pass the baccalaureate on his own.” (P.1, Ch.1) 

I forgot this point. Bovary’s a dimwit, but maybe he studies the wrong thing and has the wrong career. 

2/ I almost forgot that he had a 1st wife, before meeting Emma. There are 3 Madame Bovarys in the book: the mother, the 1st wife, and Emma. Isn’t it curious how the book is called Madame Bovary, and not Emma Bovary? Think of Anna Karenina. 
The 1st wife is killed off quite conveniently—what would happen if she didn’t die, and Charles Bovary fell in love with Emma? Such fun. That’s not the story Flaubert chose to tell, but it’s fun to ponder over.

3/ The image of the sad, misanthropic Flaubert I have in my head makes me forget how funny he can be sometimes. 
Look at these lines—Monsieur Rouault tries to cheer up Bovary after the death of his 1st wife: 

“Thinking it was his duty to lavish as much courtesy as possible on the doctor because he was still grieving, he urged him not to think of taking his hat off, spoke to him quietly as if he were ill, even pretended to be annoyed that lighter dishes hadn’t been prepared for him, such as pots de crème or pears baked in the oven. He told stories. Charlies found himself laughing, but memories of his wife immediately came back to him and filled him with gloom. But then they brought coffee, and he stopped thinking about her.” (P.1, Ch.3) 

Now look at the wedding party: 

“They ate till evening. When people were tired of sitting down they took a stroll in the yard or had a game of bouchons in the barn then they came back to the table. Towards the end, a few nodded off and began snoring. But when coffee was served everything came back to life…” (P.1, Ch.4) 

Coffee solves everything indeed. 

4/ I notice the horse motif. 
Charles Bovary comes to treat Monsieur Rouault, and later visits him, on a horse. 
Emma in the convent reads sentimental stories, with “horses killed on every page” (Ch.6), and: 

“The Sisters, who had greatly overestimated her calling, were astonished to find Mademoiselle Rouault apparently slipping through their fingers. But they had lavished so many church services on her, so many retreats, novenas and sermons, preached so much about the respect owed to saints and martyrs, given so much good advice about maidenly modesty and the salvation of the soul, that she did what a horse does when you drag it by the mouth: she pulled up sharp, and the bit came out from between her teeth.” (ibid.) 

I’m sure the horse image will come up again. 

5/ The lines about Emma’s reaction to her mother’s death are the 1st indication that she is sentimental and affected, and likes to put on a show, but has no depth of feeling. That is what Madame Bovary is about, it’s not about adultery.

Listening to Coltrane: the favourites

I’ve now listened to 12 John Coltrane albums: the 9 albums in the earlier post, plus Soultrane (1958), Dakar (recorded in 1957, released in 1963), and Olé Coltrane (1961).
Instead of writing something to expose my ignorance of music, I’m just going to say that my personal favourite albums are Blue Train, Kind of Blue, and Crescent. If Kind of Blue doesn’t count because it’s Miles Davis’s album and John Coltrane was only playing in the band, swap it with A Love Supreme.
So not Giant Steps. Not Ascension. That probably says something about me.
What about favourite tracks?
I struggle to pick a favourite from Blue Train and Kind of Blue, as I love the entire albums. A Love Supreme should be listened to in its entirety.
Crescent is wonderful as a whole, lyrical, sorrowful, but 2 tracks stand out: “Wise One” and “Lonnie’s Lament”.




Here are my other favourite tracks:
“Equinox” from Coltrane’s Sound:


“In a Sentimental Mood” from Duke Ellington& John Coltrane:


“Big Nick” from Duke Ellington& John Coltrane:


“Angelica” from Duke Ellington& John Coltrane:


“My Favorite Things” from My Favorite Things:


“Giant Steps” from Giant Steps:


 “Milestones” from Milestones:


“Good Bait” from Soultrane:


“Route 4” from Dakar:


Here is someone talking about the albums in a more articulate way: 
https://spinditty.com/genres/Ten-Coltrane-Albums

My listening to Coltrane stopped at Ascension, which means that I haven’t listened to music of his later periods—avant-garde jazz and all that, like Living Space, Transition, Sun Ship, First Meditations, Interstellar Space, etc. That can wait. I don’t want to listen to him so obsessively that I can’t touch his music again in my life.
Next, I’ll probably focus on Miles Davis.

On the idea of relevance and relatableness in the arts

Recently I saw an article in The Guardian which argued that instead of Shakespeare and Dickens, students in English classes should be taught the kind of literature that would be more relevant to their lives.
These arguments are nothing new. Complaints about the teaching of Shakespeare and classic literature always amount to the same word—“relevance”. Even in the book blog world, lots of times I’ve found people criticising a book because they couldn’t relate to the characters or the characters were not relatable—just look at the things people have said about Lolita, Wuthering Heights, Mansfield Park, Madame Bovary, and so on and so forth.  
As someone who love 19th century Russian literature, 50s-70s cinema, jazz, etc. I don’t understand. If you look at it that way, in literature and the other arts, I was born and grew up in Vietnam, then moved to Norway at the age of 15, and now live in the UK, and I’m in my mid-20s, how do you think I relate to the experience of Anna Karenina or Marya Bolkonskaya or Natasha Rostova? How do I find whaling relevant? How do I relate to black people’s experience and feel the pain in “Black and Blue” or “Strange Fruit” or “Ain’t Got No, I Got Life”? 
But that is missing the point.  
The idea that readers have to find the story and themes relevant, and the characters relatable, is amusing. You’re facing a work of art, and if a classic, it’s a work of art that has stood the test of time and been recognised as part of the literary canon, why does it have to be about you? 
Don’t you care about history and its legacy?  
Don’t you care about the work of writers who have changed literature and influenced generations of readers and writers, perhaps including the modern writers you now like? 
Don’t you care about literary merit, and the power of literature?  
Don’t you care about the great achievements of the human mind? 
Don’t you care to learn about different lives, and different experiences you never (have to) go through?    
Don’t you have the imagination to see beyond your own lot, and seek to understand people who are very different from you? 
Don’t you care to expand your perspective? 
Why does reading have to be about you? 
I could go on and talk about empathy and some utilitarian values of literature, but it’s unnecessary. If as a reader you can only enjoy books that you personally find relevant and relatable, you’re limiting yourself, but I have no say in what you choose to read in your own spare time. It’s when people talk about the teaching of literature that the idea of relevance becomes a problem. 
One of the common arguments is that it puts you off reading. I don’t know where it comes from, I’ve heard people blame their dislike of reading on the books they read in high school, but how do they know that reading just isn’t their thing anyway, regardless of high school? I could say the same thing about physical education I had in school, but the fact is that I’ve never been athletic anyway. 
There are different kinds of students. There are students who, once they finish school, never touch a book again in their lives. And there are students who otherwise may not have opened these works of art themselves in their free time but appreciate being introduced to them, and would expand their reading beyond these works. Classes are the place for this. I’m lucky to come from a family of readers, but there would be students who don’t get that at home, and who are forced to read the literary works that they come to love. It’s similar to the way I was introduced to jazz—if not for that class at University of Oslo, I probably would never have got to jazz myself, and now I love it more than anything else. 
Another argument is that you don’t need Shakespeare to survive or get a job. Let’s be honest, just to survive or get a job, you don’t need most of the stuff you learn in school—when do you ever need those theorems in maths class or those physics equations or those chemical formulas, unless you choose to follow that particular field? But that’s not the point of education. 
All the talks about relevance and relatableness in literature and the arts are just stupid and nonsensical statements made by philistines. And if teachers think this way, they shouldn’t be teaching.




__________________________________________

Announcing a read-along: 
I’m organising a (re)read-along of Madame Bovary. At the moment it’s me, Himadri (Argumentative Old Git), and my friend Anne. 
Does anyone else want to join?

Reading What a Fish Knows as a fish eater

After writing about fishes and their social relationships, Jonathan Balcombe devotes Part VI to fishes’ sexual behaviours and parenting styles. 
The chapter about fishes’ sex lives is, again, full of fascinating facts: promiscuous fishes (Balcombe’s word), polygamous fishes, monogamous fishes, fish harems, fishes that produce eggs and sperm at the same time (simultaneous hermaphrodites), fishes that change sex (sequential hermaphrodites, such as the clownfish of Finding Nemo), courtship, mating, oral sex and sperm drinking (yeah, you read that right), faking orgasms (you didn’t read that wrong either), external fertilisation, and so on. 
The chapter about parenting is also interesting, talking about protecting eggs and taking care of the young, helpers, and freeloaders (brood parasitism—a fish leaving its eggs with other fishes’ eggs to be protected and raised, like some birds do). 
Then we get to Part VII: “Fish out of Water”. That’s when I felt the book was starting to have a different tone. Or did I imagine it? Balcombe discusses fishing, bycatch (the fishes caught that are not wanted and thrown back into the sea), fish-farming, problems of hatchery-reared fishes that are released into the wild, different killing methods, different ways a fish may die when caught, shark finning, recreational fishing, and the practice of eating fish. 
As he talked about cruelty, fishes’ suffering, and moral concerns (the word “moral” gets repeated a lot in this section of the book), I started to realise that the whole point of the book was not only to tell people more about fishes and make them realise that fishes are smart and have individuality, but to get people to stop eating fish. 
Do I feel bad? In a way, yes. But would I stop eating fish? No. I eat meat and fish (and dairy and vegetables and so on). 
I’m not going to debate the subject of meat eating vs vegetarianism/ veganism—it’s not the point of this blog post. Vegetarianism/ veganism is a legitimate cause, if you do it for animal rights and the environment, and if you can commit to it, that’s good for you. It’s the preaching that is annoying. Perhaps my perception of the final part of the book and its epilogue is coloured by my experience with many vegetarians and vegans in real life and on social media, though I think that the book borders on preaching and trying to make you feel bad for eating meat and taking part in the cruel and inhumane treatment of fishes. People have different causes, just as they have different interests. With interests, we also have priorities and can’t get to know everything in depth, even things we do enjoy, because life is short—a friend of mine, for example, enjoys jazz but has to “neglect” it because he spends time on classical music and opera, whereas my decision to listen to John Coltrane properly at the moment means that I don’t have time for other kinds of music.  
It’s similar with causes. Some people do everything they can to limit their negative impact on the environment, that’s good. Some people fight for animal rights, that’s good. I come from a single-party state which doesn’t respect freedom or human rights, where people don’t have the most basic rights that Westerners take for granted, such as the right to vote for leaders or the right to remain silent. Dissidents get years in prison, people get killed whilst in custody… It’s hard to really care about animal rights. My main focus is on free speech, freedom, equality, and human rights. I care enough about animal rights to be against trophy hunting, hunting and killing endangered species, cruel treatment of animals in tourism, and that sort of thing, but not enough to be ready for the difficult commitment to a vegetarian or vegan diet. 
I can’t imagine a Vietnamese vegan either. A vegetarian, yes, but not a vegan. Compared to Westerners, we eat more kinds of animals, and also eat more of an animal—for example, with chicken, Westerners only eat the meat, we also eat the skin and feet, and make bone broth. Everything we eat has animal products—we have fish sauce, shrimp paste, and lots of other sauces and other kinds of food. Replace all ingredients with plant-based products, you don’t really have a Vietnamese dish. A vegan fresh spring roll isn’t a fresh spring roll. 
Having left my country, I only have the language, and the food. To become a vegetarian, or further (because, as vegans say, “it’s not enough to be a vegetarian, veganism is the way”) requires sacrifice, commitment, and a strong belief in the cause, all of which I lack.
Anyway, this is getting more personal, so let’s go back What a Fish Knows. It is a very interesting book, but it’s tiresome in the final part. I suppose that says more about me than about the book itself.

Listening to Coltrane: the albums

As I’ve decided to delve into John Coltrane’s music, I’m going to listen in a more systematic way—listen to a whole album, instead of individual tracks here and there as I usually do.
Because Coltrane changed and developed his style over time, it’s useful to be aware of chronological order, and put the albums here. Note: for the time being, I’m not going to listen to every single of his albums chronologically, only a few main ones.
1957: Blue Train.



This is the first album that made me love Coltrane. For the past 2-3 years (I don’t have a good conception of time), “Blue Train” was one of the tracks by Coltrane that I kept coming back to (the other ones were “Equinox” and “So What”) but I love the entire album.

1958: Milestones—Miles Davis and John Coltrane started experimenting with modal jazz.



My favourite is the track “Milestones”.

1959: Kind of Blue—Miles Davis and John Coltrane’s masterpiece, and the best-selling jazz album of all time.



Apart from Miles Davis playing trumpet and John Coltrane playing tenor saxophone, the album had Cannonball Adderly on alto saxophone (except on “Blue in Green”), Bill Evans on piano (except on “Freddie Freeloader”), Wynton Kelly on piano (on “Freddie Freeloader”), Paul Chambers on double bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums.
Kind of Blue is just wonderful. I keep coming back to it. 

1959: Giant Steps—after Coltrane left Miles Davis to go in a new direction, this was his most influential album.



Youtube called “Giant Steps” “the most feared song in jazz”, because of the difficulty.

1960: My Favorite Things—1st album to feature Coltrane playing soprano saxophone.



It’s interesting to listen to Coltrane’s takes on these jazz standards, especially “Summertime”, though it’s barely recognisable anymore.

1962: Duke Ellington& John Coltrane.
I can’t find the full album on youtube, but I love “In a Sentimental Mood”, which I used in a recent video. It’s good to see Coltrane perform with another jazz musician I like.



It seems like a rather conservative album, compared to the experimental and revolutionary nature of “Giant Steps” and “My Favorite Things”.

1964: Crescent.



The album has McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on double bass, and Elvin Jones on drums.

1964: A Love Supreme—his most spiritual album, and one of the most critically acclaimed.



I’m not religious, not even particularly spiritual, but this is magnificent.

1965: Ascension— seen as a cornerstone of Coltrane’s work.



Slowly I would probably listen to everything, but these are the albums I choose for now.

Changing tastes

1/ A few days ago I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s again, probably the 3rd time. 
My bf had never seen the film before, but knew about the controversy, which I assume most people would—the controversy about Mickey Rooney playing Mr Yunioshi. Put aside the fact that it’s a white actor wearing make-up and prosthetics to play an Asian character as comic relief, which is seen as offensive, it’s just not funny. Was it ever funny, when the film was released in 1961? It’s crude and unnecessary, and doesn’t fit in with the tone of the film. 
The Yunioshi character was the reason that I could never fully embrace the film. Now, seeing it again, I don’t like it much anymore. Audrey Hepburn is still charming and elegant, the cat is still cute, and Paul’s speech at the end of the film is still poignant, but maybe Breakfast at Tiffany’s is not for repeated viewings. Certain flaws become more obvious, some of the speech sounds expository. Maybe it’s one of those films that should be remembered, as a lovely charming thing, rather than seen again. 

2/ Every year I watch about 100 films, some of which are revisits. 
Some films demand multiple viewings—each time you see something new. Persona, the Mount Everest of film criticism, is an example. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring is another. Or F for Fake. 
Masterpieces like Sunset Boulevard or Chinatown, which I saw again over the past year, never become boring or outdated. They are perfect. There are films I’ve seen 6-7 times and will still see again: The Godfather, Casablanca, The Silence of the Lambs, The Shawshank Redemption… 
Some films lose their magic on revisit. I enjoyed re-watching The Phantom of Liberty, which is whimsical and brilliant, but I no longer felt the fun upon my revisit of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie—its charm relied too much on the random unexpectedness, which obviously was no longer there when I knew what was going to happen. Mother the 2nd time around was not as good, which is probably the case for films which rely heavily on the mystery and suspense of solving the case/ finding the murderer, and on the twist. As you watch it again, it no longer has much to keep your interest.  
That’s why a film like Chinatown still retain its magic on multiple viewings. I don’t watch it for the answers. I watch it for Jack Nicholson’s performance, for the character of Jack Gittes, for the great dialogue—sharp and full of meaning, for the tight structure and pace, and for John Huston and Faye Dunaway. 
And sometimes, watching a film again, we don’t like it anymore just because we have changed. I just don’t like American Beauty, Edward Scissorhands, or Scarface anymore, though I used to. Our tastes change over time. 

3/ A blog is a great place to make note of what I like, and keep track of how I’ve changed over time. 
In 2015, I listened to Billie Holiday all the time, obsessively, for a long period. Then it passed. Since then, it’s mostly Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone that I listen to. Sometimes Aretha Franklin. Sometimes Etta James. Sometimes Sarah Vaughan. 
Sometimes I wonder how many artists I like now, I will still like in 30 years, or 50 years. My formative years were the time in Norway—that was when I discovered classic cinema, photography, 19th century literature, Russian literature, and jazz. I reckon that for the rest of my life, these things will always be important to me, especially classic cinema, Russian literature, and jazz; it’s my views on the individual artists that change. 
Shall I try to predict? 
Tolstoy, I’m sure, will always be there. He is a giant, not only in Russia but in world literature, and his impact on my life cannot be overstated.  
Same with Nabokov. 
With Melville, I’m not sure, but Moby Dick will always be a favourite and an important novel. With Jane Austen, I expect to still respect her in 30 years, or even 50 years, because I already went from disliking her and thinking she was chicklit, to discovering the great depth and sensitivity in her works, but maybe one day I will no longer care about stories of growth, understanding, and self-understanding. We never know. 
In cinema, I think I will always like Ingmar Bergman and Billy Wilder. I once had a Wong Kar-wai phase, a Martin Scorsese phase, even a Stanley Kubrick phase, but Ingmar Bergman is a director whose films have everything that I think are important about cinema: great cinematography and lighting, striking imagery, creative and haunting use of sound, good editing, great acting and memorable performances, style, depth, personal vision, exploration of relationships and human consciousness, and formal experiments that push the boundaries of cinema. He was also the director that I discovered, and learnt from, during my 3 years at the film school, and who influenced my first short films. 
It’s also hard to imagine a time when I wouldn’t like Billy Wilder. Is there any other writer-director who writes more memorable dialogue and makes so many great films in such different genres? I love his sharp wit and humour, and the humanity of his films. 
About music, I know a few people who listen to jazz their whole lives, so I don’t suppose I will stop loving jazz. It’s just hard to say if I will always like John Coltrane, whom I’m focusing on at the moment. But I expect Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald to always be there, on their own or together. I don’t like watching Louis Armstrong—his grin makes me uncomfortable, but I can listen to him all day. People talk about his optimism, which isn’t wrong for songs such as “What a Wonderful World”, but there’s nothing so haunting like the pain in his performance of “Black and Blue”. 
Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on their own are fantastic. Together, they’re recognised as the greatest duets in jazz. Her velvety voice softens his edges. My favourite of theirs is “Summertime”. 
Well, let’s see how things turn out.

Listening to Coltrane

I discovered jazz several years ago, when doing a course called Multicultural American Literature at University of Oslo, which should have been called African American Literature and Jazz Music. My lecturer was American and had a degree in literature and a degree in jazz. He introduced us, or at least me, to jazz—I’m still thankful for that course.
Over the past few years, I’ve been listening to jazz, mostly vocals, especially Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, also Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, etc. I also listen to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, bit of Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck… (can’t really get into Charlie Parker at all). 
These days I’ve been thinking that I listen to jazz in a rather superficial way. I’m a literature and cinema person rather than a music person. I enjoy jazz, but can’t talk about it, the way I can talk about a book or a film, and can’t recognise the individual style of each musician. This needs to change.
For now I want to get to “know” John Coltrane properly. Listening to A Love Supreme at the moment. 



Yesterday marked the 60th anniversary of Miles Davis and John Coltrane’s album “Kind of Blue”, one of the most successful jazz records in history.


Obviously I spent yesterday listening to it, several times. Isn’t that just wonderful? Especially “So What” and “Blue in Green”.
Here’s a video of their live performance of “So What”:



I won’t say anything about Kind of Blue, because, as I said, I can’t talk about jazz. But I do love the combination of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Just divine.
Found this article: https://www.jazzwise.com/Features/miles-davis-and-john-coltrane-yin-and-yang

Fishes and social contracts

In Part V of What a Fish Knows, Jonathan Balcombe writes about fishes in a community—with company/tank mates or in a shoal or school of fishes. You now may ask, do fishes recognise each other? They do. Fishes may have patterns that are only visible in UV light. Balcombe says, fishes have individual recognition, memory, and preference about whom they choose to swim with; they also have personalities. Do they recognise human faces? People who have pet fishes say yes.
Yesterday I made a video about fish watching, using my footage of The Deep (aquarium in Hull). Watch who swims with whom.



Now, to get back to the book, the most fascinating section of Part V is when Balcombe writes about social contracts among fishes—consider the cleaner-client symbiosis of fishes.

“The system works as follows. 1 or 2 cleanerfishes signal that they are open for business. They work at specific locations, and may use swimming postures and bright colours to enhance the signal’s visibility (a fish’s version of the rotating red-white-blue cylinder outside a barbershop). Other fishes of various types congregate at the cleaning station, where they wait their turn to be serviced by the cleaners. […] [Cleaners] pick over the clients’ bodies, removing parasites, dead skin, algae, and other undesirable blemishes. Clients benefit by receiving a spa treatment, including parasite removal. Cleaners get fed.”

So which species are they?

“Marine cleanerfishes include many wrasses, some triggerfishes, butterflyfishes, discus fishes, damselfishes, angelfishes, gobies, leatherjackets, pipefishes, sea chubs, surfperches, suckerfishes, jacks, and topsmelts. Freshwater cleanerfishes include cichlids, guppies, carps, sunfishes, killifishes, and sticklebacks. Some invertebrates, including several shrimps, also provide cleaning services. Client lists number well over 100 known fish species, including sharks and rays. Other clients include lobsters, sea turtles, sea snakes, octopuses, marine iguanas, whales, hippopotamuses, and humans.” 

Regarding humans, in Asian (I think Chinese) spas, people can dangle their feet in pool for cleanerfishes to pluck over.

“This is a dramatic scene if the client is a large predator. Although a shark or a moral eel could easily snap up the cleaner for a quick snack; it just isn’t savvy to eat your service provider.
But it is kosher to show consideration toward them. […]
Grey reef sharks invite cleaners to service them by angling their bodies upward and opening their mouths wide. The cleaners show no fear as they enter the shark’s deadly cavern. They seem to know that this massive predator, hundreds of times their size, means them no harm.”

Isn’t that so interesting?
The relationship between a cleanerfish and their client is also not random.

“It is built on trust, and cultivated over weeks or months. A social contract such as this requires that individual cleaners recognise their clients. With dozens of clients per cleaner, cleanerfishes maintain an impressive mental database of clientele. In choice experiments where a cleaner could choose to swim near 1 of 2 clients, the cleaner spent more time near a familiar one. […]
In addition to remembering whom they cleaned, cleaner wrasses can also remember when they cleaned them. They are more likely to give precedence, say, to a particular triggerfish client who missed their last appointment, because that client will probably have greater parasite buildup.”

These fishes can use memory along 3 dimensions—who, when, and what. They demonstrate episodic memory.

“If a fish can track past events, might she also be able to predict future ones? […] Roving cleaners are more cooperative with their clients near the centre of their home ranges, where they are more likely to reencounter client fishes. They do less mucus nipping and cause fewer ‘jolts’ in their clients during cleaning interactions.”

This is like our behaviour—human beings are more cooperative with a partner when we’re likely to interact with them again. Doesn’t this make you look at fishes in a different way?
Now, just as in the business world of human beings, there can be conflicts, cheats, and frauds, there are equivalents in the fish world.
The conflict between cleaners and clients is because cleaners most like to glean from the mucus, which has more nutritional value and might taste better than algae and parasites, and clients wouldn’t like this.

“A jolt happens when a client flinches as a cleaner nips at the protective mucus layer that surrounds a fish’s body.”

Consequently, cleaners give clients some tactile stimulation.

“They do this by facing away from the client and stroking them with rapid movements of their pelvic and pectoral fins. This caressing behaviour seems to be done for 2 reasons: (1) to encourage a client to stay longer at the cleaning station, and (2) to mollify a client following a jolt. Cleaners are more likely to caress a predaceous client, probably because it lowers the risk of an aggressive chase from a potentially dangerous customer.”

I don’t know, that sounds like a massage to me.
The cleaner-client symbiosis, in many ways, mirror business relationships in the human world. For example, if we read reviews before watching a film or ordering a product online, prospective client fishes “watch the performances of cleaners before deciding whether to let a particular cleaner inspect them”, mucus-nipping cleaners are shunned, and cleaners do a better job when they are being watched.

“If a new client, who has no history with the cleaner, is cheated, he or she simply swims away. But a resident client who has built up a relationship of trust with the cleaner behaves as if having been insulted: he chases the cleaner around.”

Cheats get punished.
This social system is highly complex and “encompasses long-term relationships built on trust, crime and punishment, choosiness, audience awareness, reputation, and brownnosing.”
Guess what, there are also con artists in the fish world—fishes that pretend to be cleanerfishes, and when the client least expects it, the impostor takes a bite of fin and dashes for cover.
I can no longer look at fishes the same way again.