tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36717162772660418042024-02-19T02:59:38.470+00:00My Failure At Modern LivingSelf-absorbed over-analysis of everything.Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-21412379661118802322018-12-28T11:43:00.003+00:002018-12-28T13:14:25.891+00:00Has science killed philosophy? (Short answer: No.)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Is philosophy past its sell-by date now that we have science to find out the definitive 'truth' about the universe? Well, as you can tell by the fact that I put 'truth' in quotation marks, my answer is “no – don’t be ridiculous” and here is why...</i><br />
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This blogpost is based on a talk that a friend (who is a doctor of philosophy) and I (a former philosophy teacher) gave back in 2016, when it seemed to be particularly common for those of us into philosophy to be fielding questions along the lines of “Isn’t philosophy pointless now we have science?”, “What has philosophy given the world compared to science and technology?” and “Isn’t philosophy dead, like jazz or guitar rock?” Having both found ourselves on the wrong end of such frustrating pub conversations – and worse, having seen similar arguments coming from high-profile science champions such as Bill Nye The Science Guy, Neil deGrasse Tyson and even Stephen Hawking (RIP) – we decided it was time to gather up our 'beefs' and air them. Now it’s almost three years later but these 'beefs' bear repeating, so here goes. <br />
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In the first instance it’s tempting to take “What has philosophy given the world?” at face value and argue back with “How about all of politics, or ethics, or formal logic... or SCIENCE ITSELF?” but this doesn’t tackle the accusation that philosophy has "served its purpose so can now be retired” and kind of misses a more fundamental issue – that to suggest science could replace philosophy is to fundamentally misunderstand the difference in what science and philosophy respectively do. <br />
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I would be the first to admit that many of the 'classic' philosophical questions and quotations that get trotted out again and again are creaky old obsolete BS (the 'mind/body' split anyone?) – but that kind of undergrad cliché stuff is no more representative of the cutting edge than an apple falling on Newton’s head is of the current state of physics. I would also be the first to admit that that academic philosophy seriously needs to do more to fight the tendency to retreat into an ivory tower of needlessly impenetrable jargon and navel gazing, and needs to engage and communicate with other academic fields and wider society more – but that doesn’t mean philosophy in general is dead and buried. <br />
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<b>Bill Nye The Sceince Guy's special journey </b><br />
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Bill Nye’s arc is an interesting one, because in 2016 he posted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROe28Ma_tYM">a video in which he pooh-poohed philosophy as pretty much useless</a>, and not worth bothering with, compared to science. <br />
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As Olivia Goldhill in <i>Quartz</i> put it: “The video, which made the entire US philosophy community collectively choke on its morning espresso, is hard to watch, because most of Nye’s statements are wrong. Not just kinda wrong, but deeply, ludicrously wrong... Nye’s remarks, which conflate ideas from completely different areas of philosophy, are a caricature of the common misconception that philosophy is about asking pointlessly ‘deep’ questions, plucking an answer out of thin air, and then drinking some pinot noir and writing a florid essay.” <br />
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Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry in <i>The Week</i> pointed out: “To argue that philosophy is useless is to <i>do philosophy... </i>More to the point all of the institutions that make modern life possible, very much including experimental science, but also things like free-market capitalism, the welfare state, liberal democracy, human rights, and more, are built on philosophy. All of these things are cultural institutions: They exist because many people find certain ideas valuable and decide to act on that basis... If the ideas that underlie these cultural institutions become lost, or misunderstood, those cultural institutions might malfunction. This is very much the case of science.”<br />
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But in 2017 <a href="https://qz.com/960303/bill-nye-on-philosophy-the-science-guy-says-he-has-changed-his-mind/">Nye revealed the backlash had led him to a complete about-face on the issue</a> after “months” of sleepless nights as he decided he must learn more about philosophy – and he now believes everyone would benefit from a more 'philosophical' outlook, stating “I’ve come late to this. Now I’m all about the philosophy. Bring it on.” <br />
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For those of you baffled at Bill Nye’s new-found enthusiasm, still convinced that science makes philosophy pointless, I urge you to ask yourselves the following: <br />
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<b>1) What do you imagine philosophy is?</b><br />
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Because it has such a long and diverse history, and the term has been used in different ways at different times by different peoples, what exactly we mean by 'philosophy' is tricky to pin down. The word itself, of course, derives from ancient Greek: 'philo' meaning love, 'sophos' meaning wisdom – hence, literally, “the love of wisdom”. The Oxford Dictionary definition is: “The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.” <br />
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For the Greeks, philosophy started as a combination of the semi-mystical with what would later be called 'natural science', with questions such as “What is the universe made of?”; with Plato, Socrates and Aristotle the emphasis shifted to practical and moral questions such as “How should the perfect society be arranged?” and “What is it to live a ‘good’ life?”; the term has been used to cover all manner of religious thought and theology from cultures all over the world, from Middle Eastern mysticism to medieval Christian scholarship to European alchemy to Buddhist spirituality to ancient animism and everything in between; it has been concerned with what exists and what the nature of what exists is; with what we can know and how can we know it; with how language works and how logic works and mathematics works and how such things relate; with the human condition – psychology, consciousness, free will, existence in general and our place in the world; with the study of cultures and cultural criticism, what is actually going on in our society and others and whether that could or should be different... which leads us back to politics and ethics once again.</div>
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The above list only scratches the surface but what should be clear is that philosophy is NOT one method, NOT tied to any particular subject, NOT tied to any particular time or culture and NOT tied to a functional end goal or practical application. It is also absolutely NOT just a matter of “what I believe” (Marilyn Monroe quotes, touchy feely platitudes, unquestioning religious or political dogma, random cute 'thinky thoughts' that are not pursued or subjected to any scrutiny). If anything distinguishes philosophy, it is that it is recognizable as rigorous, structured, analytical thought – even if you think that it is misguided or plain wrong. What philosophy is, is a <i>catch-all term for the history of analytical human thought. </i></div>
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Now try asking again: “Isn’t <i>analytical human thought</i> pointless now we have science?”, “What has <i>analytical human thought</i> given the world compared to science and technology?” and “Isn’t <i>analytical human thought</i> dead, like jazz or guitar rock?”... See? You get my point.<br />
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<b>2) What do you imagine science to be?</b><br />
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Unlike philosophy, science is a method. There may be multiple schools, stances, methodologies and disciplines within science, but generally speaking, to be <i>identifiable as science</i>, there needs to be an empirical basis to how knowledge is arrived at. A testable theory is drawn up, then tested in some way and accepted, rejected or tweaked depending upon the results... then the theory is developed further for further testing and retesting in a cyclical and continual process of model-building and refinement. The scientific method has certain accepted philosophical underpinnings, though these have been argued over (and continue to be argued over) by theorists and – yes – philosophers, to ensure that how we do science is as rigorous as it can be, and that we can be as sure as we can be that what we are gathering from the process (and how we interpret what we have gathered) is as valid and reliable as it can be. <br />
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But science is not as united as the layman thinks – all fields tend to be deeply divided by rival schools with different outlooks competing for supremacy; much of what is taken as 'hard fact' by the layman (because a man in a white coat said it) is not taken that way in the academic field – there is a lot of uncertainty, theorising and 'best fit' interpretation going on with a only a relatively small core of undisputed 'fact'. Furthermore, the facts themselves do not tell us what meaning we should take from them: interpretation and meaning is put on by us afterwards, in applying how the facts relate to us and what relevance they appear to have to our current lives, given our other knowledge – other knowledge which in turn is filtered by interpretation.</div>
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This means that when scientists start banging on about the 'meaning of life' or the 'ultimate truth', they are leaping beyond what science is supposed to be about or equipped to do and in fact engaging in (often pretty amateurish) philosophy. Please do not confuse pseudo-philosophical bluster by scientists with actual science – it's perfectly possible for a researcher to do perfectly good, solid science and then gush a bunch of shoddily-thought-out philosophy around it, without even really being aware that they're doing it; because they haven't bothered to even glance at the fruits of thousands of years of rigorous, rational, analytical thought that has thoroughly mapped the problems and pitfalls of certain arguments and ways of thinking because “Isn’t philosophy pointless now we have science?” I mean, FFS.</div>
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<b>3) Do you think it's pointless to be self-aware about the way we think and the concepts we use?</b></div>
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If philosophy was only about discovering 'objective facts' about the objective world, then – Yes! – science does that much better. But even the most dry, 'objectively' framed science is riddled with everyday assumptions and concepts that are virtually never analysed outside of philosophy. As every philosopher knows, even our most basic concepts – about life and existence, space and time and number and identity and logic and knowledge and consciousness and cause and effect and everything else – often start to unravel on scrutiny, proving to be much more complex than assumed, as elusive as trying to catch a cloud, or simply liable to fall apart all together. These concepts underpin everything about the human condition, the human world, the human experience – and are the product of 'us' in relation to the 'world'. As such thinking and talking about them is a perfectly valid way to unpick and analyse them, for greater understanding. The focus of philosophy is not simply on pinning down objective facts – rather it is about analysing the very concepts that make up how we engage, experience and interact with the world and others. Philosophy is about humanity’s self-awareness. </div>
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As put by Cambridge don Raymond Geuss in his recent alternative history of philosophy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Changing-Subject-Philosophy-Socrates-Adorno/dp/0674545729">Changing the Subject: Philosophy from Socrates to Adorno</a></i>: “Confronted by a standard question arising from a normal way of viewing the world, a philosopher may reply that the question is misguided, that to continue asking it is, at the extreme, to get trapped in a delusive hall of mirrors.” One of the most characteristic things about philosophy is that it questions the questions, which may seem infuriating but is actually the unique strength of it – it never takes things at face value, always analyses the underlying assumptions and attempts to bypass or overhaul conventional ways of thinking, to find new ways to look at old and entrenched problems, or explore a deeper, more fundamental understanding of the concepts involved. </div>
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This is best illustrated by the fact that, the deeper you go into philosophy, the more 'meta' the questions get. You may start off asking whether, for example, abortion is morally justified or morally wrong; then you move to asking if you can logically 'think out' morality, and come up with a system that will tell you whether any particular moral question (e.g. concerning abortion) is right or wrong; then, when you get really 'hard-core', you start asking what the concept of morality even <i>is</i>, where it <i>comes from</i>, what it’s <i>based on</i>, how it <i>functions</i> and plays out in the world. These are different levels of thinking and arguing – and notice the more 'hard-core' philosophical questions get, the less 'practical' they are. The impracticality of philosophy is something I will vigorously defend – philosophy at its most fundamental <i>should</i> be free and abstract, removed from the pressures of having a particular purpose. Just like art, having a particular functional goal (for example to push a political idea, sell a product or appeal to the tastes of a particular demographic) tends to limit, warp and bias the results. Philosophy, like art, is defined by being removed from practical concerns – in fact a focus on practicality can undermine it. <br />
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<b>It’s about the journey, man, YOLO </b><br />
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Philosophy and science are not two rivals both racing to get to the 'facts' on the same racetrack – with science the younger, fitter, better equipped competitor. They’re not on the same racetrack at all; they are different beasts in different games. And yet they are inextricably linked. Philosophy not only begat science but is weaved throughout its methods and theorising today in ways that still need to be regularly unpicked and paid attention to keep the engine of science well tuned (It should also be noted that both are also bound up with a third Siamese twin – the realm of mathematics, statistics and logic).</div>
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Certainly, you rarely get a 'right' answer in philosophy, but you can certainly uncover 'wrong' – ie. arguments that simply don’t work, concepts that are inadequate or flawed, and scientists really should pay attention to this before going beyond the data and espousing wider metaphysical theories and interpretations about life and the universe and everything. Philosophy, though, is really not just about bagging a fact as an end result, it's about the journey: the deeper understanding gained by analysing and unpicking the concepts we use and assumptions we make – it is about the structure of our thought and the world as we experience it. <br />
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But the lack of a particular, practical end goal does not make philosophy pointless. Think about it: If you say hard-core philosophical questions are pointless to think about, you are essentially saying it’s pointless for individuals, societies, cultures – or even humanity as a whole – to be <i>self-aware</i>.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-66642462447639372402018-12-09T16:40:00.000+00:002018-12-27T15:32:19.181+00:00Some rambling middle-aged thoughts on ‘cool’ ~ or ~ I'm sure nothing very interesting is happening ‘in da club’<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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First a confession: I was, in my teenage years, ever the one to sneer at trendiness or any cooler-than-thou airs and graces I caught whiff of – and therefore, of course, I was hypocritically <i>very</i> concerned with my own brand of anti-fashion hipdom and authenticity. Now the whole fight of fashion and anti-fashion has ceased to matter much at all, the battlefield long left behind. Thank cripes. The closest I come to the trendiness trenches today is perhaps a semi-detached toe-dipping flirtation with this year’s tie fashions or a Pavlovian grimace of disgust at what these identikit twenty-something vloggers are doing with their hair. Ironically I have better style awareness, now it matters so little to me, than I ever have. But whatever, without further ado, here are some more recent musings on fashionableness and ‘cool’ from a middle-aged man who is neither. <br />
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<b>Cool is charisma, not po-facery</b><br />
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We’ve all met ‘em when moving in social scenes when we were young adults: those effortlessly stylish types who kind of hang around and say very little, seem to know all the most prestigious and popular people and be in the most prestigious and popular places – and never EVER crack a grin. At anything. Maybe you didn’t actually want to <i>be</i> them; but you felt as if <i>society</i> felt that you should be wanting to be them – and the fact that you weren’t like them at all was enough to give you a vague but permanent inferiority complex. You know, those gits.<br />
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You may also have had the joyous revelation, possibly after encountering these young po-faced cools when you were into your thirties and less easily impressed, that the reason these people say very little and crack no grins is that they are either <i>really rather dull</i> or <i>really rather insecure</i>. That is what all that style and aloofness is hiding. You continue to run into them, but now they are younger than you and they look positively frightened by your give-fewer-shits maturing confidence and wise-cracking ‘real talk’ about, like, actual life and stuff (or maybe your jokes are just bad).<br />
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Either way, the equating of cool with po-facery is bullshit. There is this kind of basic trope on comedy shows and in perfume ads that cool people all strut about pouting behind shades; but outside the rarefied fantasy world of high fashion, it’s nonsense. That cliché of 'cool' is rather like that kind of British soap opera idea of 'sexy' which involves actors of limited range laying on the fake cockiness with a shovel and an alarming leer, that in real life would make you think they were cheesiest, cringiest, creepiest dick ever to attempt seduction – the glib media stereotype is an unconvincing caricature by people who don't quite know how to capture 'cool' or 'sexy' as it actually comes across in real life.<br />
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The people who actually make a lasting impression of cool, the people that people really want to be like – say, George Clooney, Beyonce, Audrey Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Mohammed Ali, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Jackie O, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Bowie, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Lou Reed, Siouxsie Sioux, Kurt Cobain, er, Kim Deal out the Pixies – are cool because they have <i>charisma and talent</i>. That may be charisma and talent that taps into something particularly zeitgeist at that point in time, like punk rock or film noir or break dance or a retro Parisian lifestyle, yes; and yes, these people most often look good and dress well (though not always); but that is not enough. What makes Tom Hardy cool is not his looks or his muscles or his clothes – countless forgettable Hollywood himbos have that – it’s all the other stuff about his manner and presence and energy and all that, and also his sheer acting chops. What makes Lady Gaga cool isn’t that she’s aloof and (yes) <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bESGLojNYSo">poker-faced</a></i> (haha), it’s her otherworldliness and bonkers out-there creativity combined with that high-style stuff. These people have something of a different order to those cooler-than-thou but thoroughly mediocre mimics that just aloofly ape their surface details.<br />
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It should also be said that fashion (even high fashion) and trends (even serious ones) should be fun and exciting, otherwise what’s the point, what’s the draw? And also: sense of humour is most often utterly key to charisma – there are very few 'cool' people whom you could subtract the wit and playfulness from without removing all their power. Joyless cool is poison. Cool without fun is kryptonite. Those po-faced posers looking cool in their cliquey cool bubble at that cool party you went to when you were 23... you know I’m not sure now that they were ever really that cool. They certainly thought they were; we don’t have to believe them.<br />
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<b>Nothing interesting or exclusive is happening in da club</b><br />
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Certainly one of the elements involved in young people’s idea of 'cool' is lifestyle – that cool people are so cool because they are constantly going around having these amazing cool experiences with other amazing cool people in amazing cool places. Anyone familiar with the humblebragging, holiday selfies and filter fetish of people’s 'look how great my life is' behaviour on social media should know that much of this is an illusion: at most fleeting high moments selected from the complex and difficult maelstrom of everyone's lives, pinned like butterflies as if they’re representative of every species of their experience. Us jaded oldies have been around long enough to know, for example, that excessive flash is always hollow and <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.com/2017/12/life-goalz-or-what-i-found-out-2017.html">fame is certainly not all it’s cracked up to be.</a><br />
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There is this sense that cool people party harder (and still wake up looking gorgeous the next day) because they are wild and free and sexy and dangerous and having mind blowing high times that us mere mortals can’t even imagine... but the more I think about this, the more I think this <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.com/2017/04/maps-and-tropes-or-life-begins.html">trope</a> is just the lingering remnant of our naive youthful excitement when we were yet to experience any of this. Because I don’t know about anyone else my age or older, but 'partying hard' gets more and more repetitive and yawnsome with every year that goes by. Sure, this feeling is in part because the hangovers are now like having two days of Australian flu, so it just doesn’t seem worth it; but it’s also because you’ve been there and done that so many times and frankly it doesn’t change much, that kind of activity, wherever you are or whoever you’re doing it with – you just get physically more battered and more like a broken record doing it. I would not change my younger experiences for the world, and I do think I learnt a lot about life, myself and other people from them, but hedonism can only take you so far when it comes to revealing esoteric knowledge and the secrets of life – before you’re just befuddling yourself and repeating the same old shit, addictively, like an ageing Britpop covers band who still think Oasis are the most relevant band in the world.<br />
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A case is in point is the ridiculous trope of '<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qm8PH4xAss">da club</a>': that paragon of exclusivity where all the rich and important and gorgeous party animal people go and sit around looking cool and gorgeous and guzzling champagne and snorting powder and dancing all sexy and hooking up for amazing sex. <i>You do know it’s just a darkened room with the music turned up loud and lots of people off their tits in it, don’t you?</i> Acting like people always do when they’re off their tits... like nobs. Don’t you? That <i>is</i> all it is. Beyond the flashy veneer nothing very interesting or exclusive is happening – I'm pretty confident that rare and valuable life-transforming experiences that hold the key to lasting enlightenment and happiness are not thence; deep and meaningful knowledge that will reveal the true nature of this existence is not being imparted behind those intimidating club doors – there’s just some wankered wankers flashing their cash and egos around and trying to get in someone’s pants, or trying to grab a little more over-priced 'high life' for themselves with their gasping little hands. That’s all. If I had all the money and time in the world there are certainly lots of new and fascinating experiences I would seek out; that isn’t one of them. It’s just some people off their mash in a dark room, with some beats. <br />
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<b>Fashion is, and has always been, silly</b><br />
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The standard stance on the cool fashions of young people is that, at the time they are 'cool', they are indeed the most exciting and interesting ways of being: cutting edge, hip and completely appropriate. But as time marches on they become tired, dated, inappropriate, naff and silly, which is why you look back on your old self and go “Ha! Ha!”<br />
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But here’s an idea: what if the main issue is not that <i>culture</i> has changed, but that <i>you</i> have? What if those cool fashions always <i>were</i> silly, but you were just too young to see it? It strikes me that the way you cringe and sneer at what you thought you was cool when you were 16 is very probably much the same way your dad reacted inside to <i>the very same stuff </i>but<i> at the very time it was happening</i>. Your olds knew that “That’s radical, dude!” was ridiculous coming from the mouth of a 19-year-old from rural middle England, just as your Gran’s mum knew that “I dig that hep sound, daddio!” was ridiculous coming from the mouth of anyone who wasn’t a jazz musician and your Dad’s dad knew that “Whoah, those are some heavy vibes, man!” was ridiculous coming from the mouth of pretty much anyone at all... and just as you know that “That’s bare sick!” is frankly nonsense coming out of the mouth of a skinny pale teen on the 'you' tube – or your own 13-year-old step-daughter. To some, mullets, leg warmers and shoulder pads never looked good, so it must seem to them like everyone else only finally got the memo 10 or 15 years later. To some the skinny jeans, big-shouldered blazer, Mr Whippy hair and hipster tattoos combo has always looked teeth-grinding. To use the parlance of our times, “Just sayin’.” <br />
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By jaded middle age, image and transitory fashions matter less – or at least <i>should</i> matter less – and over-earnest idealism looks naive and pretentious – or at least <i>should</i>. The issue is not only a generation gap of understanding, but a time gap of credulity and maturity. You get better at seeing beyond surface, more cautious at getting swept up in enthusiasm for all-talk-and-no-trousers bullshit. A poser is a poser no matter what clothes or words they are affecting, or who is hanging around them or 'bigging them up', and you get better at spotting them for what they are.<br />
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This means your relationship to old idols can change. For example, on re-watching a daytime TV interview with John Lydon (née Rotten), conducted just after he had quit the Sex Pistols and formed his new band Public Image Ltd, it struck me in a completely different way 20 years after I first saw it: when I was 21 the fact that he stormed off in a huff mid-way through looked like a furious, edgy call-to-arms against the stupid, stifling mediocrity of a corrupt and square society; now I’m 41 it looks like a pompous, self-important wallflower being a dick to some nice, straight-forward people for doing their jobs – getting disproportionately angry that he is not being asked the 'right' questions about his art. I just thought “Pick your battles John” – there is lots to get righteously furious about in this world, and “Oh they asked me about my former band when I told them not to” is not one of them.<br />
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That isn’t to say that I don’t still love many of my former heroes, or don't have many of the same passions I’ve always had, or don't hold close and fondly the things that I identified with and that gave me joy when I was pupating; only that I tend to take them less seriously. In fact some of the people and things I could not bring myself to like for cool or fashion-tribe reasons when I was more credibility-selective I have now developed a fondness for, or finally actually <i>get</i>. In fact I’m not down on fashion at all, really – in its glorious silliness, its variety and restless inventiveness, its pomp and nonsense, it’s a sheer delight that I love to hate; that persuades my po-faced face to crack a big grin every time I talk about it. Dig it, daddio.Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-25652038732323892642018-10-31T20:06:00.000+00:002018-12-27T15:30:02.810+00:00Ritual ~or~ why horror movies get it all wrong<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In horror movies a ritual is something with unique and frightening power - you say the right words, do the right movements, with the right props in the right place and time and BAM! Something happens, something extraordinary. But the idea that certain rituals could, say, summon a demonic spirit or open a portal to another blasphemous dimension is not just heightened reality - exaggerated, oversimplified and tweaked into the fantastic - the idea is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a ritual even <i>is</i>. Let me explain:<br />
<br />
<b>1.</b><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We tend to think of religion when we think of rituals because that's where they appear at their most deliberate and obvious, and it's this link with the divine, spiritual, mysterious and awe-inspiring that of course has led to their inclusion in horror and supernatural fiction. But they are everywhere in life, often completely unconscious: from the order and manner in which we do things before leaving the house or when we come home from work; the ways in which we greet each other and say goodbye (language is full of ritual features); the motions we are expected to go through when buying an overpriced coffee or haggling over a Turkish carpet; motions we are expected to go through at a job interview or on a date; the games that we play for sport and what we do watching them; how we perform music or drama or comedy and what we do watching them; to what we say and how we move when we gather to celebrate, commiserate or protest... These traditions, habits and expectations are part of the functioning of a society, a shared language of symbols and behaviour through which we can understand each other, and the world, and navigate our way through it.<br />
<br />
I have always been a bit sniffy and dismissive of ritual in everyday life, I know; perhaps sometimes unfairly, as traditions and rituals do serve an important purpose in social cohesion and stability, and even our ability to make sense of the world. But at the same time there is something maddeningly knee-jerk and brain-dead about how we can often all simply fall into step and thoughtlessly repeat the same old actions - long after they have ceased to actually do what they were designed to, long after they have come to symbolise something quite different from what they profess to, or long after they have become simply empty and impotent gestures that have no remotely rational purpose. And there can be something maddeningly pompous in how we can take tradition and ritual all <i>so</i> seriously. But I know my behaviour is chock full of habit and ritual too - and a ritual is, if nothing else, a comfort. <br />
<br />
<b>2.</b><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Which brings me back to what rituals are not. The idea that doing a ritual just once could produce some new and startling effect - the idea of a ritual as the catalyst for some a creative and dynamic action such as opening a portal, casting a spell or conjuring a demon - is kind of the opposite of what a ritual <i>really does</i>. Rituals are an attempt to KEEP THINGS THE SAME - to solidify and make concrete an idea or behaviour by repeating it again and again. Think about where rituals are deliberately done - religious services, marriages, funerals, remembrance services, awards ceremonies, military parades, seasonal celebrations, or even superstitious behaviours and OCD-like ticks - and it is obvious that these are repeated symbolic actions that are designed to try to leave a lasting mark on the ever-changing maelstrom of life as it flows by - a bid for <i>reliable regularity in a transient and uncertain world</i>.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rituals mark a milestone, remember past lessons we do not want to forget or keep an idea or belief alive; they codify a useful way of doing things - knowledge, skills and strategy through practice; they train social behaviour or create a norm for how to act and what to expect; they try to exert control or comfort where it is sorely lacking. If we want to sombrely remember Archfiend Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, or maybe celebrate His Satanic Majesty's 13.8 billionth birthday, or maybe ensure that Cthulhu's heart-warming life advice or innovative guitar technique are never forgotten, by all means, lets get a ritual going. But as for actually summoning those guys and making new things happen, forget it. The only effect ritual <i>actually</i> has is on human psychology and behaviour.</div>
</div>
</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-46972356719560837332018-05-26T15:49:00.000+01:002018-10-10T17:55:06.390+01:00Tooling up in the struggle to live: How my view of mental health has changedLast week was mental health awareness week. Appropriately, I
was aware of this, and yet I still seem to have missed the boat on posting these choice few words on how my view of mental health has changed over
the years. Ah well - since choosing to point my career* firmly in that direction in recent times (after years replete with many a "hmm" and also a "ha"), <i>every</i> week is mental health awareness week for me now, so let's crack on.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i>Figure 1 - What it's not, quite, really</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrKSBnrdlkNpB-Gdf7sSbx20FX88TsCYzar2dHH7_X0ygkyaBjPpBax5-Sf4KJTHBy9gJ8WjFBLFX8LnBTPId0PePYKmqAX-Q656sde6kg0d5oDm7uvjclXnIC70TQX84OmCBn_pm8cWY/s1600/33619074_10156388181409935_1622849394179047424_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="1600" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrKSBnrdlkNpB-Gdf7sSbx20FX88TsCYzar2dHH7_X0ygkyaBjPpBax5-Sf4KJTHBy9gJ8WjFBLFX8LnBTPId0PePYKmqAX-Q656sde6kg0d5oDm7uvjclXnIC70TQX84OmCBn_pm8cWY/s400/33619074_10156388181409935_1622849394179047424_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
When I was a young man, even after initially studying
psychology, I suppose that I saw mental health and mental illness in terms of
<i>Figure 1. </i>Broadly speaking, I thought, most people - <i>normal </i>people - cruise along
happily untroubled by mental health issues, beyond perhaps a bit of neurotic
emotional navel-gazing if they're the over-thinky type that watches too many angsty TV dramedies. Mostly, <i>normal</i> people (I didn't necessarily think I was one) get through life being relatively functional, happy and
successful without ever having to deal with their "brains going
wrong", I thought - but a minority of poor souls have periods where bad times happen or their chemicals go wonky and they fall off that normality wagon and things get all messed up. With
treatment and time these poor souls can get better; though for some even poorer
souls they get stuck in that messed up place of "mental illness" for
life. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Very, <i>very</i> generally, of course, that outline is not completely
wrong... it's not that it's without a shred of truth, but it comes nowhere near
doing justice to how things <i>actually are</i>, or how life actually feels for the majority of people - it's far too simplistic. For a start, where <i>are</i> these normal, functional,
happy and successful people, untroubled by mental health issues? I seem to be discovering that they are a much rarer beast than I imagined, the more I get to know people in general.
In fact, to me, normal people just don't appear that <i>normal</i> anymore - by which I
mean both that everyday "normal" folks are choc full of strangeness and dysfunction (and in that I include myself); and that these fabled paragons of unwavering good mental health that you hear of in myth are just <i>not normal</i>. The older you get the more aware you
become that your family, friends and colleagues are all a bit peculiar in their
habitual ways of being, <i>and so are you</i>;
people's relationships are even more peculiar, riddled with questionable
quirks, unhealthy habits and habitual irrationality; and people's mental health
is not consistent and smooth, it rises and falls with circumstance, sometimes dramatically
and alarmingly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Biology and context</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don't mean to downplay the experience of those with more
severe mental health challenges here - a "we're all mad really and that's
just fine" attitude is lovely in sentiment, but it really is a bit insulting to
compare feeling-sad-for-a-bit-too-long-after-your-pet-died to the full-blown
staring-into-the-abyss-with-the-weight-of-a-mountain-on-your-back-24-hours-a-day-for-months of major depression; or being-a-bit-of-a-clean-freak to the hundred-life-crippling-little-rituals-you-HAVE-to-carry-out-before-doing-anything
of severe OCD. We have to be able to distinguish, certainly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That said, I
don't think the general public realises how uncertain - and how thinly
supported by hard science - many of the current categories of mental illness
that you hear about really are. Currently not a single mental illness is diagnosed solely by
looking at the brain or biology. That means the assertion that we know for sure that many diagnostic labels are definitely, basically, mainly, simply just down to brain wiring and chemicals and all that, is not a safe assumption to make - because actually we don't know the mechanisms by which the biology is linked with what are by definition behavioral and psychological expressions. Certainly<i> some</i> conditions must have a heavy influence from things like genetics and brain changes, as the biology and the behaviour appear together - but as for how exactly the nuts and bolts of it works, a huge damn lot of that is still "black box": we know there <i>is</i> a relationship but we don't know exactly how it works.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For many other disorders (depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD) the role of biology is often overstated well beyond what the current evidence can tell us, and there is just as much empirical evidence that environmental and experiential factors - as well as purely psychological therapies - <i>affect the associated biology.</i> Many mental health issues arise in a particular social, environmental or personal history context - e.g. trauma, poverty, work stress, bereavement, bullying, childhood abuse and neglect to name but a few more obvious examples. By analogy,
suggesting we could adequately explain language by looking only at what happens
in the brain when we use it would be absurd - to understand language, how it
arises, functions and is transmitted we need to understand social interactions,
developmental context and even human cultural history - which is not to say the mechanisms of the brain involved in it are not also massively important.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Categories vs continuum</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
So if mental illness is not diagnosed by looking inside the brain, how is it diagnosed? Currently by tick lists of
symptoms. Which, clearly, is not an exact science. If you display a certain number of
apparent symptoms on this list or that, that's what you get diagnosed as, even
if you don't have every symptom on the list. This means, in some cases, two
people can have more differing symptoms than the same symptoms, yet be
diagnosed with the same condition. The same symptoms can also appear on the
lists of different distinct mental illnesses, something called <i>co-morbidity. </i>This is not necessarily a problem - for example in physical illness, the symptom of "fatigue" may have many different ultimate
causes, and appear as a symptom in many different illnesses. In mental health, though, due to our
poor understanding of the mechanisms behind mental illness, it also means
people can be given a different diagnosis at different times by different
professionals for expressing very similar behaviour, sometimes with worrying potential consequences - they may be given an incorrect life-affecting label that they can't shake off and may never get corrected, or they could be given inappropriate treatment that may do more harm than good. In some cases the distinction between diagnostic categories may be artificial, more a result of us clinging onto
past theories than what current evidence is telling us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I admit I'm not too keen on the "categorical"
approach to mental illness, that treats labelled disorders as strictly distinct from, and of a different quality to, the common mental health ups and downs in
the general population. There are serious questions over how well supported such hard-and-fast category distinctions are by the current evidence. Schizophrenia in
particular has been called a “failed category” with too wide a spread of symptoms
and pretty poor support for it being a single, distinct and cohesive condition. For example, evidence
is mounting that similar biological, social and
environmental factors may underlie the symptom of psychosis - a key symptom in
schizophrenia but also a symptom of mood disorders - regardless of which diagnosis category it appears under. And importantly the same factors underlying psychosis may be involved in less severe "sub-clinical" symptoms in the general
population, such as social withdrawal, unusual visual and aural perceptions and
magical thinking, that may reveal a proneness to psychosis under the right (or
wrong) circumstances. Basically, there is <i>co-morbidity</i> too between
<i>defined categories of mental illness</i> and also the<i> more common mental health
issues</i> of the general population - the distinction may be a matter <i>of degree,
of severity, of extremity</i> rather than a strict fire-walled difference of type, in at least some cases. The ramifications
of this are huge, as it means the relation between good mental health and
mental illness is more of a constant continuum or spectrum than we previously
thought, rather than a bunch of different boxes and labels that do not overlap
and should be treated separately.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i>Figure 2 - More like how I see it at present</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyway, enough of that guff and back to my original point. I
no longer see mental health as a straight-and-true track that most people are on
and a poor minority fall off of. Rather we are all involved in the same kind of
processes, bombarded with pressures and having to adopt often only
half-successful strategies to deal with them. But some people, for some periods
of their lives at least, have a lot more to deal with than others, whether
that's a barrage of seismic life events; the awful way other people treat, or have treated, them;
work, money and social pressures; ingrained and damaging bad habits that they
struggle to break out of; the continued effects of trauma in the past; their
own bodies malfunctioning; or, most likely, a toxic combination of more than one of those factors.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Life is complex and chaotic and living it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">difficult.</i> The
purpose of most mental health treatment is not to "cure" us of our
"illness" and set us back on the problem-free healthy highway with
all of the other mentally healthy normal people. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">That highway doesn't exist</i>. The purpose of mental health treatment
is, as suggested in <i>Figure 2,</i> to arm us with whatever tools we can get our hands on to carry on the fight
and get through life - which for many involves very tough circumstances - and perhaps even be able enjoy (some of) it. That is, tools to calm the symptoms that cause us distress and stop us from living well; tools to bolster our resilience,
store up our support, preempt predictable problems; tools to help us learn about ourselves and
others and learn how to manage ourselves and others; and tools to get strategies to cope that work and are not dysfunctional. In short, I didn’t decide to pursue a career* in mental health to "cure" people. I decided to do it simply with the aim of hopefully, somehow, some day, helping
people to <i>live.</i> That is all. But in the broader, long-term view, we also need to take more seriously the task of addressing the societal and environmental factors that can apparently play such a key role in damaging our mental health - and not simply ignore them because it's easier to blame each individual's condition simply on the attributes of that individual themselves, in isolation from context.</div>
<br />
<br />
<i>*Speaking of categories, the rather "unique" combination of roles I have thus far undertaken may be too broad to call a "single, distinct and cohesive" career. Ho Hum. </i>Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-55606764277335000402017-12-31T19:24:00.000+00:002018-05-13T16:07:03.195+01:00Life goalz ~or~ 'what I found out': 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><b>It’s New Years’s and also I’m 40 (in case you missed me mentioning that in <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/maps-and-tropes-or-life-begins.html">every blog post this year</a>) so I am going to take a moment to quickly review my LIFE GOALS. Now there are three that are so apparently amazeballs that we’re all supposed to want them 2 the Max, and if we say we don’t, we’re lying. Well, get a load of me: </b></i><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Power</b><br />
<br />
I have worked in various roles in various spheres now and have become quite familiar with the lot of managers and bosses and the ladder and all that. Working in regional news I got to see behind the curtain of a lot more institutions and organisations and came into frequent contact with movers and shakers at various levels in various hierarchies. The more exposure I had to this the more it began to dawn on me: I actually <i>don’t want much in the way of power</i>. I’m happier working relatively independently and certainly have no desire to tell other people what to do; in fact that’s a headache I could do without. I really, really value my independence and freedom of expression – freedom to speak my mind honestly and critically without having to toe the line; to do my own thing how and when I want to do it; to turn off from work and turn my attention to <i>other things</i> once I’m out the door; to go about my business fairly anonymously etc – to the point I will retreat from anything that threatens these freedoms. People at or near the top of the chain in institutions may not have anyone specifically telling them what to do, but they are hamstrung and compromised in dozens of different directions that would make me recoil, and the further up the chain you go the more enmeshed you become – to have to tether your entire being to some corporate or public entity or enterprise; to be under scrutiny constantly; to be responsible for the gripes and security of an army of people below you; to have be publically accountable for a whole range of crap that may or may not be your fault. Urgh. No, ta. The very idea brings out my soul in a panic rash. <br />
<br />
<b>Fame</b><br />
<br />
If power could in fact end up restricting your existential freedoms, that’s nothing compared to fame – what a poisoned chalice that has turned out to be now we have learnt of it, readers! I used to want to be a rock star. Phew, eh? What a lucky break that never happened. Naw, seriously though, like a sizable majority of the population I used to see fame as the ultimate success because, I suppose, it appears to be validation on all levels – that you are special, you are talented, your skill is recognised, you have influence, you are fundamentally an interesting person. Except that fame does not actually prove any of those things, but what will happen is that you and your life will become public property that is fair game for everyone to chip in on, and you and your life will become a business commodity that everyone will constantly want a piece of. And what then? Many are tied to the desperate Sisyphean treadmill of maintaining it, others are stuck with it but desperate to escape back to anonymity. Now: I am <i>really</i> not a public person and I <i>really</i> don’t want to be one. I was not even comfortable putting my face next to news stories I’d written, or getting too much attention on twitter (seeing as it has become <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/shame-shame-shame.html">the place that people go to be truly awful to each other these days</a>); I could not cope with fame. Fame sounds amazing for about the first year or so, then it sounds like a hollow victory and bubble-like existence. Ta, no.<br />
<br />
<b>Riches</b><br />
<br />
Now come on Thomas, really? Ok, yes, I would sorely like to be considerably better off, that is a given. Everything is just harder to do and maintain when you’re poorer, and having to count the pennies is depressing and grinds you down. Yes, I want to have the money to buy nice things now and again, live in a nice home, travel more, and not worry about the expense. But, in line with studies that suggest money does not make us happier beyond a certain point where we are out of poverty and into comfortable, reasonably flush security, I have no real desire for flashy excess at all – in fact I kinda think flashy excess is pretty much always a sign of vacuous amoral try-hard bullshit. Add to that that, unless you win the lottery, you don’t just get rich without strings attached (see <b>Power</b>); and that there are consequences for your conscience, relationships and sense of self; and that I don’t buy for a second that wealth is necessarily anything to do with merit and... well, a friend and I had wildly divergent responses to the Scorsese black comedy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iszwuX1AK6A">The Wolf of Wall Street</a>, thus: I found it morbidly fascinating, a tale of vile people with awful inter-personal relationships and something critical missing in their souls cutting a destructive swathe through the world of high finance. “But wouldn’t it be ace to actually live like that?” my mate said, referring to their lavish lifestyles. Well... “Um. No,” I had to tell him. Whatever bit of people it is that craves superyachts and absurd shiny rollerskate cars and a house with 15 empty bedrooms and cocaine on your private jet and gold leaf on your f***ing ice cream obviously just isn’t in my peasant-stock blood. It just all looks like so much empty swank wank, wastage of existence to me.<br />
<br />
<i><b>So, if I’m pooh-poohing power, fame and riches for their distinctly turn-to-ashes-in-the-mouth potential, what kind of life goals would I push in their stead on this dawning of a new hopeful year?</b></i><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Robustness</b><br />
<div>
<br />
Actually, <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/stop-saying-follow-your-dreams.html">end-state goals are a bit suspect in general I think</a>, because the Buddhists were right – everything is temporary. I am old enough now to have seen plenty of people attain 'living the dream' status, and lose it again; to appear to have the perfect life one moment, then really not a few years down the line – and vice versa (the good news is while cloudless joy may never last, nor does lightless suffering, a mercy often overlooked but built into this 'time marches on' business). Things simply do not stay the same, and even if you can hold onto something, or keep doing the same things, the world changes around you and <i>things go stale</i> – so simply planning to achieve one state, one situation, one goal, and assuming that’s your happily ever after, is rather unwise; because then there’s the whole of the <i>rest of your life </i>to negotiate. I was once forced, at gunpoint (not at gunpoint), to watch 25 minutes of <a href="http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/jojo-siwa-meets-fans-birmingham-13389826">JoJo Bows</a>, and her mum, repeatedly tell a TV camera about how she was finally living her dream and she never thought she would but she always dreamt of it and now she was living it and this was her dream and she was living her dream and this was great – and I got sad because I could only see impending child-star breakdown because what then, JoJo, WHAT THEN? No. If I am going to set a post-40 life goal a good one would be this: To strive not for any particular one end state, but for <i>greater resilience, robustness and savvy</i> to weather the slings and arrows, storms and changes that will be happening in life anyway, whatever. That takes an openness, a resourcefulness, flexibility, intelligence and, importantly, this...<br />
<br />
<b>Relationships</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Because they are everything. If I stop for a moment to consider it, it moistens up my ducts because everything about where I am now is down to the friendship, support, influence and companionship of family and friends. They have been my rock, my mirror, my focus group, my bed and bread, my entertainment, education and enlightenment, my shoulders to cry on, mentors, cheerleaders, life coaches, homies and my home – and much more. They make me proud to know them and want to strive to live up to who they want or need me to be, or think I could be. I can’t overstate it – I, Thomas, an acknowledged selfish, self-absorbed loner and misanthrope, owe everything to the good people in my life, and hope I can give something back to them all. In particular (it will come as <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/all-single-fellas.html">no comfort to the lonesome</a>) but hitching yourself to another human in a relationship scenario, if it works right, just changes everything: Suddenly there is a net of support, a bed of warmth and comfort, that makes all kinds of things possible that just weren’t before and in many ways allows you both to stretch out and become more confident in various directions, while simultaneously acting as a shock absorber and balm for those slings and arrows mentioned above. I'm sorry for the yuk, but it's true. That's why nurturing good relationships is a goal in itself because there's not much more that is so utterly impactful upon our lives. Also, you learn stuff.<br />
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<b>Learning</b><br />
<br />
Back when I was a philosophy teacher I used to try to explain the ongoing drive to ask those big, impractical questions by saying: <i>"When you are born into the world you have no idea what you are, what the world is, or what on earth is going on. As a child you ask and learn more about this, but once you attain adulthood you’re just supposed put all that on one side and turn your attention to making money, being useful, making a family, making a name. Well, I never felt I got a satisfactory answer, so I’m still asking." </i>That was fine for a while, but when I left teaching for the more worldly world of journalism I too had got a little tired and jaded with the inconsequential and unworldliness of philosophy, thinking “What does it matter? It doesn’t help you live.” I thought I’d reached the end of the road with all that deep thinky stuff, having arrived at a kind of mellow, world weary nihilism after endless circling on the same old questions. But I was wrong.</div>
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The past four or five years have thoroughly jolted and shaken me out of that kind of slumber and shown me without a shadow of a doubt, that as clued-up and wise-ass and jaded as I got, I still did not have life, or the workings of the world, or people down at all; because there were multiple surprises, twists and turns in store, both alarming and wonderful and, man alive, there was stuff to be learnt. The past couple of years in particular have unexpectedly transformed everything in ways I could never have predicted in my personal life, and have shown me you can explore those big questions not just <i>as well as </i>doing the work and family thing, but <i>because of</i> and <i>through</i> the work and family thing – it's all more life, and <i>real</i> with it. This has left me with a renewed thirst to learn more and more – I don’t mean just the accruing of facts or experiences, but the real stuff, the <i>how-does-this-all-work</i>: What we are, what the world is, or what on earth is going on. I feel both like I’ve made strides in that compared to my previous understanding, but also that I am newly confident in my capability to learn more, and newly confident in the value of it, even if it’s an endless task. It <i>does</i> matter, because it <i>can</i> help you live – with an intelligence and purpose that bolsters the above-mentioned <b>Robustness</b>. Of course, I will only get so far before I shuffle off: The Buddhists are right, everything is temporary. But in that time I reckon I can get a heck of a lot further than those who are dicking around, tunnel-visioned and half-sentient, chasing power, fame and riches for reasons and ends they don’t even really understand; and I hope that I can in that time pass on at least some insights that might help other people in the problem we all face every day – the problem of how we can happily live.</div>
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<b><i>Happy 2018 n that.</i></b></div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-20029958862957232232017-12-12T18:02:00.003+00:002017-12-13T13:09:04.771+00:00The ideology trap<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I thought twice about posting this because, basically, I am not remotely interested in debating your political or ideological agenda. At all. Sorry.<br />
<br />
I’m no more interested in doing that than I am in arguing with a stranger in the comments section of a YouTube video (why the baffling Jesus does anyone feel <i>that’s</i> a worthwhile use of their time on this earth? I <i>mean to say</i>, really, what?). Don’t get me wrong, under the right circs I don’t mind an intelligent political discussion at all – I have in my time both studied and taught political philosophy, I was a journalist and maintain a general interest in current affairs... but these past few years, well, man alive! I <i>mean to say</i>, what?<br />
<br />
I am <i>tired</i>. Hang-dog tired and dispirited at being flung other people’s ideology constantly on social media and, if you admit it, I think you are too. I get it – we live in very “interesting times” and everyone is trying to make of it what they will and desperate to stand up for their concerns and position in the face of hostile and baffling forces that have been robustly rearing of late. I too have found myself repulsed, frustrated and confused by the turn of world events. But before we go on I should make one thing clear: I continue to resist throwing my lot in wholesale with any pre-packaged political ideology, and I happen to think when abstract ideology becomes more salient and important than the concrete, personal, pragmatic and every day, then ugliness inevitably follows.<br />
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For transparency’s sake, I always used to consider myself vaguely progressive, but not vehemently so, vaguely liberal, but with a small ‘l’ – you know, like before it became a dirty word and synonymous with snowflakery – but with a sprinkling of bleak, cynical and realist opinions on human nature and society thrown in that would probably upset many progressive liberals. But I have no idea what I am anymore... except tired – and right now I’m really not interested in hearing about your particular gawdelpus crusade, reader, so I am not going to talk about my personal political stance much here at all really.<br />
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<br />
Rather I am going to make a few <i>observations in general on ideology of whatever stripe</i>:<br />
<br />
<b>1: It’s a trap.</b><br />
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People say it’s great that everyone is engaged with politics now but y’know, I’m not so sure it unambiguously is, because... well, of the <i>radicalisation of my mates</i>. I don’t think that’s too strong a word – with everything going on the past few years I have seen a fair few previously fully-rounded individuals with their own original and considered thoughts creep ever further apart on either sides of the political spectrum, convinced that there is some kind of ideological war at hand that we must take up arms in – and start flinging regurgitated, rigid-as-rock and shouty-as-shit views straight out of someone else’s manifesto. Like any war-of-two-sides it’s self perpetuating, because it breeds grievance and opposition and frankly I think we have allowed ourselves to be <i>manipulated into it.</i> When caught up deep and wholesale in political agenda or ideology, you are not engaging with the world directly anymore, but through a rigid, simplified model, which colours all of your interactions. Please stop it.<br />
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<b>2: I don't trust crusaders, utopians or people who have all the answers.</b><br />
<br />
First of all the world is complex and ever changing and it’s impossible to be certain about pretty much anything (I’m certain about that) – so how can these people be so bloody certain their way is right? Seriously, I like to think I’m an intelligent, informed and reasonably experienced human being and I’ve been trying quite hard to figure everything out <i>all my life now</i> and I’m just not getting this “certainty” business at all. Secondly, I always get the feeling crusaders will act on ideology at the detriment to what they're actually doing to people. Thirdly, their single-minded certainty = no open minded reflection = no genuine critical judgement. Beware.<br />
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<b>3: Beware loaded ideological words.</b><br />
<br />
Free speech and democracy are <i>not </i>simple ideas, or simple to implement, no matter what anyone says, and we have never had them in an uncut pure form anyway. Yes, everyone likes the <i>idea</i> of them. No, they do not, always and forever in every circumstance no matter what, have unimpeachably pure and "morally good" outcomes. Yes, people use them when it suits them and are hypocritical about it. No, no one likes elites or entitlement or totalitarianism or mainstream media bias. Every side uses this shit. On a related point, freedom, power and oppression are related on a sliding scale, you know – freedom for the pike is death to the minnows and all that – but if you are in any confusion or doubt over if there is actual oppression happening (as opposed to words being flung around as ammunition in the ideology war) ask – A) is there a power imbalance involved here, and in whose favour? and B) are any actual individuals getting stomped on here and why? Never mind the ideology and ‘isms – that will give you your answer.</div>
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<br />
<b>4: Resentment makes the world go around.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<i>"My pain is worse than yours, you can never understand me and you need to realise this and make me reparations."</i> Alternatively, <i>"Someone somewhere is having an easier time or getting stuff they don't deserve and I do."</i> It does seem that in the political sphere both of these positions are the starting point for any debate, whichever side you are on. Resentment comes before reason. It is upsetting because I always took calmness, fair-mindedness, balance, reasonableness, intelligence, multi-facetedness to be the winning hand, but apparently it’s not. Shrill, shouty, self-centred, accusatory bullying is, apparently.<br />
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<b>5: Ideology does not make you more “awake”.</b><br />
<br />
Not everyone is motivated by ideology or sees the world through that kind of lens. That doesn't mean they're "asleep" either; in fact they may be more awake to the subtleties, uncertainties and ambiguities of the world precisely because of that. We’ve all heard the “Wake up sheeple!” spiel, from people who appear to have allowed themselves to be convinced that an off-the-peg world view constructed by someone else is now the most important thing in the world to the extent they can’t see outside of it. This, I think, is called irony.<br />
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<b>6: Ideology is anathema to empathy.</b><br />
<br />
Because it treats people's irreducibly complex lived experience as an ideal political abstract. When political ideology becomes the driving force and focus, outstripping the personal and practical, it pretty much always ends in someone getting stomped on and brutalised as their experience, wants and needs are disregarded for the “greater good” of some overly utopian f***er’s fantasy “good vs evil” bullshit narrative. Militant ideology is like those awful mission statements that businesses and institutions have: at best a simplified dream that describes what you want to reach for (though decidedly not a really accurate representation of the full, complex, organic, dysfunctional reality of things); at worst just a bunch of pretentious hot air that sounds great and inspiring but should really be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.</div>
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<b>7. Politics is about compromise.</b></div>
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Of course it bloody is. The whole set up is there, because there are multiple groups in the world who want and need different things but have to live together; groups and individuals who have different opinions, lifestyles and beliefs and all want a slice of the available resources. That's why politics exists, that's what it is – an ongoing discussion and action to resolve or at least manage this state of affairs. Politics IS compromise. It is not an ideological war for absolute goals. Get over yourself.<br />
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<b>8: A political position in negative.</b><br />
<br />
<i>“No one has ever convinced me they know what is best for everybody else. No one has ever convinced me they want what is best for everybody else.”</i><br />
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Please don’t leave any discussion in the comments. I’m tired.</div>
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Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-43044655869937491452017-05-22T00:41:00.002+01:002018-05-18T14:25:06.772+01:00All the single fellas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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At the risk of sounding like a male Beyonce (a curse I must endure in life in general), I want to say something to all the single fellas and it’s this: There is a good possibility there is nothing wrong with you, it’s just that the world of dating sucks.<br />
<br />
Why I’ve been moved to speak on this is that in recent months I’ve caught various friends and acquaintances (actually both male and female) bemoaning their singledom – often in that “I’m just bantering” way that doesn’t fool anyone. I hear them over-analysing the situation, as you do when you’ve been alone for years and are exasperated and just want some kind of explanation: Joking about what wrong-headed unknowables women/men are; joking about how you, yourself, must be a pathetic freak. Lol jokes. Kinda. Kinda not.<br />
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I am out of that dating bear pit, thank The Lord, and now comfortably well into something strong and stable (a relationship, not a Tory government) but when I hear the just-mentioned bemoaning from my own kind – the slightly introverted, slightly intense, slightly “sensitive” kind of chap – the empathy glands start pinging away, the bad memories start surfacing and I can end up getting upset on their behalf. Having spent the vast majority of my life single, these are my people, and I feel their frustration acutely. The dating game is simply not set up for a certain kind of dude who tends towards the introverted, intense and “sensitive” – for the reasons outlined below...<br />
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<b>Not yet</b><br />
<br />
But before we get into it, I want to make it clear I’m not offering “advice”. As a single man there was nothing that boiled my piss more than someone condescendingly tossing crumbs of “advice” from the safety of the comfortable relationship that they’d lucked out by clumsily fumbling their way into back when we were young and it was much easier to hook up.<br />
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And I need to say, there is nothing wrong with being on your own, other than your own desire not to be. Actually, for me, as I got older I made my peace with the prospect more and more, to the point I was quite happy in my own company and really appreciated the freedom of being a free agent when I was. You become self-sufficient. I'd see younger types freaking out about being single after mere months and just think: "Amateurs! Get a grip."<br />
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But it's hard not to internalise society's assertion that you are something of a deficient misfit if you are on your own past 30, which is ludicrous as vast droves of society are. This meant my own recent experience shocked me – my current partner and me were both veteran singletons, but getting a relationship going was actually relatively easy and natural and straightforward. I’m not trying to be smug at you – what I mean to say is, contrary to what our hind brains may have been whispering obscenely to us in the long, dark nights, there turned out to be nothing freakishly wrong with us, we were not broken, nor terminally “difficult” to be with, we were just normal people who had had some shitty luck in the past. And, it turns out, most of that “dating advice” other people give you is, I can assure you, either completely irrelevant or utter hokem.</div>
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<b>Christopher Walken</b><br />
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I’m sure everyone could tell me why their pain and plight is so much worse than that of my hetero-male-privileged ass, as is apparently obligatory in these times, and I know in many cases they'd be right. But I can assure you the struggle for my type is real – the introverted, intense, “sensitive” male can do just fine in a relationship, but is at a sore disadvantage when it comes to actually getting into one in the first place, or even just a “hook up”.</div>
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I don't mean a bit of boo-hooing over how women are so mean and how it's so hard to find "The One": I mean periods of years and years without a sniff of anything at all other than rebuff and rejection; long swathes of time convinced there was something fundamentally wrong with me or that I was cursed; long stretches convinced I simply had no choice in the matter because it had come to seem unimaginable or impossible that any women would want to stay with me beyond a month or two before they went cold or got bored or freaked out and ran away; that is if I could even get past a second date; that is if I could even get a date.<br />
<br />
I remember comparing notes on singledom with a female friend who astonished me by wishing it was as easy to get a good guy to stick around as it was to get sex. “Getting sex is easy”, she said, to my incredulity. OMG, the gulf in our experience, as outgoing female vs navel-gazing male! “No, no it isn’t,” I said. Sex for me at that point was an ultra-rare and poorly understood phenomenon that had occurred in the distant past a handful of times, which I had no idea how to make happen again. She didn’t seem to understand how things could be like that for someone, her experience being that men simply rocked up and asked for it, often as a nuisance, from her teens onwards.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, when my shacked-up friends cringed over the now-dwindling memory of their single years, I felt like Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter. In that film Walken and Robert De Niro have a shocking time of it as prisoners of war in Vietnam, but De Niro escapes and comes home, somewhat damaged, and slowly pieces his life back together and adjusts to being a civilian once more. Years later he goes back out to Saigon to track down Walken, only to find him still there playing Russian Roulette, like they were forced to do as POWs. All those years later and Walken never escaped that hell.</div>
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That’s me, I'd tell my couple-friends, that's what it's like to still be dealing with the dating scene in your 30s. "<i>I'm still there, I've been there all along!"</i><br />
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So without further ado, here is how things got like that, at least up to around my mid 30s, for this slightly introverted, slightly intense, slightly "sensitive" male:<br />
<br />
<b>1 Opportunity</b><br />
<br />
<i>This is probably the major factor – you simply don’t get to meet a wide variety of eligibles. You live in a small town, most of your friends are male and quite cliquey with it, you were never an outgoing party animal in the first place and now you’re getting older your friends go out less and stick to their own when they do. People will constantly tell you you need to get out more, do more things, but this in itself is a problem – because you don’t really enjoy being the social butterfly, you just want to be having pleasant nights at home or with the people you know and love like many others your age do. Forcing yourself into a constant round of new faces and activities begins to feel exhausting and desperate, but if you don’t do that, you might get to have a conversation socially with maybe one new eligible female about every six months. It’s just not enough. Thank god for internet dating, though that has its own soul-crushing problems.</i><br />
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<b>2 “You don’t try your luck”</b><br />
<br />
<i>This one is a revelation for you, but it’s so true – if you are a “sensitive” type you probably sneer at those sleazey, cocky, alpha-male wankers who are always thinking with their dick, pulling "moves" and dropping cringeworthy lines. But then you wonder: “Why does my delightful dry wit always miss out to the meathead who isn’t afraid to put his hand on her knee?” You write it off as women being idiots and falling for the transparent tricks of Neanderthal nobs, until a female friend takes you aside and berates you: “You don’t try your luck!” What she means is, it isn’t about slick moves or swagger, plenty of women see through that – but the meathead is at least giving a green light, and you aren’t. You are </i>hard work<i>. It’s about letting women know you’re actually interested and worth a shot, giving them a clear sign, an easy way in, something exciting to respond to – but no, there you are, too noble and “sensitive” to do anything but act the distant chivalrous friend and wonder why she’s lost interest when you finally ask her out two months later.</i><br />
<br />
<b>3 The laser focus</b><br />
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<i>In line with your intense and idealistic nature you are also simply quite narrow-minded in what you think you want, and hung up on that, even though you think you aren't. And you've spent far, far too much time pursuing and weeping over people who it was just never going to work with. It can’t be helped, because you go a bit mad when those chemicals bite, but SMH, the wasted time! You just couldn't broaden your focus and realise what a wide and wonderful world of other lovely, fun and sexy people was out there while you spent, for example, a fucking year mooning over some dickhead you had convinced yourself was your true love even though you’d never shared much actual intimacy, they didn’t particularly give a shit about you and it's questionable if you would actually even get on as a couple. Amazing what the heart will do. </i><br />
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<b>4 Intense reactions</b><br />
<br />
<i>One of the problems with not being used to a relationship is that, initially, your reactions can be a little over-intense – partly because actually getting to dating is so rare that there's a vast amount at stake and it's nigh-on impossible to take it lightly; and partly because you're so inexperienced at being in a partnership that you take your cues from films, fiction and your own imagination as to how you should be acting – and that is often way too heavy and intense, way too soon. You have a tendency to write looong emotional essays to the unfortunate objects of your affection at the slightest hiccup, and it never, ever, helps anything. You also want to talk “deep and meaningful” pretty much all the time. One ex told you: “Women just want someone fun who is there for them – not a psychotherapist!” Another revelation. The shame of it is, that's not even your everyday self, which is actually pretty laid back and goofy </i><i>–</i><i> but your date will be out the door before she knows that.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<b>5 Don't bother</b><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>You give up, you stop making an effort and worrying about it. This is part learned helplessness, part self-preservation as otherwise it risks defining you, </i><i>becoming an obsession</i><i> and having a bad effect on your mental health. And this is right </i><i>–</i><i> you are a world unto yourself, there is no reason why you have to be tied to someone else and there is plenty to enjoy about being single. Ironically, of course, being desperate to not be single makes you less attractive so not being bothered may be good strategy; in practice, though, the idea "It'll happen when you're not looking for it" is sadly not true </i><i>–</i><i>because when you stop looking, as you do periodically for long periods of time, you basically don't meet anyone (see 1) or "try your luck" (see 2), so your singledom becomes entrenched.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<b>Don't freak out</b></div>
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But perhaps I’m getting perilously close to offering “advice” here and I said I didn’t want to do that.</div>
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All I really want to say to all the single fellas (and ladies) who struggle for the above reasons is: Don’t sweat it. Don’t beat yourself up too much, don’t write off all members of the opposite (or same) sex as cruel and shallow shits, and don’t think it’s all your fault.<br />
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Being single is tough and modern dating often a ruthless and soul-destroying pursuit. People are just shitty to each other when it comes to being respectful and considerate of the feelings of their potential or discarded matches. And also, as is very clear these days, no one really knows how to do it and there isn’t a right way to do it anyway, because everyone is different – so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.<br />
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For the long-term single who doesn't want to be, your only “problem” is finding the right circumstances to meet the right someone, and being able to successfully navigate though that early awkward bit of a relationship without one of you freaking out and running away. That and the Herculean task of maintaining your self esteem through the rejections and apathy and patronising comments of your couple-friends.<br />
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When people look at you like you’re someone to be pitied and open their cake holes to dispense “what you need to do” platitudes, please laugh a light laugh and tell them, with the air of a wizened Vietnam vet: “You don’t know what it’s like out there, man.”<br />
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And if they persist, tell them, politely, to fuck right off.</div>
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Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-89070938149236428162017-04-23T21:44:00.001+01:002017-12-13T13:06:45.147+00:00Maps and tropes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In a matter of weeks I will be 40 and, actually, it feels about time – so much so that I am writing this blog post early.<br />
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The shift in world view from late twenties to mid-thirties I documented <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/35.html">here</a> but it’s now clear that was only half way through a decade-long process of jettisoning and upgrading youthful ideas and attitudes – and actually, that process is ongoing and will likely continue, until I lose my mind or turn up my toes, whichever comes first.<br />
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Trying to explain what feels different over these past four or five years is hard to pin down (there are hints of it <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/stop-saying-follow-your-dreams.html">here</a> and <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/my-valentines-day-massacre-or-romantics.html">here</a>) though a lot is in line with the expected 'life begins' trope: I feel more comfortable in my own skin than I ever have; I know myself better than I ever have; I have learned to value and enjoy the little things more; I give fewer shits about appearance, ego and cool; I have less patience with fluff, bluster and bullshit; I am much more inclined to view things pragmatically and with a calm scepticism than idealistically and emotionally; I have less faith in prevailing wisdom and the judgment of powerful people, because I have seen well-qualified authority figures make demonstrably bad decisions a few too many times; and I have discovered jazz, dressing with a colour palette and the joys of interesting architectural design.<br />
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But there's more, something more I'm still struggling to pin down...<br />
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<b>The slow process of disillusionment</b><br />
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I started this blog in my early 30s and the tag line <i>“Life: Or ‘the slow process of disillusionment’ as I call it”</i> has been floating around on it for most of that time, supposed to be humorously downbeat but also heartfelt – it did feel like virtually everything I thought was true, good, exciting, reliable or even attainable in my youth was in the process of turning out to be more complicated, ambiguous, problematic or simply more mundane as adulthood progressed. Your childhood maps and expectations of the world slowly prove to be flawed and insufficient and you have to update them with amendments in untidy, ugly scrawl or chuck them away completely. How sad, I thought, but them's the breaks.</div>
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<i>Then </i>I thought that was a sad thing. <i>Now</i> I think<i>“</i><i>Thank God for that</i><i>”</i>. If there’s one major thing I would like to point out about my 40-turning feeling it’s this – because if I hadn't got rid of those quaint old maps I'd have been stuck with them.<br />
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Because I have been noticing more and more and more in the past half decade how it’s not just me – everyone has these maps of what the world is supposed to be, ranging from basic childhood values to the received horse-sense of adult society – and all of it is a little cock-eyed, riddled with misleading myths and assumptions. <br />
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And in tandem with this I have been noticing more and more and more: The world is not how you think it is. Everything is more complicated than you are led to believe. Your maps and expectations are all wrong. Not just mine, not just yours – all of them. <br />
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<b>Tropes</b><br />
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I still don't feel like I'm making myself clear enough. So: Let's talk about tropes. By which I mean recurring devices and themes in things like art and literature, especially salient today in film and television.</div>
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What happens when a car goes off the edge of a cliff in a film? It explodes. What happens when someone is dangling over an abyss but instead of climbing up to safety they try to reach for that golden amulet on the nearby ledge? They plummet to their death, the greedy nobs. What happens when an authoritarian society creates a 'game' for public entertainment, where people are forced to run or fight to the death? The participants band together and spark revolution, of course!<br />
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These recurring ideas and motifs can be anything from a common type of scene (the heroes peep over the edge of that rocky outcrop/hidden balcony to conveniently observe an evil ritual below that reveals the full horror of what is going on!); a basic pairing of things that always go together (aliens = ancient Egyptian imagery, right?); to a full-blown complex narrative (Google '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey">The Hero’s Journey</a>').<br />
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These things are outlined in exhaustive and mind-boggling depth at the wonderful <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes">TV Tropes website</a>, which says: <i>“A trope is a storytelling device or convention, a shortcut for describing situations the storyteller can reasonably assume the audience will recognize. Tropes may be brand new but seem trite and hackneyed; they may be thousands of years old but seem fresh and new. They are not bad, they are not good; tropes are tools that the creator of a work of art uses to express their ideas to the audience. In fiction, it can even be impossible to create a tropeless tale.”</i><br />
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In life also it can also be impossible to create a tropeless tale about how you think the world works. Because this stuff doesn’t just happen in entertainment, this is how we think in general – in our social interactions, our politics, our culture, our everyday expectations and judgements. Our lives are full of stereotyping, narratives we have invented or absorbed from the world around us, and unexamined 'zeitgeist' assumptions. Some are fairly overt and obvious, but others go unrecognised for what they are – nothing more than shortcuts and habits of thinking that may actually not reflect reality all that well. Because actually, in reality, the car most often doesn’t blow up; it just crunches and comes apart and that’s it.<br />
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<b>Here be dragons</b></div>
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These tropes, of course, combine into maps of what the world should be like, whether dealing with politics, romance, religious belief, social shiz or even work or business. Of course these maps are useful, usually contain at least some identifiable truth, and we have to have them to get by and get around. But while some are better than others, not a single one of them is complete or sufficient (no matter what all those self help and 'get rich, happy, healthy and successful' guides may try to tell you) – how could they be? Because the world out there is more bizarre, diverse and complex than any guide-map can convey.<br />
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Treating these maps like they <i>are</i> complete and sufficient is often the source of endless trouble and grief. The SatNav is never the territory – yet often people seem to prefer gluing their eyes to that rather than looking at the damn road and learning to take it as it comes. I see people everywhere, all the time, sticking to their maps and coming at life full of some certain 'faith' that it is this way or that, that this <i>will</i> happen or that <i>must</i> happen... as the SatNav drives them off the edge of a metaphorical cliff.</div>
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It’s not just that this attitude sets you up for disappointment, it sets you up for <i>crisis</i> – because when what you thought 'needed' to happen doesn’t, it’s a disaster – the entire world is cast as a dreadful hell because you can not even contemplate an alternative. All you have is what's on the map and <i>“Here be dragons”</i>. So when your map proves to be wrong – OMG, DRAGONS.<br />
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But the world is not a dreadful hell, it just is. Disappointment is a bummer, but if you think one scuppered plan ruins everything, you’re not looking properly. So it turns out life is <i>not</i> arranged around you having fun, or being successful and fulfilled all the time as your entitled destiny, after all. Boo hoo. That doesn’t mean you can <i>never</i> have fun or be fulfilled or successful, just that sometimes you will, sometimes you won’t, these things never last forever and you probably have to keep working at it. And no one is immune from bad things repeatedly happening that you have to soldier though – that's not the end of a fulfilling life, it's grist to the mill of it.</div>
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The biggest misunderstanding of the field of cognitive psychology is the idea that it's all about positive thinking and telling yourself to be awesome and happy. Yes, we should regularly remind ourselves of the good things – but simply running away from reality and telling ourselves 'positive' fairy tales is not a great strategy for sustained and robust mental health. Getting a more flexible and up-gradable map, learning to read it properly and using it more in conjunction with the actual, real, road is a better one.<br />
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<b>Raw, strange and crackling</b><br />
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For me, at 40, it seems life is bigger, more complex and crackling with mystery and possibility than I ever imagined in my earlier adulthood. It's huge, raw, strange and unknowable. It may be stable and calm enough to map out in the steady spots, but it strikes me as unimaginably varied and extreme at the edges. The very nastiest, bleakest stuff does happen. So does the most beautiful and sublime. A lot of the time neither makes its presence felt. But time and again, I've found, whatever you think things are like, they are <i>not necessarily like that</i>.<br />
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I honestly don’t know how to communicate this, and will have to keep on trying because I don’t think I’ve done it here at all. I look at younger people and despair to think: <i>“My God, you have so much to go through, so much to do, to endure, to have happen before you can see this,"</i> which sounds utterly pretentious, I know. Maybe that’s how my parents look at me still.<br />
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Whatever, I’m now so much more wary of over-reliance on maps and tropes, especially those that other people have decided everyone else should adopt – I do not trust the judgement of those who are navigating life from an off-the-peg ideology or overly-embellished narrative, set in stone.<br />
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For me, at 40, there is no grand plan. <i>My</i> life’s work is now just to navigate through whatever happens, seeking out the enriching things while trying to avoid the awful stuff, dealing with what comes at me and pushing to keep the good things good or make the bad things a little better, step by step. And most importantly <i>trying to understand it better and deeper as I go</i> – because that is the one project that makes sense of it all to me, though a project that will never be complete, until I... stop. At which point, I 'spose, it stops with me. But let's see how far we get.<br />
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That's how I'm seeing things right now. I have no idea what is in store any more – and I really, really like that. To fall back on a hackneyed old trope: 'Life begins', indeed.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-78667458621819110532017-03-26T20:03:00.001+01:002017-03-27T20:44:18.832+01:00Thomas does a book review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Is it tragically romantic or are these people just mentally ill? That, for me, is the central question of </b><b>Wuthering Heights,</b><b> as my cynical and pragmatic near-40-year-old self wrestled with the yearning teenage goth I once was.</b><br />
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Don’t worry, I don’t plan to make a habit of literary musings on this blog and only thought this worthwhile ‘cos the Emily Bronte novel is such a well-known part of popular culture – and to my own surprise, what started as a whim of idle curiosity ended up with the novel engaging me in a way a book hasn’t for some time. And it’s all down to the psychology.<br />
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Fascinating is the word. It starts with a lurking sense of f***ed-up-ness, drawing you in with morbid curiosity in the manner of a HP Lovecraft short – with the discovery of an oddball pseudo-family who all hate each other, a ghost, and a gruff hard-man who cries. In fact the first three chapters of Wuthering Heights are more like an MR James ghost story than anything, and it goes on to be as much stomach-clenching gothic thriller as romance.<br />
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<b>It’s a Godawful family affair</b><br />
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The novel has a rep – it’s that one about the breathless, swoonsome, turbulent love-that-cannot-be between the fierce but flakey Cathy and the rugged-as-granite Heathcliff, on the spooky, windswept Yorkshire moors, isn’t it? A kind of dark and dour Romeo and Juliet?<br />
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That’s not the half it. Literally, the latter half the story is usually skimmed over by the films of it, and the deeply strange non-romance of Heathcliff and Cathy is only part of the slow-burning horror of Heathcliff’s revenge on everyone around him, which is what it’s really about. <br />
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The narration is split between the out-of-town gentleman Mr Lockwood, who stumbles upon the godawful family situation, and the life-long housekeeper Nelly, who fills in the history to him. Both are kind, sympathetic, intelligent and perceptive and both find the Heathcliff and Cathy business exasperating, frightening, sad and downright unhealthy – and it is clear this is to some extent also the author’s take. But it’s also clear Bronte has some empathy with the ferocity of the doomed pair's feelings, as they're so vividly drawn and explored. There <i>is</i> something seductive, alluring, even sweet, about their bond, which leaves you questioning what you actually feel about it – is it the one admirable saving grace of the awful pair? Or is it just bullshit?<br />
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My mother, who read The Heights in school, put it this way: You read it when you’re young and it’s so tragic and romantic; you read it when you’re older and you just want to shake everyone for being so daft, ugly and selfish. I think this puzzling contrast is precisely why I enjoyed it so much, because I can see both coming to it now, as a man whose world view has migrated very far from my teen and twenty-something self – I <i>was</i> that intense, sullen loner who listened to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAGAoy5WZWY">Nine Inch Nails</a> and struck the tragic romantic martyr pose. The strength of the book is that it is ambiguous and multi-faceted enough to encourage such questioning, and I suspect that’s exactly how it was intended – not as an endorsement of any one take, but as an exploration of the baffling excesses of human nature. <br />
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<b>Heathcliff and Cathy are never lovers</b><br />
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Of course a novel of this time is not going to have overt sexy sex in it; but beyond that Heathcliff and Cathy are simply not together, in a romantic way, at all as adults, despite the artistic licence of various film adaptations. I actually think this is utterly key to their strange relationship – they are more like siblings than they are lovers – at ease in each other’s company in a way they aren’t with other people, but also encouraged to cruel sniping and childishness – and their bond makes more sense seen with their early “terrible twins” relationship in mind. There <i>is</i> tenderness and kissing and hand-holding and bashful amorous looking in the book – but for the most part that's between other characters, not them, apart perhaps from their very final meeting when it’s all far too late.<br />
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No – what Heathcliff and Cathy are is two free-spirited adoptive siblings, set together against the world at an early age (and remember their “world” is only their family and servants). All their happy times together are as children, running away from the unhappy household, made bored and sad when forced apart from their playmate. This is why it makes sense that they hold onto this feeling that there is no one else in the world who could ever understand them like each other. But by the time they are in their mid teens, it’s like Hot Chocolate’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3pf7o-9OOk">It Started With A Kiss</a> – Cathy has already discovered other people (the Lintons) and that drives a wedge between them.<br />
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For the rest of the book their “romance” is a fantasy in each other’s respective heads, fuelled by <i>not</i> being together – in reality when they do fleetingly meet they are often arguing, misunderstanding and hurting each other, yet both grip, like a comfort blanket, to the idea they are somehow linked by the soul and cannot be happy without each other, even while doing this. <br />
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<b>It’s more Greek tragedy than Shakespearian </b><br />
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Much can be made of the star-crossed lovers thing, as Heathcliff is socially out-of-bounds for Cathy, being adopted, of uncertain race, and degraded to the role of a semi-literate servant by the time they are coming of age. But this is not Romeo and Juliet. The pair may be sympathetic as children, but as adults they heap suffering on themselves through their own character flaws. In Greek tragedy that was a big thing – the protagonist is always some frightful Gawd-‘elp-us, with extreme pride, obsession, ideology, stubbornness or anger issues that you can see leading to trouble a mile off, and half the appeal is the anticipation of their inevitable gory demise because of it. This is basically the template of The Heights.<br />
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Young Cathy is certainly free-spirited enough to ignore the judgement of her family and elope with Heathcliff – she isn’t coerced to marry Edgar Linton instead, she actually wants to because she fancies him and is enamoured with the idea of being the local lady of the manor. She wants to have her cake and eat it, somehow thinking Heathcliff can come with her and will be fine with this. We know this will go tits-up from the moment she says it.<br />
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Heathcliff for his part royally screws any chance of being reconciled with Cathy later because, just as things seem to have found an uneasy balance where everyone can see each other and get along, he deliberately exploits and elopes with Edgar’s sister Isabella because he’s so obsessed with getting his revenge on the Lintons – without a thought for how that will also hurt Cathy. So much for romance. From that point on he’s a happiness-sucking black-hole bogey-man who spreads a thick blanket of shit over everything he comes within 10 paces of. He lives in self-imposed exile from any chance of contentment due to his own pointless revenge obsession. <br />
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Catherine is silly, insensitive, selfish and full-of-herself; Heathcliff is cruel, obsessive, greedy and empathy-deficient. It’s not a case of whether Heathcliff and Cathy would have been happy if it wasn’t for society’s rules, man – they bring their misery on themselves, by being themselves.<br />
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<b>There are unwitting descriptions of clear mental health issues</b><br />
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A shocking total of 11 characters – more than two thirds of the “cast” – die from "illness" during the roughly 30 years covered. And no wonder the death toll is like a 1980s slasher flick when their grip on medical matters is so sketchy – “consumption” is mentioned once, "fever" a couple of times but generally people just die of being "ill", which seems to cover everything from having a cold to childbirth, as well as being in low spirits or having been out in the rain.<br />
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But the psychological observations are rather more ahead of their time. Every character has a set of well-drawn and unique dispositions, drives and demons, and how characters can be transformed by what happens (or doesn’t happen) to them is a common theme. On top of that, Catherine and Heathcliff both exhibit clear mental health issues that are not so fanciful as they might first appear.<br />
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Cathy has "fits" that may or may not be for show, but are certainly self-induced, and goes out of her way to punish herself, lock herself away, disappear into reveries, self harm and refuse to eat. In the context of a 19th century romantic novel this might look melodramatic, until you realise that people actually do exhibit such behaviours when in crisis; and one wonders if Bronte had come across such rather than just making it up. In that light the standard response of "oh she's just after attention" or "she's just trying to get her way" looks shockingly inadequate.<br />
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Meanwhile Heathcliff shows cripplingly obsessive behaviour all round, not just in his feelings for Cathy. He gives his entire adult life over to the task of plotting to possess and ruin everything that belongs to the only two families he's ever known along with, of course, thinking 24/7 about Cathy – and continues both obsessions even 20 years after she, and later everyone who actually wronged him, is dead. No man was ever more in need of a distracting hobby. I mean sheesh, Heathcliff, whittle some wooden sheep or take up yodeling or something. This may seem like his character is superficially drawn, but it isn't, the book is very much interested in what is going on in the head of that strange fish.<br />
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And the guy also has suspiciously sociopathic tendencies, in that he just doesn’t seem to be able to empathise with anyone at all, treating everyone bar Cathy as an object to play with or despise. It never occurs to him that could be the source of his continued tortured misery, not the solution. With that in mind, while his occasional exhibitions of passion can stir the heart, I was just as tempted call "bullshit" on them – for example when he bangs on about Edgar being unable to feel like he does (so wild and deep and overwhelming is <i>his</i> love blah blah). How the shit would he know? What shred of real insight into other people’s emotions has he ever shown?<br />
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<b>There is some cross-over with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</b><br />
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But the suffering isn't all caused by Heathcliff. The story is a parable about the cycle of abuse passed down through generations. The Earnshaw dad treats his kids pretty shoddily towards the end of his life, especially Hindley; Hindley becomes master of the Heights, then treats his adopted brother Heathcliff, and later his own son Hareton, awfully; Heathcliff becomes master of the Heights and treats everybody who comes under that roof awfully. Nobody is ever happy for long in that accursed house, but Heathcliff shows no awareness his own project of nastiness is less a rebuttal and more an endorsement of the nastiness dished out to him. He's a hypocrite in that sense, and just not that self-aware, for all his Machiavellian manipulations.<br />
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There is also some cross over with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre here – in that you realise all of this is only happening because the Earnshaw family is so cut off, with only each other and the Lintons to obsess over and no outside influence to tell them this isn't normal and there are alternative ways of being. In that sense it stands in a long line of gothic horror that riffs on decadent, incestuous, mutated things-going-wrong due to prolonged rural isolation.<br />
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<b>It’s the ghostly elements that validate the "romance" of it</b><br />
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Ultimately, it's the supernatural elements that provide the book's sucker punch (as well as making a lot more sense of some <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1pMMIe4hb4">Kate Bush lyrics</a>). Sure, Bronte leaves any ghostly goings-on ambiguous, pooh-poohed by the narrators as just dreams, superstitious imaginings, sickly hallucinations – but she wouldn't have included them if you weren't supposed to consider <i>“but what if...”</i></div>
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And just as you've written off the whole sorry "love" affair as the delusional and destructive BS of a couple of dickheads, you realise <i>their souls were in fact united after death; their love was such a juggernaut it survived the flesh;</i> and <i>they both chose to shun heaven to be forever tormented together on the desolate moors</i> – and that Nine Inch Nails-listening goth kid in me resurfaces and swoons "Oh!"<br />
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For a few seconds. Then you recall they were both such silly, nasty gits that, well, good riddance to them and maybe they could have just f***ed off together in the first place and saved everyone else the grief. I know love can be thus, but their "romance" is just too tunnel-visioned, strangely joyless and downright odd to really be held up as an example for anyone to want to emulate in the final account, I think.<br />
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<b>The real romance is not Catherine and Heathcliff</b><br />
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Now the real romance of the story is that between the younger Cathy (Catherine and Edgar's daughter) and Hareton. Because it happens against the odds by a mutual effort of forgiveness and understanding – and blissfully succeeds in finally dissipating the storm clouds of decades, transforming years of cyclical abuse into something happy and healthy (that is, ignoring the fact that they are close cousins, beggars can’t be choosers y'know)... but I've already gone on too long, so read it yourself.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-38521837222505889022016-11-28T00:51:00.004+00:002016-11-29T01:00:44.784+00:00Music<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><b>"Without music, life would be a mistake" - Friedrich Nietzsche.</b></i><br />
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You’d think by now it would have ceased to surprise me, but if anything it just baffles me more these days: Why does music <i>work</i>? And, since I agree with Friedrich up there, why the hell does <i>messing about with sound</i> even matter, let alone matter <i>so much</i> to me? It’s as if its very presence in modern life is a constant reminder that the human world is not fundamentally based on rationality, but strange half-understood emotional impulses and ritualised behaviour. I mean it makes no sense does it? Why should the manipulation of tonal vibrations and rhythms be so powerful and beloved, to point its everywhere in society and the people who make it can be so prized and idolised?<br />
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That said, I know for many it’s really never much more than wallpaper to hum or dance to. I even struggle to explain it to people in my life, who hear me noodling around, once again, with this or that instrument or piece of machinery for no apparent end; or listen uncomprehendingly to maybe a minute from one of the dozens of hours of odd and jarringly disparate constructions I have spent so many days crafting... and say “that’s nice dear” or shrug “s’alright I 'spose”. I’ve accepted I have to say it’s a hobby, as if it simply occupies a place in my life like rollerblading or playing Pokemon Go. Of course, it is a hobby, it is, but...<br />
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I am nearly 40, long past the teenage tribalism of music-as-fashion-identity, long past any desire to get up on stage and strut my stuff, long past any dream of turning it into a career – all of this is virtually irrelevant now. Many of my contemporaries, even those who were seriously into their music, have to some extent left it partially behind by this stage, putting away the proverbial toys in the proverbial attic, while their listening has not gone much beyond what they loved when they were 25.<br />
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And yet, now, at the start of middle age, <i>dicking about with noise</i> and finding stuff to listen to is as utterly vital to me as ever, if not in resurgence. So what is this all about, if not an early midlife crisis? <br />
<br />
<b>Therapy</b><br />
<br />
One of the reasons I value music so much now, as opposed to when I was 17, is for its therapeutic quality. That's more important now, with the stresses and strains of "adulting", than it was back then, when I was basically just dreaming of being a rock star. I seriously cannot recommend enough what a wonderful thing it is to be able to play an instrument, what a balm it is in the face of world-closing-in stress and black-fug-of-the-soul gloom.<br />
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Of course, on the one hand it is an expressive release to channel your feelings through your fingers and have it feedback into your ears – and songwriting has in the past acted as a very precise way of articulating what I was feeling and why, all wrapped up in a finely honed and quite pretty package, like spewing your thoughts out in a letter and analysing and refining them until you’re satisfied. It <i>is</i> satisfying and very cathartic, and you have a little proud gem of a creation to show for your troubles, to keep (and perhaps later cringe at) for all eternity.<br />
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But on another level just playing for just yourself is a kind of mindfulness, to use the parlance of our times. I love the fact that picking up an instrument and playing, for no particular end other than to enjoy it, puts you in a state of concentration that has nothing to do with work or practical worries, the pressures of the world, the current state of your bank balance or relationships, or whatever. For half an hour or so you are only concerned with producing a pleasing or interesting sound, and nothing outside of that matters. It’s the act of being-through-playing – it’s damn Zen, dammit, and I constantly forget just how much it clears my head and makes me feel better, bringing at least some degree of calm and content for a moment, along with the thankful knowledge that there is more to life than my current anxious obsessions – there is <i>this</i> too.<br />
<br />
And if anyone is any doubt of how deeply playing an instrument can impact on your mental state, take a look at <a href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/music-and-the-brain">this shizz</a>; or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/oct/24/want-to-train-your-brain-forget-apps-learn-a-musical-instrument">this</a>.<br />
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For these reasons I would encourage anyone thinking of taking up an instrument to do it just for themselves – don’t worry about how good you are or how much you need to practice, just dabble in a meditative way on a regular basis and you will slowly find you can do more and more. Approach it not as work, but as exploring and playing.<br />
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<b>Play</b><br />
<br />
Without a doubt one of the central elements to my relationship with music is <i>play</i> – it’s not lost on me that getting a new piece of kit to play about with is about the only thing that gives me the same feeling as an adult as getting Lego when I was kid. Pieces of musical gear are big boys toys, yes, and I’m completely unrepentant about that. Again this works on lots of levels.<br />
<br />
At the most basic there is the actual moulding and finessing of raw sound. With something like a synthesiser you can approach it in two ways – as an instrument to play, yes, but also as a straight sound-manipulation machine. I tell you, getting your hands on a proper synthesiser is like being handed a fresh piece of shiny, glittery Play Doh which you can kneed and sculpt to your heart’s content until you’ve got something ace. You can tweak away until a boring off-the-peg noise turns into something huge, or achingly atmospheric, or one type of sound completely changes into another – and then save it out and start all over again. Something similar can be said of messing about with effects pedals or recording techniques. It’s great fun, fascinating and exciting.</div>
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<br />
Then you can take up the instrument as an instrument and just noodle around in the therapeutic way described above, testing and exploring what accents, chords, rhythms and melodies you can coax from it, and when you hit on something that sounds good, keep doing it – the next thing you know you have pretty passage or wonderful riff that you can develop further... and before you know it you’re on your way to writing something. And all the time, you’re learning, practising, improving.<br />
<br />
Finally, you can take these sounds, these passages and put them together like ingredients in a pot and see how they cook, as it were – one of the most satisfying things for me is the moment when, having roughly planned out the structure of a song and tried a few different things together, you actually record a few elements layered over each other and then play it back – and, if it works, suddenly it’s more than the sum of its parts; you’ve created something bigger and with more emotional guts and punch than the simple handful of riffs and noises you started with. It's sheer joy.<br />
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At every stage you are exploring and playing, checking what you can do and what works, learning and then doing it all again – it keeps your “inner child” alive and it’s got to be good for the plasticity of the brain.</div>
<div>
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<div>
*A note of caution with this approach, though, is that it probably explains a lot as to why I never attempted a music-related career or became seriously good at any one instrument – I may wish I could play piano properly but I was always much more interested in messing about with studio gear, doing bonkers, non-linear things with instruments and putting together songs, than I ever was with learning to read music and practising scales in any systematic way. I never wanted it to be work. <br />
<br />
<b>Mood</b><br />
<br />
The older I get the more fascinated and awed I am with the raw stuff of music. For my money it’s the most direct and immediately affecting of the arts, but also one of the most abstract – even though I now know a lot about the tricks, techniques and building blocks of the stuff, there is still so much to learn.</div>
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It still seems like utter alchemy how the simple pairing of two or three or four notes, or the contrast of one chord changing to another, or just a tiny shift up or down the scale against a droning root note, can have such an immediate and visceral effect on the emotions. You can evoke the whole range of responses, from sadness to joy to unease to warmth to rage to surprise to surging triumphalism, by a simple shift of the fingers, by changing tensions on groups of strings or the size of resonant chambers – and the effect it has is mind boggling, sheer magic. The same can be said of the sounds themselves, different textures, timbres and resonant frequencies, along with rhythms and tempos.<br />
<br />
Why it is so utterly effective at mood manipulation is mysterious, but certainly has something to do with innate responses – such as the (probably) in-born discomfort and alarm at discordant or sudden sounds, related to danger or the crying of an infant, say... or the soothing effect of the mother’s heart beat in the womb, maybe. Certainly the preference for sonic harmony seems to be a universal trait.</div>
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Other responses are learnt, particularly the pairing of certain instrument sounds with the time and place they were most used (note everything with a Fender Rhodes electric piano in it immediately sounds like the 1970s) or the pairing of songs with what was happening in your life at the time (an otherwise cheesy ballad can attain deeply affecting grand pathos forevermore if it was on the radio when you split up with a childhood sweetheart or lost a beloved pet, for example).<br />
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What’s more, these relatively straightforward responses can then be played with and built upon in ever more complex ways, so you can find yourself enjoying uncomfortable discord if used in the right context, to evoke pleasingly empathetic anguish, righteous anger, or anarchic spirit; or re-imagining a familiar chord progression, melody, or band sound into something new and different, while still riffing on the emotions the original version provoked.<br />
<br />
All of this combines to mean certain genres – instrument combinations, styles of playing, song structures, production techniques and other musical tropes and ticks – can be massively evocative of whole worlds. You can be transported to a baroque-period German cathedral, or an English seaside ballroom in the 1930s, or a San Francisco jazz club in the 1950s or a sticky-floored gig in Manchester in 1979, or downtown New York at the same time, or somewhere on a Polynesian island at an indeterminate time in the past, or even THE FUTURE, but how it looked in the 1980s. The sound tells a story, and an immersive one, and that’s a large part of its appeal.<br />
<br />
It’s got to be said there is a degree of escapism about this, as there is with a lot of art – but also, as with a lot of art, it reminds you there is so much more to the human world and human history than your own time and place and everyday obsessions. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your bureaucracy.<br />
<br />
<b>Metaphor</b><br />
<br />
It <i>is</i> a wonder that music (or art in general) exists at all and continues to hold such an unquenchable fascination and central place in human society, I suppose. On the surface it would seem there is little rational about it, no obvious practical purpose. But then again, through the abstract manipulation of sound we can represent the world in metaphor and powerfully communicate things we struggle to articulate in words alone.</div>
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We like to think our actions are motivated by reason and logic but that, to me, has always seemed like a laughable pretence; no, the world and people’s activity is made up of an impenetrably complex web of innate and learnt reactions and gut drives, constantly pinging off each other and feeding back again and again until it’s hard to see what is what. The rational is but a thin veneer on the top, like glib lyrics sung over a minor masterpiece.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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Music <i>is</i> perhaps an abstract metaphor for all of this activity, the complexity of the world in microcosm: Endlessly adaptable, infinitely complex in its history and interplay, expressing and provoking the full spectrum of mood, and modes of being. Spanning all human history and culture, it is a mirror of us – and of life itself. I’m not sure what we would be if we took it away.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-10306314138269545922016-09-25T16:07:00.002+01:002016-11-29T01:17:13.868+00:00Shame. Shame. Shame.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjopdrcqZz0XEW1bjgNyCndOkvsp8F81eXfxJDpuX39U2v0NZiV8nNE1bYFanGNSFT2fYrve2SKpRcYYASQOMPphQZte58CnzH-Ud-qSBhGNdoIxpU-L1uM6twq0l53SlNFiJcAOtuuGAg/s1600/CSB46wYUEAArhrC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjopdrcqZz0XEW1bjgNyCndOkvsp8F81eXfxJDpuX39U2v0NZiV8nNE1bYFanGNSFT2fYrve2SKpRcYYASQOMPphQZte58CnzH-Ud-qSBhGNdoIxpU-L1uM6twq0l53SlNFiJcAOtuuGAg/s200/CSB46wYUEAArhrC.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b>1. Back to the playground</b><br />
<br />
We were about 11 years old and queued up for something at school when one of the confident, popular lads took his digital watch off and smelled the strap.<br />
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“Urgh” he went and proceeded to get everyone around him to smell the sweaty rubber. I smelled it. And I said something to the tune of: “Urgh, that smells like your fingers do when they’ve been up your bum.”<br />
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There was a moment of silence. It was an odd thing to say. I thought it was funny (I was 11) and also thought it was fairly uncontroversial – come on, now, we all know that smell, right? We’ve all caught an unfortunate whiff when going about our ablutions before washing our hands, yeah? If I was 16 and into edgy gross-out humour I might have said “That smells like arse crack!” and might have got a laugh (we would have been 16).<br />
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But I was 11, and I said: “That smells like your fingers do when they’ve been up your bum.”<br />
<br />
I said it. And after the beat of uncertain silence, the confident, popular lad roared with laughter and said: “He puts his fingers up his bum and then smells them.”<br />
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Everybody gasped in horrified glee and slowly it worked its way down the line – Urgh! He LIKES putting his fingers up his bum! And he LIKES smelling them! He’s gross! He’s smelly! He’s a pervert!<br />
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I tried to explain myself but it only made matters worse. They weren’t interested in my mitigation. And how could I take it back? I’d said it, it was a matter of public record. So for the next few weeks I was the “bum fingers” kid, and just had to suck it up. What had happened was that the quiet, weedy, arty guy had said something weird and it was gift – everyone was just ripe and itching to jump on it, to have someone to taunt and feel better than. I’d walked right into that role.<br />
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On the scale of bullying that is a pretty silly and inconsequential example, of course – I could have used much more extreme and traumatic examples that I saw, received or even took part in dishing out from those awkward, anxiety-filled early years, but let’s keep it light eh? – the point is that kind of situation was utterly everyday and banal in the playground.<br />
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As you grow up you think things are different and you won’t ever go back to that. While talking about introversion (<a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/i-spose-im-introvert-really-but-i-dont.html">here</a>), I said: “Having spent much of my childhood feeling vaguely threatened and misunderstood by pretty much everyone except my immediate family and closest friends, I slowly discovered that communication was a kind of super-power – to be able to explain yourself, articulate your case and express what the hell was going on in that inner world of yours was a transformative skill to develop,” – and I still feel that. But recently I’ve begun having doubts about the universal effectiveness of that super-power, because I’m starting to see plenty of cases where, both online and in the media, it <i>doesn’t count for shit.</i><br />
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I am of course talking about public shaming – where someone says something a little offensive or ill-advised and are met with a tsunami of outrage and anger, from howls of cackling derision, to calls for them to be stripped of their job and title, to full-on threats of extreme violence and death (often sexual, if female).<br />
<br />
The victim's original comment may have been a bit unpleasant, a bit inappropriate, and not something I’d condone or sympathise with, so it took me a while to pin down why the outraged response troubled me so – and it’s that, up there. The playground fear. The realisation that you’re just one unwise quip away from public humiliation and ruin.</div>
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It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t what you meant. It doesn’t matter if what you said doesn’t really represent what you think, feel or who you are. It doesn’t matter what the intended tone or context originally was. Explanation or logical argument can’t repair it – if what you said could possibly be taken as the kind of thing we might imagine a truly awful person could say, then you <i>are</i> that monster in the eyes of the world now, with no chance of redemption.<br />
<br />
Because those doing the shaming are no more interested in the reality, subtlety and humanity behind an utterance than kids in the playground – what they want is a scapegoat to make an example of, to suffer and then disappear, so everyone else can go home feeling righteous and superior. If the mob wants to tear you down, it will tear you down, blind to all reason, nuance and the facts of the matter. <br />
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<b>2. The new moral majority</b><br />
<br />
I remain deeply, deeply suspicious of the motivations of <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/in-defence-of-humour-and-scepticism-in.html">righteous rage</a> – most of the time I simply don’t buy it as this pure and noble thing we’re supposed to accept it as. It’s not humble or fair-minded, it’s cruel and disingenuous. There’s always a whiff of “casting the first stone” lack of self-awareness about it. As Nietzsche put it: <i>“No one lies as much as the indignant do.”</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I was going to write something on this topic anyway, but then I read Jon Ronson’s excellent “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” and it kind of covers it – but at the same time has made the matter crystal clear in my head. This kind of mass group-shaming is just <i>vile</i>, and not a little bit scary.<br />
<br />
One thing I kept thinking while reading that book is how people just <i>love</i> pointing the finger. They get off on having their little inner tyrant unleashed to lord it over others, while at the same time feeling that’s fine because they are justified and holy, right is on their side and everyone approves. We look to others for what is acceptable, and so when everyone starts attacking it suspends the usual social norms of being polite and forgiving – or actually considering the victim as a human being – while rewarding us with praise for joining in, egging us on. Add online anonymity and the short attention span of internet interaction to that and you can be as vile and violent as you like, with no need to consider that you don’t know the context and subtleties behind what was originally said.<br />
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And the fall-out for the victim of a shaming is not all over and forgotten quickly as it is for the perpetrators. Towards the end of Ronson’s book, he interviews Michael Fertik who runs reputation.com, a company which works to bury online shamings and damaging Google results for clients. Fertik responds to criticism that he’s <i>“manipulating truth and chilling free speech”</i> by saying:<br />
<br />
<i>“But there is a chilling of behaviour that goes along with a virtual lynching. There is a life modification... People change their phone numbers. They don’t leave the house. They go into therapy. They have signs of PTSD. It’s like the Stasi. We’re creating a culture where people feel constantly surveilled, where people are afraid to be themselves... This is more frightening than the NSA. The NSA is looking for terrorists. They’re not getting psychosexual pleasure out of their schadenfreude about you.”</i><br />
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Ronson himself says the early days of social media, where people thought they could be themselves and say anything to anyone, had proven to be naive: the sensible tactic these days it seems is to be as bland as possible online.<br />
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<i>“The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people. We are now turning it into a surveillance society where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless,”</i> he said.<br />
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Certainly I don’t want a society where one off-the-cuff remark can override everything else you ever did or said and cost you your career, reputation, friends and mental well-being if the mob decides to turn on you.</div>
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The irony is that much of this is being done in the name of liberalism, as those shamed are often perceived as transgressing against modern progressive values in some way – caricatured as the worst kind of backwards-thinking, overprivileged, oppressive dinosaur <i>whether they actually are or not</i>. Broadly speaking I’m also a progressive liberal, dammit, and to me this just seems a complete betrayal of that – the shouty moral majority used to be the ultra-conservative right wing. Us liberals thought we’d largely vanquished that kind of knee-jerk Mary Whitehouse censorship nonsense, for a more open-mined, diverse society. But no: now the shouty moral majority is us.<br />
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<b>3. Paradoxical behaviour</b><br />
<br />
Western culture in the new millennium is deeply confused about this stuff, with weird and wild extremes going on. On the one hand we have never been more accepting of the shocking, “edgy” and extreme, and love to wax worthy about the importance of freedom of speech and the right to offend and be offended. At the same time we love to destroy the lives of anyone who says anything that even resembles something we deem “not cool”, even if the comment itself was the kind of thing you hear average people say everyday, and actually fairly inconsequential. <br />
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It’s completely unremarkable to guffaw on a week night at, say, South Park, Family Guy, Bo Selecta (back in the day) or a Frankie Boyle gig, pushing the boundaries of taste and acceptability... and yet a single slightly off-colour tweet, even if clearly intended as absurd or ironic, can end someone’s career.<br />
<br />
Ronson covers in-depth the example of a woman who was reduced to a jobless, scared, numb, shell-like recluse for the sake of a picture at a war memorial where she pretended to shout and flip the bird next to a “silence and respect” sign (not <i>actually</i> shouting or intending disrespect, note, but just as a visual pun). She was so demonised and hounded online that it flooded any Google search for her name for years to come, while death threats and outrage continued unabated... and meanwhile the Sex Pistols, who wouldn't have thought twice about such a stunt <i>and would have meant it</i>, are currently being lauded as a beloved cultural institution in exhibitions across London for the 40th anniversary of punk.</div>
<div>
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This is paradoxical behaviour, it just doesn’t stack up. Now I know there is an argument to be made about the licence of entertainers and artists to say things us everyday working drones who have to toe the line cannot, but the hugeness of the disparity is mind boggling.</div>
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<b>4. Telling the difference</b><br />
<br />
People are often silly and ignorant, yes, and often need it pointing out that what they joke about can be hurtful and perpetuate ingrained inequalities – but they don’t deserve destroying for that. We have to be able to tell the difference between someone who proudly publishes Mein Kampf and someone who is making a quip without considering how it might sting; between Roosh V and some immature college geek thinking he’s being ironic. Or, as Ronson points out, a battle for civil rights and a “nasty imitation” witch-hunt. The response has to be proportionate, or we're lost.<br />
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People say stupid things in jest all the time. It doesn’t mean that’s what they really think in their sober moments. Neither does it mean that’s an indication of how they would personally treat actual people – in fact the shock of that mismatch is often the very joke itself. And yet we pretend we don’t know this. Why? Because we <i>want</i> someone to pounce on, point and shout at, to feel righteous over and superior to.<br />
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Ages ago I did a silly post about <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/and-now-im-going-to-talk-about.html">telepathy</a> where I argued that if we knew the contents of everyone’s thoughts we would not be able to maintain our social judgements based on appearance and public presentation any more: <i>“We would all have to become inconceivably more understanding and forgiving of others if we were going to be party to everyone’s inner-most secrets and feelings all the time,”</i> I said.<br />
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To some extent social media has created a world where the kind of off-the-cuff, unfiltered contents of our heads, that previously only our friends and family might hear, can now be instantly displayed to everyone all over the world, as immortal pronouncements carved in code. We still haven’t got to grips with that, neither as writers nor readers – both those of us spewing out thoughts and those of us judging them may have to modify our behaviour. Sure, we should be more mindful about what we say, but equally we cannot judge a tweet or facebook status like a carefully-planned and edited publication.<br />
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On shaming I am now off the fence. Unless there is a genuine injustice to be urgently addressed with an<i> actual victim</i>, as Ronson puts it, I’m not up for this shaming lark at all – it’s not redemptive, there is no positive outcome for anyone, just vileness upon vileness until everyone is angry, damaged and numb. And if I may be so bold, I’d like to suggest we all stop and think if it’s really fair, necessary and worth doing before we lay into anyone online, or at least think about how we should go about it and why we are doing it.<br />
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Do you actually know what this person is about? Can you be sure you are being fair to them and the spirit and context this was said in? Do you really know what the effect on their lives could be and do you actually want that? Have you never said anything a bit risque and ill-advised that could be taken as a bit dicey - could the mob not one day just as easily turn on you? I mean to say, for Chrissakes, that guy that the Christians like said it 2,000 years ago: "Let him who is without sin..."</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-2093693258046115302016-06-23T18:12:00.000+01:002016-06-23T18:29:37.870+01:00"A man who salsa dances"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxaKss4yPGvt2Ki_do2X8Ww4n_xls7lbcqAMj0yP_IBsVLzjILLS9x-6qRXg7mmF2nufnhQlpdf5ER_D6P__l9u1wVlNhSWJljRDDiLPmTKoGVVUsiFMhgfl6jbDfKvc87tLWI4gA8tUY/s1600/b06e8fff62981953f3c0c709019c8119.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxaKss4yPGvt2Ki_do2X8Ww4n_xls7lbcqAMj0yP_IBsVLzjILLS9x-6qRXg7mmF2nufnhQlpdf5ER_D6P__l9u1wVlNhSWJljRDDiLPmTKoGVVUsiFMhgfl6jbDfKvc87tLWI4gA8tUY/s200/b06e8fff62981953f3c0c709019c8119.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Those who know me even vaguely know that dancing and I are not two things you associate. Me and tirades on dark German metaphysics, yes; me and fancy footwork, no. Me and comedy awkwardness, sure; me and serious sashaying, doubt it. Me and fluid, coherent, sexy prose, perhaps; me and fluid, coherent, sexy moves, uh-uh. So the fact that I ended up in salsa class – once and once only – was as much a shock to me as anyone.<br />
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In my attention-seeking uni days my strategy was to hit the floor with limbs flailing and feet jumping in the most outlandish display I could muster, that would inevitably descend into either fits of laughter or minor physical injury, more Dadaist protest than co-ordinated rhythm; since then I am the one nodding at the back at gigs, only putting my hands half-way up in the air, like I just <i>do</i> care, and pulling the terrified gurn and frozen muscles when someone suggests I need to get up at a wedding do. <br />
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It’s not that I wouldn’t love to be someone with the effortless coiled-spring poise, light touch and physical ease of a dancer, but then I’d also like to be capable of levitation – and the fact that neither of these things is the case doesn’t trouble me that much day-to-day.<br />
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<b>No</b><br />
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The idea was first mooted on a weekend walk with some friends, when one of the group said she was thinking of going and wanted someone to go with, turning to us with the challenge “The problem is they don’t have enough men.”<br />
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“Let’s stop this right here – I am NOT going salsa dancing,” was my unequivocal response, and that was that.<br />
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I am not ready to be “a man who salsa dances”, I said. To me that means one of two things: either you are a lean, athletic, swarthy, confident, ostentatious type, who just has to let the rhythm out – which I am patently not (the rhythm is fine kept in with me, thanks) – or you are a bored, middle-class white person of a certain age who has watched Strictly and is desperate to show the ladies that you do, in fact, have some heretofore unsuspected Latin passion bubbling away under your pudgy, middle-class-white-person-of-a-certain-age exterior. <i>I could be that man.</i> And I <i>really</i> didn’t want to be.<br />
<br />
<b>So there</b><br />
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A few weeks later a second female friend, who had been on the walk, messaged me to say “Salsa tomorrow. Are you coming then?”<br />
<br />
Hadn’t she heard me? Ah, but there "could be ladies there", she said, which was a rotten power-move. You see now, if I said “no”, I wasn’t just saying “sorry it’s not for me”, I was saying “I am a miserable hermit spinster who just isn’t interested in making any effort to get out of the house and meet anyone, so I better not whinge about being on my own ever again because it’s my own fault.” Do you see what she did there?<br />
<br />
I said no.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>A (one) sexy lady</b><br />
<br />
She went along, and told me there was "a" sexy lady there – imagine it! – and also said it was really good fun and very relaxed, and I caved. What could it hurt? If nothing else I could enjoy being amusingly awkward and uptight and making dryly humorous comments throughout, I thought. It could be fun to be <i>that</i> man, I'm used to being <i>him</i>.<br />
<br />
It was only when I told people I was going to do it that it became clear there really is something in this men are from Mars, women are from Venus bullshit. The polarity of the responses was marked. Virtually every woman I told gave me a variation of “Oooooh, you must go!” and virtually every man said “WTF? Why? Who even <i>are</i> you?” <br />
<br />
When I arrived I was already sweating from the walk there and half expecting an hour or two of excruciating embarrassment, fumbling and bumbling about with various partners who would be throwing daggers at me as I awkwardly broke all my personal space rules as stiffly and sexlessly I could while failing to put anything where it should be at the right time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Yes</b></div>
<div>
<br />
But I was pleasantly surprised – there were a lot of people of all ages and types milling about, many complete novices, some serious enthusiasts, mostly completely normal looking. To start with it was all just footwork, first in big group as a warm up, then in sub-groups by ability. My friend was there, who reassuringly was still no dancer either – she more regularly dances like a 10-year-old at a birthday party and once got into some heat at a disco when her boyfriend had to explain to the woman next to her that she wasn’t taking the piss, she always busted moves like that.<br />
<br />
So it was comfortable and fun and it was eminently do-able. A bit of practice and the scales fell from my eyes that <i>this</i> is what it’s all about, all just timing and posture, and with repetition and the right music I could feel the basics falling into place already. It was muscle memory, really, no different to playing guitar, which I can do. There was the odd moment when I had to try to explain that I wasn’t tensing my shoulders unnaturally, that’s just what they are like all the time, but my “witty” self-deprecating comments largely met with no response at all – this was serious business, and I guess they got nervous wise-guys trying to quip their way out of embarrassment all the time.<br />
<br />
There was only one terrifying bit. In the big-group “free dance” at the end, the main guy would shout “change partners” every few minutes and I would be left in the middle of the floor flailing for someone, anyone, to grab me, feeling like I was back in PE class being the last to be picked... at which point I would have to plead with my new partner that “I can’t lead, I know nothing!” – a scenario which only needed me to notice I had no trousers on to be identical to a recurring anxiety dream – but I got through it.<br />
<br />
What I really began to see was just how much this could help me improve things like balance, posture and physical confidence, as well as being a pleasant and relaxed social pursuit... this could be a good, healthy thing, I thought, never mind any pretensions of “Latin passion” or learning great floor-moves.<br />
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Then again, maybe not</b><br />
<br />
The next week none of us friends could make it, but we agreed to go the week after. However, in that time I met and started dating someone <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/f-tinder.html">by a route that had nothing to do with my dancing ability</a>, to which, of course, one of my male friends’ responses was: “Well you know what’s good about this – you don’t have to go salsa dancing any more!”<br />
<br />
It’s true, I haven’t been back. But that’s as much a matter of not having the time as anything – I didn’t feel the relief he thought I might have. It’s kind of a shame.<br />
<br />
Sure, I also don’t have a raging urge to repeat my tiny taste of this other reality where I am “a man who salsa dances” either, but who knows – one day I might be persuaded again. Cha cha cha.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-5426496021328120542016-04-05T18:32:00.001+01:002016-04-05T22:57:25.643+01:00Never mind your dreams<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>"Will you stop telling my child to follow her dreams!"</b> my friend snapped while telling me about the umpteenth animated film he had sat through with his hatchling.<br />
<br />
He wasn’t exhorting <i>me</i>, he was exhorting the makers of the film for once again mining such an unimaginative seam for their central moral message. He had no argument from me, I understood. It’s not just that the message is somewhat overdone and obvious, clichéd and glib, it’s that the incessant drilling of such un-moderated aspirational spaff as "follow your dreams" is possibly damaging.<br />
<br />
What? <i>Damaging?</i> Did I just say that? What kind of shrivelled, bitter old cynic am I? It’s a bit like saying "Yeah, love and understanding is over-rated", "Hugs are for losers" or "That Hitler guy was alright, y’know?"; but hold your Twitter-style backlash for just one sock-darning minute. It is not my intention at all to play the cynical curmudgeon here (for once) – in fact quite the opposite. I promise you, in my own perverse way, I will be working towards an arguably positive, touchy-feely message of a different sort by the time we are done here.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But first we have to wade through some hard-nosed realism, at least in a vague, cursory way, so shush and buckle up.<br />
<br />
<b>Side-bowl of sh*t</b><br />
<br />
Young people especially tend to look at one with horror when one sneers at the "follow your dreams" mantra, and it’s very difficult to explain oneself. Because, I suppose, my position is a response to age, to having been about a bit and seen the outcome of dream-following - or otherwise - in oneself and others.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When you get to the point in your life where there is no doubt various ships have sailed, possibilities have narrowed and binding responsibilities have abounded, it really does all look a bit different, not to mention that you learn about the rather more shoddy, chaotic and still-oft-mundane reality of even the most high-powered and glamorous positions. So many "dreams" are simple fantasy and mirage – like an American tourist arriving in Peckham when they expected Britain to all be fairytale castles, bowler hats and tea. Other "dreams" come with a slew of unpalatable personal requirements and nature-of-the-beast necessities, making demands on your time, energy and integrity, that go a long way to taking the shine off. But if you’re not prepared to stomach that side-bowl of sh*t than you can’t reasonably say you "I could have been this or I could have been that". <br />
<br />
It’s not just personal experience I'm grumbling from, I know friends and contemporaries of all permutations: <i>Those who have followed whims and passions or those who have trod a safe, tried and tested path; those who have jumped careers multiple times and those who have stayed in the same one since early adulthood; those who have moved towns or even countries and those who still live where they grew up; those who are deeply entrenched in the corporate rat race and those who have maintained a little more independence; those who have made good money and a name for themselves and those who, well, haven’t so much...</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Not one of them has an easy, uncomplicated life without compromise, stress, relationship issues, health issues, worries about "What’s it all about?", "Where’s it all going?", "Was it all worth it?", "Should I have lived my life differently?" – not one of them would say they have arrived at exactly where they wanted to be, or is vastly happier than everyone else. From the outside you may get envious looking at others, but when you talk to them properly about their problems, you quickly realise "Oh, yeah, they have their 'stuff' to deal with too." I couldn’t honestly say I’d trade places.<br />
<br />
<b>Every "could have" is an unknown</b><br />
<br />
Because reality simply isn’t like TV, in fact TV has always done a terrible job of actually conveying what any job is actually, really, actually like, on a day-to-day basis – because it would be terribly tedious and impenetrable in its minutiae. The world of work is always infused with a little (or a lot of) strife, stress and struggle, negotiations and cut-corners, a million little petty problems to sort and demands to meet, often from unreasonable people who just don’t quite understand what is involved. This tends to be the case no matter what it is you’re doing, it turns out - even in so-called "glamour" jobs. That’s what getting things done and dealing with people is – it’s how the world muddles along.<br />
<br />
Contrast that with the oh-so-simple dichotomy we feed our younglings with, of "follow your dreams" vs "settle for a safe and dull life". Bah! I say. Bah. For a start, I'm not even sure which I have done - I've followed some dreams up to point, I've given up and waved others on their way; I've settled at some times in some places, I've not settled at others in others...<br />
<br />
And as if "dream vs settle" was really the only issue: What about "Is the reality of your dream what you think it is?", "Do you actually know what your dream involves?", "Are you prepared to put in the work or make the sacrifices to get there and maintain it once you do?", "If you got there are you sure you wouldn't want something else?", "How much compromise will you put up with?" and "At what point will you be able to say you’ve arrived?".</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I’ve said it before – every "yes" to one thing is a "no" to something else. There will <i>always</i> be things you could have done otherwise, opportunities you had to let go in taking a particular path. But every "could have" is an unknown – and would come with its own unforeseen complications. And the contents of the world’s maximum security prisons are testament that it’s not always "Better to have regretted something you did than something you didn’t do".</div>
<div>
<br />
<b>Chronic failure issues</b><br />
<br />
So here’s <a href="http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/02/02/blackboard-stands-alone-in-nyc-asking-people-their-biggest-regrets-what-they-all-had-in-common-was-heartbreaking/">this black board in New York where people are asked to write up their biggest regret.</a> And they do, and the result is rather humbling as passer-by after passer-by reveals they too have unfulfilled yearnings and missed opportunities.<br />
<br />
But Ah! say the filmmakers, ah! (it’s actually a viral marketing vid for a university, of course, not an open-ended social experiment) – "Ah! What they all have in common is their regrets are all about <i>not </i>doing something." So the take-away message is supposed to be "Every passing day is another chance to turn it all around" - or to put it another way "It’s never too late to FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS! (enroll now)".<br />
<br />
That is <i>not</i> the message I took away from this exercise, dear reader. No. What I took away was this: There is a whole generation of people out there with <i>chronic failure issues</i> because they’ve been sold the idea that life should be AMAZING all the time and everyone should be doing AMAZING things, fulfilling every ounce of potential they were ever given. If you’re not a rock star, high-powered lawyer, beach-dwelling, sky-diving scuba instructor or Steve-bloody-Jobs then, man alive, what have you been doing with your life? Haven’t you heard? YOLO, bitch! <i>YOLO!</i><br />
<br />
My God. It’s exhausting. If there is a solution to all this Sisyphean dream-chasing, it is certainly not, for my money, to <i>renew the pressure</i> and say "It’s not too late people, get back on the dream wagon!" I know people who do this, constantly raking over what could have been, what they haven’t got, what they couldn’t or didn’t do in the past and how it could have been different; and it's more misery-making than it is inspiring.<br />
<br />
<b>Stop.</b><br />
<br />
My gut response is “STOP”. Stop beating yourself up about it. Life is tough and complicated and always has been. If you didn’t pursue something in the past there is probably more than good reason, even if you don't quite recall the full details – perhaps the opportunity was an illusion and never really there; perhaps you didn’t really want to do it on balance at the time; or perhaps there was just too much else going on, as life is simply not that simple.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Stop it. Sure, if you really want to try again and can try again, then bloody well do it - but if it's too much or just not possible then shrug and go "meh", and divert your attention and energy elsewhere. There is nothing you were "supposed" to be. Instead of agonising over where you "should" be or what you "should" have, start enjoying what you <i>do</i> have; striving for what is possible and within reach <i>now</i>, not ten years in the future; making the most of where you are and the people you are with; finding ways to do what you enjoy and enjoy what you do in the life you have. Start living that life, <i>this</i> life, not the imaginary one hanging over you like an albatross. Please.<br />
<br />
If there is one "take-away message" from this video, it is that everyone has the same issues in their own way, so it’s normal and ok. Take comfort – most people also feel they missed opportunities, perhaps didn’t quite find their niche, perhaps don't have everything in their life as they'd like it, even if they seem to have it sorted to you, from the outside. Regrets are normal and fine. There is always more work to be done.<br />
<br />
Not every square peg finds a square hole, and that’s ok – life would be dull and predictable if they did, and nothing would ever change. </div>
<div>
<br />
<b>Moby Dick *spoilers*</b><br />
<br />
Of course, I would never tell anyone not to "follow their dreams" – everyone’s dreams are too personal and deep-rooted for us to really understand from the outside, and it’s not for anyone else to say what any individual should do with them. But as general life advice, "follow your dreams" is just too simple and too ill-defined for me to whole-heartedly endorse; it has to be tempered with self-awareness, worldly wisdom and strategy – especially as it can be massively destructive and dysfunctional to pursue some things beyond a certain point. After all, it basically is the plot of Moby Dick, and that didn’t end well.<br />
<br />
But while to me the urge to "follow my dreams" looks increasingly irrelevant with age, a less ambitious but related urge only seems to be increasing – the need to take time to appreciate things and recognise, seek out and do the things that give me joy, however small or seemingly trivial. Never mind high-powered ambition, it's following my passions <i>in spite</i> of the requirements of the day-to-day world that has become important to me, as a matter of maintaining robust mental heath and wellbeing - making room in my life for the continued presence of the things I enjoy and am interested in, whether it gets me anywhere in particular or not – it’s doing these things that make life better, here and now, not chasing any fantasy goal to attain somewhere in the future.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
See, told you it would get touchy-feely.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-34854836321023809712016-01-04T00:24:00.001+00:002016-01-05T01:14:40.755+00:00Three months of jazz<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So, as 2016 gets under way, 2015 will go down for me as the year when the penny finally dropped with JAZZ. “Oh great,” I can hear all my friends and acquaintances think, “that’s just what everyone wanted to happen – now he can be boring and pretentious about something else entirely.” More than one of them told me they thought I was into jazz already because I was “that type” - which I decided I would take as a compliment while knowing full well it really wasn’t. So lap it up y’all – here I go.<br />
<br />
Jazz does have a reputation, to the outsider, of being boring and difficult, of “all sounding the same” and being either pipe-and-slippers music for old men or chin-strokey hipster music for slightly younger old men. Which perhaps I am now, so perhaps it's apt. But I can put a date on my jazz Damascus moment: September 26, 2015, when on a perverse whim in a record shop (yes, I still do that) I purchased some Thelonious Monk albums in a ludicrously cheap boxed set and found on playing - almost to my surprise - <i>I think I actually really like this</i>. And I didn’t stop playing Monk (whose middle name was “Sphere”, I found out to my utter glee) for a solid month. From there Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Eric goddamn Dolphy, who for my money had to be the coolest cat alive before his teeth-grindingly avoidable death at 36 (younger than me now). <br />
<br />
<b>So What?</b><br />
<br />
Now, I do pride myself on having eclectic taste but like everyone who says “oh, I like all kinds of music” I don’t really mean it – I have my preferred comfort zone of artists and styles I return to again and again, from which I occasionally take excursions as a kind of musical tourist; and I’m clearly rooted in rock and pop, particularly of the “alternative” sort, from about 1967 to 2007, just the same as many people of my age. I’ve had a couple of token jazz records in my collection for over a decade – y’know, the usual, <i>Kind of Blue</i>, <i>Mingus Ah Um</i>, a bit of Louis Armstrong – but they make their way out for a spin maybe once a year at best, when I fancy something a bit different, never quite gripping me enough to want to delve further.<br />
<br />
"So what?" you may ask. It is not my intention to wax on about how <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvs8cjIvorE">"grrrrreat"</a> jazz is, I know it’s not for everyone – what I want to convey is the joy, revelation and even relief of discovering and entering a whole new world at the advanced age of 38 that I previously only had a very sketchy and caricatured idea of.<br />
<br />
You see Jazz is not just <i>one thing</i> as it seems from the outside, and it occurs to me that the same applies to whole areas of human endeavour that we compartmentalise as “a thing” without really knowing much in depth about the stuff that makes it up. For example, “rock music” or “modern art” or, going further, science, philosophy or – little bit of politics here, Mr Donald Trump – Islam. Again and again you hear people dismissing things under umbrella labels, having only come into contact with a couple of tiny iceberg tips of these things, assuming<i> it’s all like that</i> and they know all about it.<i> </i><br />
<br />
<b>I Didn't Know About You</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
In jazz there is a wide spectrum of different sub-cultures and schools, historical developments and traditions, worldviews and attitudes contained under its umbrella that run the glut of human temperament and experience; from low brow to high brow, joyous to melancholy, warm to scary, jump-up to soothing, basic to complex, raw to polished, crowd-pleasing to virtually unlistenable.<br />
<br />
The freaked out, hypnotic, spiritual "free" jazz Trane was doing in his final days has very little to do with 1920s swing or Dixieland, any more than industrial math-core metal has to do with Buddy Holly, though in both cases there is clearly a shared DNA. On the other hand much of the more challenging arty jazz of 1960s clearly shares a spirit with searching, experimental, iconoclastic music everywhere, from Stockhausen to Aphex Twin to Captain Beefheart - which is a spirit most big band swing, which is essentially popular dance music, is completely devoid of. My point is that within the box of “jazz” some trends are utterly in opposition to each other and some very little to do with each other - and the same can be said of rock music, philosophy and, Mr Donald Trump, Islam. <br />
<br />
<b>My Favourite Things</b><br />
<br />
What is interesting about exploring a new (to me) world like this is it puts your tastes in a new light – I haven't just abandoned my previous taste in music and got a new one; rather, without even consciously intending to, I find myself looking for the same kinds of things I value in rock music.<br />
<br />
It’s no mistake it was Monk that finally held my attention. A lot of the beginner’s recommendations (I'm ashamed to say even <i>Kind of Blue</i>) sounded a little too much like what I expected to hear, perhaps, so didn't capture my imagination. But I’ve always liked music that’s a little offbeat, surprises me and has a sense of humour - and Monk has that in spades.<br />
<br />
I found myself astonished at his piano style, which seems to have come from outer space, as if his weird runs and chords are raising their eyebrows at the rest of the quartet - why did he play like that? How? He was a consummate eccentric and original, seeming to delight in the surprising note or strange clonk at the odd time, while remaining swinging, fun and accessible - perfect.<br />
<br />
<b>Goodbye Pork Pie Hat</b><br />
<br />
On the other hand some things just don't survive the translation from rock to jazz or back again – in rock and pop there’s always been the whole simplicity and rawness thing as a mark of vitality and authenticity – virtuosity in rock happens, but has never been cool, really, whereas in jazz it’s practically essential. Meanwhile, while jazz clearly has its own silly fashions and image trappings - I was astonished to see the camera pan onto the audience at a Mingus concert in 1964 to reveal six or seven young men dotted about <i>wearing "tea" shades</i> indoors, at night - but even so, jazz has simply nowhere near the all-too-often style-is-as-important-as-substance nature of rock and pop. But that’s refreshing, as you find yourself able to jettison so much of the cultural baggage in the migration - there is a real freedom to entering such a new world as an outsider: You can shrug off the tired old conventions you are used to, but don't have to take on the native snobberies and etiquette of the new world if you don't want to.<br />
<br />
To go broader on that point, delving into jazz that was largely being made in the 50s and 60s offers just a tiny bit of mental relief from the zeitgeist of millennial Britain (which much as I appreciate, can get maddeningly samey and stifling on occasion, it's got to be said) – the decades-old transatlantic jazz world is a recognisable one, but there is still a difference in how things are valued and interpreted, the importance not quite placed on the same things in the same way. It puts your own time and culture, and its ephemeral nature, in perspective - as any sustained brush with history does, of course.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div>
<b>A Love Supreme</b><br />
<br />
Finally, I’ve found the mother of new, rich seams in my ongoing mining of all things music. When I discover a new old band or artist I tend to hoover up their back catalogue in a matter of months before I get restless and go looking for something new. This will keep me going for years. It's not just the music, it's everything that surrounds it - there are whole new terms providing me with endless amusement (“Third Stream”, ffs; “New Thing”, ffs). I've even found myself getting interested in the instruments in a way I haven't before - the family of the saxophone and how each member works; the existence of pocket trumpets and bass clarinets which, while not a shock, have simply never been on my radar before...<br />
<br />
You think you know the world - but when you delve into that labelled box you thought you had pegged, with no need to know any more about, it's contents prove so rich and diverse you find yourself overwhelmed – and realise just how little you know and how limited your worldview is. Neither box nor world will ever look the same again, and that's a pleasant surprise and an optimism-fuelling lesson.<br />
<br />
What if everything is like that? I'm pretty sure everything is like that.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-86113381132172638432015-07-15T22:26:00.001+01:002015-07-16T20:06:27.557+01:0030 things I’d be happy to live without if my experience of them never occurred again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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While one hates to be prejudiced, one can tell an awful lot about someone from the things they <i>buy into</i> – what they value or don’t value, what causes and practices they feel are important or not important.<br />
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Because it’s strange and surprisingly varied the things people care about, or more to the point <i>how much</i> they care about them. You think you know someone and then one day,<i> blam!</i> They tell you they see Jeremy Kyle as a moral compass, or never really liked the Indiana Jones films. The more people you meet the more you realise everyone’s barometer of what’s normal and what matters is different, and completely relative to the circles they are moving in.<br />
<br />
Over the years the opinions and habits of your close family and friends get drilled into you and set a benchmark; it can be bewildering and disturbing when one day you find yourself moving in slightly different circles and find people <i>noticing</i> an unthinking practice, interest or attitude of yours - that has never been called into question before – and flagging it up as unwise, unattractive, bizarre or in some way tut-worthy. It’s tempting to think <i>“OMG, I </i>am<i> actually a freak after all and I just never realised it all these years”</i> – but then you get to know yet another set of people and find they have yet another perspective; and you realise perhaps you should have explained to the first lot that <i>their</i> ideas of what is acceptable and standard perhaps really wasn’t so f***ing universal, as they thought. The weirdos.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, something you have been ribbed for for years by your home crowd can be immediately accepted by outsiders and that is nice, isn’t it, now.<br />
<br />
Basically everyone thinks <i>their shit</i> is the norm, or what should be the norm – but my gosh, we are so tied to the culture, conditions, place and time we were formed in, even if we rebel against it. As a townie, I recall just how utterly alien it was to visit my first country show, for example, as it slowly dawned on me that much of the stuff that filled the lives of these people were things I had thus far happily lived without even being aware of, let alone caring about. And exactly the same could be said of the first time I visited, say, London, with them and their “ways”.<br />
<br />
The following is not simply a list of things I’m not interested in. There are plenty of "life encounters" I don’t hanker urgently to experience, but I understand that one day, in a different time and place, perhaps I might. <br />
<br />
Neither is this a list of things I hate, necessarily, and neither is it exhaustive. I don’t, for example, say I could live without <i>racism</i> on this list, but please don’t take that to mean I love a bit of racism or, indeed, find it moreish.<br />
<br />
These examples are not things I wish <i>didn’t exist </i>– I may even feel enriched for having dealt with them in the past – they are simply things I wouldn’t miss if I didn’t stumble upon them again - a mix of either that which elicits naught but the blank face and that which elicits the weary sigh. Yes, some of this may be a mark of age.<br />
<br />
We get so involved with our little worlds, our specific set of circs, that sometimes we forget it <i>is</i> possible to live a perfectly happy and fulfilled life without so many of the obsessions and so much of the baggage we insist on clinging on to as supposedly so important and essential - both physically, but more importantly, mentally. The human race is nothing if not adaptable, and one man’s gold dust is another man’s sand. It may seem sad or scandalous to you, dear reader, but seriously, I’m done with this stuff. Go on, think about it – what 30 things could you choose?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
~------~</div>
<br />
1) TV soaps<br />
<br />
2) Synthetic handclaps used as a snare drum in modern RnB songs<br />
<br />
3) Flag-waving patriotism<br />
<br />
4) Inspirational quotes from Marilyn Monroe<br />
<br />
5) Unsolicited offers to tell me “what I need to do” to sort my life out<br />
<br />
6) Queuing to get into nightclubs<br />
<br />
7) Going into nightclubs<br />
<br />
8) Horseradish<br />
<br />
9) Knowledge of flower arranging<br />
<br />
10) De-icing my car<br />
<br />
11) Being cold in general (that’s a bold one, but I’ve thought about it some and I stand by it)<br />
<br />
12) Street dance<br />
<br />
13) The royal family (that’s a bold one, but I’ve thought about it some and I stand by it)<br />
<br />
14) Autotune used for the vocal melody in modern RnB songs<br />
<br />
15) People telling me "everything happens for a reason" (see 4)<br />
<br />
16) "This one weird tip to getting ripped"<br />
<br />
17) Jeremy Kyle<br />
<br />
18) Knowledge of bread baking<br />
<br />
19) Details of the personal life of Lauren Goodger<br />
<br />
20) People thinking it’s a great and admirable thing to be running around trying to impress people like Alan Sugar while being generally vile, shallow, mercenary and critically lacking in self awareness<br />
<br />
21) The phenomenon of "beard flowers"<br />
<br />
22) The songs of the war years<br />
<br />
23) Motivational speaking<br />
<br />
24) Torture scenes in films (enough, already, *yawn*)<br />
<br />
25) Films about vampires<br />
<br />
26) Films about men who are the best at fighting and stuff<br />
<br />
27) Austerity measures<br />
<br />
28) Modern RnB songs<br />
<br />
29) Football (now that’s a f***ing bold one)<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
30) Your shit.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-76545327923715317672015-07-05T23:43:00.002+01:002016-04-06T00:35:15.248+01:00The strange case of Kanye West<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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He took one of the biggest entourages the festival has ever seen with him to Glastonbury – and then performed virtually alone for almost two hours.<br />
<br />
Apart from the sheer irony of that fact, Mr West’s Glastonbury performance was the man’s whole thing right there in microcosm – the sheer ego of insisting on holding a headlining slot at one of the world’s most high profile festivals <i>on his own on an empty stage;</i> the grand statement in artistic minimalism that only partially worked; the disjointed flow of someone insisting on doing their own thing without any concessions to the audience; the fact that he looked rather lonely and painfully like he was trying to prove something amid the grand scale of the set up... and yet - whether wholly successful or not, he undoubtedly <i>did</i> end up having done something really quite unique and distinctive in the history of Pyramid Stage bill-toppers.<br />
<br />
<b>Not Fiddy Pence</b><br />
<br />
I admit that I am utterly fascinated with Kanye – equal parts appalled at the oh-so-LA materialism, arrogance and excess, amused by his repeated foot-in-mouth buffoonery and absurd pomposity but, in spite of all that, still grudgingly impressed and intrigued with his originality, balls and, let's face it, strangeness. Whilst his mass populist appeal may belie the fact, it's pretty clear by now that the guy is pretty <i>weird.</i><br />
<br />
Say what you will about Kanye, he <i>does</i> have an artistic vision – I suspect a lot of those who signed the 100,000-odd petition against him headlining Glasto saw him as no more than an arrogant rapper – you know, one of those hiphop types who steal other people’s records and talk over the top about cars and shooting people, whilst being frightfully disrespectful about women and overly impressed with flashy jewellery. Not like a nice "real" band who diligently learnt to play instruments quite well n that.<br />
<br />
But oh, though. While there is plenty of hiphop trope-ery in his music (The late Lou Reed was spot on describing some of the more offensive lyrics on his Yeesus album as <i>“it might be (funny) to a 14-year-old — but it has nothing to do with me”</i>) Kanye is so <i>not</i> your typical “Fiddy Pence” hiphop cliché. The man reads up on minimalist architecture and wants to design high fashion in Paris for crying out loud. Pretty much right from the outset he distinguished himself as a bit odd and high-minded in hiphop circles, to the extent his middle-class producer ass really wasn’t taken that seriously as a rapper at first – nowhere near “street” or gansta enough. Until he started selling records. And yes, the Glastonbury debacle, whatever you made of it, pretty much showed that – whether you rated it or not, he’s going off somewhere on his own these days.<br />
<br />
<b>Imma mention "Imma let you finish"</b><br />
<br />
I suppose one of the things that keeps me interested in Kanye, despite having written him off as “just a knob” countless times, is the tantalizing explanation for how a man can be so utterly, complacently, self-deludedly certain of his own unique greatness, way beyond even the massive egos of his contemporaries – and the answer is of course, that<i> he clearly isn’t</i>. I have never known anyone so desperate for the affirmation and approval of others, an unquenchable hunger that speaks of a deep, deep insecurity – that if the arbiters of art aren’t saying he’s THE BEST, it can never be true. Other artists rise above, and pooh-pooh the validity of, mere popularity, titles and awards - but it really, urgently matters to Kanye.<br />
<br />
The key to understanding his attitude goes way back. He mentions in interviews his eighth grade basketball coach who, without explanation, didn’t put him on the team, making him realize if he doesn’t fight for recognition himself, he will not get it. And no matter how successful he is that seems to remain. Today this extends those he sees as "his people" as well – he has apparently offered to stage “Imma let you finish”-style protests on behalf of others aside from Beyonce (his mentor Jay-Z’s wife) whom he keeps white-knighting for at awards ceremonies.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He also keeps claiming those who don’t immediately bow down to his greatness and let him do whatever he wants must be prejudiced against him. While I’m sure he has a point that there are still race issues in the upper echelons of showbiz, and there is a sneeriness at a rock star trying to do fashion and so on, there is something <i>a bit rich</i> about one of the most rewarded and privileged men in music claiming he’s hard done by – when his success has opened up so many more opportunities than the vast majority of <i>anyone</i> could ever dream of - and to add to that, he happily tramples over and dismisses the efforts of others (Ms Swift, Beck?). He has a persecution complex on a par with a UKIP MP, which he doesn’t seem to realize is only made worse, not better, by his constant fronting.<br />
<br />
Whatever, Kanye is an angry, troubled man, and it’s right there in the music. His confidence is hollow and vulnerable, which is never clearer than, say, in the contrast of the messiah-complex lyrics to “I am a God” with the panic-attack screaming and panting that inexplicably accompanies it. Again, in the words of Lou – who, by the way, was actually a fan – Kanye’s last album was full of “I’m great, I’m terrible, I’m great, I’m terrible - that’s all over this record”. <br />
<br />
<b>Neither Finn nor Freddie</b><br />
<br />
And it was right there in the Glastonbury set too. The first and last parts were a greatest hits package that at least proved that Kanye is a bit like Crowded House (probably the first and last time he will be compared to the lovely, low-key, down-to-earth Finn brothers) – you know more than you think. There is quite a variety of sound and style there for those who will listen - but overall it was a glimpse into quite a cold, steely, serious world of one man’s angry head-space. <br />
<br />
When I tuned into Glasto on the dear old BBC my initial reaction was “OMG, this is a bit of a mess”. Never mind Lee Nelson’s stage invasion (Jarvis Cocker would be proud), there were bits where the momentum just completely dropped: Partly as he insisted on an extended auto-tune ballad section in the middle that just made it plain he couldn’t sing; partly as there were drops and disjoins as it seemed he'd only decided on the set list in the dressing room 10 minutes before going on; and partly due to technical errors (he abandoned "I Can’t Hold My Liquor" after barking out a couple of lines and letting the guitar bit run). It simply wasn’t as slick as you might have expected, given that <i>f***ing entourage.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i>And, as social media lampooned, it really didn't demonstrate that he was “the greatest living rock star on the planet” as he claimed – he just doesn't quite have the effortless showmanship of say, a Mick Jagger or James Brown or – yes – Freddie Mercury. In fairness, I don’t really think his intention was to sing a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody at all, he was just joining in karaoke-style as he span a bit of the record in the middle of his gig - ‘cos, why the hell not. But never mind his singing, his stage presence wasn't quite Freddie either, though there was something hypnotic about seeing what he would do next - earlier he had abruptly left the audience hanging, stage in darkness, for minutes before reappearing on top of a <i>f***ing cherry picker.</i> This was not Kiss – no pyrotechnics, no costume change, no zip wire. Just Kanye up a crane. But it was when I noticed he had left the stage <i>lit but completely empty </i>during this for two or three songs, that the contrary pervert in me giggled with glee at the audacity – while it might not have been “history in the making” as he meant it, I think he may have been right, in a way - that had probably (certainly) never happened before in a headlining Glastonbury slot.<br />
<br />
<b>Where was "Mike"?</b><br />
<br />
More than a week on and the more I think about it, the more I think the whole thing might have been brilliant. People are <i>still</i> talking about it. The image of him in his bleached double-denim under those ludicrous banks of lights is burned on all our mental retinas. It was utterly simple, yet utterly unique. When Jay Z did Glasto, he turned up with a full band, turned on the charm and opened with a deliberately shambolic few verses of Wonderwall in a cheeky nod to his critics which won everyone round. Not Kanye. No, the massive ego took to the stage, barely acknowledging the audience, with only those huge f***-off whirring modern-art-installation lights, an Akai MPC sampler which he used for about three seconds, a fleeting side-stage visit from a man from Bon Iver, and the shady, hidden-away (imaginary?) “Mike” for company. It was bonkers, really, and it split Twitter in two like samurai sword.<br />
<br />
He will never endear himself to people who like their rock stars nice and pleasant and down to earth, and I am sure he is quite a horrible human being to do any kind of business with. No, he can’t really sing, he can’t really play and he can’t really dance. He is a deluded cock.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But there<i> is</i> something of the classic, larger-than-life, maverick rock oddball about him - the combination of ego and art, the clash of the crass and the highbrow, striving to reach beyond the confines of his genre with one foot (or two) planted in a fantasy world of his own making, in the vein of a Prince, Bowie, Gaga, Bush or, um, Trent D'Arby. And while the music might not be to everyone’s tastes, I’d go as far as to say I think he is the real deal as an artist – he is genuinely a bit strange, driven to change, full of fire and a-buzz with unusual ideas and creativity - and he has the balls and passion to do his thing, whatever anyone else thinks.<br />
<br />
I’m never sure if I’m laughing with him or at him, but I’m quite glad he exists – in world of increasingly styled, tried-and-tested, as-expected, by-the-numbers acts, he’s at least reliably different and interesting. All day, n****.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-33444598510153403112015-06-07T01:52:00.001+01:002015-07-05T23:20:25.762+01:00Rock is the new jazz ~or~ on the now-perceptible retreat and fossilisation of guitar music<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Given its status nowadays as a decidedly niche musical preference (albeit with a large, passionate and dedicated following), it’s worth remembering that for decades it was the unrivalled popular music of choice. At the heart of western culture, it was the soundtrack to everything from dance floors to household chores, Sunday drives to happening dives, concert hall gigs to student digs, newsreel footage to dinner parties. No, that last one didn’t rhyme.<br /><br />But as the century wore on, previously fringe and underground musical styles began to change and coalesce into something new, something burgeoning and breaking through, that all the kids were listening to... and one day it was just obvious: The tried and tested old stuff just wasn't the mainstream any more.</i><br />
<br />
But enough about the decline of rock music.<br />
<br />
Ha, ha, ha! Yes reader, and ha. You can see what I’ve done there, I’ve pretended I might be talking about jazz, but actually – imagine this! – I was talking about guitar rock! See?<br />
<br />
Ok, everyone saw that coming (or were probably just confused) but my point stands – I actually, genuinely, think guitar rock is finally over as THE mainstream form of popular music. What slowly happened to jazz when rock came along - well, now it’s happening to rock.<br />
<br />
<b>That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore</b><br />
<br />
I’m aware it’s an old eye-roller of a joke – people have been saying this kind of thing ever since that bloke from Decca Records didn’t sign the Beatles because “guitar groups are on the way out”. The <i>end-is-nigh</i> for guitar music has been announced fairly regularly throughout my entire life – notably with the breakthrough of synth-heavy music in the early 80s, and then Acid House in the early 90s. But in the past couple of years, the “death of guitars” call is less the combative, iconoclastic battle cry of those who want to wash away the old, and more the sad, keening air of those who have begun to notice the lack of it and miss it. Which I think means it might actually be happening.<br />
<br />
I stopped having my finger on the pulse somewhere around the early 2000s when the height of exclusive hip-dom was still the glitchy IDM (intelligent dance music) of WARP records, and whatever the hell Radiohead were doing post-Ok Computer. But though my interest in modern guitar bands may have waned, I was dimly aware there were various children ten years younger than myself with wild hair, yelping into microphones, banging on drums and – yes – hammering the guitar strings. Good for them, the wanky little urchins, I’d think.<br />
<br />
Their disappearance has been so slow it has been almost imperceptible. I assumed the reason I nowadays only ever heard Cowell-or-Brit-stage-school-style pop produce, or banging beats, or in-tha-club hip hop, or electro r'n'b, or twee hipster folk, or faux-50s dinner-party crooning, was that I simply don’t look around any more; so of course I only ever come into contact with the most mainstream of mainstream. Which is almost certainly true – but, importantly, guitar rock used to be part of that. Now I’m not sure it is - unless it's 40 years old, in which case it's ever more everywhere, as Black Sabbath plays in your local tea room and The Sex Pistols in your supermarket.<br />
<br />
<b>Teenage Kicks</b><br />
<br />
I recently happened to take a look at the schedules of a popular generic young persons’ radio station and it was a bit like taking the car in for a service assuming nothing much was up - and finding all kinds of shocking developments under the bonnet. The range of music played was as expected, but the focus wildly changed. All the little genre-specific dance, hip hop and urban shows, those wannabe-cool nods to credibility these stations like to throw in - once lodged in late night slots on a Thursday or summat – they now make up the <i>bulk of the schedule</i>. Meanwhile general guitar-based pop and rock music (and not just the niche stuff) – well that’s now lodged in late night slots on a Thursday or summat.<br />
<br />
Mentioning this to a teacher friend of mine, he confirmed that <i>da teenage kidz</i> he teaches have slowly stopped dreaming of buying guitars and forming bands as the years have gone by. In his current year only one child does this, but rather than being seen as a too-cool-for-school rebel, he is seen as a bit odd and geeky for it. The rest, if musically inclined, would much rather get mixing software for their tablets or a synth plug-in that can make those sick WOB-WOB-WOB sounds.<br />
<br />
This is really what clinched it in my head. I remember being that age, when there were various options for what genres of music to get into to assert your individuality – and then there would be that kid who was into jazz. Now, jazz would be so far off the teenage cool map that it didn’t even register. It wasn’t even something your classmates would have much of an opinion on – it wasn’t trendy, counter-trendy, hip or sad; it was just odd and unknown. Jazz was the kind of thing your mate’s more cultured dad, with his expensive hi-fi system and massive record collection, would sit with a glass of port and listen to. You knew it was once hellish cool, but a world away from the current teenage experience, in another time and place. Ok, so maybe we’re not there yet, but give it 20 years, maybe 25 – and that’s <i>exactly</i> what guitar rock will be.<br />
<br />
<b>It’s All Over Now</b><br />
<br />
I'm NOT saying there won't always be people making guitar music and a wide audience for it - after all jazz is still alive and well - just that it is steadily losing its undisputed place at the centre of pop culture in more sustained way than we have previously seen.<br />
<br />
No, guitar music is clearly not dead, not by a long shot – but what is happening is it is becoming ever more niche, and ever more like museum-piece music. It is fossilising. As with jazz, which underwent massive changes from the traditional swing of the inter-war years through hard-edged bebop and high-art free jazz to the funky Latin and fusion stuff of the 1970s, at some point hence the whole scene has just begun to shrink and retreat from the public imagination – and in the process has crystalised into primarily <i>historical</i> music.<br />
<br />
As with jazz, rock no longer sounds NOW. It is past-times music, to be emulated as best as possible, y'know, like back in the days of the greats<i> whose like we will never see again</i>. Today it virtually always sounds like it’s heavily referencing something from at least 25 years ago – which means its glory days have very clearly long gone.<br />
<br />
<b>It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue</b><br />
<br />
This backwards referencing has been gaining ground for some time. Sure, every generation has its novelty throwbacks, but beyond that the rock music journalist’s default for cool has been stuck on post-punk English mod and/or New York rocker style since about 1979. Oh how they adored it when Blur started wearing tufty haircuts and parkas like they might be from Quadraphenia or summat. And oh, how they jazzed their pants over the "subway tan" of NY punk revivalists The Strokes. In the UK, Britpop was a new high for nostalgia in rock music – everyone at that time was constantly banging on about The Faces, The Kinks, The Who, and... um... Paul Weller (including Paul Weller), while others were posturing around in glittery brown and orange 70s attire and yelping like glam-period Bowie.<br />
<br />
Ever since such retro-fetishism has become the norm, but it wasn't always thus - directly before that was the massive break-through in alternative rock music where all manner of previously undergrounds forms – thick sludgy grunge, psychedelic noise rock, wistful indie jangle, industrial synth goth, livid rap-metal hybridisation, strum and bass et al – began to get serious air play, and suddenly anything seemed possible and acceptable. Of course I’m biased because this happened to coincide with my teenage years, but that now seems like the last golden age of guitar rock. Genres still seemed to be rapidly developing, with fresh ideas, on a mass scale; as opposed nowadays, where you seem to get to the odd isolated individual experimenter beavering away somewhere while everyone else does genre-precise recreations or light-entertainment-showbiz takes on classic rock.<br />
<br />
<b>Ashes To Ashes</b><br />
<br />
Why guitar rock appears to have finally fossilised is not just about age, but also about technology. One element is how cheaply, easily and authentically one can emulate the sounds of the past now – as digital modelling technology has made this accessible to all, so all have made retro-sounding records. Also, with <i>all music,</i> from the dawn of recording onwards, streamable and downloadable along with everything ever written about every artist, the whole history of guitar rock is now at everyone’s fingertips – and a crushing, paralysing history it is for anyone with pretensions of doing anything remotely original in the field, or trying <i>not</i> to be too influenced by the sheer weight of it.<br />
<br />
Rock has gone through repeated phases of establishing a tradition, then modernising and breaking away from that, only to return later in a post-modern fashion. In fact the whole of the 2000s was pretty much one long post-modern period for guitar music as it regurgitated its own history in multifarious forms. But, as with all post-modernism, where do you go from there?<br />
<br />
Thanks to communications today, everything is at once so interlinked that it threatens to become homogenous and so fragmented that it threatens to become too dispersed (which sounds like a contradiction, but really isn’t) and music is no different – I suspect the days are simply gone when unique, self-contained “scenes” could spring up in a city in isolation before breaking through into the wider world 18 months later. A muso kid in Seattle is as likely to be trading beats with someone in Paris as hanging out down their local live music bar.<br />
<br />
But all the same, as a music fan and consumer it’s a massively exciting time to be alive – because you can get your hands on an artist’s entire career output in one swoop, and delve into any strand of musical history you like. It’s immersive. Which ironically explains why I’m not that bothered there’s not much in the way of new, vibrant, interesting guitar music coming through – as there is still plenty of old golden age stuff to discover which is still new to me - but then I’ll soon be of the expensive-hi-fi-massive-record-collection-and-glass-of-port-dad age, so I suppose that’s only right.Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-56481204966633945202015-02-15T13:18:00.001+00:002016-06-12T13:27:15.593+01:00My Valentine's Day Massacre ~or~ romantic notions I just don't find romantic (sorry)<br />
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<i>So here are a few words on romantic BS for Valentine’s Day. Well ok, a day after Valetine’s Day, because yesterday I decided I’d rather <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/what-happens-when-one-of-most.html">write about Heidegger instead.</a></i><br />
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<b>The One #1</b><br />
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First of all I’m not even going to give the idea that there is <i>only one destined soulmate in the entirety of existence</i> – who, of course, just happened to live in the same town and go the same gym as you – the time of fucking day. That’s clearly moronic. So let’s move on swiftly...<br />
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But – there is a less extreme version of “The One” theory which is much more common to find in otherwise perfectly sensible and intelligent people: The idea that in order for you to be really happy in a relationship you must find someone who is a <i>perfect fit.</i> <br />
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<b>The One #2</b><br />
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A lady friend once asked me: <i>“Don’t you think that’s a beautiful idea?”</i><br />
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And I said: <i>“No. No I don’t. I think it’s one of the most destructive ideas in the sphere of relationships.”</i><br />
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Which may not have earned me any romantic brownie points but, y’know, it was honest. Which is what the ladies love. Um.<br />
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Anyway, I meant it – if you insist on a perfect fit you will never find it. You are dooming yourself to always find fault with whomever you are with, to be constantly convinced there’s someone better, more fitting, <i>with greener grass,</i> somewhere out there.<br />
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It’s akin (and closely related) to the insanity of a bride who insists <i>every tiny detail </i>MUST BE PERFECT on their wedding day – in which case, ironically, the thing that is most in danger of ruining their day is their own hyper-sensitive stress-out over the fact that<i> every tiny detail </i>MUST BE PERFECT. I’m sure – in fact <i>I know</i> – that many a promising relationship has been scuppered by the obsessive-compulsive questioning "<i>OMG but are they The One?!"</i> In fact, in truth, when I hear a potential partner say they believe in “The One”, in my head I substitute it with <i>“An ideal to which I will never live up and to which I will be constantly reminded of how I fall short.” </i>It saves any misunderstanding in the long run. <br />
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There is simply no way – <i>no way at all</i> – that you can spend an intensive amount of time every single day with anyone, even a “soulmate”, and not occasionally – or even often – get bored of each other, annoyed with each other, rub each other up the wrong way and need some time out from each other... in other words, <i>notice the fractures and dis-joins between you.</i> Relationships are never “perfect fit”, no matter how similar or compatible you are. The strongest and happiest couples I know have had to work at it, find a balance, compromise and adjust to each other, at least a little bit – the difference is, is that when you love each other, you <i>want</i> to do that. To some extent you make someone “The One” by your commitment to each other and your ongoing shared history.<br />
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<b>The One #3</b><br />
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Which is not to deny that some people are more natural, suitable and compatible with each other. Absolutely there are couples who work and couples who just don’t, people who are automatically good together and people who just aren’t. But this is like friends – I have lots of close friends whom I would say are soulmates in one way or another, in that there is something in both of us that <i>just clicks</i>. But, interestingly, it tends to be a different part of my personality that each brings out – all are equally “soulmates” but all are different. It’d be a nonsense to imagine there could be a “perfect friend” that would cover all bases.<br />
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In the same way each relationship you have is different, because by the mingling of your personalities you create something unique, and that’s the joy of it. I’m afraid, when it comes to soulmates, I am very much a <i>pluralist</i> – I believe there are lots of people out there you <i>could</i> be compatible with, who have the potential to be your, ahem, “One”, and each would give rise to a <i>different flavour of relationship.</i> It is part of life’s rich tapestry, variety, diversity. To imagine there could be only one “right” person who fulfils <i>every possible desire you could possibly have,</i> seems to me just... pathological.</div>
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<b>The One #4</b><br />
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Finally, to sound horribly un-romantic and pragmatic for a moment, the reasons people couple up and stay coupled up are really not just all about eternal rom-com-style perma-bliss, emotional fireworks and silly adolescent ideals – love is also about simple snug contentment, comfort and support. Being on your own is both emotionally and practically tough at times – not just lonesome, but logistically challenging when you have no one to share your burdens with, whether financial demands, personal problems or just house-hold chores. If you find someone whom, after years of living together, you still find reasonably cute, sexy, cool and interesting, whom you feel safe and comfortable with, who still makes you laugh and doesn’t do your head in (much) – well, then you have done pretty darn well.</div>
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<b>*****</b><br />
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<i>Enough about "The One". Here are some other bullshit romantic notions:</i><br />
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<b>Rules of relationships</b><br />
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The women’s magazine and self-help-book-style <i>“a man should act like this and a woman should act like this otherwise your relationship is doomed” </i>lists of rules that some over-analytical type has come up with, having read about one or two flawed psychology studies and talked about it with their awful friends.<br />
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No. Just no. Unless it’s based on<i> thorough and extensively replicated science across cultures and generations</i>, no. There is not any one-size-fits-all way a relationship must be. People can be very different with very different temperaments and needs, and relate to each other... differently. You must be tolerant, you must allow for this, it's the 1990s for Chrissakes. Relationships are alchemical and irrational, and you can’t force them into a single, predictable mold, no matter how much you want to nail them down and control them.<br />
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Also, call me strange, but I actually find it deeply unromantic and actually kinda disrespectful for someone to be <i>only in love with their partner inasmuch as they can jump through a set of hoops and fit a pre-conceived template</i>. And, as above, endlessly stressing over whether these rules are being adhered to will <i>create</i> problems where there were none. Cut loose. <br />
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<b>It was/wasn’t meant to be</b><br />
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This makes my blood boil, probably because I’ve been told more than once by a girl that we <i>“</i>weren’t meant to be” or that it was “fate” or “destiny” that she <i>be with someone else.</i><br />
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Oh, great. That makes me feel a whole lot better, I’d think. So let me understand this right: It’s not just that you have decided you don’t want to be with me any more... no, <i>THE FUCKING STARS HAVE ALIGNED</i> to make sure I get dumped. Destiny has decreed that we must not be together. God Himself has cupped his hand and whispered in your ear <i>“Yeah, bin out that loser, go off with that other guy, he’s much more dishy.”</i></div>
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I mean to say. Fucking rich, what? <br />
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Banging on about stuff being fated, destined, or happening “for the best” or “for a reason” is just kind of an insult to all the countless people who are shitted on, fucked over or ignored when they really didn’t deserve to be, I always think. If everything happens for a reason and everyone has a destiny, <i>why the hell doesn’t everyone die happy and fulfilled?</i> If life is indeed all pre-determined then, given all the pain and suffering and injustice in the world – that regularly goes un-rectified – then that’s just <i>awful.</i> The Greeks understood fate properly – if there is such a thing, it is not fluffy and nice, and it is not your friend – it is a terrible, terrifying thing, and responsible for endless tragedy.<br />
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<b>Grand gestures</b><br />
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Finally the rom-com staple. Of course, it’s delightful when your significant other goes out of their way to do something wonderful and thoughtful and amazing for you. Of course it is.<br />
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But grand gestures are the cherry on the cake, not the be-all-and-end-all of romance. 100 slick grand gestures don’t mean someone is your soulmate, it just means they are slick and practised at this grand gestures crap, which can just as easily be hollow and manipulative as genuine and loving. <br />
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Again, call me crazy if you will, but I’m convinced real romance is not really about flashy fantasy shit like that. It’s not in the forced, showy, hoop-jumping gestures on Valentine’s Day – it is in the little, spontaneous, everyday things:<br />
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<i>The warmth of each other’s embrace at the end of a long, tough day; the sense of fun and adventure you still get together on a night-time walk home through the park; the knowledge that even when you’re miles away, you’re still both there for each other, no matter what; the knowing looks thrown back and forth at a social gathering, when you both know what each other is thinking but don’t have to say it; all the little things you do thinking of each other, almost without thinking... </i>You know what, screw grand gestures. True romance is not demanding or aspirational, it’s warm, open, honest, nurturing and supportive, it’s happiness and it's home. It’s your favourite old T-shirt, not your best suit.<br />
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Love is something that sparks between two flawed beings, who for some reason or another are drawn to, and chime with, each other, whether for a while or for the long term. It’s the feeling of belonging together, the sense that the other person may be a fuck up, but they’re <i>your </i>fuck up – that you value each other and what you’ve developed together, enough to not want to lose it or mess it up; it's the feeling that you want to face the world standing shoulder to shoulder, respecting each other as equal partners in crime, both as individuals and as an item... that’s what real love and romance mean to me.</div>
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The rest is all bullshit.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-48046442392033928932015-02-14T19:18:00.001+00:002015-02-15T23:28:40.855+00:00The Heidegger question ~or~ what happens when an academic icon turns out to be a Nazi nut?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What happens when one of the most interesting and original thinkers of the 20th century turns out to have been a full blown Nazi?<br />
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A scandal and crisis is currently running rampant trough German philosophy departments, and to some extent the wider philosophical world, as the publication of Martin Heidegger’s notebooks from 1931 to 1948 has revealed him to be significantly more on board with the Fuhrer’s kinda thang than anyone previously realized.<br />
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<b>The Velvet Underground of continental philosophy</b><br />
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Who is this Heidegger and why does it matter, you may ask – well, while he may not be a household name, his position in 20th century philosophy is unassailable. His influence on French and German thought in particular is HUGE. Well known, but never quite getting mainstream popularity, he is the Velvet Underground of continental philosophy: His legacy is in the mark he made on the big names that followed him – from Jean-Paul Sarte and his existentialism (a running philosophy joke is that Sartre’s whole career is based on a chapter of Heidegger's <i>Being and Time</i>) to Jacques Derrida and his deconstruction (good band name).<br />
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He was one the leading lights of the phenomenology movement, which may sound like gibberish to you, but I can assure you his ideas are still having an impact today, perhaps behind the scenes of modern life in academia, but still there none-the-less.<br />
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And besides, his philosophy is just so damn intriguing, packed with original, surprising and profound insights. He said western philosophy since the Greeks had been so concerned with knowledge and ethics and so on, it had ignored the question of <i>being</i> – <i>what IS being, what is it to BE? </i>He wanted nothing less than a <i>complete overhaul of philosophical thinking</i> – to destroy traditional metaphysics and build up a new account of existence by going back to <i>raw experience itself</i>. And, if you can get past his awful, over-complicated, jargon-heavy writing style, it’s far-out, revelatory stuff, with surprising parallels to eastern philosophy such as Zen Buddhism and Chinese Toaism (<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/noiseTM/an-introduction-to-zen-buddhism-and-heidegger">see here</a>) and all that good stuff.<br />
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So, it’s doubly upsetting for me, someone who studied him intensively for over a year and found wisdom and solace in his musings, to learn that his appropriately named “black notebooks” are full of frankly nutty endorsements of the work of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.<br />
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<b>Didn't we already know he was a Nazi?</b><br />
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In fairness, it should be said that none of this is out of the blue – it was known that Heidegger was a paid-up supporter of the Nazi Party from 1933 until the end of the war, and vocally endorsed Hitler and his cronies. But you kind of hoped his prolonged flirtation with fascism was kind of an embarrassing mistake, that he was caught up in the zeitgeist and swept along with the propaganda.<br />
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He was, after all, an iconoclast, wanting to sweep away the tired old order and start with a clean slate – so it’s easy to see how leaders promising the same in politics and society might have chimed with him. He is also very critical modernism in his work - modern life, modern ideas, particularly technology - and has a romantic notion of a more authentic, primordial, simpler way of being in the past. He very much sees the individual in modern society as having <i>“fallen” from authentic being</i> in some way, having become lost and <i>dehumanised</i> – so it is possible to understand why Hitler’s back-to-the-land, harking-back-to-a-forgotten-golden-age rhetoric might have appealed to the idealistic academic.<br />
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On the plus side it is known Heidegger prevented students from holding a book burning, and from displaying anti-Semitic posters, at the entrance to the University of Freiburg while he was rector, despite his ongoing support for the Nazis at the time. You hoped his silence on the matter after the war was because he was just too proud and ashamed to talk about his stupidity in backing the Third Reich. You hoped he felt a crushing sense of betrayal when it became clear the politicians he naively trumpeted turned out to be more monstrous than even their enemies imagined with the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.<br />
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You also hoped whatever Heidegger’s personal politics, they did not impact on his work – his philosophy is not overtly political, it is about <i>being in general </i>– asking what it is for a self-aware consciousness to exist in the world, what it is to be <i>“a being for whom its own being is an issue”</i> – fundamentally, <i>what are we and what is the world? </i><br />
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But no.<br />
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<b>Oh dear</b><br />
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The black notebooks (as yet unpublished in English) apparently make it more than clear that Heidegger himself had a deep seated anti-Semitism that was deeply integrated into his philosophy. He talks of “world Judaism” as one of the main drivers of western modernity – ie everything he loathes as dehumanising us and taking us away from authentic being. Why and how exactly "the Jews" are responsible is not clear, except that Jewish communities in Europe tended to be necessarily rootless, itinerant people “divorced from the soil” (a bad thing for Heidegger) and tended to be happy to grasp the new possibilities offered by modern society. There was also a view prevalent at the time that "world Judaism" was really behind the Russian revelation, and that most threatening of modern ideas, communism.<br />
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Never mind that blaming a relatively small and peripheral ethnic minority for <i>all the ills of the modern era</i> is fucking ridiculous. Of all the possible roots of modernity, with all its mechanisation, exploitation, tranquilisation and alienation from authentic existence, “The Jews” is really not an obvious go-to-source. The European Enlightenment or “Age of Reason”, yes. The Industrial Revolution, yes. Free-market capitalism, the afore-mentioned communism and – FFS – <i>fascism</i>, absolutely. Jews? Um. No.<br />
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In “fairness” to Heidgger he does also point the finger at English, American and Soviet culture, but still – it shows he buys into the then-all-too-common paranoid and idiotic conspiracy theories about “world Judaism” of the kind espoused by Hitler in <i>Mein Kampf</i>, even if he pooh-poohs the Nazis’ racial angle in favour of a cultural one.<br />
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<b>Holocaust</b><br />
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But the worst blow comes with the publication of the notebooks from <i>after</i> the end of the war, in which Heidegger talks about the Holocaust. In one jaw-dropping passage he appears to think it is more of a tragedy that Germany’s mission to transform the modern world – which had the potential to “save” the west – was stopped by the Allies before it could come to fruition. He sees this as a crime against history that is <i>even greater than the genocide of six million people</i>.<br />
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Surely, you might think, the Holocaust was the ultimate outplaying of the kind of dehumanising effect of modernity and technology Heidegger was so against - the production-line industrialisation of murder itself. But who do you think he blames for it - the Nazis he so stupidly supported? No, of course not. He blames "the Jews". Yes that’s right, they <i>brought it on themselves</i> – because they supported and drove the technological modern era, they are responsible for their own deaths by it. Not the Nazis who actually did it – they were simply trying to wipe out this Jewish culture of hateful modernity (that by Heidegger's own criteria they themselves took to an extreme in order to do that, but let’s not think about that). Yes, it really is bit like saying we can wipe out racism by the genocide of a racist race. Bloody racist races.<br />
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<b>Fallout </b><br />
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It’s not just that his views are vile – the history of philosophy is liberally sprinkled with horrible people who nevertheless had something interesting to say – it’s that they are just fucking nonsense. The fact that they are full of paranoia, hypocrisy, leaps of logic, and vast blind spots missing the obvious, casts serious doubt on his critical thinking faculties and the water-tightness of the rest of his work, which will now have to be re-evaluated in the light of this. <br />
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I mean to say, some of the translated passages of the black notebooks that have come my way read like a genteel and wordy version of the foaming-mouthed spoutings of a disgraced UKIP parliamentary candidate – if I read someone spouting this today I’d write that person off instantly as a nut, not worth wasting my time listening to. For that to be coming from someone I happen to think is among the most original and profound thinkers of the 20th century presents me with a hell of an inconsistency. How does one square this? Do I try to shrug off his more unpleasant views (surely an exercise in dishonest cherry picking)? Do I write off all of Heidegger’s thought (surely a bit baby/bathwater)? Have I woefully misjudged bonkers disgraced UKIP parliamentary candidates, who are in fact all philosophical geniuses?<br />
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All I can say is at least Heidegger wasn’t anyone’s posterboy. He never achieved the kind of hero status of the likes of Nietzsche or Wittgenstein, partly because his writing style is so impenetrable, pedantic and dull – no teenage philosophy students are scrawling Heidegger quotes such as <i>“The projection of Dasein’s ownmost-potentiality-for-Being has been delivered over to the Fact of its thrownness into the ‘there’,”</i> on Twitter.</div>
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<b>Ban or study?</b><br />
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It will be interesting to see how the academic world deals with this. Günter Figal, chair of the Martin Heidegger Society, has already resigned, stating his shock at the content of the notebooks, and that he is no longer willing to act as a representative for such a man. Those of us who always preferred Nieztsche – whose work was appropriated by Hitler and therefore is also tainted with such associations – can sit back and gloat, as <i>our</i> man, who died long before the Nazis and was vocally down on both anti-Semitism and nationalism in general, now looks like John bloody Lennon.<br />
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One thing I hope doesn't happen is that Heidegger will be treated like Jimmy Saville and excised from history. If nothing else that would be dishonest, since whole schools of thought with far-reaching consequences in the modern world owe a debt to him, whatever kind of beast he was - and our understanding of the history of philosophy would be poorer for skimming over him.</div>
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A ban on Heidegger would serve no one, and that is not the way philosophers do things anyway. What is brilliant about philosophy is that it doesn’t shy away from tough topics and questions for reasons of taste and decency – it delves right in. Burying and censoring things is the very opposite of the philosophical nature – rather it seeks to<i> drag the truth out into the light</i>, in all its ugliness and complexity, and then proceeds to dissect and debate it for eternity, to try and find out how it works, what might be going on and what the meaning and implications might be.<br />
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I suspect this is what will happen with Heidegger. If they are not already, people will soon be doing PhDs in the impact of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism on his phenomenology, or the implications of his Nazism for the work of his followers such as Satre (who, by the way, supported Stalin even after it became clear he was a mass murdering Gawd-help-us). And really, that’s the way it should be. Heidegger should not become untouchable – we simply have to handle him in a new and enlightened way.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-54304848883366360872015-01-10T14:18:00.001+00:002015-01-11T14:36:59.376+00:00Ripping the p*** ~ or ~ in defence of humour and scepticism in the face of righteous rage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>***I wrote this snappily-titled post about a year ago, in fact exactly one year to the day before the Charlie Hebdo massacre. I never posted it as it was a bit 'serious-serious' and I'd only just done a post on <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/this-was-supposed-tobe-about.html">bigotry</a>. But given the events of this week, seems timely and relevant - particularly the final sweary line, given who was killed and why. For my feelings on the Paris events, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/08/charlie-hedbo-collusion-terror-jihadi-twisted-logic">this article by Harry Kunzru</a> had me nodding in recognition, and was what reminded me I had written the following.***</b></span><br />
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<i><b>Former British POW Col John Lawrence to Japanese POW, about to be executed, Sgt Gengo Hara: “You are the victim of men who think they are right... Just as one day you and captain Yunoi believed absolutely that you were right. And the truth is of course that nobody is right.”</b></i></div>
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<i><b>– Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, 1983 </b></i><br />
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THOSE of us who habitually approach things in an uncertain, cautious or sceptical way often get stick for it – for sitting on the fence, for not throwing ourselves into a cause, for being cynical, downbeat or negative when harassed by go-getting motivational pressure. But, while as a modern human being I accept that I am a mess of flaws, failings and dysfunctions, I do not count this tendency as one of them. It is clearly linked to some of my less appealing qualities – it doesn’t exactly spur me on to grasp opportunities to the full and make my voice heard above all others – but I will defend it. <br />
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<b>Steel shutters</b><br />
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When I was a kid in the 1980s, there was often anger and strife in the media and in the world around me, just as there is today. The troubles in Northern Ireland, the cold war, Thatcherism, strikes, general moral outrage from the likes of Mary Whitehouse. Always a little off in my own quiet world (what’s changed?) I was baffled and distressed by it all – of course I was, I was a child, with no hope of understanding then what it was all about, nor any hope of having any input into whatever shitstorm I was witnessing – but I at least had a vague grasp that there was something heavy, something wrong, that had caused the disagreement.<br />
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But there were some cases where anger and strife turned into something else – something terrifying and utterly alien to me. That moment where you realise the person working themselves into a lather is not simply getting emotional or showing assertive resolve – no, they have completely switched into another mode. A mode where communication is only one way, where they are so utterly, utterly convinced that they are right – and righteous – that nothing anyone says will get past the steel shutters they have pulled down around themselves, and they may as well not be in a dialogue at all. Inside those steel shutters is more steel – brutal, rigid, utterly black and white, serious as hell and all-consuming. Outside almost everything is THE ENEMY, contemptible and not worth engaging with, except in open warfare.<br />
<br />
I was probably about 12 when I decided that that mindset – <i>no matter what the cause or argument</i> – was nothing less than a vision of evil. When those kind of people start throwing their weight around, ugliness, tragedy and horror is likely to follow.<br />
<br />
Of course I was naive – as I grew up and realised the intractable complexity of the world and its politics, I thought perhaps it was <i>me</i> being a little rigid and extreme in that view – I didn’t then understand the very real grievances that make people act like that, and that those “kind of people” surely don’t think and act like that all the time. Maybe that behaviour <i>is</i> all just down to the heat of the moment after all. But I still think I was onto something – perhaps it’s not about a “kind of” person, but rather a state of being that people can get into. Whatever, seeing someone in that state is something I still recoil from in extreme distress, suspicion and horror, still no matter what the cause.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Righteous rage</b><br />
<br />
In my student years it would even turn me off causes I had a natural affinity with to see them hijacked by people working themselves into a shrill, shouty, righteous rage about them – whether in print, in music or at demonstrations. Good grief, I’d think, we’re supposed to be the good guys, we’re supposed to be better than this. Why are we putting our fists in the air in salute and chanting jingoistic slogans like brainless drones? I guess, I thought dejectedly, because subtle, reasoned debate doesn’t get heard. What a shit for humanity.<br />
<br />
The most salient and obvious examples of this kind of behaviour are the terrifying proponents of extreme ideologies – in which category I’d put totalitarian dictators, patriotic warmongers, violent terrorists and agitators, race-hate thugs, fire-and-brimstone religious extremists or anyone, really, calling for intolerance and death on a perceived demographic. They are essentially putting an ideal of “their people” and how they want the world to be above <i>actual people</i> and how the world actually is.<br />
<br />
But aside from those noisy and threatening examples, you come into contact with smaller scale versions every day, from soap-box Nimbyism to puffed-up in-group jingoism, to them-and-us thinking and po-faced bluster in general. To me it undermines someone’s credibility immediately to see them acting in such a hysterical, inflexible way – I don’t give two shits about their “passion” and their “strength”, it’s <i>not</i> something to be admired.<br />
<br />
Because this sort of outlook is at once too narrow – everything is judged and distorted by an obsession with one issue, there is no appreciation of the wider context, or an honest approach to dealing with the complexity of the arguments; but on the other hand it is too general – it pays no attention to the subtleties of the situation or variety of opinion, instead preferring to caricature, vilify and over-simplify, which makes things much easier if you want to appear unambiguously right and call people to arms.<br />
<br />
<b>Humour and humanity</b><br />
<br />
And a key indicator is the lack of humour - a healthy irreverence, sense of irony and the absurd is, for me, a sign of intelligence and humanity. It’s all too often mistaken for simple sneering or piss-taking, but there is a difference between cynicism for the sake of it – bitter, bullying and condescending – and the more gentle but persistent pricking of grand pomposity and po-faced pretension, the humanising reality check. The latter acts as a buffer against getting caught up in such ever-so-earnest, unquestioning idealism, and means you never stop seeing people as just people.<br />
<br />
A sense of humour about serious issues is not a sign you’re not taking them seriously – it’s a sign you recognise no one is infallible, life is never perfect, and there is always some shoddiness and absurdity inherent in everything and everybody – including yourself. Forget that and we are left in a world where everything is serious and angry and what follows is intolerance and brutality.<br />
<br />
But it’s important to criticise the attitude, the behaviour, not simply the people displaying it. I say that not for touchy-feely namby-pamby reasons, but because it’s crucial to my argument – the whole problem as I see it lies in not treating others as rounded human beings. The hallmark of this kind of behaviour is removing yourself from genuine, everyday one-on-one human interaction and instead treating those you disagree with as either a faceless “them” or exaggerated monsters in the case of individuals. And it’s precisely in the gap between the complex reality of everyone’s various lives, troubles, wants and needs and the single-issue “just crusade” that any hope of understanding and empathy is lost.<br />
<br />
A wonderful case where the opposite happened is at the York mosque in 2013, where angry EDL demonstrators were served tea and biscuits and invited inside for a game of football by the faithful. It was an instant diffuser, short-circuiting the puffed-up self-righteous urge of the protesters – if they had met them instead with a similarly self-righteous, angry response it would have done nothing but escalate the situation and no one would have gone home happier or wiser. Nothing would have been resolved. Of course, a game of football is not going to make the underlying issues or dispute go away, but at least it opens a channel for calm communication and a foot in the door for reason and understanding. <br />
<br />
<b>Rip the piss</b><br />
<br />
We need people of conviction, yes. If all of us were cautious, sceptical, irreverent, fence-sitters nothing would ever get done, no one would ever show leadership, no fight would ever be won. But we need the cautious and irreverent also, to keep those convinced they are right in check, to add intelligence and nuance to the gung-ho drive, to ground them in reality, cool them down and make them see beyond their single-minded obsessions – to humanise them. <br />
<br />
People who are convinced they are right – who will not laugh at themselves, will not meet you half way, will not recognise any other opinion or way than their own, on their terms... <b>don’t tolerate them.</b> Respond with the pinch of salt, the open ear and the calm cup of tea. And if they still don’t lighten the f*** up, <i>rip the piss</i> out of those po-faced f***ers mercilessly.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-7079826439845171832015-01-09T01:00:00.000+00:002015-01-09T23:21:52.634+00:00Manners maketh the man<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgY9rDBfqxtJVJpOtaKwAiSO29MqweKRZiG8l5iAs4KZQh8WP-r-K8w4yB2wUtLaBYlyIs041mIh8bHlEiFlQ3xSJhBXdblIh6aPo9_a_kvwT13if57sUweO6GScj2-0VUke8ggeTkx4/s1600/Salt-014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgY9rDBfqxtJVJpOtaKwAiSO29MqweKRZiG8l5iAs4KZQh8WP-r-K8w4yB2wUtLaBYlyIs041mIh8bHlEiFlQ3xSJhBXdblIh6aPo9_a_kvwT13if57sUweO6GScj2-0VUke8ggeTkx4/s1600/Salt-014.jpg" height="145" width="200" /></a></div>
<div>
<b>Salty cabbage</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
“Yeah she’s not for me though,” said my friend, “she’s very sweet, but there are just these little things you notice, like – when you’re in a restaurant she puts salt on her food before she’s tasted it.”<br />
<div>
<br />
There was a silence from me.<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry?” I said.<br />
<br />
“She puts salt on her food before she’s tasted it.”<br />
<br />
“Ok. And?”<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
More silence.<br />
<br />
“It’s extremely rude,” he said.<br />
<br />
Another pause from me.<br />
<br />
“Is it? <i>WHY?!</i>”<br />
<br />
“It is. It’s the height of rudeness.”<br />
<br />
“To <i>the chef</i> maybe," I spluttered, aghast, "Why the hell are <i>you</i> offended? How’s it hurting you? <i>What do you mean?!</i>”<br />
<br />
At this point, I have to admit I was rather taken aback at my own outrage. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I was feeling it, but it certainly had something to do with flashbacks to being a timid, bewildered small child, ever terrified about making some terrible social faux-pas or another that I'd been told by some pedantic tight-ass was critically important to not being a despised figure of ridicule and shame; that I later came to realise, much to my annoyance, was absolute f***ing bullshit.<br />
<br />
“I mean to say," I said, "this is one of the bizarrest deal-breakers I’ve ever heard. Why do you give a shit? Why is having the general rule <i>‘I like my food salty, I’ll put salt on everything’</i> any ruder than tasting it first and going <i>‘urgh, no, not enough salt’</i>?!”</div>
<div>
<br />
It’s got to be said I’d be hard pressed to come up with something that mattered <i>less</i> in my choice of mate than whether <b>she tasted her food before she decided to add salt</b>. In fact I had simply not considered the matter would ever arise in a dating scenario. I felt dreadfully naive all of a sudden.<br />
<br />
My friend said, indignantly, “Well, maybe I’m just a very well mannered man. It’s not a deal-breaker, it just makes me think ‘oh no, she's one of <i>those</i> people’."</div>
<div>
<br />
“<i>I’m</i> one of those people,” I said.<br />
<br />
“Oh.” he said.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I’m not quite one of those people. I often don’t bother with table salt at all and know better than to load something carefully prepared in a fancy restaurant with the stuff. But certainly I <i>have</i> done it automatically, especially when younger, especially at home and especially with certain foods I know I like a bit of salt on (chips, steak, cabbage. Yes, I like salty cabbage).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Camp tantrum</b><br />
<br />
I tried to explain to him that for many people this was just pure habit, from growing up in families where that’s just what you do when tea rocks up at the table – throw a dash of salt, maybe pepper, maybe vinegar on the meal before tucking in.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It may be a little old fashioned, a little pre-“food revolution” (ugh); it may be a little unthinking, unrefined and not exactly the sign of a distinguishing foodie palette; but what it <i>isn’t,</i> is a slur on the competence of the cook. One could imagine a highly-strung Michelin-starred chef throwing a camp tantrum over the unwashed punters ruining his/her meticulously balanced creation by smothering it in unnecessary sodium, but he/she'd be an arse. Let people eat the food they’ve paid for how they want, for crying out loud – or do as some restaurants do and just don’t put salt on the table. I get it, y'know, you can lead a horse to water etc, but you shouldn't take it <i>personally</i>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ok, my friend admitted, so it <i>wasn’t </i>the most offensive thing in the world, just a sign of basic uncouthness. But it got me thinking about manners in general and the million little silly bits of etiquette that I – all right, perhaps mistakenly – tend to think just don’t matter.<br />
<br />
I will defend myself. I am the first to admit that I am probably regularly thoughtless, selfish, dismissive, abrupt, half-arsed, immature, irritable or just hard work, though I am virtually never deliberately rude. Most of my transgressions come from either being too wrapped up in myself, too tired, stressed, rushed or pressured, or simply socially unsure and awkward on any given occasion. On the other hand I know that when I’m on form I can be much more patient, reasonable, affable, empathetic, helpful and just damn nice than a hell of a lot of people I know. The bolshy, mercenary bastards.<br />
<br />
But I do have a deep-seated disdain for po-faced rule-keeping and ritual, for judgemental airs and graces and unquestioning tradition-following of all kinds.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The most compelling wisdom I ever heard about dinner etiquette, from the mouth of veteran butler no less, is that it should not fundamentally be about endless unfathomable customs and rules at all – etiquette is first and foremost about putting your guests at their ease. If your rules are causing your guests to feel uncomfortable, intimidated or alienated, that is rude of <i>you</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>The power of correct and proper protocol</b><br />
<br />
I tend to think if something is rude it is because of the effect - if it puts others out, causes discomfort, distress or upset. If breaking some “rule” doesn’t do any of those things, that rule is clearly serving no purpose – and can be disregarded as some bullshit dreamt up by some fussy anal-retentive to wield the power of “correct and proper protocol” over the uninitiated.<br />
<br />
Frankly we would all breathe a sigh of relief to see the back of such nonsense. Such customs are the manners version of the split infinitive in language, a so-called grammar “rule” which some sticklers continue to bafflingly adhere to because it is supposedly “correct” (it isn’t) - despite the fact it often makes sentences more confusing and clunky, not less.<br />
<br />
Futhermore: It’s got to be said that while, yes, some rude behaviour is clearly just mean, vile, nasty, selfish and even abusive, to some extent it does <i>take two to take offence</i> – by which I mean we are always involved and complicit in the amount to which we let things affect us. In the case of the small stuff particularly, one person’s indignant outrage is another’s shoulder shrug. We don’t have to obsess about these things, and could all be a little more forgiving and cut each other a bit more slack, man.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I’ll shut up now, I don’t want to over-salt the broth.<br />
<br />
(Ok, that pun needed a little salt.)<br />
<br />
(Ok, so did that one. Don’t rub salt in the wound.)<br />
<br />
(Enough.)<br />
<br />
(Salt.)</div>
</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-85020610680441381932014-12-31T20:24:00.000+00:002015-01-01T19:39:23.374+00:00NYE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>I kind of love New Year, but this year I'm doing virtually nothing for it, and I love that too.</b><br />
<br />
It divides people every bit as much as Christmas, but not as obviously. The reasons people love or hate or Christmas are well documented and understood: <i>childhood magic, cosy gift-giving, holidays, feasting, family time </i>– versus – <i>commercialisation, stress and hassle, expectations, consumerist hordes, loneliness (if you’re alone).</i><br />
<br />
But New Year (or as many annoyingly insist on calling it, New <i>Year's</i>) is a stranger beast. Some people really, really hate it, though often for idiosyncratic reasons. Certainly for those averse to big crowds and bigger parties full of forced jollity, it won't be their favourite night of the calendar - but people’s attitudes to New Year are all over the map, and I suspect very much tied up with good or bad experiences in previous years.<br />
<br />
You are kind of expected to enjoy it – you’d be a party pooper if you didn’t – but at the same time nobody calls you a Grinch or a Scrooge if you don’t, and few people gush about how much they love the occasion itself in general. But I, perhaps surprisingly, do love New Year, or at least the idea. I have had my share of anti-climactic ones (most, in fairness, given the huge expectation to have a huge time) and my share of awful ones (the combination of that expectation, alcohol into the early hours and an often <i>off-piste</i> mix of people and places can make for some quite spectacular emotional fireworks...)<br />
<br />
<b>Alain</b><br />
<br />
But you see it’s not really about any single party or event, nor even if a <i>good time is had</i> for me – in fact I have had quite emotionally traumatic New Year’s Eves that I look back on fondly, because, y’know, they were eventful and stuff.<br />
<br />
The reason I love New Year is the same reason Alain de Botton is <a href="http://alaindebotton.com/a-week-at-the-airport/">always banging on about airports</a>. It’s about the liminality. Alain loves airports, not because of any single destination or arrival, nor any one teary goodbye or hearty holiday hello, but because they’re places of transition and possibility where everyday life is suspended.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Liminal places include the likes of airports, stations, hotels, borders, even bridges – places which are neither one place nor another, but hover in a limbo in between. And while you’re there, however briefly, you hover with them. They make few demands on you other than the need to negotiate your way through them – everything that mattered in your previous home or routine is put on hold, and you can view it all at a distance, in a moment of calm, while you wait to make your way back to it, or to something new that will take its place. Liminal places can be incredibly liberating and perspective-providing if you have time to stop and appreciate them (well, that might be stretching it for bridges, but the view is often nice).<br />
<br />
New Year is like that. A few years back (after an awful, emotional one the previous annum, I think) I joked, ha ha, that my ideal New Year would be spent sitting alone in a white room in a big leather chair with a small bottle of port so I could properly think about what I had done. Ha ha. I joked. It was mildly funny (especially said with a deadly straight face). I was less than half joking.<br />
<br />
<b>Memorable New Years's – staying in</b><br />
<br />
My fondness for the celebration probably goes back to what will always be the ideal for me (no, not sitting in a white room in a big leather chair) – the cosy close-friends-only house party.<br />
<br />
Unlike Christmas, New Year is not really for "the kids", so it’s probably not that common for it to factor large in many childhood memories, but it does in mine. It so happens that from about the age of seven, for a number of years, as a family we used to get in the car and drive down to Bristol to see old friends and neighbours in the week after Christmas, in the proper tradition of Auld Lang Syne. I had spent my halcyon early childhood years surrounded by these good people, including one of my best friends, and we now only got to see them a couple of times a year at most, so this was very special – at once a return to the familiar and an exciting trip away.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In later years us kids got to stay up past midnight with the adults and Clive James being acerbic on the TV, before going bed – and then of course continuing to chat and compare notes about our experiences of the past six months or so, as we heard the reassuring (and increasingly intoxicated) murmur of the adults doing the same downstairs. It was perfect for New Year – staying up late with plenty of catching up, sharing, revelations, putting the word to rights, and year-in-review chat, something special but also cosy – and no need whatsoever for any alcohol or other stimulants.<br />
<br />
I mist me up. That has always been the bar for New Year, and one I’ve never quite met since, but it certainly informed some house parties of our own in later years. I particularly remember a lot of discussion over the use of “rooms” in hosting that one of my friends and I agreed upon – that it’s not enough to have one activity in one room, no matter how much food and booze you have on hand. People don’t like to feel penned in, they like to explore, do their own thing, find distractions away from the main throng. Multiple things going on in multiple rooms. That is key. What’s in the conservatory? – oh! – there’s an old skool PS1 with a selection of retro games; and now I’ll just go to the toilet and – oh! – there’s air hockey in the bath.<br />
<br />
<b>Memorable New Years's's – going out</b><br />
<br />
It’s got to be said, generally New Year's' spent in pubs and clubs have been less memorable for some reason (well, it's just yet another drunken night out, isn't it?) – but I have had a couple of particularly enjoyable ones down what was once my local, largely due the warm bonhomie of the lock-in, after the horrible jostling crowds thinned out to a more manageable but still diverse band of regulars hunkered down to the small hours.<br />
<br />
Ironically, the New Years that really stick in the head are often the ones which really do not go at all to plan. My Millenium in The Smoke ended up much more surreal and memorable than it would have been because we never got to the fabled club we had tickets for. The tube shut down shortly after midnight due to a bomb threat and we ended up wandering the streets with vast throngs of people all in the same situation – aimlessly roaming, hoping desperately for taxi deliverance that would not come for hours, uncertain how to get home. We walked miles and miles across central London, faced police blockades at Westminster Bridge, saw shops open up at 3am to capitalise on the stranded masses... I can’t even remember if we found the club. I think we did, but by then it was something like 5am and they didn’t let us in.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Another New Year sticks in the mind because we insisted on marching a Christmas tree home about four miles through Stoke and Hanley for reasons that now escape all who were present. We had ended up in a rather dead bar with one of my friends livid that he had missed the chimes because at the time he was having a poo, and on the way home from this slightly damp squib of a New Year's, somehow managed to purchase this tree for 50p from some people who had in turn purchased it from a kebab house we were passing. I mostly remember the righteous sense of injustice (of the kind <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/29/russell-brand-comedian-turned-activist">Russell Brand and George Monbiot</a> would be all over today, no doubt) that the police stopped us <i>three times</i> and demanded we put it down - but we still got it home, dammit. And then threw it out again a couple of days later.<br />
<br />
<b>This year #1</b><br />
<br />
This year, due to work constraints, my New Year festivities will be quite severely curtailed, which I’m strangely content with. I didn’t have any plans anyway, and even feel slightly relieved at being able to shrug off any nagging feeling that I must be having the <i>best time</i> with a simple “oh well”. I feel reasonably at peace with the turning of the year this time round, happy just that it's happening, and really feel no need to make a fuss and noise about it. After all, there will (I hope) be plenty more.<br />
<br />
Last New Year wasn’t awful but it wasn’t great either. For various personal reasons you don’t want me to go into, it didn't feel like a fresh new beginning or hopeful clean page, it felt like things were coming to an end, ships sailing, people disappearing from my life and conditions getting tougher - I looked into 2014 with not much more than a deflated numbness. It all looked a bit flat and grey, like it would just be a lot of hard work with little on offer in the way of warmth, joy, intrigue or excitement to look forward to.<br />
<br />
I was very, very wrong.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>What my horoscope for 2014 should have said</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
2014 was a tough year, there is no doubt about that – there has been much stress and exhaustion, to the point of a record number of critical near-meltdowns, it seems, rather worryingly; there has been loss, guilt, heartbreak, bereavement, and some very heavy, serious shocks and concerns; not to mention a few-too-many alarming bits when the money just ran out – but one thing it hasn’t been, is boring.<br />
<br />
There are years when you raise a glass on NYE and say “Thank the Moses we’ve seen the back of that f***er” (2008, if I recall correctly was a weapons-grade c***) but 2014 wasn’t one of them.<br />
<br />
It was a year of two halves. The first was pretty bonkers, up and down and all over the shop in ways I could never have foreseen, but things certainly happened – and while some were awful, some were quite wonderful too.<br />
<br />
By comparison it seems as if almost nothing happened in the second half, which also seemed to shoot by in a flash – but it was kind of like a recovery from the first half. The changes and bonkers events all seemed shudder to a halt, leaving me in a fug and a doldrums by the end of the summer. Almost without realising it the rest of the year, it turned out, was an exercise in slow building, getting back some fun, confidence, stability and control into my shit. To coin a phrase. Coming home and rediscovering oneself, if you want to get all touchy feely about it (and who doesn't?)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That’s what my 2014 horoscope should have said. It didn’t. I checked.<br />
<br />
<b>This year #2</b><br />
<br />
So, as I gaze upon the unsown undulations of 2015 (and who doesn't?) I feel a quiet hopefulness – I have no high expectations of astonishing imminent successes, and I have no urgent action to take or resolutions to make, but this time it feels for once like I ended the year in a better position than when I started it, and there are real and genuine possibilities that things could continue to move and improve. There are options and I am open.</div>
<div>
<br />
So no house party or lock-in, or roaming city streets (well, maybe just a bit), but neither is it the white room and big leather chair. I’ll simply be having a quiet spot of something and getting liminal with an old friend or two.</div>
</div>
</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-18772704395523717902014-11-11T02:54:00.000+00:002014-11-11T11:57:26.650+00:00I 'spose I'm an introvert, really. But I don't like to shout about it.<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVGn30tBXFYL8Q0uI93G0_c6T9r-Qu6ZoYddR6IhPFleCpHYKBtUE2arCAic0ASq-m_HJBrIylJfNRDuyoINI6yWYc-pN0Cr7NGVvQNPWKcMMm4BGrG49c524G69x0-ms7tSijkknKqd0/s1600/mbti1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVGn30tBXFYL8Q0uI93G0_c6T9r-Qu6ZoYddR6IhPFleCpHYKBtUE2arCAic0ASq-m_HJBrIylJfNRDuyoINI6yWYc-pN0Cr7NGVvQNPWKcMMm4BGrG49c524G69x0-ms7tSijkknKqd0/s1600/mbti1.jpg" height="148" width="200" /></a></div>
<i><b>~or~ </b><b>On being unapologetic about wanting to stay in.</b></i><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Accept yourself</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the risk over coming over all <i>“hey lets all love
ourselves and celebrate our differences, you go girl!”</i> – which I try to avoid
if possible as it’s not a good look on me – I have recently had reason to
<i>accept a part of myself</i> and, frankly it’s a relief.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No, I’m not gay (sorry about that). I have no announcement,
no news for anyone who has known me for any length of time... just a few fresh
(but quiet) thoughts about something that has come into focus again recently: That
I am, fundamentally, an introvert, really.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, I’m by no means the most introverted introvert. In fact
I have consistently chosen career options that have required me to communicate
and assert myself, which may seem odd, but not to me – having spent much of my
childhood feeling vaguely threatened and misunderstood by pretty much everyone
except my immediate family and closest friends, I slowly discovered that
communication was a kind of super-power – to be able to explain yourself, articulate your case and express what the hell was going on in that inner world
of yours was a transformative skill to develop, and I developed it rather well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I still think of myself as shy and retiring, which in a lot
of cases I am – but I forget that isn't what everyone sees when, for example, I'm happily babbling and gesticulating away in a violent conversation, or boldly and bolshily schmoozing with strangers as part of the day job. But that I am fundamentally an introvert seems so obvious to me, a
fact known practically from the egg, that - remarkably - I seem to have almost
forgotten it, or its significance, of late.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>"Say baby, what’s your Myers-Briggs type?"</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First a couple of important things about introverts and
extroverts – the terms have kind of entered everyday language to mean “quiet”
and “loud”, but that’s not quite on-the-money. While shy, socially-awkward people
will of course be introverts, that
doesn’t mean all introverts are shy or socially awkward – any more than all extroverts
will be loud and un-thoughtful. Invented by Carl Jung, the terms would more accurately be defined as “internally focussed” and “externally focussed”, and are key in a lot of more modern theorising about personality (not least the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator">Myers–Briggs Type Indicator</a> which, nauseatingly, appears to have replaced “what’s
your star-sign” as the dating-compatibility question of choice for the "rational" set).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An introvert is most comfortable when immersed
in their own “inner world” of thoughts and feelings – and likely to be uncomfortable and unhappy
if they’re not regularly allowed to spend some quiet time “there”. Meanwhile an
extrovert is most comfortable focussing on external things – objects and events
in the “outside world” – and likely to be unhappy if they’re not regularly allowed to
go out, find stimulus and do stuff “out there”. Clearly very few people are all one or the other, and we all experience
both modes depending on our situation, the company we're in, activities required of us, etc –
but the idea is that most people tend more in one direction than the other.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Underwhelming revelations</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, I’m wary of labelling and pathologising myself as anything - this “Oh I'm an Aquarius which means I'm just like this and everyone just has to accept it” kind of business is both self-fulfilling and limiting - but in this case I am so very clearly an introvert there is nothing remotely
controversial about "diagnosing" me thus.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is not the revelation. The revelation, in two parts, is this:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A) That somewhere along the line in the past couple of
years - <i>without realising it</i> – I seem to
have "internalised" the idea that being introverted is probably a bad thing and I
should fight it because when I indulge my introverted
tendencies it kinda makes me a loser.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
B) That F*** THAT SHIT, in the most robust possible
terms. The above unconscious attitude has been contributing absolutely nothing to my
life except a vague sense of sense of guilt, vague self-esteem issues (as if I needed
any more) and a party-pooping pall over stuff I enjoyed.<br />
<br />
Actually, this is less about "accepting myself" in a warm, airy-fairy way, and more about rather selfishly saying: "Screw it - I'm not apologising any more, I'll do what I damn well like". I had allowed myself to become convinced that solitary, internally-focussed activities were kind of worthless, directing one away from the practical and worldly stuff one should be doing. But recently I've indulged myself in a couple of projects unashamedly on my own - and the knock-on effects have made me realise I have been missing something of late.<br />
<br />
Purpose is key – this is not about mooching around idly on your lonesome, but using the
fabled “me-time” in a focussed and productive way to do things you really want
to do. To my
surprise I’ve found a sense of re-engaged purpose and achievement that lasts
well beyond the activity itself and casts a life-enhancing, optimistic halo
into other areas of life – a benefit that was obviously there before, but I must have previously simply taken for granted, and then forgotten.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As alluded to in <a href="http://myfailureatmodernliving.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/beating-up-self-or-habitual-self.html">previous posts</a>, one becomes more "worldly" as one gets older - the practical concerns
of society become more and more salient as you get more “adult”. Of course extroverts are much more naturally focussed on both practical concerns and society – it’s their home turf. So society values extroverts
more immediately and obviously – despite the fact that society benefits just as much
from what introverts produce with their thought and creativity, away from its
glaring eye (which, I gather, is what <a href="http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/about-the-book/">this book</a> is all about, though I rather
shoddily don’t seem to have read it yet).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Prejudice against my people</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The upshot is, in everyday modern living, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking “I must be more like those extroverts” at all times. Which is a crying shame.<br />
<br />
Having gone through an entire childhood and adolescence
being constantly asked <i>“Why are you staying in? Why aren’t you out
playing football like a normal kid?”</i> one comes out the other side and breathes
a sigh of relief, with a vindicated <i>“See? I turned out a reasonably normal, functioning, well-adjusted individual, after all - and there are plenty more like
me who are now very successful and cool and stuff cos of their staying in and being a bit weird as a kid". </i>One finally shrugs off all that crap you had to put up with, just to get your drawing done or your book finished, as the well-meaning but ill-informed bluster
of people who just <i>didn’t understand...</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
...only for it to <i>come back,</i> in another form, as one drifts towards middle age, FFS. I’m 37, and again people are going <i>“Why are you staying in? Why aren’t you out travelling, sky-diving, marathon running and downing
cocktails, like a normal adult? Life is for living YOLO.”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s the <i>same shit</i>.
And it’s basically <i>prejudice against my
people</i>, dammit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, maybe I should have got out more when I was a kid – but
it wasn’t me. I was never going to be any good at, or interested in,
football. In the same way “getting out” and forcing myself into social
situations when I’m not in the mood can leave me feeling more distracted, bored,
anguished and disconnected than if I’d stayed at home. Extroverts have no idea
how much effort it can be for an introvert just to maintain "normal social face" when they just want switch that side of themselves off and
be left alone. There is only so much socialising an introvert can take before they need a battery recharge of quality leave-me-alone time. Forcing them out of that doesn’t wean
them off being introverted - it just makes them miserable and uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
<b>A healthy, balanced diet</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I do understand that there is a danger for any introvert of
locking themselves away too much, of being too wrapped up in their own world to
<i>get things done</i> and <i>grasp all the opportunities</i> the world has to offer. But I at least have some sort of natural barometer of this – I do feel it when I’ve overdone the solitary
stuff. I, too, go stir crazy, feel down when I've not spoken to anyone properly or left the house, and sometimes <i>really</i> need to get out. I love socialising and frankly sparkle with it when I'm in the mood. At work I'm almost always happier for having got out of the office, and feel bereft on days when it's empty all bar me - so I'm not a without extrovert needs, and really not the
misanthrope I sometimes pretend to be. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I do have a vivid, active and varied set of introverted interests, too, thank you very much. And when I indulge them, far from feeling like a sad
hide-away, I actually feel more alive
and engaged with the world – because my mind is active and <i>I am</i> experiencing, learning, exploring the world in a different way; and doing that means I feel sated, invigorated and fired
up with new discoveries and passions to go back into the more social
sphere with. It is a balance - a hearty helping of introversion is just fine as part of a healthy balanced diet, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are vast rewards to spending quiet time on things alone,
that simply cannot be gotten by any other method – whole vistas of intense,
mind-expanding experience. But you don’t get introverts telling extroverts <i>“Why are you going out? You need to stay in more, read a book, whittle some wood or something”</i>... Extroverts are always mouthing off, judging us introverts.<br />
<br />
Actually, of course, introverts are always judging extroverts too. But we keep
it to ourselves.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-62363478223403338872014-09-29T00:08:00.000+01:002014-09-29T01:55:49.088+01:00This did not go so well<div class="MsoNormal">
I was going to write something tonight.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because I felt I couldn’t come back after six months with
something so thoroughly <i>downbeat</i> as the last post, and just leave it at that - or
you, adorable, sage and dexterous reader, would think “cripes, he’s gone a bit
shocking”, or even (bless you to the point of sycophantic weeping) be vaguely
concerned.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As an aside, what is slightly misleading about the previous
post is it makes out that when I was younger I was having a whale of a time as
this dynamic free-spirited creative force – when in fact, while yes, my
lifestyle was somewhat (but not unrecognisably) different, and all manner of
produce did indeed issue forth from my furtively over-active brain and fingers,
all the while I was still constantly bewailing the loss of youth, the awfulness
of the encroaching world and the certainty of a grey, empty future. In fact, from
roughly about the age of 17, and in fact that is what drove quite a lot of the ‘produce’.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve always had a tendency to long-nights-of the-soul about nothing. I look
back and think “Jesus wept, you were 19 or 24 or 31 – if you’d just spent less
time brooding about what you thought you’d lost or were about to lose or would
never have, you might actually have appreciated what you'd gained, got and might yet attain - and enjoyed
yourself more.” And of course, I’ll look back on now, when I’m 45 or 60 or 79
and think exactly the same thing. One does grow and change over the years, but
there are core elements of personality that remain, and this recurrent wan, nostalgic pessimism, unfortunately, appears to be one of the less palatable ones.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I was going to write something tonight as I thought I’d
better follow that last post up with something light or positive or at least interesting
and engaging, but now it’s too late to write anything really, except more of this guff, and that has only gone
and given me the ennui.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mmn. *Sigh*.<br />
<br />
This has not gone so well.</div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671716277266041804.post-25514105464899365452014-09-16T01:46:00.001+01:002014-09-17T00:35:30.946+01:00Beating up the self ~or~ Habitual self-flagellation over trifling piff-puffs<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">When you’ve
spent the afternoon rattling around in your tin and despite the best of
intentions not quite managed to set foot beyond the paving slabs of your front
yard; when you have failed get a haircut, to make a number of important (but
not urgent) calls, or to really sort anything out that would constitute
progress towards making changes in your life that really need to made, but
instead have just cooked, eaten and washed up, ironed, tidied and busied
yourself with any number of brainless domestic chores you could have done at
any time; when you realise then that it’s really too late to make a start on
anything, or go see anyone, and the night is tick-ticking away but you’re not
tired and don’t really need to be up early so you decide it’s a good idea to
have a drink, because why wouldn’t you...?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This is
when you like to slump down and enjoy a touch of habitual self-flagellation,
just to see the night out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">So, it
strikes you, y’know, you’re not really sure you <i>actually enjoy life much at all
</i>anymore. How did this happen? You always thought your way was right. You’re
always shaking your head and tutting at the follies and stupidity of others and
the way they go about things. So let’s look at where being smart and “different”
and a wise-ass has got <i>you</i>, huh? Let’s look at what <i>you’ve</i> attained.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You’re a
massive success in your chosen field, right? <i><b>Looks
at slippers.</b></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Well, ok,
but at least you’ve made some money, yes? <i><b>Shuffles
slippers awkwardly.</b><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Ah! But
you’ve done important things that have changed lives? <i><b>Frowns at wall to the left.</b><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">You do
enjoy what you do though, more than other people, yeah? <i><b>Shrugs. Sighs.</b><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Mmn. Well,
you’ve made a home for your loving family and that’s what counts, huh? <i><b>Blank stare. </b><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Nevermind. You’re a bohemian-ish sort, eh? You've always got the simple pleasures of your books and your art, hmm? <i><b>Faint but
perceptible </b></i><i><b>grimace*</b><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;"><b style="font-style: italic;">*</b><i>For a good
four or five years now it has been clear things on this count are to some
extent in decline. It’s a natural and normal thing of course, as one approaches
middle age and responsibilities increase – work, families, and just the million
little chores of doing the adult life – we all have less time, energy and even
money to devote to those purely selfish, immersive pursuits. The days of wiping
out whole weekends in pursuit of the learning or the creative urge – which is kinda necessary
to properly getting into the zone and completing something impressive – seem
long gone. Nowadays getting more than a couple of hours at a time to block out
the world and crack on, before you need to attend to something worldly, is
pretty rare - and when (like today) you finally get some time, you’re so tired
and distracted and out of the habit, you struggle to start anything. You used
to be the most prolific producer of creative stuff that you knew, chucking out
an unstoppable torrent, and hoovered up eclectic knowledge like a sponge. With a hoover. Your interests and inspirations were varied, your
approach oblique, your thoughts never obvious, your path never pedestrian. Life
was all about playing, experimenting, learning, analysing, assimilating, re-combining,
crafting and throwing something back into the world as a result. Perhaps it was
all youthful pretention, and perhaps you were (ironically for someone so averse
to cliché) a cliché – but you at least </i>felt<i> like somebody interesting and
idiosyncratic, intelligent and insightful, doing things in your own interesting
and idiosyncratic way, with something intelligent and insightful to say. Now you
just feel like a man. Another adult person. You go to work, you come home, you
eat, you sleep, you do your washing, you pay your bills, and you occasionally
enjoy the same social activities and entertainment as everyone else in your demographic. Another man, dealing with the demands of every day modern life,
struggling basically not to be shit – a shit employee, a shit friend, a shit
family member, a shit adult – with what you often suspect is a very modest
success rate. You don’t seem to have the time, money or energy to do much else.
You still dabble in creative pursuits, and read the odd thing, and still enjoy it, but the last few
years you have begun to wonder recurrently – are you over the hill, a spent
force? To pretend “your art” is these days any more than a thoroughly
unremarkable bourgeois hobby, or that more than a handful of faithful old
friends should give a shit about checking out what you produce, is stretching
it. To pretend you're still in some way academic, the same. In conclusion: When we were younger, it used to feel like it was us against
the world. The world won.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Um...
hmm... gosh, now. But, but, but, y’know – ah! But you’re HAPPY, yes? <b><i>Looks appalled and starts to cry</i></b><i><b>.</b><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">And that’s
only the start of it, a springboard into endlessly circling worries over </span>money, work, relationships, people, the troubles facing friends and family, health, the future, the state of society, the state of humanity... and soon everything fills you with bleak revulsion and despondency.<br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-GB">You know what you’re doing. It’s what the cognitive
school would call a triad of negative biases – <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB">-<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><b>Thoughts
about the self: </b>anything good about you or what you’ve done is nothing special; anything bad is a sign of your plentiful smorgasbord of major, contemptible flaws.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB">-<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><b>Thoughts
about the world: </b>anything good about it is either a mirage or a rare exception; anything
bad is just the norm, the way the world works.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB">-<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><b>Thoughts
about the future: </b>anything good that happens is a one off and it won’t last; anything bad that happens is the way it will always go. D:Ream were
wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">It’s a rut,
a stuck record. Driven by
the misplaced urge to be realistic, to be honest, to be under no illusions, you forget this shit-tainted self-absorption isn’t entirely realistic, honest nor under no illusions - since it’s biased,
selective thinking, making sweeping generalisations that just aren't warranted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Your friend
reacted with disbelief to that whole Robin Williams thing (which, whatever your
view of the outpouring that followed, certainly got debate going about
depression, which is really not to be sniffed at) but your response was not
shock, just a sad “Oh no”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">A lot of
people were aghast that someone so successful, wealthy and loved could possibly
feel worthless, trapped or depressed. But you pointed out to your friend that
you both had just spent the conversation wailing and gnashing your teeth about
your lots and staring bleakly into the existential void. Such vague malaise may be a trifling piff-puff compared to the crippling, empty, black-hole despair
of real depression, but what your friend was saying about Williams having it all –
and therefore not justified in being depressed – could equally apply to the two of you,
from the perspective of a poverty-stricken, bedridden old man living alone in a shack
in Sierra Leone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The poor old thing would say: “How can you two be miserable?
Go cook yourself a nice steak in your nice kitchen, play one of your five
guitars, go for a drink with your mates and get out there and do one of the
million things you are young, healthy, wealthy and free enough to be able to do.” </span>The point
was supposed to be that it doesn’t matter how much you appear to have from the
outside, no one knows your inner world, your demons and what
it’s like to be you – and no one is immune to depressive, obsessive
thoughts.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">But the
analogy backfired a little because, on the other hand, you’ve got to admit the poor
old thing would still be very right.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><b><br /></b></span>
<span lang="EN-GB">Goodnight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Noyushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16821042807593222169noreply@blogger.com2