... by John Wyndham is an apocalyptic book, a genre I often struggle with, but he writes beautifully and hauntingly about desolation ...
"The sun comes out. Everything looks bright and fresh, but even that, and the fact that for the next twenty miles all went smoothly, did not shift the mood of depression that was closing over me again. Now I was really on my own I could not shut out the sense of loneliness. It came upon me again as it had on that day when we had split up to search for Michael Beadley - only with double the force ... Until then I had always thought of loneliness as something negative - an absence of company, and, of course, something temporary ... That day I had learned that it was much more It was something which could press and oppress, could distort the ordinary, and play tricks with the mind. Something which lurked inimically all around, stretching the nerves and twanging them with alarms, never letting one forget that there was no one to help, no one to care. It showed one as an atom adrift in vastness, and it waited all the times its chance to frighten and frighten horribly - that was what loneliness was really trying to do; and that was what one must never let it do ..."
28 June 2012
11 June 2012
Marx and Divorce ...
"You don't simply dissolve marriage; divorce means that you retroactively establish that the love was not the true love" is an interesting take on the subjective and temporal nature of love ...
29 May 2012
Metaphysics ...
... was a topic of discussion among some friends the other night. My head has been trying to find my way through this hazy fog for a long time and I am still lost, but I believe (or hope?) ...
- God exists.
- Beauty, love and goodness persist in the darkest corner. We just have to look very very hard.
- Love may not win sometimes but its impact is unforeseeable and unquantifiable.
- Death is not the end ...
- God exists.
- Beauty, love and goodness persist in the darkest corner. We just have to look very very hard.
- Love may not win sometimes but its impact is unforeseeable and unquantifiable.
- Death is not the end ...
13 May 2012
If there is a man ...
... is the autobiography by Primo Levi about how he saves his scaffold at Auschwitz. I started it on a rainy, grey day and finished it when the sun finally arrives. One of those rare books changing your perspective on the essence of being a human, a man ...
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealisable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: the perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realisation of both these extremes states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-sufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also of every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable ...
...Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks word to express this offence, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we have reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somewhere so that behind the names something of us, of us as we were, still remains.
We know that we will have difficulty in being understood, and this is as it should be. But consider what value, what meaning is enclosed even in the smallest of our daily habits, in the hundred possessions which even the poorest beggar owns; a handkerchief, an old letter, the photo of a cherish person. These things are part of us, almost like limbs of our body; nor is it conceivable that we can be deprived of them in our word, for we immediately find others to substitute the old ones, other objects which re ours in their personification and evocation of our memories.
Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possess: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself. He will be a man whose life or death can be lightly decided with no sense of human affinity, in the most fortunate of cases, on the basis of a pure judgement of utility. It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term "extermination camp", and it is now clear what we seek to express with the phrase: "to lie on the bottom" ...
... It grieves me because it means that I have to translate his uncertain Italian and his quiet manner of speaking of a good soldier into my language of an incredulous man. But this was the sense, not forgotten either then or later: that precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilisation. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last - the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves with our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.
For human nature is such that grief and pain - even simultaneously suffered - do not add up as a whole in our consciousness, but hide, the lesser behind the greater, according to a definite law of perspective. It is providential and is our means of surviving the camp. And this is the reason why so often in free life often hears it said that man is never content. In fact it is not a question of a human incapacity for a state of absolute happiness, but of an ever-insufficient knowledge of the complete nature of the state of unhappiness; so that the single name of the major cause is given to all its causes, which are composite and set out in an order of urgency. And if the most immediate cause of stress comes to an end, you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others ...
... However little sense there may be in trying to specify why I, rather than thousands of others, managed to survive the test, I believe that it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid, as for his having constantly remind me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside of our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth surviving.
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealisable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: the perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realisation of both these extremes states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-sufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also of every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable ...
...Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks word to express this offence, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we have reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somewhere so that behind the names something of us, of us as we were, still remains.
We know that we will have difficulty in being understood, and this is as it should be. But consider what value, what meaning is enclosed even in the smallest of our daily habits, in the hundred possessions which even the poorest beggar owns; a handkerchief, an old letter, the photo of a cherish person. These things are part of us, almost like limbs of our body; nor is it conceivable that we can be deprived of them in our word, for we immediately find others to substitute the old ones, other objects which re ours in their personification and evocation of our memories.
Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possess: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself. He will be a man whose life or death can be lightly decided with no sense of human affinity, in the most fortunate of cases, on the basis of a pure judgement of utility. It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term "extermination camp", and it is now clear what we seek to express with the phrase: "to lie on the bottom" ...
... It grieves me because it means that I have to translate his uncertain Italian and his quiet manner of speaking of a good soldier into my language of an incredulous man. But this was the sense, not forgotten either then or later: that precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilisation. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last - the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves with our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.
For human nature is such that grief and pain - even simultaneously suffered - do not add up as a whole in our consciousness, but hide, the lesser behind the greater, according to a definite law of perspective. It is providential and is our means of surviving the camp. And this is the reason why so often in free life often hears it said that man is never content. In fact it is not a question of a human incapacity for a state of absolute happiness, but of an ever-insufficient knowledge of the complete nature of the state of unhappiness; so that the single name of the major cause is given to all its causes, which are composite and set out in an order of urgency. And if the most immediate cause of stress comes to an end, you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others ...
... However little sense there may be in trying to specify why I, rather than thousands of others, managed to survive the test, I believe that it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid, as for his having constantly remind me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside of our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth surviving.
12 May 2012
Jenni Fagan ...
... remembered being pregnant in The Independent today and the world she painted for her yet-to-be-born son is exciting and full of life. It is exactly how I picture a friend of mine in NY will be liked when she becomes pregnant ...
The truth of it is this – we live in a world without explanation, in a galaxy and universe surrounded by galaxies and universes and nobody asks questions too loudly because the answers are sketchy at best. I can't explain to you why we arrive as seeds and leave as dust, but I can show you the truth in rainbows. I can bake you pancakes, and take you to the park in autumn so we can kick up the leaves ...
... We step onto the pavement and an old man swerves by us, singing loudly in Italian. His coat is covered in shiny badges. He gestures at passers-by as if he is ushering them off a plane, and they try to avoid him.
This is life – in all its smelly glory! I hope you can forgive me for bringing you into it, especially if you think too much like I do. It's OK really, the ache of being alive, the beat of your own heart, the silence of unanswerable questions. There are shooting stars, and music, and there is magic if you learn how to look – and it is still our world, no matter how many other people might try to convince you, it's mostly theirs.
It is yours and it is mine.
And all these other people walking by us in the snow, it's their world too.
The truth of it is this – we live in a world without explanation, in a galaxy and universe surrounded by galaxies and universes and nobody asks questions too loudly because the answers are sketchy at best. I can't explain to you why we arrive as seeds and leave as dust, but I can show you the truth in rainbows. I can bake you pancakes, and take you to the park in autumn so we can kick up the leaves ...
... We step onto the pavement and an old man swerves by us, singing loudly in Italian. His coat is covered in shiny badges. He gestures at passers-by as if he is ushering them off a plane, and they try to avoid him.
This is life – in all its smelly glory! I hope you can forgive me for bringing you into it, especially if you think too much like I do. It's OK really, the ache of being alive, the beat of your own heart, the silence of unanswerable questions. There are shooting stars, and music, and there is magic if you learn how to look – and it is still our world, no matter how many other people might try to convince you, it's mostly theirs.
It is yours and it is mine.
And all these other people walking by us in the snow, it's their world too.
07 May 2012
Becoming a Jackal ...
... is a song by the Villagers. The lyrics reminds me a little of the portraits painted by Lucian Freud, not sure why ...
The most familiar room
Every implement was leading to you
And your homely sense of dissaray
Never once the same
Always rearranged
But things would never change
In the seam between the window frame
Where the jackals preyed on every soul
Where they tied you to a pole
And stripped you of your clothes
I was a dreamer
Staring at windows
Out onto the main street
Cause that's where the dream goes
And each time they found fresh meat to chew
I would turn away and return to you
You would offer me your unmade bed
Feed me till I'm fed
And read me till I'm read
But when the morning came
You would catch me at the window again
And your homely sense of dissaray
Never once the same
Always rearranged
But things would never change
In the seam between the window frame
Where the jackals preyed on every soul
Where they tied you to a pole
And stripped you of your clothes
I was a dreamer
Staring at windows
Out onto the main street
Cause that's where the dream goes
And each time they found fresh meat to chew
I would turn away and return to you
You would offer me your unmade bed
Feed me till I'm fed
And read me till I'm read
But when the morning came
You would catch me at the window again
In an eyes wide open sleeping state
Staring into space
With no look upon my face
Staring into space
With no look upon my face
I was a dreamer
Staring at windows
Out onto the main street
Cause that's where the dream goes
And when I got older
When I grew older
Out onto the streets I flew
Released from your shackles
I danced with the Jackals
And learned a new way to move
So before you take this song as truth
You should wonder what I'm taking from you
How I benefit from you being here
Lending me your ears
While I'm selling you my fears
I danced with the Jackals
And learned a new way to move
So before you take this song as truth
You should wonder what I'm taking from you
How I benefit from you being here
Lending me your ears
While I'm selling you my fears
06 May 2012
Lucian Freud ...
... is an artist whose works I cannot fully comprehend, as he paints his subjects so violently and tenderly at the same time. The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery was truly astonishing. His studio, the importance of punctuality in his sitter, the silence between them, the unknowable of another person reminds me of psychotherapy and he once said,“When you find things very moving, the desire to find out more lessens rather. Rather like when in love with someone you don’t want to meet the parents.”
"Portrait of the Hound" is his last unfinished nude portrait of his long term assistant (David Dawson) and his whippet (Eli). It is a most affecting portrait, as the rawness of the human soul and its physical imperfections lie bare ...
Waiting for the dark, waiting for the light ...
.. by Ivan Klima is a book I came across at Prague earlier this year. It is set around the time of the Velvet Revolution (1989) and explores whether arts, dreams and identities can survive under a totalitarian regimen, reminding me a little of the hope aspired by the recent Arab Spring ...
But Peter began to talk about himself. He said he thought it was his responsibility to take the position when it was offered but now he felt like an interloper. Some hated him, some tried to suck up to him and others tried to curry favor with him by informing on their colleagues. Yet he had neither the inclination nor the desire to play the judge. We all lived in this country. Given the conditions that existed here, every one of us came out of it scarred in some way. And who can establish a borderline between guilt and innocence, when that borderline runs somewhere right down the middle of each and every person? People overthrew the old regimen in the hope that they would finally see justice done. There would have to be an attempt at some kind of judgement. "Someone can probably be found who can establish that borderline," Peter said, "but it won't be me. The job will probably be done by someone who will use it to cover up his own guilt".
What was justice?
But Peter began to talk about himself. He said he thought it was his responsibility to take the position when it was offered but now he felt like an interloper. Some hated him, some tried to suck up to him and others tried to curry favor with him by informing on their colleagues. Yet he had neither the inclination nor the desire to play the judge. We all lived in this country. Given the conditions that existed here, every one of us came out of it scarred in some way. And who can establish a borderline between guilt and innocence, when that borderline runs somewhere right down the middle of each and every person? People overthrew the old regimen in the hope that they would finally see justice done. There would have to be an attempt at some kind of judgement. "Someone can probably be found who can establish that borderline," Peter said, "but it won't be me. The job will probably be done by someone who will use it to cover up his own guilt".
What was justice?
Justice was revenge wrapping itself in a cloak of high principle.
03 May 2012
Famous ...
... by Naomi Shihab Nye, is a poem sent to me from a friend in DC, a world full of famous people ... I love the last stanza and really hope that each of us finds a way to be famous as described in this little poem ...
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
02 May 2012
I saw a hippy girl on 8th avenue ...
... by Jeffrey Lewis came onto my ipod this morning, and it made me smile ... I have been sitting in a psychiatry meeting for the last 2 days with quite famous professors/clinicians, and one of them did spot a long white ponytail, sang a Spanish song during dinner while in a suit ... so he is still a hippy at heart :)
I saw a hippy girl on 8th avenue
She barely looked at me for a second or two
And I suddenly realized I no longer looked much like a hippy
mmmmm
She had a long thin dress and rainbow clothes
Not long ago I wore one of those
But now-a-days I guess I don't very much like anything
mmmmm
I had a great pair of bellbottoms, I had two
My friend borrowed one and the other I outgrew
And now to the eye I'm turning into another non-descript guy
But I still travel light and my hair is still long
I still hate deoderant and I still sing songs
But over the years I've noticed I'm not dressing as colourfully and psychedelic as I used to
'Cause I wore my tye-dyes until they rotted to shreds
And I can no longer follow The Greatful Dead
And it's gotten to the point where I don't even identify with most Phish fans anymore
And someday soon I know I'll cut my hair
And a week after that I know I won't even care
It's how it all comes to all along
Everything that you feel will one day feel wrong
I was talking to my friend Eric
Just to see what he think
And he said "Jeff, it's weird
But I no longer look like a punk"
I guess we don't need our clothes for an identity crutch
And we looked at each other and we didn't look like much
And we looked out at the world like a movie theatre
At all the hippies and the punks and the skinheads and the skaters
And someday or other maybe sooner or later they'll come to the realization
That what's important is whether you can carry on a human conversation
It's not what you wear on the outside
It's how you think and feel on the inside.
I saw a hippy girl on 8th avenue
She barely looked at me for a second or two
And I suddenly realized I no longer looked much like a hippy
mmmmm
She had a long thin dress and rainbow clothes
Not long ago I wore one of those
But now-a-days I guess I don't very much like anything
mmmmm
I had a great pair of bellbottoms, I had two
My friend borrowed one and the other I outgrew
And now to the eye I'm turning into another non-descript guy
But I still travel light and my hair is still long
I still hate deoderant and I still sing songs
But over the years I've noticed I'm not dressing as colourfully and psychedelic as I used to
'Cause I wore my tye-dyes until they rotted to shreds
And I can no longer follow The Greatful Dead
And it's gotten to the point where I don't even identify with most Phish fans anymore
And someday soon I know I'll cut my hair
And a week after that I know I won't even care
It's how it all comes to all along
Everything that you feel will one day feel wrong
I was talking to my friend Eric
Just to see what he think
And he said "Jeff, it's weird
But I no longer look like a punk"
I guess we don't need our clothes for an identity crutch
And we looked at each other and we didn't look like much
And we looked out at the world like a movie theatre
At all the hippies and the punks and the skinheads and the skaters
And someday or other maybe sooner or later they'll come to the realization
That what's important is whether you can carry on a human conversation
It's not what you wear on the outside
It's how you think and feel on the inside.
29 April 2012
Alfred Edward Housman ...
... For him, rain was always associated with lost love. London has been bathed in rain for the last two weeks and I wonder if long buried memories are once again being discovered and pondered upon ...
The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases
And I lie down alone.
The rainy Pleiads wester,
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of
That will not dream of me.
The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases
And I lie down alone.
The rainy Pleiads wester,
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of
That will not dream of me.
23 April 2012
Rabbit Proof Fence ...
... is a beautiful film by Phillip Noyce about the struggles of the indigenous Aboriginal people and illustrates the importance of empathy and humility even when we believe we are absolutely right, as we only can ever view the world through one pair of eyes ...
"This is a true story - story of my sister Daisy, my cousin Gracie and me when we were little. Our people, the Jigalong mob, we were desert people then, walking all over our land. My mum told me about how the white people came to our country. They made a storehouse here at Jigalong - brought clothes and other things - flour, tobacco, tea. Gave them to us on ration day. We came there, made a camp nearby. They were building a long fence".
"This is a true story - story of my sister Daisy, my cousin Gracie and me when we were little. Our people, the Jigalong mob, we were desert people then, walking all over our land. My mum told me about how the white people came to our country. They made a storehouse here at Jigalong - brought clothes and other things - flour, tobacco, tea. Gave them to us on ration day. We came there, made a camp nearby. They were building a long fence".
Humboldt's Gift ...
... is a book by Saul Bellow about art, literature, poetry in the materialistic world of America. A novel with lots of meandering musing about life but I think the following paragraph is a true reflection of our lives today ...
"Some think that sloth, one of the capital sins, means ordinary laziness," I began. "Sticking in the mud. Sleeping at the switch. But sloth has to cover a great deal of despair. Sloth is really a busy condition, hyperactive. This activity drives off the wonderful rest or balance without which there can be no poetry or art or thought - none of the highest human functions. These slothful sinners are not able to acquiesce in their own being, as some philosophers say. They labor because rest terrifies them. The old philosophy distinguished between knowledge achieved by effort (ratio) and knowledge received (intelletus) by the listening soul that can hear the essence of things and comes to understand the marvellous. But this calls for unusual strength of soul. The more so since society claims more and more and more of your inner self and infects you with its restlessness. It trains you in distraction, colonizes consciousness as fast as consciousness advances. The true poise, that of contemplation or imagination, sits right on the border of sleep and dreaming. Now, Naomi, as I was lying stretched out in America, determined to resists its material interests and hoping for redemption by art, I fell into a deep snooze that lasted for years and decades. Evidently I didn't have what it took. What it took was more strength, more courage, more stature. America is an overwhelming phenomenon, of course. But there's no excuse, really. Luckily, I am still alive and perhaps there's even some time still left".
"Some think that sloth, one of the capital sins, means ordinary laziness," I began. "Sticking in the mud. Sleeping at the switch. But sloth has to cover a great deal of despair. Sloth is really a busy condition, hyperactive. This activity drives off the wonderful rest or balance without which there can be no poetry or art or thought - none of the highest human functions. These slothful sinners are not able to acquiesce in their own being, as some philosophers say. They labor because rest terrifies them. The old philosophy distinguished between knowledge achieved by effort (ratio) and knowledge received (intelletus) by the listening soul that can hear the essence of things and comes to understand the marvellous. But this calls for unusual strength of soul. The more so since society claims more and more and more of your inner self and infects you with its restlessness. It trains you in distraction, colonizes consciousness as fast as consciousness advances. The true poise, that of contemplation or imagination, sits right on the border of sleep and dreaming. Now, Naomi, as I was lying stretched out in America, determined to resists its material interests and hoping for redemption by art, I fell into a deep snooze that lasted for years and decades. Evidently I didn't have what it took. What it took was more strength, more courage, more stature. America is an overwhelming phenomenon, of course. But there's no excuse, really. Luckily, I am still alive and perhaps there's even some time still left".
08 April 2012
The Sense of an Ending ...
... by Julian Barnes is about the malleable nature of an individual's memory; the pains we have unknowingly caused and the crushing sense of remorse upon discovery ...
I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever costs. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.
Also when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. You image yourself being lonely, divorced, widowed; children growing away from you, friends dying. You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire - and desirability. You may go further and consider your own approaching death, which, despite what company you may muster, can only be faced alone. But all this is looking ahead. What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from that future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously keep records - in words, sound, pictures - you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping. What was the line Adrian used to quote? "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation".
What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had either won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain? Well, that was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to avoid being hurt - and inflicted for precisely that reason.
I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever costs. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.
Also when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. You image yourself being lonely, divorced, widowed; children growing away from you, friends dying. You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire - and desirability. You may go further and consider your own approaching death, which, despite what company you may muster, can only be faced alone. But all this is looking ahead. What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from that future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously keep records - in words, sound, pictures - you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping. What was the line Adrian used to quote? "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation".
What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had either won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain? Well, that was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to avoid being hurt - and inflicted for precisely that reason.
10 March 2012
Diamond and rust ...
... by Joan Baez ...
I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed
Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there
Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Because I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid
I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed
Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there
Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Because I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid
09 March 2012
Mourning and Melancholia ...
... By Sigmund Freud
"The distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment ...
Thus the shadow of the object fell upon the ego, and the latter could henceforth be judged by a special agency, as though it were an object, the forsaken object. In this way an object-loss was transformed into an ego-loss and the conflict between the ego and the loved person into a cleavage between the critical activity of the ego and the ego as altered by identification".
"The distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment ...
Thus the shadow of the object fell upon the ego, and the latter could henceforth be judged by a special agency, as though it were an object, the forsaken object. In this way an object-loss was transformed into an ego-loss and the conflict between the ego and the loved person into a cleavage between the critical activity of the ego and the ego as altered by identification".
04 March 2012
Oresteia by Aeschylus
Zeus has led us on to know,
The Helmsman lays it down as law
That we must suffer, suffer into truth.
We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart
the pain of pain remembered comes again,
and we resist, but ripeness comes as well.
From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench
there comes a violent love.
(translated by Robert Fagles, 1977)
The Helmsman lays it down as law
That we must suffer, suffer into truth.
We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart
the pain of pain remembered comes again,
and we resist, but ripeness comes as well.
From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench
there comes a violent love.
(translated by Robert Fagles, 1977)
22 February 2012
Truth at all costs ...
... is the title of a service in London on 10th November 2010 in remembrance of the sacrifices made by those involved with reporting from war zones. The transcript below is given by the inspiring Marie Colvin.
Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured and humbled to be speaking to you at this service tonight to remember the journalists and their support staff who gave their lives to report from the war zones of the 21st Century. I have been a war correspondent for most of my professional life. It has always been a hard calling. But the need for frontline, objective reporting has never been more compelling.
Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction, and death, and trying to bear witness. It means trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of propaganda when armies, tribes or terrorists clash. And yes, it means taking risks, not just for yourself but often for the people who work closely with you.
Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defence or the Pentagon, and all the sanitised language describing smart bombs and pinpoint strikes, the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children.
Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?
Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price. Tonight we honour the 49 journalists and support staff who were killed bringing the news to our shores. We also remember journalists around the world who have been wounded, maimed or kidnapped and held hostage for months. It has never been more dangerous to be a war correspondent, because the journalist in the combat zone has become a prime target.
I lost my eye in an ambush in the Sri Lankan civil war. I had gone to the northern Tamil area from which journalists were banned and found an unreported humanitarian disaster. As I was smuggled back across the internal border, a soldier launched a grenade at me and the shrapnel sliced into my face and chest. He knew what he was doing.
Just last week, I had a coffee in Afghanistan with a photographer friend, Joao Silva. We talked about the terror one feels and must contain when patrolling on an embed with the armed forces through fields and villages in Afghanistan...putting one foot in front of the other, steeling yourself each step for the blast. The expectation of that blast is the stuff of nightmares. Two days after our meeting Joao stepped on a mine and lost both legs at the knee.
Many of you here must have asked yourselves, or be asking yourselves now, is it worth the cost in lives, heartbreak, loss? Can we really make a difference?
I faced that question when I was injured. In fact one paper ran a headline saying, has Marie Colvin gone too far this time? My answer then, and now, was that it is worth it.
Today in this church are friends, colleagues and families who know exactly what I am talking about, and bear the cost of those experiences, as do their families and loved ones.
Today we must also remember how important it is that news organisations continue to invest in sending us out at great cost, both financial and emotional, to cover stories.
We go to remote war zones to report what is happening. The public have a right to know what our government, and our armed forces, are doing in our name. Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.
The history of our profession is one to be proud of. The first war correspondent in the modern era was William Howard Russell of The Times, who was sent to cover the Crimean conflict when a British-led coalition fought an invading Russian army.
Billy Russell, as the troops called him, created a firestorm of public indignation back home by revealing inadequate equipment, scandalous treatment of the wounded, especially when they were repatriated - does this sound familiar? - and an incompetent high command that led to the folly of the Charge of the Light Brigade. It was a breakthrough in war reporting. Until then, wars were reported by junior officers who sent back dispatches to newspapers. Billy Russell went to war with an open mind, a telescope, a notebook and a bottle of brandy. I first went to war with a typewriter, and learned to tap out a telex tape. It could take days to get from the front to a telephone or telex machine.
War reporting has changed greatly in just the last few years. Now we go to war with a satellite phone, laptop, video camera and a flak jacket. I point my satellite phone to South Southwest in Afghanistan, press a button and I have filed.
In an age of 24/7 rolling news, blogs and twitters, we are on constant call wherever we are. But war reporting is still essentially the same - someone has to go there and see what is happening. You can't get that information without going to places where people are being shot at, and others are shooting at you. The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that enough people be they government, military or the man on the street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or the TV screen.
We do have that faith because we believe we do make a difference.
And we could not make that difference - or begin to do our job - without the fixers, drivers, and translators, who face the same risks and die in appalling numbers. Today we honour them as much as the front line journalists who have died in pursuit of the truth. They have kept the faith as we who remain must continue to do.
Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured and humbled to be speaking to you at this service tonight to remember the journalists and their support staff who gave their lives to report from the war zones of the 21st Century. I have been a war correspondent for most of my professional life. It has always been a hard calling. But the need for frontline, objective reporting has never been more compelling.
Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction, and death, and trying to bear witness. It means trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of propaganda when armies, tribes or terrorists clash. And yes, it means taking risks, not just for yourself but often for the people who work closely with you.
Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defence or the Pentagon, and all the sanitised language describing smart bombs and pinpoint strikes, the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children.
Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?
Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price. Tonight we honour the 49 journalists and support staff who were killed bringing the news to our shores. We also remember journalists around the world who have been wounded, maimed or kidnapped and held hostage for months. It has never been more dangerous to be a war correspondent, because the journalist in the combat zone has become a prime target.
I lost my eye in an ambush in the Sri Lankan civil war. I had gone to the northern Tamil area from which journalists were banned and found an unreported humanitarian disaster. As I was smuggled back across the internal border, a soldier launched a grenade at me and the shrapnel sliced into my face and chest. He knew what he was doing.
Just last week, I had a coffee in Afghanistan with a photographer friend, Joao Silva. We talked about the terror one feels and must contain when patrolling on an embed with the armed forces through fields and villages in Afghanistan...putting one foot in front of the other, steeling yourself each step for the blast. The expectation of that blast is the stuff of nightmares. Two days after our meeting Joao stepped on a mine and lost both legs at the knee.
Many of you here must have asked yourselves, or be asking yourselves now, is it worth the cost in lives, heartbreak, loss? Can we really make a difference?
I faced that question when I was injured. In fact one paper ran a headline saying, has Marie Colvin gone too far this time? My answer then, and now, was that it is worth it.
Today in this church are friends, colleagues and families who know exactly what I am talking about, and bear the cost of those experiences, as do their families and loved ones.
Today we must also remember how important it is that news organisations continue to invest in sending us out at great cost, both financial and emotional, to cover stories.
We go to remote war zones to report what is happening. The public have a right to know what our government, and our armed forces, are doing in our name. Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.
The history of our profession is one to be proud of. The first war correspondent in the modern era was William Howard Russell of The Times, who was sent to cover the Crimean conflict when a British-led coalition fought an invading Russian army.
Billy Russell, as the troops called him, created a firestorm of public indignation back home by revealing inadequate equipment, scandalous treatment of the wounded, especially when they were repatriated - does this sound familiar? - and an incompetent high command that led to the folly of the Charge of the Light Brigade. It was a breakthrough in war reporting. Until then, wars were reported by junior officers who sent back dispatches to newspapers. Billy Russell went to war with an open mind, a telescope, a notebook and a bottle of brandy. I first went to war with a typewriter, and learned to tap out a telex tape. It could take days to get from the front to a telephone or telex machine.
War reporting has changed greatly in just the last few years. Now we go to war with a satellite phone, laptop, video camera and a flak jacket. I point my satellite phone to South Southwest in Afghanistan, press a button and I have filed.
In an age of 24/7 rolling news, blogs and twitters, we are on constant call wherever we are. But war reporting is still essentially the same - someone has to go there and see what is happening. You can't get that information without going to places where people are being shot at, and others are shooting at you. The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that enough people be they government, military or the man on the street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or the TV screen.
We do have that faith because we believe we do make a difference.
And we could not make that difference - or begin to do our job - without the fixers, drivers, and translators, who face the same risks and die in appalling numbers. Today we honour them as much as the front line journalists who have died in pursuit of the truth. They have kept the faith as we who remain must continue to do.
19 February 2012
Le Quattro Volte ...
... is a enigmatic poignant film by Michelangelo Frammartino. I do not think that I completely understood it but time did indeed slow down as if you were wandering alone in a slightly-forgotten small medieval Italian village. It reminded me of the cyclical nature of the universe; fallen leaves, snow covered landscape, birth of a goat, death of a man, fear of abandonment, festive joy, tree, log and smoke.
The title comes from Pythagoras and spoke of each of us having four lives within us; the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human. Maybe it is impossible to truly understand the universe and we can only participate in its internal clock, trying to walk in its pace ...
13 February 2012
David Hockney ...
... at the Royal Academy of Art was full of psychedically coloured woods, trees and flowers, awing me with the wonders of nature through the prism of memory while urging me to look at the world afresh one more time ...
‘We see with memory. My memory is different from yours, so if we are both standing in the same place we’re not quite seeing the same thing. Different individuals have different memories; therefore other elements are playing a part. Whether you have been in a place before will affect you, and how well you know it. There’s no objective vision ever – ever.’ (David Hockney speaking to Martin Gayford, 2009).
David Hockney, 'The Arrival Of Spring', 2011.
Woldgate Woods, 21, 23 and 29 November 2006.
"Every tree is different. Every single one. The branches, the forces in it; they are marvellously different. You are thrilled. This is the infinity of nature." (David Hockney speaking to MArco Livingstone, 2008).
‘We see with memory. My memory is different from yours, so if we are both standing in the same place we’re not quite seeing the same thing. Different individuals have different memories; therefore other elements are playing a part. Whether you have been in a place before will affect you, and how well you know it. There’s no objective vision ever – ever.’ (David Hockney speaking to Martin Gayford, 2009).
David Hockney, 'The Arrival Of Spring', 2011.
Woldgate Woods, 21, 23 and 29 November 2006.
"Every tree is different. Every single one. The branches, the forces in it; they are marvellously different. You are thrilled. This is the infinity of nature." (David Hockney speaking to MArco Livingstone, 2008).
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