Red of the Soul...

Dissent: to know the price of compromise.

M.D.F's book is so beautifully produced that you almost don't want to read it, or at least you're inclined to savour it like one would a fine wine (or so I'm told). But nothing prepares you for the effortless prose; whilst glancing (yes, why is your reading always so superficial?!) through some of the essays Hazlitt's words fly off at the page and at you so that you get the distinct impression that you're swimming through a sea of words; Foot's prose on the other hand comes across as more grounded, rooted...iron in the soul.

Both have brief sketches of their fathers, something that is quite endearing. For some odd reason there isn't much of that in bloggerworld-or at least you don't come across it. Maybe that's all for the best given your distaste for cheap sentimentality (what, is there any other kind?).

"...my father threw back his spectacles over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue."

The red and the black.

And what is the finest essay in the whole of the English language according to Mr. Foot?

There was this line by will Self? about how Hazlitt's essays are too pre-determined, perhaps even slightly didactic-especially in comparison to Montaigne's.

The Indian Juggler is simply dazzling and one of my favourites. And the way it swerves one way then the other..also, the idea that through plain speech and common phrases something profound can emerge immediately strikes you as what counts in favour of modernity. This line of thought, that within an ordinary life there can be majesty if not grandeur, continues in art, music, and film...

The Fight:

'You talk just as well as he [Cobbett] writes.'

Hazlitt expresses a desire for a form of communication removed from the regulation and the normative power of institutions...before all theory or "educational regimes"...when expression is suddenly freed from psychological, social, or political constraint.'

That is a fantasy, of course, but a charming one nevertheless and in those rare moments when the clothes fall away, so to speak, we do speak, & we find ourselves (even) with nothing to say. None of that stuffy affected European "intellectuality" but a plain English, as a "bit of human nature" (or, if you like: "...in the last scene, between death and ourselves, there is no more pretending; we must talk plain French"). No talk of death or existential anxiety; no mention of death or time  or "the soul"; no exaggerated reminiscing about what has been irretrievably lost; no idle speculations about eternal life or ridiculously grandiose claims for art; not to speak of...of. Not the afterlife, then, not the false note of seriousness that men in hats carry around with them to hide their shallowness. Not speak, memory, but to speak now, since the small fires of November are lit, and it is a time for forgiveness.

Notes to myself from myself

Hazlitt: print removes knowledge from the esoteric and makes available to all. cp. tyranny: secrecy, ignorance, divine origin of political authority.

In politics: public opinion, public reasoning, rather than the truth. Reasoning as the ability to take a second look (re-vision); in life: the ability to take a step back or sideways and let the traffic flow..second-takes, second spaces.

Hazlitt: Radical commitment is infantile cp. the maturity of second thoughts. Egotism: the inability to see other points of view, to place oneself at the centre of everything. When one does see the other side, there is an incredible capitulation. But if one has sympathy for the other side from the beginning, is open to the possibility that there is some value/truth to the opposing view, then one can sustain one's commitments. This, ultimately, depends on a 'dramatic flexibility' of character.

Hazlitt, the 'good hater'.. Browning? ..he hated well...he hated the things that prevented him from loving. 

Democracy is made by its habit of passionate and various communications.

Any view can contradict another because there is no single vantage point. What emerges will be provisional, something subject to refinement, further inquiry, elucidation.

'Hazlitt's devotion to impossibility, failed projects, catastrophes, whatever resists redemption.' Spectacle, entertainment, diversions-'to momentarily suppress the solitary's awareness of his solitude.'

Certain movements and impressions of the hand and eye, having been repeated together an infinite number of times, are unconsciously but unavoidably cemented into closer and closer union.

On J. Cavanagh: 'His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind complete. He could do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly what to do. He saw the whole game, and played it.'

Remarkabale qualities, especially when most of us never see the 'whole game'.

'A form of writing which frames moments of energy or revelation in melancholic reflection' .

This notion that the stylish might be something richer, deeper than surface illumination, a way of writing/thinking as a way of being. Panache. There's something fundamentally appealing about the ease and urbanity of people settled in their ways. Even the plodding peasant has some redeeming qualities (I guess). Nostalgia for a rural idyll or some supposed lost age of innocence is quite amusing though. Peasants are sly and crafty bastards. I suppose they're  not as bad as the self-styled religious folks or Commies or, indeed, as delusional as those who hark back to some sort of lost golden age infused with Tradition, Religion.

Whilst solitude is always precious I suspect it is even more so in times of verbal hyperinflation, instant messaging, and against the background of the cacophony of gossipers and media clowns, as well as the relentless onslaught of images. On the other hand, it's overestimated: if abstract reason isolates as well, then the altenative is surely good conversation, just as a remedy for the fragmentation  of our consciousness is the icon and a training in how to stop, look, and listen (rather than an iconoclasm).  

Beasts of the wild

Buckle up, people.

Over the last 800,000 years Co2 levels have never been above 300 parts per million (ppm). Currently, the Co2 -equivalent level (i.e. including methane) is about 430 ppm. An increase of 30 ppm has never occurred in less than a thousand years but the last increase of 30 happened in just 17 years.

Co2 stays in the atmosphere for, on average, 5-200 years. But that's an average...there are some suggestions that it could be up to 1,000 years. So, even if we cut back now, there's still a chance of significant increases in temperature over time. In reality, because of "feedback effects" and the possibility of non-linear systems or "thresholds" we're not even sure in our projections of : i) how much Co2 there might be and ii) the damage it might cause. In short, we have a "cascade of uncertainty" (IPCC, 2007).

As the great natural philosopher once said: there are unknown unknowns.
~~~

Just saw the beautiful film, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Bought Yellow Birds from O'Hare. Looks good. A recent report out on sexual violence in the army. Second thought: is that so surprising? Glancing through Finley's Ancient Economy and the depressing thought strikes you:  just how many people have been treated like chattel down the years or, alternatively, how few people have or had autonomous, decent lives?

Burn the Maths

'But I know I had a growing feeling in the later years of my work at the subject that a good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypotheses was very unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules---(1) Use mathematics as a short-hand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can't succeed in 4, burn 3.'

In academia there are many ways to be clever (and perhaps not too many to be wise). But why should one believe that intelligence ought to be rooted in schools or the university ? To say that it should be institutionalized is just crazy. There are other ways to be intelligent and intelligence isn't everything anyway. You can have a Ph.D. and still be a major league asshole. That probably doesn't capture the whole of it: can still be, and probably are.

Marshall, like other critics (Morishima) was himself a mathematical economist and so there's some weight to his comments.

It does appear that what counts is technical competence as well as the desire and ability to publish highly complex stuff in journals that no-one but other technicians can read and understand. God forbid that there should be public scrutiny of one's ideas! A 'clever' person who isn't also a self-publicist isn't really that clever after all. But what other kind of intelligence could there be if precision and "rigour" aren't all they're cracked up to be?

I think the first thing is to be aware of the history of one's subject ( a history of ideas). Then one might see that a lot of work is just (moderately) new wine in old bottles. Secondly, one should be aware of first principles, assumptions, understand the 'ways of approaching'; thirdly, one should be able to make connections-within a discipline and across them. Fourthly, one shouldn't be driven by theory or techniques (Marshall's 'engine of inquiry' point); fifthly, one should have some idea of what can and should, and what cannot and should not, be studied: the attempt at universal theorizing is dangerous. Having some idea of what one doesn't know is useful. Related to these points, I guess,  is the ability to say: "I do not know" and "we may never know". Sixth, abstraction and making generalizations is all well and good, but what's the point if you can't communicate those ideas except in a specialized, obtuse language?  

He falls
but never to the depth.
Falls, the shadow,
across her face,
like the moon's blemish.

Alone, I know not where I am.
The world is false as water.
It echoes back the heart’s  desire.
Love burns in changes of the moon.

...

the devil and the blues

"I don't give a fuck what they say," is Malian rapper Amkoullel's terse answer to a question about the Islamist music ban. "We won't let them get away with it. We don't need them to teach us how to be Muslims. We're a secular tolerant country, where everyone declares their religion according to their feeling. And in any case, they know that a Mali without music is an impossibility."

"I'm a Muslim, but Sharia isn't my thing," says Rokia Traore, one of Mali's most famous international stars. "If I couldn't go up on stage anymore, I would cease to exist. And without music, Mali will cease to exist."

More news from a strange planet: At one level its heartening to hear people defiant in the face of such obtuseness; still, you can't but help feel depressed at the speed with which this plague is spreading...

Yesterday I had an intriguing conversation with someone who has gone the other way. Started out as a real firebrand, "the most hardcore person in my batch", someone who wrote polemical articles saying the killing of  certain minorities was justified to someone who now doesn't believe. Smart, articulate, and with an incredible passion for reading, understanding, this person, a historian of sorts,  is now an avid fan of classical music (Chopin). But it does make you wonder: how can one hold such views in the first place? Is it just 'natural' if you're brought up in a household were such views are rife? Also, what is it that makes someone switch? In his case it seemed to be that the defeat of the Taleban wasn't followed by the end of the world. And finally, what is it that actually changes: the content of one's thoughts, the style of thinking, a change of heart?

This is a question for all of us, really. Especially when you hit middle-age and realize that your views are becoming  even more rigid by the day and you're becoming more set in your ways, literally hungering for some sort of order in your life (you must admit that the extent of it is nothing more troublesome than not having your butter in a butter tray and having jam out of a jar rather than from a small bowl. How anal is that!).

barbarians at the gates

'They are turning the holy sanctuary into a machine, a city which has no identity, no heritage, no culture and no natural environment.'

---from The Guardian.

There's something barbaric about the Saudis. Of course, if it was just about architecture or aesthetics it wouldn't be so bad, but it's really symptomatic of a really bizarre mindset that finds expression in many walks of life (attitudes to women, other faiths, etc.). I really couldn't give a fig what the towel-heads do, but the fact that they're exporting their brand of ignorance everywhere else makes me slightly nervy.

A people or government that has such disdain for its own past is really quite delusional. I once had lunch with a local maulvi here and despite spending the first thirty years of his life in the U.S. he didn't want to talk about America at all. That was odd, very odd, for it is hard to imagine that anyone who hasn't had extremely unpleasant childhood experiences would want to willingly negate what is so obviously a part of the fabric of their life.

This is not about some sort of blind sense of nostalgia or the arrest of all development. After all, one could quite easily advocate a middle path, one of an organic development that is line with a country's history, traditions, culture and environment. To say that some buildings have value because they are of historical/cultural or aesthetic merit is not the same thing as saying there should be no change whatsoever. There's a kind of fanaticism that wants to hold on to the past too tightly-just as there's a kind of fanaticism that wants to reject it in toto.

I wonder if there's a whiff of Stalinism in all this? One of the strangest things you noticed at Essex was just how much the East Europeans seemed to hate-and hate with a venom-their own country. It was as if Communism had, in addition to creating some horrendously ugly buildings, blanked out people's memories (and maybe the two are connected).

At another, less insidious, level there is the development of the bland, monotonous shopping malls in many (American) cities, so that what is distinctive of a particular place is lost to the vision of the planners; it's all about getting from A to B with least resistance.

...

How strange you have to be to remain faithful.
---G. Hill.

In a world of constant flux, sovereign becoming, to think of how many seasons have passed without understanding and not reach out for something familiar-a book, a smile, newspapers-is no mean feat. What is an act of faith? Everything is different, you hear someone say, when viewed in a sacred light.

The last remnants of colours on the trees, high decaying bronze, earth slowing, dark places becoming darker..October is a great turning point in the course of things. In November you will forgive me, Anna. What do you remember? To your astonishment you keep the music with you, close by. You think, in a childish way really, that you can lock some sort of feeling deep in you and draw on it later. Except it doesn't work that way. Nothing's stored and nothing can be stored. And yet you can't accept the flow either. Not to speak of the heart.

Lost my way, lost count, crossed too many thresholds, and didn't cross any. Keeping, not finding. Back, step back, sit down with one knee on the floor, tying your laces outside the school on the hill. How strange, our unfaithful hearts! Most of the books I have remain unread and there were so many flowers whose name I never knew.

Needs/Desire

Need, desire. For a long time now modern man has forgotten how to talk in terms of what he needs, for to talk in terms of needs is to recognize one's limits, one's dependence on others and other things. Desires, on the other hand, are limitless and point to-at least theoretically-a person's autonomy, his or her freedom from necessity. You don't ask why you desire something or someone (let's just stick with 'thing' to avoid unnecessary complications)..tastes are just taken as given, they just 'are'.

To speak of desires is easy and nothing is lost; they are often light, weightless, nothing that reveals too much about you the person, whereas needs get to the core of what you're about; needs single you out as fundamentally lacking in something. What is more isolating than a person in need? Paradoxically, there is a tendency to reaffirm a kind of unity with other needy beings...what defines us, in this reading, is that we share the same needs. For example, the needs of the body, even if mediated by society, are held to be universal, non-relative. And around that a form of politics can be built, perhaps...universal rights. But what of the needs  that cannot be expressed such, or that are not so easily recognizable? I need you, I don't need you. Indeed!

Economics doesn't help here. Preferences or desires are not distinguished according to how they relate to what we really need. Any reflection on what we ought to desire isn't part of the story. The intensity of one's preferences or desires doesn't have to relate to some intrinsic value of the object of one's desire; in fact, one's desiring is what makes the object valuable.

Somehow you think that if you knew what you really needed you'd know yourself. 

wilderness; a jewish life...

On the road again, in-between places...looking for familiar voices, people, places...the anchors of the world when there are no anchors...the great greying tree outside the window, the tree stump in the park from which little r would deliver her lectures on what's wrong with the world; the rickety old bridge across the Roding, behind the Baptist Church, where a black dog licked little r's cheek ("why did he do that?"). The music in our lives, each note strikes then falls...finds home, leaves home.

The flailing marriages, the old ones less fluent, gasping at the loss of words, the middle-aged friends at a crossroads, the mystery...how did we end up here?! the young ones blissfully innocent of history, enraptured by the latest computer game.

Against the Day

The October light, still with a hint of summer somewhere at its back, a warmth in the details. As time passes, as you grow older, certain days and hours are picked out, like a word in a book that is underlined. The brilliance of the light falls on the sloping school yard, on rusting leaves, reflects off high windows; each person  becomes more distinct and yet less sure of themselves. Someone fumbles with a book in their pocket on the train. Two women, who are really men, sit sadly next to one another, against the world.

Q tells me the story of how Ghazali was once robbed. He pleads with the robbers not to take his books-his prize possession. But they do, and they tell him: you shouldn't value something so much that it's loss causes you such distress. After that Ghazali learns all his work off by heart, as if he could stave off the dissolution, protect himself from the randomness of life, by simply memorizing what he knew.

In a seven minute walk you come across three galleries in the swanky part of town: Rothko and some Japanese photographer (their work horribly juxtaposed); Auerbach whose beautiful brush? strokes reveal an underlying structure of a human personality (really must get R. Hughes's monograph); and Luc Tuymans, whose 'grey paintings' are something you've always wanted to see.

The flowers still stirring in their frozen dream, the sun's light gently touching their outer being. The frost creeping up on the conservatory window, a thin veil of intricate patterns webbed on the glass, refracting the light, making it dense, slow, profound. You notice the seasons more as more are stored up. The great tree hunches its shoulders like an old homeless man, preparing for a harsh winter. The accumulation of memories in its grain, against the grain...

The days are numbered. Six or seven. Time passes like a series of blank pages, until once again a word emerges, and that word was your name.   

~~~

b's great adventure in the US of A.

Back in ol' blighty after a whirlwind trip to the States. You forgot just how polite and courteous the Yanks are. Really quite remarkable. Old world charm, I guess. And the lovely accents...when C said: "are we all set here?" your heart nearly melted.

Stuck at the ungodly Newark for eight hours. A very old black woman, bespectacled, chicken-necked, looked at me and said: "looks like you is stuck here, baby!". The problem was, of course, that you looked at everyone through the prism of tv. memories. So, for instance, the taxi driver at NY was really Gene Wilder. One degree or two to the side and you could have sworn this was Lukas, your German friend. You were half expecting Starsky and Hutch to show up...

Also, everyone wanted to talk to you, to confess to some failing or heartbreak. I think that's less to do with the naive gullible look I have and more to do with the fact that a considerable amount of Americans are slightly unhinged in my opinion.

Past Chicago, the lovely blazing reds and deep bronzes of Fall. The bus driver of the Lincoln Express said he'd take me right up to the hotel for "less than a taxi". When we got there I said, trying to scam him, "I'm truly overwhelmed by your generosity, Sir"(If I'd had a southern accent it would have gone down a treat). He just looked at me and said, "That'll be five bucks". Anyway, I only had two and some change and poured them into his outstretched hands. Well, there you go...East End cunningness always beats Yankee gullibility hands down. Felt quite sorry for him, actually. He looked like an old Paul Newman with his clean half-sleeve white shirt and two-shade brown sunglasses. The driver on the way back, Mr. Lewis, was a real character. Genuinely funny. I was gonna do my Paul Newman from Cool Hand Luke there...gen-u-wine

At Newark airport, outside  Dunkin' Donuts, where I spent 4 hours gulping down sweet coffee, a man wearing light blue jeans, sneakers, and baseball cap started talking to me. Here he was, the quintessential "loser". He was "on the run". He was "hot". Had left his uncle's funeral where the money from the safe had gone missing. "Family, they mess ya up". I was going to tell him the famous line from Larkin but it would have been lost on him. He delivered newspapers for 27 years and was now in Phoenix. "And what do you do in Phoenix?"

"Not'ng..ain't much to do out there"

~~~

The talk itself went okay. Met a Mr Wang who told me this old Chinese line: each child is born to be kind. "That's lovely," I said.

"Oh no, " he replied, in a thick Chinese accent. I and my wife ah baptist for 27 yeah..we Baptist...everyone born in sin! And we both laughed.

~~~

the inventory

The things I have lost over the years...

A Gilgiti hat, my book on dinosaurs, friends, the Guinness Book of World Records, my fear of that disabled veteran in the wheelchair near the train station, South Wales, the opportunity to become rich for the rest of my life (let's not go there!), furniture, my heart, a black cardigan, sun glasses, some hair, a collection of old coins, stamps, a carefree smile, old tin soldiers, a sense of direction, marbles, my mind(?), belongingness, the ability to spell, socks, a wedding ring, time, registration papers, und einiges, was ich niemand verrate...

Some things are lost, some are irretrievable; some you forget, some you can't but help remember. A silver mirror makes your heart sink; a gold cup at your lips, and the world was full again. Learn to let go. At this age you realize there is no learning. Hold on, then, b. Ah, the wisp of regret, the mortal coil, the unfolding of a piece of paper, an indecipherable list of 'things to do', books 'to read'; little r, in a fit of beautiful destructiveness, has drawn a crazy series of circles over the lists. In all the lists in the world, and the lists of lists, there are some things the heart cannot speak of.   

taking the piss

Somehow I stumbled across an article on German humour...you're taking the piss, right?

As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron,

---Denise. 

With the arctic sea ice rapidly melting (the summer arctic is half what it was in 1979 in area terms...probably even less, volume-wise), the polar bears aren't going to be so leisurely any more. How serious is this? We don't know, but it does appear that temperatures in that region are increasing at twice the global rate and it's not clear what impact that will have on the release of 'sequestered methane' and sea levels.

The swami said that her father saved some saffron that someone brought from Kashmir for the wedding of his six daughters. Good saffron was, or so the saying went, as precious as gold. A small touch can transform the whole meal. You wonder about that: the idea of saving, of storing up, of not always expressing everything, savouring...the future moment as real and wonderful as anything else even if it never arrives, is only leisurely dreamed about.

~~~

Consumer culture has made us too accustomed to getting only what we want, no more and no less. Experiences are atomised into their component parts, the extraneous excised in an attempt to maximise the impact of the parts we prefer, with no thought to how their context changes them. But if you only ever get what you know you already want, serendipity is denied and the richness of experience is reduced to the button-pushing delivery of crude hits of fun, excitement, novelty or reassurance, often consumed in the private bubble of home or headphone.

---Julian Baggini.