Winter House

HitchEnds

2011-12-17T01:22:00.016Z

I confess that Christopher Hitchens was a relatively recent literary discovery for me. I got to read his Hitch-22 memoir which was published earlier this year and I developed a liking not necessarily for his views and opinions but for the man himself. A prodigious wordsmith and a rigorous intellectual - he was truly a superior fellow.

While I strongly repudiated some of his views in an earlier post, I've always been held in awe of the potency of his rhetoric. In interviews, this came across even more brilliantly. Hearing him argue was like listening to David Gilmour sing - a commanding, fatherly voice with an elegantly measured tone. Aside from his brain, it was his greatest asset.

If he was drunk for the better part of his life, he damn well sobered up by the end. And a graceful end it was, calmly accepting his fate while fervently rebelling against it. It was a Camusian death, a truly 'happy' one.

It seemed to me he always had this inherently human quality about him. He was the arch-nemesis of anything which rendered man soulless, be it a totalitarian regime or an illusive religion, or an empty glass of whiskey. In one of his last interviews, he said he'd like to 'do' death, to take an active part in his own 'extinction'. Rather than falling into a chronic depression, he sought to make sense of his cosmic being right to the very end.

Whether it was his belligerent stance on the Iraq War or his revilement of God, you might have agreed or disagreed with him, but you would have promptly declined to take part in a debate against him. Sometimes you may not have necessarily trusted his opinion, but you could always count on his intellect.

If I had to pick out a character of literature that most resembled his persona, it would be the the famous doctor and avowed atheist Desplein from Balzac's The Atheist's Mass. Desplein attends Mass strictly four times a year in honour of his dead friend Bourgeat who helped him when he was in dire straits and eventually became his lifelong companion. Bourgeat was a devoted Christian but he never challenged Desplein's outspoken atheism. Upon his death, Desplein swore to regularly hold Mass for him as a kind act of gratitude and respect for their friendship, all in spite of his clinical lack of faith. Though religiously neutral, Desplein proves his humanity and strong devotion to the person he prized most as a friend.
Hitchens, like Desplein, was more human than he was Christian but still less of an atheist than he was human. He embodied the principle of not denying anything but nevertheless doubting everything.

Indeed, as intelligent doubt transcends blind faith, humanity transcends religion. This is how it is on Earth. Is it the same in Heaven too? It should be, otherwise it would be Hell.

May the Hitch rest in peace.

Today I Fall In Love Again

2011-12-15T03:52:00.002Z

Forgotten classic from the early 80s - was not on YouTube until now...

The Tree of Life

2011-12-05T13:34:00.003Z

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation ... while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Book of Job 38:7

These are the opening words of wisdom to “The Tree of Life”, by Terrence Malick, starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and to a smaller extent, Sean Penn.
I went to see it a couple of weeks ago, hooked on some flattering reviews, including a full four-star appraisal by Roger Ebert himself. The first half an hour or so did not look particularly promising as by then some people had walked out already. Indeed, the 30-40 minutes of continuous creation and evolution was heavy-going. The formation of the universe, of our dear planet Earth, of living organisms, of dinosaurs and marine creatures – it was all spectacularly overpowering. It felt like a National Geographic documentary more than a Brad Pitt/Sean Penn blockbuster, which I was secretly hoping it wouldn’t be anyway.

We are then immersed in the life of a typical, 1950s American suburban family - the O’Briens. The father (Brad Pitt) is ex-military and evidently took part in the war. He is a plaintive, Bible-bashing patriarch who insists his children address him as ‘Sir’. The mother (Jessica Chastain) is gentle and diplomatic, and she speaks very little, though she always looks as though she has a lot say.

For the majority of the film we slowly follow the three young children around the house and neighbourhood, as they develop as individuals and come to gradually lose their rose-tinted view of the world. We learn at the start that one of the children has died (perhaps in the Vietnam War), and we see the mother and father’s anguish as they cope with this tragedy.
The highlight of the film is not its stunning cinematography – this is a device primarily used for perspective. It makes the lens through which we see the world that much wider. Malick’s point of view is that of the Hubble Space Telescope, with huge aperture, peering into life’s cosmic depths.

The real beauty of the film is the O’Brien family. We are thrust into their lives, from birth till death. We see the boys growing up. We see O’Brien senior coping with his own disillusionment in life, by being a stern but loving father. He takes his sons to church on Sundays, while teaching them basic self-defence skills back home. “In this life,” he says, “you can’t be too good”. Or else? “People woul’ take advan’age of ya.”

Simple words, rendered eternal by the narrative’s slow but effective unfolding. From the point of view of a filmmaker, it is precisely the moment when a character utters such uncomplicated, almost clichéd words, that is the real gamble. Will it work? Will it be derided for being clichéd, or will it be cherished as poetry?

In Malick’s case, the gamble pays off. By the time these lines are pronounced, we are so fixated on the life of the O’Briens and have established such rapport with them that we feel almost a part of the family. We discern bits of our own childhood in there, from the mischief in the classroom to hearing your parents’ muffled arguments through half-open windows – these are all simple memories shared by us all. They can cause pain and turmoil when gazed at from a distance and this is what the film is compelling us to do.

The only other movie which achieves that very same effect as skilfully is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror. Of course, nothing comes close the Russian masterpiece in terms of pure lyricism and fluidity, but the essence is there, namely a sort of Proustian “a la recherche du temps perdu”.

We are periodically carried over to the present where one of their children (Sean Penn), now grown up and an architect, reminisces about his childhood, his parents and his brothers. Something obviously irks him from deep inside. It is a cocktail of guilt and nostalgia, served ice cold in the hourglass of his middle-age. The film itself offers us such a cocktail too and this is where it scores the most points.

Malick views art as a form of interrogation. First, it triggers an emotion: neurons are pumped up from one place to another. Then the heart picks up the pace. And then we see a bit of ourselves in there, among the many specks that make up the image we are looking at. The brain’s primary forte is association. It connects all those little dots that make up our consciousness, and then just as fast, it erases other dots and connections. Our mind impresses and represses at the same time. But somewhere along the way, the reverse happens, and there erupts within our psyche, the irksome, long-repressed memory of a distant past. This is what Sean Penn’s melancholy hero experiences as he wanders around the convoluted, almost surreal architectural maze of the city he inhabits – a landscape no doubt reflective of the state of mind he finds himself in.

How can one possibly reconcile oneself to this repressed memory? The pain of knowing that this precious little bubble of reminiscence is but an apparition of a moment, lost in time and space, never to come back – it is a shock from which we can recover only by reliving it again through art. It’s a mental simulation, an age-old survival mechanism.

Is it perhaps the same thing which deters that Troodon from killing the fallen Parasaurolophus by the riverside, in one of the film’s most enigmatic episodes? Mercy against all the odds? Note how right after this curious scene, we see an asteroid slamming into the earth and wiping out the dinosaurs. Is the Troodon divinely punished for defying its nature? Is this an allusion to humankind’s tendency to lose itself in hubris, revolting against the natural world, denying its own essence?

At the end of the film, we see all the O’Briens, dead and at peace with each other, on a seemingly endless beach .They are smiling, kissing and hugging each other. They are tenderly stroking each other’s cheeks with their hands. This is Malick’s vision of paradise. United in death, the family is together, happy and free.

Likewise, in its finest hour of great pity and selflessness, the Troodon is killed, along with all of its kind. In Tarkovsky’s Mirror, the faceless narrator dies stroking a dead bird which is mysteriously brought back to life at the moment of his death. It seems that for Malick as for Tarkovsky, tenderness is our most noble invention but at the same time, it is what’s killing us softy.

Derain's London

2011-11-24T12:58:00.007Z

The best painted view of London in my opinion is Big Ben by Andre Derain. This 1906 Fauvist jewel of a painting struck me deep upon my first setting eyes on it. The brilliant luminosity, the casual dabs of warm colours set against a vast expanse of cold blues and greens – it’s a mesmerizing artwork. Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament are blue – cool, detached and distant. The sky and the water are part-blue, part-green. It’s a vision of a city bathing in dusky nonchalance. The sun’s gingerly rays are subdued, not by clouds or the London smog, but by the city’s inherent alienation. They can be seen only as a wayward reflection on the Thames.
This was the London back then. It is the London of today too. Like a badly-kept diary, the city hosts our most intimate experiences and ponderings, at once deeply private and precariously public.

Derain’s image is a universal one, irrespective of the time of day, or season.

Having had to constantly commute around London for years, I’ve come to understand the alienation of the big city, as written about in books and shown in films. These days, with the advent of Kindles and Blackberries, it’s decidedly worse. You board a train and every passenger around is glued to the one or the other, or both. You enclose yourself, trying to escape the suffocating mass of others around you, wishing you were home already. At first I was annoyed by this spectral anonymity – cold and impersonal, like Derain’s Big Ben. By the end, I had adopted the same method, only with an actual book instead of a Kindle.

But whether it is on a train or on the Tube, the sight of a row of people buried in their iPhones, iPads or Blackberries, texting away or playing games is somewhat unsettling. Not that there is anything wrong with it of course, but it is the true face of the big city – its most candid image. No historical landmark or cultural monument can claim to represent the city more authentically than this image. This daily hustle is its pulse. Sure, there are the parks – these are the pages written in invisible ink on the badly-kept diary that is the city: intimate and fresh, and when it comes to privacy, one of the few alternatives to the stuffy back rows of cinema screens. Finding peace and intimacy in London is a rare treat, much like catching a glimpse of the London sunset from Parliament Hill in Hampstead Heath – magnificent but seldom cloudless or without fog. All in all, the sun is a marginal character on the London skyline, locked in constant battle with the grey clouds and white mists for dominion over its vast expanse.

Generations upon generations of organic growth – London is the city of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. One fictional, the other real; one good, the other evil, but both united in their profound knowledge of the city. Holmes himself says in one Conan Doyle’s stories – “the thief or the murderer could roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle , unseen until he pounces, and then evident only to his victim.”

Having been out in London at night on many occasions, I’ve always kept this quote at the back of mind. My chance encounters so far have thankfully never been with any murderers or thieves. But strolling around the centre of the city at the early hours of the morning is the most intense experience the metropolis has to offer. At this point, it sleeps. Gone are the tourists; gone are the commuters; gone is the daily bustle. The city now dreams. Streetlights are reflected on the wet pavements and roads. Famous squares and landmarks are delicately illuminated, ethereal in the cool night air. Only shady clubs and McDonalds restaurants are still open, with crowds gathered outside throughout the night. It’s mostly quiet, save for some light traffic on the streets.

It’s dangerous but I feel bizarrely safe. Somehow I’ve grown to feel at home on these streets. The city acts as a sort of father-figure, embracing its sons and daughters. If I am walking late at night with a friend, there’s a ghost steadily walking along with us. It is no tiger waiting to pounce over us; it is London itself.

The city inhabitant (so called ‘urbanite’), is an adaptable creature. He is wary of what’s lurking around the corner, or who is walking behind him. He is confronted daily with human vice, in all sizes and shapes. In any big city, crime is a tradition, a spectacle, almost a ritual. Its dark labyrinthine alleyways enable crime, breed crime, from mugging to murder. The urbanite, engulfed by the ravishing spectacle of ubiquitous crime, becomes infected by its omnipotent presence. He is dwarfed by soaring corporate towers, stifled by congested roads, his voice lost in the buzzing metropolitan beehive. He is no longer the sturdy cowboy his ego urges him to be. Instead, he is a little rose-cheeked cherub, meek and shy, always finding himself around the edges on the epic canvas of city life. Such a peripheral existence makes him somewhat of a coward who sees but does not act. He enjoys the comfortable luxury of anonymity by being indifferent and invisible. A scuffle on a bus is of no concern to him – why risk getting stabbed to death or going through the arduous process of being a witness for the police, when he can walk out in one piece, free of the burden of civic duty?

With my dad being a bus driver, I’ve heard the same disturbing story time and time again- how when an argument erupts on the bus, or even a punch-up, and afterwards he calls for any witnesses among the passengers, they scowl and quietly depart from the scene.

This is the urbanite’s la condition humaine. Chin down, eyes low, brows high: snappy but subdued, with a shroud of fog descending upon his face at the first sign of trouble brewing before him.

In Derain’s painting, little specks of red and orange make up Westminster Bridge and show up on the Thames, and of course the sun itself. They are marginalised however, confined to a nominal existence on the peripheries of the image. Overwhelmed by the ubiquity of the blues and greens, they are nevertheless there. The sun’s rays still manage to illuminate a section of the Thames, and the contours of the bridge are almost entirely painted in red. These warm colours rebelliously assert their presence within the painting. So, in the midst of this dusky nonchalance, there are flickers of radiant warmth, rare and precious. Derain recognised the scarcity of this warmth and understood its true value, hence his defiant dabs of red and orange. He knew that London’s peace and warmth are as frail and fleeting as the colours of its sunset.

It's A Balkan Thing

2011-08-30T23:57:00.007+01:00

In a recent article by Christopher Hitchens, one of God’s most ruthless assassins, the Serbian ultra-nationalist issue is discussed from a point of view of religious fanaticism. Prompted by the recent capture of Gen. Radko Mladic, Hitchens sums up Balkan history in a nutshell:

“It would be nearer the truth to say that the entire history of the region is one long confessional feud that when allied to ultra-toxic nationalism was strong enough to drag the entire modern world into a catastrophic war in the summer of 1914.”

Except this nutshell is more like a hot-air balloon, inflated by Hitchens’ own ideological expediency.
First of all, blaming the incident of ‘summer 1914’ as the root cause of World War One is a rather crude example of blind historical negligence. It was more of a simple catalyst, a casus belli, an excuse than a truly fundamental cause. The reasons for full-scale war date back to times and events, prior to 1914 and are considerably more complex and certainly cannot be summarized in a single ‘hitchslap’ sentence.

Second of all, the claim that the “entire history of the region is one long confessional feud” is as vague as it is untrue. The entire history of the region does not revolve around Serbian nationalism and the Serbian Orthodox Church. There are other countries, other nations and other political agendas there – Yugoslavia is not the answer to everything.

Hitchens then goes on another of his coolly-controlled, anti-religious lectures, concluding that “religion nearly destroyed the economy and society of former Yugoslavia and did deep and lasting damage to its people and culture”.

Coming from the Balkans, but living in the UK, I have constantly had to contend with a wearisome paradox. I find myself deploring war crimes committed by the Serbs during the appalling wars of the 90s, but on the other hand I feel a fundamental closeness with this mystical region, inescapable and alluring. I know it well; I’ve lived half my life in it. I know its culture, its history, its people. I also know its problems. I remember being childishly awe-struck by the sight of two NATO F-16 fighters cruising in the sky above Bulgaria on a beautiful summer’s day, during the ugly Kosovo War in 1999. I remember the then infamous joke circulating from mouth to mouth around every village and town in Bulgaria, about the Serbs formally apologising for shooting down an ‘invisible’ American stealth plane – ‘sorry we didn’t know it was invisible!’, the joke ran.

When recently I was discussing the capture of General Mladic with a friend of mine, who is a Politics student, I found his fervent stance on the issue quite disconcerting. With powerful, unwavering conviction, he repeated over and over again: “8000 innocent Bosnians massacred”, “worst mass murder since the Holocaust”, and so on. As a Balkan native, I felt a big catch-22 lump in my throat. I knew I wouldn’t be true to myself if I had simply nodded off his invective against Mladic and the Srebrenica massacre. In such moments I always instinctively feel the need to be defensive; to produce a counter-argument that would instil doubt and suspicion within my friend’s Americanised line of reasoning. Striving to accept my Balkan background and acknowledge it wherever I go and whoever I meet, I find myself delicately exculpating alleged mass murderers such as Mladic. Not because I sympathise with them but because I sympathise with the land that produced them.
Is it to assuage a certain guilt that I bear over the fact that I come from a region largely in disrepute? It is as though the very fact that I am from the Balkans makes me indirectly complicit in any atrocity that happens or has happened there. Sometimes I feel my origin hanging around my neck like Coleridge’s albatross.

There is nothing in the Serbian Orthodox Church, neither rite nor doctrine that encourages babies to be slaughtered in the hands of their mothers. Hitchens’ reference to the Ustase catholic-fascist organisation in Croatia during the Second World War over-emphasizes the role of religion at the expense of the more accurate case of extreme nationalism which seeking to assert its fundamentalist values expediently utilizes the symbolic and propagandistic power of religion. Religious faith is a mediator not a cause in such conflicts. The prime mover in this case is ultra-nationalist radicalism which has seeped through the region with deadly infectiousness and has done so for decades, exacerbated by the still popular myth surrounding Marshall Tito and the nationalist pride which his name still yields in the hearts of many Serbs today.

In my experience, Serbia has always been the flagship of nationalism in the Balkans. The Serbs are innately hot-headed, ready to draw knives and guns at the slightest jolt of their patriotic self-identity. They are generally far more zealous in their convictions than say my fellow countrymen, the Bulgarians. Their naturally fiery passions coagulate in an ultra-nationalism that only time will shake off and destroy. And though these passions already seem to diminish and fade from the picture in today’s Serbia, as demonstrated by the relatively minor protests against General Mladic’s extradition to The Hague, the memory of the catastrophic wars of the 90s will be the albatross around the country’s neck. Such guilt is hard to swallow let alone acknowledge. Is it still deep inside, accumulating, and waiting to erupt? Unlikely, considering Serbia’s current pro-Western government, more interested in pragmatics than principles.

But in light of the media’s scorn for all things Balkan and appetite for murder and mayhem, Hitchens’ painfully biased article is a step too far. This is not a Michael Palin-presented, reader’s-digest travel show demagogically aiming to alleviate the West’s culpability in world affairs, but an essay by one of our heavyweight intellectuals, whose opinion counts and whose words are chewed over and over by many political publications and blogs. His views resound through the net and in print, written with a permanent marker on the white board of Balkan discourse, already graffitied enough with the smears and smirks of Western propaganda.

A single glance at the ending of Mr Hitchens’ article exposes his means to an end:

“Religion nearly destroyed the economy and society of former Yugoslavia and did deep and lasting damage to its people and culture. But in the journal of record for American liberalism, the profound connection between faith and fanaticism is treated as if it were a startling exception rather than a grim rule.”

From the affairs of the Balkans and former Yugoslavia, we are suddenly transported back to the US and find ourselves riding the waves of Hitchens’ life-long polemic against religion, through a critique of American liberalism. In the end, his fiery tirade against religion’s debilitating impact on the Balkans turns out to be nothing more than a vehicle to further his own personal anti-religious agenda.
If you read Voltaire’s entry on the Bulgarians in his Philosophical Dictionary (Part I), you will begin to realise that this ignorance and complacency is traditional and part of the norm in the West’s view of the Balkans. And if Voltaire himself could partake in this tradition, it would seem preposterous to expect anything less from our very own Enlightenment extraordinaire Christopher Hitchens.

The Marquise With Red Wine

2011-08-01T18:32:00.005+01:00

I recall about a year ago I was working as a bar person at this annual regatta - a job a friend of mine got me. At one point as I was pouring yet another pint (it took longer for me to pour it than the customer to drink it) I glanced around, seeing as there weren’t many guests around, my eyes met with those of a well-dressed, blonde middle-aged woman who was peering straight at me, unflinchingly. I momentarily looked back down at the pint and then again turned towards her – she was still standing there at the bar, idle and frozen, and still gazing at me.

Though I felt slightly uneasy I only assumed she wanted a drink. I finally managed to pour the pint, after spilling twice its weight on the floor. I approached her and kindly asked her if she would like anything from the bar. Still looking straight at me, she shook her head, her lips gently motioning a silent no. Her head was slightly tilted down, eyes bulging forward – a feline, almost a Kubrickian sort of gaze. I looked at her again and her eyes were still locked onto me, as though she was challenging me on a who-would-blink-first competition. Her gaze followed me around as I moved to the other side of the bar to serve another customer.

Not only did I feel slightly uncomfortable but also somewhat intimidated. She was I’m guessing in her mid forties. I said she was well dressed but was she really? She had an office-like, indigo skirt with a matching jacket and a clean, crisp white shirt underneath. Presentable but lacking imagination, as though she was there to oblige a rich husband: she did not in the least care about the regatta. Casually holding a slender glass of red wine in her hand, she was standing by the bar, alone, with nobody, not even a ladyfriend in sight. This regatta was a posh event, with plenty of evidently wealthy guests. She was clearly part of the entourage.

Blonde hair down to her shoulders, she was fairly tall, with a shapely frame. Her stillness was stately but her tight-fitting skirt implied a coquettishness that I found particularly attractive. Her face was pretty but pending a wrinkle or two. It was her eyes that I found especially unnerving. I know that look. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it in films; I’ve pictured it in novels. It is the aristocratic middle-aged wife, all polished and accomplished, lonely and unhappy. It’s the sort of high-society woman, like the Marquise de Listomere that Eugene de Rastignac incessantly talks about and desires, in Balzac’s stories: “She has principles, she fasts, takes the sacrament, and goes to balls and operas very elegantly dressed; her confessor permits her to combine the mundane with sanctity."

Of course I doubt this woman fasts and takes the sacrament, but you get the point. Did the way she was standing there, completely by herself, detached from the other guests, momentarily removed from the world, peering at me, imply a loneliness of the kind Rastignac sees in women like Marquise de Listomere?

Even though I have often been told by guys and gals alike that I am good-looking and I admittedly do receive the occasional eye from girls wherever I go, I’ve often found it hard to accept these compliments and looks without a pinch of salt. Wearing a repugnant, oversized promotional t-shirt compulsory for the occasion, I did not exactly picture myself as an Adonis. And yet because I do get these sort of looks from time to time, I knew this marquise had something in mind. Her eyes were royal green, sharp and penetrating, almost predatory. This was a woman who married not out love but out of pure pragmatism. She was not a mistress or a high-flying prostitute: these women make more of an effort in the sartorial department. No, her bland style could only be of an unhappily married woman of worldly demeanour but sheltered character. And there is me, young and innocent, novice as much as in the pint-pouring business as in life itself. And there she was, the sun setting on her face, with a half-filled glass of red wine in her hand where its crimson rays converge. It’s a curious relationship, that of a younger man with an older woman- a scenario I have often pondered over. I am reminded of Aunt Pelageya’s words to the young Tolstoy that there was nothing better for a young man’s development than an affair with an older woman.

This fleeting encounter made me think about the veracity of this statement. There was something feral about this woman’s eyes. Even when I looked back at her and my eyes were interlocked with hers for a few seconds, she did not recoil. In this visual impasse, it was I who withdrew first. Did she purposefully seek to make me baulk under the weight of her gaze? For fun maybe? Were the crafty, alpha-female sparkles in her eyes the last remnants of this woman’s dignity? Behind her firm, unyielding facade, there was a girly vulnerability which I knew was there, hidden behind years of expert spin doctoring for the benefit of someone else. A woman does not seek money or security. Above all, she seeks attention. Constant, unceasing, undying attention.

I felt the urge to talk to her. Anything would do. No, it was pointless. As much as the resplendent fantasies of being with an older, attractive woman are alive and well in me and most young men my age, I was overcome by hesitation. I thought I should give her a polite smile, to comply with my good customer service skills. In the end I turned shyly from her and onto the next marquis or marquise, asking for a glass of red wine.

Murdoch Wasn't Yet Born....

2011-08-01T09:55:00.004+01:00

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there's no occasion to.

(Humbert Wolfe, 1924)

Camus in the Panthéon?

2009-11-24T03:06:00.005Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8375244.stm

The calls to scrap the idea of re-interring Albert Camus in the Panthéon are justified in my view. Last year when I went to France, I briefly stopped by Villeblevin - the little village near Paris where he was killed in a car crash almost exactly 50 years ago. I visited the unassuming monument at the site of the crash. The rural humbleness and charm of the place emanated a soft scent of earthliness and humanity: the unimposing stone relief of Camus's head boded well with this atmosphere. It was simple and modest and perfectly so.

As far as I know, Camus himself is buried in a similar sort of place in southern France. He better stay there. The great figures in the Panthéon (Voltaire, Emile Zola, etc) all died in old age - an age befitting the grand classicism of the Panthéon .

It elicits admiration without sympathy.

There, closer to the earthly world and thus to humanity Camus should rest befitting not his age but his character.

While his philosophy makes the individual's mortality easier to swallow, he died too young - he is simply not and never will be ready for the Panthéon because he was simply not ready for death. This calls for admiration and sympathy alike. Let it stay that way.

10 Best Films Still Available On YouTube

2009-09-21T11:48:00.011+01:00

"Available" is the variable in this case. Hurry up and enjoy it illegally - no YouTube film lasts forever! Great for the casual viewer too.

10.Gold Rush - This is one is a joke actually - it's too old to be removed from YouTube!

9.Goodfellas - Overrated but still fun to watch.

8.The Postman (Il Postino) - Not overrated and still fun to watch.

7. Andrei Rublev - Recommended by the Roman Catholic Church itself! - the only thing this film and Catholicism have in common and I would like to take the opportunity to thank God for that!

6.Ivan's Childhood - Sartre actually wrote a long essay defending it from critics - it's just that good.

5.Once Upon A Time In The West - Forget the cowboy hats, forget the gun shootouts, forget even Henry Fonda's blue eyes - this film's real intelligence lies in its central character: The Woman (personified by Claudia Cardinale). In essence, everything revolves around her: Harmonica, Cheyenne - at the core of their heroism is found their genuine wish to protect a brave though still defenceless woman. Harmonica's revenge is not only personal - that's just one of dimension of it: it's also a revenge for the savage taking away of a woman's natural right to have a family to take care of. The noblest type of revenge surely?

4.The Seventh Seal - Why did this film leave such a mark upon my consciousness? It's naive and outdated. Bibi Andersson's long, golden hair? - but it's a black & white film! The squire's earthly and cynical magnetism? The humour? The film is 52 years old in cinematic terms and 1052 in comic terms . No, it's the treatment of death - its inevitability is made strangely beautiful.

3.Mirror (Tarkovsky) - Directly combining the individual's tragedy with that of humanity as a whole - no film has ever done that so well. Nature itself is like an individual character in it. Greatest film ever? Yep.

2. La Notte - The charismatic actors are to blame! It's a boring film but so are all of Antonioni's works. While he does use excessive symbolism, it's not a simple visual play of signifier/signified, it's just a subtler way to probe into the depths of our emotions - I do get it.
It's beautiful actually.

1. L'Samourai - The Bushido code of the Japanese samurai warrior transposed onto the gloomy streets of 60's Paris, and Alain Delon in the title role. The solitude, spartan conditions and morbidity which engulf the protagonist...it's a different world, an attractive world for all the wrong reasons. The final scene is one of the best ever.

A New Type Of Leadership

2009-08-25T00:02:00.014+01:00

I have often imagined what it's like to be one of those great military leaders of antiquity or the Middle Ages: battles, bloodshed, unburied corpses gorged on by ravenous vultures - all sights of vileness and cruelty, potentially combined to end in victory though of the pyrrhic type. The risk involved is colossal.

A leader of that type has to take into consideration so many things - all of equal importance more or less - food supplies, intelligence, potential revolts, discipline, tactics, etc. Thousands of lives at stakes; the leader is but one, though his safety is not guaranteed either.

Leadership cannot escape the heroic brand it proudly bears. This is because of the charisma which graces the pages of history's great leaders: from the dvinity of Alexander to the megalomania of Napoleon. Let's face it: the battle turning heavy cavalry force is not imbued in the character of everyone. It has to be nurtured.

Why do so many children idolise great leaders of the past? Because the charisma required to lead men into the thralls of death is the same as the charisma which would fight back the bullies at school? Or young people - do they think that the charisma required to inspire an outnumbered army to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat is the same as the charisma which could help them win the heart of a woman?

Rather than an answer, this provokes another question: how many of those great leaders completely resigned themselves to the ideal of their leadership, refraining from wine and women, preferring war and politics. As such, charisma is buttressed by devotion and self-discipline.

Of course I find myself inspired by those straightforward, belligerent, vive-la-revolution sayings like, 'if you want peace, prepare for war', but I also realise that their glory is found in their realism, in their sober, down-to-earth recognition of humanity's only way to get even with death.
Sayings like that dig a hole into the concept of conformity, but it's like digging a hole in the ground - the deeper you dig, the more trapped you, yourself become. Thus you lead yourself out of conformity to lead other men into it.

You can be the leader of an army, a state, an age - it's all to do with charisma. In their leadership qualities, their charisma, devotion, self-discipline, the noblest, most abstemious prophet and the cruellest, most tyrannical dictator meet and recognise each other.
Jesus was charismatic but so was Hitler. They were both leaders in their own, particular way and they were both successful in what they set out to do, though neither of them won in the end, especially the latter. They were conjoined by their charisma however distant they were from each other in terms of their words and actions.

That is why the concept of leadership, the very idea of being such a leader is an entrancing one; but one does not have to bother with acquiring an army or instigating a coup d'etait. Why? Because the essence of leadership is the will to accomplish, and it all boils down to leading an age, an epoch - the noblest type of leadership.

Armies are slain, states are subjugated; but an age is yet more poweful and resilient because it exists in the heart, forged by the continuous, titianic clash between preservation and progress.

The leader of an age, one among many perhaps, is that spear ripping through the air with its sharp, pointy tip, carrying the freedom of man to live in an age which can be called as such; that very same spear on which is stuck and brandished a copy of the epopee which we find ourselves dreaming of living in.

We live in Africa, an intellectual one: the times are starving, the age is starving, blogs are starving, and isn't this very thought of the need of this type of leadership the key in which the requiem of the world would be composed?

Candles

2009-08-12T17:50:00.003+01:00

All the souvenirs on my desk and bookshelf,
all the postcards on my wall,
and all the posters too,
all that reminds me of places
that I have been to...
whether I've waded through them,
or they've waded through me...

doesn't matter,
because if my room was a church,
a temple of the Lord,
all those things would the candles be,
all bright with a delicate blaze,
and in harmony too

and if should my room
a church become...
...and all those postcards, posters, souvenirs
into candles be turned,
then the delicate blaze,
however delicate,
will burn me alive on the spot...

Like some heretic I will burn then,
(there are so many of them 'candles'!),
in body, I will be turned into ash,
in spirit too, but not because of them 'candles',
but because of something else -

- nobody ever asked me where I got each one from!

Tragedy On Both Sides Of The Equation

2009-08-06T00:05:00.012+01:00

The text below is a comment I found left by a forum user concerning the death of the Bulgarian actor Antonii Genov, three years ago - an actor of which I am a huge admirer. His characters were always highly intellectual, spiritually potent and strong with a melancholy disposition, mellow but captivating voice and careful, equanimous conduct. He was very popular during the Communist era though he went underground afterwards.

He died supposedly of alcoholism brought about by years of solitude and self-imposed exile.

I translated the comment and decided to post it here because I think it's nicely written and contains an exact and truthful vision of my beloved bastard of a country which I visited recently - a trip to which I may devote a separate post at some point.

Anyway, here it is:

"Antonii really was a great actor! Not just with his films roles, but his performances in the theatre too...

What killed him, like so many cultural figures, intellectuals and many other decent people from the various tiers of the social pyramid, was all that happened in Bulgaria after 10th Nevember 1989 (fall of communism), and which became a byword for disillusionment in the minds of people - the so-called 'democracy'. What killed all of them was the eventual structuring of the social system which differed hugely from what they imagined on their 'Aesop-style' theatrical stage and in the images and visions they painted with their quills, believing that there lay the future of the nation they belonged to. People perish like flies, overwhelmed and crushed by fundamental democratic reforms - that is death as imagined today. But the cyclically reproduced by the system greed, aggression, spiritual degradation; the nihilism offered to us by our politicians, serving the economic interests of their western and Russian mentors - all that will end up killing us and our children, slowly and stealthily. All this until we 'federalise' ourselves as a country, until Bulgarian becomes the second most popular language in the land of Asparuh, Simeon, Levski and Botev and we start dancing our folk dances in late-night clubs - some as emigrants in another country, others as spiritual emigrants in their own land."

Tragedy on both sides of the equation as I would like to call it - the worst kind of tragedy, no doubt. One thing leads to another, another leads to yet another. The end is but the betrayal of the beginning.

Back on Track, Hopefully

2009-06-24T13:51:00.003+01:00

The last post had an air of morbidity about it, I know. Often happiness and me go together like Superman and kryptonite and though it hurts, it heals.
It's not the end though. Posts should be resumed at some point.

Last Week

2009-05-25T17:04:00.006+01:00

Last week:

-A flatmate overdosed on painkillers so I spent most of the night in hospital with her

-I had my heart broken

-I threw up in a pub

-I got so wasted I felt as though my head was going to explode

-I got an extraordinarily low mark for one of my university essays

-I nearly ruined my relationship with the person who in a matter of weeks has appreciated me as a person better than anyone I have ever met

----

Right now this thought is buzzing over my head like a bunch of flies over a corpse:

Sadness can indeed be inspiring but not now, not at the moment...

On Feminism

2009-05-07T23:36:00.006+01:00

The rather genteel recent debate on feminism at Reflections of the Damned has left my hopes for a bloodier dispute rather empty.

So I've decided to be honest, a bit absurd, a bit ridiculous, a bit silly:

The true feminist is the type of person who would go on a holiday in Turkey with a couple of friends, and having arrived at the magnificent Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, he/she would suddenly, when there isn't the tinniest bit of expectation in the air, take out the Turkish flag and set it alight in a determined, demonstrative way, to the utter shock of his/her friends.

At the precise moment before suffering a violent death at the hands of passers-by, he/she would just as suddenly, with no less determination, triumphantly cry out to his/her friends:

'Leave me, save yourselves! Run!'

His/her unfortunate and clueless friends however, inevitably caught up in the melee, would also be ingloriously slain.

Hate me if you wish to but there, I've said it! (sigh)

Pillaging The Past

2009-05-03T11:41:00.003+01:00

The ongoing war in Iraq has undoubtedly caused havoc from a cultural point of view. Among the thousands of victims claimed, the country's rich historical past has also suffered major casualties.
Even at the very beginning of the war in 2003, the Baghdad National Museum of Antiquites had apparently been ransacked and looted with little intervention on the part of US troops.

Though I am mostly distrustful of reports as to the destruction of Iraq's cultural heritage (American and Iraqi alike) since they may have probably been exaggerated and used as a springboard for the next vituperative attack on the Bush administration, I still somewhat feel more sorry for precisely this cultural cataclysm which seems to have gripped the country as a whole than for the human casualties on the battlefield, so to say. The latter is inevitable, but the former could have been prevented in a way.

It's yet another pitiful tale of the disgraceful sack of a major city. The situation, an anarchic mess, is perhaps comparable to the abhorrent and ridiculous nature of the Latin Empire that followed the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the catastrophic Forth Crusade. Just like the revered, valorous but ruthless Latin crusaders, the American troops are the Christian knights in shining armour intent on occupying the holy lands of Islamic oppression in the name of liberty and democracy. In the Fourth Crusade, none but few of the crusaders actually made it to Jerusalem and the Holy Lands as originally planned. In the American Crusade of the last 6 years, the Americans did make it to Baghdad but they left their purported chivalric virtues hanging in the thin air of their alleged 'liberator' personage.

Few realise that behind the nobility and courage of the medieval knight there lurked the reality and instinct of the ferocious warrior.

Though the war has indeed claimed thousands of victims, if the cultural heritage of a country is the backbone of its very identity, has not the wide-scale plunder and destruction claimed the lives of millions to come?

Enthusiasm: A Paradox

2009-04-17T15:29:00.013+01:00

"What colour is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life", said Van Gogh - a man whose black & white drawings were better than his paintings.

Highly Recommended

2009-04-07T17:13:00.004+01:00

A book I have just finished reading: The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov.

It's a fictionalised biography of the great Victorian explorer Richard Francis Burton.
Admittedly, I was also interested because the author is Bulgarian (writing in German).

The book itself exceeded my expectations. The life of a man thirsty for knowledge explodes before your eyes like a colourful painting. A man thirsty for knowledge, not for power - a key element which all the more exalts him as a character. His explorations of India in the time of the Raj accompanied by Naukaram, his guide and 'servant', are recreated with vividness, brutal realism, and from multiple
perspectives.

The novel itself is multi-layered, the point of view shifting from one character to another, exposing Burton's often controversial activities in all their splendid variety and pioneering boldness.
He learns Gujarati, Hindustani, among a multitude of dialects, astonishing and even frightening the locals. He is often suspiciously looked upon as simply another British colonialist, trying to 'civilize' them, subjecting them in the process. However, it's clear Burton's nature belies the imperialist character of the other British officers there. He does not simply absorb their culture, he practically lets their culture absorb him. He is not there to conquer them politically by force; he is there to conquer his own fears, to defy his seemingly lacklustre background which he perceives as stagnant, bleak and uninspiring. In fact, on a couple of occasions his disdain for his own country is made explicit. His veiled contempt for his superiors, including the great General Napier, is also not spared the reader who is eventually deployed to the Sindh province of colonial Pakistan.

Burton's sexual exploits are also depicted in a surprisingly graphic manner. Nevertheless, even the relationship between him and his 'mistress' are complex as he is caught up in a painful love triangle with her and Naukaram. In fact, even the people who accompany him in his tortuous but fascinating travels are richly developed characters, all with their own story to tell - one of the most rewarding aspects of the book, without a doubt.

Burton makes the Hajj and publishes his personal account of it, sending shockwaves throughout the Muslim world.
The scenes where he finds himself among the thousands of pilgrims in Mecca are reflected upon as we are steeped in the consciousness of the man himself - a consciousness that possesses the lucidity and vitality of water and the fieriness and volatility of oil.

His most arduous exploit however is presented in the third main part of the book - his laborious expedition targeting the source of the Nile. Illnesses plague him and his fellow explorer, John Hanning Speke - a person he comes to detest. In fact, ironically he gets along better with the natives and the other foreign participants on the expedition than with his fellow Englishman.
Evidently, Troyanov is acutely conscious of this and strives to make it as explicit as possible. I would even venture to say that perhaps he aimed to portray the quintessential British imperialist through the character of Speke who is far more interested in appeasing his ego by hunting the local wild animals than investigating the cultural heritage of the natives. He is quite clearly a foil to Burton. Not that his character given a typically secondary role - his presence is key to the final section of the book.

Burton is on his deathbed at the very end. The ending isn't sad though, neither is it particularly dramatic. He dies, but an atmosphere of humour is nevertheless created as a bemused Roman Catholic priest discovers the terrible truth about the man he has just administered holy unction to. It's a clever ending, for it highlights the inscrutable nature of Burton. And indeed, that is at the very core of the book for me: religion normally transcends the individual but what happens when this rule is turned on its head? We are always left feeling small and insignificant at the thought of a religion, foreign or not, which is nonetheless a thing of higher stature than us. We are struggling to fully comprehend it - the very reason for this insecure feeling prompted by an insecure faith.

With Burton it is different.

It is as though religion itself, Islam or Christianity, is left gaping questioningly at him.
He fathoms religion better than it fathoms him. His 'last wish' could perhaps suggest otherwise but I think it merely emphasises his deep respect for it.

An intelligently written novel, well-researched and penned by a man who is himself an avid traveller. Burton is a summative character, a symbol for that very same spirit that is able to marvel at all that is foreign and ostensibly incomprehensible. That sort of spirit is a rarity, an extraordinarily valuable one however. It is particularly relevant today with the controversial role that Islamic extremism plays in our lives.

The fundamental question is laid out before us: does one need to falsely assume the role of a dervish called Sheikh Abdullah in order to grasp Islam like Burton does? The answer is a simple and straightforward 'nope'. One does not need the various aliases that Burton hides behind in order to understand other faiths and customs. All one needs is that very same inspiration that drives him along, to learn that death is not the only way to transcend earthly life.

There's A Man For You!

2009-03-24T12:32:00.002Z

Now I am not into guys but the sheer admiration I feel for Alain Delon in that interview above is something that must not remain hidden. His detached, cool manner; his deep, sagacious voice; his sharp, penetrating gaze - these all combine to render him such a visually imposing man. Most actors (particularly of today) possess the charm and presence of a stray cat in comparison.

Men and the French language have never been manlier!

Killin'manjaro

2009-03-09T00:37:00.004Z

Nine celebrities have successfully reached Mount Kilimanjaro.

I can now see why Hemingway shot himself. He knew it was coming. He consecrated this magnificent summit in 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro', portraying one of the most beautiful deaths in literature. Those nine celebrities desecrated it by transposing the false, hyperbolized reality of their social being onto a venerated, mysterious place.

Harry indeed died not bereft of hope, but I feel he was not that lucky the second time we killed him, for we killed his hope first.

The Man Of Action

2009-02-20T04:20:00.001Z

The more I think about it, the more I gain experience with the whips and scorns of time, the more I feel that a man is no man at all if he is not a man of action. Or perhaps not that he is not a man at all but he is not much of a man to be fair. To act is better than merely to talk - a simple fact yet one which I feel is not fully comprehended by most people and men in particular. This simple fact has immense gravitas, yet it is much like the Moon - the light of its weighty truthfulness is only revealed to us in phases, in crescents and halves, and only occasionally in its entirety.

Napoleon, one of the most famous examples of the man of action, himself said that time is most precious to men. We can never recover lost time. Nostalgia, even despair over lost time and missed opportunities is a beautiful feeling just as Keats' Odes are beautiful. That mysterious, twilit tinge of regret that often consumes us is not an arbitrary experience - it is one of the purest, most sincere and profound instances of a man's life. Our most ebullient fear is the fear of having to experience this feeling of bitter regret time and time again.

The newborn child's only sensation of existence is the amorphous, hazy consciousness that at the very least reminds him of this very existence of his, frail though it may well still be. The pulse of this primeval sensation resonates through the nightly caverns of the unexplored consciousness as silently and incessantly as the heart that beats within the fortress of our ribcage. Do we feel our heart beating most of the time though? No, I would say - it's mostly silent. We take this pulse for granted and it is only in the effects of its misuse, or certain lack of use that we come to painfully acknowledge its significance. Likewise, we only come to know of the pulse of this primeval sensation when we reflect on its seemingly silent passivity. Up to this point, it was the mere murmur of a brooklet, now it explodes with the force and fury of a geyser; and this marks the point at which we resign almost completely to its sparkling, vivacious candour. Indeed, a man ought not to resign himself completely to anything but this precise primeval sensation - not to a woman, not to a nation, not even to a seemingly convincing ideal - nothing but this single sensation. A man should only completely surrender to this condition, because it is above all, the most fundamental one from which stem all the rest.

In the Middle Ages, the huge walls of Constantinople were thought impregnable. Legends and myths of its impregnability made it the focal point of the imperialist ambitions of many conquerors. Of course they were not actually impregnable. The Latin Crusaders and later the Ottomans proved this. But in its glorious history, Constantinople's essence would enchant us with those precise legends and myths of its impregnability. There, that is its elan vital, that is what fuels the eternal pyres of its majestic status in our minds. The same goes for the primeval sensation described in the last paragraph - its importance for our being is precisely its vehement reinforcement of the fact that there is something there. Indeed, there is something there - that is the first sensation that a child experiences in infancy; and it sustains our frail being thereafter with its primeval pulse. The child doesn't know what it is, but it knows that it's there; we may not necessarily know what is there in store for us if we act in accordance to our passions, but we know that there is that something which awaits us – our only consolation.
The true man of action has a deep, visceral knowledge of the inner workings of this feeling. It incenses him. It makes him immune to inaction. It empowers him.

The primeval sensation with which we greet the world should be the primeval sensation with which we greet other people; with which we read the opening lines of a poem; with which we reciprocate a heartfelt smile. Myths always describe, eulogize in fact certain actions and thus passions are myths seen through the eyes of a blind poet. Close your eyes and act! Tiresias was blind but a prophet; passions can make you blind but they can make you a prophet too. To act – that is what’s important. All myths are actions past; all passions are actions to be. At least that’s how it ought to work.

Act, act, act. A man is born to act. A man without the will to overstep the boundaries of his reserved character, cringing his life away, is a man to be swiftly dealt with – severe, inflexible justice. Terror needs to strike him – his ungratefulness towards life and its spirited vibrancy needs to be guillotined away, whatever the cost.

From now on, I shall divorce myself from this lonely promontory that is my decency, better judgment and the lot. A man is nothing but a mule carrying the bulky lot of his fruitless diffidence; a real man carries it just as well, with sturdiness, patience and stoical equanimity, but stops and takes breaks from time to time…

From now on, I shall write with stubbornness, not waiting there sterile for a spark of inspiration. I shall be a man of action – inertness is too formulaic for me now.

My mind is weary, exhausted, rejected – it craves practice. And in Shelley’s little, lovely lyric I shall find the compass of my manhood: this weary, rejected mind of mine will find its solace in some secret nest not perched on the feeble twig of some stagnant tree, but on the crest of a billow, forever in motion, forever sure of its course, forever racing towards an end unforeseen.
There you shall find me now.

The Hoodie

2009-02-02T15:57:00.005Z

I have only just unearthed this picture I took of a hooded top during my visit to the Byzantine exhibition in the Royal Academy of Arts. Yes indeed, no mistake there - it's an original Byzantine hoodie from the Middle Ages. It's a charming sight to behold, not least because of its age.

Nowadays the 'hoodie' itself is the toga of 'chav culture' as this primeval-instinct, Charon-on-your-bus-stop-and-maybe-even-on-your-doorstep, psychopomp 'culture' is popularly referred to here in Britain. Psychopops indeed -they swiftly dispatch you to the Underworld, no judgment necessary. The hoodie - a crude method of concealing your physical identity so as to reveal your mental actuality - lives on.

Not that I want to associate the Byzantine 'hoodie' with the derogatory term we all know today, but who knows, perhaps on occasions it might have served a similar purpose.

And as we all know too from Once Upon a Time in the West:

Harmonica: There weren't no dollars in them days.
Cheyenne: But sons-of-bitches? Yeah.

The 'hoodie' is as universal as the insidious person wearing it.

Great Writing

2009-01-29T00:42:00.003Z

'I've got one more record. - Have you heard "So Long Letty"? I suppose you have. '
'Honestly, you don't understand - I haven't heard a thing.'
Nor known nor smelt, nor tasted, he might have added; only hot-cheeked girls in hot secret rooms. The young maidens he had known at New Haven in 1914 kissed men saying 'There!' hands at the man's chest to push him away. Now there was this scarcely saved waif of disaster bringing him the essence of a continent...

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is the standard by which great writing ought to be judged.

A Dutchman's Beard

2009-01-24T01:26:00.003Z

Willem Barentsz was a 16th century Dutch explorer who sought to find the Northeast passage, running above Siberia's north sea line which would have allowed easier access to countries as remote as India and China. He died on the 20th of May 1597 after his ship got stuck in the ice near the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.

Four years later, in 1601, Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night:

'...and you are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard...'

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

2009-01-10T20:25:00.003Z

This is a 12th century Byzantine icon of The Ladder of Divine Ascent. I came across it during my visit to the Byzantine art exhibition in the Royal Academy. I couldn't help but smile the first time I set my gaze upon the unfortunate monks ingloriously falling from it, pulled downwards by the symbolic demons representing their vices. It is quite amusing at first sight due to the way the falling figures are portrayed - their bodies turned completely upside-down, damning them irrevocably. Funnily enough, it all looks like an episode from a children's comic series, but it was seriously intended to visually present the metaphorical ladder of ascent to God's Kingdom so as to 'educate' the monks at the Sinai Monastery.

But when I look at the nasty black demons I am struck by their position within the image itself. Some of them are fairly high up, yet do they need a ladder to elevate themselves to such heights? No, it seems - they are floating freely in the air, parading around in weightlessness. They don't need a ladder - their cunning is enough to defy gravity and send them up closer to the heavenly Christ than many of the monks, whose journey up is toilsome and time consuming.
The sheer ease with which these demons move within the picture , their implied subtle movements - this is where the true seriousness of the image shows up. The demons are seemingly able to reach certain heights without the help of the ladder - they evade its 'righteous' path.

I am sure I am delving into certain metaphorical depths within the icon beyond which the painter initially intended, but a question invariably pops up nevertheless: how many people have tried to reach Christ in that very same way?

I smile, apologetically this time, and blush.

La Dolce Vita

2008-12-31T00:24:00.006Z

La Dolce Vita - one of the richest, most impressive films I have ever seen - is suffused with the falsities of our society that are relevant now more than ever in our current age. The main character's reckless, self-destructing egoism wraps up the people around him in a bouquet of desperation. A review however would not only be superfluous, it would be somewhat too asphyxiating for me here, and thus I won't pursue anything of this kind.

It is the character of Steiner that fascinates me. On a profound level, it is him who is actually living the 'dolce vita', in contrast to Marcello's affected persona. He is seemingly the ideal family man of strong, sacred values and he is likewise materially endowed with a great home of palatial atmosphere, which is constantly an enchanting venue for the gatherings of formidable and some not so formidable representatives of the intelligentsia. Despite this ostensible perfection which smiles at him from every corner, he confesses in a bleak, cautious tone to his friend Marcello:

"Sometimes at night the darkness and silence weighs upon me. Peace frightens me; perhaps I fear it most of all. I feel it is only a façade hiding the face of hell. I think, `What is in store for my children tomorrow?' `The world will be wonderful,' they say. But from whose viewpoint? If one phone call could announce the end of everything? We need to live in a state of suspended animation like a work of art, in a state of enchantment. We have to succeed in loving so greatly that we live outside of time, detached."

His success and his family do mean the world to him, yes. But in the depths of his internal anguish, he becomes aware that while he is gracefully putting his children to bed, that very same world plans vengeance on him. The serenity and peace of his social existence is the disquietude and turmoil of his personal life- solitude is what unites together these two realms of his consciousness. He is frightened by it all: by the Cold War, the intrigues and tensions upon which his era is founded; by his bourgeois existence which threatens his honesty; by the sheer spiritual discomfort which has stripped his convictions of anything which is not directly concerned with the ephemeral. All this foreboding leads him to the monstrosity of killing his beloved children and committing suicide.

It is incomprehensible to the ordinary person how this calm, collected, erudite, blessed man could drive himself to such despair because of the intense fear conjured up by the false security of his 'perfect' life. His sole conviction is one of anxiety; and that very same conviction forcibly overwhelms his love for his family - one of the most sinister connotations of the film.

Is Steiner not the symbol of the paroxysmal pleasaunce which society itself has taken to in its blindfolded search for the 'dolce vita'? He became a monster before becoming a martyr. In the process of him bartering his humanity for tranquility, he lost both.

In Antarctica - a land still mysterious, remote and enigmatic as ever - the ghost of the great explorer Robert Falcon Scott who perished there frostbitten and starving, is said to roam the desolate sheets of ice of the continent, greeting expeditioners on their way to the South Pole. In our civilized land of dissipation, the ghost of Steiner is there greeting us with open arms to embrace us, before he shoots in our direction.

Following Last Post's Analogy

2008-12-25T02:00:00.007Z

This is a portrait of Albert Einstein - not hard to guess of course. It is another great picture by Boris Georgiev - the Bulgarian artist whom I was referring to in my last post, and whose moving words I quoted. I keep finding these great fellow countrymen of mine from the darker, largely forgotten annals of history. It's not just my intrinsic sense of patriotism that compels me to seek them out; it goes deeper than that even. If one cannot be a 'great' man like the (mostly deceased) people one admires, one can at least extricate the less well-known of them from history's dark matter and at least provide them with some kind of a voice from beyond the grave - give them a 'proper burial' so to say. You have nothing to pay them back with - they are dead after all; but that way, you can 'pay it forward' by making more people of the present hear that lone, long belittled voice for some time to come.

The way I see it, it is often the case that there is greater solidarity between the living and the dead than between the living and...the living. For this precise reason I shall continue 'giving them the microphone' with the occasional blog post or two. There's so many of them goddamn it, and they keep popping up like still images of a distant, edenic childhood in the mind of an ageing poet. I feel the urge to lift the veil of historical iniquity and uncover their accomplishments. They've got nothing but their chains to lose!

Anyway, here comes the truly remarkable letter which Einstein himself wrote after seeing the finished portrait(I have tampered with the translation a tiny bit to make it clearer):

"Your art made me feel in those orbits where, far from earthly harship and suffering, the soul finds peace. After concentrating in contemplation on the portrait of myself, I felt the need to thank you from my heart. As the weak shadows of a transient reality, we feel home-sickness and unfulfilled love towards a different, intangible world. This is felt both by the painter and by his model - each in his own way. I hope you would be able to achieve in your creative process and in future as much as would ever possible for us, the mortal beings. The artist should rejoice in this precise mission that he has."

February 11, 1929, Albert Einstein

Happy Christmas to all people who rejoice in this precise mission that they have.

A Heavenly Analogy In The Midst Of A Hellish Reality

2008-12-22T01:34:00.006Z

"Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark," Dante tells us.

To echo the style of my last post, I shall 'detour' Dante's words with the generous aid of another great artist:

"Embittered by living in an age of extreme materialism and destruction of sacred values, I sought shelter in the life of a wanderer. "

From the introduction to the catalague for the individual exhibition of Boris Georgiev in Milan, 1956. (Link)

Five Pillars of Wisdom

2008-12-14T02:34:00.004Z

"Various inscriptions in Classical, non-barbarized, Greek have been found in Ai-Khanoum.
On a Herôon (funerary monument), identified in Greek as the tomb of Kineas (also described as the oikistes (founder) of the Greek settlement) and dated to 300-250 BCE, an inscription has been found describing Delphic precepts:"

'As children, learn good manners.
As young men, learn to control the passions.
In middle age, be just.
In old age, give good advice.
Then die, without regret.'

I am willing to fiddle around a bit with this:

'As children, learn bad manners.
As young men, renounce everything that hinders the passions.
In middle age, be unjust.
In old age, let your advice freely abide the aforementioned.
Then die (I dare you!) without regret. '

The first one may well be applied to the individual, but society and the world as a whole rests on the pillar of that second set of precepts.

Of Caesar and Smoking

2008-12-05T17:02:00.007Z

As I casually take out the packet from the inside pocket of my coat, I reach to open it and just as casually supply my lips with a cigarette. Closing the packet, I suddenly notice the big, black letters glaring at me with the forceful imposition of one of those 'TOXIC' warning signs you get on jars containing harmful substances. I have noticed it before, yet never had I shed a penny of thought concerning it. Indeed, as I keep staring at it for an unusual amount of time, I am suddenly bombarded with images inside my head - most humorous ones in fact. I picture Julius Caesar on the banks of the river Rubicon with his 13th legion behind him. His gaze is somewhat subdued - pensive, with a tinge of sadness. His conscience is weighing upon him. Does it crush his determination though? Does it have the potential to subvert his lofty ambitions? Indeed, no. His conscience is more like a strongly constructed chariot proving feeble still as it slowly and clumsily sinks into the quicksand of his determination, disappearing from view - no glory, no regrets! Nothing but ambition! He looks up and sees the still waters of this frontier, beckoning him to march over it and immerse himself in a bloody affair - a path beset with peril! He breathes in the air, with all the freshness of daybreak, holds this fresh, pleasant air hostage momentarily in his lungs, and for an instant looks up at the grey, wintry sky - the heavens obscured by smoky cloudiness! He holds this posture for a second or two, and abruptly though still with imperious dignity, he bows his head and closes his eyes with the intensity of a child playing hide-and-seek, and he sighs in resoluteness and determination! Behold this resoluteness! do not think one of its various nuances does not represent the tempting, tasty, creamy colour of submission! But Caesar - equally a Cicero and a dirty shepherd - as any human would traverse far and wide, overturn the earth if needs be to find his Mount Sinai! Oh, escapism - the most indomitable whim, a force of raw brutality! Immanent to even great Caesar!

Caesar still stands there - determined and brave. Sober-faced as a Roman bust, he eyes the horizon, and contemplates the lands beyond the river. His decision is now set in stone: he is to cross the Rubicon - a most certain war at stake! It'll be a journey, a formidable challenge!
He appropriates a trumpet and hails the men with a piercing blast - Advance!

He sets out to cross the river when suddenly, as though struck by Jove he stops and stands dead still. Right on the bank of the river, a sign is placed, on which big, black letters are warning the ambitious:

Danger!

Deep Water
Competent Swimmers Only!

Caesar, dumbfounded, staggers about - a frown clearly visible on his face, exposing his bewilderment and inadequacy. Slowly - the stupid expression not once departing from his face -he looks back at his men, who are all staring at him - their faces stony and cold.
'Is this a joke?' Caesar asks, still terribly confused.

I light up the cigarette clutched between my lips. One last look at the packet and the writing in big, black letters.

Ah Caesar, I know how it feels! Alea iacta est!

Recalling Halloween

2008-12-01T01:49:00.002Z

As I recall Halloween this year, I cannot help but laugh quietly to myself. The party that I went to required a fancy dress appropriate for the occasion. Since lately I have been gradually more and more convinced that Life imitates Art rather than vice versa, I decided to opt out for this new chic conviction of mine by eschewing any sort of particularly fancy dress for the sake of natural charm. I simply jumped into an accommodating, dark suit with an ink-blue shirt, and used some black face paint to highlight the area around my eyes, giving me a 'darker' look. All that I was left with was the hope that if not scary, I would at least be...eye-catching in a way...

Well the party hall was too dark anyway - I should have anticipated that prior to my sudden, sharp, stinging disappointment. Either way, what I want to briefly point to here is a rather humorous (in relative terms) exchange between me and this girl. When she first saw me in this suit, dark and smart, she was unsurprisingly puzzled and thus inquired as to why I had chosen this particular form of dress. Well, actually it was a straightforward, crass 'what's this got to do with Halloween?', to which I most sharply replied that I am actually meant to be Satan.
A look of incredulity swam across her face.
'I am Al Pacino from The Devil's Advocate,' I duly added, before fate had the oportunity to situate my being in-between hopelesness and boredom.
'Oh, right', was her casual reply, accompanied by a laugh of recognition. 'But how is that meant to be scary, I mean you just look too...sophisticated for the Devil', she inquired further.
'Too sophisticated?', I retorted.
'Yeah', she said, 'you shouldn't be that sophisticated'.
'But then I would be God...merely,' I added, sharpening my eyebrows and smiling a sinister smile. In the end I laughed considerably more than her, but whose fault was that, I would leave in the hands of the reader to master the gist of - I cannot myself decide in favour of anything concrete. Ultimately, perhaps my adulterous wit swiftly supplied me with a pair of horns which I was hitherto short of. Come to think about it - who cuckolded the Devil himself and gave him a pair horns to wear for an eternity? It wasn't his Wit, for he is the Red-Bull, the Lucozade of wit itself in fact.
I'll tell you who it was: his legion of imitators who write at night, and of night, and reinvent him constantly.

P.S. That includes Myself et Al.

A Poem

2008-11-23T15:15:00.004Z

The Church doth have a merciful hand,
Reading between the lines, I see,
The Church doth have a sense of humour too,

For he was only "showing off, bragging by a young English working-class musician who had grown up in the age of Elvis Presley and rock and roll and had enjoyed unexpected success",
And with this, I am led to believe, he was merely joking of course,
I should have known better, it was all a joke,
Or was it perhaps something greater?
I suffer the Vestibule if I do not decide, I suffer damnation if I do...

Oh, 'tis absolution for him!
And the Church, with its forgiving hand
strokes his angelic spirit, claiming it was a 'youthful joke' only,
and so all is well, hereafter,
for he is forgiven! Mercy on his soul! Forgiven!

But when a time comes (and it's come before as well),
when the Church has to be itself absolved and forgiven
for its remark on the boyish bragging of a prole - an insult in fact
under the guise of a forgiving cardinal,
who will do the job, God or man?

Who will The Church be answerable to?

A message: when in the midst of a communion,
some cardinal's mitre falls off (by accident perhaps?)
it'll mean somebody up there (beyond those towering spires)
overheard that remark...

To a God like this, I tip my hat.

An Iconic Image

2008-11-17T15:19:00.004Z

"Ladies and Gentlemen, following the results of the 2008 presidential elections, as a man of sense and honour and as a good Christian, I shall now endow you with my...absence. I mean it works for Jesus, doesn't it?"

(Applause)

Darkness Revisited

2008-11-12T00:19:00.003Z

This recent article from BBC News makes for an interesting read.
Is 'darkness' truly the foremost characteristic of horror? The author seems to have a problem with this, though I do not really see him as making a well-rounded point anyway. 'Dark' movies like The Dark Knight owe their impressiveness because they are dark and gloomy - a natural, an intensely gritty theme and rather than slagging it off by dismissing it as a 'fashion accessory', I would much prefer to take it on board as it being a vital component of today's decadent society which is saturated by the stagnant light of dead-end, post-modern mentality, which I feel is best illustrated by the metaphor of one hopelessly but with a wisp of determination trying to punch someone in the face, while that same person is holding one's head and successfully keeping it at a safe distance, guaranteeing one's ultimate failure to inflict even the slightest injury.
Fantasy, which is merely reality in disguise, is mediated by darkness and thus sprouts horror and suspense.

I feel that the author gets it right with the examples that he gives though. He cites Philip Larkin's haunting poem, Aubade, as 'really dark', darkness reincarnated in fact. This is where he hits the nail on the head because if you read Larkin's poem, the impending sense of doom is interspersed with chilling images of 'reality' and 'everydayness'. That is where the 'darkness' really comes into action - mixing the universal and inexorable, Death, with the seemingly mundane, 'earthly' objects and situations, all done in such a way as to change your perception of those precise objects of mundanness and ostensible insignificance. You'll thus see 'darkness' in those objects the next time you come across them, and THAT is what has the potential to truly haunt you. The fact that you are familiar with them also means that you would be able to visualize them more easily and vividly as you read the poem.

All those fantastical creatures, from jokers to cyclops to vampires - they're all scary and dark, yet I can't help but think: just as art works best when hidden, as Ovid would say, horror works best when earthly...

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare.
Not in remorse-
The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin

Staring Into Nothingness

2008-11-03T15:53:00.005Z

The movie Heat starring Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in the lead roles is undoubtedly one of my all time favourites. You cannot escape the momentous presence of these two giants of Western cinema, and the film itself contains so many memorable instances and situations - a masterwork of film directing.

What I would like to briefly comment on is the ending scene however. Emphasizing its hypnotic power is pointless as it is self-evident, but the real brilliance for me is conferred upon the close-up shot of Al Pacino's face as he stares into the unknown, the half-lit airport runway encompassing him and his dying nemesis. Initialliy, he has his mouth slightly open, his breathing still heavy after what has just happened. He stares into the void, the camera focusing on his face and more importantly, his eyes - he is momentarily lost with a confused face expression; and for a few seconds it looks as though his eyes are gradually filling up with tears, but that very same instant, he suddenly closes his mouth, his face slowly and pensively transformed, resulting in a silent, contemplative, equanimous expression, as he visibly withholds his tears, accepting the reality of the situation - it was ultimately his duty and it was the 'right' thing to do.

That precise moment, that exact shot is the most powerful instant of the entire scene, for in that brief close-up on Pacino's face, the mechanism by means of which human emotions function is exposed in all its splendour: all initially seems too overwhelming, too hard to swallow and one's emotional frailty warrants a river of tears, a mental breakdown even; and yet our tenedency to repress our pains, to stay sober, to acknowledge the cold indifference of the outside world - that is the moment where our spiritual being, though on the verge of collapse, in the moment where it is at its weakest, it becomes aware of its own strength and with a calm, collected albeit solemn face, we simply accept reality as it is.

This is precisely what Pacino's character experiences in that final close-up shot - he takes a peek over the precipice where nothingness resides, and indeed he stares into nothingness for a few seconds, not knowing what to do or where to go; and just then, he sees his own reflection in his surroundings, the airport, which he realises is where his social being is, and where his duty lies - a calm, dignified expression swims decisively over his face. He is alive.

A Genuine Protest For Peace

2008-10-25T16:17:00.004+01:00

Torn asunder I am - social and spiritual being, both a pole apart. On my own in my room and it's late in the evening, and the nocturnal gloom outside is a lash which violently tears out bits of pale skin from the emaciated body of wisdom and seriousness; not to say how cold it is, and how windy. It's time for my £1o Parker fountain pen to become pretentious! And as I drown my sorrow in the blank sheet of paper before me, I take sanctuary in the smooth, black ink, which flows and flows over the paper; but I would more likely descend into the underworld content with a truly accomplished work for which I yearn, than resign to the frivolity of heavenly drunkeness - it's a paradox, a painful sting in fact for my already impaired ego, and yet it is a truism set in stone. Only some feet away, a few thin walls actually separate me from the sound and fury of the nearby kitchen where this exact paradox, should it become public knowledge, would be seen through a magnifying glass - exaggerated, hyperbolized and vainly laughed at.
This company of people, resigned to pseudo-hedonism, is a distinct muffle to my exhausted ears. And I, resentful, holding them in secret contempt, I simply keep on writing, though I fumble and noiselessly stammer, my pen coughing up blood rather than ink, fresh and crimson from my embittered soul. Am I on the same wavelength as them tonight? Alas, not quite, for I can be, and yet I refrain - a totally different wavelength I am writing of...
And so as they laugh and drink, blatantly and unashamedly justifying their student status, immersed in an intense discourse concerning their two chief worldy objectives of the night - hallucination-inducing absinthe and the fine, fresh, female 'stock' awaiting them at the averagely hellish nightclub in town. 'Averagely hellish' - a powerful though absurd phrase, not without its humour, but oh, what a perfect and exquisite dress it is for the faceless, cold, silent plastic model of the night's painful meaninglesness!
And as they are laughing and babbling away, I - alone and bitter - am trying in desperation to be inspired, even for a second or two; and yet nothing, I feel nothing at all, and writing itself is rather mechanical and unnatural, but I try with every possible means available to a person's capacity for concentration, to continue so as not to stop at a dead end.
As the others are chattering away in the neighbouring room, I sit alone, tired and moody, and I am writing a story of the impotence of their generation which is also mine.

In Case You Are Suffering, Nobody Cares.

2008-10-15T18:29:00.007+01:00

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Musée des Beaux Arts

by W. H. Auden

The Last Supper

2008-10-05T14:23:00.003+01:00

The Last Supper

by Nikolay Gay

The Last Supper as a subject is indeed one of the most popular for paintings and the general arts as a whole. Never mind Leonardo's representation, the one above is unique, unconventional and powerful. Not suprisingly, it was painted by a Russian, for who could better fuse despair with dignity without taxing the image of its elegance...

Undoubtedly, the most solemn, sober and sincere portrayal of the Last Supper I have ever come across.

Persona

2008-09-25T00:28:00.004+01:00

Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona (a plot synopsis can be found here) is a thorough, implicitly violent study of confessionalism, if we take of course that the term confessionalism in this case means a person’s often uncontrollable and recurrent tendency to confess things of highly personal nature in front of a patient listener.
It demonstrates the lack of sovereignty that one has over oneself when one is placed in a situation where one ends up as the sole orator. With all her evident innocence and professional courtesy, Sister Alma unconsciously conceals the confining atmosphere of her existence: the uneventful, of not relatively dull unfolding of her life as she has fallen prey to convention and ordinariness, which in Freudian terms, inextricably impairs her ego, reducing her subconscious workings to the profound, childish inferiority complex of the nascent female psyche. Thus, as her relationship with Elizabeth becomes increasingly intimate, it serves to precipitate this effect by making Alma cling in desperation to a person of far stronger will and social standing; in fact, she becomes very susceptible to the intrinsic, often sadistic desire for a person to seek out another person who is perceived as possessing a greater level of autonomy both socially and mentally. The former’s sense of belonging is enhanced as a result, and for a temporary period of time, Sister Alma is subconsciously elevated within the hierarchy of her mind which is ultimately revealed as deeply prejudiced, contrary to her initial portrayal as a proper, affectionate, if not rather all too innocent young person. The sinisterly mute Elizabeth, with all her ominous, dark equanimity and unassailable strength of will, serves to make Sister Alma a verbal diarist: the latter virtually dictates the most intimate secrets of her past, this closeness forcing her to become a person of increasing impetuosity and random temper, sometimes menacingly furtive, sometimes shockingly apparent.

One thing for which we do not need the largely speculative psychoanalytical approach here is the fact that in the duration of the film, Sister Alma becomes increasingly withdrawn within herself; she is submerged, to an unavoidably powerful degree, into the realm of her instinctive drives for inner and outer recognition i.e. her craving for her ‘persona’ to be raised to the rank Elizabeth’s. Her ego becomes the single most important concept for her. Thus, both female characters exhibit a common trait of egoism, but they end up expressing it in ultimately conflicting ways.
I won’t go into much more detail there because I would simply be reiterating the same ideas over and over again, bearing in mind that so much has been written about the film.

One thing however which I would like to draw your attention to here concerning Persona is that for me, a very significant idea about the individual’s relation with the rest of society and the circle of people around him is postulated in it. During their private spiritual escapade together, Sister Alma and Elizabeth share a peculiar sort of relationship: they converse but only one of them is doing the talking – there is absolutely no reciprocity there, nothing to distract the frail, emotionally convulsed Alma from herself. Indeed, there lies the problem: Sister Alma becomes self-absorbed to the point of her ending up as probing the perilous, dark, brooding depths of her basest instincts. She is so withdrawn from society, Elizabeth being so open to her innermost secrets, that she momentarily forgets the conventional, monotonous, everyday reality of her social life, instead taking preference solely for her own past pains, misfortunes and inner turmoil. The dire consequences of this are several violent altercations with Elizabeth which come merely inches away from being fatal.

What does the film then suggest about society and ‘other’ people in general relative to the individual? Why is it that ironically ‘others’ are so vital to our level of sanity?
The second question is of greater importance of course. Indeed, by ‘ironically’ I mean so many other films and books that portray the individual slipping into the lugubrious abyss of insanity precisely because of other people. Countless stories follow that same basic scenario. Yet, Persona somewhat differs in the sense that the reverse is true in the world which it presents to us. Sister Alma is rendered a victim in the general scheme of things because she becomes so entrenched by herself, that she is made to question everything about her normal, regular life, all of which makes her scornful and increasingly prone to precipitous sadism as her incessant, resentful envy of Elizabeth is further fuelled by her unreciprocated confessions. She is indeed oblivious to anything aside from herself because she has temporarily gotten rid of everything that is part of her ordinary existence – her profession, her family etc. Thus all that had once been indelible from her life and all the things she had consciously viewed as her foremost priorities - it is all shattered only to expose her paining inner self which from the moment she is secluded with the enigmatically silent Elizabeth becomes her sole object of attention, contrary to what her initial task as a nurse was. She becomes an ungodly hermit, consecrating her ego at the price of her sanity.

What does this tell us then?

By her withdrawn condition, marked by intense confessionalism, Sister Alma proves something: the individual is inherently in need of ‘other people’ because they serve to distract him from himself, indeed through his perceived responsibility towards their dealings and their own personal necessities, he is diverted from the potentially fatal experience of self-absorption – what Sister Alma herself ends up experiencing throughout the film. Instead of Elizabeth serving positively as the ‘other’ person, her eerily silent disposition exacerbates Sister Alma’s feeling of isolation, and thus ultimately conditions her to unhealthy, unstable, unlimited confessionalism.
All in all, the film speaks eloquently about the human desire for belonging and self-actualisation, but it is also a powerful warning against one spiralling down into oneself with potentially fatal consequences. It does not espouse solidarity as much as it simply repudiates extreme egoism. The fact remains: one cannot be the sole talker, one cannot succumb to the temptation of appeasing one’s ego by the unceasing act of speaking one’s heart – it is a pernicious condition.

One needs other people, not just to spit at, as one well-known nihilist would have you believe, but also to simply converse with so that one does not end up sidetracked from the path of level-headedness and be immersed within oneself, drenched in the murky waters of one’s ego.
Hell may indeed be other people, but is not heaven the other extreme in the sense that it cannot offer us much beyond ourselves? Reciprocal, indeed normal relationship with people, with all its emotional baggage, may after all bestow you with a touch of stoicism to fend off your most subversive enemy – yourself.
A touch of stoicism? It itself would only tip the balance in favour of a heaven that we may dub hospitable.

The Conceit Behind The Concept

2008-09-18T12:45:00.002+01:00

I have long entertained the thought of writing a disparaging post on the subject of modern art. I admit I have never been particularly fond of it. Works by Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst alike have always left me somewhat cold and empty , rather like looking at Cezanne paintings – you recognise their formalistic implications and influence upon subsequent generations, but I would confess that my aesthetic sensibilities are flaccid and impotent, were I to ever admit that I enjoy anything aside from merely studying them for the sake of expanding my knowledge of other movements which I actually like.

Dipping a dead shark into a glass tank of formaldehyde and dubbing it rather pretentiously, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, is to me as cheaply sensationalist as bands producing videos with an overt anti-Iraq War message – flashy, false, and populist - ultimately worthless.
Walking through the Tate Modern, you are submerged into precisely such a world – a world where the concept supposedly wins. The Idea is the victor but where are the spoils of that victory?! I’ll tell you where: Damien Hirst is a millionaire.
And so the Idea, the Concept runs concurrent with financial benefit. But why not? Man is a pragmatist by nature.

Indeed, the well-oiled mechanism through which communication is established between a conceptual piece of art and the general public works similarly to any religious institution – it seeks to achieve prominence and power by falsifying as neatly and eloquently as possible a person’s idea of living in earnest with himself; he is objectified, stuffed like a Christmas turkey with claptrap he accepts as attractive due to its digestible, seemingly melodious, euphoric charm which it offers him as a substitute for living in everyday nothingness. The cogwheels behind this mechanism may often give off violent sparks in the face of plutonic controversy, ensuring that those artists’ names would be splattered all over newsreels. Not before long, even their shoe sizes will make the headlines, and then even the grunts of critics won’t matter. In other words, maximising gain while simultaneously minimising strain – the concept behind the Concept. Art today, and I mean such high-profile art functions precisely in this manner.

What is Tracey Emin doing when she exhibits her unmade bed along with all the pleasant niceties unashamedly part of her life? Is she trying to make a statement about a woman’s life today in general – the unscrupulous reality which she has to put up with? Is she trying to relate to us her experience of depression and loneliness? Is she simply trying to extend the boundaries of art, thus altering the way we perceive it overall? Or is it all publicity? Trying to answer those questions would be like trying to solve the Middle East – mission impossible.
One thing is certain though: publicity, well she was indeed blessed with that at least. Nothing can dissuade me with from the view that this is more artifice than genuine art.
Art and aesthetics are indelible counterparts; they are the lever through Archimedes wanted to lift the earth – a likewise impossible task because the oceans of vanity are simply too heavy.
If any of the above questions were true, Tracey Emin’s My Bed would be nothing more than social commentary. There is quite a considerable difference between a piece of social commentary and a piece of art, though the two very often of course tend to overlap. Not in this case though. If anything, Tracey Emin’s work is social commentary and its sole purpose is to convey a message, a meaning, a point. For it to be art though, it needs to possess some kind of an appeal; and by no means am I referring to an academic, Bouguereau- type of draftsmanship, I am merely emphatically stressing it should have an immediate impact upon the eye, whether it’s beautiful or plain unattractive – it absolutely must provoke a feeling, a sensation from within, which would perhaps naturally draw you towards it. A statement, a cantankerous critique on the landmark mishaps of the modern woman presented in the form of a scruffy bed does not qualify as such – it is not even ambitious, let alone effective.

Let me give you an example:

Tracey Emin would get up one morning, still bearing the torch of a heavy hangover, with a face the state of which would characteristically reveal her fondness for Edward Munch and an attire as clean as her bedsheets. She would spend at least a minute, possibly two, simply asking herself the existential question of what actually happened the night before. However it won’t be long until an empty bottle of Stella suddenly rolls down the heap of dirty clothes beside the bed and bumps into her foot. From this, she would rationally infer that whatever it was that happened the night before, it could have probably been seen from space. Naturally, her brain still on cruise-control, she would instinctively try to convince herself that last night was not really that bad and it could have been much worse - all those typical womanly expressions would be swirling around her cloudy mind, as she would be desperately trying to console herself. However, the night before would unfortunately still remain a jigsaw of suppositions. Nearby, right next to the dusty, old, out-of-tune piano that nobody plays, a handful of ambitious ants would be transporting the last remaining fags to their little abode in the garden under the perilous conditions of the Himalayas – the towering crests and cashmere ravines of wine-splattered clothes, so uncouthly amassed in compact piles on the floor – indeed, a work of art in itself, conceived and christened by chaos. Pregnancy test results – negative. Tracey Emin would sigh in relief, as at least one mystery of the past night would appear to be solved. She would then call forth the muses of divine inspiration – she turns the TV on, for the sound of the ravenous flies buzzing over the putrid leftovers of last night’s feast in the kitchen is driving her crazy. Evidently, the ghost of the early-hours past would still be hanging around the place for an indefinite period of time, as Tracey Emin would finally admit to herself that last night’s happenings certainly did not make for a symposium the kind of which Plato would be honoured to write about.
All of a sudden however, an idea will flash inside her mind. It’s fate! Lumens upon lumens of light would shine all over her divinely inspired brain, filling her with confidence that millions of innocent people from the remotest spots of the globe would doubtlessly love to witness first-hand the spectacle of her existence, immaculate only in its arbitrariness!

Thus ends the long and winding road to a single decision and thus My Bed is born!

And thus from the ridiculous we come to know the sublime:
Indeed, Michelangelo would tend to the ostensibly unexceptional solid block of marble that would have been only just delivered to his atelier, as he would tend to any living creature that he would effort to call dear. He would behold it with all the sharpness and clear, forthright resolution, pondering over its suitability, its dimensions – perhaps he would even deprive himself of a few days’ worth of sunlight merely to correctly visualise the finished masterpiece and its most intimate details from the amorphous marble block in front of him. Of food and drink he would not shed the slightest thought; with the thought of even young, virile, handsome males he would dare not concern himself; even incomplete ruminations of life and death the budding leftovers of which would be scattered upon the affluent table of his grand nature, he would put to a healthy repose, devoting his sincerest, most passionate, life-affirming attention to the masterpiece the exquisite forms which he would in his blessed mind conceive of. And thus years would pass as in a hermitage in his lonely atelier; he would carve, and chisel and chase; his talents would unrelentingly pressure even his well-being and perhaps knock the spirit out of it, all in the name of the uncertain, gloomy twilit realm where lies his most important debt – his debt to Man!
He would shun its beauty and call it unfinished, as so often happens with surly geniuses like himself; but it would be the honest, unpretentious, unerringly simple eye of the astounded viewer who, nevertheless well-bred in aesthetics, would revel with heartfelt sincerity in the Pieta’s painstaking perfection!

Indeed, it would be a posy of perfection the likeness of which an eminent poseur could never but in vain try to imitate!

I hope the above comparison, too idealistic or too cynical or for some perhaps too satirical, elicits a sound understanding of the very crux of the issue at hand. Sure, it may all be terribly far-fetched and equally untruthful, but at least to me it serves as an apt summation of where Conceptual Art gets it all so totally wrong in my opinion.
The fact remains: you can by all means try and grasp the meaning of Tracey Emin’s My Bed; you may look upon this work of art as a genuine work of art, but in the end, you will look at it, and casually say – ‘Yeah, I see what you mean, it’s alright, yeah’ - it would ingloriously fall so devastatingly short of any lasting appeal because it is quite simply nothing more than a sensationalist piece of social commentary conceived by the supposed artist, but in reality, designed by the media. You would just as swiftly want to move on.
I mean, can you really go up to Michelangelo after he has only just completed his Pieta and say with equal casualness - ‘Yeah, I see what you mean...’
Nothing beats genuine, accomplished beauty before your eyes, not even a concept or an idea, least of all a puny, populist attempt at those...

But, as Whistler once said (and quite rightly so):
“And the artist's occupation was gone, and the manufacturer and the huckster took his place...”

LHC or...

2008-09-13T13:04:00.004+01:00

The recent doomsday debacle stemmed from the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) Big Bang experiment proves yet again that commercialism has invaded the Universe's most sacred quantum secrets as much as it has penetrated Paris Hilton's private area. Indeed, I dont know about the Universe, but I can tell you with near certainty that the World - our little, blue blotch of a planet- was born from the latter and trimmed exquisitely in its own pusillanimous likeness.
Alas, it is all in the name of popularising science in general, for 'tis obvious that an end-of-the-world scenario would sell big time. Therefore, you would not have to read Dan Brown's Angels & Demons to learn about CERN - its worldwide fame is now of the same rank as Dexter's Laboratory in fact!

All we can do is to sit and write in vain criticism of how the grandest, noblest scientific experiment is being brutally whored by the media. This post, as wittily insignificant as insignificantly witty will only ultimately resound with the echoes of my own little, lone, lascivious voice! This is my humble share of what I would like to call the Large Harlot's Contingent (LHC) - all blogs and bloks alike are alloted a space within it for free!

Wisdom With A Twist

2008-09-04T23:50:00.005+01:00

Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt

As Aristotle stares emptily into the chasm between material and spiritual wealth, represented by him and Homer respectively, he suddenly finds himself mentally estranged from his bourgeois existence and is ultimately guilt-stricken.

I can't help but think: only impotence has the power to place the average man in such a state of prolonged melancholy...

Twisted Logic From The Divine Gutter

2008-09-03T13:11:00.008+01:00

When in Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard, the story of the great French philosopher who notoriously has an affair with one of his female students, the long-suffering and repentant Eloisa utters with an embittered, exclamatory tone - "But why should I on others' pray'rs depend?" - she is questioning the very nature of solidarity amongst people. Are those spiteful relatives and friends of hers the emanation of God's most truly heartfelt creation - slave morality? If they should so maliciously unite, and with such resentful passion I imagine against her person, aren't they the vanguard of slave morality? Behind their ostensibly holy disposition lies the innate desire to prolong her suffering as much as possible, so as to appease their egos and the egos of their base counterparts. As swift as a falcon, they would plunge down on her - the frail, little mouse - seizing the opportunity to convince her that through their "prayers", she will be saved from eternal damnation, when in fact this very act on their part so inevitably puts her on a leash, and with the cross of human betrayal, she heads for the underworld along with the other damned souls!
People best unite through vice than through virtue, and Eloisa, oh she knows this all too well!

Through the above line, Pope so magnificently and yet with such exquisite subtlety acknowledges that poor Eloisa is aware of this - indeed true nobility and greatness finds itself familiar to only a few, if not just to one, and Pope makes it clear that with this precise realisation, Eloisa is thus the ultimate victor in the eyes of the almighty Hindsight! She lost her earthly battles, only to win her divine war - this woman now ought to be venerated as a saint!

The Life of the Author

2008-08-31T13:30:00.001+01:00

Writers are there to write – their sole purpose. There is not a cause, nothing of tangible quality that would be a worthy substitute for writing when it comes to sincere devotion to one’s chosen path of existence. But what happens when the circumstances in which a writer is born require that bit extra devotion for him to be a writer of his time?

Something akin to melancholy struck me when I thought about the circumstances in which one of the greatest Bulgarian writers was born and bred – Ivan Vazov. His work is idiosyncratically Bulgarian, and it would hardly make an impression outside the national scope for thought, for it is literature that represents the perpetually fresh pine tree of Bulgarian folklore. Naturally, that makes it virtually indecipherable to Western readers – their blood type hardly matches that of the people for whom this literature was meant. I would imagine that were they to be translated into English for instance, Vazov’s works would suffer the same fate as a small child falsely accused of greedily devouring his friend’s porridge bowl – it would be dismissed as something so trivially childish, so naively puerile – a quixotic blunder the sole corollary of which would be the derisive back-stabbing remarks of bloodthirsty, intellectually disaffected critics. That would not be particularly surprising, considering the fact that what they’ll ultimately get would be hardly more than nationalist exaltation and a bitingly sharp, recalcitrant tone, purposefully crafted as to inspire within one’s heart the belligerent desire for freedom (from the Ottoman Empire in this case).

It would not be gravely dissimilar to a sort of Braveheart-type of patriotism, tinged slightly by the rays of the enlightening sun of folkloric poetic bravura. The virulent cries of the dirty, unshaven infantrymen would be replaced by the multitude of exclamation marks splashed with heavy ink across rolls of parchment.
In other words, writers such as Vazov exercised their literary talents solely for the cause of their country’s liberation; they wanted freedom above all else – some of them losing their lives in the process.

I am convinced that Vazov could have written literature that would have rivalled anything by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy or Zola. He had promises to keep though – he was one hundred per cent devoted to the cause of his country’s liberation both politically and spiritually, and thus he used his writing to inspire the otherwise lethargic patriotic spirit of your average Bulgarian person, so that his literature would have been just as well understood by the simple, uneducated peasant whose raw streak of rebellion would have cast too small a shadow over the general scheme of things.

Vazov’s writing exists by-itself, in unremarkable autonomy from the philosophical zeitgeist of the times (late 19th century). Multi-lingual as he was, he would have been well aware of Dostoevsky’s ground-breaking pundit misers, Baudelaire’s blossoming flowers of evil, or even Nietzsche’s ideas on literary lobotomy – he would have doubtlessly considered all of them in some form or another. Yet, nothing of this essentially transpires in his writing – it’s mostly all patriotic zeal, extolling the virtues of his motherland, and yes it’s all romantic and lyrically beautiful, but somewhat too idealistic and generally too intellectually meek for the times. It is culturally rich and exquisite but unlike rose oil, it would hardly ever be a good foreign export.
However disenchanted I feel for stating this, I think this man was a figure of immense literary potential, but it was sadly all somewhat ‘wasted’ for the sake of his country’s spiritual preservation. A genius squandered away? No, but rather a genius gone astray from the rest of the world, in order never to do the same with his own nation.

This was a man who was indeed swallowed by the sweeping tide of the circumstances in which he was born; he did not compromise even in the slightest, for the sake of sustaining the frail, fallible phantom of his country’s cultural heritage – a figure of great symbolic stature. Is this not the path which every writer ought to take? To adhere with uncompromising strength to one single ideal or principle, even if this would not be the most practical means to achieve recognition – that is exactly what he did even if it did not win him world-wide renown. I personally believe that a man of his ability would have been aware of this, and I do not doubt that such thoughts did indeed occasionally cross his mind. Yet, Bulgarians often tend to overlook this act of sacrifice on their literary father’s part, and it is not until one becomes aware of the bigger picture that such questions start to emerge.

Albert Camus’s detractors may disparage his philosophical merit, often severely criticising his lack of systematic thought or his tendency to approach issues at hand with naivety, especially from a political point of view. And yet, just like Vazov’s sole concern was for his crippled, little country, for Camus it was humanity - both very worthy ideals, by any means. They are symbolic and thus they function differently from any philosophy or any school of thought, rendering detractors’ criticisms valid but not final.

There is thus a definite discrepancy between a writer’s intellectual and symbolical merit, and since writers are after all people of flesh and blood, I often tend to find myself partial to the latter. Philosophies are ten-a-penny, but seizing the times, grabbing hold of the spirit of the age and becoming a figure of great symbolic eminence, of unity and moral strength, well that has the power to inspire things of equally transcendent character.
If only a bit naïve, I find this standpoint admirable at the very least.

Where Polygamy Beats Religion

2008-08-28T00:05:00.004+01:00

According to theories, the ancient Bulgars were surprisingly tolerant from a religious point of view. Apparently, one possible explanation for this was that the richer and more politically influential Bulgars were largely polygamous. However, because of the variety of religions and cultures which the ancient state of Bulgaria housed, so the wives that one Bulgarian 'aristocrat' had were all quite often from different backgrounds, hence from fundamentally opposing faiths.
They could easily be Christian, pagan, Muslim, or Zoroastrian as a matter of fact - it did not matter because each child would have been brought up according to the mother's religious inclinations. Thus the polygamous dad would have had to tolerate the particular faith of each of his children in order to preserve the harmony within the family and keep each wife happy.

Almighty Practicality! Where is thy blush?

Maybe there's some sense in that though.

If the concept of polygamy could transcend the concept of religion, why not...you know... ?
Ah, another proof that all you need is love?!
Perhaps those bloody, ancient noble savages had the answer even before Lennon uttered the sacred words...

Tourism vs Terrorism

2008-08-18T12:04:00.003+01:00

The Wikipedia page for Radovan Karadzic's arrest and prosecution contains this piece of information:

"After Karadžić's arrest, the venues associated with his underground period as an anonymous physician are being transformed into a place for tourist activities - there is already a special itinerary for tourists from his former quarter where he had been dwelling for years via the shop where he had been purchasing bread and coffee and taking a lunch to the edifice of the court, from where he has been delivered to the Hague Tribunal. The itinerary is increasingly popular not only for the local inhabitants but for foreign tourists as well."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry but one thing is certain: the media hype about the 'Balkan butcher' is completely unfounded, since personally I do not view him as such, though I am by no means taking sides here. I simply felt rather sorry for this man, seeing his pitiful appearance before the ICTY Tribunal where he's representing himself. The Bosniaks have been angelically portrayed in the media as innocent victims of fanatical nationalists, but wasn't Karadzic simply trying to defend his country from the increasingly prevalent Muslim population in it? In some years time, those same 'victims' could quite possibly ask for an independent state, and who is going to be the terrorist then? I suppose the media here in Britain is simply trying to appease the Muslim community by condemning any sort of violent undertakings against Muslims throughout the world. Remember Chamberlain and where his policy of appeasement got him with Hitler?
I am not trying to exonerate Karadzic, but he was once a man who simply did not wish to become a tourist in his own country...

Sartre, Caravaggio and Suffering

2008-08-15T00:16:00.004+01:00

‘Each groan, each facial expression of the man who suffers aims at sculpting a statue-in-itself of suffering.’

This is a noteworthy sentence extracted from one of the most remarkable passages in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Suffering and humiliation are joined by the hip- that is a basic principle of our existence. Indeed, if we exist merely for others, is it not the very fabric of our existence that warrants a perpetual continuum of humiliation and indignity for us as beings entrapped within the inevitability of our being-for-others, as Sartre likes to call it. We crave that our relative, subjective being of existence would somehow transpire within a tangible dimension, so that we would be able to heed it with our five senses, preferably our eyes. In our suffering, we pine intensely for the creation, for the sculpting of this very same suffering into an object independent of others, independent indeed of our own consciousness; it would exist by itself, as an immovable, solid object that would somehow be standing there, motionless and as physical as any object which we may touch. In other words, in the abyss of our suffering, in the very feeling, intense and powerful and beguiling, we long for that feeling to remain there, to be imprinted within the objective, ever-flowing reel of our existence, so that it may stay there, pertaining to the universe which initially prompted its very creation, so that it would not fade away or diminish in significance; but it would gratify us with the promise of its independent, solid, unaffected, objective, and perhaps most important of all, eternal state. Human beings are intrinsically attuned to this feeling, of this desire to leave behind something which would not be rendered in multiple perspectives, and would not exist in kaleidoscope-like nuances, but it would simply be there forever.

How regretful we are of the fact that Newton, in the universality with which he conceived of the universe, was ultimately wrong! Conversely, it was Einstein, with his relativity which probed the fabric of this non-constant, non-universal cosmos which we find ourselves existing within.

Caravaggio’s paintings offer us a glimpse of this precise pure, unaffected, raw suffering. His compositions are almost always very intimate, closely observing the faces of the subjects depicted, instead of taking preference for grand, sweeping scenes of unnatural, gaudy nature. His Christ is so human, all too human in his suffering in fact. We empathize with his suffering, but we find ourselves strangely lured by it. Perhaps not to it as suffering, but as a still image of a person suffering. These photographic oil representations are undoubtedly the closest we can get to Sartre’s being-in-itself sculpture of suffering. We perceive them, and thus they exist, and thus they live and thus we live them. Indeed, the key phrase here is we live them, and we cannot help it because if we so intensely desire that our suffering should be made to exist as a thing-in-itself, then the seemingly eternal suffering of Caravaggio’s Christ ought to prompt within us precisely this sensation of perceiving and being able to actually visually observe a type of suffering that is there, only it is hanging on a wall in a gallery, but would that not suffice? Would we not, in the innermost profundity of our conscious perception, be entranced by its objectivity? Christ is there. His human face is there. His painful expression, with all its anguish and grief is there. Is that not the absolute closest we can get, if only for a frail, transient flicker of an instant, to the durable, solid, eternal object of pain which we wish to give birth to?

Men and women alike, we all aspire to be the Virgin Mary, the mother who would deliver the perpetually-suffering Christ to the universe, so that his grieving, apprehensive face would be there for all eternity, existing and thriving in its objective universality, unflinching before the rigorous inferno of the prejudiced, subjective human mind. There lies our innermost maternal instinct!

Indeed, as Freud notes in his brilliant psychoanalytic profile of Leonardo da Vinci, the legendary polymath regarded his paintings as his children. That was the reason, Freud concludes, for Leonardo’s painstaking slowness when it came to completing his works – he was perhaps simply far too sensitive and too much of a perfectionist when it came to the creation of something which objectively reflected his deepest, most intimate feelings. His Sartrean ‘being-in-itself sculptures’ were there before him in the form of his paintings – objects that he was able to personally value for the artful way in which they actualised his overwhelming desire to leave as a vestige something blessed with existence of superior duration. The stillness of Christ’s anguished face gives the impression of this when beheld with greater concentration.

In this context, Sartre has managed to console a god with a godless universe, and justify his existence in the face of man’s principal need to exist outside himself, objectively and by chance, eternally – his longing to become god!

Sartre has somewhat nailed it in this case I think, but then of course, you wouldn’t be thinking of him next time you’re shaking the Pope’s hand...

Glory Through the Ages

2008-08-10T21:09:00.006+01:00

The old joint better known as London prides itself on its world-famous historical landmarks. Indeed, anyone familiar with the game of Monopoly would surely known what I mean. But where Monopoly fails, places of true interest and merit succeed in carrying the Olympic torch of the nation's glorious past...for free.
The National Portrait Gallery is, physically and legally, part of the National Gallery - one of London's foremost attractions. But the latter, the daddy, well that's for the tourists. The former, the sonny, is for the beings wealthy in spirit, the cultured or perhaps the pretentious wine-stained tourists (a different breed altogether), or simply people who have had too much of the daddy and prefer to settle for the walking shadow of its infant prodigy - The Portrait Gallery.
The Portrait Gallery is downright outrageous - it's simply too good. In a city where the sun is generally not welcome, it's a place of eternal sunshine of the spotless kind.
Masterpiece portraits of Britain's top notch historical figures adorn its walls -the majestic Elizabeth I, the exquisite Byron in Albanian garments, the mystical Richard Francis Burton staring perpetually into the void, the modest, almost rustic Cromwell; gravity's best friend Newton, head-free sets' foremost endorser Charles I, the blue-eyed charms of Faraday, as well as gravity's other best friend (but for entirely different reasons) Henry VIII, among
countless others.
Jokes aside - the Portrait Gallery is to me what Tintern Abbey was to Wordsworth. But I would be too presumptuous to think anyone cares - that I can be sure of.

A lot of people (die-hard political know-alls mainly) often speak of the paradox that is Britain and her history. How could this spittle of a country rule most of the world once? She's not territorially blessed, and the same goes for her natural resources. Yet her army was often the best in the business, her navy even more frequently so; colonial gain was but the net effect of all this. The National Portrait Gallery holds the answer perhaps. Indeed, that greatness Britain once had, well wasn't it all due to the talent, hard-work and devotion of precisely those magnificent figures that now silently heed you from their freshly-polished though too confining frames in a gallery that nevertheless honours them befittingly with its dignified interior? This is the true greatness, albeit imperiously so, that Britain genuinely possesses. What better proof is needed to confirm the glory of her past? A spittle indeed, but one which was spitted out by a god!
In our present world, such greatness, one that rests on the shoulders of giants like the abovementioned historical figures, is unfortunately gone. Now, it's all proxy war politics where instead of Newtons, apples fall on the heads of oil magnates. Britain's economy is an odourless gas, and so is that of the Unites States - it is based mostly on banknotes, which are rendered meaningless when confronted by the true wealth (the one that you could smell) of Russia's natural resources. What is the present crisis in South Ossetia but the assertion of precisely this observation...
Britain was once great because she was able to make good use of the people she bore - the National Portrait Gallery justifies this. But that was before. Now, she's childless, the North Sea waving her aside with false geniality, bearing right on the world map towards an unfriendly giant.

Repin's Way

2008-08-02T17:48:00.003+01:00

The above painting, which depicts the 14-year old Pushkin reciting one of his poems before the great Derzhavin, is curious for something else other than its centre of attention. If you look on the left hand side, you will note the priest sitting right next to the visibly impressed Derzhavin. He is, in a rather ludicrous way, strangely gazing at the viewer - a slight, enigmatically uncomfortable, almost embarrassed smile visible on his face. It definitely lacks the general amazement seen in the rest of the crowd, and to me it expresses a certain tedium hidden within the holy man's seemingly unimpressed heart. It almost seems a type of mockery on great, old Repin's part, as the discrepancy between the priest's rather bored face and the audience's utter rapture, effectively showers young Pushkin with self-assured aplomb. Maybe Repin was in elevated spirits when he was painting this picture, and so decided to humour himself by subtly inserting this figure of the priest so as to balance things out on Pushkin's exalted stance?

A highly-original artistic prank, perhaps? If that is the case, I shall salute Repin for a sense of humour as sophisticated as his brush! Maybe Pushkin ought to challenge him to a duel as well?

Why not, they're both equal now.

Homeric Charmlessness

2008-07-16T23:06:00.002+01:00

Note: Ipchuk shall be away for some time and as a consequence, Winter House will be left rather more inhospitable than usual for a while, until all is back to normal again. If your feel the urge to vomit, scream or shed a tear because of that, Ipchuk's advice is for you to read the following, and enjoy the gritty silence in the end...

Of course, Homeric characters are very much driven by their indomitable egotism. Indeed, their hubris, the tiny thin thread on which hangs their characteristic heroism, is paradoxically the primary cause of their inevitable downfall. In that same spirit, I have come to ruminate over the various aspects, degrading or invigorating, of people’s ability to communicate with each other in public. Undoubtedly, the perceived charm of the natural charmer is indispensably important for the flawless communication of his ideas. He is a gifted in the art of persuasion, a skilled orator and not short of the odd acting ability. But what of us, the lesser communicators, indeed what are we left with? Are we the ones locked in a cage like beasts, salivating perpetually over the much-desired, greasy bone that is so far our of our reach?
What belies so openly and unashamedly our ability to speak well, is our intrinsic quality to hide the truth inside us so well, so ably that our familiar, natural figure of speech becomes this very same greasy bone out of our reach. We lose the plot, and in the process, we start talking in a voice that would thenceforth remain the subject of heavy critique on our part. In other words, some people, although wealthy in ideas, are penniless in the face of the all-too unpolished means of verbally channelling them through. Our penchant for self- expression turns in on itself and like a frightened dog, shoves its tale between its legs and a large ‘guilty’ sign swims across its face – the process is instinctual and most people generally have had the bittersweet benefit of practice in this field. So there, amidst the numinous mists that mask our finite ability to achieve the perfect tone of conversation, or the ideal use of expressive diction, we stand on the peak of our human desire to achieve what we hitherto only conceived of as impossible.

Every so often I bear a certain amount of detestation for my perceived appearance when I am conversing with someone: the sheer banality of my tone, the treacherous stammer which my nervousness sometimes elicits from my voice – it’s all so discouraging, so discomforting, so disingenuous, so artificial! In the end, your speech is stripped of its quality and you are unremarkably steeped into the insipidity of your own insecurities. In fact, you become the next promenading, pseudo-flamboyant, whacko-wanker of Gogol’s Nevsky Prospekt, and the world and the people around you assume the role of a Shakespearean chorus – they paint somebody else’s world, not yours...
In that intense moment of expectancy where you are determined to make an impression, you become the impresario of your own ego, and die a thousand deaths in that single instant when your efforts bear no fruit, and you only end up as the fictional director, not as the actor partaking in the action as you initially set it out to be. Sometimes I think that all this resentment and bitterness that people amass within themselves is due to the fact that people are too presumptuous when it comes to their ability to transform themselves; they think that behind their ego lay hidden millions of other alter-egos that they may with ease exploit to further their own ends, and achieve the perfect manner of speech, the perfect tone, the perfect expressive diction, and the optimum temperature for their charm to thrive in. This presumptuousness gives birth to immediate disappointment as they realise that in reality, those theoretical alter-egos are in fact the plain, grey cardboard cutaways of their own single, unimpressive, perceivable non-entity of a personality.
The eventual disillusion would arrive soon enough.

This is the martyrdom which every shy, modestly dressed, humbly sworn introvert has to go through before eventually receiving the honour of guiding other people out of the labyrinth of their blissful ignorance. His crown of thorns, which hitherto had rendered him a pitiable being, which had in the past unflinchingly disavowed his true persona, which had denied him access to the gratitude of other people, well that thorny crown would in the end implode under its own weight and unblock the pure streams of his painfully-awaited tears that would crystallize on his slushy cheeks and with stupor and vigour bring him back to life. This would be the end for the Stalinist period of his insufferable ego and others shall grasp the purity of the source of his seemingly troubled being; he would enchant them all with his inspirational carelessness, with his shell-shocked consideration, with the dispirited drum of his attractive indifference, embalming only the remnants of his hitherto unexplored countenance. The transformation would be complete, and he shall feel (whatever feeling in this state means) the altered nature of his being – he would be the last man! No bible in his hands, no flag to vaunt, no name to go by, no ode of joy to sing; nor would he desire power or be in need of cash – he would have nothing to fear! His coldness will not recoil from anything earthly, least of all the plights of others, for there is nothing more earthly than those long overdue plights! In a terrible twist of events, he would become the blank sheet of paper, on which others shall write with their cunning quill, and mould him in accordance to their own self-indulgent will.

He would doze off and hibernate over the eternal winter of his unforgiving surroundings. This would be his hubris here, and this would be his punishment hereafter! The misty, numinous peak on which he proudly once stood, from which he thought he could finally descry his innermost desire to achieve that which he hitherto thought of as inconceivable, was a peak among peaks and it was no Mount Athos!
From then on, hands casually in his pockets, he would saunter nonchalantly and whistle incessantly under his nose – whistling, with due care for every correct note, the inaudible tune of his requiem!
--------
Eventually, he plucked up the courage to say ‘hello’ – courage which was mistaken for crass, sharp, bold, impudent audacity, and he dared not survey further.
‘Ah, Homeric Audacity!’, he thought, and consoled himself on that very fact. He went home, and began work on his Homeric Indifference – the only note of existence for the charmless man.

Balkan Folk Tales They Did Not Want You to Know

2008-07-14T16:20:00.003+01:00

In the midst of a violent, adrenaline-pumped election protest outside parliament, with an enraged crowd of people all grunting and shouting 'Democracy! Democracy!', one man feels a streak of rebellion within his unfittingly jocund soul, and decides to emphatically change the subject of conversation. He starts shouting, as loud as he can, 'Menstruation! Menstruation!', completely disregarding the character of the protest.
A bewildered protester, baffled by his supposed comrade's unnatural behaviour, starts questioning him:
'Mate, why are you shouting 'menstruation' instead of 'democracy'?
The courageous rebel-within-a-rebellion casually replies:
'Well, it doesn't matter as long there is blood shed!'

Unfortunately, he did not survive to fight another day...

The Art of Calmness

2008-07-08T15:01:00.002+01:00

I have decided to compile a list of all the things that I find calming. These are things that in those dark moments, when you are haunted by the surreptitious screeches of past regrets, or in those instances where a chokingly large lump of existentialist angst is savagely tearing your throat, or perhaps the simple, raw feeling of embitterment or alienation is traversing your realm of being; in those moments you instinctively seek some form of escapism, where for a fleeting period of time, your sense of purpose would regenerate and your personal decency would likewise be able to atone, momentarily exorcising those devils from you froth-corrupted lungs, instilling a sense of sublime tranquillity where it most matters: the heart.
So soothe away, things of unfortunate temporality! Soothe away!

The list is in no particular order

-- Macedonian folk music - although it is officially Macedonian, it is very much Bulgarian, relayed and relayed over generations from Bulgarians to Bulgarians, sung in Macedonian (an easily intelligible Bulgarian dialect), and loved by young and old, ugly or beautiful, rich or poor! This music is so melancholy yet it is not dramatic at all. The singing involved is not technically demanding or complicated, it is much better, for it calls for the voice of the heart, which simply transits along the throat for the sake of credibility! The lyrics conjure up images of nature at its most sublime: from the serenely flowing brooklets painted so aptly by the soft, unpretentious sounds of the accordion, to the natural, inherently gentle rhythm of the drums which echoes your pulsating heart as you march across fields, ravines, forests - a natural landscape which is contagiously exhilarating. But the sheer simplicity and memorable nature of each tune resonates with such life-affirming force, such spiritual equanimity which renders it pleasantly refreshing, gently ennobling your hitherto destructive instincts. It is not assertive or in any way intrusive; it does not espouse its own view of life, it simply enriches your imagination in a quiet, uncomplicated, melancholy manner.
The heroic past of an entire nation is preserved in those songs! Undoubtedly, a Unesco World Heritage Site for the world of music!

-- Botticelli paintings - Probably the Quattrocento painter who injected himself most in his art. The exquisite essay by Walter Pater on Botticelli reveals some of the inner-workings of his paintings - the sober sorrow of his Madonnas, and the grace and purity of his Venuses, all...terribly unoriginal. The real soothing value of Botticelli is in the faces of his figures - that peaceful, gentle, silent passivity on their part, as though they are aware of their other-worldliness, bathing in the various scents of their delicacy and fondly taking pleasure in it all! His Madonna of the Magnificat exudes such refined melancholia, such enthralling, virginal smoothness - this is the image that you want to see flashing before your eyes as you lay dying!
Botticelli was one of the most notable Renaissance humanists in painting. The razor-sharp delicacy of his brush does not propagate false piety, it possesses a far more human touch. There is subtle, magnetic aspect to his works which draws you in, responding obligingly to the fanmail that it receives from the bright spark of your child-like sense of hope and innocence. It is the Everest of edenic imagery, unveiling your longing for the long-gone. Surely, there must be something comforting in that at least!

--Schumann's 54th piano concerto- That piece of music encapsulates brilliantly the different nuances of human emotion: from the sublimely grandiose to the playfully whimsical to the, yes, soothingly slow - it bounces back and forth across the entire spectrum of these purely human emotions. Yet it contradicts itself because despite its repetitive character, it flows so naturally, so logically that even though a specific type of human sentiment may somewhat randomly pop up effectively from around the corner, there still emerges an organic continuum that is seamless in its melodic stream. I do not personally find it excessively profound as a piece of composition, and it does somewhat lack a richness of texture but its lucidity, its unobtrusive nature immediately instils within you a sense of familiarity, as though you were brought up listening to it. I perceive it as the utmost modesty in music, as it fails to dazzle you like Mozart or Vivaldi does, nor is it complex or cutting-edge like Shostakovich, but its simple efficacy does not rob it out of its inherent effervescence, for it is a type of effervescence that pats you gently on the hand, subtly exposing itself, leaving a lot to the imagination, you know, kind of like the musical equivalent of softcore...stuff.
Performed solo on the piano, it is better, but I wouldn't kick the fiddles out of bed either!

--Ottorino Respighi's L'adorazione dei Magi- Now that is a true musical gem! It is obscure, and on top of that, it is an obscure movement of a fairly obscure orchestral work, of a composer that is...fairly obscure. But I have to make a confession here: it is actually based on Botticelli's paintings of the Adoration of the Magi. Oh, so familiar! But the case is different. It is equally applicable to his other paintings in general. It has an air of stillness about it, but a stillness where Botticelli's bronze-like Venus and rather wry-looking Flora meet in the Garden of Eden, and strangely do not feel out of place! This is because it straddles both the religious and classical works of Botticelli. The quality of this piece however is actually contained in the fresh, crisp air that breezes past you, caressing your skin as one of Botticelli's less damned-looking Madonnas would stroke her little cherub, that little baby Jesus! Yes, it is refreshing and remarkably inspirational, and as long as your cynicism is not as taut as a 1300 year-old Bosnian pine, you will do just fine by a having a go at listening to it!

Well these are some of my suggestions. They could serve as a sort of a treatment against the stresses of the hyper-threading technology that your serpentine sense of angst would often use to sneak through the occasional wasteland of your sometimes livid mind.
Sure, they may seem rather pretentious but they are not costly or time-consuming at all, and do not require any cerebral effort on your part, save for that which they may eventually inspire...

The Soul of Man Under Socialism

2008-07-05T13:47:00.004+01:00

Recently, I came across an essay by Oscar Wilde - The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
My curiosity was owed more to the fact that the essay offered the prospect of a glimpse into the true person of the famed author, which in this case would not be hidden by the façade of his wit and penchant for farcical situations as is the case in his more widely known works.
The essay itself is nevertheless more worth reading for its well-articulated ideas, rather than the actual originality of those very same ideas. His discussion of libertarian socialism is more or less simply another naive exploration of the much longed-for Utopia, extolling the virtues of a classless society; but the breadth of his language, and the eloquence and power of his prose arguably compensates for this. Also, his debate on the nature of journalism of his day is impressively modern, as all the arguments put forward in his discussion seem so fresh and equally applicable to our own celebrity-crazed society.
I have extracted certain passages from the essay that do ultimately add up to make for a good read:

“ A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
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“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under certain conditions, may seem to have created individualism, must take cognisance of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the sphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.”
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“In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.”
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“The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.”
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“But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that was quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly second-rate order, or of no artistic value what so ever.”
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“In France, in fact, they limit the journalist, and allow the artist almost perfect freedom. Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist, and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the world, and the most indecent newspapers. It is no exaggeration to talk of compulsion. There are possibly some journalists who take a real pleasure in publishing horrible things, or who, being poor, look to scandals as forming a sort of permanent basis for an income. But there are other journalists, I feel certain, men of education and cultivation, who really dislike publishing these things, who know that it is wrong to do so, and only do it because the unhealthy conditions under which their occupation is carried on oblige them to supply the pubic with what the public wants, and to compete with other journalists in making that supply as full and satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible. It is a very degrading position for any body of educated men to be placed in, and I have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely."
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“If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive.”
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“In centuries before ours the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump. That was quite hideous. In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole. That is much worse. And what aggravates the mischief is that the journalists who are most to blame are not the amusing journalists who write for what are called Society papers.”
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“It is only fair to state, however, that the extraordinary success of the revolution in house decoration and furniture and the like has not really been due to the majority of the public developing a very fine taste in such matters. It has been chiefly due to the fact that the craftsmen of things so appreciated the pleasure of making what was beautiful, and woke to such a vivid consciousness of the hideousness and vulgarity of what the public had previously wanted, that they simply starved the public out. It would be quite impossible at the present moment to furnish a room as rooms were furnished a few years ago, without going for everything to an auction of second-hand furniture from some third-rate lodging-house. The things are no longer made”
---------
“One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick up a brush for a painter, but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw mud. And yet the democracy have not so far to stoop as the Emperor. In fact, when they want to throw mud they have not to stoop at all. But there is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.”
---------
“But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will change. The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result. All the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.”
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“What man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment. The new Individualism, for whose service Socialism, whether it wills it or not, is working, will be perfect harmony. It will be what the Greeks sought for, but could not, except in Thought, realise completely, because they had slaves, and fed them; it will be what the Renaissance sought for, but could not realise completely except in Art, because it had slaves, and starved them. It will be complete, and through it each man will attain to his perfection. The new Individualism is the new Hellenism.”

An Elegy

2008-07-02T20:39:00.007+01:00

Well it's officially a fact: my goldfish has died.

Something akin to brain damage plagued it since Saturday night, and today morning, I found it lifeless on the bottom of the tank. There were two of them, but now one of them is gone.
That sort of illness was particularly brutal as my goldfish kept swivelling about, without any proper sense of direction. Its little body assumed the shape of a rainbow in such a grotesquely pitiful manner - I was pretty much helpless. Its appetite abruptly vanished, and though I tried force feeding it by shoving food right at (not right into it, of course) its mouth, hoping that it will be consumed, that was likewise to no avail either as all was simply vomited out again. Whatever treatments I poured into the tank, nothing could restore that little goldfish's élan vital, as it lay there paralysed; its body emaciated - the only glimmer of hope being the fact that it was still intaking oxygen, but in the end, the severity of the illness was simply too much to bear as its gills eventually ceased functioning. The rest was silence.

What caught my eye however was the other goldfish - the healthy one. Day and night, it huddled together with its dying comrade, ocassionally giving it the odd life-restoring nudge, but the terminally ill goldfish responded less and less to these as its state deteriorated in favour of complete resignation. That resignation was eventually followed by the all too imminent death.
However, the other goldfish was visibly sensing this and I somehow felt sorry both of them. But I have to admit - that healthy little fish, in spite of its all too natural simplicity and questionable intelligence, demonstrated such matchless solidarity, such a courageous readiness to do everything at its pathetic disposal to help its dying pal, that I almost felt guilty before it and I am sure that in its eyes, I was the culprit and the cause of its friend's demise. And perhaps I was -that itself I cannot myself tell.

If such simple little creatures could exhibit such a strong sense of togetherness and comradeship, where does that leave us, humans? Is our intelligence and certain tendency to over-think things through to blame?

For instance, the high rate of gang crime here in the country, and the recent spree of street stabbings in the city bears as its foremost cause the wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time effect, i.e. the unfortunate nature of circumstances surrounding the case. But the fundamental reason simply has to be ineffective and plain bad upbringing. Indeed, parents are most to blame as they have unleashed upon the world creatures whose code of behaviour equates to instinctive baseness, disregarding to the full any sense of personal pride and dignity. It's not swimming with sharks that; it's swimming with piranhas, for they are the mindless pack of killers who would feast upon your helplessness, without any code of honour, tactics, or at least some form of intelligent stalking prior to attack. This is what you are up against when you're facing a bunch of ignoble cads: unprovoked, uncalculated, unfounded offensive against you, not as a person, but as an objectified victim.

In the end, that little mythically dumb goldfish ostensibly had in store more care and affection towards its damned friend, than many human parents living on council estates have towards their own children, and that's pretty much how the cookie crumbles nowadays.
In the meantime, the little goldfish is now somewhere on the shores of the river Styx, better known as the sewers, having been literary flushed down the bog. Those bastards thought, they are still living.

In honour of my dead goldfish and its comrade's valorous albeit vain attempts to resuscitate it, I shall watch Finding Nemo again!

The Other Stuff Unheard - II issue

2008-06-28T14:32:00.005+01:00

...reporting the news as they very nearly were! (manifesto)

50 Cent pens a children’s book

Who is the literary genius then? The new wave of celebrity writers has now become quite an institution, with hard-on, full-on and not- yet -universally-recognised buffoon rapper 50 Cent publishing his first ever children’s title – The Diary of a Penitent Pussy.

The book has been widely lauded as the cutting-edge of literariness and his mastery of prose has been littered with frantic applause. The faithful citizens of Queens Borough, New York City, have all praised the book as ‘a subtle tour de force, depicting with egregious sophistication and a touch of sickeningly well wrought sensuality, the real life of a pussy whose love conquests rival even that of Felix that Cat or Tom from Tom & Jerry’. Queens Borough, New York City, is in fact that birthplace of the rapper-turned-writer.

‘I think it’s about the relationship between animals and stuff’, 50 Cent was available to comment. And indeed, it is hardly surprising that given his stylish videos and the plaudits they have received in recent years, the rapper (real name Curtis Jackson) should settle down and write about the life of animals – a natural progression from the subjects portrayed and themes explored in his music videos.

The New York Times has likewise rated the book among its top-ten reads of the summer, calling it ‘the most profound piece of lyrical writing since UB40’s great hit – Rat in Me Kitchen’.

Celebrities-turned-writers have certainly done well out of their literary endeavours, with the most recent example being ex-Spice Girls diva Geri Halliwell whose series of children’s novels, Ugenia Lavender, have all but outsold giants in children’s fiction such as Roald Dahl and Beatrix Potter. The same phenomenal success is likewise expected from 50’s evidently painstaking efforts to promote his new book, for in the UK, the sanguinary debacle between the two rivalling publishers, Penguin Books and Oxford World’s Classics, as to which one of those would have the privilege of owning the rights of 50 Cent’s work, is a hotly-debated topic the progress of which The Economist has since been closely following.

In response to the question as to what inspired him to write a children’s novel, the rapper faithfully adhered to his trademark humility and had only this to say:
‘It was an urge, you know, quite unexpected. It seemed the natural thing to do, in the end. But I ain’t answering those sort of questions anyway. I’m just in it for the benefit of the doubt. You know I thought, well if a cat has nine lives as they say, and I got shot nine times, then something there matches up, and that’s how I came up with the title.’

Talks are already underway of 50’s next album, which is rumoured to be titled - Get Rich or Die Broke in Your Publisher’s Car. We understand that it will be a concept album, describing the events surrounding the rapper’s rise and fall in the literary business.

The Diary of a Penitent Pussy has also been nominated for the Public Toilet Literature Prize 2008, and is now available in bookshops throughout the world... and beyond.

The Leftovers of a Private Renaissance

2008-06-27T00:08:00.003+01:00

School trips: signing up for one is like signing up a declaration of independence – one’s cares and responsibilities are momentarily swept away by the opportunity for exploration beyond the tedious realms of everyday life. School trips represent some kind of an outlet, a vent for one’s long-repressed desires which have consciously and unconsciously accumulated throughout the seemingly perpetual, dreary days of normal school existence. From this point of view, the trip that I experienced recently can safely be considered a true paradiso….

The last word there might have given it away, but about four months ago I found myself in Florence. Indeed, the ‘cradle’ of the Italian Renaissance offered me an escapade, a form of catharsis which somewhat enlightened me, purified me, purged (for at least a fleeting moment) some of my deep, internal inklings which had previously ailed me. Was it the painting, the sculpture, the architecture? One would be inclined to believe so but the answer lies elsewhere.
Since I am not writing the script for a soap opera, I’ll swiftly delve into the actual substance of what this trip represents, what it signifies and what conclusions I have drawn from it.

First of all, a key realisation that initialized this 4-day odyssey came early on, as I was half-sleeping on the coach that took us from Pisa to our desired destination - Florence. As I glanced at the nearing lights signalling our arrival at this labyrinthine city, I contemplated the twilight sky and the vista offered by the cupola of Florence’s central cathedral: the brilliantly-defined contours of the Duomo lined up against the cloudless bluishness of the dusky sky gave me a thrill, a sensation which amounted to hypnosis. This was not due to the excessive beauty of the scenery or the fresh Tuscan air, but quite the opposite in fact – it was the cosiness, the unpretentious simplicity of the mostly yellow and ochre painted houses that surrounded us.
It was late afternoon so the incipient darkness gave way for the watery crescent of the Moon and as such, the architecture itself was not as clearly visible so I was more or less forced to keep imagining the grandiose edifices that awaited us. It was at this point however that I grasped something…

People have the rather discouraging tendency to seek a meaning to life in life itself as a uniform continuum of time without clear frames of reference. In other words, as I set my eyes on the above-described view that the twilight sky and the Duomo offered I became conscious of the fact that one ought not view life in this manner because time itself is beyond us and as such, we should not ask the question ‘what is the meaning of life?’ but rather, ‘what is the meaning of this night?’. What we do tonight or tomorrow, well that’s something we have control over because the next night or day represents a tractable period of time over which we have at least some perceived choice as to what we make of it. Only a couple of hours before I was in rainy, ‘chavy’ London and now I was strolling around the streets of the quintessential Renaissance city. This stark, chiaroscuro-like contrast between ‘light and shade’ (helped of course by the swiftness of air-travel) was what prompted me to arrive to this seemingly simple conclusion because I genuinely became aware of my free will, and the fact that it is limited more by time than by space…

Such abstract thoughts were duelling within my mind and just like so many countless times before, the heart had already won this duel of sensations before the mind even got a chance to exclaim ‘en garde!’.
But such abstract, unfittingly innocent Wordsworthian thoughts had no place here on this trip I was quick to recognise. The cardboard cutaways that were the people I was required to march along with were hardly appreciative of the beauty or history of the city. Indeed, they were not totally oblivious to it as I presupposed at first, but for instance, the exquisite statues that adorned the colonnade of the Uffizi gallery were virtually non-existent for them even though they represented the absolute genius of the city: sculptural portraits of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Galileo, Dante, Machiavelli were merely the ticks within the itinerary drawn before-hand and no-one even ventured to take photographs with them - they simply passed them by without a gist of recognition, or even the merest, most casual glance.

More to the point however, this actually led me onto the idea of what distinguishes the more mature, more mellifluously fine-tuned mind from the rather unripe, stubborn, as-green-as-chlorophyll consciousness of the average teenager: it is the ability to appreciate the symbolism behind physical beauty, preferring the substance found within rather than the elegant façade as was the case with those prepossessing statues outside the Uffizi. Sure, their charm is of course contained in their exquisite finish, but more importantly, they serve to depict certain figures of the past of immense historical value. Was I the only one who could appreciate that? Indeed, it was in my view an apt demonstration of where the two ends of the verdant and the ripe type of mind meet, for recognising the innerness, the ethereal symbolism of that which may initially lure you with its fine exterior, is no doubt, the art of appreciating art (even of you are blind-folded, or just blind). Upon seeing Michelangelo’s David in the Galleria Academia, one girl from our merry collegiate was evidently unimpressed, and denounced it as ‘just another sculpture’. Of course, it’s made from marble like most of the other sculptures, but then she failed to grasp the fact that its placement in the very heart of the gallery, is not at all coincidental, and what it represents, indeed, what it stands for, is of incommensurable significance because it is a true landmark of the world, and there’s no higher pedestal for it but that. Explaining all this to her would have been of no avail.

Feel free of course, to accuse me of excessive self-acclaim with this observation, but just as I have the right to breathe, I have the right to insight! In that case, let the assertiveness of my ego be my oxygen!

Moving on, the mostly Apollonian days of my trip were shamefully besmirched by the prevalently hot Dionysian nights. No, there weren’t any actual brawls (hence that ‘shamefully’ remark earlier) save for that of occasional quarrelling, but that was all merely the handy work of rose wine and my willingness to experiment. Either way, I decided to play the role of the jester - that agent provocateur disguised as Bacchus!

I ended up deliberately exaggerating my alcoholic inebriety and all of a sudden, in that tiny hotel room where there were 20 of us little lambs packed and stricken by the gin and tonic plague, I brazenly shouted them all down, and came up with a challenge: we were to have a little reciting contest! With an air of belligerent defiance, complimented well by my unique Falstaff impression, I indecently assaulted them with the slurs of Macbeth’s final soliloquy (you know the ‘sound and fury’ one) which to my great misfortune I knew by heart. They all ended up applauding in the end, but in those laudations could be discerned of course not the sonorous waves of admiration, but the violent dissonance of justified mockery, which note by note was petulantly dribbling upon my face like a broken roof leak

My half-drunkenness however was still urging me on with forceful vehemence, and my seemingly entertained audience likewise undertook the suspicious effort of cheering me on, evidently stirring up more trouble for my already crippled pride. I kept my head high, chin domineeringly up, and eyes bulging and glittering like crystal balls, affronting the very basic principles of decorum and Florentine humanistic dignity. Along came my next pitiable performance as I recited Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be speech’ in its entirety, hiccupping for obvious symbolical reasons and with ill-fated promptness at ‘proud man’s contumely’.
Still, the aftershocks I was to experience later.

Disregarding the charade I had caused, I stormed out of the room, and out onto the deserted, narrow road where our hotel was stationed. The bulk of my physical weight I felt in my head, as I began lingering around the area, where nightlife thankfully lacked the vibrancy of early 20th century Monmartre, thus serving to sober me up quite refreshingly. I eventually took sanctuary in a small restaurant, where I sat down by myself, with a level of confidence which only a person who has just experienced a sudden bout of shamelessness is capable of. The quietness and laid-back atmosphere of the place was appealing to me.

I closed my eyes for a moment and reflected on the night’s happenings. Of course it would have all been forgotten by the morning, for the drinks would have taken care of this. Still, was it all necessary? Was the provocation I had witlessly masterminded really worth the indignity, and all for the sake of taking my chances only to see what would happen? One needs such experiences if only to atone later through the refined touch of imminent regret, which would later serve to exasperate the cerebral realm of our being.

Better be alone in one piece than be desired in several, I thought as I sat in that charming little restaurant all by myself. I took preference to a glass of white wine this time, desperately hoping that its superior bitterness of taste would resuscitate my fading will to behold my own reflection on the restaurant’s large window.

Just to Explain

2008-06-25T10:55:00.003+01:00

Ben has telepathically somewhat anticipated my next post. Indeed, though we have both concurred as to the superiority of the term 'blok' to 'blog' in terms of designating our 'frustration outlets', as he likes to call them, I still feel its message has not been clearly stated.
Bearing this in mind, I posted something a few days earlier, which I feel was largely neglected, perhaps because I simply did not bother to explain the idea behind it. I have decided to start posting, from time to time, an 'irregular periodical' which I have christened 'The Other Things Unheard': I feel the name itself reflects the absurdist character which its contents will embrace, and it is also name that is plain and easy to remember. On top of that, it is also a vague pun on 'The Theatre of the Absurd' - all sufficiently self-explanatoty.
Now, what 'The Other Things Unheard' will involve, is the occasional post involving the odd mock-newspaper article with the frequent contributions of The Editor, who would competently opine on the given article. Think of this mock-newspaper belonging to what I would describe as an edenic society, where the hitherto ideal living standard of the people within it, is gradually waning due to the negative influence of certain institutions and philosophies which would only serve to corrupt it. Therefore consider my mock-articles and their contents as objects belonging to Pandora's Box, as they will be describing the evils which we know from our world, slowly creeping into this fictional Atlantis, which 'The Other Things Unheard' will give a voice to.
The articles will of course involve figures from our own world: celebrities, memebrs of the royalty, famous people still with us today, and likewise people for whom it would be physically impossible to join us for a cup of coffee these days...
I feel that such 'rubrics', even if they are not regular, will introduce some kind of coherence to 'bloks' and this will at least make them that bit more presentable, and more interesting overall.
So, the first issue 'The Other Things Unheard' is already out, and I'll warm it up in the microwave by referencing it again: it is experimental as you shall note, but its chosen theme should hardly surprise anyone here, and remember, it is meant to be satirical, though like all satire, it still bears certain tragicomedic touches here and there.

Of Small Steps and Giant Leaps

2008-06-23T19:44:00.009+01:00

If you thought Wimbledon was smashing, think again...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7468966.stm

"Most physicists believe the risk of a cataclysm lies in the realms of science fiction. But there have been fears about the possibility of a mini-black hole - produced in the collider - swelling so that it gobbles up the Earth. "

"Critics have previously raised concerns that the production of weird hypothetical particles called strangelets in the LHC could trigger the mass conversion of nuclei in ordinary atoms into more strange matter - transforming the Earth into a hot, dead lump. "

This is perhaps the only sort of experiment where the idea of Health & Safety seems to defy the point, but at least one thing is certain: we have long since moved on from Tesla's promethean experiments in his laboratory where the Earth was likewise under such threat had it been a perfect conductor...
Therefore, if we are to go down in a sudden apocalypse now, at least we'll be doing it in style, creating a black hole and thus taking part in the cosmic advancement of the Universe, rather than the egotistic nuclear war which would have only served to advance human interest...
Anyway, these people are actually worried about the Earth being swallowed up by an artificially created black-hole - sometimes I find it hard to understand them...

"The Other Stuff Unheard" - an irregular periodical

2008-06-22T14:00:00.007+01:00

Main article in the latest issue of ‘The Other Stuff Unheard’ today:

Last night, at approximately 5.55 pm, a man reportedly dressed in nothing but a plain white toga, has broken into a beauty salon, violently thrashing absolutely everything in sight. All windows were completely shattered, as the subject in question apparently used a brick to initially force his entry into the salon, which at the time was just about to close. All beauticians inside were shocked to suddenly discover this man bringing utter carnage to all of their equipment, behaving, according to eyewitness reports, as though ‘he was possessed by some evil spirit’, exhibiting obvious symptoms of paranoia. The motivations behind this man’s despicable act are yet unclear, though from all the eyewitness evidence now gathered, it seems that he was in his late 60s, perhaps early 70s, around 5’10’, with an extensive, bushy beard and a likewise thick, unkempt hair.
Apparently, his face was pale, though bearing a strange grin which incessantly adorned his face, terrifying all that were unfortunate enough to be inside the salon at the time. He was merely clad in a white toga, with nothing underneath, which the beauticians inside were curious to observe, and who were eventually able to provided the Police, with highly professional, detailed descriptions, noting the subject’s odd choice of dress, which they claimed was ‘rather old-fashioned’.
Moreover, some of the victims, despite some initial reluctance to talk, eventually reported that the man also on a few occasions yelled out, what the police now believe is his first name – ‘Democritus’.
A woman who witnessed the bizarre happenings in the beauty salon at the time, and whom we have kept anonymous for legal reasons, had this to say:

“It was only a second or so, when I turned my head to see this man who was holding a large, red brick in his hand, obviously intending to break the windows. I panicked and dropped my lipstick, but was helpless to do anything, as the man made his way inside, breaking everything he set his eyes upon, behaving like a wild animal. It was only when he looked me straight in the eyes, I immediately recognised him. It was Democritus, and I knew it.”

The man however, is still at large, and is believed to be very dangerous.
Here is a artist's interpretation of his face, composed of eyewitness accounts:

The Police are still appealing for more witnesses to come forward, as investigation gets underway.

Editor’s comments:

This case, though still very much fresh in our minds, has somewhat perturbed the government, as Parliament has now voted in favour of a new bill, which I believe is a direct consequence of this particular incident. The bill itself involves the creation of a new institution, which has its own ideological interests, giving us ample opportunities for discussion, not least because of the steadfastness of the Parliament in voting it through. In brief, it was the government’s official reports which I have carefully examined. What they aim to get across to the wider public is that the man in question was reportedly ‘resurrected’ – a new term coined by this new institution calling itself the Church, which essentially means ‘ to raise from the dead’. What this worryingly suggests, is that the culprit was actually the real ‘Democritus’ – an ancient Greek philosopher, who lived between c.460 BC and c.370 BC. He was one of the first thinkers to come up with the theory of matter being composed of minute, indivisible ‘atoms’. Certainly, the appearance of the man bodes well with his alleged identity, and the Police as well as the Government, are insistent that it was in fact Democritus risen from the dead, though they are somewhat suspiciously reluctant to comment on the yet unexplained nature of his motives and anti-social behaviour.

Nevertheless, what strikes me as odd, is this precise insistence on the government’s part to propagate the view that he was in fact, ‘resurrected’, and certainly the number of times that this neologism has been used in the official report of this particular case, is staggering, amounting to some 2, 000 occasions where the term appears within the report. I cannot help but be disturbed by this number, as the actual nature of the investigation into the incident seems more shrouded in mystery, and more complicated than the incident itself. Never on one occasion did anyone note a more likely explanation, that the man in question could be a simple poser, who for all we know, could have escaped from a nearby mental hospital, managed to somehow acquire this type of clothing and set upon himself the task of anarchy – the corollary being this precise incident. Certainly a more logical explanation closer to the truth, and in spite of all this, no official has probed into its likelihood as of yet, and it does not look as though someone with any sort of influence ever will. The government remains adamant as to the truthfulness of the outcome of the official investigation into the case, and what is even more worrying, and I daresay frightening, is that the Parliament with its new bill, has gone to great lengths to assert this view as an unquestionable truism; and all this in spite of a far more obvious theoretical resolution to the case.

The government has likewise invented a new term to denote the ideological foundations of the ‘church’ – ‘religion’. This ‘religion’ is apparently linguistically extracted from the unlikely coupling of ‘relic’ and ‘Aegean’, with the latter being a reference to the civilization of ancient Greece and its constituent states, all situated on the Aegean sea (and in fact, rather revealing of the fact that I my opinion all that this ‘religion’ includes is rewritten narratives of old legends and myths originating precisely from this region).

While this blend of the Antique with the modern is admittedly, artfully done, I cannot eschew the facts, and this new institution does not require close scrutiny in order to observe its overall bizarreness. Even recently, it has released a book which it calls ‘The Bible’, and which is now available in unlimited quantities in all bookshops. If you thought that was worrying, you ought to note that only yesterday a book shop manager was apprehended in custody for allowing one of the copies of this book being displayed in the ‘Fiction’ section of the shop...
I would end on an objective note: the case continues.

Love and its Friends and Foes

2008-06-18T01:01:00.005+01:00

Note: I do apologise for the post's apparent, excruciating length. But if you are daunted or plain lazy, I don't mind, just do not complain about a lack of fortune from now on because it's your choice whether you read it or not...

One may wonder and wonder: what is the subject that since the dawn of human civilization has been most talked about, most thoroughly explored, most ruminated over, most suffered for, yet somewhat the one that has been the least understood?
Hand on heart, ‘tis love!
Love. Indeed, the more I discuss it, the more susceptible I feel to this inexplicable sense of spiritual mystification. It is the one subject where you start with a platitude, and even though you may eventually bring your discussion to an inglorious close, you may still find yourself uttering platitudes upon platitudes, until the next terribly made porn film parts you and this innocent feeling if exigency that is pumped through the intricate blood vessel system of your spiritual innerness. Thus the inquiry as to love’s platonic side ends, and its sometimes irritating physical aspect kicks in with all the imposition and might that nature is capable of.
What if one devotes some time and effort to love’s apollonian side? Where do we start, indeed where could we, as all - too -human humans seek the roots of platonic love?
‘In Plato!’ shouts the learned man. But I say he, with all his marvellous erudition, should look elsewhere. But where exactly? Plato was one such learned gentleman, living in a precociously civilized, albeit often barbarous society that was ancient Athens. Truly I admit, I have only read one of his works dealing with the subject of love, and enlightening and captivating though The Symposium may be, it exposed to me what stood in the way of Plato, indeed what was the barrier between him and his understanding of the ever elusive subject of love. Is it not all too clear? The problem is contained in his very advantage: his erudition. Had he not been so darn clever, he would have understood love better!
I would also ask you to please excuse my rather mocking tone, glazed lightly with youthful arrogance, for an 18 year-old such as myself, publicly sharing his views on love, or at least confiding as to how he feels about love, could easily turn into the Achilles heel of his public persona, where he would be the subject of most iniquitous derision, dismissed as a vain attempt at manhood, in his course of trying to prove it is there, both in his head and in his pants.
I have come to the conclusion that in all likelihood, one has to rid oneself of both these attributes. That would apologetically leave the heart, because in the heart meet the two extremes, the two ends of the spectrum, for what pulsates there in your thorax straddles what you would definitely find below it, and what in most cases may eventually be discerned above it...
Following this analogy, it is only logical to accuse the heart of being the ego of the human body, where the genitalia is the id, as opposed to the superego which is usually found in the head, though I have to say the latter is without any shadow of doubt, the more indiscriminate of the two. In other words, the heart is the clearest, most unrelentingly raw manifestation of human instinct. The key word here is of course, raw. What exactly should that be the strongest link of the sentence? Because at the same time, it is by far the most obscure part of it, and also the part that is most underrated... rather like my guitar playing...
In all essence, the platonic, or the dark side of love, is massively under-explored, I feel. But I am here to tweak a bit with people’s idea of it, by recounting a story, or a film to be precise, and hoping that ultimately, my retelling of this story would aid people’s perception of the Holy Spirit of Love, or whatever you may call it, should you be daring enough to be one of those types of people who have never seen A Scent of a Woman and yet at the same time claim their favourite movie to be Titanic: usually some young, naive 12 year olds, or just grown ups who have never got around to growing a brain stem.
Sure, the film lacks the wittiness of A Scent of a Woman, yet the journey of, well as Hollywood likes to call it nowadays, ‘self discovery’, is undoubtedly there, and I would argue to a far, far more impressive extent.
The film’s name is Orisiya, or Destiny, as translated from Bulgarian. It was made in 1983, and I would simply state that very few films have ever made such an immediate, almost tearfully sobering impact on me.
Now, I won’t bother with explaining the plot; I would instead let the astonishingly well-written synopsis on the Internet Movie Database do this for me:

‘ This is a screen version of the short story 'Dervish Seed' from great Bulgarian writer Hikolai Haitov. The action takes place in an old-time village in the Rhodope mountains. A boy grows up in a mountainous village. To make sure that the 'dervish seed' of their clan will be preserved, his relatives decide to arrange a marriage for him. His fiancée is a beautiful girl. The Boy is hardly 14 when he is married off to a girl he sees for the first time on his wedding night. The young people fall for each other, but they are still kids, unable to cope with hardships all by themselves. Neither has yet emerged from their childhood and simply gets carried away by childish games, so that the morning the bride is still the maiden she was before. The girl's brothers strike a bargain with a neighbor and swap their sister for two goats. A rich man, who also is setting his affection upon the girl, pays off a ransom and takes the girl off. Years pass by. Both the boy and the girl have families of their own, yet their hearts are in agony for good. Torn between hatred for his rival and his love, for 40 years the Boy is destined to see his beloved busying herself in the neighboring garden. But towards the end of the film when her husband is taken ill, he gives her a hand in tending the man who has broken his life. Love has vanquished the barbaric wish for revenge. The primitive consciousness of the character has evolved to a higher level of humane thinking. In fact, this spells the film's main idea: though one may not find happiness, one can still fulfill the higher purpose of one's life.’

Not only is this plot summary well-written, it is actually appropriate! Bearing this in mind, I hope the basic story is thus more or less clear.
Indeed, the Boy in question, with all his desperately apparent youthfulness is robbed, unexpectedly, of the young girl he is due to marry. The film, in its initial stages, portrays their childish playfulness, their slow transition to mutual self-discovery, coming just short of true sexual awakening. Indeed, the unaccustomed viewer may find those early scenes rather strange, as the two young lovers possess a rather animalistic sort of approach to their initial relationship, albeit in a very pure, innocent almost beautiful way, and when it comes to the end of the film, you would undoubtedly realise the appropriateness of those scenes as chosen by the director. Indeed, they play an intrinsic, a vital part of the atmosphere established in the film. And what an atmosphere! There is no soundtrack used save for the rough bustling of bells found on the necks of goats, so as to recognise them. Indeed, this is the sort of sound which most aptly sums up village life in the mountainous, God-forsaken, unforgiving terrains where the action takes place. The other background texture of sound which may eventually qualify as music, is the ghostly silence of masses upon masses of snow falling down the frosty earth.
And what is it all got to do with platonic love then?
The crux of the story comes right at the very end. Indeed, the plot itself overall is incredibly simple, for the film’s true worth is contained in the atmosphere created from the director’s point of view, and the final, ultimate twist which concludes it, regardless of how populist this itself sounds.
The young, embittered Boy persistently longs for the Girl’s return, and the film goes as far as actually giving us access into the extreme depths of his spiteful mind. We are provided with vivid, violent recreations of scenes from the bitingly resentful imaginative schemes of which his simple, peasant soul initially conceives: from slitting his enemy’s belly open, to burning him alive on the stake, with his ominous laughs echoing throughout the snowy precipices and meadows of the village’s surroundings.
Those scenes unrelentingly shower us with incendiary spite, with sadistic desirousness which thrives in the young Boy’s heart, as the years pass by.
Despite all this, he never truly takes any action against his Enemy, and the fruits sown by the Devil in his heart, are ultimately not cultivated in such a precipitous manner as his sheer embitterment initially promised.
Years go by, and the Boy has married another beautiful woman, and has a family. His sons eventually grow up and get married themselves. At the back of his mind however, he is mentally on the look out for the neighbouring house, where his Enemy has likewise created a family with the Girl. As the Boy’s sons eventually leave the house and go on living their own lives, the Boy (now a man in his fifties, of course) gradually becomes alienated from his surroundings. One morning, as he learns of his Enemy’s grave illness, he takes it upon himself to go up to His house, and as he inevitably comes across the Girl (now a grown woman and a mother, of course), he pities her greatly, because she is the one who in the cold, callous winter snow, has to collect wood sticks for the fire which keeps the house warm, along with his Enemy in it. Else, he would die.
The true nobleness, the towering virtue of his act is contained in that he himself takes up the responsibility for the chopping up of wood in the virtually frozen forest, so that he could relieve the Girl from doing this herself, and possibly perishing in the process, due to the coldness of the weather and the strenuousness of the act, which requires a man’s resilience and strength. In other words, the Boy ultimately ends up helping the Girl in her care for her ill husband – the Boy’s nemesis, his bitter, lifelong enemy, all for the sake of keeping Her alive and well. This is how in this God-forsaken, tiny mountain village, plain, spiritually guided wisdom has ultimately prevailed over hopeless, juvenile spite, resulting in the great, insurmountable devotion of the Boy to the Girl. We may be reminded here of the Imbd synopsis:

“ Love has vanquished the barbaric wish for revenge. The primitive consciousness of the character has evolved to a higher level of humane thinking. In fact, this spells the film's main idea: though one may not find happiness, one can still fulfill the higher purpose of one's life.”

This is no simple tale of ‘love conquers all’, by any standard. In fact it provokes certain questions as to the nature of love and how it ties in with life itself. The Boy’s virtuous act is distilled from the memory of the childhood innocence of his initial relationship with the Girl. From this, he gathers the nobleness and gentility that is sustained in the moral value of the story. The overpowering thought of his innocently heartfelt past with the Girl, is what in the end prevents him from barbarous belligerence with his Enemy, and that very same thought, so deeply it finds itself embedded within his consciousness, that it ultimately succeeds in making him a person of greater moral stature than his Enemy, and a heart that is indelible from this lifelong loyalty towards the Girl.
Now, this type of logic may find itself actually complimenting the theory put forward by Aristophanes in the Symposium – that love and the act of love reminds us, perhaps on an unconscious level, of our initial, primordial state of being. This allegedly involved three beings, male, female and an ‘androgynous’ being, conjoined to form a sphere of effective ‘wholeness’ and physical and spiritual unity. Zeus’ ever prompt, severe, inflexible, heavenly justice however smote them, only to leave those beings, separated, thus resulting in what we would now refer to as human beings of opposing sexes. Thus, the Boy’s love, from the point of view of my argument, carries him into the realm of longing for past innocence and idyll, of the times when he affectionately recalls as being the happiest of his life, involving his first steps with the Girl. Aristophanes’ argument purports a similar idea of love being our simple longing for an arcadian past. All in all, both ideas carry a virtually identical line of reasoning. Indeed, the Boy’s longing of love long lost, in the end carries the torch of his elevated way of thinking, transforming his ineffective spite, into a nobleness that is both egregious and effective.

The story is likewise an exploration of free will. Where does the idea of free will thus fit in here? Well, for instance, if we shed some further, even more penetrating thought on the subject of the Boy’s spite, we may be able to discern the concept of free will within it. In my opinion, the story and the message that it tries to relay to the viewer, is the fact that despite the monstrosity of the desires which our minds may give birth to, one is not bound by any physical limitations, and one is absolutely free to attempt at their actual realisation, for nothing in the corporeal world, least of all a God, would intervene and stop you from accomplishing whatever you have set your mind upon. The Boy effectively spends his whole life pursuing the thought of his Enemy’s demise and painful death, and his true bride’s longed-for return. He is completely free to roam the darkest, most ghastly chambers of his brain, but he remains adamant deep down inside himself, that one’s internal paroxysms are to be overcome, and tamed by the force of the residue of the grace associated with the past; that one cannot escape the comforting thoughts of the humane touch of innocent warmth and affection, however long ago it may have been experienced. In this way, the Girl may have been taken from him physically, but her spiritual presence remains preserved in the archives of his heart, so as to keep one step ahead of the spiteful practicality of his vehement drive for revenge. Therefore, one is free to accumulate as much contempt and bitterness as possible within one’s own head, but the heart more than makes up for it, through the rawness of its instincts, because the powerful longing for an edenic past which I have extracted from the story, and which Aristophanes puts forward in the Symposium, in the Boy’s own heart, ultimately takes preponderance over and eschews the base, the spiteful and the ugly side of human course of vengeful action.
Hence, by means of this precise realisation, we arrive at the most truthful manifestation of platonic love. The story itself for me serves exactly this purpose of explaining how our awareness of the nature of platonic love is as equally important as our actual experience of it, because by knowing, by recognising the true significance of this type of love, we would be paving the way for the raw, edenic, instinctual realm of our hearts, to be more open to actually acquiring it in the first place. Thus learn to be less susceptible to the ‘pangs of disprized love’, and you will taste the truth of what’s written above.
Here, I have ended on a platitude...as promised.

Animated indeed...

2008-06-15T00:42:00.004+01:00

A remarkable example of unshakable determination and commitment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overcoat_%28animated_film%29

"To this day, Norshteyn is still working on the film—his ardent perfectionism has earned him the nickname "The Golden Snail". Although he has been offered chances to leave Russia, Norshteyn believes that finishing his film in "circumstances approaching comfort" would be impossible."

The story behind it all is easily as eventful and captivating as Gogol's short masterpiece. It seems his overcoat is still pending...
But us the potential viewers, we'll be the critics - the hooligans which, with our commercial inebriety and pathological, ultra-modern sophistication may eventually be won over...not by scraping the floors of Hollywood's dainty studios, but by a story which was once true, and may well still be...

Certain Truths Articulated Well

2008-06-09T10:24:00.002+01:00

"Every motor-tyre is made out of the blood of negroes under any lash, yet motorists are not all heartless villains. When we buy wax matches, we buy a painful and lingering death for those who make them...War is only the final flower of the capitalist system, but with an unusual proletariat...The fundamental mistake lies in wrong expectations, leading to cynicism when they are not realised. Conventional morality leads us to expect unselfishness in decent people. This is an error. Man is an animal bent on securing food and propagating the species.

One way of suceeding in these objects is to persuade others that one is after their welfare - but to be really after any welfare but one's own and one's children is unnatural. It occurs like sadism and sodomy, but is equally against nature. A good social system is not to be secured by making unselfish, but by making their own vital impulses fit in with other people's. This is feasible. Our present system is at fault; but it is weakness to be disgusted with people because they aim at self-preservation. One's idealism needs to be too robust for such weaknesses. It doesn't do to forget or deny the animal in man. The God in man will not be visible, as a rule, while the animal is thwarted. Those who have produced stoic philosophers have all had enough to eat and drink. The sum total of the matter is that one's idealism must be robust and must fit in with the facts of nature; and that which is horrible in the actual world is mainly due to a bad system..."

Bertrand Russell, a letter to Ottoline Morrell

For now...

2008-06-02T10:47:00.002+01:00

I would like to make a statement that due to the strenuous examination process I am going through at the moment, Winter House will inevitably be suffering from a lack of attention on my part for the time being. Posts will be resumed in a week or so, or maybe eariler or perhaps even later. It all depends on how a certain institution has chosen to examine me this year, for it can go well or it may end up as an apocalyptic disaster, which may deter me from blogging for an indefinite period of time. Do not be frightened though, in all my short life story, I have always managed to avoid disaster on the brink of survival, and why should it be different this time?
If all goes in a satisfactory manner, however, Winter House may be reborn again from the ashes of her host's perilous endeavours, and emerge as victorious in the face of iniquitous opposition.
These will then be my winter notes on summer impressions...naturally.
I'll leave you to it then.

La Condition Humaine

2008-05-27T19:33:00.001+01:00

Today I endured one of the most tedious lessons in human history. Throughout its duration, none of my senses, apart from my eyes, was actually engaged. The appalling cloudiness outside did not help, and I found myself restrained in a classroom full of no-brainers with whom I’ve shared a class for nearly two years now, yet I’ve hardly gotten to know any of them. In fact, there were seven students in the room, including myself, and we were revising one of the most gigantically disappointing subjects I have ever come across- History of Art. Though I love art in itself, I absolutely abhor doing it as a subject because what it does to anyone of your senses is what liquid nitrogen does to any physical object in sight – it engulfs and freezes it in a relentless orgy of cold, biting inanity. The course material is gripping, however. Unfortunately, it does not grip you because it is fascinating, but because it is intrinsically dry and dismal; its grip is more like plague, as any mental and sensory strength you may have possessed before, is irrevocably lost under your nose, where the coarse smell of glossy paper furnishes your appetite for plain, raw nonsense. You become a slave to suddenness, impulsiveness and all other irrational sensations which you heart automatically surrenders to. As the soft, succinct tone of the teacher traverses the inner volutes of your ears, it mutates into an excruciatingly monotonous Gregorian chant and the lesson becomes a liturgy, where your prayers for a more rapid passage of time, remain unanswered. To add insult to injury, you are surrounded by a bunch of cardboard cutaways whose lethargic face expressions are reminiscent of sleeping chimpanzees.
A fucking water-meter is more fascinating to behold!

As your eyes move across the room, you find yourself face to face with these incorrigibly dull individuals, whose actual individuality is contained solely in their clothes – the only means of distinction for them. As a collective whole, they range from seemingly irreparable, reticent half-bright, half-vague characters to mawkish blondes, to plain, deaf and dumb, naturally stupid residues of what people tend to refer to as ‘humanity’. In any person’s preconceived notions about what a boring lesson constitutes, nothing can aptly illustrate what my dreary experience was today, since this abscess of spite which I felt is hard to gauge let alone can it be ascribed merely to words. I have already elaborated on the nature of my surroundings, and it is not difficult to surmise this bitter abhorrence that was instinctively encroaching onto my consciousness.

What was even worse, one of the idiots in my class was actually considerate enough to bring biscuits into the classroom from the sight of which, I swear my heart missed a beat due to this asphyxiating hate which I instantly felt. There is hardly anything I detest more than watching this non-entity, this vain semblance of man eating biscuits during the course of a lesson; the way that he looks at the teacher, with his blunt, desultory countenance probes the very depths of my emotional resilience. My stoicism however prevailed at the time, and I refrained from crushing his jawbone, tempting as it was. What was even more irritating, was the almost inaudible muffling of this girl, whose coconut hairstyle and huge, bulging frog-like eyes served to make her the human equivalent of the Mary Celeste – empty and aimless in both expression and manner though by no means mysterious. (Incidentally, her name is Maria)
As I said, her voiceless muffling (definitely not caused by a speech impediment or anything) was the most aggravating thing about her, and I could not help but spitefully imitate her manner of speech in my own head.

This is the atmosphere in which I was meant to study Matisse today. Near boiling point, I eluded both the teacher and the class during a short pause of the lesson, and with quiet fatalism, I left the building. The cloudiness outside prophesized rain.

On the way to the bus stop, I was stopped by two younger girls asking me whether I could buy cigarettes for them. When I refused, they beckoned me to do it with such forceful insistence that I thought they would eat their hands on the spot just for the sake of acquiring some fags. Not that I condemn smoking, I embrace it personally as I am myself an occasional smoker, but a girl with a cigarette clutched between her lips is one of the ugliest sights conceivable to me. I fucked them off naturally, and as I resumed walking, behind my back I could hear their loutish voices hurling vulgarities at me. They would have been eternally grateful had I bought them cigarettes, but now I had the privilege of being genuinely hated – a step away from the cold indifference that awaited me back in the insufferable classroom at school. All for the better that way, I concluded. At least the hate was mutual.

What strikes me now as I am writing this, is the contrast between the two realms which I have described above. The classroom, well it symbolised the nothingness which humans are capable of: their utter ignorance, their rigid, unshakable indifference, all in contrast to the curiously attractive albeit uncouth hate of the two girls. This dichotomy fascinates me, because what it does is to confront you with a choice – the frozen apathy of the genteel people in the classroom as opposed to the coarse loutishness of the two girls on the street. I refer to my classmates as ‘genteel’ because they are not the street type, they are generally middle-class and attend an admittedly excellent school.
Yet, as I’ve said, they are somewhat apathetic, and though they are perceivably ‘better’ than the two female smokers on the street, their tedious manner of being repulses me for more greatly than the childish discontent of the two girls. I know at least that from the latter, I am getting some kind of a response which I unquestionably prefer to the crushing ‘nothingness’ of the non-chalant bricks in the classroom. The reference to André Malraux here is not accidental. This is the type of condition I have extricated from the today’s happenings: the human condition.

In regard to the recent debacle...

2008-05-14T14:31:00.004+01:00

Despite my initial reluctance to comment on the unsparing excoriating that this post has seen, I have decided to at least try my luck at reconciling some of our cabbalists here whose endless feuds have not in my opinion yet come to see the daylight of productivity.
The intellectual combatants in question are Louis Berceli and the Underground Dude - two bloggers whose posts I often read because I always find in them something new I can learn from and share ideas with. They are both very good at what they do, and (as someone once said in this hugely underrated film) I respect people who are very good at what they do.

Underground Dude, a couple of months ago, when I first came across you blog, I was unsurprisingly impressed by it but it was a certain post of yours which made a special impression on me, particularly the way Louis commented on it along with your own replies. I couldn't find the post in question but as far as I can remember it dealt with the problem of your perceived social ineptitude. Louis thus gave you some advice as to how to 'fix' this, and you politely remarked that you are '25 not 18 years old' and that he should 'watch his tone', since you are obviously older than him, yet he was the one who appeared to be giving you some 'fatherly' advice.

It was the manner in which you said it, Underground Dude; the tone you adopted there was one of gentleness and paternal wisdom which I was greatly impressed by. All spite and ressentiment you had overcome and instead you chose to be the 'bigger person' by coolly preserving, with undeniable control over your words and tone, your sense of dignity. And all this was owed not to your usual supercilious jibes but to this lucid manifestation of the eternal wisdom which you demonstrated there. This for me is the perfect illustration of the nobleness which you are so capable of.

I despise 'moralisers' but I am ready to assume the role of one in this instance because the tone of your writing there possessed natural, precocious sagacity - something which commands respect in all situations and applies to all circumstances. That for me was your finest moment of universal wisdom and insight and it speaks so much louder than the belligerent spite which you have become accustomed to in your attitude towards Louis and the rest of the Monkeys.
Even they themselves are so blatantly amused by this attitude and admittedly, it is often quite entertaining but like all great things, it has limits as well. I am convinced, as we are all probably, that this is all a game, and that your attitude is the brainchild of your desire to provoke a challenging response from the person you are verbally excoriating so as to bring out the best in them and see how well they could defend themselves intellectually. Such people are normally so easily provoked and in doing this, you enable them to work at their optimum point and see how cogently they could substantiate their arguments. If that is the case, and this is your technique of testing people, it is absolutely fine by me and I am sure everyone here will agree. But your remark to the Monkeys telling them to ‘keep their distance’ is a petty example of meaningless, dissonant oppugnancy which is light years away from the laconic lyricism and nobleness of the instance which I have discussed above.
I hope you do not perceive this as me ganging up with them against you. Quite the opposite in fact, I am neither on their side or yours because we all thankfully still have our individuality here on the blogosphere. Our cabal is not established on the basis of unifying us and bringing us closer together, but as a means of each one of us asserting his own individual will, thus resulting in a better cohesion between us as thinkers and people with views rather than people of flesh and blood.
Here we are all faceless bloggers- discussion being our business. We talk philosophy, we do not philosophize over it.

All We Hear is All We Need...

2008-05-11T10:41:00.002+01:00

A wonderful post at the Hermitage has led me reconsider the role of TV on the daily running of our lives. I myself abhor most of the programmes they tend to show on TV nowadays. For instance, one channel that used to be renowned for its good selection of films on weekends, is now solely concerned with the CSI series, CSI:Miami and Law and Order – all of them being distasteful American programmes which follow on from one another each Saturday night. I am sorry but I would rather eat my own foot than spend each Saturday night watching these programmes and their endlessly repetitive plots, dreary acting and 10-minute commercial breaks, all of which leaves you with the overwhelming desire to throw the remote control at the TV set (if you can find it that is).

TV has appallingly been treading the same water for years now. All those shows, films, sitcoms and even documentary programmes are simply tossed at you, without any consideration as to their artistic merit. In the end you become their pet – whatever they fling in your cage, you are left without much choice whether to eat it or not. I myself transcend the boundaries of this ‘cage’ by simply leaving the living-room; but what about all those people my age who spend an inordinate amount of time in front of the TV and are virtually hooked on programmes such as Prison Break or Lost?
Their MySpace pages are ruinously packed with all kinds of references to such shows, and even the more sensible people who try and avoid them are inevitably swept by the tide of the majority as they risk not ‘fitting-in’ if they appear not to be interested in those programmes. Sure, Lost may be rich in references to philosophy but how many viewers are really truly concerned as to why the character of John Locke bears that name?
For them, it is not important what they watch but what is shown on TV at a particular moment when they are slumped comfortably on the armchair next to a revolting take-away which they believe was actually cooked. In the end, most people are as inseparable from their couch as a red wine stain.
For this reason, I propose the revival of radio. I am beginning to listen to radio more and more often, and at least one thing is certain: radio presenters are infinitely better than TV presenters. There is a superior air of professionalism about them; they are erudite and most of them feel right at home in front of the microphone, as they are selected on the basis of merit and talent, rather than solely on looks as is the case in the highly nepotistic realm of the television industry. Also, even though radio stations are likewise highly malleable under the pressure of commercialism, most of them still bear a good assortment of songs which do well to accompany the vicissitudes of one’s precarious state of mind. Instead of the TV programmes which are full of half-wits who pester us with their pseudo-intellectual remarks, radio shows often feature some quite well-informed guest speakers and a sophisticated debate is thus formed on a variety of subjects. Even commercial breaks are somewhat more entertaining than the ones you get on TV.
Listening to the radio is process which stimulates the mind far better than watching television anyway, as it requires greater concentration.
In the end, due to lack of alternatives, radio is swiftly becoming my version of prime-time TV. Maybe we ought to stop watching and engage the other senses as well...
Learn to listen, listen and learn.

Not poetry but...

2008-05-06T23:18:00.002+01:00

‘And He who now to sense, now nonsense, learning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
And He, whose fustian’s so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad.’

Alexander Pope

I have come lately to observe a curious tendency of mine. It is the fact that I somewhat find it much easier to remember good, sophisticated prose than the same text in bullet points. It ought to be the other way around, but in my case, beautiful prose, with all its inherent lyricism is not mechanically embedded into my mind but rather flows gently, with great, efficacious fluidity into the realms of my consciousness. Bullet points severely lack in rhythm. Even though in school they prefer to spoon-feed you with them so that you can ‘digest’ the required information more easily, the mind, especially the aesthetic mind, is wonderfully stimulated by the act of reading prose which fittingly abides the rhythm of your consciousness. That is essentially the crux of it – your streaming consciousness adjusts beautifully to the rhythmical grace of appropriately connected words.

Good prose stays buoyant at the forefront of your perceptive mechanism even though often your sea of consciousness is subjected to violent fluctuations which may imperil its flow. Bullet points, the quanta from Hell’s darkest chambers, are merely raw lumps of parched, infertile soil. They precipitate further draught in the mind which is already bankrupt in terms of its aesthetic sensibility. The subjects that I do at school are all essay-based but often the way we approach them is initially by means of bullet points – an unrewarding method which leaves you cold and rusty, with an atmosphere hardly short of the inside sleeve of a Radiohead album. It is simply the fact that bullet points imply fragmentation, something which distorts the natural tempo of the mind’s inner flow. If ideas are indeed quanta of information, just like bullet points, why should the latter pose such a threat to the mind’s ability to remember? Perhaps the answer is that even if ideas are essentially units of information, they are also very much interconnected with each other within the rolling tape of our consciousness, something akin to the way individual neurones are linked together in the brain. Nevertheless, just because they are there does not mean that a signal is reaching them, thus perhaps illustrating the detrimental effect of bullet points upon the mind. If more quanta of information or bullet points penetrate our consciousness, they distract our attention from other, already registered bits of data, thus hardly making them conducive to our mind’s ability to connect the pieces of the jigsaw to form a whole, intelligible memory.

Prose, on the other hand, particularly when it is well composed, is poured slowly and tenderly, like honey into our conscious flow of associations from which a crystallized ‘byte’ of memory emerges, thus enabling us to acquire a sense of the natural melody that each words suggests. After all, what ensures a less painful process of memorisation – the gracefully lyrical, smooth textures and lines of Leonardo’s figures, or the ugly, disjointed webs of Picasso’s cubist ventures? Indeed, the aesthetic victor would inevitably be the former because of the eupeptic feel of its structure.

I will refrain from discussing poetry here since I consider its conventional rhythmical form to bear the same impact on our sense of remembrance as a well written piece of prose. Also, I am not referring to verbatim, word-to-word remembering but rather to one’s overall understanding of a given text, which I would argue is more durable and of greater quality than the minimalist, bullet-point approach which more or less distorts the coherence of the encoded information stored in the brain.

Our intuition is borne out of our tendency to absorb the linearity of several spontaneities and fuse them together into a theoretically infinite, Bergsonian ‘duration’, effectively forcing our mind to encrypt such information in a more associative manner. Indeed, our brain’s musicality reaches its apogee whereby the piece of eloquent prose which we have just read, is ‘swirled’ within our heads, therefore ‘mixing’ it with all types of other information, whether it be in the form of a visual image or a simple melody. If we are thus able to combine intuition, the cornerstone of the brain’s natural perceptiveness, with the mind’s inbred sense of rhythm, then remembering becomes a process of simply fine-tuning the continuity of the text before you to the current of consciousness which arises from this precise combination. After all, is not this at the root of our ability to remember a text which we have actually heard someone reading aloud in a particular way? Thus, the simple, auditory impression which continuous prose stresses upon our minds, is far more emphatic than if that same text is broken down into individual bits, hence our enhanced capacity to remember it.

Bullet points – the language of the teachers: it is not poetry, but prose run mad!

A note on the Notes...

2008-04-27T00:51:00.001+01:00

Let’s face it, we all know what a monumental work Notes from Underground is, and I am of course aware that anything I say about it, any view I dare express here would ultimately form the skeleton of yet another sublime platitude that would vainly collapse under the weight of its own inanity; nothingness crushes indeed...
But every platitude carries its own truth and though ostensibly it seems like pointless rumbling that signifies nothing, it’s the purely artistic nature of the Notes that I would like to discuss here. In fact, I would limit myself for convenience’s sake to just one little episode, or rather a seemingly casual remark made by the anonymous confessor with his trademark spitting derision.

The Underground Man’s comment on the ‘sublime and beautiful’ is a telling little instant where Dostoevsky makes his statement by means of only a couple of sentences from which he then departs and immediately moves onto another subject of interest, ultimately giving the impression of a simple, throw-away comment that would hardly make the front page of the reader’s curiosity. But it is exactly in such remarks that one can uncover some previously unexplored areas of the Underground Man’s powerful monologue.
He starts directly with ‘sick, spiteful and unpleasant’, a straightforward and immersive coupling of negative adjectives. But as the text and its theme unwinds, a loud of mysticism forms over certain parts of it that render it unclear in a peculiar sort of way.
Revealing his irrational side as though it was merely his rational side, the Underground Man informs us with an air of vindictive self-mockery, that he would ‘drink away’ to the artist who manages to create an image ‘worthy of a painting by Gay’. This is the way that he ‘delights’ in observing the ‘sublime and beautiful’; he implies that his praise of this ‘image’ is not akin to conventional praise but one which involves the total conceding of the soul to ‘drinking’ in the name of this ‘image’. He would take his hat off before it but he praises it in a disdainful manner – it is exaltation albeit in existentialist terms. In other words, he would not think twice before bowing down before to the picture ‘worthy of Gay’ but this would only be done from the simple, decadent sensation of giving up i.e. dedicating your consciousness to the exaltation of this picture because it inculcates you with the sense of the ‘sublime and beautiful’.
In a way therefore, the Underground Man is effectively sneering at this image because once again, he lets himself be devoured by his own realisation of his superfluity and worthlessness. In other words, he enjoys ‘great art’ for the sake of enjoying his own degradation as he recognizes how ‘low’ he stands in comparison to it. He therefore, perceives the picture ‘worthy of Gay’ as he would perceive a toothache - they are both distractions to his hapless and monotonous manner of living and they are both ‘painful’ to him – a fact which he welcomes with great satisfaction.
In the ‘drinking away’ to this picture, the Underground Man admits that he is prepared to effectively ‘kiss the feet’ of anything he perceives as being so greatly superior to his own achievement. Rather than impairing his ego, it would promote it as it would promote his ‘spite’ because he would realise just how much he enjoys bearing the burden of his own degradation which itself should be carefully observed in the face of the ‘contrast’ which is meant to undermine his opinion of himself. Rather than doing so though, it presents another source, another means of satisfying his craving for pleasure as he perceives himself a greater mystery than the picture ‘worthy of Gay’. This is how he turns the obvious ‘disadvantage’ that tradition yields as a result of such an unenviable position, into an ‘advantage’ for his personal benefit.
Therefore, he praises great art not for its own value but for the ‘fact’ that he knows and is convinced of his intrinsic superiority to this ‘art’.
This ‘intrinsic superiority’ is provided by his perception that he is in fact, a greater phenomenon – something less fathomable than a great work of art, rendering him far more worthwhile than any such piece of ‘great art’ for he, through his unforgiving confession endows the reader with something far more valuable than a ‘mere’ work of art, even if it is ‘worthy of Gay’.

Consequently, by using such remarks through the Underground Man, Dostoevsky is able to articulate a sharp, complex observation of the character’s mental condition which brings about great psychological insight into the workings of our system of aesthetics.The Underground Man would ‘drink away’ to this ‘picture’ and he will recognise it as a supreme achievement but he is hardly concerned about its perceivable aesthetic value; in fact he feasts upon the petty crumbs of his moral depravity. Self-indulgence and insecurity will of course never enable him to ‘cleanly’ welcome this ‘picture’ but rather he would instinctively drown yet another glass reflecting upon it, though ultimately ending up as blatantly mocking it – laughing away its obviousness of perfection and thus trying to ‘distract’ the reader’s attention away from it and onto his own derangement. By doing this, he effectively puts forward the argument that this precise ‘obviousness of perfection’ of a painting by Gay is where paradoxically the kernel of its ‘imperfection’ lies. If something so unmistakably bears such an air of perfection, the Underground Man would merely dismiss it as pompous; indeed in his world, perfection equates to pomposity, and is therefore morally uninspiring. He would discard perfection for the sake of discarding the common man’s view of perfection; a picture of Gay would indeed bear a mark of perfection but it is the Underground Man that would bear a mark of distinction – something which he ineffably perceives as superior – a subtle assertion which his twisted morality ultimately thrives upon.

Satires of Circumstance

2008-04-24T18:17:00.003+01:00

I admit I have got a thing about Thomas Hardy's poetry; it not only tells you stuff, it speaks to you from all sides, and each word reverberates with a dignified yet elegently exuberant air of confessionalism. I wouldn't go as far as calling it exquisite, but samples from it exhibit such candid self-awareness on Hardy's part which deals away with overly elaborate allegories or bristly metaphors, and opts instead for gentle satire...of circumstance, that is.

The Elopement

'A woman never agreed to it!' said my knowing friend to me.
'That one thing she'd refuse to do for Solomon's mines in fee:
No woman ever will make herself look older than she is.
'I did not answer; but I thought, 'You err there, ancient Quiz.'

It took a rare one, true, to do it; for she was surely rare --
As rare a soul at that sweet time of her life as she was fair.
And urging motives, too, were strong, for ours was a passionate case,
Yea, passionate enough to lead to freaking with that young face.

I have told no one about it, should perhaps make few believe,
But I think it over now that life looms dull and years bereave,
How blank we stood at our bright wits' end, two frail barks in distress,
How self-regard in her was slain by her large tenderness.

I said: 'The only chance for us in a crisis of this kindIs going it thorough!' --
'Yes,' she calmly breathed. 'Well, I don't mind.
'And we blanched her dark locks ruthlessly: set wrinkles on her brow;
Ay -- she was a right rare woman then, whatever she may be now.

That night we heard a coach drive up, and questions asked below.
'A gent with an elderly wife, sir,' was returned from the bureau.
And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public ken
We washed all off in her chamber and restored her youth again.

How many years ago it was! Some fifty can it be
Since that adventure held us, and she played old wife to me?
But in time convention won her, as it wins all women at last,
And now she is rich and respectable, and time has buried the past.

Of Blogs and Books

2008-04-16T00:19:00.002+01:00

Anyone who is a frequent reader of BBC's online news service may be familiar with it all, but I dug up some 'news' from 2 years ago which briefly describe how a blog was nominated for BBC Four's Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. Here it is:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4847424.stm

The blog that is referenced in the article seems to be particularly famous though I have never come across it before. The anonymous Iraqi woman who has been posting it since 2003 apparently portrays vividly, from first-hand experience the war in Iraq, and I reckon it surely must be an insightful read, though you may already be aware of it since the blog entries were eventually collected in a book. That said, this very fact must at least give us bloggers some assurance as to the value and potential of our seemingly underappreciated ruminations which in most cases deserve a wider audience.

The World’s Worst Private Detective

2008-04-09T19:40:00.003+01:00

Note: I wrote this a while ago but this is the first time that it has seen the light of Winter House's paradoxically black background. I wrote it in one sitting inspired by a random burst of creativity the origin of which I still haven't uncovered. It was however a similar impulse of decisiveness that compelled me to post it here, and I am still in doubt as to what to make of it. Critique of whatever kind would thus be helpful. Do please excuse the length, I am fully aware that what is here is something well in excess of a normal blog post and that is why I dare refer to it as a blok-post and I am sure my fellow cabbalists would know what I mean...
I endeavoured to write a little introduction, aiming to at least absolve myself from the responsibilty of excessive explaining...
PS. the little quatrain at the very end is courtesy of the late Lord Byron.

The story below would, on first reading of course, make hardly any sense. As indicated by the title, it is meant to be satirical and it is for the most part though the faithful reader would certainly not find it hilarious nor excessively entertaining. The author would also like to acknowledge the often child-like simplicity of the narration which some readers may unsurprisingly find rather tedious. The author is fully aware of this and apologises in advance and in his defence, this ‘simplicity’ is merely there to make the story that bit more efficacious and thus compensate for its modest length. Likewise, if on a second or third reading the reader is still somewhat perplexed as to the purpose of this text, he/she should bear in mind that it is allegorical and serves (in the author’s view) as an apt summation of some if his observations and accumulated experience. All the characters presented hereafter are exaggerations; they are symbolic and reflective of reality and to unlock the mystery of their role in the story, the reader needs simply to make an association between them and their historical background. This is will be accomplished only by means of a close read and an imaginative interpretation.

The World’s Worst Private Detective

‘I’ve found it! Yes, I’ve found it!’ cried private detective Shedlock Knows.
‘Found what, sir? The Object?!’ answered Dr Watson, kneeling down beside him, with a powerful torch in his hand…
‘Yes, it’s the object that we’ve been looking for…that very same one! Oh, do you have the torch? Give it to me!’ Knows was suddenly in a frenzy as he observed that Dr Watson could still not find the object despite the fact that he was the one with the torch, and he still couldn’t see it!
Illuminating the object using the torch, Knows looked at it and gleamed in happiness.
‘This is what it all comes down to! This is all that we’ve been working towards! And now it’s ours!’ Knows shouted with triumph in his voice that silenced even the thunder that was forcing itself outside. So loud was his voice…
‘Sir, please…please don’t! You’ll wake the neighbourhood!’ Dr Watson trembling in fear and desperation tried to silence Knows so that from now on, he would know not to raise his voice like that.
‘Hold on to the torch.’ Shedlock Knows said to his valorous partner. ‘There it is’ he was uttering continuously as he picked the porcelain object and held it in his hand, being wary of its evident fragility. It was in fact, a beautifully ornamented Oriental amphora, mostly sepia in hue.
‘Can you see it! Oh my beauty!’ Knows was overcome with joy and a smile sneeringly made its way onto his face. He kissed it.
Dr Watson was wide-eyed and a tiny bit confused as he peered down at the object.

With great, almost microscopic precision, Knows carefully shook the dust off the object, and all with his bare hands! Both men walked out of the flat and onto the dark, scarcely lit corridor as they made their way towards the exit.
‘This is history, Watson, this is history…’ Knows turned to his partner and patted him on the shoulder.
‘Eh, no sir, this is the elevator shaft…’ Dr Watson keenly observed.
Realising this, Shedlock Knows slipped and fell on the floor a step short of falling down the elevator shaft. ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?!’ he bitterly complained to his valorous partner. ‘Where is the actual elevator gone?’
‘Eh, I don’t know sir. It was here just a minute ago. We did arrive as quietly as possible using the elevator, sir. But now, it’s gone.’
Shedlock Knows got up and looked about the deserted and gloomy corridor.
‘Something is rotten here in this council estate…’ he observed sharply.
Something was however missing, it transpired to our two brave fellows.
‘The object! It’s fallen down the elevator shaft! Oh, no…it’s probably been shattered into its elementary bits!’ Knows kneeled and gazed down the abyss of the shaft.
Dr Watson was however still a bit confused.
‘Did you say elementary sir?’ he inquired with an attentive look.
‘No, I meant elementary as in its individual, constituent parts.’ Knows clarified thoroughly.
‘Oh, but it’s now at the bottom of the shaft sir! What shall we do?’ Dr Watson was worried.
Both of them set about thinking.
Out of nowhere, suddenly something fell down onto Knows’ head. He jumped up courageously and a shiver protruded down to his very spine.
‘What was this sir?’ Dr Watson inquired frightfully.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know! Check what it is!’ Knows logically panicked.
Dr Watson fearlessly picked it up and observed it carefully for approximately a minute. ‘It’s an…an apple sir…’ he turned to his colleague.
Knows was mystified.
‘An apple? Ah yes! I know what we shall do now! Hang on Watson, I’ve got an idea!’ he assured his valorous partner. ‘We shall get a rope! Yes a rope! And we shall suspend it down the shaft, and that’s how we’re going to get to the object!’
Knows stood daringly at the edge of the shaft, and his magnificent shadow was traced onto the wall opposite him, for he was no doubt preparing to go down there.

‘Now, Watson, when you get down there, make sure you are careful about how you pick up each of the elementary parts…’ Knows was assuring his poor partner who was trembling in despair as he peered over the edge of the bottomless shaft. He bore a deathly pale countenance, indicating that he maintained his calmness even in this severe moment of threat.
‘I am ready sir.’ he uttered.
‘Ok, Watson…be careful and remember to simply shake the rope to indicate that you are at the bottom.’ Knows was giving some last minute advice. ‘Oh, and here’s a bottle of water, just in case the shaft turns out to be deeper than I think…’
With those promising words kept at the forefront of his mind, the valorous Dr Watson slowly descended down the shaft, and in no time he was lost in the claustrophobic darkness that ensued around him.

Up there, at the edge of the shaft stood the worried Knows. He gazed down the infinite abyss and for the first time in the history of their partnership, he was proud of Dr Watson. Outside, the storm was still in full force, and Knows, looking down at the shaft uttered in a moment of glory, ready to express fully his sympathy towards his partner and friend…
‘When shall we meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain?’
Yes, he was indeed inspired by the sheer courage of Dr Watson.
Suddenly however he heard footsteps echoing down the corridor. Knows hid himself around the corner just by the stairs, and observed who it was that was coming.
Yes, he realised it. It was the occupant of the flat from which they acquired the object.
She was of medium height and had a rather dejected face with dark patches beneath her nevertheless, pretty eyes. She unlocked the door and went in.
Before she managed to close the door however, it was time for Knows to make his move. He hurried after her and confronted her directly, remembering Watson’s remark on the quietness which he had to maintain in order not to disturb the neighbourhood.
‘Stay still!’ he uttered all of a sudden. ‘This is private detective Shedlock Knows!’
The poor woman, who was of middle age, became wide-eyed in astonishment. She was afraid.
‘What is happening?’ she said with an accent, in a state of fearful trembling.
‘I know all about you.’ Knows said and approached her. ‘I know you’re living here, in this flat, illegally!’ This pitiless accusation was signalled by the malignantly triumphant expression on his face.
‘Please, I don’t know what is happening.’ the poor woman uttered with a rather hard intonation.
‘This flat, and I know this for a fact, was not even officially bequeathed to you by your ancestors and as such, you have no right to live here!’ Knows reproached her with disdain and hostility. ‘You’re living here illegally!’
‘But I just…came home from work…I’m really tired…’ the poor woman said.
She lived alone in the flat, or rather existed merely in it for the rest of the time, she was swamped by the wretchedness of her piteous job.
‘Oh, don’t pretend to be innocent! I know of your guilt!’ Knows shook his head in disapproval. ‘I know where you’re going! You will be coming with me!’
He turned around, convinced of her weakness, and certain that she would follow him.
‘Come on!’ Knows beckoned her ignobly without even looking at her eyes.
The poor woman suddenly felt completely forlorn as a person. She lived alone and was as such lonely and friendless most of the time. The image of a young boy flashed before her very eyes. It was her little son, and she was constantly haunted by the thought of him being motherless in a country distant and obscure. His smile warmed her heart but stole a piece of it every time she remembered it.
All of a sudden, she felt bitter and her fright disappeared in favour of fury. She became determined and instinctual in her drive for action. She ran towards Shedlock Knows and grabbed hold of him, pushing him about with animalistic vigour.
‘Ahhh…’ he was stunned and lost balance. The poor woman did not let go of him and continued dragging him in a senseless way towards an unknown end.
They were nearing the elevator shaft where valorous Watson was still descending down towards the bottom, trying to reach the object.
‘What are you doing you wretch!’ Knows shouted in panic, but there was no-one to help him, and there was no going back. Before he even realised that he was standing on the very edge of the shaft, he found himself plunging down into the utter darkness of this abyss.
‘Ahhhhhh…Watson, do something!’ Knows was frantically shouting for his valorous partner to save him.
‘Sir! Hang on, I’ll catch you!’ Dr Watson spread out his arms, ready to embrace private detective Shedlock Knows.

Eventually, both of them found themselves at the bottom of the shaft. Still shocked and delirious, Knows got up and looked around into the impenetrable darkness.
‘Finally, we have reached the bottom!’ He thought, still shaken as he recalled the way he found himself there in the first place.
‘Ah and here is the object!’ he was restored to his previous state of joy, as he peered down onto the shattered amphora. ‘Here it is!’ he turned to Dr Watson.
‘Hey, Watson…’ he observed his valorous partner who lay there motionless.
He did not move a limb and there was no sign of life within him. The fall may have proved too much for our fellow.

Disregarding Dr Watson, private detective Shedlock Knows instantly turned back his attention towards the amphora or whatever remained of it now. He could scarcely see which part fitted the other, but his total effort was still dedicated towards rebuilding the amphora. He could not give up now for he was holding in his hands, what he had been aiming for in the past couple of weeks.
His efforts at rebuilding the object however were in vain. He was despairing over what had happened. In the meantime, the sound of the police sirens echoed throughout the elevator shaft, much to the alarm of the detective.
‘No! It cannot end like this!’ he was saying to himself as he gripped some of the constituent parts of the object in his sweaty hands, in an almost child-like manner.
The police was arriving.
Looking over his dead partner’s body, he again gazed down at the shattered amphora.
In a state of pathetic indifference, Shedlock Knows began placing some of the parts in his very mouth. He tried to chew them, and a self-indulging smile appeared on his bruised face, perversely enjoying the insipid taste of the porcelain parts there in his mouth.
Yes, he was consuming them just like an animal would gorge on dead flesh, and all the time, the laughable smile did not vanish from his face but was even more intensely pronounced than ever.
Suddenly, as though resurrected from his grave, the valorous Dr Watson raised his head and looked at his partner, in shock.
‘Sir, what are you doing? You’re…you’re eating the elementary bits…’
Knows did not even pay attention to him, but was instead focused on the feast that he was pleasuring in.
‘Sir, but don’t you know? This porcelain….it can never be digested by your organism..’ Dr Watson looked in disbelief. ‘You’d not be able to digest it, sir!’
Knows did not pay any attention whatsoever.
Suddenly though, as he was about to consume the next substantial bit of porcelain, Private Detective Knows noticed an inscription on it, with very clear letters, in English.
He looked at it, and began reading it, and at this very moment, the police, having arrived, flashed some light down into the shaft and Knows was able to see his own reflection on the smooth surface of the porcelain. When he looked into it, a skull ablaze in fire, looked back - a fire which interestingly enough was not giving out any heat.
The inscription on this very same bit of the amphora read as such:

Start not—nor deem my spirit fled:
In me behold the only skull,
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.

………….

An Encounter

2008-04-05T15:48:00.003+01:00

(Based on a true event)

As he approached me, I did not shudder in the least since I was not at all expecting him to initiate a conversation. But out of the blue he came up to me with a tantalizing smile shining bright on his face. I was simply waiting at the bus stop having just visited my local library – perhaps the tamed look of innocence and restrained countenance left as a residue from my stay at the library was enough to make him decide I was perfectly susceptible to his proverbial shit. He was black, dressed plainly in an unimpressive set of clothes – a dark brown Reebok jacket with an unidentifiable red T-shirt underneath and a pair of distasteful indigo-dye trousers. I had a fucking modern day apparatchik standing right before me!
‘Alright? Would you like to come to church with me, sir?’ he said while handing me some kind of a leaflet, still retaining his sniggering little smile which instantly served to annoy me greatly. I would imagine he would have been more tactful somewhat and this thought annoyed me to an even greater extent. I made a prompt rejection of course. His advances were increasingly perseverant however.
‘Are you sure, sir? Come to church with me.’ he continued.
‘No, really I don’t have time and it’s not really my thing, thanks.’ There was an irritating air of politeness in my words which I took no fondness to.
‘But I can help you, sir! Jesus would help you!’
That was the final straw. Once His name was mentioned, I decided to be the ‘bigger person’ and retort...
‘I am not sure about that. I am Muslim.’ I lied.
‘Oh? Really? But it doesn’t matter, this is for all religions.’ he seemed surprised because if I was telling the truth, my appearance would have been in utter discord with my ‘religion’. He pointed out some of the writings on the leaflet, emphasising the universality of this ‘meeting’ that was scheduled to take place apparently in some church. ‘It’s free to go there, sir.’
‘I see, and is it free to stay there?’ My first derisive remark.
‘Yes, sir. Of course it’s free and I would make a discount for your membership, especially for you, sir!’
Of course, whether I got a ‘discount’ or not depended on anyone but him, I thought.
‘Interesting. And so you’re saying your organisation is quite the cosmopolitan type then...’ I could not help but smile scathingly.
‘Well yes, sir. We accommodate all types of religions and are world-renowned for our charity work throughout the world, sir. There was this instance your know when this Zimbabwean minister, errrm...I can’t remember his name now, but he actually held a banquet to address world poverty, and it proved very successful for addressing the issue of famine throughout Africa... A worthwhile summit it proved to be, sir.’
‘Did you talk about climate change as well?’ I replied, a demonic smile floating across my face, imitative of his apparent anxiousness.
‘Why, yes! Yesterday, I attended a meeting, sir. We are planning to build a new church nearby. Should be good.’
‘Really? With solar-powered candles, I would imagine...’
‘Well, not at this stage but I would propose the idea to our research department, sir. Or you can even do that yourself, if only you come to church with me, sir. Follow me.’
My humour was running dry as was my mouth. A momentary uncomfortable silence ensued, until he spoke to me again:
‘So what do you say, sir? Jesus suffered for you, sir. He suffered and died on the cross for you! Would you like to talk about the Bible, sir?’
‘No thanks.’ I suddenly straightened up and slightly closed up on him. His sneering smile was still there. I looked at his eyes and stood silent before him. He was of average height but his egg-shaped head made him appear shorter than he was. In addition, this large, bulky jacket of his did not exactly compliment his slim frame; it actually further accentuated his baldness. He was most evidently a very ‘umble man...
‘Do you believe in God, sir?’ He asked, perhaps forgetting or purposefully overlooking my earlier remark about being a Muslim.
‘No, sirrah’ I replied indifferently. My tendency to mock was suddenly, violently displaced by a feeling of inward fury which was cast out of this inexplicable, amorphous bronze material, which figuratively speaking carries the seeds of metaphysical rebellion. Like bronze, it was of a vaguely dark hue, highly-malleable and incorporated all the enmity one could possibly feel towards an odious character as the one who was standing right before me.
‘May I ask you a question, sirrah?’ I spoke first this time. ‘How many disciples did Jesus have?’
The man gave me a curious look. He stood there motionless, his smile fading very slowly from his face. ‘Well twelve, sir.’
‘So that’s twelve apostles then. Very well. But to be honest, I disregard Jesus as a person.’
‘Why, sir? He loves you.’
‘It’s just that I somehow have more faith in his disciples, that’s all.’ I spoke softly, in short sentences, deliberately not finishing them so as to mystify him further.
‘What do you mean, sir?’
‘It’s simple. If Jesus is supposed to represent an ideal, I am not going to stand in the way of that. What bothers me is that his being as an ideal belies his being as an actual person. In other words, whilst I do not disparage him as a figure, I discredit his actual existence. He is an ideal, and that’s it. Now, what interests me is his disciples. They symbolise humanity; they carry in themselves the rare human zest for unquestionably adhering to a principle – a truly magnificent quality which dwarfs Jesus’ reputed perfection. Their denials and incredulities serve to make them human, much more down-to-earth. That’s why I find them much more fascinating.’
A confused look swam across his face.
‘Sir, you should come with me! You’ll learn so much more about faith and you would be able to atone, believe me.’
‘I told you, I don’t want to.’ I said.
‘Come to the pub then, seriously come to the pub.’
I laughed.
‘Come to the pub, you might meet a girl there.’ he carried on with his lyrical bullshit.
I laughed even harder.
‘And yet I’ve met you.’ I said mockingly.
He seemed to be running short of things to say. I informed him of the fact that my bus was approaching. He smiled helplessly, clueless as to what to say, and slowly turned to leave. ‘Ok, ok, sir’.
As he was walking away, he glanced back at me.
‘See you at Emmaus.’ I said to him with indulgent, life-giving derision.
I was going to get the bus, but I was suddenly seized by an impulse that beckoned me to return to the library. And so I went back there. As I contemplated its amassed collection of books, I shook my head slightly, in spiritual despondency. God, where do I start?

2008-04-01T23:26:00.002+01:00

Unfortunately, my Russian is not very good but I am trying very hard to read Russian poetry, especially Lermontov. To English-speakers, his only novel 'A Hero of our Time' may be familiar but apart from this, his poetic output has been largely neglected outside his native land.

He did manage to be the hero of his time but for only a while before his prodigious talents were swiftly deposited to the annals of history with his tragic death in a duel at the age of only 26.

Reading through some of his earliest works (some supposedly written as early as 14), I cannot help but be absolutely enthralled by his precocious verse which reveals a startlingly mature intellect. He is one of those Byronic figures which could immediately be impressed upon your mind with their inexplicable magnetism which emanates supremely from their various portraits - the one above, executed posthumously and arguably being the best of them all.

The poem below, written in 1831 (when he was 17) is an unequivocal example of this:

Requiem

There is a blest place: by the trace

In wilderness, in a little glade’s middle,

Where in the eve, mists twine and bristle

In moony silver’s easy lace…

My friend! You know that glade, fair;

There dig a pit and let me rest,

When I will cease to breathe in air.

Give to that grave a good regard --

Let all be legally there settled

Raise on the grave a cross of maple,

And place a stone, wild and hard.

When thunderstorms will shake the forest,

The traveler will see my cross;

Maybe, the stone and the moss

Will give to him a rest at most.

Faithfully in-between...

2008-03-29T11:11:00.003Z

‘I do not deny anything but I preserve the right to doubt everything’

I am a person who abides the above principle. Perhaps the main reason behind this is that the statement above denounces the value of absolute truth whilst it refuses to become an absolute truth itself. I am not a rationalist and so I need some kind of faith in a higher power, but so does everyone else. That is all clear to me. The question is – why do people retain their faith even though they go to great lengths trying to escape from it? In the end faith in itself adopts a different form and shape altogether and remains within us, never truly leaving us but simply progressing and regressing, sometimes violently alternating between one such form and another. Ultimately, we revolt against it but its clutch on our throats is inconceivably greater and more powerful than our means to liberate ourselves. But it is not this asphyxiating clutch that is the true issue here; the crux of the matter is to be found elsewhere, in this very process of progression and regression, this constant, seemingly perpetual flux that our concept of faith undergoes each day.
We, ultra-sensitive doubters, are mentally structured in such a way that our faith is extremely variable and often completely random to the point that sometimes we may abruptly experience a total shift in perspective even if it is for a fleeting moment. Our quintessential aim is to squeeze out the most of it so that our memory is kept fresh for reason to instigate the process of fermentation – our chief goal. But in our aim is to be found our pain, for in that very same process of fermentation, we end up in a state of emotional hypothermia – a feeling of internal stagnancy eventually transformed into bitterness and resentment.
Allow me to be more personal here. I am generally a reserved character, often shy though I do frequently experience bouts of spontaneous arrogance which I later end up regretting. I think I also lack will-power because in all the times I have tried to be someone other than my usual self, I have mostly failed though I have had some high points. I am perceived as shy and ‘charming’ by some people, and well, the rest are more or less indifferent. I absolutely loathe the word ‘charming’ when it is used to describe me for it implies meekness and general clumsiness – a shorter way of saying ‘good-natured’. To a latent egocentric like me, this is intolerable and rather pathetic because such adjectives are far too modest and unimpressive. A cuddly teddy-bear could be described as ‘charming’ but not a man. Call a highly-opinionated man ‘charming’ and you might well sense that his ostensibly grateful smile is, figuratively speaking, a worn-out curtain behind which an anarchical feeling of spite is concealed; there is the most effective rhetorical device to emasculate a man – to call him ‘charming’. And so I feel, to my utter embitterment, that on the outside I am perceived precisely in this manner. Of course I might be wrong for I am no mind-reader and I cannot know what other people are thinking but the overriding gist of it all is I think pretty clear.
Our problem as ultra-sensitive doubters is that in our hyperactive self-denigration, we base our faith on preconceptions. These preconceptions tend to distort our view of the universe as a whole and chisel directly into the realm of our instincts. We end up being judgemental in accordance with principles extracted from raw instinct and raw human instinct is never moderate; it always strives towards sensationalism and often succeeds in reaching the point of intuitive Jacobinist totalitarianism. In other words, it preaches chaos.

However, I am not here to discuss the inner-workings of vanity.

It is simply the case that when our desire is to convey to the outside world a sense of self-assertiveness and we come to fail and instead this self-assertiveness is mistaken for self-deprecation, this failure becomes the ingredient for future mental volatility.
I am not ‘charming’ and I do not want to be; but when I am perceived as such, well what choice am I left with but to continue pretending. In our daily lives, our moods oscillate according to circumstances and we try to give a false impression of ourselves to every individual person we come across. How are we to stay sane then? We can’t and you are wondering why we need faith...
It is not simply to keep us going and make us put up with a lot of shit. That’s not the case. Our faith is lost in the abyss of timelessness. There is not enough time goddamn it!

With this indomitable current of crap that society showers us with, we simply do not have time to stop believing...

Marat/Sade

2008-03-25T22:31:00.003Z

Recently I saw the 1967 film adaptation of Marat/Sade – the well-know, though not too famous play by Peter Weiss. I was aware of its reputed quality and the prospect of a play within a play is generally something I cannot possibly refuse to watch. It basically recreates the atmosphere during the French Revolution and the events leading up to the assassination of the popular and influential journalist Jean-Paul Marat by the disillusioned Charlotte Corday in his own bathtub. Throughout its duration, the infamous Marquis de Sade, a patient in an insane asylum who has himself written a play about the death of Marat, has been permitted to stage an adaptation of it by using his fellow inmates as actors. Weiss’ play is set in 1804 during the Napoleonic Era, with the Revolution long over now.

The film itself can perhaps be best described as eerie. It makes use of only one setting – that of the asylum ward. This makes the film uncomfortable to watch as it forces you into this claustrophobic state of being and even though it is not a black-and-white film, its bleak, post-apocalyptic colours give us little else than slightly varying shades of grey, visible in most characters’ clothes. Indeed, hardly anything could be more distasteful to watch for the film is obviously not explicit in terms of language, nor does it make use of excessively graphic imagery; it is simply the truly repulsive way in which its two hours drag slowly and painfully, coercing you into abhorring it in every way possible. It is psychologically tense but then many films are; what actually distinguishes this particular one is its clinical coldness, its idiosyncratically dispassionate ambience which as I said, is seemingly perpetual in the slow unfolding of events. Indeed, they are not real ‘events’ in the conventional sense of the word but merely vivid simulations of real historical events, focusing mainly upon two starkly contrasting historical figures – Jean-Paul Marat and the Marquis de Sade. The former as a character in the actual play, is not even a tenth as impressive and fascinating as the latter. Marat’s physical appearance is of course in keeping with David’s iconic canvas Death of Marat but it is de Sade and his softly-spoken, pensive nature that protrudes each scene with an electrifying presence which let’s face it, can only be the focus of our latent admiration than merely the subject of ridicule. His equanimity and well-controlled manner only makes us ponder over the question of whether he ought to be in a mental asylum at all for he never truly shows signs of being clinically insane but merely stands passively by as an observer to most of the dealings of the other inmates, occasionally interfering in the process so as to guide them as the director of the play within a play. Patrick Magee’s masterful acting paints precisely such a picture of de Sade. His principal apathy is arguably not what the audience would have in mind, particularly when we consider that he is after all the author of 120 Days of Sodom. There is hardly anything outlandish about him though it does not take a quantum leap of the imagination to see through his composed behaviour which to me betrays powerful repressed desires and covert bitterness, channelled curiously through his cold disposition. He is confident but careful and not intrusive; his virulent conduct is marked by supreme coolness and seeming level-headedness, and his words are articulated in a detached, simple manner. He is still far from being a positively heroic figure but in a way, he reminds me of Dostoevsky’s The Possessed and the character of Stavrogin, only considerably older. Unlike Stavrogin however, the character of de Sade is not especially revered by anyone and this is hardly surprising bearing in mind that we are dealing with people who are basically all nuts. Indeed, the qualities of appearance possessed by de Sade are completely irrelevant here and in fact, in this nightmarish realm of cold indifference, hardly anything is of any relevance at all as most of the characters are effectively doomed to remain in this mental ward for the rest of their insignificant lives; they are portrayed as leeches and nothing is done to enhance their position but on the contrary – everything is made as desolate and miserable as possible, undermining them constantly.
You become a puppet for the film’s director Peter Brook and his awe-inspiring machinations which compel you to abhor the characters and wish only the worst for them. Even the meek Charlotte Corday, intriguing as she is, makes for an unpleasant viewing and scarcely conjures up empathy from the audience.

Indeed, the ward within the film is hellish in its coldness, however oxymoronic that may sound; it is infinitely more depressing and bland than One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest simply because it is actually, the only setting in Marat/Sade.
Directly tying with this is the undercurrent of absurdism that creeps within this slow paced film. In fact, perhaps Peter Weiss would have had Kafka’s work in mind when writing the play, for I found that within the two-hour duration of the film, you are most unwelcomingly transformed into a cockroach, being placed on the same level as the actual characters who all seem to be physically trespassing into your own world. The net effect of all this is that you more or less become a host for their embryonic insanity and all boundaries between you and the characters simply disappear as you are effectively absorbed by their overwhelming eeriness and sinisterly-sounding songs. For me it does work similarly to Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty which manifests itself in highly-dramatised scenes with the upshot being the ultimate illusion of gritty realism, which is meant to immerse the spectator into the often shockingly-powerful action of the play. Marat/Sade does this and does it brilliantly – aesthetically appealing only to hardcore fans of Kafka’s writing or perhaps Joy Division’s music. In fact, the atmosphere evoked within the film has much in common with the ethereal monotony of ‘The Eternal’ by Joy Division.

Marat/Sade does not compromise and does not at least care about the potential revulsion on the viewer’s part. It goes beyond that; it portrays a post-revolutionary world in a post-apocalyptic setting that does away with false idealism – a world where God is rid of. It works simultaneously as a biting satire for the French Revolution and as a cathartic tragedy that illustrates Man’s irrational side and how easily it is found provided it is situated against the backdrop of the right set of circumstances. I would even go as far as saying that human mental endurance should be tested through it and if you do come across it and watch it in its entirety, and if you do eventually grow fond of it, there is a reason for this and it is contained in the Marquis de Sade’s famous remark– ‘You are already dead to the world’.
Happy viewing.

Softcore Irony

2008-03-19T15:57:00.002Z

The above image depicts the 1498 execution of Girolamo Savonarola - the Dominican preacher and one-time leader of Florence. He fervently opposed the pervasive ideas of the Renaissance which he viewed as decadent and sacrilegious. Ultimately he ended up being tortured and executed on the order of Pope Alexander VI, with an infinity of charges brought against him, including heresy and other 'religious errors' .
What is most fascinating about the image however is not only its subject matter but the style in which it is painted for as you can observe, the floor is divided up into an Albertian grid and exhibits a classical single-point perspective - all typical Renaissance features in the visual arts.
Ironically therefore, even the painting which depicts the execution of Savonarola is stylistically in accord with the principles which he himself so ardently opposed...
O long live enlightenment!

A Taste of My Yesterday...

2008-03-13T17:13:00.001Z

I would like to recount an episode from my early childhood which has only recently surfaced within the realms of my consciousness. It is rather amusing admittedly but for me it is one of those occasions where its significance is only understood later on, when the mind has left its juvenile abode in favour of the invaluable though mostly tortuous dwellings of maturity.

And so once when I was staying with my grandparents for the summer in their country house, I was quietly absorbed by the latest book I was on the verge of finishing reading. I cannot recall precisely which book it was, but it must have been a childhood favourite, something like Tom Sawyer or Lassie or perhaps the Arabian Nights. The house incidentally was a reading heaven for me – it was as old as the Sumerians (made of mud bricks), it kept cool in the scorching summer heat, and most importantly, it was immune to the spoiling effect of daylight and this is what preserved its eerie atmosphere. Every sinisterly creaking piece of furniture inside dated back at least a few generations and the dark-age walls were adorned with the ghostly portraits of my long deceased great-grandparents who peered out at me, finding themselves at the root of my most grotesque nightmares. All in all, a house perfectly suited for a 9 year-old...

Next to my bed I could sense the imposing presence of the large wooden chest which was buried under tonnes of dust though its bulging silhouette possessed a constant, uninvited spot at the corner of my wary eye. It was the harbinger of my most intimate fears and it always managed to conjure up a mass of malevolent sensations only natural for a child my age. Strangely enough, I never actually knew what its contents were but the all-pervasive silence of the house somehow urged me to venture in and see. And so I opened it. Aside from an unimpressive heap of ancient books, I stumbled across some old memorabilia, a couple of Boney M and Abba vinyl records and a certain worthless amount of foreign banknotes, mostly from the good old Eastern Bloc.
Soon enough, I got bored with it and eventually swallowed up the harsh truth – the chest was devoid of any object of interest whatsoever and thus it nearly put and end to my quest to find the philosopher’s stone...
But a child’s curiosity, boundless as it is, prevailed and so as a consolation, I decided to inspect the books that were on offer. All of them were thick hardcovers, mercilessly weighing upon my sweaty, fragile hands with enough dust to blind me for good. ‘No matter’, I though, ‘if anything it is sagacious dust...’

After prolonged deliberation, I settled on ‘The Captain’. Its cover was uniformly red, evidently uninviting but if I was to satisfy my inquisitiveness, I had to make a choice and ‘The Captain’ seemed to be the best compromise since its title contained the prospect of adventure. And so I opened it and began reading. Page after page, complex statistics jumped up and down like notes on a stave but this mystery captain I was looking for was nowhere on the horizon. Unsurprisingly, I soon got tired of it, closed it, threw it on the floor and denounced it in the name of the improvisational Tedious Act I made up especially for the occasion. I lay on my bed for a few minutes disappointed with such heartfelt bitterness as only a child is capable of.

Again, I had to admit defeat. With an uncomforted frown on my face, I picked up the culprit from the floor and glanced at its cover for one last time. Utterly bewildered, I suddenly realised the terrible truth – I was reading Das Kapital by Marx.
I was extremely sorry that I couldn’t find this mystery captain but at least now I had an idea why. With a renewed nonchalance, I simply threw the book back in its resting place – the old, dusty chest which from this moment on, was exorcised forever from the corner of my eye...
I wanted to go out, but outside it was now raining.

Not Quite Terms of Endearment

2008-03-07T16:26:00.004Z

The poem below depicts extraordinarily well the nature of The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky. It is one of the most powerful and effective poems I have come across in terms of capturing the essence of what it describes, and I love the way its ornate vocabulary almost makes it anti-poetical because of its inherent dynamism and cacaphonous density. In-between, the occassional thunderous political comment can be discerned incorporated brilliantly within the lines, coupled with an air of biting satire. All in all, not for the faint-hearted!

The audience pricks an intellectual ear...
Stravinsky... Quite the Concert of the Year!

Forgetting now that none-so-distant state
When they (or folk facsimilar in state
Of mind) first heard with hisses – hoots – guffaws –
This abstract Symphony (they booed because
Stravinsky jumped their Wagner palisade
With modes that seemed cacophonous and queer),
Forgetting now the hullabaloo they made,
The Audience pricks an intellectual ear.

Bassoons begin... Sonority envelops
Our auditory innocence; and brings
To me, I must admit, some drift of things
Omnific, seminal, and adolescent.
Polyphony through dissonance develops
A serpent-conscious Eden, crude but pleasant;
While vibro-atmospheric copulations
With mezzo-forte mysteries of noise
Prelude Stravinsky’s statement of the joys
That unify the monkeydom of nations.

This matter is most indelicate indeed!
Yet one perceives no symptom of stampede.
The stalls remain unruffled: craniums gleam:
Swept by a storm of pizzicato chords,
Elaborate ladies re-assure their lords
With lifting brows that signify ‘Supreme!’
While orchestrated gallantry of goats
Impugns the astigmatic programme-notes.

In the Grand Circle one observes no sign
Of riot: peace prevails along the line.
And in the Gallery, cargoed to capacity,
No tremor bodes eruptions and alarms.
They are listening to this not-quite-new audacity
As though it were by someone dead – like Brahms.

But savagery pervades me; I am frantic
With corybantic rupturing of laws.
Come, dance, and seize this clamorous chance to function
Creatively, - abandoning compunction
In anti-social rhapsodic applause!
Lynch the conductor! Jugulate the drums!
Butcher the brass! Ensanguinate the strings!
Throttle the flutes!... Stravinsky’s April comes
With pitiless pomp and pain of sacred springs...
Incendiarize the Hall with resinous fires
Of sacrificial fiddles scorched and snapping!...

Meanwhile the music blazes and expires;
And the delighted Audience is clapping.

Concert-Interpretation by Siegfried Sassoon

Bludgeoning the Poor

2008-02-29T20:20:00.004Z

A rather interesting episode is retold in a book which could aptly be described as a 'guide' to the philosophy dealing with the problem of evil found in Baudelaire, Nietzsche and Hitler.
It involves Baudelaire and is contained within the brief chapter 'Baudelaire on Bludgeoning the Poor'. While the title certainly does not imply a manifesto on humanitarianism, the story is for me an appropriate example of the paradoxical nature of seeming inferiority and the true, natural necessity for intense, sudden sensations as the guiding principles of the mystery of human judgement.

'He (Baudelaire) went outside and as he was entering a cabaret, a beggar reached out of his hat to him... At that very instant a familiar voice whispered in his ear. It was the voice of the ''demon of action, the demon of combat, that good angel, or good demon,'' who accompanied the poet everywhere he went to advise, prompt, persuade him. The voice whispered: ''Only he is equal to another who proves it, and he alone is worthy of freedom and who knows how to conquer it.''
At that point, the poet instantly jumped upon the beggar and with a single blow of the fist hit him in the eye, which in a second's time grew as big as a ball...grabbing a big branch, the poet commenced to beat the old man with the obstinate energy of a cook tenderizing a piece of steak.
Then all of a sudden, inspiring in the poet what he called the pleasure of a philosopher confirming the excellence of a theory, the ''antiquated carcass'' that he had beaten over turned over, stood up with more energy than the poet ever would have suspected to find ''in so singularly broken down machine, '' and with a look of hatred that seemed a good omen to the poet, that ''decrepit brigand'' threw himself upon his attacker, blackened both eyes, broke four teeth, and laid him flat.
The poet concluded that this strong medicine had given the old man back his pride and his life.'

The Roots and Flowers of Evil in Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Hitler by Claire Ortiz Hill

This argument certainly has some logic to it, and there is a pleasant air of rejuvenation in it which I find rather attractive. The idea of violence, provoked merely by the intricate workings of human sensations, inependent of any deep political or philosophical convictions, is appealing because it transcends morality inasmuch as it takes into account the idea of human irrationality and inexorable strive towards chaos. If that is taken out of the equation, what are we left with but a monotonous continuum of impotent rumination, hence a singular, plebeian state of being. In our seemingly perpetual reflective existence, there is the recurring theme of helplesness which I've noticed bloggers are prone to experiencing. In their well-carved out posts, they assume the role of tragedians - pouring volumes of scornful, sometimes demonic remarks and commentaries so as to provoke an openly-desired mass of comments which often total strangers stumble across, initially bewildered but gradually recognising the general gist of it all. That moment of recognition triggers certain impulses within the mind which could be compared with the 'demon of action' referenced in the passage above- a revitalisation of the essential driving force of action - impetuousity. The almost sinister atmosphere created by one suddenly finding oneself amid a highly-charged sea of insomniac bloggers is enticing because of its murkiness and because it represents what could quite possibly be a previously unexplored area of mental abstraction, so elegantly manifested in blogs.
While there is hardly any novelty in the concept of 'bludgeoning the poor', if its basic substance serves the role of an 'energizer' its value could most fittingly be found within that unity and strange coherence that it forms between individual bloggers. Their endless strife for intellectual insight, their ineluctable desire to vent their views through the sinister latency of late-night blogging, though physically and perhaps psychologically unhealthy, is what ultimately prevails.
They bludgeon each other and here lies their strength.

Kafka's rival...

2008-02-22T13:22:00.002Z

When Švejk subsequently described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in exceptionally eulogistic terms: 'I really don't know why all those loonies get so angry when they're kept there. You can crawl naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite. If anyone did this anywhere on the promenade people would be astonished, but there it's the most common or garden thing to do. There's freedom there which not even Socialists ever dreamed of. A chap can pass himself off as God Almighty, the Virgin Mary, the Pope, the King of England, His Imperial Majesty or St Wenceslas, although the chap who said he was St Wenceslas was tied up naked all day long and lay in solitary confinement. There was also a chap who shouted out that he was the Archbishop, but all he did was to eat, and, of you'll pardon the expression, do something else which rhymes with it - excrete - but no one's ashamed of doing that there. One chap even pretended to be St Cyril and Methodius just to get a double portion...
...one was was in a straitjacket all the time so that he shouldn't be able to calculate when the world would come to an end...'

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek

The Bold and the Beautiful

2008-02-18T14:29:00.001Z

Whilst the Internet’s advantages are all too familiar to us, there is another valuable aspect of it that I have recently allowed myself to ponder over.
Since the road to vice is paved by virtue, it is one of the most remarkable qualities of the Internet to reveal some rather disturbing ‘statistical’ facts about the larger proportion of young people today and some of their outlooks, opinions and views alike.
A curious browse through some of the more popular chatrooms or dating websites (Myspace, Facebook etc) for me is truly symbolical of the degenerative elements which Western society has come face to face with. I cannot help but be stricken by the sheer materialism that has come to dominate my generation’s values in life.

One needs only to glance at some example profiles that young people have set up on the Internet through the endorsement of sites such as MySpace. Virtually every photo that you come across is replete with cheap pieces of jewellery, either rings or earrings or the ‘trendy’ 50 Cent- type golden chain that hangs around people’s necks like Coleridge’s albatross. This ornamental idealisation of one’s personal image is what I find absolutely abhorrent because it implies falsity and cheapness of values which are already mostly devoid of meaning anyway. They have been transformed into these abstract concepts which denote coldness and alienation – a sea of involuntary existentialist consciousness which we find ourselves treading on.
Indeed, the ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’ which Lyotard uses to refer to the post-modernist era is something I would agree with but the ‘meta-narratives’ which he mentions have now been most observably replaced.
Personalised websites and profiles provide us with the opportunity to cheat reality and present ourselves in an entirely different light and young people today have wholly embraced this spirit of falseness which now appears to be fully harnessed, ready to be used to their advantage.
Simply count the number of photos that men have uploaded which show them resting against a glitzy new supercar or half-naked, posing as though for some ‘strongest man’ competition, or indeed adorned virtually from head to toe in dubiously-acquired ornamentation which now seems to be the trademark style of my generation. Or of we are to turn to the girls, well they bode finely with the representational style of men with increasingly sleazy poses and equally-cherished jewellery and perhaps worst of all – copious amounts of make-up. What I find even more vexing is when girls post pictures of themselves evidently produced at some professional studio and brand themselves ‘models’, as though they expect some kind of veneration on the website visitor’s part.

Of course, I have nothing against people trying to make themselves look better but there are certain limits and the Internet and indeed, society as a whole is now saturated by the extremities of people’s exhaustive efforts to reinvent themselves.
They would naturally prefer the easy step of changing their appearance rather than choosing the arduous recourse of changing themselves and this is where I think the greatest worry lies. In my view, all those suicide-advisory websites or violent video games merely lead to individual, isolated incidents whereas this general materialism which is so clearly evinced in the nature of dating websites is a far more worrying aspect of society because it indicates gradual decadence on a much wider scale which has the long-term potential to be a greater threat than the occasional school-shooting or web-influenced murder.

God is not to be found at the peak of Mount Olympus anymore, He has now plunged down the gorge clinging desperately to his ticket to the next G-Unit gig.

Chancing upon God's dice...

2008-01-28T23:35:00.000Z

These words to me constitute perhaps the most acutely incisive lines addressed to God I have ever come across. Though they are not necessarily directed towards God Himself, they are subtly resonating, touching upon a sensitive theological debate that was to become the defining principle of late 19th century philosophy.

''Damned chance! I am waiting for you. I do not wish to defeat you with principles or what foolish people call character; no, I want to be your poet! I'll not be a poet for others!''

''As a bayadère dances to the honour of God, I have dedicated myself to your service; light, thingly clad, supple, unarmed, I renounce everything, I own nothing, I have no to own anything, I love nothing, I have nothing to lose; but haven't I then become more worthy of you, you who long ago must have wearied of depriving people of what they loved, wearied of their cowardly sights and prayers?''

''Show me a possibility that looks like an impossibility...''

''Let her hate me, despise me, be indifferent to me, love another, I'm not afraid; but stir up waters, break your silence. It's cheap for you to starve me in this way, you who after all fancy yourself stronger than I.''

The Seducer's Diary by Søren Kierkegaard

Happy Christmas (All is Over)

2007-12-24T01:19:00.000Z

It’s a only about a day before Christmas and what a Christmas it would be…
I feel completely out of tune with the whole festivity thing about Christmas. To be brutally honest, it’s so depressing when you feel as though last Christmas was only yesterday and time has gone so fast; in fact everything seems like a total waste of time because no happy memories truly spring to my mind from the past year.
It’s so bad, I shall from now on call Christmas ‘The Nativity’ as a protest since judging from some recent statistics, people's generel knowledge has dropped considerably so
at least that way nobody would recognise it as a festive holiday.
Exams – most of them practically failed; TV has become a total bedlam; great works of art have now become the subject of my most recent lessons, with the expected outcome being that now I am completely indifferent to them; the so-called ‘bitches’ at school have now become even greater ‘bitches’ since I am now not even certain whether they are ‘bitches’ at all; I’ve been having a hard time remembering stuff I should be remembering for school, and when someone once really wound me up by condescendingly mocking me for not knowing stuff that we studied in school, I wryly replied that I didn’t know it precisely because I studied it at school…
That last one actually still makes me laugh. It’s so true though. Sad but true and judging by the fact that yet again it does manage to bring a certain self-indulgent, devilish smile on my face, I feel like an accomplished misanthrope now. That surely must be the first sign, among a few others…
The great thing about famous misanthropes (Scrooge, Hamlet etc) is that in spite of all, they don’t come cheap and that’s not because they’re mostly rich misers but simply because they are always miserable in style. And that’s what we are all seeking isn’t it?
An intelligent person would always personally exonerate someone who is deeply miserable if they’re doing it in style, and that’s why Hamlet would always have ‘flights of angels’ sing him to his ‘rest’.
To be bad is art, to be good is artifice. That’s what perhaps best sums up my frame of mind at present.
I haven’t made any noticeable progress in terms of my personal acquaintances; I rarely sleep more then five hours a night nowadays, and the worst part is that if I do fall sleep eventually, my sleep is so deep that when I do wake up (no more than five hours later), or in the process of waking up, I usually experience a brief moment of numbness when I struggle to even open my eyes, though I am fully conscious. It’s somewhat like the pendulum effect, so abruptly swaying between lapses of unconsciousness and lapses of consciousness that I feel as though my whole being is merely the light switch controlled entirely by someone else. Whether it’s God Himself or another piece of artifice, that I cannot be sure of…
And what does it matter for how could you find out? If that ‘someone else’ really exists, they would obviously never betray their identity to me, for that would spoil the fun… God would never reveal Himself as God because he can evidently foresee the consequences sensibly enough.
I have also unwittingly stirred up trouble between myself and some of my teachers. I have even devised an efficacious method of demonstrating my utter resentment towards some of them. Now, I do not even give them excuses for why I did not turn up to their lesson and I am shunning them completely by the use of the simple, if not childish - ‘because I didn’t want to’. Obviously I was disgusted with myself afterwards but what really, really pisses me off now is the fact that those very same teachers smile and greet me throughout the school corridors when I come across them, as though nothing has happened, as though the day before, I wasn’t at all appearing contemptuous and with blatant arrogance, not even bothering to make up an excuse about why I wasn’t in their stupid lesson, but dismissing their pleas with disdainful ignorance. Have they not taken it to heart at all? Is it all just a matter of professionalism?
One thing is certain: Respond to others’ ignorance with an even greater form of ignorance and watch how your enemies double everyday….
It’s human nature: You delight in it reading about it in books but its dark, empirical side stings bitterly.
So do wish me a Happy Christmas but only when it's all over...

A Discourse on Strength

2007-12-13T15:28:00.000Z

...After a silence: "You are funny--don't be offended--very funny. And it's very strange that you should still be good-natured when you might well be spiteful....You're strong...that's good...."

Reminiscences of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy by Maxim Gorky

In praise of the obscure!

2007-10-25T15:59:00.001+01:00

Recently, I saw Control: the Ian Curtis film. It was a speedy decision to see it in the first place, and I was largely unprepared as such. My mindset was quickly transformed however and the intensity that the film offered did in my opinion, place me somewhere in the consciousness of the man himself.
First of all, it is entirely black & white which renders it all the more bleak but being monochrome in hue, the film has preserved the authenticity of Joy Division’s public image today. After all, fans and listeners alike have only seen black & white photographs of the band and Curtis himself, and the film successfully continues this long tradition of destitution and dreariness that is most associated with late 70s Manchester. No need to go into detail about the atmosphere within the film then as it is completely self-evident.
What did however surprise me was the wealth of humour that was present, particularly in the beginning. The introduction of the band’s manager, Rob Gretton, especially stood out as a fine example of this straightforward and rather artless humour which complimented brilliantly the distressing emotional and physical derangement, generally pervading the film.
Likewise, the depiction of characters is accomplished with this distinct, simple efficacy that more or less reminded me of a George Orwell novel. They are sorely realistic but their symbolical effect on Curtis’ mind is reinforced again and again which makes the film very incisive in psychological terms.
The actor, Sam Riley, puts a remarkably unique performance. His ability to emulate Curtis’ trademark singing style exhibits such effort and dedication that it instantly reminded me of the feelings I get when watching Curtis himself performing in videos.
Observing the performances portrayed in the film, you are showered with this immediate sensation which consists of telling yourself that he is so ridiculous and yet so brilliant.

You would doubtlessly be struck by this feeling and it is through such instances that the film’s authenticity towers above other such ‘documentary’ films which often fail to capture the essence of their context and as such belie their original purpose.
A naturally recurring theme in the film is epilepsy. When it comes to seizures, Riley’s acting is almost brutal though perhaps a little too much so. During such epileptic fits, he staggers about so violently and this somehow betrays the convincing nature of his performance but nevertheless, it is realism that the audience expects and ultimately gets – one of the strongest points of the film.
The tedium of Manchester at the time is visually captivating, complete with Ballardian landscapes, council estates and general gloominess.

The magnificent paralleling of Joy Division songs and particular scenes of the film sheds enormous insight into Curtis’ lyrics. One such occasion is his parting with his wife Deborah, immediately after which ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is played in the background, serving as a powerful accompaniment to the scene.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the film is the fact that its principal character, Ian Curtis, is not portrayed as the archetypal artist of genius. On the contrary, he’s mostly weak and frail when it comes to dealing with his own emotional and moral vicissitudes. He relies heavily on other people to support him mentally and often ‘loses control’ not due to epilepsy but because of sheer sadness – infinite sadness.
This helps the film rather and in no way does it deduct power from its protagonist who though saying very little, speaks volumes through his plain honesty and personal magnetism.

It is not hard to see therefore that the film would become a classic in some years time, gently adding to the cult and mystery of Joy Division rather than overblowing it and casting it into the abysmal mould of commercialism.

A Cynic's Guide to Cynicism

2007-09-28T23:20:00.000+01:00

Antisthenes, an ancient Greek Cynic philosopher, said that “I do not possess, in order not to be possessed” . As such he dressed in rags innapropriate even for a beggar.
And so once, Socrates, who generally agreed with his philosophy, said to him:

“I can see your vanity, Antisthenes, through the holes in your cloak.”

Short Existentialism Today

2007-08-20T14:07:00.000+01:00

Often one, according to all the laws of inequity both directed towards oneself and others who happen to be around, becomes so conscious, so powerfully conscious of one’s absurdity of standing that all of one’s immediate rationalism is lost in favour of atrocious irrationalism that amounts eventually to extreme egoism. It is the struggle for autonomy and in one’s mind a terrible battle between the hyperactive conscience and the impulsive uniqueness of egoistic judgement is thereof adjoined.

At such moments, and they are so perversely pleasing to one’s eternal ego, the heart itself is invited to play the important role of being the false inquisitor to this naïve but extraordinarily noble struggle.
‘Talk to me for God’s sake, ask me that question instead of asking them for you’ll get an answer of superior quality. Ask me not them!’
Such thoughts are swirling around one’s mind at instants like the one currently being described. Extreme egoism – hyper-egoism!!

Thus the struggle for attention becomes animalistic, almost barbarous for a few seconds as you observe other individuals around you, and you suddenly find that they’ve been turned into vacuous non-entities; something akin to Kafka-style cockroaches – faceless, gliding upon the hellishly monotonous and gripping surface of your own self-critical inequity of a judgement. If they are blind towards you, return their blindness and it would silence the pain…
Their adulation is totally misdirected and worst of all, completely unfounded.

Further few seconds later, this craving for attention and impulsive loneliness is metamorphosed into absurdity; this absurdity is what becomes dominant though the emotional entombment itself is still obsequious enough, but is now diminishing in favour of internal laughter – a mockery. That mockery is based upon one’s immediate observation that this attention which one is so lacking from others is exceptionally dull anyway. Those words that modulate to form sentences and eventually petty expressions are not the key to satisfaction because they’re in fact extremely dull and short of meaning.

What is attentively spoken to others in your company which bounces off you as though a brick wall has been constructed in front of you- that is often ordinary, everyday language, far too unworthy to even be directed to you let alone you consent on receiving it!

You realise this and the pain of the aforementioned struggle has undergone a sublimation, a process akin to that of a comet in the sky, that leaves you in the very privates of the absurd as you indulge yourself in the hyper-conscious but of course silent mockery of others and for the duration of further few seconds, you are seeing yourself in the third-person, as you wish to be seen by others, and as such you receive an apologetic feeling of tearful despair almost a fit of epilepsy or abominable panic, as you realise that these ‘unworthy’ words are actually ones of exceptional significance to your satisfaction because invariably you succumb to the passionate and clenching tortures of the human need for social belonging.

All of a sudden, your confidence returns to its previous low level and sucks its own thumbs in an instinctual effort to arrogantly reveal its own ’lowness’ to you, and just like the chilling first breeze of the dawning winter, your cold skin is slashed violently and you are faced with the ugly and deformed countenance of smugness that swallows you whole, and at that very moment, if there is a mirror nearby, look into it and search for the two pointy antennas that might by transpiring within the thin air that you find just above your head.

Oh the head is fine, but it’s the heart that’s worn out!

2007-08-12T14:35:00.000+01:00

Of this 1809 portrait depicting French Romantic writer François-René de Chateaubriand, Napoleon is said to have remarked that the portrait 'looked like that of a conspirator who had come down a chimney'.

The trial however continues...

The Briefest of Brief Introductions to the Absurd

2007-07-27T13:42:00.000+01:00

It was now seven, and the gunfire seemed to have come nearer, fresh batteries were firing on the other side of Sedan, nearer and nearer.
'Oh well,' Sergeant Sapin said in his matter-off-fact way to Jean and Maurice, 'I shall be killed today... Still, it's annoying because I was going to get married when I got home.'

So it was that Sergeant Sapin met the death he was expecting. He had turned round and he saw the shell coming when it could no longer be avoided.
'Ah, here it is!' was all he said.
His little face, with its big eyes, was merely deeply sad, with no terror. His belly was split open...

Extract from 'The Debacle' by Emile Zola

2007-07-09T20:39:00.000+01:00

Whilst having a pleasant stroll around the Tate Modern a few days ago, I stumbled upon a mind-boggling collection of the admittedly less abstract art contained in one of the exhibition sections. It was Soviet propaganda art and it adorned the greater part of the walls inside the room. Among the numerous pictures of the Messiah-like Stalin and forever-living Lenin as well as the ever highly appealing sagacious faces of Marx & Engels, I came across something highly-original and its precise originality has been the product of a most advantageous hindsight that enables us to look back and smile apologetically.

The above picture is divided into a capitalist and communist side, and I'll be leaving you alone to figure out which one is which, considering of course that it is after all a Soviet propaganda poster.

And so speaking of music, one could always of course be reminded of the various Party denunciations of musicians such as Shostakovich for instance but I suppose it's not always healthy to concentrate on the rather pedantic side of the ever advantageous hindsight...

Blogging...Again...

2007-06-29T16:54:00.000+01:00

First time I've blogged for two whole weeks and yet the absoluteness of those two weeks is not present in my sense of time. In fact, they have elapsed in such an inglorious manner that the disappointment of wasted time has taken hold of me big time...
But right now, it seems to me a pretty noble and charming thing to be a young person and as I am terribly young, I feel for the still young at heart despite their accumulated years of age which fortunately for them are still accumulating.

Nevermind the bollocks, here's what I mean...

‘Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! I explained to her than, in two words, directly, ruthlessly (and I emphasize the fact that it was ruthlessly) that the heroism of youth was charming, but — not worth a farthing. Why not? Because it costs them so little, because it is not gained through life; it is, so to say, merely “first impressions of existence,” but just let us see you at work! Cheap heroism is always easy, and even to sacrifice life is easy too; because it is only a case of hot blood and an overflow of energy, and there is such a longing for what is beautiful! No, take the deed of heroism that is laborious, obscure, without noise or flourish, slandered, in which there is a great deal of sacrifice and not one grain of glory — in which you, a splendid man, are made to look like a scoundrel before every one, though you might be the most honest man in the world — you try that sort of heroism and you’ll soon give it up! While I — have been bearing the burden of that all my life.’
-A Gentle Creature– Dostoevsky

A Highly Prepossessing Quote

2007-06-15T18:40:00.000+01:00

I once jokingly asked him “what is the most original and unrealisable thing you would like to experience at the moment?” I’ll tell you, Swinburne replied, “to ravish Saint Genevieve during her most ardent ecstasy of prayer – but in addition, with her secret consent…”

(Turgenev on Swinburne)

Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics, Politics by Isobel Armstrong

2007-06-07T14:30:00.000+01:00

Whilst surfing through Radiohead's eminent blog, 'Dead Air Space', I came across a photo of Thom Yorke and noticed the reproduction of a relatively famous painting stuck onto the wall just above him on the background.

I recognised it instantly as 'The Forge of Vulcan' by Diego Velazquez who is indeed one of the most respected painters in history and one of my personal favourites.

That said, I cannot hope to correctly guess who exactly placed it there, nor can I be sure that it has anything to do with any member of the band.

Still though, I think we should all agree that despite this utter surprise that struck when I saw the photo at first, it is nonetheless still very much indicative of the originality that Radiohead as artists possess, and this reproduction on the wall of their studio (presumably) should be accepted as something far cooler than what usually adorns the walls of most recording studios.

I think it's fair to say therefore that Radiohead are Radiohead because you would somehow expect them to have such an artwork that is depicted in the picture above.

Man vs Predator

2007-05-29T18:25:00.000+01:00

A teacher of mine once remarked that I was ‘a very fair person’. His words have since been embedded within my phonological loop and have traversed my consciousness on quite a few occasions. Indeed, I think he was right and that I as a person am generally ‘fair’ insomuch that I do not pick a side hastily and mostly take quite some time with all my mental ponderings, arguments and questions, taking into account or at least trying to take into account all moral and intellectual perspectives before forming an opinion.

That said, I think I can thus briefly discuss something which has fascinated me during the past week or so and it is very much borne out of this personal ‘fair’ attribute that I am content with possessing.
It concerns something which normally I would turn a blind eye to and pretty much overlook, and it involves the Predator movies. The fact is that I am not a big sci-fi fan but I am indeed a fan of good film directing and thus Predator 1 & 2 are among the few exceptions.
Having carefully watched the films in the past week, my opinion of humanity in general has not so much shifted ideologically but perhaps well justified in some respects. Indeed, the Predator is the greatest hunter in the universe but that’s irrelevant. The Predator is physically powerful and highly manoeuvrable for his size, and that again, is very much irrelevant.
What is truly impressive is the concept of the Predator, ‘for what he is, not for what he does’, as is remarked in the second movie.
Therefore, what I think is in fact noteworthy is that despite everything, the end of the two films is all the same, and it represents no particular change from a wider point of view but only personal for the protagonists i.e. Schwarzenegger and Danny Glover.

The comparison that the Predator as a concept provides is what intrinsically fascinates me. Indeed, carnage ensues in the first movie for instance, as shown by the skinned bodies hanging down from the trees at the beginning that is obviously the Predator’s accomplishment. Yes, the sight, however brief, may ruin your lunch, but if you observe the Predator as a creature superior to Man, you should not simply look at him in mere physical and combat terms.
What if the Predator supersedes Man in moral terms as well?
Sure, the Predator is not allowed to kill an unarmed, pregnant or ‘young’ person, and that’s what sets him apart here. In both Predator 1 & 2, the people directly killed by him, are all either criminals or armed forces, but never civilians.

Both endings of the films accordingly, represent no change, but things continuing as normal. This is perhaps more overtly observed in Danny Glover’s character and his final words – ‘You’ll get another chance’.
Life proceeds forth as if nothing has happened because indeed, no alteration of humanity has occurred and we know that the Predator will be coming back some time afterwards, and again and again etc. He would kill a couple of ‘bad’ guys and the hunt will be over. There will be no winner even if the Predator is killed in the end.

Therefore, the Predator hunts for sport and will most brutally kill individuals for the sake of acquiring trophies, but Man is a creature far more base and vile, and would choose war and devastation as to only satisfy His megalomaniac aims and ambitions.
Predator commits a distinct, isolated, episodic carnage. Man, on the other hand, creates atrocities that are effective on a far broader scale that will always involve innocent people, even if only a few.
The Predator comes and goes but Man is consistent in all His evildoings.

Thus, the Predator may be seen as serving as a mirror; a mirror that the whole of humanity should look into and see the truth as it is. The truth itself is that Man is actually worse than the Predator because at least the Predator strictly adheres to his set code of morality and Man, well He often sinks considerably below this level and would usually decay into being base and irrational, and completely immoral, which are attributes most clearly exemplified as part of the gang members’ behaviour in the second movie.
Sure, both the Predator and Man will each seek their own individual ambition but the difference is that unlike Man, the Predator will choose to die rather than hypocritically abandon this ambition in favour of a more presently practical one.

This image of the Predator can even be extended onto a further level and he can be seen as the gruesomely ugly, alien version of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. Through him, Man is judged and well, eloquently condemned as being unworthy in a debatably philosophical, abstract sense. In the films, people are openly depicted as mere louses in a flagrant comparison to his 7 foot stature. People are treated as such and made to look unworthy in every sense of the word albeit only the protagonists eventually manage to prevail over the Predator in a dramatic battle that matters for them only, and not to humanity in general. Sure, Man ‘wins’ but does He really?

If you observe Schwarzenegger’s face expression at the end of the first movie, you can see he’s crushed and even startled to a point of this absolute, fundamental change, but it is his personal experience only, and not humanity’s as a whole.
He’ll live to tell the tale but who’s listening let alone understanding?
Therefore, you may very well ask him at such a moment, ‘Where has he been?’, and bearing in mind the argument presented here, you may clearly be able to see through the rhetoric of this question and make your own conclusions.
Such ambiguous characters can be seen throughout comic books and sci-fi films with Alan Moore’s ‘V for Vendetta’ being a notable example.
You can take for instance, the Predator’s instinctual suicide in a hopeless situation and interpret it as simply not so much aimed at destroying his advanced weaponry and preserving his honour, but perhaps simply killing himself rather than choosing to be finished off by such an ‘unworthy’ creature that is Man. It’s disputable this view, but the Predator might just be onto something here indeed. This attitude is akin to being put into a situation where you are challenged to a duel for example, and yet you refuse to uphold it not because of cowardice but due to the fact that in the end, it is only natural to inquire into the nature of your potential slayer and ask yourself the question – ‘Is it really worth it to lose my life in the hands of this prick?’

The realm of the Predator and his presence can be seen as a dystopia. Indeed, the principal characteristic of any dystopia is people being treated like parasites, small in size and utterly insignificant. Man’s greatest fear is being treated as such because of the painful damage done to His pride and this is subtly exposed in Greek times for instance, with the Homeric world of Gods and fate and the two’s obvious interlinks. Both of them are absolutely indifferent to man’s ideas of goodness and justice. This is at the heart of tragedy overall, not only in the Ancient Greek world but as part of the very fabric of Man’s psyche.
The Predator movies explore this thoroughly though not openly. A couple of people end up being devoured by him who rips off their heads and scavenges their flesh in order to preserve their skulls and spinal cords. Sure, a terrifying act and this is precisely at the heart of this debate, with Man being completely dominated by the Predator who finishes Him off in this austere, heart-wrenching and ‘humiliating’ way.
This is what mainly comprises Man’s foremost fear and the Predator’s job is to instil this kind of fear within the viewer by means of this cinematographic simulation i.e. the movie.

Perhaps, the Predator is within us; within our minds as part of the Freudian idea of the id, ego and superego where there is this constant instability and self-doubt.
He’s not human but his actions serve as a microcosm of what Man has done, still does and will continue to do in the future – Atrocity.
The Predator lives in this micro realm and his bloody escapades exist precisely within this fictional, micro realm of the movie. And yet in reality, it is ultimately Man’s transgressions within the actual macro realm of life that contrives the real difference between Him and the Predator. As such, the Predator’s actions can be vindicated with the pretext of them being performed on a comparatively small scale, in contrast to Man whose liberty and discordance with morality paves way for atrocity on a scale that is infinitely grander and thus, far more horrendous.

Therefore as to this mighty creature, the Predator, well he should simply not stay on Earth and any residue Predators still broodingly hovering the obscure places on Earth should immediately leave.

Perhaps, you may just be too good for this planet or at least, not bad enough.

2007-05-27T15:45:00.000+01:00

Why have conspiracy theories concerning the Renaissance only extended as far as Da Vinci and his precocious engineering designs?

All of you conspiracy theorists have been delusional so far, particularly relating to UFOs and little green men for you've never perhaps paid attention to what's majestically shimmering right in front your very eyes. You've gloriously managed to ignore the most reliable evidence for the existence of other life forms and their benevolent visits to our planet.

Simply give it a good look and think to yourselves as to who possibly human can create the object that is depicted in the picture above. Clearly this object is the most unquestionably valid evidence that aliens do indeed exist and have been visiting our planet Earth for centuries on.

I turn to all you delusional Fausts that comprise the great majority of the conspiracy theorists, and challenge you to dispute this view because after all only Michelangelo himself can claim what's naturally his whereas you, well you are only left with a juicy bone to salivate over and are cheated out in advance.

An Interesting Attitude

2007-05-10T17:11:00.000+01:00

That evening decided --
why not be lovers factually?
–it’s dark, so we shan’t be seen.
I leaned right over her actually
and actually,
as I,
leaned,
said to her,
like a good father :
“Passion’s steep as a precipice
–please, I beg you,
stand back farther.
Farther still,
I beg you, please.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky

A microcosm of the French-English relations

2007-05-04T21:06:00.000+01:00

A couple of days ago, in my college there arrived a number of French exchange students whose lack of understanding of even basic English was comically revealed in the face of the fact that when a certain ‘Bonjour’ was lightly said to them, they were most benevolently, with a hint of an apologetic smile, nodding in false agreement which of course was marked with a complete form of actual mystification.

There was the certain case however, which remained in my memory for a significant period of time afterwards, and it essentially involved a French girl who due to her total inability to speak English was effectively an outcast when it came to joining my fellow students in conversation. Indeed, whilst the others were childishly immersed in the superfluous trivialities that usually propagated within the subjects of their attention, I came around and saw this very same girl sitting down on the grass with them but totally remote from their conversation; and believe me, we’re talking about a 2-3 metre physical distance here, with a rather startled, ‘what planet is this?’ gaze on her face.
Suddenly I felt a certain pity for her because seeing the flagrant boredom that marks a person’s countenance in my very own presence, is something I have a most utter disdain for.
I approached her tenuously with great care and tried to fuse together my English with my failingly patchy French and thus initiate a conversation. I succeeded for she was most polite despite the frequent misunderstandings that were prevalent throughout the duration of our encounter. However she constantly maintained a grace that presciently exposed to me the fact that she would undoubtedly develop to be a most attractive and mature woman.

We ended up talking with the uttermost entertaining linguistic limitations, of French writers and I am sure that any man would agree that a girl using her natural French accent to pronounce ‘Emile Zola’ is irresistibly, a most melodious and memorable music for the ears.
Nonetheless, our conversation was limited in time as much as it was limited in substance and thus, she left in a terribly inglorious procession that secured the knowledge for the both of us that would never see each other again.
The point being here is the complete state of ignorance that the others manifested within their limited scope of perception which meant that in spite of the fact that some of them had a French which was infinitely more advanced than mine and yet none of them engaged in any sort of verbal contact with her, absolutely forsaking the elemental perception that was needed to visually observe the girl’s preliminary sullen, downcast gaze.
These people, for a fact I knew to be the most boastful of their multitude of friends and yet they severely lacked the rudimentary senses for companionship and psychological insight. All of them had Hi5 pages with just about a million ‘buddies’; all of them were incessantly on their phones (with the subservient aim of course, to show just how many contacts they were in possession of). All of them were constantly spending an inordinate amount of time on MSN and such chat-room oases.

They ultimately did not have the excuse for the obvious language barrier that existed because I still proved that this did not matter in fact, and that a pleasant conversation was a most natural process of basic amiability.

Something else was indeed missing and it was borne out of what Immanuel Kant would preferably call ‘indebtedness’ that was unfortunately the primary impetus for their conveyance towards the girl i.e. indebtedness or enforced friendliness and not to the sincere and humane benevolence that marked my own attitude towards her, which ultimately made all the difference.

I hope she sought to understand this and my distinct humility, or perhaps maybe she would recall the encounter later on when her perceptive senses are more penetrating and mature.

Cleverness is all too well, but it is the sole job of the Perception to fill in the blanks that it often leaves behind.

Notes On Arrogance

2007-04-24T11:17:00.000+01:00

The duress that is contained within the anecdote that is to follow is one that has been afflicting the innermost of ailments and convictions lately within me.
The problem thus with the fact that a lesson which precedes lunchtime leaves the stomach not only hungry but empty to the point where one feels as though it was a grand Zeppelin filled with worthless helium.
Therefore, the problem, most of all, is that one does not stray too far from abandoning the course of the lesson and all its themes which as this emptiness progresses, become increasingly without substance.
This is the absolute last thing you need because if this very lesson is history, then an empty stomach is ultimately synonymous with an empty registry of attention.
Even the majestic subject of our intense study, Napoleon, has to be extra zealous to inspire any whatsoever interest within oneself.
As we were discussing and getting to grips with the points of the 1801 Concordat between Napoleon and the Pope, I became not so much fascinated by these ‘fair’ points and stipulations (which by the way, when it comes to history, the most tedious of all themes is the multitude of points and agreements made in treaties etc.) but with the fact that all the points of the Concordat were unashamedly in favour of Napoleon.
I became internally agitated when the teacher (objective as ever) remained so purposelessly neutral that it almost seemed comical because the vacuum that was this most illustrious silence was marked with a general lack of comprehension and reluctance to admit the pure, holy truth of the matter (typical characteristic of a student of any age).
The Concordat, without unnecessary elaboration, was essentially a reconciliatory agreement between the Pope and Napoleon which basically gave the French leader immense clerical and religious power and certain peace when it came to the not at all unusual feud between Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and the Jews which were all allowed in the process, to preach their faith without the worry of being imprisoned because of their conscience.
But what irritated me considerably was this precise sparseness when it came to summing out the Concordat. Indeed, I felt as though the whole class needed to be aware that it was a fundamental ‘rip-off’ for the Pope, this very agreement.
As a result of this sudden burning desire to make a distinct point myself, I proposed the logical argument that what the Concordat and its meaning purported was the fact that Napoleon ultimately aimed to deceive the Pope by providing him with assurance that he was tolerant, peace-seeking leader who was himself religious with the only innocent ambition being his desire to recognise within himself the importance of being earnest.
What the Pope failed in reality, to grasp was that Napoleon, the dictator, was all these things with large, accentuated inverted commas.
What I publicly stated in front of the teacher was something along these lines.
The Concordat was a blatant deception. A laugh in the face of the Holy Man of Rome.
I wanted to stress on this and the whole class to cease to be so unaffectedly influenced by the atrocious objectivity of the teacher, but to realise this very same truth.
I continued my argument and supported my point with the fact that Napoleon could have easily imposed these exact statements contained in the Concordat without the laborious need for contention when it came to the Pope.
The teacher however, (and I could see the aggravation caused on his slightly reddened face), cut me off sharply by saying that Napoleon sought to win the support of the people whether royalist or republican and that the Concordat acted as the official bridge that brought (for the greater part) to peace many of Napoleon’s opponents.
My argument was thus insufficient to be worthy of being noted-down.
Fair enough, just like the Concordat.
I was aware of course that my suggestion was flawed but I stoically tried to conceal this very awareness so that he thought I genuinely meant what I said.
Here comes the interesting bit.
Whilst I indeed tried to hide my awareness, I only succeeded to keep it to myself for the duration of a minute or two.
In fact, when he finished explaining the official nature of the Concordat, I felt ready to reveal the truth.
‘I know this, sir’ I said, calmly and so coolly with a solid air of arrogance.
‘I just wanted to make sure that the whole class understood what the Concordat effectively meant and I thought that by raising the issue that I raised, I could simply get you to provide me and the rest of the class with a definitive answer to the actuality that resided within the points of the Concordat.’
Teachers generally are trained well to sense the mellow arrogance of a student and my history teacher, experienced as he was, bore not exception to this rule.

Behind the ubiquitous objectivity of a teacher there lies the fright of an educated man of being momentarily surpassed by the true intellect of a much younger person. True intellect and objectivity cannot co-exist without feuds between the two. Fervent or latent, such feuds will always be present.

My point thus being:

For God’s sake, in the name of science, literature, art and history, arrogance though mostly unconscionable, is the key to the enlightenment that these four main fields should bestow upon a person, particularly a student for in the end, everyone in my history class was left as avidly entertained as startlingly enlightened.

If the world was a saddle in the excruciatingly calm and motionlessly monotonous sea, then arrogance will be the water that would keep it afloat.

6 Alternatives to Suicidal School Rampage

2007-04-19T16:42:00.000+01:00

1. Realise once and for all the lost cause of such action. If my logic is correct, such a high number of school shootings has accumulated that the whole concept of 'school shooting' has itself fallen victim to commercialisation. A lost cause indeed.

2. Read 'The Myth of Sisyphus' by Albert Camus and see for yourself that all that matters is the experience of life and that from an individual point of view, you can in fact balance out the endeavours between acts of virtue and acts of vice.

3. Take a certain period of time each day for yourself to become a communist but as such, do not seek out the Utopia of equality but instead look for the almost child-like sentimentality that you can enjoy by the exemplified humane attitude towards humanity. In other words, be an idealist to a certain healthy extent.

4. Read some of the works of famous wrongdoers such as Marquis de Sade and Aliester Crowley and learn about the true nature of evil and realise how it is certainly not your thing at heart.

5. Realise that wishing to die in a 'self-promoting blaze of glory' is for people who can only hold a book upside-down.

6. Read 'The Idiot' by Dostoevsky and see for yourself that despite all the unfairness, weakness and universal shit that may surround you, you have to be prepared to face it with a crucifix clutched in the palm of your hand rather than a conflagration of saliva dabs in your mouth.

These are some of my suggestions. Sure there is infinitely more at hand. I guess I just have to wait until the next Cho Seung-hui comes along so I can post them here.

2007-04-13T11:43:00.000+01:00

It feels heavenly indeed, when I manage to discover an artist who I consider as good as anything I've ever witnessed in my relatively short but spectacularly rich experience with art.

The above painting is one such example of a rather obscure artist, Ivan Aivazovsky, that really imposes on me the will to look more on the brightside of life and I can thus enjoy a respite from the toil of intellectual pessimism. Romanticism is healthy for the mind and there is no question that this is indeed true. Although the painting above portrays people clinging to the badly damaged mast of their crippled ship and the so-called '9th Wave' is certainly about to consume them in one go, there is the wonderful balance between the delight in nature against the fragility of human physicality. Spirituality is what counts here and the people depicted are nevertheless hopeful, even for a miracle to save them, but still remain faithful to their hopes.

For once I have undoubtedly found a painter that matches the formidable Sublime of Friedrich without letting go of realism like Turner or plunging into the unneccesary Romantic nationalism of Delacroix.

Applause is what's left, and pride of course.