Song of the Innocence of Experience

 

 

If I could make the world as pure

And strange as what I see

I’d put you in a mirror

I’d put in front of me

 

(Lou Reed)

 

I recently heard a song called Dreamboat. I had no idea who it was by or what it was called but I knew that it was from the 1950s so I trawled my collection of 50’s records but could not find it anywhere then, to the great derision of my friend, I discovered that the song was from 2014.

 

Dreamboat, sail across the ocean

 

Your love, sets my heart in motion

 

Dreamboat, drift away with me

 

 

 

The lyrics worked because they appeal very directly to the heart, yet are also abstract.

 

 

Many theories for a simple world have been formulated but, as with most theories, they do not work in practice, either because they are unfeasible or because people corrupt the power that comes with them.

 

The 1998 film Pleasantville is set in a black and white American dream, however once the moral foundations are broken colour starts to come into the black and white world and with it fear, hatred and jealousy.

 

The scientist Nikola Tesla had little business sense and although he invented the radio years before Marconi he did not have the economic drive of his competitors. (Edison set out to discredit Tesla by getting cats and dogs to drink, in public, from water that was wired with Tesla’s new theory of alternating current (AC) and then set out to show that his Direct Current (DC) was superior by using it for capital punishment (the prisoner failed to die so and, to the embarrassment of Edison, had to be electrocuted a second time), meanwhile Tesla proved that AC was not as dangerous as Edison said by running millions of volts through himself and letting it form sparks from his hands to light lamps- he even found that electrical vibrations could cure constipation- although when Mark Twain decided to try it he did not heed Tesla’s warning about the time limit and had to send for some clean clothes). This is consistent with many inventors, writers- those folks who change the world whose ideals are exploited by those who only think of money. Innocence is seen as a vice when rather it is one of the greatest virtues.

 

 

I was recently told that ten is too old to read Enid Blyton books. With the invent of selfie-culture and social media it seems that more and more children and young people are losing the innocence of childhood at a younger and younger age and not only does this damage their development but it also creates more isolation, hence the rise of internet dating, ignoring that maths (I+LOW= -Rs) (Internet + Loss/Lack Of Will = Negative Results), now in Pleasantville one would go up to another and say ‘gee I think you are swell, would you, maybe, like to get a milkshake with me, shucks?’ however, in the modern world, the innocence of the Teslas is lost and with it we are losing more than we can stand to loose and once innocence is gone it can never be gotten back.

 

 

‘till next time

The Nobel Lie

 

Last week it was announced that one of the two greatest popular songwriters of all time was to receive an award. For the last two billion years bookmakers have speculated on whether Bob Dylan would win the Nobel Prize for Literature and, hey, he finally did. When I heard the news part of me thought ‘about time’ and a bigger part of me thought ‘who cares?’

 

 

I’ve never been one enamoured by awards (best fish and chips in town according to some local newspaper!) and I am one of those miserabilist who does not celebrate their birthday feeling it to be not any kind of achievement (Sigmund Fraud says it is the cause of all anxiety) however the Nobel Prize is a ‘big deal’.

 

My relationship with it has always been undefined- whilst I am glad that the likes of Hermann Hesse had his opposition to the Nazi Party ‘validated’ and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won it for showing the reality of the Gulags, I am more thrilled by Sartre refusing the award because

 

‘The writer must therefore refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution, even if this occurs under the most honorable circumstances’

 

The whole notion of Laureates baffles me. The likes of Carol Ann Duffy becomes Poet Laureate and spins out some spiffing couplets about the royal family whereas a poet like Allan Ginsberg would never be made a Laureate simply because he would be too rebellious and would be unpredictable despite being the ‘voice of his generation’ whilst Blake was dismissed out of hand as a mad man

 

When Leonard Cohen (the second fellow) was offered a Canadian award for poetry in 1968, his response was ‘Much in me strives for this honour but the poems themselves forbid it absolutely’ and when Dylan himself was given the Tom Paine award for being a Civil Rights kinda fellow, a drunk and uncomfortable Dylan rather elegantly points out the absurdity of talking about ‘colours’ and then states ‘Old people when their hair grows out, they should go out. And I look down to see the people that are governing me and making my rules – and they haven’t got any hair on their head – I get very uptight about it.’

 

He later wrote an apology poem in which he stated

 

‘ it is a fierce heavy feeling

thinkin’ something is expected of you

but you dont know what exactly it is…’      

 

Subsequently he has accepted many awards (his Oscar for the song Things Have Changed used to travel on tour with him, sitting on stage, Dylan being of the age where Hollywood still meant something) and, personally, I think he deserves them all and more but is it really recognition? Surely there are tangible (economic) and intangible (respect) things which are more of a recognition? (I am aware that regular readers will be thinking me an oxy-moron given my usual decrying of poets dying in gutters). Congratulations Mr Dylan, you deserve all the praise you get but I’ll leave the last word to Leonard Cohen, possibly the only living person able to judge Dylan’s work

 

‘…(it) is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.’

 

 

 

‘till next time!

Why Bother?

 

We are born, we live, we die and in the end it all amounts to- nothing. However, as with most things, it is the journey that matters (not all things for if one is going on holiday then the hours of flights and delays is nothing compared to the actual holiday!)

 

Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg was your average young fellow but when his betrothed died he went into the darkness (trying to contact her via the occult) and emerged out the other end as the poet Novalis.

 

Novalis wrote a book called Henry Von Ofterdingen. In the book Henry has a dream and in his dream he sees the face of the most beautiful girl in the centre of a blue flower. He knows that this dream is not his alone and many people, maybe everyone, has had the same dream but Henry decides that the best use of his time is to go and find this girl, so out he sets. However, before he finds her Novalis died so I’d like to think that Henry is still out there searching for his dream.

 

Whilst many people set out with noble intentions, many quickly fall by the wayside into the rut of existence. In the brilliant introduction to philosophy, Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder creates his own creation myth- a magician pulls a rabbit (the world) out of a hat and people are born on the fur of the rabbit and whilst most crawl down the fur to nestle safely and warmly against the body of the rabbit others try to climb up to the top of the fur to look the magician in the eye and call out to those below ‘Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space!’

 

These folks are the great philosophers and inventors, the people who shape the world. Usually full of self-confidence and stubbornness, George Bernard Shaw once observed ‘the reasonable man adapts himself to the world while the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.’ This is how the world changes from the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, dragged kicking and screaming by those whom people despise and then take for granted.

 

For many, life contains one element- sustenance- to eat so as to exist, to reproduce so as to exist (ever wondered why the obsession with cookery and sexual intercourse?) however it is the stubborn ones who do not subscribe to this model who change the world, those who try to create new worlds, sometimes for personal gain but usually just for the hell of it, the great thrill, the why not? factor (usually resulting in poverty, disgrace, resentment or obscurity). Without such dreamers- many scientific discoveries came about with no practical use but great use was found for them later- the world would become stagnant and die however we take these people’s sweat and tears for granted when really we should be reading their biographies, studying their notes and as Nietzsche said ‘the average man sees something spectacular and goes ‘I’m scared, freak!’ whereas the exceptional man goes ‘wow! Why haven’t I done that a thousand times before?’

 

The ‘normal’ person lives the life of compromise, more than is necessary just to survive in the civilised world, with relationships, occupations, ambitions and dreams nothing above the ordinary but as Hunter S Thompson said in a lecture at Boulder University ‘what’s wrong with spending your life chasing rainbows?’ but don’t procrastinate for as another rather rebellious figure, Jesus, once said ‘I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work’  

 

‘till next time!

 

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

 

One of my favourite artists is Renoir. Renoir pioneered impressionism and through his work managed to reflect some of the sublime beauty of people however how much of the picture is a reflection of the subject and how much is a reflection of Renoir’s mind?

 

The band Kraftwerk show the dangers of one ‘discovering themself in the mirror’

 

The young man stepped into the hall of mirrors

Where he discovered a reflection of himself

Sometimes he saw his real face

And sometimes a stranger at his place

He fell in love with the image of himself

And suddenly the picture was distorted

(so) he made up the person he wanted to be

And changed into a new personality

(Even the greatest stars discover/dislike/change themselves in the looking glass)

 

 

 

 

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

 

― Albert Einstein

 

Who we are is reflected in our surroundings and the people around. One can tell a person’s character by the company that he keeps and what people say of him. No matter how many masks one dons, one still is one’s self at the core and cannot be eradicated, even if it only shows itself at night when one is alone without their public mask on.

 

When I was a child…I understood as a child…but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly…now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

 

(1 Corinthians 13:12)

 

 

However, one must not be too quick to condemn those who hide behind masks as it may simply be for survival. When Franz Kafka died Milena Jesenska wrote:

 

‘He was shy, timid, gentle, and kind, but he wrote gruesome and painful books…too wise to…live…too weak to fight, he had that weakness of noble, beautiful people who are not able to…battle against the fear of misunderstandings, unkindness, or intellectual lies. Such persons know beforehand that they are powerless and go down in defeat in such a way that they shame the victor. He knew people as only people of great sensitivity are able to know them, as somebody who is alone and sees people almost prophetically…He knew the world in a deep and extraordinary manner. He was himself a deep and extraordinary world…The fact is that we all seem capable of living, because at some time or other we have taken refuge in a lie, in blindness, in enthusiasm, in optimism, in some conviction, in pessimism or something of the sort. He has never taken refuge in anything. He is absolutely incapable of lying…. He has nothing to take refuge in, no shelter. It’s as if he were naked and everyone else had clothes on.’

 

And whilst we may all want to be the mirror that shows people how beautiful they are, maybe, in our hearts of hearts, we want people to show us how beautiful we are

 

‘till next time!

 

 

I’ll be your mirror

Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know

I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset

The light on your door to show that you’re home

(And) I find it hard to believe you don’t know

The beauty that you are

But if you don’t, let me be your eyes

A hand in your darkness, so you won’t be afraid

 When you think the night has seen your mind

That inside you’re twisted and unkind

Let me stand to show that you are blind

Please put down your hands

‘Cause I see you

I’ll be your mirror

 

(Lou Reed)