Fate, Up Against Your Will

 

In the seminal Echo & The Bunnymen song The Killing Moon the lead singer Ian McCulloch plaintively intones ‘fate, up against your will, through the thick and thin he will wait until you give yourself to him’.

 

Fate is one of those concepts which crops up almost on a daily basis, be it in the guise of inevitability, fate itself or other synonyms. One of the traits which people display, in terms of language, is the declaration that they will change their fate or control their fate, clearly missing the whole point of fate, something which is inevitable and cannot be changed by will, happenchance or anything.

 

So, what is fate? The most famous example of fate comes from Bill Shakespeare’s butchering of Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbē in which two star-crossed lovers, or to let Shakespeare tell it

 

Two households, both alike in dignity

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.

 

And here we see two interesting notions. Firstly, that the lovers are star-crossed meaning that their fate is foretold, possibly linking to notions such as Astrology (something which even the renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung believed to be possible) and that their fate was to be to be part of a greater purpose, that is to be the sacrifice to end the war. But this still hasn’t answered the question, what is fate?

 

‘In Greek mythology, Fate was personified as three sisters: Clotho, the spinner of life’s thread, Lachesis, the allotter of a person’s destiny, and Atropos, who cut the thread at death. … Because of this, there is only heroism and a brave death to strive for, as one’s doom is already sealed.’

(litcharts.com/lit/mythology/themes/fate)

 

Once again we are presented with a contradiction for, as the above quote shows, in mythology fate was what controlled the actions of mortals and yet people could choose to be heroes. If fate is all encompassing then this cannot be for one would be fated to be a hero or not, thus making all human action just south of pointless/meaningless and making it seem possible that instead of fate people are actually refering to self-determinism where one’s actions can set about a chain of events powered by the initial impetus. But, as we know, humans don’t always do what they should thus making the notion that this is foretold seem to be build on a foundation of sand.

 

As with most things, we must turn to the wisdom of Leonard Cohen to try understand what is fate:

 

‘And all of this
Expressions of
The sweet indifference
Some call love

The high indifference
Some call fate
But we had names
More intimate’

 

In this Leonard is astutely saying that such notions as fate stem from language and not from a reality. Often, in this blog, we have spoken of how things are rarely as they seem and here it seems we have another example to draw upon. When the philosopher Spinoza spoke about God being in nature, what he meant was that God is something beyond our comprehension but we sometimes see manifestations of God in what we call nature. Likewise, as existence is so far beyond our comprehension and as we cannot see our time in the grand scheme of ‘time’ (as in all existence) we try to interpret what happens and then create cool and nifty (huh?) concepts such as fate to explain what cannot be understood and try to understand why things don’t always go the way we would and it seems that fate is, indeed, up against our will.

 

‘till next time, fate willing (ha!)

 

Tesla’s Pigeon

 

If history and discovery were not guided by the small egos of small people then questions such as ‘who invented AC’ and ‘who invented the first radio’ would have a widely known answer: Tesla.

Thwarted by the likes of Edison (a glorified salesman) and ultimately blacklisted by the FBI for making the mistake of inventing what became known as the Star Wars Defence System whilst being Serbian, Tesla died in obscurity and poverty. Whilst the likes of Einstein, Feynman and Oppenheimer were expert at self-promotion and emerged in a world which they were advanced of, for sure, but during a time of great scientific discovery in physics (Bohr, Fermi, Rutherford et al) with the convenience of birth (Italy, Germany, America etc.) Tesla was apart from this and with comments such as:

 

‘The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.’

 

And

 

‘The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.’

 

It seems clear that, even though Einstein allegedly said that Tesla was the smartest man alive, Tesla was never welcome, nor did he wish to be welcome, in the small club of ‘elite’ scientists, most of which made up the Manhattan Project.

 

Tesla, also famously, had little time for women and sexual intercourse, not that he thought badly of women but that he revered them too much:

 

‘I had always thought of woman, as possessing those delicate qualities of mind and soul that made her in these respects far superior to man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal, figuratively speaking, and ranked her in certain important attributes considerably higher than man. I worshiped at the feet of the creature I had raised to this height, and, like every true worshiper, I felt myself unworthy of the object of my worship…but all this was in the past. Now the soft-voiced gentle woman of my reverent worship has all but vanished. In her place has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies in making herself as much as possible like man–in dress, voice and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind.’

 

So, here we have a man who was intellectually brilliant who revered women greatly, so much so that he thought the current trend to be like men devalued women in her own eyes, and thought that sexual intercourse got in the way of scientific discovery. It all seems very simple yet the questions which are abound focus on his sexuality (a-sexual? Homosexual? etc.) as Tesla was a once in a lifetime mind and people cannot understand him so project their own notions of normalcy upon him. Likewise, people like to mock Tesla’s affection for pigeons. Tesla, living in a hotel (it helped with his OCD), would find inured pidgins and bring them home to heal and, in the words of Tesla:

 

‘I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a women, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.’

 

This has often been cited as ‘proof’ that Tesla went insane or was ‘weird’ or etc. as one’s personal experience cannot understand the actions of Mr Tesla, but, couldn’t it easily be seen as ‘evidence’ that everyone, even those who think and feel deeply, have an inherent need for love and affection?

 

‘till next time

Direct And Indirect Time

 

 

Let me tell you about Johnny, Johnny is not his real name, but it is the name he asked me to use when I said I’d write this up. Johnny is someone I don’t know but met by happenchance and ended up having one of those conversations you can only have with strangers. Johnny had gotten a BA in English Language and Literature when he was 21 and then at 30 had done an MA in Philosophy and Literature. This might seem quite a progression, but it is even more than it seems. His thesis for his BA was on American political poetry and Bob Dylan and his MA on Bergson, Einstein and time. After graduating Johnny spent a year looking for a job he ‘didn’t have to care about’ and then, after 3/4s of the year of frustration, had two interviews for the NHS. He then received a phone call saying that he didn’t get the job but, instead, the AD had created a brand-new apprenticeship for him. So, at 32, Johnny became an apprentice, not in anything linked to his degrees, in business analysis. It might seem that with his analytical mind, as shown from his degrees, that he would be well suited to it but still it does seem rather odd. Johnny told me that upon arriving, on his first day, he was to he had to be the ‘saviour’ for the small team of BAs. They were constantly overworked (capacitated) and couldn’t work out why. Johnny told me that upon an initial inspection he noted that they had three system designed to track their work but that none of the systems worked or could ever work. Thinking about this, Johnny said, he devised ‘a new concept’ in thinking about the time for projects. That is Direct and Indirect time. Johnny said that, for example, he saw that his boss had 60 hours of work scheduled for the next two months and, working full time, his boss would have 300 hours to do 60 hours of work, and yet was still over worked. How could this be? Johnny thought about it and checked the means of tracking the work and realised that they did not work because the data that was being inputted was incorrect. When raising this with his boss, she replied ‘you have to see the big picture’ to which Johnny replied that all big pictures were created by meticulous detail to each individual brush stroke.

 

Later, when thinking about it, Johnny said that he had realised what had been the problem. The time spent on the project, consultations, meetings, paperwork, presentations, charts etc equated to the 60 hours but how much time was being spent on the project that was not being accounted for, that is indirectly. What did he mean by this? Well, knocking on a door to say, ‘have you heard back?’ can take between 5-15 minutes depending how far away the office is and how long you chit chat and if the person is busy when you arrive. Say this happens four times in a day, you have already spent up to another hour working on the project, not on a set stage but rather indirectly in preparing the next stage. Add this up over a month and the 60 direct estimated hours could find themselves accompanied by another 20-100 hours (very rough estimate) of time spent indirectly working on the project. Factor in the daily functions and soon your 300 hours to do 60 hours work starts to look very short. Add a couple more projects, holiday and illness and you will be way over your allocated hours/time.

 

I asked Johnny how this could be solved and he just smiled and said, ‘if you write it down in a column in a notebook (heading indirect time: 5 mins) then you can get a clear picture of how the time is spent and the data you input will be more accurate giving better results and thus solving the problem or, at least, making it clear’. He said he had taken this to his boss, as they had devised the systems, but as they didn’t want to note down what they actually did they were unwilling to humour his suggestion. Johnny had asked her, as this was what she had to do for other people- analyse their business and show them how to make it better- why, if it was what others should do, why did she feel exempt from it?  He said that she had been evasive in the answer and then continued as before. Johnny said that as he had left work that day (full disclosure: we met at a bus stop waiting for a late bus) his boss had been digging out an old model she had had to calculate time which, she had said, didn’t work so she was going to use it again. With that the bus arrived and the social awkwardness which had brought about the conversation ended as we made sure we sat as far apart as possible on the bus.

 

‘till next time

2018: An Existential Crisis

 

Ten years ago the unthinkable happened. Western capitalism failed. Fuelled by easy loans, credit and greed the markets grew too big and, as with the fool who built his house on the sand, once the tide came in the system crumbled. Millions became unemployed and homeless. Quick action from new president Obama and the Bank of England prevented a great depression era catastrophe however, things were bad. Shops closed own, unemployment grew. Unemployment figures went down but 3 of each of those jobs went to the same person who still could not afford to live.

 

Ten years later things are better but not that much so. Parts of the West are still living in 2008 times. The banks which were bailed out by the tax payer did not pay back the money and continued trading the bonds which caused the crash, just under a different name. Only one person went to prison, a coder who, being offered a chance to build his own trade system, left Goldman Sachs. Goldman, the giants of integrity, sent the FBI to his house and found an untouched USB full of his old data (he liked to keep copies of his work for no reason other than to have them) which Goldman said belonged only to them, and in the ‘wrong’ hands could manipulate the markets, and thus he went to prison.

 

There are many books you can read about this but what I wish to talk about today is the existential crisis and the growth of ideas. Once upon a time, employers would find a person with talent and would bring them onboard. It was a risk but it was a risk of low value which could yield great results. Since 2008 everywhere operates under strict budgetary cuts and now employers cannot fill positions they have let alone create more with any element of risk. Those mostly affected are the so-called Millennials, those who turned 16 in about 2000. The Millennial stereotype is that they are lazy start-upers who have no sense of responsibility and feel entitled.  This might be true for some but for many this seeming attitude comes from a) years of their parents having relatively decadent lives which they continued immune from the crash and b) a lack of opportunities as a result from the crash.

When researching this essay, I spoke to many between the ages of 22 and 35 and not a single one, not yet on the housing ladder, believed that they would ever be on it. Likewise, sat in the bank the other day, a man was speaking to the lady with the clipboard (you know the one) and saying that his fix rate mortgage was ending and he wanted another one and that he wanted another to buy a new property to loan. This, I thought, was interesting. In a time when the young, the with-outs, are being accused of being entitled, those who were complicit in the problems are still feeling entitled to buy more properties despite a global shortage, to then rent at extortionate prices. There is no denying that the shape and fabric of society has been changed immeasurably by the 2008 crash but one can see that as those who caused the problems are unwilling or unable to change one can see the next ten years, or so, as being  as hard and when the next crash comes about, as it will (many of the emerging markets have either slowed down or crashed, think China, India, Brazil etc), the shape of the world will be one which may take decades to recover from.

 

But, as they say, it has happened before and it will happen again so it is all good.

 

‘till next time (uh huh)

Dylan And The Drugs

 

‘But I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned!’

 

One thing which annoys me greatly is that when one creates a piece of art, which is wonderful, people look at it and go ‘hmm, I could not make that myself or even understand it so it must have been made on drugs’. One person who gets this frequently is Bob Dylan however, if one was do a smidgen of research one would see that this is just nonsense, even given his documented addictions to heroin, amphetamines, turning The Beatles onto weed and so forth.

 

One song which this is said often about is the song Mr Tambourine Man where the narrator implores a mysterious being to ‘play a song for me/ In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you’, a bit like the pied piper of Hamelin. So, who was this mysterious Mr Tambourine Man? Well, according to ‘experts’ it was drugs/dealer, however, in the liner notes of the Biograph box set, Dylan wrote, ‘”Mr Tambourine Man’ was inspired by Bruce Langhorne. Bruce was playing guitar with me on a bunch of the early records. He had this gigantic tambourine”’ and, indeed, when the song was, I believe, premiered publicly at the Newport Folk Festival, Mr Langhorne went around telling people that he was Mr Tambourine Man.

 

Ok, but what of the content of the song? If one knows the work of Dylan one will know how his art stems from the British and American tradition of ballads, that is to say songs which are stories/journeys. The biggest influence, by his own admission, to Dylan becoming a folk singer (having previous owned an electric guitar due to the influence of rock ‘n’ roll, most notably, Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Elvis) was Woody Guthrie,

 

‘Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know
All the things that I’m a-sayin’ an’ a-many times more
I’m a-singin’ you the song, but I can’t sing enough
’Cause there’s not many men that done the things that you’ve done’

 

Woody Guthrie wrote a very beautiful song in 1940 called This Land Is Your land’ in which the narrator travails through America concluding that

 

‘From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.’

 

Now with this in mind, if one listens to Mr Tambourine Man, with lyrics such as ‘And but for the sky there are no fences facin’’ then one can clearly see that the song is a ballad about one’s journey through the self and/or America. Whilst Woody’s is wildly optimistic

 

‘As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.’

 

Dylan’s landscape is more nightmarish, darker

 

‘Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow’

 

And is about escaping a reality. Another explanation for the darker tone can be found in Suze Rotolo’s memoir A Freewheelin’ Time about her relationship with Dylan (songs such as Boots Of Spanish Leather are about her and their relationship) as he was starting out and her being in the first group of students to break the embargo on Cuba to see what it was really like for themselves. In the book she recounts her having a fight with Dylan, him storming out and then coming back later, after walking the streets, and writing a draft of the said song.

 

Another song which is labelled as a ‘drug’ song is Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 with its lyrics, every line in the verse having a reference to being ‘stoned’:

 

‘Well, they’ll stone you when you walk all alone
They’ll stone you when you are walking home
They’ll stone you and then say you are brave
They’ll stone you when you are set down in your grave
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned’

 

Of which many picked up on only the last two lines of each verse and assumed that it was a drug song. The song, to me, was never about drugs, it was about loneliness. Every time you try to do something there will be people to ‘stone’ you in the biblical (and current in some parts of the world) sense, to knock you or, more simply will criticise everything you do. Given how Dylan wrote the song in 1966 whilst he was performing with a live band for the first time, an act which caused people to go to shows to just boo him and shout abuse at him, means that it should be read more as a song saying it’s lonely here but f you, I’ll do what I want, everyone should do what they want!

When asked about the drug interpretation over 40 years later, Dylan, in a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, dismissively said “These are people that aren’t familiar with the Book of Acts.” Referring Jesus’ disciples spreading the Gospel to a generally unwilling populous thus supporting my interpretation of the song.

 

Often interpretations of songs, books and even actions are misconstrued as people tend to view everything through the prism of their self, but that’s fine if that is all they can do but if you want to know the truth of things then generally you have to do a little work yourself, not that everyone will like it but, hey, as the great man himself said:

 

‘I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned!’

 

‘till next time