From a Baby in a Basket ... Lines in Memory of My Mother: Doreen Hall (10 July 1926 - 13 Feb 2023)

Me and My Mother (c. 1969)

 

 

I. 

 

I was in two minds about whether to speak or stay silent at my mother's funeral service, which was held this morning at South Essex Crematorium. But in the end I decided that I had to say something and wanted to say something; for if I didn't, then who would? 

 

But I also decided it was important to keep it simple, keep it brief, and keep it honest. And so, for anyone who might be interested, here's what I said ...    

 

II.

 

From a baby in a basket to a corpse in a casket: and in between - a life. 

 

A life defined in terms of duty and by a promise made as a Brownie: I promise to do my best. 

 

I think the one thing that can be said of my mother without fear of contradiction is that she always tried to do her best. 

 

But now, sadly, my mother's life has come to a close and everyday language is somehow inadequate to express one's emotions at this time - which is why we turn to poetry ... 

 

This short verse, written by D. H. Lawrence at the end of his own life, is one that I find particularly touching: 

 

 

All Souls Day 

 

Be careful, then, and be gentle about death. 

For it is hard to die, it is difficult to go through 

the door, even when it opens. 

 

And the poor dead, when they have left the walled 

and silvery city of the now hopeless body 

where are they to go, O where are they to go? 

 

They linger in the shadow of the earth. 

The earth's long conical shadow is full of souls 

that cannot find the way across the sea of change. 

 

Be kind, Oh be kind to your dead 

and give them a little encouragement 

and help them to build their little ship of death. 

 

For the soul has a long, long journey after death 

to the sweet home of pure oblivion. 

Each needs a little ship, a little ship 

and the proper store of meal for the longest journey. 

 

Oh, from out of your heart 

provide for your dead once more, equip them 

like departing mariners, lovingly. 

 

For a related post to this one, please click here.

 

With thanks to Erica Buné and Tina Johnson for all their help and kindness arranging my mother's funeral.

Notes on Young Kim's 'A Year On Earth With Mr. Hell' (Part 2)

A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell (Fashion Beast Editions, 2022) 

ft. Miss Young Kim and Mr. Richard Hell

 

 

To read part one of this post, which offers a series of opening remarks and notes on subjects including amorous gifts, dirty handkerchiefs, cunnilingus, and the politics of fashion, please click here. 

 

May I also remind readers that page numbers given below refer to the Fashionbeast edition of A Year on Earth With Mr Hell (2022). 

 

 

Random Notes on Young Kim's A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell (cont.)

  

On (In)Fidelity 

 

Miss Kim is irritated by Mr. Hell's feeling guilty about the fact that he is cheating on his girlfriend: "I think the truth is, as unconventional and wild as Richard is [...] he is hampered with a puritanical streak." [153] 

 

He is, she says, an absurd and puerile coward, ashamed of his own polyamorous nature. 

 

But is this the truth? Or could it not be that "the profound instinct of fidelity in a man" is "just a little deeper and more powerful than his instinct of faithless sexual promiscuity"? [j]

 

After all, even Lady Chatterley's lover ultimately desires the peace that comes of fucking [k] and recognises that his underlying passion is for constancy, not to endlessly chase skirt - particularly as, like Mr. Hell, he is no longer a young man [l]. 

 

"'What a misery to be [...] impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace'", writes Oliver Mellors [m]. And what a misery also to remain, in Kim's own words, a "hapless adolescent in trouble with too many women" [160]. 

 

No wonder that by the end of the book Mr. Hell is looking "sad and torn and guilty and weary" [223] and eventually tells Miss Kim that he can't continue the affair: "'I have to go. I feel terrible doing this to my girlfriend. Being two-faced. My head hurts.'" [223] 

 

 

On Lurking 

 

Like Mr. Hell, I too prefer to wait outside a bar or restaurant when meeting someone, rather than sit passively (and anxiously) inside; a practice that Miss Kim finds curious and bizarre, though explains it to herself by deciding that he must like to anticipate and observe the arrival of his date - "like a predator waiting for its prey" [44].

 

That's possible: but I think there's another reason why Mr. Hell likes to stay lurking in the shadows for as long as possible. For is there anything worse than to be seen looking lonely at a bar or table, waiting for someone who may or may not arrive; one feels not only exposed, but emasculated. 

 

Only a masochist would find pleasure in this; in their subordination and being kept in a state of suspense by another. 

 

 

On Name Dropping 

 

Whilst at the Knickerbocker Bar and Grill, Miss Kim and Mr. Hell both name drop like crazy in order to assert their own status and, presumably, find common cultural territory with one another by identifying shared acquaintances and inspirations: Picasso, Agnes Martin, Francis Picabia, René Clair, Ian Fleming, Ian McEwan, Allen Ginsberg, Karen Blixen, Carole Bouquet, Peter Beard, Russ Meyer, are all casually alluded to over oysters. 

 

I know this will infuriate some people, but I found it kind of funny, rather than a sign of snobbery or narcissism. And besides, isn't name dropping a function of basic human interaction; don't we all do it, to some extent - even those whose only connection to famous names is via a box of chocolate liqueurs. 

 

 

On Punk Anthems 

 

According to Miss Kim, Richard Hell's 'Blank Generation' is "the ultimate nihilistic punk anthem" [9] [n]. But that's debatable. And, in fact, I have already discussed this song (and found it wanting) in contrast to the far more provocative (if less poetic) 'Pretty Vacant', by the Sex Pistols: click here. 

 

 

On Sex 

 

Ultimately, Miss Kim comes to the conclusion that sex is sex [169] - i.e., a fixed and never-changing reality which in some way provides the great clue to being. But we can't let this metaphysical notion pass without comment ... 

 

Like Foucault, I tend to see sex as a complex type of agency formed by regimes of power unfolding within time and place, or history and culture, rather than as an ideal anchorage point supporting various manifestations of what we term sexuality. The belief that it somehow eludes and resists power and resides deep within us over and above the material reality of bodies and possessing its own intrinsic properties and laws, is simply a piece of modern romance. 

 

Of course, this isn't to deny that the convenient fiction of sex hasn't proved to be extremely useful; or that it will cease to function in the immediate future. It seems certain that sex will continue to be thought of as a great causal principle long after novelists and lovers have abandoned older ideas of the soul as mere superstition. 

 

For the fact is, a very great number of men and women - including Miss Kim and Mr. Hell - have made their very intelligibility dependent upon their sex and it provides them with their most precious forms of identity. Which is why they talk about and think about sex endlessly and desire to "have access to it, to discover it, to liberate it, to articulate it, to formulate it in truth" [o]. 

 

Despite the popular belief that there have been centuries of repressive silence and shame surrounding the subject, sex has in fact been the most obsessively talked about thing of all. What is peculiar about modern societies, suggests Foucault, is not that they kept sex locked away in darkness, "but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret" [p]. 

 

In other words, what really distinguishes the world we live in is a polymorphous and increasingly pornographic incitement to discourse about sex. Those who are genuinely interested in libidinal pleasures might do best not to vainly attempt to extract further confessions from a shadow, but show how sex is - and has always been - a purely speculative element within the historical process of human subjectification. 

 

In a postmodern future - that is to say, in a time after the orgy - people will be unable to fathom our sex mania. And they will smile, says Foucault, when they recall that there were once people such as Miss Kim and Mr. Hell who believed that in sex resided a truth "every bit as precious as the one they had already demanded from the earth, the stars, and the pure forms of their thought" [q]. 

 

 

On Sexism and Gender Difference

 

Miss Kim is annoyed when her steak arrives well done, having "clearly specified rare" [44]. Surprisingly, she interprets this as an act of overt sexism rather than incompetance or poor service: "Do they think only men like bloody steaks?" [44] 

 

However, she still expects and considers it normal that Mr. Hell pay for the meal. Why? Because Miss Kim believes in male gallantry and thinks it "only fair that the man pay for the experience [of dinner] when a woman spends a fortune maintaining her appearance" [89].

 

Woe betide any man who dares to go Dutch: 

 

"When the bill came, I put down my credit card before I went to the bathroom. I was curious to see what he'd do. It was a test. It wasn't a big tab, but I'd saw he split the check in two. That was the last nail in the coffin." [68] 

 

In fact, Miss Kim - who openly declares herself a non-feminist (even whilst complaining that, as a single woman, she is often shown little respect by men) - subscribes to many traditional ideas and stereotypes concerning gender and sexual difference: 

 

"A man thinks so differently from a woman" [79] ... 

 

"Men are wonderfully bestial" [106] ... 

 

"Men never grow up" [177] ... 

 

And - my personal favourite -  "Men are strange" [181].

 

Amusingly, however, by the end of the book Kim realises that she's not merely like a man in many respects, but, thanks to all the hardship she's lived through, has in fact "become a man" [230]. 

 

By which she means that at times of crisis or emotional stress she enjoys watching a lot of TV. 

 

 

On Smell 

 

"Smell is a surprisingly powerful sense - far more powerful than sight and touch" [110], says Miss Kim. And whilst unable to remember it, there is, she insists, a "scientific reason for this" [110].

 

That's probably true. But there's also an interesting pollyanalytic reason which D. H. Lawrence outlines in Fantasia: 

 

"The nostrils are the great gate from the wide atmosphere of heaven to the lungs. [...] But the nostrils have their other function of smell [...] delicate nerve-ends run direct from the lower centres, from the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion [...] There is the refined sensual intake when a scent is sweet. There is the sensual repudiation when a scent is unsavoury." [r] 

 

One recalls also something said by the narrator of Patrick Süskind's fabulous novel Perfume (1985): 

 

"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally." [s] 

 

I smiled to see Young Kim not only informing her readers that she always wears the same perfume - "pomegranate, from Santa Maria Novella" [111] - but that her vaginal fluid has a "distinctively sweet smell" [211] - although I accept that some might find that a little too much information. 

 

 

On Spanking 

 

Miss Kim writes: 

 

"I stretched myself out over his lap, he slapped my ass hard, but not hard enough to truly hurt, several times, maybe four. The slaps were surprisingly loud, crackling through the air, which made me uncomfortable, in case anyone heard. Then, his fingers explored my pussy and my asshole for a bit before his hand came down harder several times more [...] What fun." [122] 

 

The English vice, as it is known - and which includes all varieties of corporal punishment (caning, flogging, spanking, etc.) - remains ever-popular within the world of lovers. As a form of sensual discipline it is an ascetic practice which has a restorative effect on the soul. 

 

That is to say, if carried out with genuine passion, then chastisement establishes a circuit of polarized communication and produces as powerful a flash of interchange between parties as an act of sexual intercourse. It should, therefore, be regarded as a natural form of coition which makes a violent readjustment in the flow between lovers, allowing, like a thunderstorm, for a fresh start and a new feeling. 

 

Ultimately, corporal punishment is a vital necessity because man does not live by love and kindness alone and human culture is inscribed and cut into the flesh. To paraphrase Lawrence: As long as men and women have bottoms, they must surely be spanked ...

 

 

Notes

 

[j] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 318.   

 

[k] I have written on this key idea in Lawrence's late work in a post entitled 'Chastity' (19 Dec 2021): click here. 

 

[l] Age is always a significant issue - certainly for 67-year-old Mr. Hell, concerned he'll not be able to sexually satisfy a much younger woman. But when Richard tells Young that it would best if she forgot him, as he was too old, she dismisses the idea. Later, however, she wonders why it is she doesn't meet younger people, closer to her own age, with whom to form romantic relations, concluding she belongs to the wrong generation (see p. 141).

      Finally, note how when Mr. Hell breaks up with Miss Kim and expresses guilt over his infidelity, he again reminds her of his age: "'Next month I'll be sixty-eight! And I'm doing all this?!'" [229]

[m] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, op. cit., p. 301.

 

[n] Later, Kim describes 'Blank Generation' as a "powerful piece of poetry, art, and emotion packed like dynamite into a catchy paean" [215]. Which is fair enough, but I still prefer 'Pretty Vacant'. 

 

[o] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1998), p. 156. 

 

[p] Ibid., p. 35.

[q] Ibid., p. 159.

 

[r] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 100. 

 

[s] Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, trans. John E. Woods, (Hamish Hamilton, 1986), p. 82. 

 

 

Notes on Young Kim's 'A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell' (Part 1)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Aujourd'hui, Maman est morte

Last photo of my mother on her 96th birthday 

(10 July 2022)

 

 

My mother died today. Unlike Meursault, however, I'm pretty certain of that. 

 

Because today also happens to be my birthday and I'm accepting her death as a kind of final gift: a chance to live again and re-enter the world from the same woman who bore me sixty years ago. 

 

Funny how, at such a time, one thinks of a short French novel published 80-odd years ago (L'Étranger) and of a fictional character indifferent in the face of death, or, perhaps more precisely, accepting of la tendre indifférence (or absurdity) of the universe in which life unfolds and then quickly closes.    

And funny how one also (rather shamefully) recalls the words written by Schopenhauer following the death of a Putzfrau to whom he had been paying a monthly sum by court order after an altercation in which she was injured: Obit anus, abit onus ('The old woman dies, the burden is lifted').

But mostly I just remember the final lovely smile my mother gave me as she found the strength to say my name one last time.

For a follow up post to this one, please click here. 

Some Do the Deed With Many Tears and Some Without a Sigh: On Matricide

John Singer Sargent: Orestes Pursued by the Furies (1921):

This is what happens when you kill your mum ...

 

 

I. 

 

A recent piece by Yvonne Roberts in The Guardian on the subject of child to parent violence and abuse (CPVA), detailed the dramatic rise in the number of (often elderly) women murdered by their sons since 2016 [1]. 

 

Rarely spoken about and often misunderstood, matricide, it seems, is the crime du jour ...

 

 

II.

 

Now, whilst I'm no expert in this area and have only the vaguest familarity with the growing body of research, I have been caring full-time for my mother - who is in her 90s and has Alzheimer's - for the past seven years and this gives me, I would argue, a degree of insight into the subject based upon actual experience.      

 

The fact that I can comment upon the subject from a philosophical perspective informed by a reading of Nietzsche, also allows me to bring something different to the discussion - although not necessarily something that people might want to hear ...

III.

For example, I think that rather than view matricide as a gendered crime to be explained in terms of toxic masculinity, we might better understand it as often an ironic consequence of care; this is why Nietzsche warns against pity and describes it as more harmful than any vice. 

 

The fact is, being in the presence of the old, the weak, the sick, the demented and severley disabled for a prolonged period of time when one is still relatively young, healthy and strong, is not advisable; one eventually becomes infected with their misery and is driven towards atrocity. 

 

If this sounds like victim blaming [2], that's because, in some sense, that's precisely what it is. I know I've behaved monstrously towards my own mother at times. But I also know that she (inadvertently) gave birth to this monstrous me, just as she gave birth to a loving son. 

 

Nietzsche says that the only healthy response to the wretched of the earth is nausea (not pity). For nausea is a protective instinct; one that causes us to fear and move away from that which (and those whom) sicken us. Nausea keeps us safe and, also, it protects the one who repulses from our contempt and anger, by ensuring a safe distance between us and them.      

 

 

IV.

 

It has been suggested that one of the reasons that so many elderly women are being abused and killed by their sons is because there's a chronic lack of social care and a shortage of affordable housing; the latter end up living at home and having to provide care for the former, 24/7. 

 

Unable to go anywhere, do anything, see anyone - and unable even to think or breathe at times - is it any wonder violent - even murderous - thoughts arise?

 

Like Paul Morel, I can vouch for the sense of helplessness and horror that one feels when obliged to watch over one's mother, slowly dying (and choking) on a bed [3]. It's not easy, nor is it in any sense edifying; it is, rather, demoralising and distressing and it very often leads to the secret wish that the burden of providing palliative care is lifted sooner rather than later. 

 

Ultimately, says Nietzsche, the first principle of his charity is allowing the terminally sick to die - and assisting them in this [4]. Euthanasia, however, is illegal in the UK and only a very few will have the courage to actually do what needs to be done, thereby risking not only pursuit by the Furies (i.e., a lifetime of grief and guilt), but criminal prosecution for murder.

 

And so, most do nothing - until the crack-up - and then a very small number commit mad and terrible deeds; such as burning the bloody house down with their grey-haired mother locked inside, or frenziedly stabbing the latter over a hundred times with a kitchen knife. 

 

Not that I imagine Nietzsche approving of such actions ... 

 

Indeed, for Nietzsche the only human beings who are of any concern to him are those who manage to endure in the face of terrible hardship and suffering; individuals who learn to overcome perhaps even their own nausea and remain stoical in the face of adversity; individuals whose kindness and compassion is the mark of their own self-conquest.  

 

Ultimately, Nietzsche's is a tragic philosophy - but not a murderous one. And it is because Zarathustra deems his followers capable of committing every evil - including matricide - that he most demands goodness from them ... [5]

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Yvonne Roberts, '"You had better be careful in your bed tonight": shock rise in women killed by their sons', The Guardian (15 Jan 2023): click here.

[2] Victim blaming is the act of holding the victim of a crime or misdeed either entirely or partially responsible for the harm that befell them. Adorno regarded it as characteristic of the fascist mindset, but I tend to agree with Roy Baumeister that blaming the victim is not necessarily always fallacious and that the fantasy of the wholly innocent victim and entirely malicious evil-doer lacks moral complexity. 

      See Baumeister's Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, (St. Martin's Press, 2000).

 

[3] Paul Morel is the protagonist of D. H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers (1913). His mother is dying of cancer and in great pain. So Paul is overly generous with the amount of morphine he puts in her milk one evening. I have written about this in a post entitled 'Sons and Killers' (17 Sept 2016): click here.

      See also the related post - 'In Praise of Euthanasia as a Practice of Joy before Death' (16 Sept 2016): click here. 

 

[4] See Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, §2. 

 

[5] See the section entitled 'On Those Who Are Sublime' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where Nietzsche writes: 

 

"When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible - such descent I call beauty.

      And there is nobody from whom I want beauty as much as from you who are powerful: let your kindness be your final self-conquest. 

      Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you. 

      Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

      You shall strive after the virtue of the column: it grows more and more beautiful and gentle, but internally harder and more enduring, as it ascends."

 

This is one of the loveliest - and most crucial - passages in Nietzsche's work, particularly for those who are concerned with his ethical philosophy. 

      I am quoting from Kaufmann's translation of Zarathustra, which can be found in The Portable Nietzsche, (Penguin Books, 1976).

 

 

Aloha! Should Johnny Rotten Mind His Language?

Johnny singing his heart out on The Late Late Show Eurosong 2023 Special 

RTÉ Television Centre, Dublin (3 Feb 2023)

 

 

I. 

 

Sadly, Johnny Rotten has failed in his bid to emulate Johnny Logan and will not be representing Ireland in this year's Eurovision Song Contest. Somewhat ironically, the 67-year former Sex Pistol and his post-punk outfit Public Image Ltd., were defeated by a group calling themselves Wild Youth.    

The song that Rotten safety-pinned his hopes on - 'Hawaii' [1] - is described as a love letter to his 80-year-old wife, Nora, who - as he never tires of telling us - has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. 

 

Whilst the track with its refrain of remember me, I remember you, is certainly touching, one can't help but find it a rather feeble response to his wife's condition when compared, for example, to the ferocious song written in response to the cancer that killed his 46-year old mother, Eileen, in 1978.

There's nothing nostalgic or sentimental about 'Death Disco', as Rotten rages in despair at the dying of the light in his mother's eyes and watches as she lies choking on a bed, surrounded by rotting flowers [2].

 

His Eurovision entry, by contrast, is much more accepting that all journeys end and that all one is ultimately left with are memories of happier times - if one's lucky, that is, and dementia doesn't rob you of the past as well as aggressively restrict your ability to think and carry out everyday activities in the present.     

Perhaps, being generous, we might say that 'Hawaii' is the song of a more mature and reflective songwriter, whereas 'Death Disco' was the composition of a young man almost insane with anger. 

 

However, for all its poignant charm, 'Hawaii' still wasn't selected for Eurovision: in fact, it finished fourth out of the six songs competing and was given a lukewarm reception by the judges. But then, the Irish have never really accepted London-born Lydon as one of their own; he was even arrested in Dublin once, in 1980, and spent a weekend in Mountjoy prison on a trumped up charge. 

 

Still, maybe it's for the best that PiL didn't win the vote. For in this age of political correctness, certain voices have been raised in woke circles about the problematic use (or appropriation) of the word aloha by non-Hawaiian speakers like Lydon ...

 

 

II.  

 

In a recent article publised in USA Today, David Oliver suggests that it's time to stop using culturally sensitive words out of context [3]. Just because you can say hello in Hawaiian, writes Oliver, that doesn't automatically give you the right to do so. 

 

For aloha isn't merely a simple greeting. It has a profound (some might say sacred) meaning for native speakers, referring to a spiritual force that might be described as love, peace, or compassion; a force that is fundamental to existence. Aloha means recognising this force in oneself, in others and in all things.

 

I suppose a Heideggerian might identify aloha as an elementary term - i.e., one that speaks Being [4] - and it might be argued that it is devalued when coming from the mouth of a tourist, or someone who uses it simply to add a little exotic colour to a song lyric.

 

Personally, I wouldn't want to take this argument too far. However, I can agree that we all need to be cautious and respectful when using words that we don't fully understand and which speak others in their otherness; i.e., we all need to mind our language, as it were - even Mr. Rotten.      

 

 

Notes

[1] 'Hawaii', by Public Image Limited (John Lydon / Bruce Smith / Lu Edmonds / Scott Firth), will be released on vinyl as a limited edition 7" single later this year. To watch the official promo video, click here. Or to watch the band performing the song on The Late Late Show, click here. 

[2] 'Death Disco', by Public Image Limited (John Lydon / Keith Levene / Jah Wobble / Jim Walker), was a single release in June 1979 on Virgin Records: click here for the official video. An alternative version entitled 'Swan Lake' can be found on Metal Box (Virgin Records, 1979).  

 

[3] David Oliver, 'Is it time to stop saying "aloha" and other culturally sensitive words out of context?', USA Today (13 Jan 2023): click here. 

 

[4] For Heidegger, the ultimate task of philosophy is to preserve the force of the elementary words in which Dasein expresses itself. See Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Blackwell, 2001), p. 262.