Philematology: On Kissing and Cannibalism

Daniel Silver: Kissing (2024) [1]

Statuario Altissimo marble and bronze,

with a stainless steel baseplate

 

I. 

 

It wasn't until I saw Daniel Silver's sculpture of bronze lovers "'stuck together like two jujube lozenges'" [2] that I realised the full horror of an oft-quoted remark made by Georges Bataille: 

 

A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism ...

 

 

II. 

 

What this means is that there's an accursed link between eating and eroticism. 

 

For consumption, like sex, is a way in which separate beings not only communicate, but fatally come into touch, enabling the self and non-self to bridge their discontinuous existence as individuals [3].  

 

Or, to put it another way, sexual desire that drives us to press lips together and insert tongues in mouths (and other bodily orifices) and the voracious desire to devour the other, are as closely connected as Eros and Thanatos in a general economy in which non-productive expenditure (via acts that often violently transgress social norms) is key.    

Herman Hupfeld may insist that "a kiss is just a kiss" [4], but, as a matter of fact, nothing is ever so innocent or free from context (i.e., a whole network of meaning and significance). 

 

 

III.

 

Apparently, anthropologists disagree on whether kissing is instinctual or an example of learned behaviour. 

 

Those who favour the former point to the fact that other animals appear to kiss (whilst ignoring that not all humans engage in the activity) [5]. 

 

Those who favour the latter, argue that kissing in its modern (romantic) form has evolved from activities such as suckling or premastication in early human cultures [6] and there is certainly evidence to support the claim that cataglottism [7] has developed from mouth-to-mouth regurgitation of food - or kiss-feeding - either from parent to offspring, or between lovers.

 

 

IV.

 

It might be noted in closing, that man's will to merger or primal unity - be it via the sexual penetration of a lover's body or the consumption of their flesh - is what some describe as a death instinct, seeing as it conflicts with the "central law of all organic life"; namely, that each organism is "intrinsically isolate and single" [8].  

 

The problem, of course, is that another vital law is that we need and desire one another; that each organism only thrives via intimate contact with others.  

 

Fortunately, coition is only ever a coming-close-to-death; a meeting but not a mixing of separate blood-streams. There is no real union during sexual intercourse and, once the crisis is over, the sovereign individuality of each party remains intact. 

 

However, that's not the case in cannibalism, or what might be called a hard-vore scenario, wherein at least one party is going to be semi-digested and certainly won't be able to enjoy a cigarette afterwards as a singular being.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Daniel Silver's Kissing (2024) - in part inspired by Constantin Brâncuși's famous sculpture, The Kiss (1907-08) - features in his Uncanny Valley exhibition currently showing at the Frith Street Gallery (Golden Square, London), until 18 January 2025. The photo is by Ben Westoby, courtesy of the artist and gallery. For more details visit: frithstreetgallery.com

 

[2] This humorous remark is made by Rawdon Lilly in D. H. Lawrence's novel Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 91.

 

[3] See Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Vol. I, trans Robert Hurley, (Zone Books, 1988). Readers interested in Bataille's interesting (somewhat idiosyncratic) take on death and sensuality might also like to see his work entitled Erotism, trans. Mary Dalwood (City Light Books, 1986). It is also available as a Penguin edition entitled Eroticism (2001).

[4] Herman Hupfeld (1894-1951) was an American songwriter, whose most notable composition was 'As Time Goes By' (1931), which featured in the 1942 film Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz), performed by Dooley Wilson as Sam. The line quoted here is taken from the song. 

 

[5] I'm pretty sure that Heideggerians would protest that although many other animals exchange what appear to be kisses of affection, they are not kisses in the full sense (that kissing is something that only human beings can fully experience due to our ontologically unique status). 

[6] Another theory suggests that kissing originated during the paleolithic era, when cavemen would taste the saliva of females in order to determine whether they would make a healthy mate (or perhaps a hearty meal).

 

[7] Cataglottism - more commonly known as French kissing - involves extensive tongue activity in order to induce sexual arousal and not merely the pressing together of lips. 

      As Freud rightly says, it is strictly speaking a type of kinky deviation from normal sexual activity, even if no one acknowledges or rejects it as such. See his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1920), in which he writes: "Even a kiss can claim to be described as a perverse act, since it consists in the bringing together of two oral erotogenic zones instead of the two genitals."

      Later, Freud comments on how strange it is that the lips have such erotic value amongst lovers - including the most sophisticated ones - in spite of the fact that (technically) they are not sexual organs, but constitute the entrance to the digestive tract. 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Edgar Allan Poe', Studies in Classic American Literature, Final Version (1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 67.

        

 

Further reading: those who are interested in this topic might like to see Ursula de Leeuw's essay 'A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism: Julia Ducournau's Raw and Bataillean Horror', in Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, Volume 7, Issue 2, (2020), pp. 215-228. Click here for an online pdf. 

 

 

Free the Probe-Heads! Once More into the Uncanny Valley with Daniel Silver

Daniel Silver: Angel Dew (2024)

Statuario Altissimo marble and bronze (172 x 66 x 104 cm)  

frithstreetgallery.com

 

Beyond the face lies an altogether different inhumanity - free the probe-heads!

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things I like about Daniel Silver's Uncanny Valley exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery, is that it has given me a new appreciation for the astonishing beauty of that metamorphic rock formed from limestone or dolomite (and composed of calcite crystals) that the ancient Greeks called mármaros, with reference to its gleaming character, and that we know today as marble. 

 

Previously, I've expressed concerns with this material long-favoured by sculptors keen to work within a Classical tradition; concerns mostly of a political nature to do with marble's high-ranking status within what Barthes terms a hierarchy of substances [a].  

 

But, after seeing Silver's new works up close, it becomes impossible not to admire the grandeur of the marble sourced from an old Italian stone yard - particularly as Silver essentially leaves the rock as quarried, only lightly treating the surface or making sculptural marks upon it. 

 

Even without the bronze heads that sit atop them, one could spend many hours happily contemplating these rocks and their geo-aesthetic qualities.

 

But, talking of the metal alloy heads ...

 

 

II.

I'm pleased that Silver seems to privilege the head over the face; that he leaves the latter inscrutable and unsmiling. Because, like Deleuze and Guattari, I have problems with the face which has long held a privileged and determining place within Western art and Western metaphysics in general [b].

 

We like to think our face is individual and unique. But it isn't: it's essentially a type of social machine that overcodes not just the head, but the entire body, like a monstrous hood, ensuring that any asignifying or non-subjective forces and flows arising from the libidinal chaos of the latter are neutralized in advance. 

 

The smile and all our other familiar facial expressions are merely types of conformity with the dominant reality. If men and women still have a destiny, it is to escape the face, becoming imperceptible. 

 

And how do we do that? 

 

Not by returning to animality, nor even returning to the head prior to facialisation. We find a way, rather, to release what Deleuze and Guattari term têtes chercheuses ...

 

 

III.

 

The primitive head is beautiful but faceless: the modern face is produced "only when the head ceases to be part of the body ..." and is overcoded, as we say above, by the face as social machine in a process "worthy of Doctor Moreau: horrible and magnificent" [c].  

 

But we can't go back: neo-primitivism is not the answer. As Deleuze and Guattari note, renegade westerners will "always be failures at playing African or Indian [...] and no voyage to the South Seas, however arduous, will allow us to [...] lose our face" [188].

 

But perhaps art can help us here: not as an end in itself existing for its own sake, but "as a tool for blazing life lines, in other words, all of those real becomings that are produced only in art, and all those [...] positive deterritorializations that never reterritorialize on art, but instead sweep it away with them toward the realms of the asignifying, asubjective, and faceless" [187].

 

In other words, perhaps art can liberate probe-heads that "dismantle the strata in their wake, break through the walls of significance, pour out of the holes of subjectivity" [190] and steer inhuman forces and flows along lines of creative flight. 

 

 

IV.

 

To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that Daniel Silver is on board with this project; he's a self-confessed Freudian after all and what we're proposing here is very much anti-Oedipus. Ultimately, I fear there's something a little Allzumenschliches about his vision. 

 

But, you never know: he clearly finds heads fascinating and there's definitely the promise of something vital in his work; something that "exists between the human and non-human, intertwining rocks with bodies, minerals with flesh, embodying multiple temporalities" [d].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the post dated 1 December 2012 - Why I Love Mauro Perucchetti's Jelly Baby Family - click here. And see Roland Barthes, 'Plastic', in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (Paladin, 1973), pp. 104-106, where the phrase 'hierarchy of substances' is used.  

[b] See the post dated 13 September 2013 - The Politics of the Face - click here.

[c] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1996), p. 170. Future page references to this text will be given directly in the post. 

[d] Paula Zambrano, Curator of Programmes at the Contemporary Art Society, writing in a short piece posted on 6 December 2024: click here. 

Readers might be interested in an earlier post published on Daniel Silver's Uncanny Valley exhibition  - From Victory to Stone (17 Dec 2024): click here. 

 

This post is for Poppy Sebire (Director of the Frith Street Gallery) for kindly sharing her insights into Daniel Silver's artwork. 

From Victory to Stone: Into the Uncanny Valley with Daniel Silver

Daniel Silver: Uncanny Valley (29 November 2024 - 18 January 2025)

Frith Street Gallery (Golden Square, London) 

Photo by Ben Westoby / frithstreetgallery.com 

 

I. 

 

Firstly - and I hope this doesn't seem too pedantic - but the concept of the uncanny valley does not refer to an underworld in which one finds oneself lost, as the press release for the new exhibition of work by British sculptor Daniel Silver at the Frith Street Gallery claims [1]. 

The uncanny valley - as I'm sure many torpedophiles will know - is a psychophysiological phenomenon (rather than a mythogeographical location, such as Hades) that refers to the unease and revulsion experienced by people when challenged by certain ambiguities, inconsistencies, and/or discrepancies (in voice, movement, or appearance) of the almost but not quite human [2].  

 

 

II.

 

Daniel Silver was born in London, in 1972, and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and The Royal College of Art.  

 

He describes his sculptural work as an attempt to combine ancient and modern elements whilst, simultaneously, communicating something of the timeless (and universal) character of humanity - not a project that I approve of, obviously.

 

For such idealism invariably means a retreat from external reality and the positing of a fantasy of inner life and essential being that ultimately serves to domesticate and contain mankind within some kind of crypto-theological or, in this case, a psychoanalytic narrative (Silver is a reader of Freud, so not surprising that he should think about the family ties between his pieces).  

 

Having said that, Silver does remain committed to celebrating the substantial nature of his figures, in bronze and large, heavy pieces of raw marble excavated from an old Italian stone yard, and it's this that most excites about the ten pieces in this exhibition (certainly more than the oedipal elements that he attempts to overcode the work with). 

 

Indeed, if I were a sculptor, I would be exclusively concerned with materiality and the fact that human biology is founded upon and born of geology, not Geist - i.e., that organic life evolved from inorganic rocks and minerals in a chemical process known as abiogenesis (now there's a title and a theme for a new exhibition) [3].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Click here to go to the Frith Street Gallery website where full details of Daniel Silver's Uncanny Valley exhibition (29 Nov 2024 - 18 Jan 2025) can be found and a copy of the press release downoaded.

 

[2] This term, uncanny valley, is an English translation (by the art critic Jasia Reichardt) of a phrase coined in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori - bukimi no tani. In order to avoid association with the earlier psychoanalytic concept of das Unheimliche (which Freud developed from the work of Ernst Jentsch), the phrase is sometimes alternatively translated in English as valley of eeriness (which is unfortunately not quite as catchy, even if arguably more accurate).

      According to Mark Fisher, the eerie is a distinct mode of strangeness that troubles the notion of agency and makes us question our own existence or uniqueness, making us feel anxious or apprehensive. It has very little to do with Freud's concept and should not be equated to the latter.    

      See Mark Fisher, the Weird and the Eerie (Repeater Books, 2016). And see my two-part post on this work published 10 October 2023: click here.   

 

[3] Paula Zambrano, Curator of Programmes at the Contemporary Art Society, anticipates what I'm suggesting here in her short piece posted on 6 December 2024 on the CAS website, writing that Silver's work "exists between the human and non-human, intertwining rocks with bodies, minerals with flesh, embodying multiple temporalities". That's spot on, I think. 

      Unfortunately, however, she ends her piece mistakenly claiming that the uncanny valley is "shaped by memories and desires" and "is the realm of the underworld as a metaphor for the unconscious", thereby falling into the Freudian trap that Mark Fisher warned against (see note 2 above).

      To read Zambrano's article in full, click here.    

 

 

Musical bonus 1: The title of Silver's exhibition - 'Uncanny Valley' - comes from a track by the singer-songwriter Johnny Flynn working in collaboration with author Robert MacFarlane, that was released as a single from the studio album The Moon Also Rises (Transgressive Records, 2023): click here.

 

Musical bonus 2: The title of this post - 'From Victory to Stone' -  comes from a track by the Scottish punk rock band the Skids, released as the second single from their debut album Scared to Dance (Virgin Records, 1979). Written by Richard Jobson and Stuart Adamson, it reached number 10 in the UK Singles Chart: click here.  

 

Click here for another post written on Daniel Silver's Uncanny Valley exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery (29 Nov 2024 - 18 Jan 2025).   

 

 

Whatever Happened to the Bosworth Boys?

Four members of the Bosworth Boys in 1981:

Lee Flavell and Greg Mason stand in front of Neil Attree and myself

 

'Oh, what happened to you? / Whatever happened to me?

What became of the people we used to be?'

 Highly Likely (1973)

 

I.

 

Possibly because I've been watching Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? [1] five nights a week on That's TV  (Freeview 56) - the home of iconic television from the last fifty years - I've been constantly humming the theme song [2] and feeling even more nostalgic than usual for the 1970s and old friendships formed at school ...

 

 

II. 

 

It will probably not surprise readers of this blog to discover that I did not go to an elite school as a child. 

 

That's not to say, however, that the institutions I attended - or the teachers who worked in them - were useless, or that I felt in any way deprived of opportunity (although to be unaware of what one is lacking or missing out on is, of course, a sign of deprivation; what the Marxists call false consciousness).     

 

Just that they had limited facilities and mostly looked to supply Ford Dagenham rather than Oxbridge.  

 

 

III. 

 

I began my educational journey at Bosworth Infant School in the late 1960s, before progressing to Bosworth Junior School (conveniently located right next door) in the early '70s. 

 

Both these schools on Charlbury Crescent, Harold Hill, were opened in 1951. And both were closed (and eventually demolished) in 1974, the year I left to begin senior school, because of fears of imminent collapse due to the use of high alumina cement in their construction [3].

 

My senior school was Bedfords Park Comprehensive; formed in 1973 by the amalgamation of Harold Hill Grammar School and Broxhill Secondary Modern School (or Boothill, as it was known locally) [4]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

It was at Bedfords Park that my friends and I were identified as the Bosworth Boys ...

 

Before that, we had no notion of ourselves as constituting a distinct group or gang. We were just boys of the same age who lived on the same estate, played football together, and were in the same class at school.

But at Bedfords Park we were the Bosworth Boys: me (the funny one); Andy Greenfield (the special one); Lee Flavell (the sporty one); Neil Attree (the short one); Mark Chandler (the tall one); and Greg Mason (the good-looking one). 

 

Whilst we were all mates, we were actually three pairs of close friends, rather than a unified group of six. 

Sadly, whilst Andy and I have remained friends and occasionally meet up for a pie and pint, I almost immediately lost touch with the others after leaving school in 1981 and I do wonder from time to time - though not very often, to be honest - whatever happened to the Bosworth Boys ...?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? is a British sitcom first broadcast on BBC1 between 9 January 1973 and 9 April 1974. It was a sequel to the mid-1960s series The Likely Lads. 

      Both were devised and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais and both starred Rodney Bewes, as Bob Ferris, and James Bolam as his long-time best friend Terry Collier. However, they were very different shows; not only was Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? in colour, it was smarter, funnier, and more touching (the comedy often including elements of pathos).   

      Overall, there were 26 episodes across two series, plus a 45-minute Christmas special in December 1974. The show (rightly) won a BAFTA TV Award for Best Situation Comedy in 1974.  

 

[2] The show's theme song, 'Whatever Happened to You', was written by Mike Hugg and Ian La Frenais and performed by a session band with singer Tony Rivers supplying the lead vocals. Recorded and released as a single on BBC Records (under the name Highly Likely), it reached number 35 in the UK Singles Chart in 1973: click here. Or for those who wish to know more, here's a short interview with Mike Hugg discussing the song: click here.

      Finally, Thom Bonneville will be amused to discover that a punk version was released by the British band Snuff as a Christmas single in 1995; it can be found on the album Potatoes and Melons Wholesale Prices Straight from the Lock Up (Fat Wreck Chords, 1997): click here. 

 

[3] Strangely - and rather disconcertingly - this phenomenon of buildings, businesses, and institutions that I have been associated with closing and then having all physical traces of their existence destroyed, has continued throughout my lifetime.

  

[4] Bedfords Park School in Harold Hill, Romford, Essex was closed in 2010. It is now the site of a thousand new homes and the Noak Hill Sports Complex (see note 3 above).

Reflections on a Jellyfish Cloud

Detail from a photo by Matthew Bettleheim

cloudappreciationsociety.org

 

 

I. 

 

I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to describe virgae as my favourite meteorological phenomenon, but, like the American writer Ben Lerner, I'd certainly place these dry storms amongst the most fascinating of weather events [1] ...

 

 

II. 

 

In brief, a virga is a wispy streak of precipitation seen trailing from the underside of a cloud, but which evaporates - the technical term is sublimates - before reaching the ground as rain, due to compressional heating, thus failing to bridge the gap between heaven and earth. 

 

In other words, virgae are liminal events that occur betwixt and between; i.e., in that transitional zone that is neither here nor there; the realm from which jellyfish [2] and other entities that cannot easily be placed into a single category of existence have their being; the virtual space, in which everyday expectations are frustrated and anything seems possible. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Ben Lerner, The Hatred of Poetry (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020), pp. 99-100. 

      I have twice published posts on this book: once in October 2016 - click here - and once in July 2021 - click here.

 

[2] Jellyfish are astonishing things; composed of 95% water and lacking most of the major organs associated with animal life - such as brains, bones, hearts, and lungs - they have been drifting through the world's oceans for hundreds of millions of years and some species may effectively be immortal.

      Interestingly, virga clouds are often referred to as jellyfish clouds, based on their appearance; tentacle-like structures trailing from a more substantial body.

 

What Was I Thinking? (13 December)

Torpedo the Ark: images from posts published on 

13 December (2014-2023)

 

 

Apart from 2012, 2013, 2019, 2020, and 2022, I have published a post on this date on Torpedo the Ark in every year since its inception. And sometimes, it can be instructive to look back and see what one was thinking and how things may have changed since ...

 

 

Carry On Facesitting (13 Dec 2014) 

This perfectly innocent post is, I discover, another now placed behind a sensitive content warning by the censor-morons who police things for Blogger (which has been owned and hosted by Google since 2003): is it something I said in the text, is it the accompanying image, or is it both? 

 

I don't know. And Google will not say: they simply refer you to their community guidelines and then invite you to identify your own wrongdoing, rectify the situation, and then republish the post in the hope that, after an official review, you'll be allowed to keep it up and that it will be freely accessible to readers. 

For the record: the post is fine as is and I do not intend to make any changes to it. It does not advocate facesitting, although, even if it did, this is not a criminal activity and harms no one.

 

Rather, the post simply reported on a good-natured and somewhat comical protest outside Parliament by sex workers, freedom-loving perverts, and various interested and/or sympathetic parties against new legislation that prohibits the depiction of certain kinky (but nonetheless perfectly legal) acts between consenting adults.

 

It amazed me then and amazes me now, that the UK government might spend its time opposing activities such as facesitting - or regulating the size of dildos - on the (spurious) grounds of health and safety. As one of the organisers of the protest pointed out, the new laws are not only anti-queer, but also inherently sexist, as many of the activities discriminated against are ones that afford specifically female pleasure and empowerment. 

 

 

On the Truth of Things (13 Dec 2015) 

 

Whilst conceding that questions concerning politics and psychagogy are philosophically interesting and that one must invariably return to them at some point, for me, back in 2015 - in my object-oriented days - I was more enthralled by those entities that make up an inhuman and non-human universe and encourage the posing of questions that do not always posit Man as the central subject or final solution.

 

In other words - and I still think this now - the beauty and the truth of things is precisely that they exist mind independently and it's a real joy to occasionally write about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens (not to mention bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens), rather than just human ideas and human relations.

 

 

Reflections from a Sickbed (13 Dec 2016) 

 

It strikes me that the depressing thing about a long-term health condition, is that it lowers your expectations of what constitutes a good life; one is suddenly pleased merely to experience a pain-free day.  

On the other hand, convalescence is a vital phenomenon and so sometimes one welcomes being sick, so that one can, as Heidegger would say, return home to oneself and one's destiny - which of course is death (as all being is a being-towards death). 

 

That being the case, it's not surprising that when ill in bed back on December 13th, 2016 my thoughts should turn to the question of how best to dispose of that most accursed of all objects, one's own corpse. After considering several of the main methods, including cremation, inhumation, and immurement, I decided that a Tibetan sky burial - in which one is literally fed to the vultures - was the most attractive option.  

 

 

Kissing Hitler 1: Some Like It Hot / Kissing Hitler 2: Notes on the Führer's Love Life (13 Dec 2017) 

 

Not one, but two posts on the theme of kissing Hitler published on the same day back in 2017 - what was I thinking, indeed! Perhaps there's some truth in Godwin's law after all ...

Although, as a matter of fact, the first post - 'Some Like It Hot' - was more about Tony Curtis (and what it was like to share an on-screen smooch with Marilyn Monroe), than about Hitler as a recipient of amorous affection. 

 

The second post, however, did look somewhat deeper into Hitler's love life - something that has long been subject to critical and clinical analysis, as well as sensational speculation and obscene rumour. I arrived at the conclusion that, ultimately, it was a pity that Hitler wasn't more of a libertine and less of a Nazi; it's always better to make love rather than war, no matter how perversely one may choose to do so.      

 

On Poetry and Plagiarism (With Reference to the Case of Ailey O'Toole) (13 Dec 2018) 

 

The case of the young American poet Ailey O'Toole - which caused a bit of fuss in certain literary circles - still interests me and I still feel that Ms. O'Toole has nothing to apologise for or feel ashamed about and that she was treated poorly by moralists defending bourgeois (and untenable) notions of intellectual property.

 

For the fact remains, very few poets invent neologisms; and even fewer have original thoughts or feelings. They essentially rearrange the words of a shared language and play with the ideas and emotions of the culture to which they belong. It's an art - and it can produce amazing results - but poetry is never a personal or private matter, no matter how idiosyncratic one's writing style. 

 

As Roland Barthes would argue, the poem-as-text is neither representative of a non-linguistic reality, nor expressive of an author's unique being. It's explainable only through other words that are also drawn from a pre-given, internalised dictionary. Every poem is, in a sense, already a copy of a copy of a copy whose origin is forever lost and meaning infinitely deferred. 

 

Wherever she is today - and whatever she's doing - I send Ms. O'Toole kind regards and warm wishes.  

 

 

Notes on the Fetishist (And Other Stories) by Michel Tournier (13 Dec 2020)

 

Michel Tournier was the writer I loved reading most in the winter of 2020-21 and I wrote over twenty posts inspired by (or referencing) his work in this period. 

 

This includes the above post, in which I offered a series of notes on a collection of stories originally published in French under the title Le Coq de Bruyère (1978) and which offered a queer and often disconcerting dip into the world of the sordid supernatural (to borrow the author's own description).  

 

Those who enjoy philosophically-informed fiction that explores the porno-mythic imagination and accelerates what Jonathan Dollimore terms the perverse dynamic, will like this book - and like it a lot. Other readers, who don't enjoy such fiction, probably won't like it so much (but then, such people probably aren't spending time on this blog either). 

 

The Day of the Golden Jackal (13 Dec 2021)

 

I love felines: but I'm not so keen on canids. 

 

That said, I was happy to discover back in December 2021 that the number of golden jackals - small wolf-like animals, about three times the size of a red fox - have been rapidly expanding in number and increasing their range in recent decades. 

 

Apparently, you can now find jackals living, hunting, and howling in many parts of Central and Northeastern Europe and it has been estimated by the IUCN that whilst there may be fewer than 17,000 wolves left in Europe, there are around 117,000 jackals - and the more the merrier, I say, although, of course, all the usual suspects - such as farmers - raise their familiar objections. 

 

Sadly, therefore, these intelligent and sociable animals continue to be hunted in many countries; one can only invoke the great jackal-headed god Anubis to bite off the hands and tear out the throats of those who harm them (some think that capital punishment for deliberate cruelty to animals is a bit extreme, but I'm not one of them). 

 

 

On the Haunting Beauty of Sue Lloyd (13 Dec 2023)

 

Finally, on December 13th last year, I discussed how, as I get older, my desire is increasingly tied to nostalgia and has effectively become a type of spectrophilia; i.e., sexual attraction to ghosts, or, as in my case, the haunting images of dead actresses from the 1960s and '70s. 

 

This includes Sue Lloyd, who guest starred in many much loved English TV shows during this period, but is perhaps best remembered today for her long-running role as as Barbara Hunter (née Brady) in the British soap opera Crossroads.

 

A former dancer and model, Miss Lloyd also appeared in a number of films; performing alongside Michael Caine in The Ipcress File (1965) and Joan Collins in The Stud (1978), for example.  

 

But what I like most about Miss Lloyd is not her acting credentials, but the fact she exuded the kind of dazzling beauty and sexual sophistication of the older woman which excited me as an adolescent and continues to work its magic some 50 years later. 

 

 

A Brief Note on the Punk Is Dead / Punks Not Dead Debate

I. 

 

There is a big secret about The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle: most punks don't like it [1]. 

 

And the reason is simple: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle is an attempt by Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid to dig a grave and bury both the reputation of the Sex Pistols as well as the expectations of their fans. 

 

Of course, Wattie Buchan didn't get it: and still doesn't get it, even in 2024. 

 

Suggest that punk is anything less than alive and kicking and he'll give you the same mouthful of abuse as spewed out in 1981, grounded in his unshakeable conviction that punk's not dead.

 

 

II.

 

For those who aren't familiar with the name, Wattie Buchan is a former squaddie turned punk rocker, born in Scotland in 1957. He is best known as lead singer and frontman for the Exploited, who, in 1981, released an album by the title of Punks Not Dead [2] - one that, even lacking an apostrophe, would quickly become a slogan graffitied on walls (and leather jackets) the world over. 

 

In part a reaction to snobby music critics writing for the NME who now privileged bands categorised as post-punk, the album title also challenged the anarcho-hippie band Crass who famously included a track on their album The Feeding of the 5000 (1978) entitled 'Punk Is Dead' [3]. 

 

If this track is lyrically more sophisticated than that given us by Mr Buchan and friends - sung by Steve Ignorant, I'm guessing it was written by Penny Rimbaud - it is equally naive in its militant idealism and, ultimately, the discussion around punk - what it is and whether it is alive or dead (as well as who is and is not authentically a punk) - becomes extremely tedious and futile; especially when it's almost 50 years after the event.

 

One thinks of the phrase two bald men fighting over a comb ...

 

    

Messrs. Buchan and Ignorant in 2024 

(aged 67)

 

Notes 

 

[1] Obviously, I'm paraphrasing the opening line to Leo Bersani's famous 1987 essay 'Is the Rectum a Grave?', which can be found in Is the Rectum a Grave and Other Essays (Chicago University Press, 2009), pp. 3-30. 

      The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was released as a soundtrack album in 1979 (Virgin Records) accompanying the film of the same title that finally arrived in UK cinemas in 1980, dir. Julien Temple. Click here to play the title track. 

 

[2] The Exploited, Punks Not Dead (Secret Records, 1981). To listen to the title track: click here. For those who may have trouble understanding the lyrics: click here.

 

[3] Crass, 'Punk Is Dead', from the album Feeding of the 5000 (Crass Records, 1978): click here to listen to a remastered version of the track on YouTube (with a video by Jay Vee which conveniently includes the lyrics to the song). 

      Punk Is Dead is also the title of a collection of essays edited by Richard Cabut and Andrew Gallix (Zero Books, 2017), about which I have written in a post dated 27 June 2021: click here.

 

 

In the Village of the Dolls

Ayano Tsukimi with some of her creations

Nagoro, Japan (aka the Village of the Dolls)

 

 

The Japanese city of Nara might be the city of the deer [1], but the little village of Nagoro, located in the Iya valley on Shikoku, the smallest of the four main Japanese islands, is home to an ever-shrinking human population who have been replaced by life-sized dolls made of straw and dressed in old clothes [2] ... 

 

Positioned throughout the village, these effigies have made Nagoro a popular tourist destination, despite being in a remote mountainous region. 

 

Nagoro was never a big place; the villagers never numbered more than a few hundred at most. But now there are just a handful of human inhabitants [3] and over 350 dolls made by Ayano Tsukimi, who moved back to her birthplace from Osaka in 2002, to look after her elderly and recently widowed father.

 

When he died, Ayano made a doll in his likeness (and in memory of him), which she placed in a field near his home. Then she began to make dolls of other deceased family members and former residents, along with some that were born entirely of her imagination. 

 

Soon, other villagers copied her and, before long, there were more dolls than people; including a classroom full of child-sized dolls dressed in school uniforms; a group of dolls waiting at a bus stop for a bus that never arrives; worker-dolls pretending to dig up the road or repair phone lines; and a solitary doll fishing on a riverbank.     

 

Whilst some might find the idea of a doll village creepy in the extreme, others - particularly those with a fetish for dolls - will imagine it a kind of paradise (though I have to say, the dolls seem entirely devoid of erotic allure). 

 

Now in her 70s, one wonders if someone will eventually make a doll of Ms Tsukimi. 

 

And one also can't help thinking that as the population of Japan rapidly shrinks over the next thirty or forty years [4], they will either have to start producing significantly more children or radically rethink their attitude to immigration. 

 

Otherwise they are going to need to manufacture an awful lot more dolls ...

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post dated 10 December 2024: click here. 

 

[2] In Japanese these figures are called kakashi, which usually translates into English as scarecrow, although in this case they were made to combat loneliness and commemorate the dead, rather than deter birds.

 

[3] There are only about two dozen people left in Nagoro and there hasn't been a baby born there for over twenty years.

 

[4] Whilst Japan remains just outside the top ten of most populous countries on earth, it is estimated by the Japanese Health Ministry that the population will decrease from its current level of c. 126 million people to c. 86 million by the year 2060. There are already more than 10,000 ghost towns and deserted villages in Japan.  

 

Never Mind the Nara Deer, Here's the Harold Hill Herd

Young deer seen trotting past a parked car outside my house

(Harold Hill, Essex - 23 Nov, 2024)

 

 

I. 

 

As much as I might like to, I don't suppose I'll ever visit the Japanese city of Nara, where, for many centuries, sika deer have been regarded as sacred animals and natural treasures, protecting the city and and its inhabitants and bringing good fortune. 

Also known as spotted deer, these graceful and medium-sized herbivores are relatively tame and allowed to roam not just in Nara Park, but throughout the city [1]. Citizens, as well as tourists, feed them on specially formulated deer crackers (sika senbei) [2]. 

 

 

II.

 

Still, even without visiting Nara, I often encounter deer on a daily basis - right here on Harold Hill ... [3]

 

Thought to have been introduced to the area by the Neve family - who lived at the Manor Country House, long before the post-War housing estate was built on land they had previously owned - the Harold Hill & Noak Hill deer herd are one of five in the area that have been successfully breeding for many generations.  

 

Although some miserable cunts complain about the deer visiting their gardens and argue that they pose a health and safety risk as well as a nuisance, other residents are delighted that such majestic animals are freely roaming on greens and seen trotting through car parks, or around the local shops.  

 

There are, apparently, 25,000 people living in Harold Hill and only around 400 deer: surely the former can - and should - accommodate such a number (personally, I'd happily rewild large areas of the estate and introduce wolf packs to control the number of deer - and residents).  

 

 

Harold Hill Deer 

Photo by Maria Thanassa

 

   

Notes

 

[1] Nara's deer are given the David Attenborough treatment in a short clip on the BBC website: click here.

 

[2] These rice crackers may be delicious, but, unfortunately, they are not the healthiest option, lacking in fibre and other essential nutrients. Studies have found that many of the Nara deer - particularly those who make the park their home - are malnourished due to their preference for proceessed food rather than grass. 

 

[3] For a BBC News report dated 20 April, 2021 on the deer of Harold Hill, click here.

Cheirophilia: the Hands of Rachel Ashley

Philip Ashley inspecting the delicate white hands 

of his cousin Rachel by candlelight [a] 

 

'There are some women [...] who through no fault of their own impel disaster. 

Whatever they touch, somehow turns to tragedy.' - Nick Kendall [b]

 

 

I. 

 

Jean Baudrillard insists that the slender and lively hands of women are of greater symbolic and seductive beauty than their eyes or hidden sexual organs, and I suspect that Philip Ashley - the naive and inexperienced (possibly unreliable) narrator of Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel My Cousin Rachel (1951) - may very well agree with this assertion. 

 

For he certainly seems to be partial, shall we say, to the delicate white hands of his older, twice-widowed, half-Italian, very alluring cousin Rachel ... 

 

 

II.

 

From the first time he meets her, with, at that time, hate in his heart for the woman he believes responsible for the death of his beloved guardian, Ambrose, Philip notices her hands clasped in her lap: 

 

"I had never seen hands so small before on an adult person. They were very slender, very narrow, like the hands of someone in a portrait painted by an old master and left unfinished." [80]

 

When Rachel finishes drinking her tea and places her cup and saucer back on the tray, he is once again "aware of her hands, narrow and small and very white" [85], noticing also that she has "two rings, fine stones both of them, on her fingers" [85].

 

So, whilst I'm not saying Philip is a cheirophile or hand fetishist, it's certainly true that when talking to Rachel he finds it hard to retain eye contact and that his gaze does not wander from her face towards her breasts or feet, for example, but almost exclusively to her hands: 

 

"I shifted my gaze from her eyes down to her hands. They were clasped in front of her, small and very still. It was easier to speak somehow if I did not look directly at her, but at her hands." [99]

 

It's true also that he is fascinated by the manner in which the fingers on her right hand would touch and play with the ring on her left hand: "I watched them tighten upon it" [99] and then gradually relax their hold. 

 

No doubt Philip is hoping that Rachel will one day hold something of his own in her hands - and I don't mean his heart. At one point, whilst watching her hands, he imagines himself sitting naked in his chair before her; exposed and all his fantasies revealed unto her. 

 

His childhood friend Louise is not mistaken to say to him: "'How simple it must be for a woman of the world, like Mrs Ashley, to twist a young man like yourself around her finger'" [133].

 

III.

When not clasping her hands in front of her, or playing with her rings, or stroking the head of the dog, Rachel sometimes cups her chin in her hands or puts them to her face in a defensive gesture; at other times she gives Philip a hand to hold or kiss. And, like a true Italian, when she grows animated in conversation she gestures somewhat excessively with her hands.

 

It is sometime before Philip finally gets to hold her hands in his own, or to remove her gloves so as to passionately kiss her hands. But his joy in so doing doesn't last long. For after Rachel makes it perfectly clear that she has no intention of ever marrying him, Philip reflects how her hands lose their warmth and, when he does attempt to hold them, "the fingers struggled for release, and the rings scratched, cutting at my palm" [270].

 

During his prolonged period of illness, Philip is nursed by Rachel. But the feel of her hand upon his fevered brow and neck isn't soothing; it is, rather, hard and gripping like ice. When finally he begins to recover his senses and his strength, however, he is content to lie in bed holding her hand in silence:

 

"I ran my thumb along the pale blue veins that showed always on the back of hers, and turned the rings. I continued thus for quite a time, and did not talk." [289]

 

 

IV.

Finally, the questions that all readers must address arise: Are Rachel's the hands of a murderess? Does she stir ground laburnum seeds into his tisana? 

 

By the end of the book, Philip certainly has his suspicions and after noticing how Rachel stirs the tisana with a spoon in her left hand [c], he comes to the following fatal conclusion:

 

"I had held [her hand] many times, in love, before. Felt the small size of it, turned the rings upon the fingers, seen the blue veins upon the back, touched the small close-filed nails. Now, as it rested in my hand, I saw it, for the first time, put to another purpose. I saw it take the laburnum pods, in deft fashion, and empty out the seeds; then crush the seeds, and rub them in her palm. I remembered once I had told her that her hands were beautiful, and she had answered, with a laugh, that I was the first to tell her so." [321]

 

Finally, Rachel has the accident that kills her (one that Philip is complicit in, if not criminally responsible for). Climbing down to where she lay "amongst the timber and the stones" [335], he takes her hands in his for the last time and, despite being cold, he "went on holding her hands until she died" [335].  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Screenshot from My Cousin Rachel (dir. Roger Michell, 2017), starring Rachel Weisz as Rachel Ashley and Sam Claflin as Philip Ashley. 

 

[b] This is the warning Philip's godfather, Nick Kendall, gives him on the eve of his 25th birthday, with reference to his beloved cousin Rachel. See Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel (Virago Press, 2017), p. 246. All future page references to this edition of the novel will be given directly in the post.

 

[c] Whilst I'm sure most readers will accept that being left-handed is perfectly natural and not a sign of evil, the fact remains that left-handedness has long been associated with negative qualities and malevolent activity; the word sinister derives from the Latin word for left.

 

 

A Sprig of Holly: Notes on Gibbeting (with Reference to the Case of Tom Jenkyn)

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827): A Gibbet (detail) 

Undated watercolor and ink on paper (36 x 27.5 cm)

Yale Center for British Art

 

 

I've discussed the topic of capital punishment in a previous post and mentioned that I live close to a notorious junction known as Gallows Corner, where they used to hang men in the old days [a]. 

 

I believe it was also the preferred practice to leave the bodies of those executed hanging in chains or fastened into an iron frame. And so that the public display might be prolonged, bodies were sometimes coated in tar and left until almost completely decomposed, after which the bones would be scattered. 

 

Known as gibbeting, this common law punishment was designed as a piece of violent theatre and a final humiliation intended to provide an additional deterrence measure, just in case the threat of hanging wasn't enough to prevent the heinous crime of murder. 

 

An ancient practice, gibbeting wasn't enshrined within English law until the Murder Act of 1751; an act which also included the provision that execution would take place two days after sentencing, unless the third day was a Sunday, in which case the condemned - and those who looked forward to seeing him swing - would have to wait until Monday morning [b].

 

The act also gave the judge passing sentence the power to turn the body of the condemned over to the medical profession for dissection and anatomical study, rather than hung in chains, which, I suppose, one might find a less shameful fate (although I suspect that, if given a choice, a hardened highwayman or pirate would reply like James Bond who when asked by a barman following a heavy loss at the poker table whether he wants his martini shaken or stirred says: Do I look like I give a damn? [c]  

 

 

II.

As a sensitive child, I was upset for days if I saw even a dead hedgehog by the roadside. 

 

So I'm fairly certain that the sight of a rotting human corpse on a gibbet might have been similarly distressing. Although, having said that, the reactions of children to scenes of horror can be complex - as Daphen du Maurier illustrates at the opening of her Gothic novel My Cousin Rachel (1951) ...

Reflecting on the time when, as a seven-year-old, he is taken by his much older cousin (and guardian), Ambrose, to view some poor wretch left hanging in chains where the four roads meet, Philip Ashley recalls:

"His face and body were blackened with tar for preservation. He hung there for five weeks before they cut him down, and it was the fourth week that I saw him. 

      He swung between earth and sky upon his gibbet, or, as my cousin Ambrose told me, betwixt heaven and hell. [...] Ambrose prodded at the body with his stick. I can see it now, moving with the wind like a weather-vane on a rusty pivot, a poor scarecrow of what had been a man. The rain had rotted his breeches, if not his body, and strips of worsted drooped from his swollen limbs like pulpy paper." [d]

 

Philip continues: 

 

"It was winter, and some passing joker had placed a sprig of holly in the torn vest for celebration. Somehow, at seven years old, that seemed to me the final outrage, but I said nothing." [1] [e]

Having walked round the gibbet so as to observe the horror from all sides, with Ambrose playfully poking and prodding the corpse with his stick, as if it were a funfair attraction provided for his amusement, Philip's cousin eventually attempts to put things into a philosophical context and provide a moral lesson:

 

"'There you are, Philip,' he said, 'it's what we all come to in the end. Some upon a battlefield, some in bed, others according to their destiny. There's no escape. You can't learn the lesson too young. But this is how a felon dies. A warning to you and me to lead the sober life.'" [2] 

Stopping short of condoning femicide, but cheerfully parading his sexism, Ambrose continues:

 

"'See what a moment of passion can bring upon a fellow [...] Here is Tom Jenkyn, honest and dull, except when he drank too much. It's true his wife was a scold, but that was no excuse to kill her. If we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.'" [2] 

Philip is disturbed to discover the dead man's identity and to realise that, in fact, he knew him. He wished Ambrose had not named him:

"Up to that moment the body had been a dead thing, without identity. It would come into my dreams, lifeless and horrible, I knew that very well from the first instant I had set my eyes upon the gibbet. Now it would have connection with reality, and with the man with watery eyes who sold lobsters on the town quay." [2]

When asked by Ambrose what he thinks, Philip attempts to disguise the fact that he felt "sick at heart, and terrified" [2]. And so he answers in an amusing and remarkably precocious manner for a child: "'Tom had a brighter face when I last saw him. [...] Now he isn't fresh enough to become bait for his own lobsters.'" [2] [f]

However, despite such witty bravado, Philip's actual squeamishness causes him to vomit before leaving the scene at Four Turnings: "I felt better afterwards, though my teeth chattered and I was very cold." [3] 

 

Perhaps in anger, Philip throws a stone at the lifeless body of Tom Jenkyn; though, as he ran off in search of Ambrose who had walked ahead, he felt ashamed of his action. So much so, that, eighteen years later, he is planning to seek out poor Tom in the afterlife in order to apologise. 

 

Until then, however, he asks the ghost of Tom Jenkyn to disturb him no more: "Go back into your shadows, Tom, and leave me some measure of peace. That gibbet has long since gone [g] and you with it. I threw a stone at you in ignorance. Forgive me." [3]

 

I don't know about Tom, the lobster salesman and wife killer, but I suspect most readers will almost certainly forgive such a childish indiscretion. 

 

Though whether they will be equally forgiving of Philip's treatment of Rachel - and there is no proof that she was guilty of anything, as Philip finds no concrete evidence to show she had a hand in the death of Ambrose, or that she was slowly poisoning him - is debatable ... [h]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the post dated 20 March 2019: click here.

 

[b] The act of 1751 also stipulated that under no circumstances should the body of a murderer be afforded a decent burial. The act was formally repealed in 1834, by which date the use of gibbeting was very much out of favour with both the public and the authorities; the last two men to be gibbeted in England had been executed two years prior. The socio-cultural reason for this move away from such violent and spectacular forms of punishment in favour of more subtle - more humanitarian - techniques is famously examined by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975).

 

[c] I'm referring to a scene in Casino Royale (dir. Martin Campbell, 2006), starring Daniel Craig in his debut as James Bond. The joke, of course, is that usually Bond is very particular about how he likes his martini served (shaken, not stirred).  

 

[d] Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel (Virago Press, 2017), p. 1. Future page references to this edition will be given directly in the post.

      Interestingly, with adult hindsight, Philip has decided that Ambrose must have taken him to witness this horrific scene as a test of his character; "to see if I would  run away, or laugh, or cry" (p. 1). 

 

[e] It's arguable that the sprig of holly was not placed in mockery by some passing joker, but, rather, in a spirit of Christian charity and forgiveness; for holly is a sign of the eternal life that is promised to those who repent their sins and accept the love of Christ. 

 

[f] As a matter of fact, although lobsters are scavengers that feed on dead animals, live fish, small molluscs and other marine invertebrates, they are not known for eating human flesh.  

 

[g] Du Maurier doesn't reveal the year in which her novel unfolds, but if, as Philip informs us, the gibbet has long since gone and those accused of murder are now given a fair trial and, if subsequently convicted and sentenced to death, a decent burial, then it would certainly be set after 1834 (see note b above). 

      Roger Michell, the director and screenwriter of the 2017 cinematic adaptation of My Cousin Rachel starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin, situates his film "somewhere in the 1840s (between Austen and Dickens: between canals and railways)", as he writes in an introduction to the 2017 Virago edition of du Maurier's book (p. vii).  

[h] Du Maurier is a mistress of ambiguity who loves supplying her books with narrators whose defining characteristic is their unreliability. And so we can never know for certain who's guilty of what and who's the real victim. At one time, I would've found that irritating: Not any more, though.