On Self-Isolation (Entry from the Dementia Diary)

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash 

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After 2,440 days in exile and isolation - of which the last 520 days have effectively been spent in solitary confinement (only a demented old woman and a cat for company) - I can vouch for the fact that:  

 

"The experiences of a man who lives alone and in silence are both vaguer and more penetrating than those of people in society; his thoughts are heavier, more odd, and touched always with melancholy. Images and observations which could easily be disposed of by a glance, a smile, an exchange of opinion, will occupy him unbearably, sink deep into the silence, become full of meaning, become life, adventure, emotion. Loneliness ripens the eccentric, the daringly and estrangingly beautiful, the poetic. But loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the illicit." 

 

- Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, trans. Kenneth Burke, (The Dial, 1924).

I Wish I Was Skiing (Fragment from the Dementia Diary)

Stan Laurel (c. 1920)

 

 

When you are living in exile and singlehandedly caring 24/7 for an elderly parent with dementia, then, trust me, all days are bad days [1].

 

But some days are worse than other days and feelings of entrapment, isolation, and violent frustration are overwhelming. Today is one such day. 

 

But, for some reason, at times like this, I always remember Stan Laurel on his death bed telling the nurse that he wished he was skiing: 

 

'Oh, I didn't know you could ski, Mr Laurel', she replied. 

 

To which Stan jokes: 'I can't - but doing anything would be better than this.'

 

Amazingly, thinking of this and of Stan's smiling face - or whistling Laurel and Hardy's cuckoo theme [2] - always manages to bring solace and make happy. 

 

It's not that the latter promises a better tomorrow; rather, it reminds one that in the grand scheme of things there is no grand scheme and life is patently absurd. Ultimately, we are all descendants of Sisyphus, forever pushing a giant rock uphill, or, in the case of Stan and Ollie, a piano up a long flight of steps.      

 

Notes 

[1] For an idea of what a typical day involves, click here. 

 

[2] Laurel and Hardy's cuckoo theme - entitled "Dance of The Cuckoos", was composed by Marvin Hatley. For Stan, the tune's melody represented Oliver Hardy's character  - pompous and dramatic - whilst the harmony represented his own character; somewhat out of key and only able to register two notes: Cu-coo. 

      The original theme, recorded by two clarinets in 1930, was re-recorded with a full orchestra in 1935. It was first used on the opening credits for Blotto (dir. James Parrott, 1930). A full version of Hatley's absurdist masterpiece can be played on YouTube by clicking here. 

 

 

Amechania

Reworked image from

A Guide on Greek Mythology 

by chubbyeol_jones on wattpad.com

I. Help!

 

In an interview with Playboy in 1980, John Lennon confessed that far from being simply a commercially upbeat number, the song that served as the title track for both a 1965 feature film and album was, in fact, a genuine (if subconscious) cri de couer from someone who felt he was no longer in control of events following the Beatles' rise to global superstardom: 'I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help.'*

 

Funnily enough, after 1,634 days in Essex exile caring for my mother (who is in her 90s and in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's) - that's 1,634 days continuously, without a break, and without any professional assistance, training, or experience - I understand exactly how Lennon felt ...

When I was younger, so much younger than today

I never needed anybody's help in any way

But now these days are gone, I'm not so self-assured ...

 

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways

My independence seems to vanish in the haze ...

 

Yep, that's about it - you nailed it John!

 

And although I do appreciate the Little Greek being 'round (most of the time), I'm increasingly obliged to turn to the Ancient Greeks for extra support when I'm feeling down ...

II. Aμηχανία

 

When I say the Ancient Greeks, I mean in particular the Sophists; i.e. those teachers in the fifth and fourth centuries BC who specialised in subjects including rhetoric, music, and mathematics and instructed young men in the art of virtue and how to live to their full potential.

 

The Sophists were particularly interested in providing philosophical protection against the feeling of helplessness; i.e., a dreadful feeling of being overwhelmed by events outside of one's control: 

 

"Suddenly all the trappings of competence [and agency] we have built up against the blows of fate seem useless, and from one moment to the next people sink back into a state of almost archaic helplessness."**

Naturally, the Sophists had a name for this feeling of powerlessness - amechania - and, whilst little discussed today within philosophy, it was one of the most important concepts within ancient ethics: "It literally describes the lack of mechané, which means the cunning or the device [...] we can use to get out of a situation of existential difficulties ..." [266]  

 

German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, whom I'm quoting here, goes on to explain:

 

"Amechania describes the situation in which human beings are denied what the Greeks believed made them wholly human, that is, the ability to retaliate against attacks, being equipped with options for action or, as we would say today, being in full control of their agency. As soon as people sink into amechania, they land in a situation that just doesn't seem appropriate for human beings. Ancient Sophism thought more profoundly on this point than the Academy. According to Sophism, the meaning of all training, both spiritual and physical, is that people react against the extreme situation of amechania [...]" [266-67] 

 

Sloterdijk concludes:

"The legacy of Sophism became part of Stoical ethics that wanted to develop human beings as creatures that would never be helpless. This ethics is based on the postulate that humans should always be able to do something, even in situations in which the only possible thing they can do is to remain calm and composed." [267]

- Or break up the band ...

 

 

Notes 

* To read David Sheff's September 1980 interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (published in the January 1981 issue of Playboy), click here. The section in which he discusses writing 'Help!' is on page 3.

 

** Peter Sloterdijk, 'Questions of Fate: A Novel About Thought', a conversation with Ulrich Raulff, in Selected Exaggerations, ed. Bernhard Klein, trans. Karen Margolis, (Polity Press, 2016), p. 266. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the text. 

 

Play: The Beatles, 'Help!', single released (July 1965) from the album of the same name (Parlophone, August 1965). The song was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and recorded 13 April, 1965. Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing. A black and white promotional film, dir. Joseph McGrath, was made in November 1965 for use on a Top of the Pops end of the year special: click here. 

 

On Essex Girls and Eyelashes

Image via whisper.sh

I.

Essex is home to many things, including a huge number of beauty salons offering eyelash extensions; there's at least a dozen such venues in Romford alone. It's hardly surprising, therefore, to see numerous young women walking around with cosmetically-enhanced lashes that make me open my own eyes wide with astonishment.    

The funny thing is, after prolonged exposure to these and other essential elements of an Essex girl's look - spray tans, sculpted brows, big hair - one starts to appreciate the defiantly artificial, high maintenance and rather exotic aesthetic. 

In fact, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine (or remember) other looks and I fear that if my exile continues for much longer I'll succumb to the belief that the only way is Essex. For the look is not only exaggerated in a porno-cartoonish manner, it's compelling in its flawlessness. Some people like to sneer at Essex girls and deride the look, but this is mostly a mixture of snobbery and envy.      

II.

Having expressed my concern that I'm potentially at risk of becoming enamoured with Essex girls, the truth is I'm probably immune because I don't tie my understanding of beauty to an idea that bigger is always better when it comes to breasts, lips, or, indeed, eyelashes.

Ultimately, I prefer the idea of queering or perverting beauty rather than simply enhancing or augmenting it. Thus, for example, I prefer those women - few in number and not often encountered on the 174 - who do a bit more with their lashes than simply lengthen and thicken them.

For example: women who choose to wear mink eyelashes encrusted with diamonds; or women who wear paper eyelashes inspired by the art of Chinese paper-cutting; or women who wear eyelashes made from colourful bird feathers or flower petals; or women, finally, who would dare to wear the flylashes (below) made by British artist Jessica Harrison from the legs of dead flies.*
  

* For details and images of these plus several other designs see: '10 Strangest Eyelash Extensions', posted by Ruth on Oddee (12 Feb 2011): click here.

In My Secret Garden

Bust of Epicurus against a background of wild flowers 

One of the very few consolations of living in isolated exile here in Essex is having a small garden in which to sit, drink wine, and listen to the birds sing whilst the Little Greek tends to her plants and battles with the snails.

One suddenly feels a real sense of kinship with Epicurus, who, famously, established his school of philosophy in a beautiful garden on the outskirts of Athens, c.307 BC. This green oasis - not far from the site of Plato's Academy, but far enough and of such a contrasting character as to suggest it belonged to a very different world - symbolised the idyllic yet worldly nature of Epicureanism.

Inscribed above the garden gate was a sign that read: Welcome dear guest - please stay a while and discover for yourself that the highest good is happiness. Men - and women - came here to practise and cultivate an ethics immanent to existence that valued reason, pleasure, friendship, and flowers.  

Modern scholars are not quite sure of the exact location of the garden, but, given the fondness amongst early Christians for building churches upon ancient sites of learning and pagan temples - and considering the hostility that many medieval theologians exhibited towards all forms of material hedonism - it's very possible that the Byzantine Church of Haghios Georgios [St. George] was erected upon it.     

That's a shame. Because no matter how beautiful the church or magnificent the cathedral, the sky above and the earth below remain more beautiful and more magnificent. This is something that even the devoted Christian Will Brangwen is forced to accept in D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow:

"He listened to the thrushes in the gardens and heard a note which the cathedrals did not include: something free and careless and joyous. He crossed a field that was all yellow with dandelions, on his way to work, and the bath of yellow glowing was something at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that he was glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral.

      There was life outside the Church. There was much that the Church did not include. He thought of God, and of the whole blue rotunda of the day. That was something great and free. He thought of the ruins of the Grecian worship, and it seemed, a temple was never perfectly a temple, till it was ruined and mixed up with the winds and the sky and the herbs." [Ch. 7] 

Epicurus would, I'm sure, thoroughly endorse this passage by Lawrence, which promotes belief in the ruins and affirms the joy of living amidst the natural world having seen through the false promise of the Absolute.

And Nietzsche too would approve. For, as Keith Ansell-Pearson reminds us, there was nothing Nietzsche loved more during his mid-period than the thought of strolling in a peaceful garden:

"He wants a new vita contemplativa to be cultivated in the midst of the speed and rapidity of modern life; we need to [...] go slowly and create the time needed to work through our experiences. Even we godless anti-metaphysicians need places for contemplation and in which we can reflect on ourselves and encounter ourselves. However, we are not to do this in the typical spiritual manner of transcendent loftiness, but rather take walks in botanical gardens [...] and look at ourselves 'translated', as Nietzsche memorably puts it, 'into stones and plants' (GS 280)."

Ansell-Pearson concludes, in an absolutely crucial passage for those who would understand Epicurus-Nietzsche-Lawrence and their non-idealistic (in fact, counter-idealistic) Naturphilosophie:

"We free spirits have more in common with phenomena of the natural world than we do with the heavenly projections of a religious humanity: we can be blissfully silent like stones and we have specific conditions of growth like plants, being nourished by the elements of the earth and by the light and heat of the sun."

Notes

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy, (Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 141-42. Note that GS 280 refers, of course, to section 280 of Nietzsche's The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974).  

Epicurus, The Art of Living, ed. and trans. George K. Strodach, (Penguin Books, 2013).

D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989).  

For a sister post to this one on the notion of ataraxia, click here. 

Musical bonus: click here to play a much under-appreciated track by Madonna, from the album Erotica (Maverick Records, 1992), which supplied the title to this post. 

A Postcard from Southend-on-Sea

Southend-on-Sea, Essex, lies approximately 40 miles east of London on the north side of the Thames Estuary; a region that has produced its own virulent strain of English now spoken in many regions of this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Ingerland.  

It is home to the world's longest pleasure pier; a marvel of 19th century engineering that everyone from Princess Caroline to Arthur Daley has strolled along at some point. 

I first day-tripped to Southend with my parents in the early seventies. By then - although I didn't know it at the time - it was already in decline as a popular holiday destination. Everyone who could was jetting off to sunny Spain instead. For who wants soggy fish and chips and a mug of lukewarm tea, when you can have a big plate of paella washed down with a cheap bottle of vino? 

Still, I always loved my time in Southend as a child, beginning with the train ride from Romford via stations whose names had an exotic and almost magical allure - Shenfield-Billericay-Wickford-Rayleigh-Hockley-Rochford-Prittlewell - my excitement growing as I got ever closer to the coast and the thought of a fresh plate of cockles raked straight out of the mud at low tide, or an ice-cream from Rossi's.

There was no real beach to speak of and the grey sea was always out as far as I remember. But the place had a certain working-class Cockney charm (dare one say authenticity) and I had hours of fun in the amusement arcades and Peter Pan's Playground (which I preferred to the rather intimidating Kursaal full of young skinheads in their boots and braces and ageing Teddy Boys). 

What I enjoyed best of all, however, was sitting in the landscaped gardens of the Shrubbery eating a packed lunch, which always involved either a ham or cheese sandwich. There was a little stream and a waterfall, a fairy castle and a few left-over figures; remnants from its fifties heyday as Never Never Land.

Today, over forty years later, Southend is still on sea and many things have remained essentially the same; the pier, for example, still stretches a mile out to nowhere (although now you have to pay to walk along it).

But the deprivation of the town is as noticeable - and as shocking - as the tattooed obesity of the natives, or the large number of women hanging around the newly built lagoon wearing hijabs and burkinis and recreating scenes that more closely resemble Mogadishu than the lost world of Jane Austen and Donald McGill. 

      
 

Reflections on the Death of a Rat

SA 2016

When exiled in Essex looking after an elderly parent in need of extensive and intensive care due to a serious neuro-cognitive impairment, it can quickly become isolating: friends fall away and family members stay away. And it's virtually impossible of course to communicate with the natives, or get to know the next door neighbours. 

And so, like Dr Doolittle, one turns to the animals for companionship; whistling to the little birds, observing the slugs and snails in all their soft beauty, and attempting to befriend a very timid but rather fierce looking local cat who likes to sit under a big bush at the top of my back garden, disappearing through a hole in the fence whenever he's approached. 

I've been leaving him a small tin of Gourmet Gold chicken and liver chunks in gravy at night for several weeks now, which, judging by the emptiness of the tin each morning, he seems to enjoy. Indeed, in what I like to interpret as a gesture of gratitude the cat today left a freshly killed (and semi-eaten) rat on the lawn for me to find.       

Now I know that many people find such feline behaviour gross, or might raise a moral objection to cruelty (it's amazing how many self-professed animal lovers are in denial about the murderous and carnivorous nature of reality). But I must admit to feeling rather touched by this attempt to reciprocate kindness and share food.     

I understand that domestic cats have an effect on wildlife numbers, killing many millions of birds, rodents, and other small creatures each year. However - and this might surprise many readers - there is no scientific evidence that predation by moggies is having any serious impact on other species here in the UK.

What the research does show, however, is that rapid loss of natural habitat due to human activity is the major factor in why biodiversity is shrinking; over 60% of British species have significantly declined in recent decades and 10% face extinction. And it's we - not our pets - who are to blame ...