Believe in the Ruins: In Praise of Hayat Nazer

We make art lest we should perish from the truth ...

 

 

I.

 

I don't know if Muslims, like Christians, believe that God moves in a mysterious way, but I suspect they probably do. 

 

So one assumes the more devout citizens of Lebanon were prepared to accept this as an explanation for why, one year ago, God allowed a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate stored at the (state owned) Port of Beirut to explode, killing over two hundred people and injuring many thousands more (not to mention causing extensive property damage and leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless).    

 

The blast was so big and so loud, that it was felt across the entire region and heard in Cyprus, more than 150 miles away. American geologists recorded it as a seismic event measuring 3.3 and it is considered one of the most powerful artificial (and non-nuclear) explosions in history.  

 

Obviously, the 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate shouldn't have been kept in a warehouse without proper safety measures - and alongside fireworks - for the previous six years. But, even so, God could've stepped in and stopped the disaster, if only he weren't so damn mysterious.

 

And the Lebanese officials who repeatedly ignored warnings could also have prevented the disaster, if only they weren't so corrupt and incompetent. 

 

Fortunately, apart from feckless politicians and an enigmatic deity, Lebanon is blessed with Hayat Nazer ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Born in Tripoli, this 33-year-old former UN humanitarian worker turned full-time artist, has produced a magnificent sculpture from the twisted metal and broken glass, thereby reclaiming the ruins and redeeming the suffering caused by the Beirut blast.

  

The untitled female figure stands nine feet in height, with her right arm raised and a stopped clock at her feet, showing the time of the explosion: 6.08. It is everything - and does everything - that Ian Rank-Broadley's statue of Diana, Princess of Wales, standing in the Sunken Garden of Kensington Palace, isn't and doesn't do.  

 

For whereas Nazer's piece embodies the gritty resilience of the Lebanese people, Rank-Broadley's symbolises the sentimentality and aesthetic awfulness that the British pride themselves on (one is only relieved that the children standing with Diana aren't all holding teddy bears). 

 

Finally, it might be recalled that Nazer has used debris in her art before; previous works include the figure of a phoenix made from pieces of the tents erected by protestors during the October Revolution (2019) which were destroyed by the authorities, and a heart-shaped sculpture assembled from rocks and empty teargas canisters, collected during clashes between protesters and the security forces. 

 

She's an idealist, of course; acting in the name of Love. And that's unfortunate and problematic. But she's also talented, courageous, and beautiful, so I'm prepared to overlook her philosophical shortcomings.

 

 

hayatnazer.com

 

 

Note: for an interesting article on Hayat Nazer and her work, by Fizala Khan, in The Kashmiriyat (1 Nov 2020), click here. 

 

 

Further Thoughts on Síomón Solomon's 'The Atonement of Lesley Ann'

Artwork for The Atonement of Lesley Ann (2020) 

reworked by Stephen Alexander (2021)

 

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, 

more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. - Luke 15:7

 

I. 

 

Síomón Solomon's The Atonement of Lesley Ann (2020) - a theatrical ghost-cum-love story (based on actual events) - continues to haunt my imagination; particularly the use of the religious term atonment in its title ...

 

One wonders what Solomon has in mind by his use of this concept and why, for example, he didn't simply call his play the killing of Lesley Ann? 

 

For in what way is Lesley Ann atoned? And for what does she need to be atoned? Is Solomon suggesting that she is in some manner complicit in her own abduction and murder (that no one is innocent after all)? 

 

That would certainly be a provocative and unsettling suggestion. But then the whole idea of atonement via a sacrificial offering - be it Christ on the Cross or a child on the Moors - is deeply disturbing, is it not? 

 

Because we know who it is who is washed clean by the spilt blood and forgiven their sins - who it is taking a step on the path towards redemption and, ultimately, not just fellowship but reunification with God [1] - and it isn't the victim; it is, rather, the one who wields the knife ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In other words, it's Ian Brady and Myra Hindley who, via a terrible act of faith, are atoned by the sacrifice of poor Lesley Ann [2].    

 

Again, it's quite shocking to be reminded that the road to salvation can begin in an act of violence and even the practice of evil. But then, of course, the inventor of this whole mad system is a cruel and vengeful God who not only demands sacrifice be made unto him, but is prepared to see even his own son scourged and crucified. 

 

Ultimately, Solomon isn't attempting to exonerate Brady and Hindley, nor excuse their appalling crimes. By incorporating a transcript of the recording made of ten-year-old Downey begging for her young life into the play he reminds us of the facts of the case in all their horror. 

 

What he is doing, rather, is exploring the scandalous logic of Christian morality which offers the possibility of redemption to even the most depraved of individuals.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Atonement means unity or reconciliation between man and God; a coming back into ontotheological wholness (literally at-one-ment). We might note also that the word atonement is often the English translation given for the Hebrew term kaphar [כָּפַר], which means to cover - thus atonement might also be defined as the covering over of sin, or, indeed, the covering up of crime; a form of concealment with which God himself is complicit.     

[2] Unless they have committed what is known within theological circles as the eternal or unpardonable sin and can thus never make amends or receive forgiveness. However, that isn't something - as far as I remember - indicated in Solomon's play.  

 

 

To read the first in what is now a trilogy of posts on Síomón Solomon's The Atonement of Lesley Ann (2020) - on things that go bump in the theatrical night - click here. 

 

And to read the second post in the series, in which I offer some additional thoughts on the play, click here. 

 

 

Sinister Writings 2: On the Sexual Politics of Adam and Eve

Theodor Harmsen: Hermaphrodites (2017) 

The Book of Adam and Eve 

theodorharmsen.com

 

 

What do you call the layer of excess fat surrounding the vagina? 

Woman.  

 

If ever there was a joke written to offend feminists concerned with the sexual objectification of women - particularly their reduction to a body part - it's this one. 

 

And yet, if certain midrashic interpretations of God's creation of man in terms of what we would now call intersexuality are to be believed, then we might well ask what is woman if not merely a monstrous personification of cunt given an autonomous life of her own once separated off from the body of Adam.

This is not a question that escapes the attention of Abel Tiffauges:

"Reading the beginning of the Book of Genesis, one is pulled up short by a flagrant inconsistency that sticks out like a sore thumb in the venerable text. 'So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them ...' This sudden transition from the singular to the plural is downright unintelligible, especially as the creation of the woman out of Adam's rib does not occur till much later, in the second chapter of Genesis. But all is clear if one retains the singular throughout ... 'So God created man in his own image, that is, at once male and female ... And God said to him, be fruitful, multiply ...' etc. Later he sees that the solitude implied by hermaphroditism is undesirable, so he puts Adam to sleep and takes from him not a rib but his ... womb, i.e. his feminine sexual parts, and makes these into an independent being." [14-15]

 

That's interesting: for not only does it mean that Adam was originally created as an intersexed being, but - made as he was in God's own image - that God too is therefore both male and female (or, if you prefer, neither male nor female). 

 

Exactly how Adam was physically constituted is something that rabbis and Christian theologians who have bought into this idea have long debated; was he a true hermaphrodite or simply one half of a conjoined male-female twin assemblage (i.e., a single bi-sexed body)?   

 

Fascinating as it is to think of the Old Adam "armed with all his reproductive apparatus, [...] a constant prey to amorous transports of unimaginable perfection, in which he is both possessor and possessed, except - who knows? - during the periods when he was pregnant by himself" [15], this is not my main point of interest. Nor am I concerned here with the (potentially liberating) implication of this myth for those who identify as trans, queer, intersex, or non-binary. 

 

Rather, my concern is for the daughters of Eve and how this myth enables the kind of sexism contained in the joke with which I opened this post, by encouraging men to think of woman as not only a walking, talking sex organ, but a sex organ which originally belonged to Adam before God decided that the hermaphroditic model was not quite working and tore the sexes asunder.

 

If, technically speaking, woman has no sexual parts of her own - but is herself merely a sexual part of the original man "deposited outside himself [...] and taken up when needed" [15] - then why, for example, should a man worry about the ethical issue of female objectification, or wish to ensure female pleasure and fulfilment; particularly when he is "naturally out of step with woman's slow, vegetative ripenings" [8] ...?   

 

See: Michel Tournier, The Erl-King, trans. Barbara Bray, (Atlantic Books, 2014). All page references in the text refer to this edition. 

 

For sinister writings on angelic oppression, click here. 

 

For sinister writings on cadent euphoria, click here. 

Three Great Liars 2: Mark Twain

Portrait photo of Mark Twain 

by José Maria Mora (1882)

Before Wilde, there was Twain ...

Or, at any rate, before Wilde's essay 'The Decay of Lying' (1891), there was Twain's short paper 'On the Decay of the Art of Lying' (1882), in which he makes a humorous appeal for the men and women of America's Gilded Age to lie in a more considered (and considerate) manner, insisting that the ability to construct and deploy falsehoods is one of mankind's greatest gifts and highest virtues. 

For Twain, nothing is more distressing for a man of right feeling than to witness the noble (and necessary) art of lying so impoverished (and prostituted) as it is within the modern world and he suggests that it should be taught in schools; for no art or virtue can bloom without careful and diligent cultivation.

Wise and intelligent lying is what the world needs in the face of ignorant and uneducated falsehood (and what we today term fake news). It might even be preferable, suggests Twain, not to lie at all, than to lie injudiciously or without imagination.   

Not that he advocates subscribing slavishly to the accepted truth (doxa) like a naive child, an unsophisticated fool, or a religious fanatic. Those who insist on truth at all times and in all circumstances are at best asocial and at worst inhuman. It is impossible to live with (or alongside) such habitual truth-tellers; but, fortunately, such people are extremely rare.

Indeed, according to Twain, such individuals do not, in fact, exist and have never existed:

"Of course there are people who think they never lie, but it is not so [...] Everybody lies - every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deception - and purposely."

I don't know if that's true; but it's amusing to consider the possibility that it might be true - and the philosophical implications of its being true. That society - and, indeed, our very humanity - might be founded not upon Truth, but falsehood makes Satanists of us all (for Satan is not only the Prince of Darkness, but the Father of Lies).

And that's no bad thing; for whilst God may have truth on his side, he remains a jealous, vindictive, and bloodthirsty deity who demands sacrifice and enjoys punishing mankind; the Devil, on the other hand, is a gentleman with impeccable manners who recognises that lying more often than not is a form of courtesy.   

Of course, Twain wasn't a Satanist. In fact, he remained an irreverent Christian throughout his life; often highly critical, but, ultimately, still a believer in Almighty God.

Little surprise, therefore, that he concludes his essay striking a conventional moral tone and condemning black lies. We should always lie, he says, with a good object; "healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously", i.e., lie gracefully in order to benefit others, not merely to gain a personal advantage.  

To which a Nietzschean (or Sadist) might ask: Where's the fun in that?


See: Mark Twain, 'On the Decay of the Art of Lying', in Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays, 1852-1890, ed. Louis J. Budd (Library of America, 1992). 

Note: The above essay was originally written for presentation in 1880 and first published in The Stolen White Elephant Etc. (1882). It can be read as an ebook on Project Gutenberg: click here. 

To read the first in this series on great liars - on Nietzsche - click here. 

To read the third entry, on Oscar Wilde, click here.

Ding Dong! In Memory of Laura Bell (Queen of London Whoredom)

Detail from a portrait of Laura Thistlethwayte (née Bell) 
by Richard Buckner (1871)

"She had a small doll-like face, piquant and provocative, big blue eyes, a strawberry-and-cream complexion, 

cascades of glorious golden hair, the most shapely pair of shoulders in London, and a soft, persuasive voice. 

She was, in short, well-armed for her attack upon male susceptibility."

Irish-born beauty Laura Bell is a famous example not only of a good girl gone bad, but a bad girl discovering religion and becoming an ardent preacher against vice. I'm not sure which is the most interesting of these moral phenomena; the fall into sin, or the adoption of Victorian values and bourgeois conventions. Let's investigate ...    

Bell was born in Dublin, in 1829, but grew up in the village of Glenavy, Co. Antrim. As a bored teenager with something of a wild streak, she decided to leave home and find work as a shop girl in Belfast, supplementing her meagre earnings by also working as a prostitute. Finding that she derived more pleasure - and certainly made more money - from whoring rather than retail, Bell decided to move to Dublin and establish herself as a courtesan. Among her illicit lovers was the famous surgeon and author Sir William Wilde (father of Oscar).

Having successfully learnt all the tricks of her trade - and still only twenty years of age - Bell decided to head to London and try her luck amongst some of the richest and most powerful noblemen in Europe. Eventually, she would be known as The Queen of London Whoredom and ride daily around Hyde Park in a gilt carriage drawn by two white horses, with a young pageboy wearing a black and yellow striped waistcoat sitting proudly behind her. She wanted to cut a figure as a woman of sex, style, and substance and this she certainly succeeded in.      

It was whilst in the Royal Park that she met the Nepalese Prime Minister, Jung Bahadur Rana, who was immediately captivated by her and installed her in a beautiful house in Belgravia, showering Bell with outrageously expensive gifts during the three-month period they spent together.* Before he returned to Nepal, he presented Bell with a diamond ring and the promise that he would always be there for her should she ever need his assistance.

When Bell wrote to him in 1857, asking that he send forces to help the British crush the Indian Mutiny, it was probably not quite what he'd had in mind. Still, a promise is a promise - and Bell enclosed the diamond ring with her letter to remind him of it - so he duly sent troops. One wonders what other woman - apart from Queen Victoria - could've stepped into world political history in such a decisive manner at this time ...? 

I'm not sure when (or why) Bell chose to quit her lucrative and adventurous life as a courtesan; perhaps after she married Capt. Augustus Frederick Thistlethwayte in 1852 and moved into a new home in Grosvenor Square. Or perhaps after she found old time religion in 1856 and started referring to herself as God's Ambassadress.

From this point on she mostly hosted evangelical tea parties for high society (rather than orgies) and wanted to save London's prositutes (rather than reign over them)**; eventually forming a very close and long-lasting friendship with William Gladstone, who also had a thing for rescuing fallen women.

Because there is no God - or, if you prefer, because God is a cunt with a cruel sense of humour - just when Bell was at her most righteous and telling everyone who would listen about His Love, her husband - who liked to sermon the servants by firing his pistol into the ceiling - accidently shot and killed himself, leaving her a heartbroken and lonely widow for her final years.***

Bell died, seven years after Thistlethwayte's fatal accident, at her home in West Hampstead, in 1894. Many of those who knew her at the end of her life had no idea of how notorious a figure she'd been in her prime and most obituaries made only veiled references to her life as a prostitute, stressing instead her charity work and kindness to animals. 

Notes

* To give you some idea of just how outrageously expensive these gifts were - including the house in fashionable Belgravia - it's believed that Rana spent in the region of £250,000 on Bell during their brief affair; that's £21 million in today's money, making her one of the most expensive rides in history. 

** Having said this, there's evidence to suggest that Bell may have continued to have the odd affair; including one, for example, with the artist Edwin Landseer (best known for sculpting the lions in Trafalgar Square). 

*** Actually, this isn't quite the case; Bell's marriage was not a happy one and she and her husband had largely lived separate lives; she hosting lavish parties in London, while he spent his time hunting in Scotland. One of the main bones of contention between them was the fact that Bell liked to spend way beyond her means and had no concept of living sensibly on an allowance. By 1870, she owed her creditiors £25,000, much to Thistlethwayte's chagrin.

Those interested in the lives of famous 19thC prostitutes might like to read a sister post to this one on Cora Pearl: click here. See also 'Love Blinds: The Shocking Case of Jeanne Brécourt': click here.

    

Notes on Vegetal Philosophy and Literature

I.  All Flesh is Grass [Isaiah 40:6]

"Plants", says Randy Laist, "play a vital role in the experience of being human" [9].

It's not just the fact we like to keep a cactus on the kitchen windowsill and utilise plants in an ornamental and symbolic manner; we also consume them, fashion clothes out of them, inhabit structures built with plant materials, and - let's not forget - exploit our green-leaved, photosynthesising friends to manufacture drugs, medicines, and cosmetics.    

Archaeologists might like to speak about the stone age, iron age, and bronze age, but we have always essentially lived in an age (and a world) dominated by plants:  

"Not only has agriculture always been the primary source of bioenergy that has allowed human populations to balloon so prolifically, but the weaving of plants into baskets, the carving of trees into floating vessels, and, possibly, the use of plant-based psychotropic substances to provoke dream-visions have all played a crucial role in the emergence of modern globalized human beings." [9]

Our intimate relationship with plants has also shaped our evolution; the hand - so beloved by Heidegger and which he thinks of as unique to human beings - wouldn't be what it is were it not for the branches and twigs it evolved to grasp and manipulate as tools. It's worth remembering that, according to Genesis, God created plants three days before he bothered to create man and that ultimately all flesh is grass.   


II. On the Defoliation of the Cultural Imagination

Having said all this, ultimately Laist's critical interest is in the long and intimate relationship between plants and literature; a relationship that has been in serious decline for some years now, despite our over-fondness for the prefix eco. Laist notes:

"When one scans contemporary culture for evidence of plant-based narratives [...] the most dramatic meta-phenomenon is the defoliation of the cultural imagination." [My italics, indicating not only that I love this phrase, but that I fully intend to use it henceforth.] [10]

Even as recently as a hundred years ago, writers shared a botanical vocabulary with readers who had a deep familiarity with the appearance and properties of a wide variety of trees and plants. Arguably, that's simply no longer the case. For not only do most readers prefer tarmac and technology to woodland and wilderness, but most authors no longer know the names of the remaining flowers growing by the roadside - and nor does this particularly bother them.     

Laist suggests that the situation is a little different with poetry; that there are still a number of contemporary poets fighting a rearguard action "against encroaching mental defoliation" [11], but I struggle to think of a poet who knows the world of flora in the astonishing and intimate manner that D. H. Lawrence experienced it.

And would any poet today define poetry as Blanchot once defined it: the attempt to protect and preserve in speech a voice in which the silent suffering and joy of flowers might come to expression? I doubt it.   


III. On the Uncanny Ontological Potency of Plants

In his introduction to Plants and Literature (2013), Laist also makes the following interesting point:

"The scarcity of plant-life in the cultural canon of the contemporary West is particularly striking when contrasted against the ubiquity of stories that feature animals [...] Despite the fact that urbanization has taken human beings just as far away from animals as it has taken them from plants, the fewer animals there are in the wild, the more seem to crop up on television [...] and on YouTube." [11]

Not only that, but within academia animal studies has recently developed alongside women's studies, queer studies, and black studies. But as Laist rightly argues:

"Animal studies is essentially an extension of human studies; it is relatively easy to imagine the subjectivity of animals. Animals may be shaped differently than we or pursue a different mode of life, but the basic coordinates of human existence and animal existence are identical in many respects." [11]

Reminding us of Aristotle's extremely influential (but limited) characterisation of plants, Laist continues:

"When it comes to plants [...] we encounter a much more significant barrier to our imagination. Plants seem to inhabit a time-sense, a life-cycle, a desire-structure, and a morphology that is so utterly alien that it is easy and even tempting to deny their status as animate organisms." [12]

You might think that Aristotle's positioning of plants at the borderline between inanimate objects and living beings lends them uncanny ontological potency, but it seems that for many writers - primarly concerned as they are with the human, all too human and the personal, all too personal - they're of almost zero interest. 

If I may mention the name of D. H. Lawrence once more, one of the reasons for his greatness - and one of the reasons for my continued fascination with his work - is that he never forgets that human life unfolds within a non-human and inhuman context that is completely depersonalised; a context in which dark pansies and lilies of corruption blossom.

Lawrence understands that the power of plants is not merely symbolic, that they have ontological import all of their own and provide a way of life that is alien, beautiful and soulless; that they challenge our basic assumptions about what it is to be a living thing and our anthropocentric conceit.

The brute force and environmental destructiveness of man may crush many plants or push them into extinction, but, writes Lawrence, the plants will rise again and all our mighty monuments and great cities will not last a moment compared with the daisy.  

See: Randy Laist (ed.), Introduction to Plants and Literature: Essays in Critical Plant Studies, (Rodopi, 2013), pp. 9-17.

A Brief Note on How Miracles Unfold as a Form of Cosmic Origami

A miracle is an object or event that not only obliges us to reflect with wonder upon phenomena that seemingly transgress or suspend natural and scientific laws, but has a radically transformative effect upon our lives.

Although often attributed to a deity or demon, I prefer to think of miracles without agency and as part of a materialist metaphysics vaguely based upon Deleuze's work on the potential of things to differ from themselves.

In other words, I conceive of miracles as:

(i) A fateful inward folding of the outside ...

Like Deleuze, I regard the entire universe as an origamic process of folding and unfolding that creates an interior that is a doubling of the outside, rather than something that develops autonomously and separately from that which is external to it.

And this is true also, one might note, of the way in which the self is formed; the concept of the fold allowing Deleuze to think not only about the production of human subjectivity in a non-essential manner, but also about inhuman possibilities of becoming. 

(ii) A momentary actualisation of virtual chaos that shatters the parameters of the everyday, thereby allowing all things - good and evil - to become possible ...

To think of miracles only in terms of what benefits mankind or as the work of a heavenly Father, is a laughable mix of anthropocentric conceit and moral stupidity. Ultimately, the great advantage of thinking in terms of the miraculous and loving fate is that one no longer has to believe in such a loving God or subscribe to a model of sentimental humanism.


Note: readers interested in this area of Deleuze's work might like to see The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley, (University of Minnesota Press, 1992) and 'Foldings, or the Inside of Thought (Subjectivation)', the final section of Foucault, trans. and ed. by Seán Hand, (The Athlone Press, 1988).

Strange Flesh: Notes On Sodomy

Sleeve artwork for Mortal Way of Life (1988) 

by German thrash metal band Sodom

I. The Sin of Sodom is Polysemic

Sodomy is one of those lovely old-fashioned words that is commonly misunderstood. Many people, for example, think it refers exclusively to anal sex - particularly between two men - and perhaps recall that Oscar Wilde was accused (not unfairly) of posing as a sodomite by Queensberry.

Historically, however, sodomy possessed a much broader meaning and referred to all non-procreative sexual activity, including, for example, oral sex and bestiality. It was often also tied to the practice of pagan witchcraft. Sodomy was thus not simply a form of perversity, but heresy; a rejection of God and a libidinal defiance of his moral authority.

It's hardly surprising, therefore, to discover that sodomy has a biblical origin ...


II. What Begins with the Threat of Angel Rape Ends with Fire and Brimstone 

According to the account in Genesis [18-19], God decided to exact divine retribution upon Sodom after two of his angels entered the city (in human form) and were immediately threatened with gang rape by the inhospitable locals.

Although Lot, who was charged with looking after the divine messengers, offered the townsfolk his virgin daughters as sexual substitutes, the men of Sodom were adamant they wanted to experience strange flesh whilst they had the very rare opportunity to do so.

For the Good Lord, who had long identified Sodom (along with the twin city of Gomorrah) as a hotbed of impenitent sin and sexual depravity, this was the final straw and He unleashed his destructive wrath upon it and its inhabitants in the form of fire and brimstone.

Only Lot and his family were given the opportunity to get out of town, although, unfortunately, their escape didn't quite go to plan after Lot's wife made the fatal mistake of looking back, as if secretly longing to stay and continue her old life in Sodom. For this, as everybody knows, she was turned into a pillar of salt.

(Interestingly - and as perhaps fewer people know - Lot and his daughters found solace in this time of apocalyptic upheaval and great personal loss by entering into an incestous relationship and having drunken sex in a cave ... but that's another story, for another post: click here.)
 

III. On the Necessity of a Little Sodomy

Never one to shy away from these matters, D. H. Lawrence insists that not only can bawdiness be healthy, but even sodomy can be sane and wholesome, provided there is a proper give and take between parties: "In fact, it may be that a little sodomy is necessary to human life."

It's only the fanatic insistence on purity, writes Lawrence, that always leads to madness, denying as it does the simple truth that all men and women are subject to desire and possess "blood and bowels and lively genitals".

The only problem is that Lawrence wishes to restrict acts of sodomy to the right time. But, by definition, such acts occur at the the wrong time, in the wrong place, with the wrong partners and involve a misuse of organs; this is what makes them such unnatural acts.

Nevertheless, it's important to be reminded that however problematic many aspects of his work are for a contemporary readership, Lawrence was not someone who wished to restrict human freedom and experience. Just so long as we don't get our sex on the brain and seek to form an ideal identity upon it, he was happy to acknowledge the necessity of vice as belonging to a general economy of the whole.   

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'What's sane and what isn't', The Poems, Vol. III, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1614-1615.

Blue is the Colour ... Notes on Barnett Newman's Onement VI

Barnett Newman: Onement VI (1953)

Sixty years after it was painted, Barnett Newman's Onement VI sold at Sotheby's in New York for $43.8m, which, as the art critic Jonathan Jones says, is a tremendous bargain for what is an essentially priceless work of art; one that offers us a glimpse not only of the sublime understood from the perspective of traditional aesthetics, but of the blissful blue unity that belongs to what D. H. Lawrence calls the Greater Day. 

In other words, Onement VI is more than an artwork; it's a portal onto a prelapsarian world lying on the other side of angel-guarded gates; an act of defiance against God's judgement and an assertion of man's right to return to Eden home. The hope of regaining paradise - what else, asks Newman, could possibly explain the seemingly insane desire to be a painter or poet ...?

A vertical light-blue line - what Newman liked to term a zip and which is an iconic and revolutionary aspect of his mature work - divides the flat expanse of perfect deep blueness in a manner suggestive of the biblical creation myth when the waters of heaven were separated from those of the earth. Again, it's as if Newman - one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and a leading exponent of colour field painting - is directly challenging God in his capacity as the maker of worlds: 'Anything you can do ...'

But the painting also challenges the viewer who stands before it, obliging them to be aware of their own presence and locality - as well as their own contingency and isolation - before the Void, whilst, at the same time, conscious also of their belonging to and connectedness with the universe and all things in it. In other words, Onement VI - like all great artworks - helps put us back into touch and atone for the Fall (understood as a fall not into sin, so much as into self-consciousness and separateness). 

Whilst at 102" x 120" it's not monumental in size, it's a work - one is tempted to call it an event - on an inhuman scale. And Newman - shamefully underappreciated as a painter for much of his life (the media preferring to promote the work of more volatile characters such as Jackson Pollock) - is a true giant of American art who almost at times makes his far more successful friend Mark Rothko seem a little lame in comparison.       

On the Dog's Bollocks and the Loss of a Penile Bone in Human Males

One of the things my friend Catherine loves most about her new puppy dog is the soft, subterranean nature of his penis, which she characterizes rather nicely as rhizomatic.

"It runs parallel to and just under the surface of the skin (you can see the bulge), with just the very end of it projecting out into the world, like a lipstick."

She adds: "The balls are also mainly under the surface, just at the far end of the semi-submerged penis", though I think she may have mistaken the spherical knot of erectile tissue known as the bulbis glandis for the dog's testicles (not that I'm an expert in canine genitalia).

Catherine concludes with a confession of aesthetico-sexual preference: "I think it so much nicer to have a secret, shy little organ hidden away, rather than a perpendicular penis."

Were I female, I suspect I might very well feel likewise; there is something displeasing about a large dangling dick. But, being male, what really fascinates me about a dog's penis is the fact that it contains a bone (the baculum); a feature common to many placental mammals which provides sufficient stiffness to enable non-erect penetration and allow for an extended period of coition.

Unfortunately, the so-called os penis is absent in man, although present in other primates including chimpanzees and gorillas. Thanks to a malevolent and mocking God removing such from Adam in order to make Eve, human males have never known the joy and reassurance of a true boner and have had to rely on haemodynamics and the vagaries of desire for hardness.


Note; I am grateful to Catherine Brown for suggesting the subject of this post and for allowing me to quote from her correspondence in which we discussed it. Readers interested in Catherine's further views on man and dog should click here. 

What Big Extraterrestrial Eyes You Have

Matilda the Cat is something of an internet sensation, with thousands of followers on social media. But, despite her appearance, she's actually a perfectly normal moggie. The poor thing does suffer, however, from a rare condition in which the lenses of her eyes have spontaneously detached, causing blindness, and giving her the look of an alien being. 

Those who are interested in reading more about her case should visit: aliencatmatilda.com - her official website. Because, fascinating as her story is, what I really wish to discuss here is the origin of the idea that aliens - particularly those known as Greys - have large, black, glassy-looking eyes. 

Obviously it doesn't come from the actual world, because there are no entities from out of space visiting planet Earth on a regular basis and abducting large numbers of human beings in order to probe them and fuck with their minds. Many people - mostly Americans - might believe contrary to this and insist that there's a global conspiracy covering up the facts, but, alas, it is of course complete nonsense; a mad fantasy on behalf of the needy, the lonely, and the fearful. A bit like the belief in a loving - but vengeful - God. 

For God, like ET, is a convenient fiction. Not surprisingly therefore, we find that our idea of what an alien looks like first comes from literature: H. G. Wells to be precise, who, as long ago as 1893 was already imagining futuristic grey-skinned beings with big heads and large eyes. Then, in 1901, he depicted the natives of the moon (Selenites) in very similar terms. 

He was followed in this belief that alien races would conform closely to a certain body type, by the Swedish writer Gustav Sandgren who, in 1933, under the pen name of Gabriel Linde, published a sci-fi novel translated into English as The Unknown Danger. Here, once again, a race of aliens were described as chinless wonders possessing big bald heads, large gleaming eyes, and small mouths. 

Thirty years later and press reports of the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction case described those doing the abducting in this identikit manner. All stereotypes are grey; but by now all Greys were stereotypical.

Spielberg unimaginatively gave us more of the same in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). And then, in the 1990s, Mulder and Scully chased very familiar looking aliens for nine seasons, The X-Files firmly establishing the link in the paranoid imagination between Greys and the military-industrial complex of the New World Order.

As Oscar Wilde once said, Life imitates art far more than art imitates life. The disappointing thing is how few people realise this (and how tragic the consequences can be).

Artificial Intelligence and the Question of Racism (The Case of Jacky Alcine)

Jacky Alcine and Friend - laughing and posing for selfies 

in a manner that is all too human 

One of the more disconcerting stories doing the digital rounds at the moment concerns Google's amazing new picture service which lets you store (and edit) unlimited images online. So far, so good. 

But Google Photos also automatically stores the images under a wide but predetermined variety of category headings using the latest advances in Artificial Intelligence to identify objects. And this is where the problems begin; including the problem of racism as an inbuilt feature of technology.  

Thus, embarrassingly for Google, the case of Jacky Alcine, an African American, and his female friend, also black, who were both labelled as gorillas! 

Now, whilst there's nothing essentially wrong or shameful with looking like an ape - we are apes! - of course this issue needs to be understood within the cultural context and long history of racism. This is what makes this case of mistaken identification in the words of a Google executive, "100% not okay". 

To their credit, Google acted swiftly to rectify the situation, apologised to Mr. Alcine and his friend, and issued a statement expressing their genuine sorrow at the upset caused. But still the question tweeted by Mr. Alcine, himself a computer programmer, not of how this happened, but why, remains discreetly passed over in silence. 

For whilst we can all understand glitches in the technology involved and accept that more work needs to be done, the key question concerns the kind of image data that was collected and used by Google in the first place. It's here that an unconscious cross-race effect enters in. For when engineers attempt to teach a machine what a human being looks like by showing it the happy white faces that belong to the majority of their fellow employees in Silicon Valley, then unintended (but nonetheless real and just as offensive) racist consequences follow.

Somewhat depressingly, though unsurprisingly perhaps, it seems that just as the White Man is modelled in the image of God, so is Sonny made in the image of his pale-faced creator and comes with bias built in as standard ...                 

The Rainbow

 Joseph Anton Koch:  

Landschaft mit dem Dankopfer Noahs (1803)

 

Yesterday, a lovely rainbow across the skies of West London: even Hounslow was briefly redeemed by this trick of the light and band of faint iridescence colouring the heavens. But any joy is short-lived and, ultimately, there is always something threatening rather than hopeful in this mythological and meteorological phenomenon and one starts to feel oppressed. 

For despite symbolizing gay pride and the hope of social and political equality in the secular imagination, the appearance of a rainbow invariably takes us back to Genesis 9 and God's post-diluvian pledge to Noah and sons:

I now establish my covenant with you and your descendants and with every living creature: never again will all life be cut off by the waters; never again will be there a flood to destroy the earth. I have set my rainbow in the clouds and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and all life on earth. 

This is all very nice, though it might be thought too little, too late and hardly compensating for the global catastrophe caused by the very same loving Father who sent the rains for forty days and nights in the first place, ensuring that every living thing perished and was wiped from the face of the earth. It also provides significant wiggle-room; for in promising not to send another global flood, God carefully avoids promising not to exterminate life via some other means in the future. In effect, he is saying that whilst there'll be no more drownings or water torture, he doesn't promise not to one day burn the earth to a cinder.

The rainbow, however, doesn't exclusively remind us of the Old Testament deity playing his games of abuse. We also think of Lawrence's great novel of 1915 and particularly the closing passage in which Ursula sees the rainbow as the promise of a new day and a new evolution - though one which again noticeably follows an act of violent destruction:

"And the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face of the world's corruption were living still, that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration, that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle, corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven." 

- D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 458-59.

Why are those prone to genocidal fantasies so seduced by rainbows? Is such sentimentality inherent within the psychopathology of those who thrill to the thought of apocalypse and dream of utopia at any cost? 

Beware of the grand idealists who say creation of the new can only follow the total destruction of the old. And beware of those who place, chase, or even sing rainbows ...

Why Being Offended Doesn't Justify Bear Attacks on Children

Despite what Larry David argues with the neighbourhood cops in a classic episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (S2/E3), it's difficult to fully accept that being called a bald asshole by some local teenage girls constitutes a hate crime. It's impertinent, yes - and one can see that it might be hurtful to more sensitive members of the bald community - but it hardly warrants police action or being accorded the same degree of seriousness as the use of racial slurs for example, or homophobic abuse. 

Still, Larry's demand that a form of official reprimand be forthcoming - if only a stern word with the parents - is as nothing compared to what happens when the prophet and miracle-worker Elisha is also mocked for being a bald asshole in the second Book of Kings, 2:23-24. 

Making his way to the town of Bethel, about ten miles from Jerusalem, Elisha is accosted by a large group of youths who make fun of his baldness and challenge him to ascend unto heaven in a whirlwind like his master Elijah: Rise up baldy! they jeer. In response, Elisha calls down swift and savage retribution upon them: God bringing forth two she-bears from the woods who maul over forty of the youths.

It sounds insane and, of course, like most of the Bible, it is insane - not to mention morally indefensible; a divine act of psychotic overreaction and disproportionate cruelty at the behest of a delusional fraudster who is today venerated as a saint!

When will religious people learn that whilst they have the right to be offended, they don't have the right not to be offended; nor to extract violent and bloody revenge upon those who are deemed to have caused offence - be this in the form of suicide bombings or the unleashing of wild animals.

       

The Omphalos Hypothesis

The Omphalos hypothesis - named after the title of a mid-19th century work written by Philip Henry Gosse which proposed, in keeping with a biblical time scale of events, that God created the earth at some point within the last 10,000 years - is one that some creationists in our own time still bizarrely cling to.

Indeed, not only have they accepted Gosse's argument that natural indicators of a significantly more ancient world history, such as fossils, were faked by God, but they have also extended the argument to cover cosmic phenomenon - such as light originating from far-off stars and galaxies - that suggest the universe to be many millions of years old.

Despite the desperately insane aspect to Gosse's notion - which, as Stephen Jay Gould points out, is a classic example of an utterly untestable theory - I have to say I like the idea that the world is fundamentally false and based on appearance; that God, the father of all Truth, is also a great deceiver.

 

So too do I like Bertrand Russell's sceptical attempt to push the Omphalos hypothesis to its logical extreme, by proposing a five-minute hypothesis which argues that the universe could, in fact, have  just come into existence, with all human memory, all signs of history and all ancestral evidence included.

Oh those young earthers! In attempting to untie the geological knot, they have entangled themselves in all kinds of foolishness. It's cruel to mock them, but almost impossible not to: Forgive them Father, for they know not what they say ...

Why Atheism is a Non-Precarious Way of Living

 Ahn Jun: Self-Portrait (2011)

ahnjun.com

There's an irony in the fact that those who seek moral and existential certainty often pray to God to provide such; just as there's an irony in the fact that the Italian atheist philosopher Federico Campagna posits a concept of precariousness (or what he terms precarity) as part of his radical ethics and politics; or rather as a postmodern temporal condition which makes such an ethics and a politics both possible and necessary. 

In the case of believers seeking the assurance of truth - i.e. some form of solid foundation upon which to build and thus to find shelter and safety - the irony is that they make this entirely dependent upon God's will and God's grace; something to be obtained by entreaty. In other words, it's contingent upon the divine favour of an often unpredictable and spiteful deity who provides no guarantee whatsoever that mortal prayers will be answered.

The religious quest for certainty thus paradoxically places the faithful in an entirely precarious position. And so, despite what Nietzsche thought, living dangerously seems to involve living with and not without God.

The irony of an atheist philosopher subscribing to a concept of precariousness is thus also exposed. For not only is it essentially a religious notion, but it robs atheism of its one great advantage; namely, that it doesn't allow for doubt or uncertainty. As an atheist, you can know for sure that your prayers will never be answered and that there's no mercy, no justice, and no salvation.

(And you can know for sure what happens if you skip too close to the edge and fall from a tall building ...)   

Note: those interested in Federico Campagna's thinking might like to read The Last Night: Anti-Work, Atheism, Adventure, (Zero Books, 2013).

On the Spectral Rape of the Virgin Mary

Astonishingly, some Christians continue to believe that if they lead modest, conventional lives unblemished by additional sin, then they'll avoid harm and receive God's blessing; or, at the very least, he'll leave them unmolested until they stand before him on the Day of Judgement. 

One might have thought that the shocking story of the girl-child Mary would have taught them differently. For here was a thirteen year old girl who, although born without sin due to her immaculate conception, was nevertheless leading a regular life of moral and social conformity, happily betrothed to a man, Joseph, according to the traditions of her people, and nervously awaiting her wedding night when they would be united as man and wife.

But, having already been selected by God as a broodmare (and doubtlessly groomed by him and his angelic servants throughout her childhood), Mary was never going to be allowed to live a happy, healthy, orthodox life as a Jewish wife and mother. Instead, she would be subject to spectral rape and divine impregnation and obliged to accept her role within a perversely insane religious melodrama:

"This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: his mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
      But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ...'
      When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus."

 - Matthew 1: 18-24.

What Matthew's account wishes to reassure its readers is that Joseph is placated and, effectively, made complicit in the rape of his young wife and the exploitation of her fertility. It says nothing of how Mary felt about events. For an account of this, we have to turn to Luke. He tells us how God also sent the angel Gabriel to visit the virgin Mary and that he greeted her as the special plaything of the Lord:

"Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus ...'
      'How will this be,' Mary asked the angel, 'since I am a virgin?'
     The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.'"

- Luke 1: 29-38

     
Recognizing that she has no choice in the matter, Mary gives what might be regarded as consent: 'I am the Lord's servant. Let it be as you have said.' Only then, having got her agreement to be fucked, does Gabriel depart. But her consent is clearly rendered null and void given her age and the situation of extreme duress or coercion under which it was given.

It surely doesn't take much to imagine how, despite her resignation, Mary remains distressed; she is clearly agreeing to act in a manner that she would not normally act were she genuinely free to choose. If it's difficult to say no to sexual predators in positions of power and authority, it's virtually impossible to say no to a god: ask Leda. But yes doesn't always mean yes and all the pure white lilies in the world don't make it so.             

The Gospel of Cool Hand Luke

Cool Hand Luke (1967), directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman, has been widely embraced by a Christian audience keen to equate the character of Lucas Jackson with Jesus. And they are certainly helped in this by the fact that the filmmakers were neither shy nor subtle in their use of overtly Christian themes, songs and imagery.  

However, we mustn't forget the storm scene wherein Luke explicitly identifies God as merely a mythological authority: he laughs at Dragline and his fellow prisoners for still believing in that "big-bearded Boss up there". And, after God fails to give any sign of his existence and power - despite Luke's daring him to do so - the latter looks round with a smile and declares: "That's what I figured; I'm just standin' in the rain, talkin' to myself."

This, for me at least, is the crucial line of the film: a brave man's honest resignation to the fact that he's alone in the world with no Heavenly Father either to look after him, or judge him; that it's not simply a failure to communicate.

This, of course - what we might refer to as the truth of the void - is precisely what Christians cannot and will not accept. They stare with horror and fear at the prospect of a world without supernatural significance or the hope of salvation and a life which, for them, is therefore without value or meaning and is just a kind of empty nothingness.

But as Luke also pointed out: Sometimes nothin' is a real cool hand.