New Year's Day: I've Said It Before and I'll Say It Again ...

TTA New Year's Day Postcard (SA/2026)*

 

 

Here we are on the first day of the New Year and I find that, like Oliver Hardy in Dirty Work (1933), I have nothing to say ... 

 

That being the case, I thought it might be fun to republish half-a-dozen posts from years gone by dated January 1st ...

 

 

Panem et Pyrotechnics (1 Jan 2014)

 

Fireworks, as Oscar Wilde observed, have one big advantage over the stars; namely, you always know precisely when they are going to appear in the sky. 

 

But public firework displays - no matter how spectacular - soon bore and disappoint and one can't help wondering at the politics of the event and the psychology of people who stand in the cold gazing upwards with their mouths open, fascinated by bright lights and loud bangs; content to obey their leaders for another twelve months thanks to the promise of panem et pyrotechnics. 

 

New Year's Eve makes North Koreans of us all ... 

 

 

A Nietzschean Message for the New Year (1 Jan 2015) 

 

For me, the greatest and most touching of new year blessings and resolutions remains the one with which Nietzsche opens Book IV of The Gay Science (written January, 1882): 

 

'Today, everybody permits themselves the expression of their dearest wish. Hence, I too shall say what it is that I most desire - what was the first thought to enter my heart this year and what shall be for me the reason, guarantee, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want increasingly to learn to see as beautiful what is necessary in things, so that I may become one of those who makes things beautiful: amor fati - let that be my love from now on!'

 

 

Happy New Year From the Ghost of Jean Baudrillard (1 Jan 2018) 

 

When asked during an interview in January 2006 what it meant to wish someone Happy New Year, Baudrillard amusingly replied that it was 'a collectively remote-controlled symbolic ritual that has its place in a [...] cost-free sphere'. 

 

In other words, an empty gesture without value; a seasonal greeting from another time which, just like Merry Christmas, tries to desperately recreate a social bond or, more accurately, evoke nostalgia for such, via an exchange of disintensified signs. All the high days and holidays that we so want to enjoy and make special, invariably leave us feeling lonely and inadequate; hostages to our own lives of consumption. 

 

Having said that, Baudrillard hates to be thought of as a pessimist or a nihilist in the pejorative sense of the term. And he does, in fact, still anticipate that there might be an element of radical newness in times to come; a counter-force lodged within the present that's the source of future ambivalence; a catastrophic force that enables individuals to change established forms and punch holes in the order of things; an unverifiable force which, inasmuch as it has 'nothing to do with consciousness, common sense or morality', we might simply call evil. 

 

And so, in wishing readers a Happy New Year, I suppose I'm wishing them the courage to become complicit with l'intelligence du mal. 

 

 

Reflections on a Rose and a New Year's Resolution (1 Jan 2019)

  

New Year's Day: the world of my little garden forever undying. Roses, stained with the blood of Aphrodite, bloom and make happy. Sometimes, I think it would be nice to remain alone with the flowers and do nothing but quietly reflect upon their perfection. 

 

But then, after a few minutes, I realise that not only is such a life impossible, it's also undesirable; that one's main duty as a Lawrentian floraphile is to actively shelter the rose of life from being trampled on by the pigs. Thus, I resolve to 'go out into the world again, to kick it and stub my toes. It is no good my thinking of retreat: I rouse up and feel I don't want to. My business is a fight, and I've got to keep it up.' 

 

 

Why You Should Never Wish a Happy New Year to a Nietzschean (1 Jan 2023)

 

I don't know the origin of the zen fascist insistence on wishing everyone a happy new year, but I suspect it's rooted in the 18th-century, which is why in 1794 the Archange de la Terreur - Louis de Saint-Just - was able to proclaim: Le bonheur est une idée neuve en Europe ... 

 

Such a new idea of happiness - one concerned with individual fulfilment in the here and now and realised in material form, rather than a deferred condition of soul which awaits the blessed in heaven - had already become an inalienable right of citizens in the United States, although whether Jefferson was inspired by the English empiricist John Locke - or by the French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau - is debatable. 

 

Either way, the pursuit of happiness was declared a self-evidently good thing that all Americans should uphold and practice; for ensuring the greatest happiness of the greatest number was, as Jeremy Bentham wrote the mark of a truly moral and just society.

 

The problem, however, for those who take Nietzsche seriously, is that this positing of happiness in its modern form as the ultimate aim of human existence makes one contemptible; the kind of person who only seeks their own pleasure and safety, avoiding all danger, difficulty, or struggle. 

 

Nietzsche wants his readers to see that suffering and, yes, even unhappiness, play an important role in life and culture; that greatness is, in fact, more often than not born of pain and sorrow. This is why his philosophy is a form of tragic pessimism. And this is why it's ironically insulting to wish a Nietzschean happy new year ...

 

 

Nothing Changes on New Year's Day (1 Jan 2024) 

 

I don't like - and have never liked - the Irish rock band U2. 

 

But that isn't to say they haven't written some fine songs, including 'New Year's Day', which contains the killer line: Nothing changes on New Year's Day - a line which counters all the mad optimism of those gawping at fireworks, popping champagne corks, and singing 'Auld Lang Syne' without any idea of what the phrase means. 

 

Often, these are the same people who criticise others for being despairing about the past or present and who insist on being hopeful for the future - even though the expectation of positive outcomes with respect to temporal progress seems entirely groundless. 

 

I don't want to sound too diabolical, but it seems to me that the phrase lasciate ogni speranza written above the gates of Hell is actually a sound piece of advice. For Nietzsche may have a point when he suggests that it is hope which prolongs the torments of man and is thus the most evil of all evils. 

 

* One of six designs in the official TTA postcard range, available as a set for just £29.99.

 

 

On the Art and Politics of Triviality (Wilde Vs Adorno)

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) / Theodor W. Adorno (1903 - 1969) 

 

I. 

 

The narrator of Lady Chatterley's Lover identified the modern era as an essentially tragic age; one in which the skies have fallen and we are left among the ruins, with no smooth road into the future. Nevertheless, we are encouraged to live and learn, rather than weep and wail; to scramble over the obstacles and build new little habitats, have new little hopes. [1]

 

However, this post-cataclysmic emphasis on the small scale - on being more modest in all things, including our architectural ambitions and personal aspirations - does not mean a fall into triviality, as I very much doubt that Lawrence wants us simply to peel potatoes and listen to the radio, even if this is arguably a preferable alternative to tragically wringing our hands [2]. 

 

That said, Lawrence is surprisingly ambivalent when it comes to this subject: one might have expected him to be strongly opposed to things lacking significance or a certain grandeur and, at times, he is; often contrasting the elemental beauty and primeval darkness of a natural landscape with the ugly triviality and falsehood of modern life [3]. 

 

But, at other times, Lawrence criticises those who hold themselves aloof from small talk and playful banter, suggesting that it is this refusal that hinders their ability to develop more meaningful relationships: 

 

"They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse." [4]

 

 

II. 

 

Unlike Lawrence, some people are not so ambivalent on this question: they aggressively condemn those individuals who devote themselves to activities regarded as trivial pursuits; i.e., childish games, old-fashioned hobbies, pointless pastimes, amateur undertakings, etc. 

 

Doubtless, this includes blogging ...   

 

In fact, I recently received an email from an anonymous reader informing me that blogging in the almost obsessive manner that I blog - about what are trivial personal concerns disguised with philosophical or literary references in order to appear of import or possible interest to others - reveals me to be an affected narcissist who, in avoiding the serious challenges of the real world is effectively part of the problem. 

 

They close their email thus: 

 

I'm sorry to say, but you're essentially a complacent conformist who blogs more as a coping mechanism, rather than to bring about much needed social and political change and I would remind you of these lines from Adorno: 

 

"Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil." [5]    

 

 

III. 

 

Now, appreciative as I am of such criticism, I can't say that I'm persuaded by Adorno's identification of triviality with evil (nor of evil with inertia, when the latter is not merely the negative ideal that he would like us to believe, but a vastly complex state) [6].      

 

Ultimately, as with his broader critique of the Kulturindustrie, I find Adorno's thinking on this question somewhat exaggerated and overblown; no one, as far as I'm aware, is attempting to consummate triviality and thereby lead us into absolute horror. 

 

The fact is, being trivial does not make you evil; it simply means that you prefer to linger at the crossroads, uncertain of which way to head, but happy to chat with others you may encounter rather than forge ahead on a single path leading you to the mountain top.  

 

And so, push comes to shove, I'm more inclined to side with Oscar Wilde rather than Adorno, who advised: 'We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.' [7]  

 

It seems to me that it is this mode of thought - more comical than critical - that offers us the best chance of surviving among the ruins; for it allows us to find something more important than meaning and that's humour. Refusing to take things tragically, means learning how to laugh in the face of adversity, which might not make us better human beings, but it will almost certainly make us less earnest and the enemy of ascetic idealism [8].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing (and quoting words and phrases from) the opening paragraph to D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). I have written about this opening in a post dated 21 September 2019: click here.  

 

[2] In the second version of Lady C., the narrator of the tale says: "We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen. Having tragically wrung our hands, we now proceed to peel the potatoes, or to put on the wireless." How we read this line is very much open to interpretation.

      See The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 223.  

 

[3] See, for example, the letter to J. D. Beresford (1 February 1916), in which Lawrence contrasts the Cornish coastline, with all its heavy black rocks, to the "dust and grit and dirty paper" of the modern world in all its non-elemental triviality and shallowness. 

      The letter can be found in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Vol. II., ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge Universty Press, 1982), p. 519. 

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron (Cambridge University Press, 1992), chapter VII, p. 178.

 

[5] Theodor W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 115: 

 

[6] I know this because inertia became a key term in D. H. Lawrence's understanding of energy and materiality. Unlike other modernist writers - including Adorno - who disliked inertia and always wrote in praise of dynamism, Lawrence contrasted negative inertia (associated with industrialism and the ideal of limitless production) to positive inertia (associated with the limits and fragility of life and its generation). 

      Readers who are interested might like to see the essay by Andrew Kalaidjian, 'Positive Inertia: D. H. Lawrence and the Aesthetics of Generation', in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 38, No. 1, (Indiana University Press, Fall 2014), pp. 38-55. This essay can be accessed via JSTOR: click here. 

      See also a follow up post to this one on the law of inertia and the principle of evil (21 July 2025): click here. 

 

[7] Oscar Wilde, from an interview with Robbie Ross, published in the St. James Gazette (18 Jan 1895): click here. This, of course, is the philosophy behind The Importance of Being Earnest (1895): 'A Trivial Play for Serious People' as it was originally subtitled.      

 

[8] In the third essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche concludes that the ascetic ideal has "even in the most spiritual sphere, only one type of real enemy [...] these are the comedians of the ascetic ideal", i.e., those who arouse mistrust in the latter via a refusal to take things seriously. See On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press, 1994), III. 27, p. 125. 

      Readers interested in this, might also like to see Keith Ansell-Pearson's essay 'Toward the Comedy of Existence', in The Fate of the New Nietzsche, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and Howard Caygill (Avebury Press, 1993).     

 

Dancing a Sailor's Hornpipe with Legs & Co.

 

The girls of Legs & Co. on Blue Peter 

 (BBC Television, 14 Jan 1980) [1]

 

I.  

 

There are numerous variations of the hornpipe, both in terms of dance movements and musical composition. But, in one form or another, it has been performed in Great Britain and Ireland from at least the 16th century [2] until the present day, bringing great joy to one and all.  

 

Interestingly, however, although the hornpipe is today commonly associated with sailors, it didn't become firmly linked in the popular imagination with seamen and seafarers until after 1740, when a popular dancer famously performed a hornpipe dressed as a Jolly Jack Tar at Drury Lane Theatre. 

 

The fact that even members of the Royal Navy were soon copying this routine on board ship - with its famous movements mimicking nautical tasks such as hauling ropes, climbing the rigging, and looking out to sea - is yet another example of life imitating art [3]. 

 

Perhaps surprisingly, captain's would encourage - and sometimes even order - their men to dance the hornpipe, as the exercise kept them in good health when at sea and living in cramped conditions; just as a daily tot of rum kept their spirits up.  

 

 

II.  

'The Sailor's Hornpipe' is a traditional melody that some readers will know from the Last Night of the Proms, when it is played as part of Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs (1905). 

 

Others will recognise it from the Popeye cartoons, where it is usually played as the first part of the opening credits before then being segued into an instrumental version of Sammy Lerner's famous theme 'I'm Popeye the Sailor Man' (1933). 

 

And others will know it from the BBC children's show Blue Peter [4], whose famous signature tune is a hornpipe known by the title 'Barnacle Bill' and written by Herbert Ashworth-Hope, but which between 1979 and 1989 used Mike Oldfield's updated version entitled 'Blue Peter' [5].   

 

 

III. 

 

Now, as readers might probably guess: I don't much care for Mike Oldfield and his Tubular Bells (1973). Nor did I ever watch Blue Peter as a child, preferring the funkier ITV show Magpie [6]. 

 

However, I do like Legs & Co. ... 

 

And their interpretation of Oldfield's version of a sailor's hornpipe - seen first on Top of the Pops in December 1979 [click here] and then on Blue Peter in January 1980 [click here] - wearing extremely fetching sailor outfits that dispensed with trousers but included skimpy bright blue knickers to match with belts and neckerchiefs, ranks amongst their most memorable of performances. 

  

Notes

 

[1] The six girl dance troupe Legs & Co. is composed of Gill Clark, Lulu Cartwright, Patti Hammond, Pauline Peters, Rosie Hetherington, and Sue Menhenick. 

 

[2] The National Maritime Museum traces the hornpipe which, as we will see, hasn't always been associated with sailors and dancing on deck, all the way back to the late 14th century; there are references to the hornpie as instrument - from which the dance takes its name - in Chaucer, for example. See the museum's website: click here. 

 

[3] The idea of life imitating art is a philosophical position most famously put forward by Oscar Wilde in his essay 'The Decay of Lying (1891). It reverses Aristotle's notion of mimesis which argues that art is a representation of life. 

 

[4] Blue Peter is a long-running BBC children's television programme with a nautical title and theme. Due to its longevity, it has established itself as a significant part of British culture and heritage. 

 

[5] Mike Oldfield's version of the Blue Peter theme was the first time the original arrangement had changed since the programme began in 1958. Released as a single on Virgin Records in November 1979, it reached number 19 in the UK charts. For those who might be interested, the official video can be viewed here. 

 

[6] See the post entitled 'Reflections on Seeing a Magpie' (2 December 2024): click here. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one on how watching girls dance makes happy (published 31 May 2015): click here.  

 

 

An Open Letter to Simon Solomon from Stephen Alexander

 

Stephen Alexander / Simon Solomon

Dear Simon,

Thank you for your remarks on a recent post entitled 'Yabba Dabba Doo!' (28 Feb 2025). 

As I think you deserve a somewhat longer (and more considered) response than the comments section allows - and as the Little Greek suggested the following remarks may interest a wider audience - I've decided to publish them here in the form of an open letter ...    

Firstly, to answer your question regarding Barthes and nihilism, I suggest you read Shane Weller's essay entitled 'Active Philology: Barthes and Nietzsche', in French Studies, Vol. 73, Issue 2 (April, 2019), pp. 217-233. You can find a revised version of the essay on Kent University's Academic Repository:

https://kar.kent.ac.uk/71559/1/Barthes%20and%20Nietzsche%20%20THIRD%20REVISED%20VERSION%20-%20Clean%20version.pdf 

As some readers may not have the time or inclination to read the above text in full, here's the abstract which, I trust, will allow them to see why Barthes might indeed be considered a nihilist in the Nietzschean sense:  

"While the importance of Nietzsche to Barthes has long been recognized, with Barthes himself being the first to acknowledge it, this essay argues that Nietzsche's influence lies behind almost all of the major aspects of Barthes's mode of reading and writing in the 1970s, a mode that Barthes describes as 'active philology'. At the heart of this active philology is a cancellation of meaning that makes of Barthes's later critical practice a form of active nihilism in the Nietzschean sense. Exploring the various facets of this active philology in order to highlight the ways in which Barthes both follows and deviates from Nietzsche, this essay proposes an understanding of Barthes the active philologist as the incarnation of what Nietzsche terms the 'last nihilist' - and, crucially, one for whom any kind of Nietzschean overcoming of nihilism is anathema."

Even without reading Weller's essay, I would've thought, Simon, that the phrase La mort de l'auteur - title of a famous essay written by Barthes in 1967 - provides a huge clue as to what drives his critical approach ...

Secondly, you're right, Nietzsche does say in The Anti-Christ that the word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding and that in reality "there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross" [1]. But if you were to continue reading the same section of the above work (39), you would find the following important lines:  

"It is false to the point of absurdity to see in a belief [...] the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian: only Christian practice, a life such as he who died on the Cross lived, is Christian. ... Even today such a life is possible, for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible at all times. ... Not a belief, but a doing, above all a not-doing of many things, a different being." [2]

As ever with Nietzsche, there are lots of subtle twists and turns and one has to be wary about taking a line, a paragraph, or even an entire section as providing his definitive position. He puts it this way; he puts it that way; then he puts it another way entirely. The point is one can be a Christian, providing you don't turn a practice into a doctrine; i.e., it's about imitating Christ not following the teachings of the Church.     

As for De Profundis and other matters ... I don't see why I should accept this tear-stained text as more valuable than Wilde's earlier writings; you may find what you describe as his repudiation of aestheticism magnificent and moving, but I see it as a loss of style. 

And as for his ludicrous self-identification with Christ (with the latter conceived as a Romantic hero and artist), well, what is that if not simply another pose? I'm surprised you're taken in by this mix of self-pity, resentment, and bloated rhetoric. 

I'm also surprised that you don't seem to see the irony in quoting the part of Wilde's letter in which he takes a pop at those whose "thoughts are someone else's opinions [...] their passions a quotation" [3].

And not only do you quote from Wilde, but from Nietzsche and Jung too - even as you seem to object to my referencing authors; or perhaps your remark about being an 'anyone-ian' betrays a misunderstanding of how proper names function within a text.

In brief, the proper name contains within it a series of associations (and connotations) that I’m calling upon in order show how 'my' text unfolds within a much wider philosophical and literary history and an intertextual space. When I say 'as a Barthesian', for example, I’m not identifying with Barthes as an extratextual being, but evoking a certain style of thinking and writing.

Using proper names is also, of course, a way of dispersing and disguising the self; like Nietzsche, I want to be able to declare myself 'all the names in history' - onymic ambiguity rather than unified authorial presence is the aim. 

Anyway, hope these remarks answer your questions and address your concerns. 

SA  

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 161. 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] Oscar Wilde, De Profundis. Written in 1897, the complete and corrected text wasn't published until 1962 when it was included in The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (Harcourt, Brace & World). The line quoted can be found on p. 479. Note that a scholarly edition, ed. by Ian Small, was published as De Profundis; Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis, by Oxford University Press in 2005 (Vol. II of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde). 

Yabba Dabba Doo! On Writing So As to Pleasure and In Praise of the Laughing Caveman

Betty, Wilma, Barney, and Fred enjoying a good laugh

The Flintstones (Hanna-Barbera Productions, 1960-66) 

 

 

A question I am often asked is: Why write?

 

I suppose I could answer as many other writers have answered and suggest it's to stave off death; i.e., one writes so as not to die [1].

However, as a nihilist who subscribes to the Nietzschean view that life is merely a very rare and unusual way of being dead [2], I've no reason to postpone a joyous return to the inanimate; a reconciliation with what is actual [3].    

So, why write, then?

 

Well, as a Barthesian, I remain keen to affirm the pleasure of the text and the posts assembled here - even those which are more readerly than writerly in character [4] - are intended to afford torpedophiles some degree of enjoyment by introducing an element of fun [5] in the field of critical blogging (a field that is all too often determined by those whose practice of writing is weighed down by the spirit of gravity). 

For fun is not only a crucial component of playfulness (i.e., hedonic engagement with the world), but it can also help one avoid what Wilde terms humanity's original sin, i.e., self-seriousness: If only the caveman had known how to laugh ... [6]  

 

Notes

 

[1] Writers - particularly poets and some philosophers - often overestimate the power of language. Unfortunately, whilst sticks and stones may certainly break our bones, I'm not convinced that words can ever save us. See the post 'Writing So As Not to Die' (27 Feb 2025): click here.

[2] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, section 109. 

[3] See Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, Volume 9, 11 [70].

[4] Writing in Le plaisir du texte (1973), Barthes makes a distinction between two types of text; those that are readerly (lisible) and those that are writerly (scriptible). 

      The first, provides the kind of reassuring pleasure (plaisir) that doesn't challenge the reader's subjective consistency; whilst the second type of text induces a state of bliss (jouissance), which allows the reader to lose or step outside the self. Obviously, Barthes values the latter over the former, but he concedes that even the most readerly of text can still give some satisfaction, even if it doesn't make you cum in your pants and cause literary codes to explode.

      See the two-part post entitled 'Postmodern Approaches to Literature (3)', published on TTA on 2 August 2016 where I explore all of the above at some length. Click here for part 1; or here, to leap straight to part 2. 

 

[5] See the post written in defence of fun published on 3 June 2024: click here.

[6]  I've always loved this line from Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), even if the evolutionary origin of laughter - which can be traced back millions of years to our great ape ancestors - appears to be rooted more in survival and the formation of vital social bonds than merely enjoyment. 

      See Jordan Raine's article on this topic on the conversation.com (13 April, 2016): click here. 

In Memory of Leonard Rossiter (1926-1984)

 Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby in Rising Damp (1974-78)

and as Inspector Truscott in Loot (1984)

 

I. 

 

As a Rising Damp aficianado, I was pleased to find family, friends, and fellow actors - including Don Warrington and Gabrielle Rose - sharing memories of Leonard Rossiter in today's Guardian.

 

As Catherine Shoard writes: 

 

"Four decades after Rossiter's death, his singular style - manic energy, machine-gun delivery, splenetic intelligence - continues to carry remarkable currency." [1]

 

And continues to make laugh. 

II. 

  

Rossiter died from a heart condition (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), aged 57, whilst waiting to go onstage at the Lyric Theatre, London, where he was playing Inspector Truscott in a production of Joe Orton's dark farce Loot (1965), directed by Jonathan Lynne.

 

As Orton was a scandalous playwright much admired by Malcolm - and I was a fan of Rossiter's - I naturally felt obliged to attend a performance of Loot - which I did on Tuesday 2 October, 1984, just three days before Rossiter's death. 

 

I recorded in my diary at the time: 

 

LOOT: very good; very funny; very well-acted. Leonard Rossiter's performance was particularly enjoyable. I can see why Malcolm loves Orton: virulently anti-authority and all forms of moral hypocrisy; like an angrier (more contemporary) version of Oscar Wilde.

 

And on Monday 8 October I noted (somewhat prosaically, I have to admit): 

 

Distressing news: Leonard Rossiter died backstage a few days ago. A hugely talented comic actor, he'll be much missed.     

Thanks to TV and YouTube, however, we can still enjoy his work - although I smiled to see that Rossiter - who could be a deadly serious and impatient individual, who hated wasting time - had once described the former as merely: 'An advanced technical method of stopping people from making their own entertainment.'

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Catherine Shoard, '"It was hard not to stare at him all the time": inside the remarkable rise and shocking loss of Leonard Rossiter', The Guardian (5 October 2024): click here. 

 

 

Readers who enjoyed this post might like to see an earlier post (dated 15 October 2022) discussing the character of Rupert Rigsby, as played by Leonard Rossiter: click here. 

Bring Me the Head of Oscar Wilde

Visualisation of how Eduardo Paolozzi's Oscar Wilde 

sculpture will look when installed in Chelsea

The Paolozzi Foundation

 

 

A new sculpture of Oscar Wilde - or, more precisely, of the Irish playwright's head cast in black bronze, lying on its side and sliced into segments - has been condemned by his grandson, Merlin Holland, on the grounds that it fails to adequately convey Wilde's genius and is, from a purely aesthetic perspective, absolutely hideous (his words, not mine) [1].      

 

I have to say, Holland's criticism of the work, which is based on a maquette by the late Eduardo Paolozzi [2] - one of the most seminal British artists of the post-war era and a pioneer of Pop Art - seems rather ridiculous. And the fact that he should describe the work as unacceptable is troubling.

 

Holland may know more about his grandfather, whose life he has researched and written about extensively, than anybody else, but he has failed to appreciate that Paolozzi's cubo-surrealist sculpture is not meant to be a lifelike representation, nor is it attempting to capture Wilde's joie de vivre. 

 

Actually, the piece is very much in line with other sculptural works by Paolozzi; see for example his piece entitled The Head of Invention (1989), located at the entrance of the Design Museum in Kensington - click here - and if one were to criticise the Wilde sculpture it would be on the grounds that one has seen this kind of thing before.         

 

In sum: it lacks uniqueness, but it's not gloomy or hideous and it's certainly better than the hilariously bad memorial statue of Wilde by Danny Osborne located in Dubin's Merrion Square - click here - though not as challenging as Maggi Hambling's A Conversation with Oscar Wilde (1998), which can be found off the Strand in London, in which the playwright rises from the dead, cigarette in hand: click here.    

If Paolozzi's work tells us more about him than it does Wilde - and I admit it probably does - I can see this might be an issue for some, including Wilde's grandson. But that doesn't trouble me as an admirer of both men and, besides, our task ultimately is to learn to appreciate the piece as an object in its own right and not as something tied to a human subject.     

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting from the article by Dalya Alberge entitled '"Absolutely hideous": new London sculpture of Oscar Wilde condemned by his grandson', in The Guardian (21 September 2024): click here. 

 

[2] In 1995, Paolozzi along with eleven other invited artists submitted a design for a statue of Oscar Wilde to a committee chaired by Sir Jeremy Isaacs. The committee, of which Merlin Holland was a member, eventually shortlisted six candidates, including Paolozzi, and requested they create maquettes (i.e., scale models). Ultimately, Paolozzi's design was rejected as too brutalist and the committee chose Maggi Hambling's more playful (if somewhat macabre) sculpture. 

 

Memories of Summer '84: Charisma

Just another day in the press office at Charisma Records 

for Jazz and Lee Ellen (1984)

 

 

Entry from The Von Hell Diaries Tuesday 7 August 1984

By the time I got into Charisma this morning, Lee Ellen was already freaking out because Malcolm had cancelled three cover-interviews [1]. As she tried to re-arrange things, I was sent over to McLaren's office on Denmark Street with two cheques: the first for £5000 (a video fee) and the second for £20,000 (advance against the next album). 

 

I had also been given a letter, marked private and confidential, that I was instructed to hand personally to Malcolm. Unfortunately, there was no one in to receive either the letter or the cheques when I got to Moulin Rouge. However, on the way out I bumped into Malcolm and we both went up to his first floor office.

 

Clearly, the contents of the letter were not to his liking. And when Carrolle [2] arrived, he told her she couldn't have the half-day agreed, but would have to type up an immediate reply, which I was to then take back to Charisma. While they worked on the letter, I chatted with Andrea [3] who, by this time, had also arrived at the office. 

 

As well as the letter, Malcolm also gave me three tape cassettes and a small box containing 'valuable jewellery' that he wanted to have couriered to Nick Egan [4] in New York without the US customs knowing anything about it. I was told to wrap the things up carefully and if anyone asked at Charisma what the package contained I should tell them it was a rubber fish. 

 

For security, I was put in a cab by Carrolle - even though the walk from Denmark Street to Wardour Street is literally only a few minutes via Soho Square.              

 

Later, Lee Ellen called me and said I should meet her at 6 o'clock at the Soho Brasserie on Old Compton Street, where Malcolm was going to give an interview to someone from Time Out. Had a fun night chatting, eating sausages, and drinking Black Russians. The Melody Maker journalist Colin Irwin joined us - he's clearly in love with Lee Ellen, but then, to be fair, who isn't?

 

The terrible trio - Glen Colson, Jock Scott, and Keith Allen [5] - also briefly came over. Not sure I'm a fan of the latter; a bit too aggessive for my tastes, so glad when he and his pals headed off to the Wag Club. 

 

Found it ironic that, interview over, Talcy Macly of all people should tell me he's never seen anyone as pale as I am. He asked Lee Ellen what she'd being doing to me. 

 

He also advised that I needed to 'calm down' a little, saying that he'd never want to rob a bank with me as I made him a nervous wreck. 'Listen Jazz boy', he said, 'you've got to learn how to make people feel comfortable. Be a bit more cunning; don't show so much enthusiasm'. Having acted as my mentor-cum-career's advisor, he then launched into a long (but fascinating) monologue about Oscar Wilde. 

 

With regret, I left in time to catch the last tube back to Chiswick. Lee Ellen told me the next day that Malcolm kept her up until 2am with his stories and his complaints that pictures from a recent photo session had made him look like Michael Bentine. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lee Ellen Newman was the Press Officer at Charisma Records, a label founded in 1969 by Tony Stratton Smith and home to a few old hippies, such as Genesis, but also the label to which Malcolm McLaren was signed.

[2] Carrolle Payne was McLaren's Personal Assistant at Moulin Rouge (25, Denmark Steet). 

  

[3] Andrea Linz was a talented fashion student and McLaren's girlfriend and muse at the time. 

 

[4] Nick Egan is a visual artist and graphic designer who collaborated with Mclaren on many projects in the early and mid-1980s. 

 

[5] Glen Colson was a music publicist associated with Charisma Records; Jock Scott was a popular performance poet (about whom I published a post on 18 April 2016 in his memory - click here); Keith Allen was associated at this time with a group of British comic actors known as the Comic Strip. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Malcolm McLaren, 'Madam Butterfly (un bel di vedremo)', single released from the album Fans (Charisma Records, 1984) on 20 August 1984: click here. Video directed by Terence Donovan.

 

 

For further memories of the summer of 1984, click here and/or here.    

 

Adoration of the Golden Calf

The Adoration of the Golden Calf – image from the 

Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg 

(12th century)

 

I.

 

According to the Book of Exodus [1], the golden calf was a cult idol made by the Israelites when Moses was for forty days and nights at Mount Sinai being entrusted with a ten point list of commandments inscribed by YHWH himself on two tablets of stone. 

 

To be fair, slipping back into bull worship is tempting at the best of times - even when, ironically, the very first two of the above commandments read: Thou shalt have no other gods before me and Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. 

 

Unfortunately, six weeks is a long time for a fanatically religious people to be left without an idol to worship and, fearing Moses might never return, they convinced his brother, Aaron, to make them such. And so Aaron constructed a golden calf and an altar to place before it, declaring: This is your god, O Israel!       

 

Before long, the people were making burnt offerings to their new deity and feasting and dancing in front of the lustrous bull. Happy days ...!   

 

Yahweh, of course, soon discovered what was going on and was not best pleased; he told Moses that he intended to destroy the Israelites. Fortunately, Moses was able to persuade God to be merciful. But when he returned from the mountain and saw the golden calf, Moses found himself in a rage and threw down the Tablets of Stone, breaking them on the ground. 

 

Further, he burnt the golden calf, ground it to powder, mixed this with water, and then forced the Israelites to drink up.   

 

 

II.

 

What has this biblical story got to do with us today? 

 

Quite a lot if, like Jordan Peterson, you passionately believe that such tales still have things of vital importance to teach us; warning, for example, as this tale does, about the dangers of false gods, materialism, and hedonistic self-gratification [2].   

 

If, however, like me, you're not quite so exercised about these things - viewing Abrahamic religions to be far more dangerous in their idealism, self-denial, and claims to absolute Truth than false gods, etc. - then probably not so much. 

I've never seen a golden calf - and certainly never worshipped one. And when I hear mention of the golden calf, I don't think of the ancient Jews messing around in Egypt. I think, rather, of the bohemian set who used to frequent the notorious London nightclub called The Cave of the Golden Calf ... 

Opened in the summer of 1912 by the Austrian writer Frida Strindberg - wife of the famous Swedish playwright - The Cave of the Golden Calf was the last gasp of late-19th century decadence, as epitomised by Oscar Wilde and his gang of aesthetes (i.e., young men who liked to wear nail varnish and drink iced champagne or sip absinthe in order to see the world as they wished to see it, for a short while at least). 

 

Located in the basement of 3-9 Heddon Street, in Mayfair, it was a favourite haunt of aristos, artists, and intellectuals trying to recreate a European caberet vibe. It was decorated by the painter Spencer Gore, with contributions by Jacob Epstein and Wyndham Lewis. Sculptor Eric Gill, meanwhile, designed the club's motif; a phallic Golden Calf - symbol of biblical dissipation and idolatry.

 

Regular guests of the establishment included many of the usual suspects; Ezra Pound, Katherine Mansfield, Ford Maddox Ford, Augustus John, et al. I can't imagine, however, that it would've been the kind of place that D. H. Lawrence would have been happy in, even if he was friendly with several of the above.  

 

The Cave of the Golden Calf - a place given up to gaiety - closed its doors shortly before the outbreak of war in 1914; not as a response to the seriousness of the times, but because it went bankrupt, Mme. Strindberg heading West to the States and leaving a trail of debts behind her. 

 

Today, members of the LGBT community claim The Cave of the Golden Calf as the prototype of London's gay bars and clubs and the site is home to one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants.      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Exodus 32: click here for the version found in the King James Bible. 

 

[2] Peterson - wearing his amazing(ly ugly) dreamcoat - insists that worshippers of the golden calf were "dancing around naked, drunk" and describes what went on as a "Pride parade" (i.e., the surrendering to immature instincts). Click here to watch a six minute video on YouTube in which Peterson shares his thoughts (with Russell Brand) on the story of the golden calf. 

On the Rise of the Useful Idiot

 Adapted from the poster for I Am Greta

(a documentary film dir. Nathan Grossman, 2020)

 

I. 

 

Byung-Chul Han says that the idiot has all but vanished from our society. But Han is not using the term idiot in its familiar modern sense (i.e., to refer to a stupid person). 

 

Rather, he's returning to the ancient Greek term from which it derives - ἰδιώτης - which refers to a private individual who prefers to think their own thoughts rather than simply subscribe to common sense or conform to popular opinion (even at the risk of appearing ignorant or foolish). 

 

For Han, the idiot is thus a type of outsider or heretic; not so much uninformed as unaligned with any party or cause; someone who values freedom and opposes the violence of consensus [1]. The idiot, in brief, is the kind of person attracted to philosophy, a practice born - like psychology - of idleness and characterised - like art - by its uselessness [2].   

 

 

II.

 

Unfortunately, however, there's more than one type of idiot in this world.

 

And if the type of useless philosophical idiot privileged by Byung-Chul Han has all but vanished from contemporary society, the political idiot who prides themselves on their allegiance to a cause, party, or ideology and happily makes themselves useful to such is, it seems, proliferating in number ...

 

Some commentators may clutch their pearls - or even reach for the smelling salts - when they hear the term useful idiot [3], but it's a widely accepted term within political discourse [4] to refer to someone who believes they are fighting for a just cause and have history on their side, without fully appreciating the consequences of their actions or the extent to which they are being cynically manipulated by nefarious forces.  

 

Many supporters of Extinction Rebellion, or Black Lives Matter, or those we currently see larping for Palestine on streets and campuses across the Western world, are probably well-intentioned idealists; i.e., perfectly sincere in their views, but they are politically naive to the point that idiocy hardly even covers it; closing their eyes to reality and shutting their ears to reason, they unwittingly assist in the destruction of their own culture, history, and society.   

 

Notes

 

[1] See Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, trans. Erik Butler, (Verso, 2017). And see also the post 'On Heresy and Philosophical Idiotism' (20 Nov 2021): click here. 

 

[2] Nietzsche famously asserts in Twilight of the Idols (1889) that idleness is the beginning of psychology (and is therefore the result of vice). 

      Oscar Wilde, meanwhile, writing in a Preface to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) claimed: "All art is quite useless." He later explained in a letter what he meant by this: "Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way." Similarly, philosophy is simply intended to open up a space for thinking - nothing else. Wilde's letter can be read in full here. 

 

[3] For those gentle souls who prefer a slightly less harsh-sounding term, it might be noted that some commentators speak of useful innocents, whilst those within the intelligence community apparently refer to unwitting agents.

 

[4] Frequently used during the Cold War to describe those susceptible to communist propaganda and manipulation, the phrase useful idiot was (ironically but mistakenly) attributed to Lenin by the Russian human rights activist and Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. Lenin may have liked to use it, but he certainly didn't coin it, and nor is it found in any of his writings.

 

 

Reflections on 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I. 

 

The American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) is perhaps best remembered today for a (semi-autobiographical) short story written after she suffered a severe bout of postpartum psychosis and first published in 1892: The Yellow Wallpaper ... [1]

 

 

 

II. 

 

The (possibly unhinged and certainly unreliable) narrator is a married woman who keeps a journal. Her husband, John, is a doctor and "practical in the extreme". 

 

By this she means: 

 

"He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures."

 

Rightly or wrongly, she resents the fact that he will not believe she's physically unwell and blames him for thereby retarding her recovery. And, to be fair, I can see how this might be troubling. 

 

For it's bad enough when one's useless GP insists there's really nothing wrong. But when one's own spouse - who just happens to also be a physician of high standing - "assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression", that must be really maddening. 

 

And when one's own brother - also a highly respected doctor - concurs that one is simply exhibiting signs of a slight hysterical tendency ... Well, it would be enough to make anyone want to scream and tear at the wallpaper (whatever the colour or pattern). 

 

It's an unfortunate fact that doctors and others working in the healthcare professions, are often not what one might expect or hope for. And experience over recent years has taught me to be wary of accepting their diagnoses and prescribed treatments. 

 

And so I'm sympathetic to the narrator of Gilman's story; even if, as I say, she may be unreliable on occasion and a little too romantic and overly sensitive to queer vibrations for my tastes (sometimes, a draught is just a draught and you really do just need to close the window).  

 

And I do see that John is a patronising and paternalistic prick; I wouldn't want to be married to him, that's for sure.     

 

As for the wallpaper:

 

"I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. [...] The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others."

 

I know a lot of people dislike wallpaper: and I know a lot of people hate the colour yellow - although I'm not among their number and have, in fact, just painted my kitchen in a lemon zesty colour full of enough sunshine to make Van Gogh proud [2].  

 

Still, she has a point: one should be happy - or, at the very least, not unhappy - in one's domestic surroundings. 

 

And it's wrong of her husband to laugh at her about the wallpaper. Just as it's wrong not to appreciate that Wilde was perfectly serious when, lying in his wretchedly furnished Paris hotel room, he declared that he and his wallpaper were fighting a duel to the death: One or the other of us has to go.

 

The fact that Wilde died shortly afterwards proves that home furnishings can have a malevolent - even fatal - influence on our lives and that aesthetics deserves to be taken very seriously as a branch of philosophy. 

III.

 

Like the narrator, I also used to lie awake as a child and extract a mixture of terror and entertainment out of the objects of my little bedroom. She remembers how kindly the knobs of a big old bureau were, whilst I remember the scary faces and figures made of leaves that appeared in the curtains - and that returns us to the yellow wallpaper:  

"This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded, and where the sun is just so, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design." 

 

Despite this, the woman grows very fond of her room; in spite of the wallpaper, or perhaps - somewhat perversely - because of the wallpaper: "It dwells in my mind so!" She spends many hours trying to follow the pointless pattern:

 

"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit." 

 

She particularly dislikes it at night, when the moonlight shines on the undulating wallpaper and gives her the creeps: 

 

"The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out. I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move [...]" 

 

Her husband tells her to go back to sleep and not be silly. But she doesn't. Instead, she lies there in the darkness "trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately". 

 

If the colour of the paper is bad enough, it's the pattern - with its purely random design that seems to change depending on the light and time of day - that really tortures her mind:

 

"You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you." 

 

In the end, she decides the female figure she sees behind the pattern is a prisoner; trapped and desperate to escape. And she determines to learn her secret, even if she still can't stomach the yellowness of the wallpaper which makes her think "of all the yellow things I ever saw; not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things". 

 

Oh, and did I mention the paper's unique smell: 

 

"I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair." 

 

"Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad - at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house - to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell." 

 

 

IV.

 

And so, we approach the end of Gilman's remarkable tale ... and the narrator's further descent into madness. 

 

She decides, for example, that the pattern of the wallpaper really is moving; that the trapped woman is making it move as she crawls around and shakes the bars of her prison, desperate to break out. Unfortunately, "nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so".   

 

But, having said that: 

 

"I think that woman gets out in the daytime! [...] I’ve seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. [...] I see her [...] creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!" 

 

Finally, there's only one thing for it - she has to strip the paper off the walls: 

 

"As soon as it was moonlight, and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper." 

 

The next day, when alone in the house, she attempts to finish the job, keeping a rope close by just in case the woman gets out and requires restraining. But peeling off the paper isn't easy and she grows increasingly angry and frustrated. She also now totally identifies with the woman and believes that she too has emerged out of the wallpaper:   

 

"I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! I don’t want to go outside. [...] For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."

 

At this point, her husband John comes home and discovers her creeping around the room:

 

"'What is the matter?' he cried. 'For God's sake, what are you doing!' I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. 'I’ve got out at last,' said I [...] And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!'" 

 

In horror and despair, her husband collapses: 

 

"Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!" 

 

Is that final line a triumphant assertion of female agency and independence - or the confession of a lunatic? 

 

Maybe both: I don't know. 

 

But I do know Gilman's work fully deserves the multiple readings from many different perspectives that it has had over the last 130 years. H. P. Lovecraft was not wrong to recognise it as a classic tale which powerfully (and cleverly) delineates the madness which can overtake any one of us (whatever the colour of our wallpaper) [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I am reading (and quoting) from Gilman's tale as published in eBook form by Project Gutenberg in 1999. Click here to read free online.  

 

[2] See the post 'How Beautiful Yellow Is' (1 May 2024): click here. 

 

[3] See H. P. Lovecraft, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature', a 28,000 word essay published in The Recluse (1927): click here to read on the H. P. Lovecraft Archive. 

 

Thanks to Síomón Solomon for suggesting this post.