In Praise of Sleep

Man Ray: Sleeping Woman (1929) 

Museum of Modern Art, New York

What can one do, asks Nietzsche, when one succumbs to ennui and feels sick and tired of everything and everyone, including oneself -?

Some recommend drugs; others a stroll in the park. Still others say you should turn to Jesus.

Nietzsche, however, believes the best thing to counteract that awful mixture of boredom, fatigue, and depression is plenty of sleep – both real and metaphorical. Philosophy, a discipline born of idleness, teaches the importance of knowing how to nod off, in either sense, at the right time and in the right way.

Speaking as someone who has regularly compromised their sleep over the years, let me also affirm the vital necessity of a good night’s rest - and, indeed, of daytime naps. Sleep not only sharpens the mind and the senses, as neuroscientists confirm, but it makes happier, healthier, and more creative.

I was once rather disparaging about Tom Hodgkinson (click here), but I agree entirely with him that it’s an absolute certainty that in paradise, everyone naps.

Notes 

Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1982), IV. 376.

Tom Hodgkinson, How to be Idle, (Penguin Books, 2005); see in particular the sections on morning lie-ins, afternoon naps, and the joy of finally retiring to bed at the end of each day. 

The Case of Thomas Townsend (Germ Free Adolescent)

Your deodorant smells nice ...

An inquest into the recent death of 16-year-old Thomas Townsend found that he died from the effects of butane inhalation, following excessive use of spray-on deodorant.

The Kent teenager, concerned about body odour but unwilling to shower, used multiple cans of deodorant in order to stay fresh smelling, if not actually clean. Investigators at the scene of his death found over forty aerosols in his room, many of them empty.

The inquest heard that Thomas, a resident of a children’s care-home in Kent, was troubled and had a history of self-harm, but had expressed no desire to take his own life. Nor had he shown any interest in substance abuse (pathologists found no drink or drugs in his system). He simply didn’t want to stink as nature intended, nor be reliant upon such a primitive and bothersome solution as soap and water. And so he turned to science to counteract the bacterial breakdown of perspiration.

Recording a verdict of accidental death, the coroner declared that Thomas had simply succumbed to the effects of the gas. But surely we might say a bit more than this. For, if nothing else, his case illustrates perfectly the modern obsession with hygiene as a form of commercial and cosmetic artifice which, when taken to an extreme, becomes fatal; something which punk rocker Poly Styrene was singing about almost forty years ago and which Jean Baudrillard also often commented on with characteristic brilliance.

In the words of the X-Ray Spex front woman, Thomas aspired to be a germ free adolescent - one who, sadly, allowed his teenage anxieties and antiseptic fantasies to get the better of him to the point that he literally sprayed himself out of existence, leaving behind nothing but a nice smelling corpse.


Note: Those readers who wish to hear Germ Free Adolescents, by X-Ray Spex, should click here, for a TOTP recording from 1978 conveniently uploaded to YouTube.   

Like the Circles That You Find in the Windmills of Your Mind

According to recent research, how you see the above geometric shape reveals your political personality: if you see it as a circle (more or less), you are inclined to be liberal in your thinking (inclusive, tolerant, non-judgemental, etc.); if, on the other hand, you see it as it is and describe it as such - an imperfect or irregular ellipse - then you are more likely to be conservative in your thinking (sensitive to difference, wary of deviance, disturbed by things that don't quite fit, etc.).

This tells us something crucial about moral humanists and how they view the world - mistakenly. Or, more accurately and ultimately more dangerously, they see things not as they are, but as they would ideally wish them to be. Liberals are almost wilfully blind to any facts that don't coincide with or reinforce their own political wisdom and moral prejudice. 

And this, as Rod Liddle notes in his own inimitable manner, means they suffer from a severe mental impairment - one that effectively makes them self-deluded morons. 

I was reminded of this when, shockingly - but not surprisingly to those of us who don't fantasise a great Family of Man all happily holding hands in a circle - news began to slowly emerge of the New Year's Eve events in Cologne, involving large gangs of non-German males systematically and violently assaulting young women. 

Because idealists like Mrs Merkel refused to listen to those who voiced legitimate concerns about admitting over a million immigrants from the Islamic world and refused to acknowledge that not everything in this world is perfectly smooth, perfectly round, and perfectly compatible with life in a modern, secular society, female friends of mine in cities across Germany now feel concerned for their safety and for the future. And, to be honest, I don't blame them ...


Notes

For those interested in reading the study by Tyler G. Okimoto and Dena M. Gromet on how 'Differences in Sensitivity to Deviance Partly Explain Ideological Divides in Social Policy Support', should pick up a copy of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, (American Psychological Association, Nov. 16, 2015).  

For those interested in reading Rod Liddle's article in The Spectator (2 Jan 2016) in which he discusses the 'political wisdom of people who don't even know what a circle is', click here.  

On Archaic Human Interbreeding

Photo credit: Neanderthal Museum (Mettmann, Germany)

www.neanderthalmuseum.info

As regular readers of this blog will know, torpedo the ark means (amongst other things) destroying the inbred and incestuous ideal of purity and celebrating the enhanced effects of diversity, deviance and hybrid vigour.

Thus I'm always interested to read studies that lend support to the possibility of sexual shenanigans (and thus genetic exchange) between different archaic human populations; i.e. of homo sapiens copping off with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and who knows who (or what) else in the promiscuous, prehistorical past. It's rather nice to think that the modern human genome carries a small percentage of DNA from now extinct species that were pretty much but not quite human in the same way as us.

Of course, I'm aware that some researchers like to argue that observable genetic affinities between archaic and modern human populations are in fact explainable in terms of common ancestral polymorphisms - and not admixture - but even they cannot rule out the possibility of introgressive hybridization due to some degree of fucking around and that thought makes me smile. 

However, just to be clear, I'm not saying that all passionate encounters with strangers make happy or that heterosis always makes healthy. It's now thought, for example, that modern man's proneness to allergies is due to the presence of three genes picked up from Neanderthal lovers - that hay fever is a sign not so much of our own hypersensitivity, but of the brute in us!

But inbreeding is far more likely to end in depression and reduced biological fitness than mixing things up a little; even the three genes mentioned above that cause some of us to itch and sneeze every summer, must also have conferred some evolutionary advantage (probably boosting the immune system, since they are involved in the body's defence system against pathogens).

So, to conclude: we should be grateful to our ancient ancestors who took the risk of loving those outside their own family, tribe, race, or species. Without such pioneers in perversity, we wouldn't be where we are today ...


This post was suggested to me by Dr Andrew Greenfield, to whom I am very grateful.

Torpedo the Ark: A Disclaimer

I've already indicated elsewhere on this blog that the contents should all be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel. I had hoped that this borrowing from Barthes would serve not only as a kind of key to what I'm attempting to do here, but also as an effective disclaimer.

Unfortunately, for some readers this is clearly insufficient and I have been asked to be a little clearer. So, for these readers, let me now say this:

Torpedo the Ark is first and foremost the opening up of a literary space and the posts should be read as fragments of theory fiction. Where and when they seemingly refer to real people, real places, or extratextual events, it needs to be kept in mind that these things have been creatively transposed into an aesthetic virtual environment.

Thus, any similarity is - if not quite coincidental - nevertheless residual and irrelevant; all names, characters, and incidents are in a very real sense fabricated and no identification with actual persons, places, products, or events should be inferred or naively insisted upon. This equally applies to the author and/or narrator of the blog, who is also a simulated effect and function of the text and not its origin or limitation.  

Those who imagine they see themselves negatively portrayed in this or in any work of literature are profoundly mistaken; for art has no interest in damaging (or, for that matter, enhancing) reputations, any more than it wants merely to imitate or represent the real. Libel, one is almost tempted to say, exists only in the mind of the humourless, thin-skinned reader who takes everything too personally and too seriously.    

On Haematolagnia, Feelings and Freethinkers

According to Lawrence, who posits some kind of instinctive and pristine form of blood-knowledge, the intellect is always suspect and we can easily go wrong in our minds. Thus, we should always trust our feelings, rather than our ideas. What the blood tells us, writes Lawrence in a letter to Ernest Collins, is always true. This libidinal irrationalism underlies Lawrence’s hostility towards modern science and forms the basis of his critique of Freudian psychoanalysis.

However, according to Nietzsche - at least during his mid-period, before he too started to develop something of a blood fetish - our feelings are no more original or authentic than our ideas. For behind even our deepest feelings stand inherited values, inclinations, and judgements. Thus to trust one’s feelings - to listen to one’s blood as Lawrence would have it - means no more than paying respectful obedience to our ancestors, rather than to “the gods which are in us: our reason and our experience”.

Ultimately, freethinkers are individuals who break from the morality of custom and traditional ways of behaving, evaluating, and feeling; men and women determined to rely upon their own intellectual resources, rather than sink down into the blood, into the past and into impersonal stupidity.

It’s a sad fact, says Nietzsche, but we must constantly be on guard against the feelings; particularly those higher feelings, “so greatly are they nourished by delusion and nonsense”.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. 1, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), Letter number 539, (17 January, 1913).

Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1982), Book I, Sections 35 and 33.

Honey for Everyone

Carmen Dene on the cover of Span, Issue 101, 

(Town and Country Publications, Jan, 1963)

There are many reasons to enjoy The Avengers episode entitled 'Honey for the Prince' [4/26] - the lovely opening scene with Steed and Mrs Peel returning home from a party in a gay and flirtatious mood as dawn breaks, for example, or Emma wearing a revealing harem costume and dancing the dance of the seven veils before then fighting a would-be assassin - but, for me, the really exciting thing is the kinky cameo appearance of Carmen Dene in the role of a sexy masseuse to the sleazy villain of the piece (played by Greek character actor, George Pastell).

Although Miss Dene, born in Liverpool, 1944, to a Spanish mother, had minor roles in several major films in the 1960s, including Goldfinger (1964), Genghis Khan (1965), and Carry On Up the Khyber (1968) - often being cast for her Mediterranean good looks - she is perhaps most fondly remembered by those in the know as a regular model in the trio of pin-up magazines published by Town and Country during the 1950s, '60s and early-to-mid '70s - Spick, Span and Beautiful Britons.

This is not, unfortunately, the time or place to outline a full history of these publications, but readers who are interested in such are encouraged to visit the invaluable site Vintage Fetish Magazines, by clicking here. I would, however, like to put on record my love for these magazines and the numerous models featured therein; girl-next-door types, posing in their underwear in the somehow reassuring (if slightly shabby and sexless) suburban settings of Post-War Britain, thus allowing those with no interest in glimpsing stocking tops and directoire knickers, to admire the furniture and upholstery of the times, or simply stare at the wallpaper.

Ultimately, if given the choice between today's explicit, charmless, full-colour pornography and this lost black and white world of erotica and home decor, full of girls who haven't been surgically or digitally enhanced and interiors that haven't been designed with so much coolness and good taste that all the joy has been drained from them, then I know which I'd choose.

As one gets older, it seems, one becomes increasingly nostalgic for - and seduced by - naivety and queer signs of life. One wants a world in which it is still possible to dream and to play and there's honey for everyone ...

Flappers

The playful flapper here we see, 

the fairest of the fair.

One of the reasons that I still very much love the flappers is because they continue to piss off puritans of all stripes who, as the critic H. L. Mencken put it so wonderfully, are those persons forever gripped by the terrible fear that someone, somewhere may be happier or having more fun than they are.

Unfortunately, this seems to include followers of D. H. Lawrence, one of whom wrote in response to a question I asked about the latter’s antipathy to the young women of the Jazz Age, that flappers were almost as bad as bunny girls. When pressed to explain this rather surprising comparison, this former editor of the D. H. Lawrence Society Newsletter sent the following text:

"Flappers are ridiculous and degrading. Lawrence hated them as he (rightly) hated the vulgar songs of Bessie Smith. Who wouldn’t look on flappers as anything but women exploiting their sexuality and being exploited? Essentially, it’s the absurd falsity of them that is so objectionable. They have been industrialised; mass produced – it’s repulsive! And all that phony joie de vivre is equally nauseating; I don’t for a second believe in their kind of good time. I won’t even mention their physical appearance – the boyishness that Lawrence commented on and so despised."

Where does one begin with this astonishing attempt to channel the spirit of Lawrence at its most malevolently misogynistic?

Well, firstly, it’s true that Lawrence on one occasion became so incensed with Frieda repeatedly playing a recording by the great American blues singer Bessie Smith, that he smashed the gramophone record over her head in an act often portrayed by commentators as violent domestic comedy, but which might better be construed as humourless domestic violence.

I also have to admit that the writer of the above pretty much manages to summarise the main reasons for Lawrence’s antipathy towards the flappers: their independence, their hedonism, their promiscuity, their artificiality and their superficiality (in dress, manner, and behaviour).

I think the really crucial point, however, is the one he leaves to last and wishes not to mention - but nevertheless can’t help mentioning: what Lawrence most dislikes about the flappers is their physical appearance. And by this we refer not so much to the short skirts they liked to wear (though doubtless Lawrence objected to these too), but to the actual bodies of the flappers, in shape, in size, and in their somewhat androgynous character.

In brief, the flappers, with their bobbed hair, flattened chests, narrow hips, and pert little bottoms, weren’t womanly enough for Lawrence, who, as is evident from his choice of wife, his descriptions of Constance Chatterley, and his paintings, clearly had a penchant for plump, curvaceous, fleshy females.

His attempt to body shame the flappers - something that, shockingly, is still being carried on by some of his followers even today - is rooted therefore not only in his puritanism and problematic gender politics, but also in his own sexual preference for BBW.

Ultimately, the slim and sophisticated figure of the flapper left him limp - and Lawrence resented them for it.

On Courage, Conviction and the Necessity of Change

A tadpole that has so gaily waved its tail in the water must feel very sick when the tail begins to drop off ... The tail was its dearest, gayest, most active member ... but the little green frog in the grass is a new gem after all. 

- D. H. Lawrence 

As Nietzsche says, it’s a common error to suppose that a person of conviction is courageous because they stick to their guns, their ideas, beliefs and principles, no matter what. This might be a method of establishing a solid reputation and of being recognized as dependable, like a trusted tool, within a society dominated by slave morality, but it takes a certain plucky insouciance to lack conviction, adopt brief habits, and hold one’s views lightly.

That is to say, the brave individual is one who regularly sheds his ideals like a snake sheds its skin; not because he changes his mind - for what kills all that is old and redundant within us is not a victory of reason, rather, it’s a form of vital energy. We shed skins and negate our former selves because new life bubbles up inside us and produces new feelings and, indeed, in certain species, entirely new forms of being. If the caterpillar had conviction, it would never become a butterfly; if the tadpole insisted on continuity and self-preservation, it would never sprout little legs with which to leap into the future as frog.

Like Nietzsche, Lawrence fully understands the importance of this and develops the idea of change as a vital necessity in a late article entitled ‘The State of Funk’.

There is, he admits, a certain justification for fear when change is upon us; because change of any sort can be dangerous and involve an element of suffering. But - having conceded that change often brings pain and uncertainty - there’s still no excuse for what Lawrence calls funk. Rather, it’s the duty of men and women when confronted by new and problematic conditions to face up to things with a little courage and good humour; not retreat behind well-known and well-worn positions and make a blustering display of their moral certainties, or offer ready-made solutions:

"There is no ready-made solution. Ready-made solutions are almost the greatest danger of all. A change is a slow flux, which must happen bit by bit. ... You can’t drive it like a steam-engine. But all the time you can be alert and intelligent about it ... Patience, alertness, intelligence, and a human goodwill and fearlessness, that is what you want in a time of change. Not funk."

Lawrence goes on to argue that it is in our power to change, our capacity to adapt, and our readiness to admit and fulfil new needs that our best hope and greatest strength resides. To be firm is one thing. But to be secretly full of fear and of petrified opinion is something else; something that leads to bullying and, ultimately, has disastrous consequences.

In sum: change is inevitable - not merely because external conditions change, but because we change and change vitally as the years pass: "New feelings arise in us, old values depreciate ... Things we thought we wanted most intensely we realise we don’t care about. The things we built our lives upon crumble and disappear, and the process is painful."

Painful, but not tragic; for we can live without conviction - and perhaps even live more gaily.


Notes

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 296, 307.

D. H. Lawrence, ‘The State of Funk’, Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 218-224. Lines quoted are on pp. 220 and 221.

On Nietzsche's Hypomania

Nietzsche Burst! Designed by by Rev. Shakes (2014) 

Available on numerous gift items from www.zazzle.ca

If there's one thing I hate, it’s being told to cheer up or to smile, by strangers possessed by a will to happiness; fascists of optimism and positive thinking, always looking on the bright side and finding strength through joy.

Nor, come to that, do I want eternal bliss or a perpetual feeling of euphoria and I don’t trust those who fantasise about elevated moods and this, regrettably, includes Herr Nietzsche, whose writing is at its least convincing, least interesting, and least readable when he indulges his poet's taste for ecstasy and utopian fantasy.

That Nietzsche should find the prospect of a future humanity embodying a single great feeling and resting on clouds something delightful, is deeply disappointing and depressing. Like Anna Brangwen, I prefer to let many feelings come and go - even negative ones - and to keep my feet firmly on the ground. I love those things which save me from being swept up into any Absolute and spit on the idea of man's perfectibility.        

If we need to get over our humanity, then it's for the same reason and in the same manner we need to get over an illness, or a broken heart. Ultimately, it's a question of recovery and convalescence, not transcendence or salvation. It takes time and it can be a painful process. It requires patience and perhaps a prolonged period of silent reflection; it's not something to excitedly sing and shout about (like a madman).

Sometimes, in his hypomania, Nietzsche seems to misunderstand his own project and betray his own attempt at a revaluation of all values ...


See: Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 288.