Reflections from a Sickbed

Having been obliged to take to my bed with the flu, thoughts turn quite naturally once more to questions of sickness and death - and, in particular, a growing concern with what will happen posthumously to my wretched corpse, that most accursed of all objects. 

Obviously, it will need to be disposed of. But this isn't a simple or straightforward matter; for there are numerous methods of getting rid of the inconvenient (rapidly decomposing) body and here's where the headaches begin for someone like me who, when faced with the blackmail of choice, instinctively chooses not to choose.

However, let us briefly consider some of the main options ...  

(1) Cremation

Cremation certainly has points in its favour and I like the idea of being reduced by flame back to basic chemical compounds. There's also something attractively anti-Christian about cremation; the thought of rising like a pagan phoenix from the ashes rather than resurrecting like an end time zombie ready to face Judgement Day appeals more to me as a Lawrentian. 

Having said that, there's enough Jewishness in my nature to feel profoundly uncomfortable with the thought of furnaces and tall, free-standing chimneys, etc. And then there's the problem of the left over ashes; either to be scattered to the four winds (sounds quite nice), or - horror! - housed inside some ghastly urn and stuck on top of the bookcase before eventually being knocked over by the cat. 

On balance then, I don't think I want to go up in smoke and be ground down to dust, thank you very much.

(2) Inhumation

Having rejected cremation, burial is left as the only major alternative and, all in all, I'm more than happy with the thought of being placed (or even thrown) into a hole in the ground and thence to push up daisies. But I don't want anything done that will retard the inevitable decomposition; no embalming, for example - and preferably no closed coffin or casket. I want naked exposure to the soil and to allow the worms and whatnot do their holy work as quickly as possible. And if wearing a mushroom death suit helps this along, then sign me up for one.

As for where I'm buried, I really don't care; though not at sea, obviously. I don't want any kind of service or religious ritual observed and would prefer an unmarked grave. However, if there is a stone, it should simply read curb your enthusiasm, which pretty much summarizes my philosophy. 

(3) Immurement / Preservation

Any form of posthumous immurement or attempt at artificial preservation is, for me at least, completely out of the question; the thought of being permanently enclosed in a tomb or mausoleum, mummified in bandages like an Egyptian pharaoh, deep frozen like James Bedford in a cryogenic chamber, stuffed like the English utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and put on display in a glass case, or letting that freaky German anatomist, Gunther von Hagens, pump my corpse full of curable polymers so that I might enjoy plastic immortality, fills me with a strange mixture of disgust and despair. 

I would, quite literally, rather be fed to the vultures (as in a Tibetan sky burial) ...                      

Corpus Delicti (With Reference to the Case of D. H. Lawrence)

Death is always an inconvenience. Not so much for the deceased; for trust me, corpses don't care. But for those who are left with the problem of disposal; be these grieving relatives, or fastidious killers hoping to cover up all traces of their victim and their crime.  

Fortunately, there are several long-accepted methods of disposal; including the top two, burial and burning. But even these ancient methods present problems. In the case of cremation, for example, there's the question of what to do with the ashes; stick 'em in a ghastly urn and put granny on the mantelpiece, or scatter them to the four winds and risk the unpleasant humiliation of having them blow back in one's face. 

The English novelist D. H. Lawrence was famously first buried in Vence, where he died in 1930, and then, five years later, exhumed and cremated on Frieda's orders by her Italian lover and third husband to be, Angelo Ravagli. 

As to what happened to Lawrence's ashes, this has become subject to confusion and controversy. Ravagli was supposed to transport them to the ranch in New Mexico, where a suitable shrine had been built. Frieda had even provided a lovely little vase. But it seems likely that Ravagli simply threw them away (possibly into the harbour at Marseilles) and then filled the urn with a handful of dust upon his return to America. 

Frieda never knew. As far as she was concerned, she'd brought Lawrence back to the place they'd been happiest and sealed his fate by mixing his ashes into a concrete block in order to prevent anyone from stealing them and, symbolically, to prevent him from wandering in death without her. 

Lawrence's biographer, John Worthen, suggests that Ravagli did Lawrence a favour by rescuing him from his wife's posthumous plans: 

"Lawrence may finally have managed to evade her ... and to finish his career solitary, free, unhoused, with no lid sealing him down or block containing him: scattered, perhaps into the estranging sea he had so often contemplated."

John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 418. 

Of Clowns and Catwomen

                                                                                                                

As everybody knows, there's an unwritten rule in the world of clowns that one must never copy the face make-up of another, thereby enabling each performer to retain their own unique identity.

In order to help ensure that this unwritten rule is followed and not accidentally infringed, some clowns voluntarily have their likeness painted onto a ceramic egg and registered with Clowns International. New clowns are able to consult the registry and avoid the potential embarrassment of looking like somebody else; one is tempted to say that face on egg thus prevents egg on face.

It's worth noting, however, that the registry is unofficial and Clowns International cannot enforce compliance; indeed, as far as I'm aware, you can't legally copyright a hairstyle, facial feature, or a way of applying make-up, no matter how individual or distinctive it may be. And neither - I believe - can you copyright a stage name, nickname, or any other type of alias.

I thought of this when reading recently about the punk icon, Soo Catwoman, who is desperately fighting a rearguard action to reclaim, protect and market her own extraordinary image - albeit forty years too late and after the young actress Judy Croll showed us all to brilliant effect in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle just how easy it is to steal and to simulate a look, no matter how original the original may be. 
  
For Soo, like many punks naively committed to notions of authenticity and the Real, it's terribly important that we not mistake Croll for her and she carefully points out the differences in facial bone, hairline and breast size, as if we should care about such anatomical details - we who care only for masks and cosmetics and the free-floating aspect of a persona as something to be performed (not essentialised or trademarked).

Interestingly, Soo also expresses her moral and maternal outrage over the fact that Croll was only fourteen and raises the spectre of child abuse by the filmmakers, thereby demonstrating her poor understanding of the Swindle as a provocative work of cinema, a crucial aspect of which is its brutal exposure of the inherently exploitative nature of the music industry which blithely trades in young flesh and talent.

Despite what she seems to believe, there's nothing degraded or inappropriate about the nudity or sexuality of a minor, nor indeed its representation in art; obscenity begins when this is commodified and prostituted by men in positions of power for their own perverse pleasure or financial gain: Mummy! Mummy! They've killed Bambi!

And so, I'm sorry if Julien Temple's film and Croll's appearance in it have caused Soo and her family great distress over the years, as she claims, but she needs to understand that most viewers either don't know who the fuck she is, or, if they do, don't care that a small role she turned down was eventually given to an actress happy to play the part.  


Note: those interested in knowing more about Soo Catwoman might like to visit her official website: click here.

Another Bloody Sunset (On Eternal Recurrence and the Snobbery of Photographers)

Die Ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen 
SA/2016

I hate people who take photography seriously; people who fuss over every aspect of their composition and have to employ all the latest technology; people who look down on those of us who enjoy simply taking snaps - including snaps of the sunset which, apparently, is not the done thing in the world of professional image making. Indeed, there's even a sneering acronym used in online chat forums: NABS - not another bloody sunset.

For me, there's something not only touching but philosophically interesting about the fact that, apart from a few superior types who like their cyclopic perception of the world to remain immaculate and claim to be unmoved by natural beauty or the wonder of events, people continue to look to the skies and attempt to capture, however naively or inadequately, the splendour of the rising or setting sun.

For I suspect that one of the things that enchants is the fact that just as no one steps twice into the same river, no sunset is ever witnessed more than once; it's an absolutely unique occurrence that only gives the illusion of an identical event happening over and over each day.

Nietzsche famously terms this the eternal recurrence of the same and, as Deleuze demonstrates in his radical interpretation of this concept, what returns is actually difference itself (paradoxical as this initially seems and contrary to what those commentators believe who write of return in terms of crushing certainty and fixed essence, rather than the very momentariness of the moment).  

The reason people will never tire of the sun and its effects and will never tire either of pictures, is because even the most clichéd of these images tell us something crucial; namely, that despite the experience of duration and continuity, there is no universal stability. 

Fatal Attraction: Notes on Hybristophilia

Jeremy Meeks: the model prisoner who stole a million hearts

Following a recent post on criminals and capital punishment [click here], I received two emails from concerned readers. The first expressed outrage and disappointment that I could write such reactionary rubbish:

"You Sir, are a disgrace and your views - even if endorsed by D. H. Lawrence - border on being no more than a crude form of neo-fascism."

The second sought to convince me that even the most dangerous of serial killers has a soul to be saved and that this can be accomplished not through harsh punishment, but through Love - and not just the redeeming love of Jesus, but the carnal affection of a good woman:

"As a trained sex therapist who has worked with many violent men, I know a lot of their anger stems from feelings of inadequacy and that these issues can best be dealt with in the bedroom, rather than the prison cell."     

These latter remarks got me thinking about hybristophilia; a paraphilia in which the amorous subject is attracted to individuals who have committed an illegal act or atrocity and sexually aroused by the thought of their misdeeds. Many high-profile felons receive explicit fan-mail, love letters, and indecent proposals from women who, for one reason or another, can't resist the dubious appeal of a bad boy - even at the risk to their own safety or future happiness.   

There's doubtless a number of reasons that might explain this phenomenon; some women want to share in the notoriety; some women want to nurture the inner child or find the hidden beauty within even the most bestial of souls; some women want to engage in a fantasy relationship that can never be consummated; others simply want to piss off their friends and family.

According to Sylvia Plath - who, admittedly, was a poet and not an evolutionary psychologist - every woman adores a fascist; the swaggering alpha male with a brute, brute heart. And, who knows, perhaps there's something in this; something which also helps to explain the eroticised male attraction to strong leaders and gangsters; a fatal attraction displayed, interestingly, even by sensitive artists and philosophers, whom one might have hoped would know better.

Thus Nietzsche, for example, getting all flustered over the thought of blonde beasts and his insistence that the criminal is actually a type of healthy human being made sick due to unfavourable circumstances ...  

 

On Criminals and Capital Punishment

Flick through the numerous TV channels on Freeview on any night of the week, any week of the year, and you are guaranteed to find endlessly repeated episodes of Top Gear. But you will also just as surely come across programmes that bring you up close and personal with some of the most hardened criminals and gang members serving time in some of the world's most notorious prisons. And these shows - even when fronted by someone as likeable as Louis Theroux - have a phenomenally depressing effect.

It could be, I suppose, that some producers are interested in humane reform and want to shock us out of our complacency by forcing us to think more carefully and more compassionately about the issues and the people caught up within the criminal justice system. But most shows simply seem sensational and exploitative; turning human misery into cheap and voyeuristic entertainment.    

Either way, I suspect that many viewers will - like me - come away completely dispirited and despairing about the entire penal system and the deplorable wretches confined within it. And some will find themselves asking what's the point of keeping extremely violent and irredeemable offenders banged up for life behind bars; why not just have them all exterminated without fuss or any further ado?

These viewers are not moral and intellectual monsters and the question is not, I think, completely illegitimate.

Rather, like Lawrence, they have been driven partly by despair and partly by a form of utopianism into thinking such thoughts and into examining their souls for a way forward; they know a new vision of society is needed and that the true criminal should be afforded no place within it; they know that, at a certain point - and due to the very nature of the crimes committed - these shaven-headed, tattooed imbeciles with what Carlyle memorably describes as ape-faces, imp-faces, angry dog-faces [and] heavy sullen ox-faces, have compromised their humanity and, thus, all claim to rights based on such. 

I don't even think we should regard their elimination as capital punishment. It's simply pest control; the necessary destruction of vermin who have no interest in rehabilitation, but just want to steal, rape, torture, and murder for personal gain and personal pleasure; individuals who, as Rod Liddle rightly says, couldn't care less about society or its laws.    

As Liddle also says, if being nice to criminals worked, we'd all be happy to shower them with kindness. But it doesn't. Nor does being cruel and vindictive and it's here that Liddle and I part company; for what doesn't kill these individuals only serves to make them stronger. And so we might as well be honest with ourselves and deprive them not merely of their freedom, but of their foul lives (though this means of course granting to the State - that coldest of all cold monsters - powers that we might later regret handing over).  

See: 

D. H. Lawrence, '[Return to Bestwood]', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 13-24. Lawrence places his call for the execution of those he designates as true criminals within a wider programme of state eugenics, justified by his philosophical vitalism. 

Rod Liddle, 'The Spectator has gone soft - prisons should be much nastier places', in The Spectator, 26 Nov 2016: click here to read online. I'm grateful to Liddle for the reference to Thomas Carlyle that I made use of above.

Nothing Important Happened Today (On Revolutionary Events)

King George III (1738-1820)

One of my favourite stories concerns George III who, on July 4, 1776, wrote in his diary with regal indifference to unfolding events in the Colonies: Nothing important happened today. 

Royal biographers and historians - overly concerned with the facts as these people often are - insist that this is entirely false; one of those apocryphal stories that enters and continues to circulate within the popular imagination simply because people wish to believe it to be true. King George didn't even keep a diary, they protest, but, sadly for them, to no avail; even former Deputy Director of the FBI, Alvin Kersh, referenced this fictitious journal entry.         

I suppose, philosophically, why it interests is because it makes one question what constitutes an event of any description; that is to say, what has to happen for something to be recognised as a happening? 

Without necessarily wanting to posit an absolute ontological distinction, it's tempting to think of events as things that occur dynamically in time, contra objects that exist concretely in space. The cat that sits on the mat is an example of the latter; his grin, or the flick of his tail as he leaves the room, might better be thought of in terms of the former. But it could well be that events are simply unstable objects and objects monotonous events and that there is thus no essential metaphysical difference.

For Deleuze and Guattari, whom we might characterize as philosophers of the event, the task of philosophy is to invent concepts which express events, or, more precisely, extract them from the material facts of the world; i.e., concepts that allow one to engage with social and political reality in such a manner that one challenges received ideas and royal prerogative. 

No wonder, then, that George was thought keen to turn a blind eye to (revolutionary) events ...

Ecosexuality Contra Necrofloraphilia (How Best to Love the Earth)

Black and Pink Floral Skull design 

sugarskullbedding.com

I greatly admire Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle for endeavouring to think ecosexuality and questions concerning broader human culture within a nonhuman and inhuman framework. And I fully approve of their attempt to encourage people to form connections with not only other life forms, but also inanimate objects, be they real or virtual, natural or artificial. 

But this isn't as easy as perhaps they imagine. For it's not just a question of sharing space and sharing affection with the things that you love, it's also a question of establishing a zone of proximity and entering into some kind of strange becoming. And it means abandoning all anthropocentric conceit and all traces of vitalism which posit life as something more than a very rare and unusual way of being dead.      

What I'm suggesting is that ecosexuality must shed itself of its moral idealism and become a more daringly speculative and perverse form of materialism. For the fact is, the earth, however you wish to metaphorically think it - as mother, as lover, or both - simply doesn’t care about the life that it sustains. Rather, it is massively and monstrously indifferent; just like the rest of the universe.  

In attempting to make an eroticised return to the actual, ecosexuality is ultimately fated to discover that it’s not an affirmation of life, but a form of romancing the dead; i.e., necrophilia. Thus it's really not a question of how to make the environmental movement sexier and full of fun, as Stephens and Sprinkle suggest, but queer-macabre in a deliciously morbid manner. And if you genuinely want to indicate the ecological entanglements of human sexuality then you must sooner or later discuss death as that towards which all beings move and find blissful unity in an orgiastic exchange of molecules and energy. It's death - not sex - that is radically (and promiscuously) inclusive.   

As for the 'twenty-five ways to make love to the earth' listed by Stephens and Sprinkle, which include dirty talk, nude dancing, skinny dipping, recycling, and working for global peace, if this is the best they can do at constructing a green lover’s discourse or an ars erotica then, to be honest, I’m deeply disappointed; all the multiple pronouns in the world don’t lift this above banality. 

One might - provocatively - suggest that there are other, more explicit, more obscene, ways of loving the earth; that our ecosexual relationship is actually a violent, mutually destructive type of amor fou in which the earth displays her passion with volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and earthquakes and we, in turn, display our virility through displays of power; mining for coal and drilling for oil, deforestation, dredging the seas, the erection of hydro-electric damns and nuclear plants, accelerated species extinction, etc. 

Perhaps it’s these things that turn the earth on – mightn’t global warming be a sign of arousal?

See: Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, ‘Ecosexuality’, essay in Gender: Nature, (MIHS), ed. Iris van Der Tuin, (Schirmer Books, 2016).

Note: This text is taken from a much longer commentary and critique of the above essay by Stephens and Sprinkle (emailed to the authors on 23 Nov 2016). 

Anankastikos (In Defence of OCPD)

When I hang my washing out on the line, I like to ensure three things: 

(i) all items of a similar type are kept together (socks with socks, pants with pants, etc.) 

(ii) all items are hung according to size (the largest things first) 

(iii) all items are hung inside out, facing the same way and the same way up.

In addition, I like to make sure all of the pegs are wooden and of the same type; or, if using the plastic pegs, that they are all the same colour (preferably blue). 

According to a full-figured friend of mine who likes to boast of having a degree in psychology, this meticulous attention to detail and concern with aesthetics isn't a noble attempt to impose order upon a chaotic world and give style to an otherwise drab and dreary domestic chore; rather, it's a sign that, like Sheldon Cooper, the fictional theoretical physicist played so brilliantly by Jim Parsons in the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory, I suffer from a mental health issue known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). 

Technically, she means obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), which is clinically distinct from the above, though I hardly dare correct her for fear that she regards this as further proof of the condition; a condition which, in my view, is neither undesirable nor unhealthy, but is rather egosyntonic and characteristic of all great artists, dandies, philosophers, and others concerned with achieving a level of perfection.      

My friend might find pleasure in doing her laundry in a carefree manner - recklessly mixing the colours with the whites, hanging things in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, folding items in an incorrect manner - but she'll never know how to give birth to a dancing star or understand why it is that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.  

        

Sympathetic Reflections on the Case of Sir Clifford Chatterley

Clifford Chatterley

comicvine.gamespot.com

Rather like Jed Mercurio, whose recent adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover for the BBC caused some consternation in Lawrence circles, I'm increasingly sympathetic to the figure of Sir Clifford Chatterley. For whilst, metaphorically speaking, the war had brought the roof down over his wife's head, it was he, poor devil, not she, who had been shipped home from Flanders more or less in bits, paralysed from the waist down, and in need of constant medical care for two full years.

The narrator tells us Clifford had a marvellous hold on life and that, despite the nature of his injuries, he was not really downcast. Indeed, Clifford remained bright and cheerful - "almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, and his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes". What's more, Clifford also kept up a certain dandyish display of style: "He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street."

One might very reasonably admire such stoicism, but the narrator seems keen to foreclose this possibility. Clifford, he says, isn't courageously indifferent in the face of pain and misfortune, rather, having been so badly hurt, "the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him ... something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone". All that was left, writes Lawrence, was blank insentience and the "slight vacancy of a cripple". In other words, Clifford is not only physically paralysed, he's numbed in soul.
 
We are also informed that, even before his injury, Clifford wasn't a particularly passionate man. Still virgin at twenty-eight when he married Connie, the sex between them didn't mean much to him; it was just "one of the curious obsolete, organic processes which persisted in its own clumsiness, but was not really necessary".

Having said that, he, like her, longed for a son and heir and hoped that he might one day regain some degree of potency, desperately trying to convince himself that he wasn't really mutilated and that the possibility of an erection wasn't entirely out of the question, even if the muscles of the hips and legs were paralysed: "'And then the seed may be transferred.'"*

Even, if need be, Clifford is open to the possibility of raising another man's child born of Connie as his own. Connie sees the logic of his thinking on this question; but she also finds it monstrous and slowly but surely she begins to turn against Clifford. Acknowledging that he wasn't to blame for the situation they found themselves in - and that his was the greater misfortune - she also concludes that he was responsible for the lack of tenderness between them: "He was never really warm, nor even kind, only thoughtful, considerate, in a well-bred, cold sort of way!"

In this way, Connie justifies her rejection and sexual betrayal of her husband: "Suddenly, with all the force of her female instinct, she was shoving him off. ... Connie was surprised at her own feeling of aversion from Clifford. What is more, she felt she had always really disliked him." Before long, this dislike has become pure hate:

"For the first time, she had consciously and definitely hated Clifford, with vivid hate: as if he ought to be obliterated from the face of the earth. And it was strange, how free and full of life it made her feel, to hate him and to admit it fully to herself."

Charming! No wonder then that he eventually turns to his nurse and housekeeper, Mrs Bolton, for comfort and affection: "At first he had resented the infinitely soft touch of her fingers ... But now he liked it, with a growing voluptuousness." After his breakdown, following Connie's decision to abandon him, Clifford and Mrs Bolton draw into a closer physical relationship:

"He would hold her hand, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said! 'Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!' And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same! 'Do kiss me!' and she would lightly kiss his body ... And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exultation ... Mrs Bolton was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved and hated it. Yet she never rebuffed nor rebuked him."

Lawrence describes this as an intimacy of perversity, but his characterization of the relationship as such betrays something both limited and limiting - and at times deeply unpleasant - in his own thinking on sex and disability. The fact is, whilst Lawrence posits genital intercourse as the only truly legitimate and authentic sex act, others of us are happy to experience and experiment with a far wider range of pleasures and not worry whether these be counterfeit, unnatural, decadent or perverse in character. We're happy also to accept that people with disabilities may - through choice or necessity - differ in the manner they express their sexuality. 

One way or another, it's Mrs Bolton who makes a man of Clifford and rouses him to action in the world:

"And in this Mrs Bolton triumphed. 'How he's getting on!' she would say to herself in pride. 'And that's my doing! My word, he'd never have got on like this with Lady Chatterley. She was not the one to put a man forward. She wanted too much for herself.'"

This, I think, is true: acutely aware of her own feelings and desires throughout the novel, Connie never seems to consider that Clifford had also been gradually dying within the marriage and that she had neglected him and his needs. By the time she's fucking Mellors, she doesn't touch her husband any longer; not even hold his hand. Yet she blames their lack of physical intimacy entirely on Clifford and his impotent cruelty. 
    
I don't, like Clifford, believe that Connie's actions indicate she's abnormal or insane, or one of those perverted women who must run after depravity. But I do think her selfish and somewhat fickle. And I do rather sympathise with Clifford, in a way that I didn't twenty years ago when I thought of her as an embodiment of the New Eve and of him only in the wholly negative - often ablelist - terms suggested by the author-narrator.  


*Note: The exact nature and extent of Clifford's spinal cord injury isn't made clear in the novel and so there is no reason for us as readers to pour scorn on his hopes. Nor should we subscribe to the mistaken idea, prevalent amongst the non-disabled, that disabled persons are incapable of enjoying an active and fulfilling sex life, replete with orgasms. For decades, the medical community assumed - logically, but incorrectly - that paraplegics such as Clifford couldn't experience the latter. But now, thanks to recent research in this area, we know differently. There is only one thing that definitively precludes such and that is massive damage to the sacral nerve roots at the base of the spine which interferes with the automatic nervous system. For orgasm is an internal (automatic) reflex, not a somatic sensation transmitted from skin and muscle movement and it needn't be exclusively genital in character; some people with spinal cord injuries develop compensatory erogenous zones allowing them to experience orgasms triggered by stimulation applied, for example, to their necks, knees, or nipples. You're triggering the same sacral reflex, just doing so via different routes. Mary Roach describes these non-genital orgasms rather nicely as immaculate; see chapter eleven of her work on the scientific study of sex, Bonk, (Canongate, 2008). 

See: D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).