The Gods Have Become Our Diseases

Cover image - by the author's daughter, Flavia Tower - 
to the first UK edition (Victor Gollancz, 1971)

I.

"We think we can congratulate ourselves on having already reached such a pinnacle of clarity, imagining that we have left all these phantasmal gods far behind. But what we have left behind are only verbal spectres, not the psychic facts that were responsible for the birth of the gods. We are still as much possessed today by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians. Today they are called phobias, obsessions, and so forth; in a word, neurotic symptoms. The gods have become diseases."  

- C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies (Collected Works, Vol. 13)

  

In this crucially insightful passage, Jung provides the key to understanding Daphne du Maurier's short story 'Not After Midnight' - a tragic tale of two ruined lives: by Silenian dipsomania in the case of a brutish American collector of antiquities, Mr. Stoll; and by pederastic satyrism in the case of the English schoolmaster and amateur painter Timothy Grey.

II.

Grey, who narrates the tale, begins by informing us that he has, in fact, recently resigned from his teaching post at a boy's prep school, "in order to forestall inevitable dismissal" [56].

The reason he gave for his resignation was ill health. But Grey doesn't specify what the nature of his sickness is, or why it should make his dismissal inevitable. He simply says that it was caused by a "wretched bug picked up on holiday in Crete" [56]. Clearly, however, it's more than a funny tummy ...

Has he, perhaps, caught some kind of sexually transmitted disease? Is that the universal complaint from which he suffers? A dose of the clap would seem to be a possibility, but Grey is keen for us to know that the bug he caught "was picked up in all innocence" and was not due to "excess of the good life" [56].     

It also seems possible that Grey is, in fact, referring indirectly to what some consider a perverse disorder; did he resign because repressed homosexual desire had manifested itself and become known to his fellow teachers and pupils? The following statement lends credence to this:

"My complaint is universal, and has been so through the ages, an excuse for jest and hilarious laughter from earliest times, until one of us oversteps the mark and becomes a menace to society." [56]

Actually, this explanation - although mistaken - is nearer the mark. But what Grey suffers from is not the flowering of an all too human sexual predisposition; his erotomania is the result, rather, of divine madness - or what Grey describes as a form of insidious evil.

In other words, he's in the process of becoming-satyr, rather than merely coming out - and that's a much more problematic proposition within modern European culture; for whilst homosexuality has been decriminalised (and is, in fact, now thought of as something to celebrate), paedophilia certainly hasn't (and isn't).

III.  

Grey's problems begin when he bumps into the physically intimidating and drunken figure of Stoll, who gives him a gift; a drinking vessel which, whilst empty of libation, was nevertheless still able to intoxicate:

"It was a small jug, reddish in colour, with a handle on either side for safe holding. [...] The body of the jug had been shaped cunningly and brilliantly into a man's face, with upstanding ears like scallop-shells, while protruding eyes and bulbous nose stood out above the leering, open mouth, the moustache drooping to the rounded beard that formed the base. At the top, between the handles, were the upright figures of three strutting men, their faces similar to that upon the jug, but here human resemblance ended, for they had neither hands nor feet but hooves, and from each of their hairy rumps extended a horse's tail." [88]

That night, Grey has queer dreams from which he struggles to awaken; dreams that "belonged to some other unknown world horribly intermingled with [his] own" [89]:

"Term had started, but the school in which I taught was on a mountain top hemmed in by forest [...] My boys, all of them familiar faces, lads I knew, wore vine-leaves in their hair, and had a strange, unearthly beauty both endearing and corrupt. They ran towards me, smiling, and I put my arms about them, and the pleasure they gave me was insidious and sweet, never before experienced, never before imagined, the man who pranced in their midst and played with them was not myself, not the self I knew, but a demon shadow emerging from a jug [...]" [89]

Grey decides the rhyton is a source of magical malevolence and that the terrible dreams which it induced were utterly foreign to his nature - but one can't help wondering about this; perhaps it simply enables one to become who one is ...

Later in the tale, we discover that Stoll has also left Grey a bottle of home-brewed drink, which, surprisingly, he agrees to try:

"It was like the barley-water my mother used to make when I was a child. And equally tasteless. And yet ... it left a sort of aftermath on the palate and the tongue. Not as sweet as honey nor as sharp as grapes, but pleasant, like the smell of raisins under the sun, curiously blended with the ears of ripening corn." [91]

He even drinks the stuff for a second time; from the demonic jug, which, on reflection - and under the influence of Stoll's home-brew -, now appeared rather beautiful:

"I don't know how it was, but somehow the leering face no longer seemed so lewd. It had a certain dignity that had escaped me before. [...] I wondered whether Socrates had looked thus when he strolled in the Athenian agora with his pupils and discoursed on life. He could have done. And his pupils may not necessarily have been the young men whom Plato said they were, but of a tenderer age, like my lads at school, like those youngsters of eleven or twelve who had smiled upon me in my dreams [...]" [97]

Grey continues:

"I felt the scalloped ears, the rounded nose, the full soft lips of the tutor Silenos upon the jar, the eyes no longer protruding but questioning, appealing, and even the naked horsemen on the top had grown in grace. It seemed to me now they were not strutting in conceit but dancing with linked hands, filled with gay abandon, a pleasing, wanton joy." [97]

It is only upon discovering the body of Stoll beneath the waves - "grotesque, inhuman [... swaying] backwards and forwards at the bidding of the current" [99] - that Grey, with understandable panic, decides to fling the jug into the sea:

"Even as I did so, I knew the gesture was in vain. It did not sink immediately but remained bobbing on the surface, then slowly filled with that green translucent sea, pale as the barley liquid laced with spruce and ivy. Not innocuous but evil, stifling conscience, dulling intellect, the hell-brew of the smiling god Dionysus, which turned his followers into drunken sots, would claim another victim [...] The eyes in the swollen face stared up at me, and they were not only those of Silenos the satyr tutor, and of the drowned Stoll, but my own as well [...] They seemed to hold all knowledge in their depths, and all despair." [100]

IV.

The point of the tale is this: becoming-Greek in a Classical sense certainly opens up a whole new way of life and a whole new world of experience, but from the moral-legal standpoint of today it spells trouble, putting you at risk of a lengthy prison sentence and of having your name added to the sex offenders register.

Those who romanticise the pre-Christian past in all its pagan splendour and think the gods of Olympus were a splendid bunch, should maybe read a bit more history and acknowledge the tragic nature of Greek mythology in which incest, rape, murder, and sodomy (in its widest sense) were the norm.*

*Note: Some readers - with knowledge of my background in Dionysian philosophy and an openly pagan past - might be surprised (even disappointed) by this conclusion. But I would remind them that even a youthful Nietzsche, writing in The Birth of Tragedy, wasn't for frenzied excess and promiscuity overriding every form of law; he warns against the savage urges of lust and cruelty and advocates for their aesthetic sublimation.  
 

See: 

C. G. Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 13: Alchemical Studies, ed. Gerhard Adler, trans. R. F. C. Hull, (Princeton University Press, 1983), 'Commentary on "The Secret of the Golden Flower"', para. 54. 

Daphne du Maurier, 'Not After Midnight', in Don't Look Now and Other Stories, (Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 56-100. All page references given in the text refer to this edition.

Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside, (Penguin Books, 1993).

This post is for Maria Thanassa.

Don't Look Now - Because This is the End

Adelina Poerio as the homocidal dwarf in 
Don't Look Now (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

He felt himself held, unable to move, and an impending sense of doom, of tragedy, came upon him. His whole being sagged, as it were, in apathy, and he thought, 'This is the end, there is no escape, no future.'

- Daphne du Maurier, 'Don't Look Now'

 
I suppose we've all felt like that on occasion (if not daily). But from out of such despair great art - including great pop music - is born. Indeed, the last line seems to invoke the 1967 track by The Doors ...


Initially written about a failed romance and the pain of saying goodbye to a loved one, 'The End' evolved into something much more grandiose, to do with the loss of childhood innocence, death, and Oedipal fantasy.

Some critics have described it as Sophoclean. Others have said it's more Joycean in its lyrical playfulness and eclectic frame of reference; that Morrison demonstrates what happens when the stream of consciousness is tainted with acid.

For many people, me included, the song is forever linked with the movie Apocalypse Now (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), which brilliantly remixed the track from the original master tapes, bringing to the fore Morrison's astonishing vocals (including his liberal use of scat and expletives that are almost inaudible in the '67 recording).

In sum: great tale; great track; great movie. And one can't help wondering what (if anything) Miss du Maurier made of the latter works? I know she liked Nicolas Roeg's 1973 film Don't Look Now, based on her short story, but what of The Doors epic and Coppola's masterpiece? I think we should be told ...*

See: Daphne du Maurier, 'Don't Look Now', in Don't Look Now and Other Stories, (Penguin Books, 2006), p. 14.

It's interesting to note that the line quoted also uses the phrase no future, as if anticipating the punk nihilism of the Sex Pistols and not merely recalling the psychedelic nihilism of The Doors. 

Play: The Doors, 'The End', from the album The Doors (Elektra, 1967): click here. And to hear the remixed version used in Apocalypse Now, click here. 

*Although we can't be sure, I doubt that Miss du Maurier would've been a fan of Jim Morrison and The Doors, as a scene in 'Not After Midnight', possibly indicates. The narrator of the tale, Timothy Grey, who is on holiday in Crete, sits outside a café savouring what is known as local colour and amused by the passing crowd; "Greek families taking the air, pretty, self-conscious girls eyeing the youths [...] a bearded Orthodox priest who smoked incessantly at the table next to me [...] and of course the familiar bunch of hippies [...] considerably longer-haired than anybody else, dirtier, and making far more noise. When they switched on a transistor and squatted on the cobbled stones behind me, I felt it was time to move on." See Don't Look Now and Other Stories, p. 73.

Clothes Maketh the Woman (With Reference to the Queer Case of Nellie March)

Anne Heywood as Ellen (Nellie) March in The Fox (dir. Mark Rydell, 1967)

Image from Twenty Four Frames: Notes on Film by John Greco: click here

I.

Nellie March is an interesting character: I'm not sure it's accurate to describe her as a dyke, but she's definitely a bit more robust and mannish than her intimate friend Miss Banford, who was a "small, thin, delicate thing with spectacles" [7] and tiny iron breasts.  

Unsuprisingly, therefore, it's March who does most of the physical work on the small farm where she and Banford live. And when she hammered away at her carpenter's bench or was "out and about, in her puttees and breeches, her belted coat and her loose cap, she looked almost like some graceful, loose-balanced young man" [8].

It's interesting to consider this: that outward appearance plays such an important role in the construction of gender; that clothes maketh the man, even when that man happens to be a woman.


II.

For all his essentialism, Lawrence is acutely aware of this. Which helps explain why he frequently gives detailed descriptions of what his characters are wearing and seems to have an almost fetishistic fascination with both male and female fashion. In the Lawrentian universe, looks matter and the question of style is crucial.

It also explains why later in the story, when March has decided to affirm a heterosexual identity and give her hand in marriage to a foxy young Cornishman named Henry, she undergoes a radical change of image. All of a sudden the heavy work boots and trousers are off and she's slipping into something a little more comfortable, a little more feminine, and she literally lets down her thick, black hair.

Henry, who has been dreaming of her soft woman's breasts beneath her tunic and big-belted coat, is astonished by her transformation:

"To his amazement March was dressed in a dress of dull, green silk crape [...] He sat down [...] unable to take his eyes off her. Her dress was a perfectly simple slip of bluey-green crape, with a line of gold stitching round the top and round the sleeves, which came to the elbow. It was cut just plain, and round at the top, and showed her white soft throat. [...] But he looked her up and down, up and down." [48]       

By his own admission, he's never known anything make such a difference, and as March takes the teapot to the fire his erotic delight is taken to another level:

"As she crouched on the hearth with her green slip about her, the boy stared more wide-eyed than ever. Through the crape her woman's form seemed soft and womanly. And when she stood up and walked he saw her legs move soft within her moderately short skirt. She had on black silk stockings and small, patent shoes with little gold buckles.
      She was another being. She was something quite different. Seeing her always in the hard-cloth breeches, wide on the hips, buttoned on the knee, srong as armour, and in the brown puttees and thick boots, it had never occurred to him that she had a woman's legs and feet." [49]

Not only is March born as a woman thanks to putting on a pair of black silk stockings and a (moderately) short skirt, but Henry too feels himself reinforced in his phallic masculinity:

"Now it came upon him. She had a woman's soft, skirted legs, and she was accessible. He blushed to the roots of his hair [...] and strangely, suddenly felt a man, no longer a youth. He felt a man, with all a man's grave weight of responsibility. A curious quietness and gravity came over his soul. He felt a man, quiet, with a little heaviness of male destiny upon him." [49]

It's writing like this that sets Lawrence apart, I think; writing that will seem pervy and sexist to some, but full of queer insight to others. Writing that, in a sense, undermines his own essentialism by showing the importance of costume and perfomativity when it comes to gender roles, sexual identity, and sexual attraction.     

III.

And does it end well once they are married, Henry and Nellie? A 20-year old youth and a 30-year old woman used to living an independent life (and sharing a bed with another woman)? Not really: something was missing. 

The problem is, he wants her submission: "Then he would have all his own life as a young man and a male, and she would have all her own life as a woman and a female. [...] She would not be a man any more, an independent woman [...]" [70]

But March, of course, doesn't want to submit; she wants to stay awake, and to know, and decide, and remain an independent woman to the last.

So it's hard to believe they're going to find happiness. But then, as Lawrence writes:

"The more you reach after the fatal flower of happiness, which trembles so blue and lovely in a crevice just beyond your grasp, the more fearfully you become aware of the ghastly and awful gulf of the precipice below you, into which you will inevitably plunge, as into the bottomless pit [...]
      That is the whole history of the search for happiness, whether it be your own or somebody else's [...] It ends, and it always ends, in the ghastly sense of the bottomless nothingness into which you will inevitably fall [...]" [69]

And on that note, Happy New Year to all torpedophiles ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Fox', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.

In Memory of Those Who Gave Their Fictional Lives (Towards an A-Z of the Lawrentian Dead)

D. H. Lawrence's phoenix design as reimagined for the 

Cambridge University Press edition of his letters and works 

(1979- 2018)

Whilst figures such as Paul Morel, Ursula Brangwen, Lady Chatterley and her lover, Oliver Mellors, have attained a degree of literary immortality, there are other characters within the Lawrentian universe who died (or were killed) within the pages of his novels and are now mostly forgotten; remembered, if at all, only by scholars and the most devoted of readers. 

This post is for (some of) those who laid down their fictional lives ...

A is for ...

Annable; gloomy gamekeeper and devil of the woods. A man of only one idea: - "that all civilisation was the painted fungus of rottenness" - who is best known for his motto: "'Be a good animal, true to your animal instinct'". Death by misadventure (beneath a great pile of rocks at a stone quarry). Not a figure to be much mourned by the locals.

See: The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 146 and 147.

B is for ...

Banford, Jill; a "small, thin, delicate thing with spectacles" and tiny iron breasts. Intimate friends with the more robust Miss March. Physically afraid of many things (from dark nights to tramps); rightly afraid and suspicious of the young man Henry who, in his heart, determines her death by chopping down a tree that accidently on purpose hits her as it falls: "The back of the neck and head was a mass of blood, of horror." Verdict: manslaughter, as a result of malicious negligence.

See: 'The Fox', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 7 and 65. 
      

Beardsall, Frank; father to Cyril and Lettie, whom he abandoned when they were very young. Characterised by the son as a "frivolous, rather vulgar character, but plausible, having a good deal of charm". Death due to natural causes (kidney failure).

See: The White Peacock (CUP, 1983), p. 33.

C is for ...

Cooley, Benjamin; aka Kangaroo. A Jewish lawyer and head of an Australian paramilitary organisation (the Diggers); a fascist-idealist acting in the name of Love and Order. His face was "long and lean and pendulous, with eyes set close together [...] and his body was stout but firm". Death by gunshot, having taken a bullet in his marsupial pouch, fired by a political opponent. But blames Richard Somers for his death, due to the latter's refusal to pledge his love.

See: Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 107-108.      

Crich, Diana; daughter of Thomas; sister to Gerald. A good-looking girl, but not somebody for whom Rupert Birkin particularly cares: "'What does it matter if Diana Crich is alive or dead? [...] Better she were dead - she'll be much more real. She'll be positive in death. In life she was a fretting, negated thing.'" Death by drowning whilst fooling around on the water.

Crich, Gerald; son of Thomas. An accursed, Cain-like figure who, as a boy, accidently killed his brother. Gudrun's lover and Birkins' closest friend (and naked wrestling partner); a man of tremendous will but whose life seems suspended above an abyss of nihilism and nausea. Thus, in the end, he just has to let go of everything and lie down in the snow. Death due to something breaking in his soul (and hypothermia).

Crich, Thomas; father to Gerald and Diana (as well as other children). A dark and stooping figure and mine owner who cares about his employees; "in Christ he was one with his workmen"; his wife and eldest son rather despise his moral idealism. He dies slowly - terribly slowly - from old age and an incurable illness. Finally, finally, comes the "horrible choking rattle" from the old man's throat. Coroner's verdict: death by natural causes.

See: Women in Love ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 185, 215 and 333.  


H is for ...

Hepburn, Evangeline; wife of Capt. Alexander Hepburn. A middle-aged woman who likes to dress in a very distinctive manner; bright eyes and "pretty teeth when she laughed". Unlucky in love - her husband is cheating on her with a younger woman (Hannele) - and unlucky in life as well; fatally falling as she does out of her bedroom window, whilst staying on the third floor of a hotel. Verdict: accidental death, but her husband's confession to his mistress - "'I feel happy about it'" - raises one's suspicions.

See: 'The Captain's Doll', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird (CUP, 1992), p. 86 and 110.

M is for ...

Morel, Gertrude; a rather small woman of delicate mould but resolute bearing. A monster who feeds on the love of her sons and despises her husband. Cultured, but snobbish. Death by euthanasia; Paul and his sister Annie agree to administer an overdose of morphia to their mother who is dying of cancer; they may have "both laughed together like two conspiring children", but it was an act of mercy in the circumstances.

Morel, William; eldest son of Gertrude; brother of Paul. The real whizz-kid of the family and a favourite with the girls. A good student; hard-working; moves to London aged twenty to start a new life, but soon falls seriously ill and not even his mother can save him. Official cause of death: pneumonia and erysipelas (a highly infectious bacterial skin disease); unofficial cause of death: maternal vampirism.

See Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 437. 


S is for ... 

Saywell, Granny; aka The Mater. Mother to Arthur Saywell; grandmother to Yvette and Lucille. One of those "physically vulgar, clever old bodies" who exploited the weaknesses of others whilst pretending to be a warm and kindly soul. Half-blind, hard of hearing and often bed-ridden, she still loved a bit of pork and to sit "in her ancient obesity". Happily for all concerned, this toad-like old woman is killed in flood waters. Verdict: death by drowning.

See: 'The Virgin and the Gipsy', in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 6 and 14.

Siegmund; middle-aged musician; husband to Beatrice; lover to Helena. A man who feels trapped in a life of domestic misery; "like a dog that creeps round the house from which it [briefly] escaped with joy". A man for whom suicide is the only way out. Verdict: death by hanging (with his own belt).

See The Trespasser, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 174.

Judenstern (With Reference to the Case of Serge Gainsbourg)

I. 

Although now strongly associated in the popular imagination with Nazi Germany, the yellow badge that Jews were obliged to wear for purposes of public identification (i.e., to clearly mark them as religious and ethnic outsiders), has a depressingly long history, albeit not one that I wish to examine in detail here.  

It's interesting to note, however, that the idea of making the patch in the shape of the six point Star of David first arose in Portugal, even though the hexagram has never been a uniquely Jewish symbol (in fact, Jewish Kabbalists probably borrowed it from the Arabs for use in the design of talismanic amulets known as segulot). 

It's also interesting to note that this Portuguese star was red, not yellow, even though within the medieval and early modern world the latter was the colour most often associated with Judas, religious heretics, and other persons thought cowardly and not to be trusted.   

The Nazis were therefore drawing upon an extensive (anti-Semitic) history when they revived the practice of forcing Jews to wear a distinctive sign upon their clothing, including, most famously, the yellow Star of David with the word Jude inscribed in letters meant to resemble Hebrew script.

Intended to further division and hatred, the Judenstern ironically increased sympathy for the Jews amongst the wider population of the Reich. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, for example, a ban had to be introduced on the polite doffing of hats towards Jews, after it became a popular form of protest against German occupation and Nazi brutality.   

II.  

Born in 1929, to Russian-Jewish parents who had fled to France following the 1917 Revolution, Serge Gainsbourg's childhood was profoundly affected by the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

Fortunately, however, he was able to draw darkly comic inspiration from this tragic period in later years; such as in his controversial album Rock Around the Bunker (1975), which included the track 'Yellow Star'.

In this short song, Gainsbourg recalls how he'd felt as a young boy required to wear such in wartime Paris; an experience only made bearable by pretending that it was a sherrif's badge, or a prize that he'd been awarded.      

Fans of the singer-songwriter - of which I'm one - might also recall that several years prior to this, Gainsbourg celebrated the huge international success of Je t'aime ... moi non plus by commissioning Cartier to design him a platinum Star of David medallion.

As one commentator notes, he had never forgotten the humiliation of his early years and this was an attempt to overcome feelings of shame and anger with humour.

For as they say in French: Rira bien qui rira le dernier ...

Notes

Play: Serge Gainsbourg, 'Yellow Star', from the album Rock Around the Bunker (Polygram International, 1975): click here. 

Note: Rock Around the Bunker is not merely an upbeat concept album about National Socialism and Gainsbourg's own experiences as a Jewish youth growing up in German-occupied Paris; it's also a subtle dig at those who bought into the Nazi chic of the 1970s - including performers such as David Bowie who should've known better.   

Ana: the Little Match Girl of Harold Hill

Were Hans Christian Andersen writing his tale of The Little Match Girl today, rather than in 1845, then I imagine she'd probably be hawking copies of The Big Issue and wearing a headscarf, rather than selling matches bareheaded and barefoot in the street.

Either way, it's a cold and depressing way to try and earn a living and I can't help feeling sorry for the young woman, called Ana, who stands - rain or shine - outside Boots every day with her magazines and, in the circumstances, a remarkably cheerful manner.

Despite Nietzsche's warnings against the dangers of pity, I often return her greeting or give her a smile. And, although I don't want what she's peddling, I have bought her a hot chocolate and even a tub of Aptamil baby formula, as requested.   

And I've done so fully aware that this horrifies many people. Editors at the Daily Mail, for example, seem convinced that The Big Issue is now merely a front for Eastern European criminals; that Britain's homeless and those in genuine need have been replaced by immigrants already in receipt of generous state benefits

Maybe that's true: I don't know ...

However, whilst no one wants to be thought of as a soft touch, i.e., open to easy manipulation and emotional blackmail by those who beg on street corners and spin tales of woe, I would hate to become one of those hard-hearted individuals, lacking in compassion or kindness.

So, push comes to shove, I'd rather hand over a fiver just to be on the safe side; even at the risk of being taken for a bit of a mug. In the end, that money secures your own spiritual well-being, rather than their material comfort.

And, in my case at least, it also got me an Xmas card from Ana, who said she will keep me in her prayers and, more importantly, signed herself as my fryend.    


Note on the images:

The first is taken from the Disney animated short film The Little Matchgirl (dir. Roger Allers, 2006). 

The second is from the inside of my card from Ana - which, although intended to be festive, was actually a card of condolence, expressing the sender's deepest sympathy. 

Punk Xmas

'Tis the season to be Johnny 

(Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la)

I.

For all its professed anarcho-nihilism and counter-cultural posturing, punk quickly revealed itself to be all too human when the festive season rolled round, with many bands embracing the cynical-sentimental showbiz tradition of releasing Christmas songs. 

Now, whilst punk intellectuals such as Craig O'Hara and Gerfried Ambrosch* might think it terribly subversive for Stiff Little Fingers to release a raucous live rendition of White Christmas, or that by performing Silent Night at a million miles an hour the Dickies caused Franz Gruber to start spinning in his grave, I do not.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how hard you pogo around the Christmas tree, you're not reclaiming the happy holiday as a pagan tradition or deconstructing moral idealism, you are - in the words of Paul McCartney - simply having a wonderful Christmastime (ding-dong, ding-dong, ding). 

That doesn't make you a collaborator, or a sell out.

But it does mean you perhaps have rather more in common with everyone else than you might otherwise wish to acknowledge and that your romantic rebellion - against cliché, dreary convention, and commercialism - is born of the fact that you care a great deal (punk indifference being merely another pose).**

II.

So what, then, are the best punk Xmas songs?

That's hard to say, as, to be honest, they're all pretty awful, with one or two exceptions, such as Fairytale of New York (1987), by the Pogues, ft. Kirsty MacColl, and Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight) (1987), by the Ramones - though I'm not overly keen on either.

I do quite like Siouxsie and the Banshees' version of the traditional French Christmas carol Il est né, le divin Enfant (1982), but, ultimately, my tastes take me back towards the two tunes previously mentioned, by SLF and the Dickies: White Christmas (1980) and Silent Night (1978).

And finally, let's not forget the Thin Lizzy/Sex Pistols collaboration (as the Greedies); A Merry Jingle (1979): click here to watch their performance on Top of the Pops (20-12-79), or here, as they close the New Year's edition of The Kenny Everett Television Show, in another time and in a different world ... 

Notes

* Craig O'Hara, The Philosophy of Punk, (AK Press, revised 2nd edition, 2000); Gerfried Ambrosch, The Poetry of Punk, (Routledge, 2018).
 
** Obviously, when I say punks care, I don't mean about the baby Jesus, but about the authenticity of experience; they so want things to be meaningful and honest and real - including the joy of Christmas. 

To relive Christmas '77 with the Sex Pistols, see the BBC Four documentary directed by Julien Temple, (2013): click here.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins: He'll Put a Spell on You

Because you're mine ...

I.

Never a favourite with the NAACP, Screamin' Jay Hawkins played with black racial stereotypes and white racial fears just as he experimented with music and performance, producing a unique sound and look that would later influence shock rockers from Arthur Brown and Alice Cooper to Marilyn Manson.

The above - and many others - were inspired by his mock-satanism and penchant for macabre stage accessories (including smoking skulls, rubber snakes, and shrunken heads).  

II.

A former champion boxer and Korean war veteran, Hawkins decided to try his luck as a rhythm and blues singer. After an 18 month spell fronting a band, he left to develop a solo career. His big moment came in 1955, when he recorded an astounding - and drunken - version of his composition entitled I Put a Spell On You, for a black music label owned by Columbia Records. 

The grunts, groans and screams that Hawkins added to what was otherwise a fairly standard pop ballard were deemed to be so disturbing that the record was immediately banned from the radio. Nevertheless, it was a huge hit, selling more than a million copies and secured Hawkins a place in the rock 'n' roll hall of fame. 

It also ensured he would be typecast as a performer, whose talents as a singer, songwriter and musician, became increasingly irrelevant; people wanted the outrageously dressed madman with a bone through his nose, taking to the stage in a satin-lined coffin and giving his best impression of the voodoo priest Baron Samedi.*    

As much as his grotesque persona delighted and amused white audiences - not only in the US, but also in the UK and France - it deeply offended many African Americans. Hawkins, however, was unapologetic, explaining that he was simply an entertainer looking to make a few dollars; not a role model, spokesman for the black community, or a civil rights activist.    

Although he had a number of other hit songs - including Constipation Blues (1969); a track about real pain, not merely heartbreak and loneliness - his star was well and truly beginning to fade by the 1970s, although he continued to work up until his death, aged 70, in February 2000, appearing, for example, alongside Joe Strummer in the 1989 cult movie Mystery Train (dir. Jim Jarmusch).  

Since his death, I Put a Spell on You has continued to be covered by a wide variety of artists, most of whom treat the song very seriously; very few have been brave (or foolish) enough to attempt to replicate - or better - the unique performance given by Hawkins himself ...**

Notes

* Hawkins did sometimes express his unhappiness with this; in a 1973 interview, for example, he bemoaned the fact that whilst James Brown did an awful lot of screaming, he wasn't given the name of Screamin' James Brown and nobody expected him to play the fool or questioned the sincerity of his performance. I'm not overly sympathetic with Hawkins, however, who voluntarily sold his soul to the devil.  

** Artists who have covered this song include Nina Simone, Bryan Ferry, Marilyn Manson, and even Bonnie Tyler.

Play: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, I Put a Spell On You, (Okeh Records, 1956): click here. 

And for a live TV performance of the song, click here. 

A Brief Midwinter Reflection

Thank fuck it's the solstice this weekend and the promise of a returning sun; have the mornings ever been so dark as this year? I don't remember them so. But maybe it's an age thing; I appreciate now why so many pensioners like to spend winter in the south, if they can afford to do so.

Of course, despite the December solstice being a cosmic and psychological turning point, it's still a terribly long wait for spring and the warmer days when love becomes possible anew. For as Irigaray points out, whilst a god can enter the world midwinter, it's too early, too cold, and too dark to really rejoice.

Winter undoubtedly has it's own special beauty and rhythm, but it's spring - "when the heavens and the earth unite" - that is the "most wonderful and divine season"; a time of flowers and birdsong that "resonates in a deep silence [...] beyond any word".      

The solstice is a time when, briefly, the sun stands still; but in the spring everything leaps forward - even the clocks! 

See: Luce Irigaray, Through Vegetal Being, (Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 36 and 37.

 

On Stamina (as Ontological Destiny)

John Melhuish Strudwick: A Golden Thread (1885)

I.

An aged philosopher, said a young Nick Land, is either a monster of stamina or a charlatan. We can probably say the same of artists, rock stars, and maybe even monarchs.

For whilst I don't want to revive and reinforce the romantic ideal of living fast and dying young - as if a premature death confirms authenticity and proves the truth of one's message - there are perhaps certain individuals who are under a greater obligation to die at the right time than other (superfluous) men and women; i.e., not too late, but not too early either. 

However, it's not this Nietzschean idea I wish to discuss; nor do I wish to comment here on what makes monstrous, or write in defence of charlatanism. I want, rather, to say something on the concept of stamina ...

II.

It's unfortunate - and a little disappointing - that Land seems to rely upon the common understanding of the term stamina; i.e., synonymous merely with staying power, or the ability to maintain an activity or commitment regardless of circumstances (including fatigue and old age). That's the kind of error that the sort of people who think that a rock has the capacity to endure might make ...   

For stamina means more than merely having the energy and strength to keep going; it refers us rather to the essential elements of a thing; the vital structures or qualities of being. As the plural form of stamen, we might even define it as the thread (or filament) from which the individual (and their fate) is woven. 

Thus, philosophically speaking, all mortals have stamina (i.e., an ontological destiny) - even charlatans, those who burn out early, or those who regard death as a festival and voluntarily choose to squander their souls ...

See:

Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992). 

Nietzsche, 'Of Voluntary Death', Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (Penguin Books, 1969).