In Defence of Fun

 

 

I. 

 

Stephen Bayley says that fun is facsimilie amusement ...

 

By which he means that fun is a false form of pleasure: "And you don’t have to be a pious old-school Modernist-moralist to find any kind of fakery not amusing at all." [1]

 

No, that's true: but it probably helps. Not that Bayley is, you understand, a Puritan: "gaiety and laughter are all very good" [2], he says.

 

It's simply that, on the one hand, he values authenticity and takes his pleasure seriously, whilst, on the other hand, he feels "both cheated and threatened by the prospect of 'fun'" [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Bayley's position is actually quite common amongst an intellectual class whose language, as Barthes would say, submits too easily to moralising imperatives that characterise fun as a vulgar notion [4]. 

 

I must confess, like Bayley, I also used to sneer at the idea of fun and would speak of the superior Greek notion of leventeia - a zest for life and life's pleasures, such as fine wine, expensive meals, and great art. The sort of pleasures, that is to say, enjoyed by those who believe themselves high-spirited and quick-witted; not those dullards who like to play a round of crazy golf and celebrate Christmas [5].

 

Lately, however, in reaction to this intellectual snobbery, I have reintroduced the word fun into both my personal and political vocabulary in an attempt to counter the negative connotations it has acquired and lift its censorship.  

 

If you make a revolution, says Lawrence, make it for fun ... [6]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Stephen Bayley, 'Why I Hate Fun', Idler Magazine (29 Dec 2023): click here to read online. This article can also be found in the Jan/Feb 2024 print edition of the Idler.

 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] As Alan McKee has argued, whilst fun is a vital part of popular culture, certain writers in the aesthetic tradition have tended to value it negatively and excluded it from "their consideration of cultural value or even demonised it as a dangerous distraction from what is truly worthwhile in life". 

      See the chapter entitled 'In Defence of Fun', in FUN! What Entertainment Tells Us About Living a Good Life (Palgrave, 2016), pp.41-59. 

 

[5] According to Bayley: "Christmas is a snare and a delusion: a resonantly empty hoax." 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Sane Revolution', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 449.  

What Was I Thinking? (2 June)

Images used for posts published on this date 

in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2023

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I'm still busy working on an 8000-word essay, the structuring and now even the style and content of which is giving me a real headache, it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by, rather than produce all-new material.

 

And so, let's time travel and reminisce ...

 

 

The Museum of Failed Products 

 

I always thought this post published in 2014 concerning the fact that the vast majority of new consumer products - just like the vast majority of species - are destined to fail, was an amusing if somewhat poignant post, concluding as it does that just as the marketplace can do without yoghurt shampoo or breakfast cola, so too can the universe do without us. 

 

 

Breast Ironing 

 

In June 2015, I wrote about the attempt to suppress the growth of healthy breast tissue in pubescent girls by using hard and often heated objects to literally flatten any signs of such development. Usually, this moral shaping of the flesh is carried out in the name of Love; i.e., it's a bad act performed with good intentions - just like the equally disgusting practice of FGM. 

 

Unfortunately, thanks to mass immigration and multiculturalism we now have both these things in the UK.  

 

 

Cabaret: Divine Decadence and Fascinating Fascism

 

Skip a couple of years forward, to 2017, and I was back in Berlin of the 1920s and early '30s ...

 

For many people, Cabaret (1972) - dir. Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli and Sally Bowles - is a near-perfect film musical; one that appears to starkly contrast the divine decadence of Berlin during the Weimar Republic with the fascinating fascism of Hitler's Third Reich, but which actually demonstrates how the two share the same cultural foundations and possess similar aesthetico-sexual concerns to do with questions of gender, style and performativity. 

 

For ultimately, if life is a cabaret old chum, then politics is just another form of show business and - as Jean Genet once wrote - even fascism can be considered theatre. 

 

Or, as Susan Sontag writes in her famous 1975 essay, there's a disturbing (almost symbiotic) relationship between the world of the cabaret and that of the concentration camp; the seduction is beauty ... the aim is ecstasy ... the fantasy is death.  

In Praise of Denial

 

Skip forward another 24 months to 2019, and I discussed my favourite line from Shakespeare - I know thee not, old man ... (Henry IV Part 2, Act 5 scene 5) - arguing that the need to deny our elders, our loved ones, our teachers, our leaders, and, ultimately, ourselves, is an absolutely crucial requirement in the process of becoming what one is.

 

Why? Because too much love and loyalty to another, or to the past, can be deadly and anyone who wishes to live and fulfil their own destiny has to offer a seemingly cruel denial of someone or something at sometime or other, regardless of the consequences or the pain caused. 

 

We deny and must deny, says Nietzsche, because something in us wants to live and affirm itself.

 

 

Schopenhauer and the Sea Turtles

 

 

2 June 2020: what was I thinking? 

 

Apparently, about German philosophers and marine reptiles ...

 

For Schopenhauer, life is a manifestation of a hungry will; concerned only with its own continuation. Thus, we witness innumerable species - including sea turtles, wild dogs, and tigers - caught up in an endless feeding frenzy in order to survive and reproduce others of their kind. 

 

Life is thus not only absurd, it is often atrociously cruel and grotesquely violent. And those who imagine that the earth would be some kind of peaceful paradise if only mankind were to stop interfering or vanish altogether, are very much mistaken. 

Sometimes, Better a Dead Mountain Lion Than a Live Dog 

Finally, last year, a post about German born, New York based artist and Wunderfrau Heide Hatry and her latest muse and family member; a stuffed puma called Luna - proving that the author of Ecclesiastes who insisted better a living dog than a dead lion was not always right. 

 

For sometimes, as Ms. Hatry knows, it is the deceased who have something vital to teach us. Which is why her long fascination with corpses has often resulted in work of great insight and macabre beauty. 

 

 

You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning and Ask Yourself: Does D. H. Refer to D. H. Lawrence?

Two of England's great punk perverts: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) 

and Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010)

 

 

At number 7 on Malcolm McLaren's top 10 books of the moment - as compiled by the man himself in February 2000 for The Guardian - is Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, which he describes as: "The most melancholic and blissfully romantic novel I have recently re-read." [1]

 

And so, it's not entirely unreasonabe to ask the question first raised by Paul Gorman [2]: do the letters D. H. on the right hand side of the 'You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning ...' shirt refer to the author of English literature's most scandalous novel?   

 

The fact that McLaren had "recently re-read" Lady C. in 2000 and still responded so positively to it, would suggest that he was a longtime fan of the work and we can probably assume he admired Lawrence for confronting the English with the one thing which, in McLaren's view, really scares them: sex.   

 

Of course, Lawrence would have hated McLaren and the Sex Pistols, but then Lawrence pretty much hated everyone and there's no denying that in his willingness to provoke and outrage and challenge the moral and political authority of the Establishment, Lawrence had an attitude which those who later idenified as punk rockers would very much recognise as similar to their own.    

 

Rather strangely, if there's one person who forms a kind of bridge between Lawrence and McLaren its the author and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg. 

 

For not only did the latter openly admire Lawrence and his writings, even at a time when it was not fashionable to do so, but he was on friendly terms with McLaren whom he famously referred to as the Diaghilev of punk [3] at the opening of an episode of The South Bank Show devoted to the latter [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'Malcolm McLaren's top 10 books of the moment', The Guardian (21 Feb 2000): click here.  

[2] See Gorman's blog post on paulgormanis.com: click here. Or click here for a revised and updated version of this post with fresh links.  

[3] Whether he coined this phrase, I don't know; but it makes a nice change from the usual description of McLaren as the Svengali of punk. 

[4] See the post 'When Melvyn Met Malcolm (A Brief Reflection on The South Bank Show Episode 178)' published on Torpedo the Ark on 10 April 2023: click here. 

In a Time Never-Never (Notes on McLaren & Westwood's Worlds End)

Worlds End: the fifth and final incarnation of McLaren and Westwood's 

store at 430 King's Road, Chelsea.

 

'It was a bright cold day in 1980, and the clocks were striking thirteen ...'

 

 

Whilst David Connor proudly promotes his role in the transformation of Seditionaries into Worlds End in late 1980 - describing the total refurbishment of 430 King's Road as a "collaboration with Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren" [1] - I think those of us who care about this matter are aware that it was the latter who essentially should be credited with the work.

 

I'm not suggesting McLaren didn't have help [2]: but the creative vision was his and the key ideas - such as the steeply sloping shop floor and the giant 13-hour clock with hands that rotate anti-clockwise at high speed promising to magically transport those who stepped inside not merely to the past, but to a time never-never or an immanent utopia [3] - were his. 

 

As was the name of the shop: and the Worlds End logo, adapted from the flag design by the eighteenth-century pirate Robert Tew, featuring a muscular arm holding a Saracen sword on a black background (McLaren having decided that the skull and crossbones was simply too clichéd) [4].

 

The interior and exterior designs McLaren came up with for the store were intended to suggest a mixture of The Old Curiosity Shop located in London's Holborn area - and made famous by Dickens in his 1841 novel of that title - and an eighteenth-century galleon.

 

Ultimately, McLaren's idea was to sail away from everything; from punk, from England, from the twentieth-century. And for McLaren, Peter Pan style pirates and Red Indian braves [5] were now sexier, more stylish, and more subversive of the cultural mainstream than rockers in their black leather jackets and ripped jeans.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See David Connor's website page dedicated to Worlds End: click here. 

      Whilst Connor produced a number of drawings for the project that developed what Paul Gorman describes as the "twisted fairy-tale elements of McLaren's concepts" - three of which are included on the page linked to - Malcolm desired a much stronger-looking facade for his store; one that was rooted in history as well fantasy. See Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 457.

 

[2] Gorman informs us that whilst McLaren "oversaw the overhaul", it was carried out by Roger Burton and the electrician Andy Newman. But the latter were simply following instructions and the concept being realised was McLaren's own. See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 457.

 

[3] This phrase, which I associate with Deleuze and Guattari, refers to a place and time that exists very much now/here rather than nowhere. I discuss the idea in relation to the land of Cockaigne and the Big Rock Candy Mountain in a post of 10 August 2018: click here. 

      As for the idea of a clock that might strike for a 13th time, this is one that resonates within English literature. The line at the top of this post, for example, is a paraphrase of the very famous opening line of George Orwell's novel 1984. Essentially, it's an idea that casts doubt on reality.

 

[4] See Paul Gorman's post of 28 August 2014 published on his (always amazingly well-researched) website paulgormanis.com - click here. 

      Readers might also be interested in Ben Westwood's post of 11 August 2017 on the Worlds End blog published on viviennewestwood.com: click here. 

 

[5] Interestingly, McLaren's relation to the Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie - creator of Peter Pan - is little dicussed, even though he was clearly much influenced by the latter's adventures in Neverland as leader of the Lost Boys; adventures which involved dealing with pirates and redskins, as well as fairies and mermaids. 

      In a list for The Guardian of his top 10 books, compiled in February 2000, McLaren places Peter Pan at number one, describing it as the "best sex story" he has ever read: click here. As a possible explanation of what he meant by this, see Philip Hensher's article in The Spectator entitled 'The creepiness of Peter Pan' (11 June 2005): click here.

      

 

For a recent post related to this one entitled 'Out of the Punk Ruins and Into the Age of Piracy' (26 May 2024), please click 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. 

Out of the Punk Ruins and Into the Age of Piracy

Jordan as SEX punk (1976) 

and Worlds End pirate (1981)

 

'Twas a sunny day when I went to play down by the deep blue sea  

I jumped aboard a pirate ship and Malcolm said to me ...

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things I most love about the animated closing scene to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) aboard the good ship Venus [1] is that it anticipates the radical move that McLaren (and Westwood) were to make the following year when they transformed Seditionaries into Worlds End and replaced the figure of the punk rocker with that of the pirate, obliging an entire generation to either set sail with them on a new swashbuckling new adventure, or risk being thrown overboard like that scurvy dog Johnny Rotten.

 

 

II.

By 1979 it was clear that Seditionaries was no longer the centre of the world:

"McLaren and Westwood's customer base was no longer drawn from the cutting edge of the capital's cognoscenti. Now visitors comprised curious provincials, cookie-cutter second-wave punks, Johnny-come-latelies and Sid fans." [2]

 

It was time to move on, or risk becoming trapped by old ideas and old looks - although, ironically, this meant leaving the 20th-century by travelling back to a more Romantic time. 

 

McLaren, now more excited by the outlaw than the rebel, began to conceive of a new age of piracy - one which Westwood was able to brilliantly materialise with her latest fashion designs. Their partnership was once more "firing into the future" [3] and it was all systems (C30 C60 C90) Go!  

 

Of course, this meant the shop at 430 King's Road would also require a major refit ... 

  

 

III.

 

Worlds End - the fifth and final version of the store - was arguably the most imaginative; a cross between a pirate's ship and the Old Curiosity Shop made famous by Dickens. Not as pervy as Sex; not as intimidating as Seditionaries, Worlds End was an unreal place of fantasy and promise. 

 

The large clock placed above the entrance with its hands perpetually spinning backwards, suggested the idea of time travel. But the fact that it had thirteen hours rather than the standard twelve made sure that one also aware that the time one was escaping to didn't exist - but might, one day.

 

In retail terms, Worlds End was certainly more successful than the earlier versions of 430 King's Road. And McLaren and Westwood's Pirate collection (1981) was a seminal moment in fashion history (it certainly inspired Galliano). 

 

Even now, the outfits seem astonishingly fresh and colourful; full of youthful exuberance and swagger. Jerry Seinfeld may have rejected the pirate look [4], but for many of us, the puffy shirt was once a must have back in the day and every now and then you'll still see models on the catwalk wearing clothes inspired by the clothes Malcolm and Vivienne created.  

  

Post-punk pirates Bow Wow Wow 

looking the part in 1981

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written about this scene earlier this year on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 438.

[3] Ibid., p. 450.

 

[4] I'm referring to the episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Puffy Shirt' [S5/E2], dir. Tom Cherones (1993), in which Jerry famously declares: "I don't wanna be a pirate!" Click here. 

Musical bonus: Adam and the Ants, 'Jolly Roger', from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS Records, 1980): click here.

 

Video bonus: Jordan outside Worlds End in 1981 speaking about the new age of piracy: click here.

 

For a related post to this one on Worlds End, please click here.   

Punk It Up (I'm a Sex Pistol Man Oh Yeah!)

Malcolm McLaren: screenshot taken from the video for 

'Punk It Up' (dir. Ian Gabriel): click here. 

A Sex Pistol - that's what I am / I punk it up / I'm a Sex Pistol Man, oh yeah!

 

 

I. 

 

These days, we're all supposed to agree that the Sex Pistols were a four-piece punk rock band fronted by the presiding genius of Johnny Rotten and that they existed from late 1975 through to January 1978, during which time they recorded and released four singles and one perfect album. 

 

But that's not a narrative I subscribe to or go along with. 

 

For me, the Sex Pistols was always a much wider, more interesting and more radical project, conceived by Malcolm McLaren, involving fashion and politics as well as music, and supported by a number of brilliant individuals, including Vivienne Westwood and Jamie Reid, who had no performing role within the group. 

 

For me, the project begins in the spring of 1974 when McLaren and Westwood refurbish their store at 430 King's Road and rebrand it as SEX and Jordan is the original face of punk long before John Lydon ever reared his ugly head. 

 

For me, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records 1979) is, in many respects, a far more challenging and daring album than Never Mind the Bollocks (Virgin Records 1977) and it should be remembered by those punk purists who insist that the latter is the only true album, that the former featured some of the Sex Pistols' greatest hits [1] - just as the film of that title provided some of the most memorable moments in the Sex Pistols story [2]. 

 

And for me, the last Sex Pistols track doesn't appear on either of these albums and doesn't involve any members of the band who went under that name. Written by McLaren and Trevor Horn, and featuring Zulu musicians and backing singers, the track can be found on McLaren's debut solo album, Duck Rock (Charisma Records, 1983) ...

 

II.

 

'Punk It Up' resulted when McLaren spent a few weeks recording material for Duck Rock in South Africa and was asked by the locals to recount stories from his time as manager of the Sex Pistols, much to their delight and amusement:      

"'They couldn't believe when I told them about causing chaos across the land, taking hundreds of thousands of pounds from gullible record companies and sticking a safety pin through the Queens' lips [...] By the end of the story the Zulus were laughing and cheering [...]'" [3]

 

As Paul Gorman rightly says, whilst McLaren refused to allow his central role in the story of the Sex Pistols define him, he was always happy to look back on this period of his life and career and discuss it at length. And so, encouraged by the response to his storytelling, he wrote lyrics for the song 'Punk It Up' and affirmed that, at heart, he remained a Sex Pistol. 

 

'Punk It Up' is a brilliant track - full of joy, full of sunshine, full of chaos, and full of magic; elements that define McLaren's unique vision of post-punk that quickly moved from piracy to paganism and celebrated (amongst others) hobos, hillbillies, and hip hoppers. It almost makes 'Anarchy in the UK' seem a bit provincial ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The double A-sided single coupling 'Something Else' with 'Friggin' in the Riggin'' was the only Sex Pistols single to sell more than a quarter of a million copies.  

 

[2] I'm thinking here, for example, of Sid's performance of 'My Way', about which I have written here. 

 

[3] Malcolm McLaren quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 291.  

The Grievance Collector

 

Unfortunately, there's a personality type in the world known as a grievance collector ... [1]

 

The grievance collector remembers every detail of every last slight or misfortune they have suffered (even those that have a purely imaginary origin) and they know precisely who to blame. 

 

Having zero self-awareness, they never stop to consider for one moment that their own venomous nature and toxic behaviour might be responsible for the anger and resentment they feel; they always look to hold others accountable. 

 

The grievance collector doesn't forgive, doesn't forget and never moves on; they wallow in their own victimhood (or stew in their own juices, as my mother would say) and sincerely believe themselves to be, like Lear, "more sinned against than sinning" [2]. 

 

The grievance collector rarely changes their mind; being skilled at the wilful misinterpretation of events and the rejection of evidence that challenges their pre-existing beliefs and opinions, they are confirmed in their own self-righteous bubble of bias and bullshit. 

 

This makes the grievance collector not only contemptuous of others, but wise in their own conceit. Which, in turn, causes them to develop maladaptive patterns of thought and behaviour that disrupt interpersonal relationships. It's not easy being friends with - or a sibling to - someone to whom you can never apologise enough.  

 

Although they mostly stay silent and brood, sometimes the grievance collector can become verbally abusive. And sometimes they will allow their animosity to bubble over into an act of actual violence - the will to revenge motivates them more than a desire to simply right wrongs [3].

Perhaps not surprisingly, if the grievance collector also subscribes to an extreme political or religious ideology, they will often become attracted to terrorism or serial killing. As one expert in this field writes: 

 

"When irrationality, antagonism, and rigidity combine with unyielding overconfidence in their own sentiments, and beliefs go unchecked or are not attenuated, these individuals become metastable - ready to ignite and explode." [4]

 

What then is the best thing to do when confronted by these human tarantulas and time-bombs?

 

Should we lend them a sympathetic ear and attempt to listen more closely to their complaints? I don't think that will make a whole lot of difference, to be honest. 

 

Should we, then, declare war against them; pass judgement and seek to punish or ridicule? Again, I don't think that will help.

 

Probably best we learn from Nietzsche and simply look away ... [5]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I prefer the phrase grievance collector to wound collector, but I'm aware that whilst the latter is often used synonymously with the former, some authors insist on a distinction. In brief, whilst the grievance collector is seen as weighed down or burdened by all the emotional baggage they carry with them, the wound collector is thought of as suffering from a far more profoundly morbid pathology; someone who likes to inflict actual psychological self-harm and, like Jesus, display their injuries.

 

[2] See Shakespeare's King Lear, Act 3, scene 2.  

 

[3] As Nietzsche says: "No one accuses without an underlying notion of punishment and revenge [...] All complaint is accusation [...] we always make some one responsible." See Human, All Too Human, Vol. II. Pt. 1: 'Assorted Opinions and Maxims', 78.

 

[4] See Joe Navarro, 'On Wound Collectors', in Psychology Today (6 Sept 2015): click here to read online. 

 

[5] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book IV, §276 where he writes: "I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation."

 

 

William Wordsworth and the Power of a Peculiar Eye

William Wordsworth and 

his green-tinted spectacles [1]

 

'With an inflamed eye, and joy in our hearts, we see into the life of things ...'

 

 

I. 

 

I didn't know, until Chloe told me, that Wordsworth had trouble with his eyes and that his poetic vision was to some extent shaped by the peculiarities of his physical vision:  

"Whether the visible world projected itself more sharply, richly, insistently, upon the eye of Wordsworth than upon that of Dante, Milton, Keats, or Shelley, we cannot know; but from what he tells us we do know that his visual impressions were of a very special intensity, and such as come to few beholders on this earth." [2]

 

In other words, it seems that due to the corruption of an organic function by disease - which not only made him unusually sensitive to light, but left him at times almost unable to see - Wordsworth was able to produce an imaginative body of work of unusual beauty.

 

Of course, having trouble with one's eyes and living in fear of blindness, is not fun; nor does it always have a positive effect on one's work. And I speak here from personal experience; there are times when I am unable to either read or write due to acute eyestrain and impaired vision. 

 

 

II.    

 

Wordsworth first began to have trouble with his eyes in January 1805, when trachoma caused an inflammation of his eyelids [3]. Five years later, first in the summer and then in the winter of 1810, he suffered two further outbreaks of the infection. 

 

Luckily, things cleared up - though it's worth keeping in mind there were no modern drugs or antibiotics available at this time (people relied on various folk remedies - such as holding a blue gemstone to the eyes). 

 

In 1820, however, the problem returned and Wordsworth genuinely worried he would go blind like his hero, Milton [4]. However, this did at least focus his attention and encouraged him to get a move on with the publication of his poetry. 

 

As attacks became more frequent and severe, he started to wear green tinted eye-glasses [5] to protect his eyes from bright light and any dust that might blow in his face. 

 

This seemed to do the trick, as things again improved and it wasn't until 1833 that one of his eyes - not just the lid - became infected; a far more serious concern, that rightly left him feeling extremely anxious about the darkness to come. News of this even made the papers of the time - obliging Wordsworth to issue a press release denying the false claim he had gone blind. 

His family were, arguably, not quite as understanding as they might have been: 

 

"A letter dated December 29th 1834 from William's nephew, Chris, to his father (William's brother) reads: 'My Uncle's eyes are … much better, indeed they would be quite well, if he did not write verses: but this he will do; and therefore it is extremely difficult to prevent him from ruining his eyesight'." [6]

 

Six years later, even his wife Mary was writing that "'tho' he labours in constant fear of his eyes and complains of discomfort from them - yet in reality he has had very little suffering'" [7]. 

I have to say, I find this apparent lack of sympathy from his nearest and dearest all a bit troubling; even if the inflammation of his eyelids wasn't quite as serious as he thought, his fear of blindness and physical discomfort was surely genuine. 

Even more shocking - to me at least - is the fact that the commentator who quotes these letters concludes his (otherwise informative) piece on Wordsworth and his ocular issues with this dismissive (almost sneering) remark.

 

"Mary's comment in 1840 acts, I think, as a caution as we assess the severity of Wordsworth's eye trouble. While Wordsworth suffered from a very real affliction, his wife's remark tells us that maybe it was not always as severe as the poet made out. This could be expected from a man of artistic temperament who was also very anxious about his illness." [8]    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The glasses are on display at Wordsworth's home in the Lake District, Dove Cottage (Grasmere). For details, visit the Wordsworth Trust website: click here.  

 

[2] Marian Mead, 'Wordsworth's Eye', PMLA, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1919), pp. 202-224. Click here for open access on JSTOR.

 

[3] Trachoma is an infectious disease caused by a bacterium. It damages the inner surface of the eyelids and can lead to pain and even permanent blindness if left untreated and one is unfortunate enough to experience repeated infections. Although it is often categorised as a neglected tropical disease, it is known to infect tens of millions of people in developing regions and is a recognised public health issue in over forty countries.    

 

[4] John Milton had become totally blind in both eyes by 1652 (i.e., fifteen years before the first publication of Paradise Lost). The cause of his blindness is debated, but bilateral retinal detachment or glaucoma seem to be the most likely explanations. His sightlessness forced him to dictate his verse and prose to secretarial assistants (amanuenses) who transcribed the work for him.  

 

[5] Again, without wanting to make this all about me, I sympathise here; following surgery on my right eye to restore vision following damage to my cornea (probably as the result of an ealier infection), I had to wear similarly shaded glasses for several months. Luckily, this was during the punk period in the late 1970s, so they didn't attract too much attention; people thought I was just another teenage poser.

 

[6] This letter is quoted by Philip Harper, in 'William Wordsworth's glasses and the lifelong struggle with his eyesight', on the always interesting website Museum Crush: click here. 

 

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

 

 

This post is for that phantom of delight, Chloe Rose Campbell.

What Was I Thinking? (22 May)

Images used for the posts published on this date 

in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I'm busy working on an 8000-word essay, the structuring of which is giving me a real headache - it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by, rather than produce all-new material. 

 

It seems that I published a post on this date for five consecutive years: 2016 - 2020. And these posts were: 

 

 

On the Death of a Wellness Warrior (The Case of Jessica Ainscough)

In the first of the May 22nd posts (2016), I discussed the tragic case of a so-called Wellness Warrior from Down Under called Jessica Ainscough. She died, in 2015, from cancer, despite her fanatic adherence to a range of alternative treatments based on diet and lifestyle rather than medical science - including the ludicrous Gerson therapy. 

 

Her case perfectly illustrating the peculiar mix of denial, dishonesty and desperate self-delusion of those who reject chemo and surgery in favour of fruit juice and coffee enemas.  

 

Ainscough sadly placed her hopes in quackery and became a pin-up girl for those who believe there's a global conspiracy by the medical establishment (in cahoots with big business and governments) to cover up the beautiful truth about cancer; i.e. that it can be cured with positive thinking and a bizarre range of practices that are basically forms of faith healing and folk magic despite the pseudo-scientific language they are disguised with. 

 

Having said that - writing in a post-Covid era - I have to admit I'm a lot more reluctant to follow the science and allow untested experimental vaccines to be used on me at the behest of the authorities.

 

 

Towards a Queer Ethology: Who Fucked Bambi (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) 

 

In the second of the May 22nd posts (2017), I discussed a short ethological study of something that those who like to idealise animal behaviour and use Nature as a metaphysical reference point for their own moral values, would probably prefer not to know about; a female sika deer contentedly having sex with a male Japanese macaque (or snow monkey) on the island of Yakushima. 

 

Apparently, although these two species enjoy a close and playful symbiotic relationship, it's extremely rare for them to engage in acts of coition. It seems wrong here to speak of consent or rape and the lead author of the study insisted that both animals seemed to enjoy their shared sexual experience (the female deer even licking the male monkey's ejaculate off her body).

 

 

On the Erotics and Etiquette of Wearing Gloves 

 

In the third of the May 22nd posts (2018), I reflected on a time when respectable women (including my mother) still wore gloves as a matter of course; not just as an elegant fashion accessory to be matched with hat and shoes - nor simply to protect the hands - but as a sign of culture, discipline and breeding.

 

Gloves encoded an entire set of values and were worn to display one's knowledge of - and conformity to - a complex series of social norms governing polite behaviour. In other words, the wearing of gloves was a question of etiquette, belonging to a wider politics of style.

 

But just as important as the wearing of gloves was their removal; a lady should always do so discreetly and not as if performing a striptease of the hand - a point that led us on to the erotics of the glove, as examined by Roland Barthes in his beautiful little book Le plaisir du texte (1973). 

 

According to Barthes, the erotics of the glove is often tied to the pleasure of glimpsing naked female flesh exposed between two edges. In other words, it's 'the intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing' which the amorous subject finds arousing. 

 

But of course, there are fetishists who love gloves in and of themselves and couldn't care less about glimpsing the flesh or intermittence; their concern is with the length, style, colour and - often most crucially of all - the material of the glove (be it leather, silk, cotton, or latex).

 

 

The Man and the Dreaming Woman: Notes on D. H. Lawrence's The Witch à la Mode

 

In the fourth of the May 22nd posts (2019), I provided a reading of Lawrence's early short story 'The Witch à la Mode' - one that anticipates his often underrated second novel The Tresspasser (1912) and which is born of the author's sexual frustration and sardonic anger.

 

Interestingly, at the end of the tale, Lawrence seems to come down firmly on the side of sexual maturity and a conventional married life. For having saved his ex-girlfriend from the flames, the protagonist of the story, Coutts, abandons her in order to become the good husband and father, growing fat and amiable in domestic bliss, that he always wanted to be.

 

 

Clap Trap  

 

Finally, there's this post dated 22 May 2020 on the North Korean style communal clap-along in support of our NHS heroes and other key workers that became almost compulsory during the Covid pandemic when we were all in lockdown (a slightly sexier-sounding way of saying imprisoned in our own homes).

 

Doubtless, many clapped with sincerity and a sense of civic duty and were not just showing off or virtue signalling with their saucepans, but the entire performance was cynically orchestrated by politicians and the media and, as I said at the time, I would rather have had a dose of the clap than stand on my doorstep and join in with a depressing (and sinister) display of mock-solidarity. 

 

Freedom is often best expressed as refusal and not-doing, because, as Barthes powerfully reminds us, fascism is the power to compel activity.