I Have Seen the Dark Universe Yawning

It is better to laugh at man from inside the Void, 

than to weep for him without ...

 

 

I. 

 

Regular readers will know that I've recently been thinking about the philosophy of absence - click here - and the call of the void: click here.     

 

But the Great Nothing that has really captured my interest of late has nothing to do with subjective experience, but is, rather, a spherical region of space in the vicinity of the Boötes constellation, about 700 million light years from Earth, known as the Boötes Void ... 

 

 

II. 

 

To be fair, it's not quite a void, as it actually contains a number of galaxies. 

 

However, this number is small; just a few dozen and thus significantly fewer than the approximately 2,000 galaxies that one might expect to find in an area of space of comparable size.

 

And let's be clear, here: the Boötes Void, discovered in 1981 by Robert Kirshner [1], is an unimaginably large area of space, with a radius just shy of 330 million light years, or 62 megaparsecs as our astronomer friends would say [2]. 

 

That makes it one of the largest known voids in the visible universe [3] and some even like to think of it as a supervoid.  

 

 

III. 

 

Of course, size isn't everything and there are plenty of smaller voids to contend with and marvel at. In fact, voids constitute around 80% of the observable universe - and don't even mention black holes [4]. 

 

Scientists hope that by studying the Boötes Void they will be able to learn more about the dark energy that drove their formation as the universe expanded. Cosmic voids also conveniently allow for the study of elementary particles known as neutrinos that freely stream across them on a massive scale. 

 

For me, however, as a philosopher rather than an astrophysicist, why the Boötes Void and other such structures excite is because they reaffirm the inhuman scale and nature of the universe. 

 

D. H. Lawrence hated that modern science books made him "dizzy with the sense of illimitable space" [5]. It is, he says, "the disembodied mind alone" which thrills to the thought of the "hollow void of space, where lonely stars hang in isolation" [6]. 

 

But, for me, what this dizzying and profoundly pessimistic thought does is remind one that "Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity" [7]; i.e., a chance to think alien thoughts and to experience monstrous new feelings, that may or may not coincide with human interests. 

 

When one stares at the night sky and contemplates the fact that there exists a mind-independent reality which, "despite the presumptions of human narcissism, is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the 'values' and 'meanings' which we would drape over it in order to make it more hospitable" [8], one simply can't help smiling. 

 

Lawrence says it's astrology rather than astronomy that gives a marvellous sense of freedom and release [9], but I simply don't agree with that. 

 

For astrology, with its central teaching of as above, so below is an all too human practice that projects man on a cosmic scale. It is astronomy - and the speculatively material way of thinking that comes out of it - that truly provides "entry into another world, another kind of world, measured by another dimension" [10] and which reminds us that the universe "is not our or anyone's 'home', nor a particularly beneficent progenitor" [11].        

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Whilst the American astronomer Robert Kirshner and his team at the University of Michigan were surveying galactic redshifts in order to create a 3D map of the universe, they discovered a huge and largely empty region of space, which was originally called the Great Nothing, but which is now known as the Boötes Void. Due to its size and the fact that it does contain some galaxies, they knew it wasn't a black hole and comparisons with the molecular cloud Barnard 68 soon made clear it couldn't be a dark nebula either.

 

[2] A megaparsec (Mpc) is a unit of astronomical distance equal to one million parsecs, or roughly 3.26 million light-years. It is commonly used to measure the vast distances between galaxies and galaxy clusters, helping astronomers map the large-scale structure of the universe.

      To give some idea of how big a distance 62 Mpcs is, keep in mind that the nearest galaxy to our own - the Andromeda Galaxy - is less than 1 megaparsec away or about 2.5 million light years (i.e., 15 trillion miles). Or, if you want to think of it another way, we could fit billions of galaxies the size of the Milky Way into the Boötes Void. 

      Of course, Lawrentians hate to think this way, sharing (or imitating) their master's horror of large numbers (meganumerophobia): 

      "All this modern stuff about astronomy, stars, their distances and speeds and so on, talking of billions and trillions of miles and years and so forth: it is just occult. The mind is revelling in words, the intuition and instincts are just left out, or prostituted into a sort of ecstasy [...] that lies in absurd figures such as 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [...] figures which abound in modern scientific books on astronomy [...] It is all poppy-cock." 

      See D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 208. 

 

[3] It's important to understand that the portion of the universe we can see (even with the aid of technology) is strictly limited and that the total size of the universe is unknown; it's estimated to be at least 250 times larger than the observable universe, but may, in fact, be infinitely bigger. We're basically living in a bubble and have no real idea of what lies outside.   

 

[4] Spatial voids, of course, are fundamentally different from black holes; the lattrer are extremely dense and have powerful gravity, whilst the former are vast regions of space that are largely empty of galaxies and matter. In other words, whereas black holes are the densest objects in the universe, voids are the least dense regions, formed by the expansion of the universe.   

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 46.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

[7] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. xi.    

 

[8] Ibid.

 

[9] I've written about this in more detail in the post entitled 'I Would Like to Know the Stars Again: Reflections on Astronomy and Astrology in the Work of D. H. Lawrence' (28 March 2021): click here. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, p. 46. 

 

[11] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound, p. xi. 

 

 

Welcome to Harold Hill ...

Fig. 1 Welcome to Harold Hill ...

where even the local pub is in ruins

Some readers might recall a post from 2016 in which I described the sad (but all too common) fate that has befallen my local boozer [1]. The Pompadours had once been a Harold Hill landmark, but is now just another derelict pub boarded up and still - nine years later - awaiting demolition (see fig. 1 above). 

 

In that period, things have, if anything - and despite Havering Council's promises of regeneration [2] - gone from bad to worse and my local shopping precinct, Hilldene, is fast becoming an area where even the ghosts are scared to venture after dark [3]. 

 

The air smells of car fumes, cooking oil, and cannabis and even Bargain Town - a large discount store mostly selling things priced at just £1 - has gone out of business; as has the pet shop and F. Cooke's, one of London's oldest established pie & mash shops. 

 

Natwest shut their Harold Hill branch two years ago; Lloyds and the Halifax having previously abandoned the area. The local estate agency has also relocated and even one of the (multiple) charity shops has closed.  

 

Thank goodness the local flower shop and hairdressers remain, as well as small-scale versions of Sainsbury's, the Co-Op, and Iceland. Other than that - and a couple of newsagents - it's basically betting shops, dodgy-looking fast food outlets, and a games arcade (though even Funland may have just pulled its shutters down for good).

 

And over all this, English flags and Union Jacks still pathetically fly (see fig. 2 below) ... 

Fig. 2 Welcome to Harold Hill ... 

where even Bargain Town went out of business

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post 'Ghost Town' (7 November 2016): click here.

 

[2] According to Havering Council's website - click here - consultations with residents have been ongoing since 2016 to try and decide the future of Harold Hill and, in particular, the Farnham and Hilldene shopping area. 

      In 2021, the Council committed to significant investment to ensure that the latter 'continues to be a beacon for the neighbourhood and the whole community to enjoy' and residents should rest assured a single masterplan vision is being put into place.

 

[3] Evidence of gang activity and associated issues, such as drug dealing and violent crime, in certain areas of Harold Hill, is well-documented. Police and local authorities, whilst aware of the issues, seem powerless to do anything (other than hold community meetings in order to warn people that the streets aren't safe). In the last ten years there has been a 167% increase in incidents of knife crime in Havering and Harold Hill East is recognised as the most deprived area in the borough.   

 

Into the Valley of the Dolls

 

Cover of Glamour UK (2025) 

Photo by Carly Scott [1]

 

 

The so-called trans issue - i.e., the debate surrounding transgender rights and what place trans individuals should occupy in society - is one of those that will not go away: and, of course, nor should it go away for as long as trans people face discrimination and violence.

 

Some people clearly wish it were otherwise: clearly wish that trans people would shut up and go away; including some of those who should know better. 

 

Whether we should put J. K. Rowling in this category is debatable. I don't believe she's transphobic and think her concern is primarily to protect the rights and status of biological women. 

 

However, she's back in the news once more after slamming Glamour magazine's decision to feature nine trans women on the cover of an issue honouring 'Women of the Year' and one can't help wondering if the bee in Rowling's bonnet buzzes with a certain obsessiveness.     

 

Taking to X, she accuses the UK publication of suggesting to its young female readership that men can be better women than they are and that this has a very negative effect on their sense of self-worth. But that's quite an extreme reading. 

 

It could be that Glamour is simply making the point that not all women are born; some are self-made - i.e., that for some, their womanhood is not something determined by genes, but, rather, a set of constructed traits (some resulting from surgical procedures and hormone treatments; others involving the use of clothes, makeup and other forms of artifice). 

 

The fact that the trans women on the cover of Glamour happily accept the designation dolls [2] is a clue to this - and might even be seen as a concession to those who insist that trans women are not real women. 

 

Which, in a sense, they're not. 

 

But then, as friend of mine who takes his agalmatophilia very seriously said when looking at the above photograph: They're not even real dolls!  

  

Notes

 

[1] The nine trans women - or dolls - who appear on this cover (all wearing T-shirts by Conner Ives) work across fashion, music, publishing and activism: Munroe Bergdorf (model and author); Shon Faye (journalist and presenter); Maxine Heron (communications officer at the UK based charity Not a Phase); Mya Mehmi (DJ and musician); Munya (model); Ceval Omar (model); Bel Priestly (actor and TikTok creator); Dani St. James (chief executive at Not a Phase); Taira (model and writer). 

      The article, by Shon Faye, which includes interviews with the above, can be read online by clicking here. 

 

[2] Actually, one of the trans women interviewed by Shon Faye - the Japanese model Taira - does recognise that the term dolls to describe trans women might be problematic; especially as it enters into mainstream culture and is used by (cis) people who do not know its historical context as a term from Black and Latina queer ballroom culture in the 1980s. 

      She says of the slogan Protect the Dolls - first used by the American fashion designer Conner Ives and which has since been adopted by various celebrities as well as members of the LGBTQ community - that whilst it's a powerful line and may help raise positive awareness of the problems facing trans people - particularly feminine-looking trans women - it could also "encourage objectifying trans bodies" and become othering in and of itself. 

      I think Taira has a point: and it's interesting to discover from Faye's article that trans is the fifth most popular porn category searched for in the UK. It's ironic that it's often the same men who desire and sexually objectify trans women who call loudest for their removal from public life and subject them to abuse.  

        

Did You Hear the One About the Philosopher and the Actress?

The Philosopher and the Actress: 

Wittgenstein & Raquel Welch 

  

I. 

 

According to the Google AI assistant, Ludwig Wittgenstein was an austere and reclusive Austro-British philosopher who did not know and never met the Hollywood sex symbol and actress Raquel Welch. 

 

Not only did they move in completely different social and professional circles, but Wittgenstein died in Cambridge, in 1951, aged sixty-two, when Miss Welch would have been an eleven-year-old child living in California with her parents.    

 

But even if they didn't cross paths in what passes for the actual world, perhaps their lives were entangled at some weird quantum level. At any rate, I can think of a parallel incident involving the same tool that allows us to make a connection between these two individuals ...

 

 

II. 

 

Many younger readers, having grown up in a world of central heating, will probably never have warmed themselves before a real fire place; never watched smoke sucked up a chimney, never emptied an ashpan, never filled a coal scuttle, or handled the various other tools that one needs to maintain a good fire, such as a long metal poker, designed to safely adjust and break up the burning logs or red hot lumps of coal so as to improve airflow. 

One person who did know how to handle a poker - though not always in the manner intended - was Herr Wittgenstein and even many non-philosophers will be familiar with the astonishing confrontation with Karl Popper at the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, in October 1946. 

 

Arguing over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles, things grew increasingly heated when Wittgenstein began to wave a poker around to make his case, at one point thrusting it in Popper's direction and challenging him to give an example of a moral rule. 

 

According to Popper, he calmly stood his ground and replied: 'One should not threaten visiting lecturers with a poker.' Infuriated by this mocking response, Wittgenstein - and again we rely on Popper's account of the incident - threw down the poker and stormed out of the room [1].     

 

 

III. 

 

Interestingly, Raquel Welch also knew how to handle a poker with violent intent ...

 

According to a recent documentary [2], Welch once threatened her father - an aeronautical engineer from La Paz, Bolivia, of Spanish descent - with said implement during a family argument around the dinner table in which he had thrown a glass of milk in the face of her mother. 

 

She was sixteen at the time and sick of her father's tyrannical behaviour towards her and her mother and this incident - in which he backed down and backed away - changed their relationship forever as well as the dynamic of the household. Thus, it was a defining (and empowering) moment for her [3]. 

 

And whilst Popper may have a point - one should probably not threaten visiting professors with a poker - I feel that the young Miss Welch (or Raquel Tejada, as she was known at this time) was justified in standing up to a bully who had humiliated and sought to intimidate her mother on many occasions over many years.   

 

In brief: violent and abusive husbands and fathers deserve to get their comeuppance.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Whether Popper's account is strictly accurate - or is dramatised for comic effect - is debatable. The most comprehensive account of this confrontation can be found in the best-selling book by David Edmonds and John Eidenow; Wittgenstein's Poker: The story of a ten-minute argument between two great philosophers (Faber & Faber, 2001).  

      Readers might also like to know that an animated short film entitled Wittgenstein's Poker is currently in post-production, directed by Christian De Vita, written by Casey Cohen, David Edmonds and John Eidenow, starring Brian Cox (as Bertie Russell), Richard E. Grant (as Wittgenstein) and Karl Markovics (as Popper): click here for details, or to lend support via Kickstarter, click here. 

 

[2] I Am Raquel Welch (dir. Olivia Cheng, 2025), is a feature documentary (produced by Network Entertainment) which explores her life and legacy. To watch a trailer on mubi.com, click here. 

 

[3] Those wishing to know more should see Welch's 2010 memoir, Beyond the Cleavage (Weinstein Books), in which she provides an account of this incident with her father and a poker that she gripped with both hands. 

 

Enjoy This Post - Such as it Isn't

Polo: the mint with the hole

Photo by Conell on Flickr (9 April 2018)

 

 

I. 

 

As a child and natural born nihilist, absence always excited more than presence (not necessarily making the heart grow fonder, but the head spin faster); holes, slits, and cracks always fascinated more than wholeness and smooth impenetrability. Pulling the plug was always a much greater pleasure than filling the tub with water.   

 

And the philosophy of negativity still appeals to me today; I spend an inordinate amount of time watching shadows in the darkness and listening to the silence. Althought whether nothingness is an actual feature of ontological reality or one that we merely imagine due to the way we think and speak (i.e., a conceptual fiction rooted in language), I don't really know and, to be honest, don't really care [1].

 

 

II. 

 

Funnily enough, the idea that we can perceive absences is becoming increasingly popular in contemporary culture - and not just amongst philosophers. People seem to be waking up to the fact that whilst how things are matters, so too is it equally vital how things are not and that being rests upon non-being. 

 

In other words, people seem to be responding to the call of the void [2] in ever greater numbers and I have to admit I smiled when I came across an essay written in 2017 by Dan Cavedon-Taylor which argued that we can tactually perceive the absence of a tooth after the dentist has performed an extraction - for wasn't I saying much the same thing in the very first post published here on Torpedo the Ark five years ealier [3].

 

Namely, that the sense of loss is palpable and that a rotten tooth - even after removal - continues to function as a provocation and invisible presence. 

 

Thinkers in both the European and Anglo-American traditions of philosophy have accepted the truth of this. Even Bertrand Russell - about as far away from Heidegger in both philosophical methods and concerns as one can get - conceded that there must exist negative facts. 

 

However, there remain those who argue that "although we can experience absences, and although our absence experiences are often triggered by perceptual experiences, absence experiences are not themselves a perceptual phenomenon" [4] and warn we should not be seduced by those thinkers who suggest otherwise and commit themselves to "the reality of negative features in the world and our ability to perceive them" [5].   

      

Thinkers such as Roy Sorensen, for example ...

 

 

III.

 

Sorensen's work on negative reality [6] - things that are paradoxically present by their absence - tries a bit too hard to be quirky and fun and so quickly starts to irritate, but, nevertheless, he's got some interesting things to say on shadows and holes, for example, and I'm vaguely sympathetic with his attempt to persuade others that these things are entities in their own right (and not just mental constructs that result from human experience and expectation - which was Sartre's position). 

  

I'm not entirely convinced that the hole in a Polo mint can be perceived independently of the matter that surrounds it, but I would certainly agree that the hole cannot be defined purely in terms of the mint sweet; it's an objective feature in itself and to deny this just seems a little silly and a form of metaphysical prejudice that thinks presence is the be-all and end-all and absence of no positive importance or reality because seemingly less tangible.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This is clearly a question that continues to trouble many philosophers, however, including Stephen Mumford, who peddles a form of soft Parmenideanism in his recent book Absence and Nothing: the philosophy of what there is not, (Oxford University Press, 2021). 

      For Mumford, the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides was largely correct to say that the division into Being and non-Being is a false rather than a fundamental division as what exists is everything whilst what does not exist is nothing. For Pamenides, to believe in the existence of both Being and non-Being is contradictory and makes knowledge impossible. He also insists that Being is eternal and indivisible.  

      Unlike Parmenides, however, Mumford does not think that being is essentially fixed and unchanging and he does not rule out the possibility of being able to think about what there is not and even that there might - under certain circumstances - be some form of negative entity that would have to be acknowledged (if only as a theoretical anomaly). 

      Thus, Mumford can, in this way, have his cake and eat it; maintaining his argument that absence and nothingness are not an ontological part of everyday reality, whilst still writing a 200 page monograph on the subject. That's not to dismiss his methodology, but simply point out the convenient nature of making a compromise of this kind.       

 

[2] I don't mean to suggest more and more people have the urge to jump from atop a tall building, but that more and more people are waking up the fact that the void is a space of forgotten possibility and future potential and so has vital existential reality. See my recently published post on this (22 October 2025): click here.  

 

[3] See Dan Cavedon-Taylor, 'Touching Voids: On the Varieties of Absence Perception', in Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. 8, Issue 2, (2017), pp. 355–366. The post on TTA that I refer to is 'Reflections on the Loss of UR6' (24 Nov 2012): click here. 

      Cavedon-Taylor and myself are in agreement that after having a tooth pulled - and after the anaesthetic wears off - the first thing you do is run your tongue along your teeth until arriving at the gap where once a tooth was located: "The gap is experienced as unnerving, and not merely on its initial probing […] Something once experienced as present within your mouth is now experienced as lacking." 

 

[4] Laura Gow, 'A New Theory of Absence Experience', in the European Journal of Philosophy Vol. 29, Issue 1, (March 2021),  pp. 168-181. To read online, click here. 

      And see also Gow's paper entitled 'Empty Space, Silence, and Absence' in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 51, Issue 7, (October 2021), pp. 496-507. Published online by Cambridge University Press (March 2022): click here.  

      In this text, Gow examines two experiences which some philosophers have claimed (mistakenly, in her view) to be paradigmatic examples of absence experience: the experience of empty space and the experience of silence. For Gow, "even if we can see empty space and hear silence [...], such experiences cannot be used in support of the perceptual view of absence experience". 

 

[5] Stephen Mumford, Absence and Nothing: the philosophy of what there is not, p. 2. 

 

[6] See for example his book Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows (Oxford University Press, 2008); or his more recent study, Nothing: A Philosophical History (Oxford University Press, 2022). 

In Memory of Three Fictional Spivs

James Beck in character as Joe Walker in Dad's Army (1973) 

George Cole as Flash Harry in The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954)

Arthur English as the Prince of the Wide Boys (1950) 

 

 

I. 

 

As a child, like millions of other people, I used to enjoy watching the TV sitcom Dad's Army (BBC, 1968-1977). Admittedly, some of the characters I found irritating - Clive Dunn's Lance Corporal Jones, for example - but most I thought amusing; particularly John Laurie's Private Frazer. 

 

The character who most intrigued me, however, was Private Joe Walker, played by James Beck, a flashy petty criminal dealing in black market goods with a cheeky Cockney persona; i.e., what is known by British English speakers as a spiv.  

 

If Private Godfrey (Arnold Ridley) might have made a kind grandad, Joe Walker would've been a fun uncle and generous I'm sure when it came to birthday gifts and Christmas presents (even if they had fallen off the back of a lorry).  

 

 

II.  

 

The origin of the word spiv is obscure, although, perhaps significantly, it was the nickname of a small-time London crook and con artist, Henry Bagster, who was frequently arrested for illicit street trading during the early years of the 20th century and whose court appearances often attracted press coverage.  

 

Whatever its origin, the word wasn't popularised until the Second World War and post-War period, when many goods were rationed in the UK and spivs really came into their own as a distinct class of traders, with a distinctive look and way of dressing; hair slicked back with Brylcreem; a Clark Gable style pencil moustache; a trilby or other wide-brimmed hat worn rakishly at an angle; a long drape jacket with padded shoulders; a wide brightly patterned tie, etc. 

 

All these things were de rigueur for someone who wanted to advertise their entrepreneurial spirit at the time and look the business. One of the reasons the general public not only tolerated but seemed to admire these worldly-wise and larger-than-life characters - apart from the fact they could get you what you wanted - was that they looked so chipper and at odds with the austerity of the times [1].   

  

 

III.

 

The look was perfected by comedian and actor Arthur English, who, during his early professional career as a stand-up comic, adopted the persona of a stereotypical spiv and became known as the Prince of the Wide Boys (Jimmy Perry and David Croft, the writers of Dad's Army, were happy to admit that Private Walker was in part based on English's stage character) [2].

 

But the look was perhaps most memorably pushed to its comical extreme by George Cole, as Flash Harry, in The Belles of St. Trinian's (dir. Frank Launder, 1954); one of the greatest and most popular of British films [3].

 

Whether Harry might identify as a spiv is debatable and he tends to describe himself as a fixer and go-between; the man whom the girls trust to bottle and sell their gin, distilled in the school's chemistry lab and place bets on the gee-gees for them. 

 

But he looks like a spiv and acts like a spiv, so I think we can use this term in good faith (although the fact that he helps the sixth form girls find wealthy lovers and potential husbands doesn't quite make him a pimp). 

 

Let's just say that Harry's a shady character and a well-dodgy geezer; a ducker and diver who certainly has connections with the criminal community, even if he's not quite one of their own [4]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] The fact is, the British working class have long had a soft-spot for loveable rogues and dashing outlaws. Thus, as Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey note, "although in both official discourse and the cinema of the period" spivs tended to be presented as "'dangerous, unpatriotic and un-British'", there was public ambivalence about them and even "a degree of sympathy for such glamorous, anti-authority figures" who, after all, helped alleviate the misery of wartime conditions. 

      See Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey, 'The Picaro and the Prole, the Spiv and the Honest Tommy in Leon Griffiths's Minder', in the Journal of British Cinema and Television, 15 (4), (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 513-531. The lines quoted are on p. 519. To read this essay as an online pdf, click here. 

 

[2] As Denis Gifford reminds us in an obituary for Arthur English published in the Independent (19 April 1995): "English was not the first to caricature the spiv on stage. That honour belongs to the great Sid Field, whose West End wide boy, Slasher Green, is immortalised for all time in the film London Town (1946)." But English's spiv act - "which he wrote himself and delivered at top speed in full motion" - was undoubtedly a thing of comic genius. 

      English signed off his first radio broadcast with the following rather lovely lines:  

      "This is Arthur English shoving orf to the tune of 'The Windmill's Turning'. Shove on the coal, blow the expense,  just keep the 'ome fires burning. Perhaps I've made you larf a lot, I 'ope I've brought yer joy.  So 'ere's mud in yer eye from the end of me tie, good night - and watch the boy!'

      To read Gifford's obituary for Arthur English in full by clicking here.   

 

[3] Such was its success with critics and moviegoers alike, that The Belles of St. Trinian's gave rise to three sequels: Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957); The Pure Hell of St Trinian's (1960); and The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery (1966), all directed by Frank Launder.

 

[4] In this he's very much like George Cole's other iconic character, Arthur Daley, in the long-running TV comedy-drama Minder (ITV, 1979-1994). They are, of course, distinct characters created by different writers and operating in different eras, but whenever I watch the Crombie-coated, trilby-hatted, cigar-smoking Arthur Daley, it's hard not to have thoughts of Flash Harry. 

      Interestingly, there was initialy resistance to the idea of casting George Cole in the role of Arthur Daley as he was seen as a bit too refined: "It was only when Euston Pictures's executive producer Verity Lambert intervened, noting that Cole had made a name for himself playing Flash Harry, the spiv in the St Trinian's films, that the deal was sealed ..." 

      See the excellent essay by Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey cited in note 1 above, p. 518.  

 

 

Bonus: Flash Harry making an entrance in The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954): click here.    

 

 

Who Was That Young American Press Lady?

Lee Ellen Newman: Press Goddess 

Charisma Records (c.1983)

I.

 

As Paul Gorman reminds us in his excellent biography, when Malcolm McLaren presented his groundbreaking new record 'Buffalo Gals' to the executives at Charisma Records in the autum of 1982, excitedly telling them how kids "'danced on their heads to this beat in the middle of the streets of New York'" [1], he may have anticipated a little bemusement, but not such angry incomprehension and resistance. 

 

Unfortunately, however, that the track was "a stylistic aural collage to rival McLaren's work in fashion, interiors and design was entirely lost on the record company ..." [2]   

 

The head of promotions declared that it was not music and refused to take it to the radio stations; poor old Tony Stratton-Smith wondered how he was going to recuperate at least some of the monies paid out in advance; and, according to McLaren, the only person who stood up for him was "'the press lady: a young American, new in her job'" [3].  

 

 

II. 

 

The question becomes: Who was that young American press lady?

 

And it's a question I'm happy to answer; not only because today happens to be her birthday, but because Lee Ellen Newman is one of the people I will always be grateful to.  

 

For she it was who advised me on the importance of building a wide network of contacts, of cultivating a likeable public image, and of remaining calm under pressure (even if, unfortunately, I never quite managed to accomplish these things to her high professional standard).  

 

And she it was who taught me how to write concisely and persuasively and to master the art of what is known in the PR world as strategic storytelling; i.e., the deployment of a cleverly structured (and seductive) narrative in order to appeal to a target audience and achieve a specific goal [4].  

 

So, thanks Lee Ellen for being an early mentor, a dear friend, as well as one of the few figures in the music business that Malcolm always had affection for. 

 

And happy birthday!

 

Notes

 

[1] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman, in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 517.

 

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 516.     

 

[3] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 517.  

      As Gorman goes on to elucidate, Charisma seriously considered taking legal action against McLaren on the grounds that he had grossly overspent and that "he was in breach of the contractual obligation to deliver music of acceptable commercial value". 

      However, 'Buffalo Gals' became a top ten hit in the UK and other countries and this "proved sufficient for Charisma to back off from its legal posturing" and press on with release of McLaren's debut album Duck Rock (1983) and other singles taken from it, including McLaren's biggest selling and highest charting hit, 'Double Dutch'.

      Relations between the artist and the record label failed to recover, however, even though Charisma would release two further McLaren albums: Fans (1984), which fused opera with R&B; and Swamp Thing (1985), composed of out-takes recorded between 1982 and 1984, which I like, but everyone else hates; McLaren's version of 'Swingin' the Alphabet' ('B. I. Bikki') is even more hilarious than that given us by the Three Stooges in their 1938 short film Violent is the Word for Curly (dir. Charley Chase): click here.     

 

[4] It may sound a bit cynical and manipulative and some might view strategic storytelling as a form of what is called by our political friends spin. In my experience, however, it's more a game whereby you give a journalist, for example, what they want for a good feature and they give you what you need in order create excitement around the artist you are representing and boost sales of whatever it is they're promoting. In other words, strategic storytelling is an exercise in backscratching rather than backstabbing and the wilful deception of others.  

 

 

Readers who wish to know more about Buffalo Gals should see the post entitled 'And They Dance by the Light of the Moon ...' (19 Feb 2019): click here.

 

Readers who think they might enjoy a post in which I reminisce about my time with Lee Ellen at Charisma Records should see the post entitled 'Memories of Summer '84: Charisma' (17 July 2024): click here.  

 

 

On Answering the Call of the Void

Can You Resist the Call of the Void? (SA/2025)

Based on Ernst Stückelberg's painting of Sappho (1897) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Apparently, the urge to jump when atop a high building, such as the Eiffel Tower, is not limited to rock 'n' roll puppets in a band called Bow Wow Wow [2], but is a fairly common phenomenon known (rather poetically) as the call of the void ...

 

 

II.

 

Usually, it's a violently intrusive thought that passes as quickly as it comes and is not regarded as a sign of any underlying suicidal tendencies. In fact, it may be the brain's way of telling you not to jump; to recognise the danger of your situation and step back from the edge. 

 

 

III. 

 

Philosophers, of course - particularly those who have taken seriously Nietzsche's injunction to live dangerously - don't always care what their brain tells them. 

 

They know that "the secret of harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment" [3] involves sending ships into unchartered seas, building cities on the slopes of a volcano, and daring to leap into the void when the moment to do so is right.

 

Empedocles knew this [4]. And Deleuze knew this [5] ...     

 

 

IV.

 

The void, of course, is another one of those ideas in philosophy that can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. But it's probably in the modern sense that most people think it today; i.e., in relation to existential nihilism. 

 

The key thing, however, is not take it too negatively: the void might even be seen as a space of potential; not just of nothingness. It's absence that makes the heart grow fonder and which allows for the emergence of new thoughts and feelings, the creation of new values and concepts. 

 

The void is also the space of forgotten possibilities, where abandoned paths can be rediscovered, allowing for different interpretations of the past (interpretations that might then be projected into the future, so that we might in this way live yesterday tomorrow). 

 

Our artist friends often insist on the importance of what they call negative space - something that is crucial for giving form and structure to what exists. 

 

And scientists too are increasingly persuaded of the importance of the quantum vacuum - a void filled with fluctuating energy and mad particles, from which the universe itself may have emerged.   

 

So, whilst I'm not encouraging any one to jump off a tall building, I think it's worth acknowledging that the call of the void is more than what psychologists say it is, i.e., a slightly odd phenomenon not linked to actual intentions, so not worth paying too much attention to.

  

The call of the void - like the call of the wild - is, in fact, a vital experiential reality.  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] The Ancient Greek poet Sappho is perhaps best known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. That, and her sexuality - although her lesbianism is much disputed amongst scholars and there is no documentary evidence to conclusively indicate her preference when it came to lovers. 

      (In classical Athenian comedy, she was often portrayed as promiscuoulsy heterosexual; the earliest surviving sources to explicitly identify Sappho's homoeroticism come from the Hellenistic period, although such modern terms, of course, would have been meaningless to the ancient Greeks and one does wonder whether projecting lesbianism on to a figure like Sappho is anything other than an ideological move motivated by queer-feminist politics.) 

       According to legend, Sappho killed herself by leaping from the Leucadian cliffs due to her unrequited love for the ferryman Phaon; a story related to a myth about the goddess Aphrodite and one that is regarded as ahistorical by modern scholars.

 

[2] I'm referring to Annabella Lwin, lead vocalist with Bow Wow Wow, and their track 'Sexy Eiffel Towers' on Your Cassette Pet (EMI, 1980), an eroticised tale of teen suicide involving a leap from the sexiest building left: click here to play. 

      

[3] Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), trans. Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 283, p. 228.

      

[4] The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles famously threw himself into the lava and flames of Mount Etna and his death has been mythologised by writers and artists ever-since. Whether he believed that this would guarantee his immortality or not, the fact is that his name lives on to this day. The Roman poet Horace refers to the death of Empedocles in his work Ars Poetica and suggests that great thinkers have not only the right, but almost a duty, to destroy themselves. 

 

[5] Deleuze committed suicide on 4 November 1995 by jumping from the window of his apartment in Paris. He was suffering from increasingly severe respiratory problems that made even simple tasks difficult (including writing, though I'm not sure we can describe that as a simple task). 

      Whether his surrendering to the call of the void marked a loss of desire on his part, however, is debatable; it could be that his decision to terminate his own individual existence was a way of affirming life and thus indicates a final resurgence of vitality. In other words, his suicide might be seen as a logical way for Deleuze to show fidelity to his own philosophy, rather than merely a wish to end his suffering. 

      See the post entitled 'Three French Suicides' (31 Jan 2024) in which I discuss Deleuze's death in relation to the deaths of Olga-Georges Picot and Christina Pascal (both of whom also answered the call of the void): click here.  

 

 

For a sister post to this one, click here.  

 

 

The Bats Have Left the Bell Tower: Notes on the Life and Death of Bela Lugosi

Bela Lugosi lying in his coffin at a Hollywood funeral home 

Photo by David Katzman

 

 

I. 

 

On this night in 1882, a star was born: the Hungarian-American actor Bela Lugosi, best remembered as Dracula in the 1931 horror classic of that title (dir. Tod Browning); the story of the strangest passion the world has ever known.   

 

It was a role that he had previously played on stage in a 1927 Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel and one that both defined him as an actor and limited his future opportunities; eventually giving us a comic turn as the Count in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (dir. Charles Barton, 1948). 

 

This pretty much signalled the end of his career as a serious actor and, addicted to morphine combined with worsening alcoholism, things quickly went from bad to worse and he ended up taking roles in the films of Ed Wood, a filmmaker famously described by critics as the worst director of all time. 

 

 

II. 

 

On August 16, 1956, the news was announced that Bela Lugosi had died, peacefully in his sleep, aged 73.

 

Amusingly, he was typecast to the very end; buried wearing his Dracula costume, including the cape. This was not at his prior request, but done on the instructions of an ex-wife, Lillian, and their son, Bela Lugosi Jr., believing that the old man would've liked it (I'm not entirely sure about that). 

 

Even more amusing is the story of how, when standing by Lugosi's open coffin, Peter Lorre turned to fellow actor Vincent Price and said: 'Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart, just in case?'   

 

III.

  

To be perfectly honest, I can't say I'm a fan: Lugosi certainly had on screen presence as Dracula, but I always thought his performance lacked a little bite. In fact, he didn't even wear fangs for the film, this only becoming a cinematic convention in the 1950s; think Christopher Lee in the Hammer version of Dracula (dir. Terence Fisher, 1958). 

 

And, as a child, I was always more enthralled by other Universal monsters; Boris Karloff's Frankenstein and Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man, for example. Lugosi's Dracula seemed a little too hammy for my tastes; not that his performance was unskilled, just that it was a little too theatrical and reliant on exaggerated gestures and a heavy foreign accent. 

 

Still, it doesn't really matter what I think: Lugosi has his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; Andy Warhol made a 1963 silkscreen print titled 'The Kiss (Bela Lugosi)', inspired by a scene from Dracula; and Bauhaus have immortalised the actor in their classic single 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' (Small Wonder Records, 1979): click here.  

On the Monstrous Nature of Philosophy

 Frankenstein's Monster x Ludwig Wittgenstein [1]

 

'Thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of the living ...' [2] 

 

I. 

 

Philosophers, like monsters, "are creatures that fail to meet prevailing measures and norms by radically exceeding or falling short of them ..." [3]. 

 

Their form of life - to use a term favoured by Wittgenstein in his later work - is unconventional to say the least; and some might even describe it as inhuman, although that is perhaps going a little too far, as even the most monstrous (and unintelligible) of philosophers share certain practices and customs with others and their thinking ultimately springs from the same bio-cultural reality [4].  

 

In sum: philosophers are not monsters per se; but their thinking is a monstrous form of life; i.e., both unnatural and prophetic [5]. And such a monstrous form of life "is not homogenous and smooth; its language is not a common and transparent one; it is not the unanimous and harmonious sound of angelic tongues" [6]. 

 

II.

 

According to the film theorist and philosopher Noël Carroll, the word monster is - rightly or wrongly - one that might easily be applied to philosophers. 

 

Why? 

 

Because monsters, like philosophers, "are unnatural relative to a culture's conceptual scheme of nature. They do not fit the scheme; they violate it. Thus, monsters are not only physically threatening; they are cognitively threatening. They are threats to common knowledge" [7].  

 

As David Birch notes: "There is an uncanny parallel here between the characterisation of monsters and the work of philosophers." [8] 

 

Indeed, we might even conclude that the best collective noun for a group or gathering of philosophers might not be a school, but a den of monsters.

 

Having said that, I repeat what I say at the end of section I: philosophers are not monsters per se; but their thinking is a monstrous form of life ... And, for me, the person who has developed this line of thought to its nihilistic limit, is Ray Brassier ...

 

 

III.  

 

In a book that I often return to and never tire of reading - Nihil Unbound (2007) - Brassier savages those philosophers who would attempt to stave off the threat (he would say promise) of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning and everything else that humanity clings to and believes in. 

 

In brief, Brassier wishes to accelerate the process (or logic) of disenchantment that began with the Enlightenment and turn philosophical thinking into what he terms the organon of extinction:

 

"Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity." [9]  

 

However else we might describe this speculative realism, it's certainly not thought as most people think it; it's thought in a monstrous form; "throwing us into a world we no longer recognise, and that does not recognise us" [10].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Obviously, by linking the names of Frankenstein and Wittgenstein I do not wish to imply that the latter was a fan of Mary Shelley's 19th century queer gothic novel. Indeed, as far as we know, he never read the book, nor did he refer to it in any of his writings. 

      And whereas Shelley was very much influenced by David Hume - her novel might even be read as an exploration of the tragic consequences of a skeptical worldview and the limitations of empiricism - the same cannot be said of Wittgenstein, who had a largely negative view of the 18th century philosopher. 

      Interestingly, as David Birch reminds us, there is an astonishing passage in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) in which Hume confesses that philosophical solitude results in his feeling like 'some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate' (Treatise, Book 1, Part 4, Section 7). 

      See David Birch, 'Are Philosophers Monsters?', The Philosophers' Magazine - click here. I shall return to this essay later in the post. 

 

[2] Ray Brassier, Preface, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. xi. 

 

[3] Jasmin Trächtler, 'Speaking in Monster Tongues: Wittgenstein and Haraway on Nature, Meaning and the "We" of Feminism', in Forma de Vida (2023): click here. 

 

[4] Should AI systems ever achieve independent consciousness, we might not be able to say the same of them. For perhaps they'll reason in a way that is truly posthuman (or techno-monstrous) and we'll no more be able to understand than we would a speaking lion; see Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1953).   

 

[5] The word monstrous derives from the Latin mōnstruōsus (from monstrum), meaning unnatural. But it also etymologically relates to the Latin verbs mōnstrare and mōnēre, which mean to reveal and to warn.  

 

[6] Jasmin Trächtler ... op. cit. 

 

[7] Noël Carroll, 'The Nature of Horror', in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 46, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 51-59. Click here to access on JSTOR. The lines quoted here can be found on page 56. They are also quoted by David Birch, in his article cited above. 

 

[8] David Birch, 'Are Philosophers Monsters?'

 

[9] Ray Brassier, Preface, Nihil Unbound ... p. xi. 

      This quote is not only pinned above the desk at which I write, but pretty much encapsulates what Torpedo the Ark is all about; i.e., that the disenchantment of the world "deserves to be celebrated as an achievement of intellectual maturity, not bewailed as a debilitating impoverishment" and nihilism is the "unavoidable corollary of the realist conviction that there is a mind-independent reality, which, despite the presumptions of human narcissism, is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the 'values' and 'meanings' which we would drape over it in order to make it more hospitable" [xi]. 

 

[10] David Birch, 'Are Philosophers Monsters?' We should note that Birch is speaking of Hume here, not Brassier.