Aspasia

Aspasia on the Pnyx, by Henry Holiday (1888) 

Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre

According to Nietzsche, great philosophers - like great artists - are sensual individuals full of excess vitality; lovers not just of the wisdom that resides in language, but of the truth located in bodies. Thus it's no surprise to discover that even old Socrates couldn't help being crazy with desire for Aspasia; the beautiful and accomplished courtesan who captured the heart of Pericles.

As a member of that class of women known as hetaerae, Aspasia enjoyed a level of independence and influence far above that of most other women in Greek society at this time. Renowned for her artistic and intellectual abilities, as well as her skills in the bedroom, she actively took part in symposia alongside male members of the social and political elite and her opinion was both highly respected and frequently sought out. Indeed, despite her somewhat illicit reputation, Plutarch informs us that many of these men even encouraged their wives to listen to her converse. 

Of course, she was not loved by all and Aspasia faced many personal and legal attacks from those envious of her fashion sense and her powerful position. She was accused, for example, of corrupting the young women of Athens due to her distinctive style and put on trial for impiety. Aristophanes even attempted to hold Aspasia responsible for the Peloponnesian War - labeling her the new Helen.

After Pericles died in 429 BC, Aspasia took up with Lysicles, an Athenian general. Unfortunately, little is known of her after this date. She is believed to have died shortly before the execution of her admirer Socrates in 399 BC.

Her name and her fame, however, have significantly lived on and not only does she appear in numerous works of modern art and literature, but, like Sappho, she is an important source of inspiration for many feminists, poets, and philosophers (both male and female).

An untimely figure, Aspasia both embodied and abolished all history in her person. She lived beyond judgement; accepting the abuse of those who spoke against her with stoicism and a wry smile. We can only ask: what's not to love about this astonishing woman?  

London Yawning: Lawrence and the Problem of Big City Boredom

Photo of a London hipster wearing red trousers posted 

by Monsieur Henri de Pantalon-Rouge on 15 Dec 2012

on the brilliant blog look at my fucking red trousers

In an article published in the Evening News on 3 September 1928, Lawrence writes of the queer horror for London that immediately grips his soul whenever he returns to the city:

"The strange, grey and uncanny, almost deathly sense of dullness is overwhelming. Of course you get over it after a while, and admit that you exaggerated. You get into the rhythm of London again, and you tell yourself that it is not dull. And yet you are haunted, all the time, sleeping or waking, with the uneasy feeling: It is dull! It is all dull! This life here is one vast complex of dullness! I am dull. I am being dulled. My spirit is being dulled! My life is dulling down to London dullness."  

One can't help wondering if this isn't simply a sign of weariness and ressentiment caused by early-middle age and rapidly failing health; Lawrence is, by this date, very ill with tuberculosis and has only a year-and-a-half left to live. When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. Or so they say. 

But, perhaps anticipating this response, Lawrence in part refutes it by denying that the sense of excitement and wonder which he used to experience when living in London has in any way faded, or deserted him with age: "True, I am now twenty years older. Yet I have not lost my sense of adventure. But now all the adventure seems to me crushed out of London."

And for this, Lawrence - like many a cyclist or pedestrian today - blames the traffic:

"The traffic is too heavy. It used to be going somewhere, on an adventure. Now it only rolls massively and overwhelmingly, going nowhere, only dully and enormously going. ... The traffic of London used to roar with the mystery of man's adventure on the seas of life ... Now it booms like monotonous, far-off guns ... crushing the earth, crushing out life, crushing everything dead."

Even the cheeky London red buses, says Lawrence, lack fun and crawl along routes which terminate in boredom. For what's to do, he asks, except drift about on your own, or meet up with friends in order to have fun and engage in meaningless conversation: "And the sense of abject futility in it all only deepens the sense of abject dullness ..."

Again, that's Lawrence speaking, but it could be a young friend of mine complaining from the heart of hip and happening Hackney earlier this week. 

I'm not sure what Zena would suggest in order to counter and overcome this urban ennui, but I'm pretty certain she'd not share Lawrence's solution which he arrived at in a related article, also first published in the London Evening News, which involves an ironic dandyism. In other words, for Lawrence, the cure for metropolitan dullness is to be found in humour and fashion.

He writes:

"In the ancient recipe, the three antidotes for dullness, or boredom are sleep, drink, and travel. It is rather feeble. From sleep you wake up, from drink you become sober, and from travel you come home again. And then where are you?"     

This is very true. And, sadly, it's also true that the sovereign solution of love has become an impossibility today, despite what Match.com might pretend. But we can still laugh and learn how to treat life as a good joke; not in a cynical, sarcastic, or spiteful manner - but in a gay and carefree fashion:

"That would freshen us up a lot. Our flippant world takes life with a stupid seriousness ... What a bore! 

      It is time we treated life as a joke again, as they did in the really great periods like the Renaissance. Then the young men swaggered down the street with one leg bright red, one leg bright yellow, doublet of puce velvet, and yellow feather in silk cap.

      Now that is the line to take. Start with externals ... and treat life as a good joke. If a dozen men would stroll down the Strand and Piccadilly tomorrow, wearing tight scarlet trousers fitting the leg, gay little orange-brown jackets and bright green hats, then the revolution against dullness which we need so much would have begun."

This, then, is my call (and challenge) to the organizers of and participants in the International D. H. Lawrence Conference which is coming to London in the summer of 2017 - dare to revolt into style like the young man pictured; get yer red trousers on!

Note: The lines by Lawrence are taken from 'Why I Don't Like Living in London' and 'Red Trousers', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 119-22 and pp. 135-38. 

Gandhi: Holy Fool and Hypocrite

It has been officially announced by government ministers on a visit to India that a statue of Gandhi is to be erected in Parliament Square. 

Obviously this shameful gesture is being made because Britain is keen to develop stronger commercial ties with one of the world's largest and fastest growing economies. But, according to the Chancellor, George Osborne, it's high-time Gandhi took his place in front of the Mother of Parliaments; his monument serving as an inspiration to people around the world and as a permanent reminder of the friendship between our two countries (this coming the day after a new £250m arms deal was signed). 

Gandhi might be thought of today as a peace-loving civil rights activist (thanks in no small part to Richard Attenborough's deceitful and sentimental 1982 film) - a saintly figure in a loincloth who courageously resisted violent imperialism - but this is a ludicrous caricature and his legacy is, arguably, a highly dubious one.      

Certainly it's worth remembering a few things about this shrewd but rather sinister and often cynical figure; a religious fanatic who wanted India to reject modernity and revert to a primitive 'spiritual' society; a holy fool who held bizarre views on sex, diet, and sleeping arrangements that were as much rooted in the puritanism of the late Victorian era as they were in ancient Hindu teachings.

           

For a start, Gandhi was initially a great supporter of the British Empire and an admirer of its power; he only changed his mind and called for Indian independence once he sensed the weakness of the latter and thus his own chance to succeed with a campaign of civil disobedience. During the First World War, for example, he joined a government campaign that encouraged Indians to enlist in the British Army. 

Similarly, when living in South Africa between the years 1893 and 1915, he supported the regime and its policy of racial segregation, merely petitioning for the increased rights of civilized Indian gentlemen like himself within the system. He certainly didn't advocate racial equality and did nothing for the black majority whom he referred to in his writings as kaffirs. 

Gandhi continued to express his attraction to (and flirtation with) powerful regimes during the Second World War, sending his dear friend Adolf Hitler a letter in which he expressed his conviction that the Führer was not the monster described by his enemies, but a brave and devoted nationalist obliged to commit unbecoming deeds. He openly called upon the British to Quit India in 1942, when they were critically and almost fatally weakened by their struggle with the fascist forces. In effect, therefore, Gandhi the pacifist allowed soldiers from the Imperial Japanese Army to do his fighting for him whilst he sat smiling at his spinning wheel.

Interestingly, as Christopher Hitchens notes, there was already in India at this time - and had been for decades - a strong alliance of secular leftists who had laid out the case and won the argument for Indian independence. Thus there was "never any need for an obscurantist religious figure to impose his ego on the process and both retard and distort it".

In a killer line, Hitchens concludes: "Just at the moment when what India most needed was a modern secular leader, it got a fakir and guru instead".

This is certainly regrettable, but, thanks to an assassin's bullet, at least Gandhi did not live to implement his Year Zero agenda which would surely have resulted in mass starvation and misery for tens of millions of people.   

     

That a British government - and a Conservative led government at that - should plan to erect a statue of this little weasel is deeply depressing.     

See: Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great, (Atlantic Books, 2008), pp. 184 and 183.

The Rainbow

 Joseph Anton Koch:  

Landschaft mit dem Dankopfer Noahs (1803)

 

Yesterday, a lovely rainbow across the skies of West London: even Hounslow was briefly redeemed by this trick of the light and band of faint iridescence colouring the heavens. But any joy is short-lived and, ultimately, there is always something threatening rather than hopeful in this mythological and meteorological phenomenon and one starts to feel oppressed. 

For despite symbolizing gay pride and the hope of social and political equality in the secular imagination, the appearance of a rainbow invariably takes us back to Genesis 9 and God's post-diluvian pledge to Noah and sons:

I now establish my covenant with you and your descendants and with every living creature: never again will all life be cut off by the waters; never again will be there a flood to destroy the earth. I have set my rainbow in the clouds and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and all life on earth. 

This is all very nice, though it might be thought too little, too late and hardly compensating for the global catastrophe caused by the very same loving Father who sent the rains for forty days and nights in the first place, ensuring that every living thing perished and was wiped from the face of the earth. It also provides significant wiggle-room; for in promising not to send another global flood, God carefully avoids promising not to exterminate life via some other means in the future. In effect, he is saying that whilst there'll be no more drownings or water torture, he doesn't promise not to one day burn the earth to a cinder.

The rainbow, however, doesn't exclusively remind us of the Old Testament deity playing his games of abuse. We also think of Lawrence's great novel of 1915 and particularly the closing passage in which Ursula sees the rainbow as the promise of a new day and a new evolution - though one which again noticeably follows an act of violent destruction:

"And the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face of the world's corruption were living still, that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration, that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle, corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven." 

- D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 458-59.

Why are those prone to genocidal fantasies so seduced by rainbows? Is such sentimentality inherent within the psychopathology of those who thrill to the thought of apocalypse and dream of utopia at any cost? 

Beware of the grand idealists who say creation of the new can only follow the total destruction of the old. And beware of those who place, chase, or even sing rainbows ...

Domesticity Kills

 Photo by Annabel Mehran from a fashion spread entitled 

'Last Words' in the 2013 Fiction Issue of Vice Magazine.

Styled by Annette Lamothe-Ramos. 

To be trapped between a rock and a hard place may sound like an unpleasant dilemma, but for the poet and philosopher it's infinitely preferable and far less dangerous than being caught between a cushion and a soft place. Or, as in poor Sylvia's case, a gas oven and a pile of dirty nappies.

It's unfortunate, but domesticity and parenthood invariably prove fatal to many an artist. For just as home-cooking makes fat and sharing a marital bed destroys desire, so all life's little comforts and the endless daily chores involved in keeping house and bringing up baby crush the spirit faster and more effectively than Domestos kills germs.   

I would seriously warn any younger readers of a sensitive and creative persuasion against performing any of the following activities on a regular and voluntary basis: hoovering the carpet, mowing the lawn, walking the dog, watering the plants, washing the dishes, making the bed, having kids, changing the curtains, wearing slippers, visiting parents, and shopping at Sainsbury's.    

Start by avoiding these things and, perhaps, you'll manage to preserve a little freedom and sanity and keep from slitting your wrists.

Good luck!

Reflections on the 2014 FIFA World Cup

2014 FIFA World Cup Official Logo

During certain periods, in certain societies, says Barthes, the theatre had a major social function; namely, it united the entire city within the joy of a shared experience and knowledge of its own passions. 

Today, it is sport - and one sport in particular, football - that in its own fashion performs this function. 

Football today, however, is a global phenomenon and obsession and it's no longer just a city which it brings together, or a nation, but, in a sense, the entire world - as we currently witness in Brazil at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Of course, just like the modern Olympic Games, the World Cup is a monstrous and insane corporate-media spectacle; one which is reportedly as rife with corruption off the field, as it is tainted by undignified behaviour on it (Suarez, really, what were you thinking?).

At best, the World Cup is merely posing as a noble sporting event with ancestral significance and only pretending to further the highest ideals of humanity. The opening ceremony - always carried out with great formality - fools no one and bores the spectators as much as it often bemuses the commentators. 

We all know football is now played by vain and greedy millionaires who are more concerned with selling their image rights and securing extremely lucrative sponsorship deals than with kicking a ball about and that the fans are treated as little more than a bovine source of revenue; the super-fat in their over-priced replica shirts supporting the super-fit for the entertainment and further enrichment of the super-wealthy.

And yet still we watch, still we care, and still we believe ... Such is the magic of the beautiful game. 

      

Pessimism (In Affirmation of the Oncoming Train)

Still from Broken Down Film (1985), by Osamu Tezuka 

For details visit: michaelspornanimation.com

Arguably, pessimism is not a philosophy as such, more a philosophical attitude or disposition; what we might term a style of thinking. 

Thus whilst there is no school of pessimism, there are nonetheless certain very great thinkers whom we regard as pessimists and between them they constitute a noble tradition within philosophy. For pessimism is ultimately a form of intellectual integrity; that is to say, a form of honesty, courage, and realism in the face of the universe as it is (inhuman, non-vital, and accelerating towards annihilation). 

The term pessimism was first used scornfully by priestly critics of Voltaire to characterize and condemn his satirical attack upon the optimistic view held by Leibniz and others that this world - as the creation of a loving deity - was the best of all possible worlds. If you believe this - and thereby make an implicit theological commitment to metaphysics - then of course you will find yourself in opposition to every form of impersonal negativity, such as pessimism, or, in its more aggressive form, nihilism.

But of course, there are different forms of pessimism, as Nietzsche was at pains to point out.

On the one hand, he writes of a romantic pessimism born of suffering and impoverishment, which he associates most closely with the work of Schopenhauer and Wagner. On the other hand, he writes of an altogether different kind of pessimism that is neo-classical and futuristic in character; a Dionysian pessimism which refuses to sit in judgement and says Yes to all that is evil, absurd and ugly - not out of perversity or wilful decadence, but out of strength and richness.

Nietzsche's greatest insight is surely this: tragedy is a form of affirmation and pessimism can be an expression of the greater health; something that gives wings to the spirit and welcomes the oncoming train.             

Thanks to Simon Thomas for suggesting this post.

Black Holes

Watercolour by Dan Bransfield

thebolditalic.com 

Twinkle, twinkle little mother how I loved you like no other -

shining like a star above and flowing sweet with milky love.

You gave and gave yourself away and laughed to see your children play.
But mother-suns can't burn eternal and so there comes a collapse maternal:

Upon the self they turn and fold, as hearts once warm grow bitter-cold

and offspring whom they once loved true become a source of food anew.

Thus what was a blood relation ends with wilful, dark negation; 

life once given is swallowed back, with malice by the mother-black. 

Stephen Alexander, The Circle of Fragments and Other Selected Verse, 

Blind Cupid Press (2010).    

Kidney Stones of the Soul

Thomas Hirschhorn: Resistance-Subjecter (2011) 

Gladstone Gallery, NY and Brussels

According to folk psychologist James Hillman, there are psychic crystallizations formed by material experience and memories which potentially cause blockages in the unconscious. 

I suppose we might think of these as kidney stones of the soul; equally discomforting, though perhaps far more hazardous to the health and well-being of the individual if they can't find a way to dissolve these deposits and release the energy they contain in a positive manner. 

Ultimately, if you don't learn how to piss the past away then you run the risk of ever-increased calcification; that is to say, if you obsessively keep looking back upon a life gone by, then, like Lot's wife, you'll turn into a pillar of salt - and that's never pleasant.    

All of which brings us to Thomas Hirschhorn's terrifying sculpture entitled Resistance-Subjecter (2011), in which a group of mannequins - bodies violently exploded or eaten away from within as evidenced by gaping wounds and cavities - are in a process of becoming-mineral.     

I'm aware that the politically-engaged and philosophically-informed Hirschhorn has his own very clear ideas concerning his work. As a Marxist, he's obviously concerned with what he would think of as the hard reality of things and this piece could, for example, be read in these terms. 

But, for me, this work is more than that and more than simply a rather banal reflection on the objectification and commodification of the human being within consumer capitalism as one critic suggests; more too than merely a warning about the corrosive effect of the gaze. 

Rather, it's a reminder to drink plenty of water and never allow tiny elements of the self to harden too much: love that which melts into innocence and forgetfulness; hate that which solidifies and endures.      

Notes: 

The above work by Thomas Hirschhorn can be viewed as part of The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture, an exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff at the Hayward Gallery, London (17 June - 14 September).

Thanks to Dr. Simon A. Thomas for the insight into James Hillman. 

 

These are a Few of My Favourite Things: Pop Singles (Top 40)

I have spoken elsewhere on the political and philosophical importance of lists, but we should not overlook the pleasure aspect: quite simply, lists make happy; they are fun (if sometimes tricky) to write and fun to read. 

So, here's a list of some of my favourite singles, assembled not in order of preference nor following a critical assessment of artistic value, but alphabetically by the name of the singer, group, or producer that I associate most closely with the track. 

For compiling lists should not be simply another excuse to exercise judgement and construct hierarchies. I love all of these records - not equally, but in any order that one might choose to play them and the only logic that links them is the fact that they continue to give pleasure and make me want to sing, dance, fuck, cry, or start a revolution. 

Six further points to note concerning the selection:

(1) I've chosen only records that were released from 1972 onwards; i.e. from the year when I bought my first 7" single: The Osmonds, Crazy Horses. Obviously, there's a bias towards songs from this and the following decade, but I've included one or two more recent tracks and I'm certainly not of the view that things were better when I was young than they are now - musically or in any way. 

(2) I've chosen only one single by any one artist. Obviously I could list several by those artists of whom I am especially fond, but I didn't want to do that.

(3) I have also limited the list to a top forty, which invariably means that some favourite songs and some favourite artists are absent.

(4) Although there are different genres of music represented on this chart (such as punk, disco and rap), I don't see why anyone would object to them all being referred to ultimately as forms of pop. I have no time for snobbery in this area. 

(5) The dates refer to the year of release as a single and not year of composition, or first appearance on an album.

(6) Finally, all these songs (with accompanying videos) can be found on YouTube if interested. Enjoy!


Abba, The Winner Takes It All (1980)
Adam and the Ants, Stand and Deliver (1981) 
Alex Guadino, ft. Crystal Waters, Destination Calabria (2007) 
Beyoncé, ft. Jay-Z, Crazy in Love (2003)
Black Eyed Peas, Pump It (2005)
Bow Wow Wow, C-30, C-60, C-90 - Go! (1980) 
Britney Spears, If U Seek Amy (2009)
The Creatures, Right Now (1983)
The Cure, Why Can't I Be You? (1987)
David Bowie, Life on Mars (1973)
Dead Kennedys, Holiday in Cambodia (1980)
Donna Summer, I Feel Love (1977)
The Darkness, I Believe in a Thing Called Love (2003)
Eminem, The Real Slim Shady (2000)
Fat Les, Vindaloo (1998)
Fugees, Ready or Not (1996)
Gary Glitter, I Love You Love Me Love (1973)
Iggy Azalea, Pussy (2011) 
Joy Division, Love Will Tear Us Apart (1980)
Kate Bush, Hounds of Love (1986)
Killing Joke, Adorations (1986)
Lady Gaga, Bad Romance (2009)
Malcolm McLaren, Double Dutch (1983)
Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)
The Osmonds, Crazy Horses (1972)
Public Image Ltd., Memories (1979)
Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)
Regina Spektor, Us (2004)
Sex Gang Children, Sebastiane (1983)
Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK (1976)
Slade, Cum on Feel the Noize (1973)
Soft Cell, Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (1982)
Sparks, This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us (1974)
The Specials, Ghost Town (1981)
Suzi Quatro, Devil Gate Drive (1974) 
Sweet, Block Buster (1973)
t.A.T.u., All the Things She Said, (2002)
The Undertones, My Perfect Cousin (1980)
Underworld, Born Slippy (1995)
X-Ray Spex, Identity (1978)