Spooks and Lovers: Halloween With D. H. Lawrence

 

Although - as far as I'm aware - D. H. Lawrence didn't celebrate Halloween, he did write a number of spooky tales with supernatural elements [1] and he had an abiding interest in the occult and things which go bump in the dark. 

 

And so, I thought it might be fun to look at what he writes in nine of his letters (and one postcard) dated the 31st of October ... 

 

 

[31 October 1903] [2]

 

On a postcard sent from Peterborough to his childhood friend Gertrude Cooper, Lawrence writes to say he is safe and sound and that he has been to visit the 12th-century cathedral, famous for its Early English Gothic façade featuring three large arches.

 

However, Lawrence will increasingly grow disillusioned with monumental religious architecture and reach the stage where he is weary of huge stone erections In other words, he will come to believe in the ruins [3] and will, like Deleuze and Guattari, seek to release desire from all that overcodes it, rejecting the myth of wholeness or completion [4]. 

 

And that is one of the reasons I so admire Lawrence as a writer: because he anticipates both punk and poststructuralism. 

 

 

[31 October 1913] [5]

 

In a letter to Henry Savage - a minor literary figure who had written a positive review of Lawrence's first novel The White Peacock (1911) - Lawrence sets forth his view that what women fundamentally want is sexual satisfaction:

 

"A man may bring her his laurel wreaths and songs and what not, but if that man doesn't satisfy her, in some undeniable physical fashion - then in one way or other she takes him in her mouth and shakes him like a cat a mouse, and throws him away. She is not to be caught by any of the catch-words, love, beauty, honour, duty, worth, work, salvation - none of them - not in the long run."

 

In other words - and in the long run - she simply desires a good fucking; a fairly conventional view which Lawrence holds too for the rest of his life. Less conventional, however, is the claim (and confession) that follows: "And an artist - a poet - is like a woman in that he too must have this satisfaction. [...] He must get his bodily and spiritual want satisfied [...]

 

Is it just me, or is there not an ambiguity to this sentence which invites a kinky interpretation ...? (Some readers might recall that I've written before on Lawrence's autogynephilia, his perverse tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a woman being penetrated by a large cock: click here.)   

 

In this same long letter, written from Italy, Lawrence also admits that whilst he dislikes Charles Dickens for his mid-Victorian moralising, he's jealous of his characters. 

 

He closes, in typical Lawrence fashion, by requesting some books, giving an update on his health - he has a rotten bad cold - and by admitting that he wishes he had some money, so needn't work. 

 

 

31 October 1914 [6]

In a rather sweet note to his Russian friend S. S. Koteliansky, Lawrence asks the latter if he can do him a favour next time he's in Soho:

 

"I saw a necklace I wanted to buy for Frieda. It is in a shop almost at the south end of Wardour St near Leicester Square [...] a second hand jeweller's - a necklace of lapis lazuli set in little white enamel clasps - costs 30/- It hangs up at eye level near the doorway. I send you a cheque. If you find the necklace, please buy it me - round beads of lapis lazuli - you can't mistake it - marked 30/-"

 

Just to be on the safe side, Lawrence even enclosed  a sketch of the necklace. However, unsure of Kot's ability to locate the piece - despite his detailed description and drawing - he then adds a PS to the letter: "If you don't find it you can give me back the cheque."

 

I suppose that's fair enough - 30 bob might not sound like much, but it would be about £190 today and the averge coal miner in 1914 would only expect to earn about 9 shillings per daily shift. 

 

Lawrence, of course, had a thing for lapis lazuli - he had once given a piece to the poet Hilda Doolittle (or H.D. as she was known) and readers might also recall that Hermione smashes Birkin's skull with a beautiful crystal ball made of such [7].    

 

 

31 October 1916 [8]

 

Lawrence is in Cornwall and has just finished writing his latest novel, Women in Love. Along with a letter to his literary agent, J. B. Pinker, Lawrence encloses the final part of his manuscript - "all but the last chapter, which, being a sort of epilogue, I want to write later".   

 

He also encloses the short story called 'The Mortal Coil', which he is clearly proud of, although not optimistic about its commercial prospects:

 

"It is a first-class story, one of my purest creations, but not destined I fear, like the holy in the hymn, to land On the Golden Strand [...] I really grieve when I send you still another unmarketable wretch of fiction. But bear with me. I will write sweet simple tales yet."  

 

Poor Lawrence! Always hoping to strike it rich with his writing and find the philosopher's stone, if only so that he can escape to sunnier climes and find better health: "I am tired of being unwell in England." 

 

 

[31 October 1919] [9]

 

It would, however, be three years later before Lawrence was finally able to leave England and head south once more: in a letter to Martin Secker expressing his concern about the Women in Love manuscript which has been sent to the US, Lawrence also adds: "I shall be in [London] Monday, preparatory to going off for Italy". 

 

He left London on 14 November: to Turin via Paris on the train and then on to Florence (via Spezia). 

 

Unfortunately, poor health and money worries continue to dog him no matter where he travels, although at times Lawrence affirms his sickness - better than a bourgeois model of good health - and his poverty; for it is preferable, he says, to sit still on a large rock than ride in the car of a multi-millionaire.   

[31 October 1921] [10]

In a Halloween letter sent from Sicily to his literary agent Robert Mountsier, Lawrence says he's thinking of heading out West and trying his luck in the New World: "What's the good of Europe, anyhow?"

 

It was a particularly busy period for Lawrence as a writer:  

 

(i) Sea and Sardinia was about to be published, as well as the poetry collection Tortoises ...

 

(ii) he was rewriting some old short stories and finishing his novella 'The Captain's Doll' ...

 

(iii) Fantasia of the Unconscious had just been sent off to his American publisher ...

 

(iv) he was also busy working on Mr Noon, although he confessed that he didn't know whether he'd actually finish writing the novel: "I get so annoyed with everybody that I don't want to tackle any really serious work. To hell with them all. Miserable world of canaille."

 

Interestingly, this letter also gives us an insight into D. H. Lawrence the wine connoisseur:

 

"We have been trying the new Fontana Vecchia wine: though it shouldn't be tried till November 11th - I don't very much like it - it's going to be rough. I'm glad I had a barrel of last year's from the Vigna Sagnoula." [11]

 

 

31 October 1922 [12]   

The following year, on the same date, Lawrence again wrote to Robert Mountsier ... 

 

He was now in Taos, New Mexico, and thinking of moving into the ranch that Mabel Sterne was offering him and Frieda; somewhere they could they finally call home and make a real life together.  

Having already invited a friend of Mabel's - Bessie Freeman - to come and live with them, Lawrence now invited his literary agent to do the same:

 

"M.S. has got a ranch, 180 acres, on Rockies foothills, about 20 miles away, wild. We went there today. It is very lovely. There are two rather poor little houses [...] all rather abandoned. But we think of going there either this week or next, to try it. If we find it possible, move in there. The ranch is utterly abandoned now, so it will be a good thing for it to have somebody there. If we go, come there with us, and we'll make a life. [...] It's a wonderful place, with the world at your feet and the mountains at your back, and pine-trees. [...] You'd have one of the houses: they almost adjoin. We'd have to get a few repairs done."

Obviously, being neither impetuous nor insane, Mountsier wasn't tempted by this offer. 

 

And one might have imagined that after his experience in Cornwall with Mansfield and Murry, Lawrence would have abandoned plans for communal living, but apparently not; as he said in a letter to Koteliansky from this period, his idea had been sound, but the people invited to build Rananim were not up to the task [13] - which is the bitter conclusion that all utopian dreamers reach.  

 

 

[31 October 1925] [14]

 

And speaking of Jack Murry ... Lawrence wrote to him on Halloween in 1925, whilst staying at his mother-in-law's, on the edge of the Black Forest, which he loved, but always found somewhat spooky; like something from a dream (or nightmare). 

 

Although obviously a little bored and wishing he'd gone to Paris instead, he nevertheless offers the following observation on Germany at the time:

 

"Just the same here - very quiet and unemerged: my mother-in-law older, noticeably. I make my bows and play whist [...] Titles still in full swing here, but nothing else. No foreigners [...] and the peasants still peasants, with a bit of the eternal earth-to-earth quality that is so lost in England. Rather like a still sleep, with frail dreams."  

 

Murry by this stage regarded himself as a radical Christian - he would publish his Life of Jesus the following year - but Lawrence doesn't have much time for this:

 

"Don't you see, there still has to be a Creator? Jesus is not the Creator, even of himself. And we have to go on being created. By the Creator. More important to me than Jesus. But of course God-the Father, the Dieu-Père, is a bore. Jesus is as far as one can go with god, anthropomorphically. After that, no more anthropos." 

 

And that's the Lawrence which the pagan me still loves: anti-Christian (or, at the very least, post-Christian) and in search of queer, inhuman gods who inhabit the outer (and inner) darkness ...

 

  

31 October 1927 [15]

Not the best of days for poor Lawrence. He wrote to Koteliansky:

 

"Altogether the world is depressing - and I feel rather depressed. My bronchials are such a nuisance, and I don't feel myself at all. I'm not very happy here [Florence], and I don't know where else to go, and have not much money to go anywhere - I feel I don't want to work -  don't want to do a thing at all the life gone out of me. Yet how can I sit in this empty place and see nobody and do nothing! It's a limit! I'll have to make a change somehow or other - but don't know how."

 

And as he wrote to the German writer Max Mohr:

 

"I unfortunately can't yet promise to dance - my bronchials and my cough are still a nuisance. But I want so much to be able to dance again. And I think if we went somewhere really amusing, I should quickly be well. My cough, like your restlessness, is a good deal psychological in its origin, and a real change might cure us both. The sun shines here, but the mornings are foggy. And I no longer love Italy very much - it seems to me a stupid country."

 

Oh dear, when one falls out of love with Italy that's not a good sign ...

31 October 1928 [16]

 

Lawrence's final Halloween letter was again written to Koteliansky. 

 

In it, whilst still feeling poorly - this time with Italian flu given to him by Frieda - Lawrence sounds much perkier than a year ago; more full of fight and ready to take on the British press and customs officials who are united in their opposition to Lady Chatterley's Lover (which had been printed privately in Italy ealier that year).   

"What fools altogether!", writes Lawrence. "How bored one gets by endless mob-stupidity."

Lawrence is holed up on the tiny French island of Port-Cros; only four miles across and covered in pine trees; there's a hotel, a port, and a handful of houses. Nevertheless, Lawrence says that, were it not for his cold, he should like it: "I feel very indifferent to almost everything."

 

Interestingly, that's not something one expects to hear from Lawrence, who often contrasts indifference negatively with insouciance, arguing that whereas the latter is a refusal to be made anxious by idealists gripped by a moral compulsion to care, the former, indifference, is an inability to care resulting from a certain instinctive-intuitive numbness (often as a consequence of having cared too much about the wrong thing in the past) [17].

 

Of course, this is just another false dichotomy. At any rate, I'm quite happy to view indifference more positively (within a transpolitical context, for example).

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Perhaps the best known of these tales is 'The Rocking Horse Winner', which can be found in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 230-244. My take on this story can be found here.

 

[2]  D. H. Lawrence, letter to Gertrude Cooper, [31 Oct 1903], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 23.

 

[3] See The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 188-91, where Lawrence writes of Anna's experience of Lincoln Cathedral and see 'Sketches of Etruscan Places', in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 32-33, where he writes in favour of small wooden temples rather than enormous stone buildings. I have discussed this material in the post entitled 'Believe in the Ruins' (16 April 2019): click here.

 

[4] See Deleuze and Guattari; Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 41, where they write in favour of partial objects, fragments, and heterogenous bits, rather than any kind of totality. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Henry Savage, [31 Oct 1913], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 94-96

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, letter to S. S. Koteliansky, 31 Oct 1914, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, p. 228.    

 

[7] See Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 105. Hermione uses the ball as a paperweight, when not using it as a weapon. 

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, letter to J. B. Pinker, 31 Oct 1916, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, pp. 669-670.    

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Martin Secker, [31 Oct 1919], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 408. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Robert Mountsier, [31 Oct 1921], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 106-108. 

 

[11] To describe a wine as rough means that it has a coarse texture. It would usually refer to a young tannic red wine, before it has had time to soften or round out.  

 

[12] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Robert Mountsier, [31 Oct 1922], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, p. 334.

 

[13] In 1916, Lawrence invited Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry to come and live in a cottage next door to him and his wife Frieda, in Zennor, near St. Ives; a tiny place, near the moors, full of black rocks, and overlooking the sea. 

      The idea was to establish an artists' colony or commune of some kind, that Lawrence wanted to name Rananim. Of course, it soon led to tension and conflict and ended in tears and tantrums.

 

[14] D. H. Lawrence, letter to John Middleton Murry, [31 Oct 1925], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 328.

 

[15] D. H. Lawrence, letters to S. S. Koteliansky and Max Mohr, 31 Oct 1927, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 203- 205. 

 

[16] D. H. Lawrence, letter to S. S. Koteliansky, 31 Oct 1928, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, p. 604. 

 

[17] Readers who are interested in this might like to see the post entitled 'Dandelion' (10 Dec 2015) which addresses the question of care in the thought of D. H. Lawrence: click here.  

Loony Tunes

Clockwise from top left: 

Haywire Mac / Napoleon XIV / Jaz Coleman / Siouxsie Sioux

 

 

There are almost as many songs about being mad or going insane as there are about falling in love; so many in fact, that attempting to compile a full and definitive list of such would probably drive you crazy. This, therefore, is simply a short post in which I discuss a few of my favourite songs on the subject. 

 

I'm not saying they're the best four songs ever recorded to do with madness, but they are the ones that have most struck a chord with me. Note that they're arranged by release date and not in order of preference.

 

 

'Aint We Crazy?' by Harry McClintock (aka Haywire Mac) (Victor, 1928): click here to play.

 

"Ain't we crazy, ain't we crazy / This is the way we pass the time away  

Ain't we crazy, ain't we crazy / We're going to sing this song all night today."

 

Malcolm McLaren dedicated his 1983 album Duck Rock to Haywire Mac and insisted that I get hold of Hallelujah! I'm a Bum, (Rounder Records, 1981), a remastered compilation of some of McClintock's greatest songs - including 'Ain't We Crazy?' and 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain', for which he is probably best remembered today [1].

 

'Ain't We Crazy?' is a type of nonsense song, in which the singer is the kind of anti-Socratic hero whom Roland Barthes celebrates; i.e., a figure who abolishes within himself all fear of being branded a madman via an amusing disregard for that old spectre: logical contradiction [2]:

 

It was midnight on the ocean, not a streetcar was in sight 

And the sun was shining brightly, for it rained all day that night 

'Twas a summer night in winter, and the rain was snowing fast

And a barefoot boy with shoes on stood a-sitting in the grass.

 

Such a man, as Barthes says, would be the mockery of our society, which subscribes to a psychology of consistency and says firmly that you can't have your cake and eat it. 

 

 

'They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!', single by Napoleon XIV (Warner Bros. Records, 1966): click here to play.

 

"They're coming to take me away, ha-ha! / They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-ha! 

To the funny farm / Where life is beautiful all the time ..."

 

Written and performed by Jerry Samuels (aka Napoleon XIV), this curious record was an instant smash in the US and UK and I loved to sing it to amuse myself and entertain friends as a child [3].

 

However, I very much doubt it would be made, released, or played today, living as we are in an era that is far more sensitive to issues surrounding mental health. Indeed, even at the time several radio stations stopped playing the song in response to complaints about its content. Predictably, the BBC also refused to play the record.  

The joke reveal at the end of the song is that it is not a departed lover who has caused the song's narrator to lose his mind, but a runaway dog ... 

 

 

'Happy House', by Siouxsie and the Banshees, single release from the album Kaleidoscope (Polydor, 1980): click here to play.

 

"This is the happy house / We're happy here in the happy house [...] 

It's safe and calm if you sing along ..." 

 

I was never a big Banshees fan, but I used to love to hear this song on the radio back in the day and as it was a Top 20 hit - peaking at number 17 in the UK Singles Chart - one heard it fairly often.    

 

I assumed at the time that the title was a synonym for an insane asylum - like funny farm, or loony bin - but later read in an interview with Siouxsie - who wrote the song with Steve Severin [4] - that, actually, it refers to a conventional family setting; to home, sweet home and the madness that unfolds therein beneath the veneer of normality and domestic bliss. 

 

It's interesting to note that the follow-up single, 'Christine' (released in May 1980 and also taken from Kaleidoscope), again dealt with the theme of madness; the lyrics being inspired by the story of a woman who reportedly had 22 different (often conflicting) personalities [5] - which explains why she is referred to in the song as a banana split lady (i.e., it has nothing to do with her having a sweet tooth).

 

 

'Madness', by Killing Joke, track 6 on the album What's THIS For ...! (E. G. / Polydor Records, 1981): click here to play the 2005 digitally remastered version.  

 

"This is madness / This is madness / This is madness / This is madness / This is madness ..." 

 

This track, despite the title, isn't actually about madness in general, but, rather, about Christianity as a very specific form of religious mania; the product of sick minds in which there is a need to believe in a dead God and life itself is interpreted as a sin. 

 

It is, if I'm honest, quite a challenging listen and will appeal only to a few. But then, as Nietzsche might say, to appreciate this track, the listener must be honest to the point of hardness so as to be able to endure the seriousness and intensity of Jaz Coleman's passion [6].

 

Th-th-th-th-that's all folks! [7]

Notes

 

[1] One of the very earliest posts on Torpedo the Ark - 5 May 2013 - was on Haywire Mac and his hobo vision of an earthly paradise (i.e., the Big Rock Candy Mountain): click here. 

 

[2] See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, (Hill and Wang, 1998), p. 3.

 

[3] The song was re-released in 1973, when I was ten-years-old, and that's probably when I remember it from - not 1966, when I was still singing nursery rhymes. However, I was a fan of at least one pop song released in that year; 'Yellow Submarine' by the Beatles.

 

[4] Guitarist John McGeoch (previously of Magazine) and drummer Budgie (previously of the Slits) also play no small part in creating the distinctive and atmospheric (post-punk) sound that makes this track so unforgettable.

 

[5] Christine Sizemore (née Costner) was an American woman who, in the 1950s, was diagnosed with what was then termed multiple personality disorder, but which is now known as dissociative identity disorder. Her case was depicted in the book The Three Faces of Eve (1957), written by her psychiatrists, Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley. The film of the that name, directed by Nunally Johnson and starring Joanne Woodward, was based on this work. Readers interested in hearing the track 'Christine', by Siouxsie and the Banshees, can click here. 

 

[6] I'm paraphrasing from Nietzsche's Preface to The Anti-Christ (1888).

 

[7] I have borrowed this closing phrase and title for the post from the animated short film series produced by Warner Bros. between the years 1930 and 1969, starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, et al. 

      Readers might be interested to know that the famous Loony Tunes theme was actually based on a crazy-sounding love song written in 1937 by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin entitled 'The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down': click here for the version by the American jazz pianist and bandleader Eddy Duchin, with Lew Sherwood on vocals. And for an additional treat, courtesy of Larry David, click here.

 

Black Daisies for Lorrie Millington (Or One Flew Over the Duck's Nest)

Image via highroydshospital.com

 

"I remember nights when we were young / They weren't very good they were rubbish   

Running round Highroyds isn't fun / Just teenagers testing their courage" [1] 

 

 

I.

 

Exactly 134 years ago today - the 8th of October, 1888 - High Royds Hospital was opened on the 300-acre estate that had been purchased three years earlier just south of the village of Menston, in West Yorkshire, approximately 11 miles from Leeds. 

 

The large stone complex, designed by J. Vickers Edwards in the High Gothic style that many Victorian architects favoured, was built to house those individuals who had the misfortune to be both poor and insane - as indicated by its original name of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum. 

 

High Royds was intended to be a self-contained and self-sufficient community; there were in-house butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers and there was also a cobbler's workshop, a dairy, and a farm-cum-market garden. 

 

Patients were expected - if able - to earn their own keep by providing labour, either on the farm, in the kitchens, or in the laundry room. They were also encouraged to learn various handicrafts, such as basket weaving, or make use of the extensive library.

 

In other words, it was the sort of place that Michel Foucault writes of in Madness and Civilization, his classic study of insanity in the Age of Reason [2]. And it was to become the sort of place that depraved sexual predator Jimmy Saville loved to visit [3]. 

 

The administration building, which is now Grade II listed, features a beautiful Italian mosaic floor in the main corridor, intricately decorated with the white Yorkshire Rose and - somewhat macabrely - black daisies [4].  

 

 

II.

 

Some of you might be asking at this point what any of this has to do with me ... 

 

Well, it just so happens, that I spent some time at High Royds in 1984 - not as a patient (fortunately), but as a visitor to my quasi-girlfriend Lorrie Millington [5], who was, unfortunately, confined there for two-and-a-half months.   

 

Anyway, for those who are interested, here are excerpts from several diary entries written at the time:

 

 

Monday 30 January, 1984

 

Received a letter from Lorrie. It turns out the reason I hadn't heard from or seen her around town lately is because she's been banged up in a mental hospital for the past three weeks! Happily, she says she's recovering, but still has to take a lot of pills (for epilepsy and various other things). 

      In the evening, I telephoned the hospital - High Royds - and asked to speak to her. After some initial confusion - it turns out her surname is Gatford, not Millington - they put her on the line. It was great to hear her voice and she sounded well. I think she was happy to hear from me, too; asked if I would visit her tomorrow and I agreed. I do hope she's going to be okay and can get out of the hospital soon. Very much looking forward to seeing her. 

 

Tuesday 31 January, 1984    

 

Having agreed to get to the hospital at 6-ish, I was obliged to skip yet another lecture.

      Bought some tulips for Lorrie en route; no idea if that's appropriate when visiting a patient in an asylum, but surely no one can object to flowers -? They might make you sneeze if you're allergic to pollen, I suppose, but unlikely to trigger a psychotic episode (though, having said that, one thinks of Vincent and his sunflowers). Just to be on the safe side, also got her some chocolates (After Eights). 

      The 731 bus took me straight to High Royds. Forbidding place - it took me ten minutes to find the entrance (and another five minutes to find the courage to pass through it). Couldn't help wondering how easy it would be to escape if ever confined in such an institution. Inside there were patients and staff wandering around - not sure who made me feel the most uneasy. 

      Found Lorrie - and she looked well, though very different with her natural hair colour. She didn't approve of the fact I'd recently dyed my hair orange, but she did appreciate the flowers and chocolates. Drank tea and chatted for three hours. She has such a lovely voice and soft accent; find it very sexy. Funny enough, she was probably more coherent than I've ever known her. Maybe we should all have a stay at a happy house! Kissed her goodbye and agreed to visit again soon.    

        

Thursday 2 February, 1984

 

Back to High Royds. Found Lorrie sitting with Keith, one of the people she shares a house with [6]. He's okay, but a bit quiet and uninspiring; always dressed in all black and likes indie music. Don't think he appreciated my being there, but fuck 'im, as they say; he's not her boyfriend after all ...? 

      Lorrie looked good, but was far more manic this evening. Before leaving, she insisted that I take some photos of her - and made Keith take one of me and her together. As well as the pics, I also took a greatest hits album by Rolf Harris that was lying around the recreation room. When I got home, sat playing that until after midnight ... 'Two Little Boys', 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down', 'Jake the Peg', etc. Not sure these are the kind of songs that assist with mental well being, so convinced myself I had done a good thing by stealing it from the hospital.                

 

Tuesday 7 February, 1984 

 

On an absolutely freezing evening, made my way once more to High Royds. Keith was there again, but soon left. I respect the fact that he visits Lorrie regularly (maybe he is her boyfriend).

      Lorrie was in a bad mood, but insisted on going to a disco event that was being held for patients. That was certainly an experience - literally a lunatics ball! Deeply disturbing, although it made Lorrie laugh when someone came up to me and made violent stabbing gestures in my direction with both fists. A member of staff assured me that he was only doing the monster mash!

      Back on the ward, Lorrie was much more loving. She's desperate to leave the hospital now and I don't blame her. But I'm not confident they'll discharge her at the end of this week as she hopes; experience has taught me to never trust what doctors say. Went home feeling depressed and - as much as I want to continue seeing and supporting Miss Millington - not sure I can face going back to High Royds [7].   

 

High Royds Hospital (2 Feb 1984)

Notes

 

[1] These lines form the first verse of the song 'Highroyds' by the Kaiser Chiefs, an indie rock band from Leeds. The track can be found on the album Yours Truly, Angry Mob, (B-Unique Records, 2007). Three members of the group - Nick Hodgson, Nick Baines and Simon Rix - used to attend a school that was opposite High Royds Hospital. The lyrics, written by Ricky Wilson and Andrew White, are © Universal Music Publishing Group. Click here to play.

 

[2] This work - translated into an abridged English edition by Richard Howard in 1964 - was originally published as Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique in 1961. 

      Foucault traces the rise of the modern asylum in which those designated as crazy are confined under the supervision of medical professionals, so as to be studied and subjected to therapeutic procedures in an attempt to cure them of their illness (whilst also protecting the society from which they were removed).

      Although seemingly more enlightened and compassionate in the clinical treatment of insane people, Foucault shows how the modern mental hospital nevertheless remained as cruel and controlling as any other institution established and run on similar lines - be it a boarding school, a workhouse, or a prison.  

 

[3] The official report into the Saville case reveals that he did in fact commit an act of sexual assault at High Royds Hospital in the 1980s, during a fancy dress fun run. It has also been alleged that he groped patients and members of staff on other occasions.

 

[4] These fleurs du mal provided inspiration for the title of Tony Harrison's 1993 screenplay Black Daisies for the Bride - a beautiful but disturbing work using verse and song to examine the lives of three women coping with Alzheimer's. The work was filmed in High Royds (dir. Peter Symes) and shown on BBC Two in 1994: click here to watch on YouTube via the High Royds Hospital digital archive.       

[5] I have written of Lorraine Millington (aka Lori Gatford) several times on Torpedo the Ark; see here, for example, or, more recently, here. 

 

[6] Keith Gregory went on to become the bass guitarist in The Wedding Present, a band he formed with vocalist and guitarist Dave Gedge in 1985 and who I tried (unsuccessfully) to get signed to Charisma Records (I was informed their jangly guitar sound was passé ... the band, however, went on to have 18 Top 40 hits).    

 

[7] As a matter of fact, I made three more visits to see Lorrie at the hospital - Tuesday 14 February, Thursday 1 March, and Thursday 15 March - before she was finally discharged on Monday 19th of March, 1984. 

 

 

High Royds Hospital 

(as I still see it in my nightmares)

       

 

Afternote: Readers might be interested to know that, following numerous complaints about conditions at the hospital, High Royds was eventually deemed unfit for purpose (i.e., no longer  able to provide proper care); this was acknowledged by the chief executive of Leeds Mental Health in 1999. After services were transferred to other hospitals, High Royds closed in 2003. It has since been converted into a residential development called Chevin Park.

 

 

Snapshots from 1983 (Featuring Johnny Rotten, Billy Bragg and Lorrie Millington)

Johnny Rotten and Billy Bragg (28 October 1983)

 

 

I. 

 

Despite the cynical brilliance of 'This Is Not a Love Song' [1], it's probably fair to say that I listened more to Killing Joke and the Dead Kennedys in 1983 than to Public Image Ltd., and that Jaz Coleman and Jello Biafra suddenly seemed more interesting characters than Johnny Rotten.

 

Nevertheless, when PiL played live on The Tube [2] in October 1983, I felt obliged to watch out of love and loyalty for all that Rotten had meant to me:

 

"PiL opened their short set with 'This Is Not a Love Song' and closed it with 'Flowers of Romance'. In between, they offered a kind of honky-tonk version of 'Anarchy in the UK'. 

      Rotten lived up to his name and probably deserved to be booed or bottled off stage. But very funny as he patted the front row punks on their spiky heads and even spat for the camera. Whilst he made little effort to actually perform, it was hard to tell if his apathy (and professed sickness) was real or just part of the act. Ultimately, this is more punk cabaret than punk rock and Rotten seems only too aware that the gig is up and his day is almost over. Nevertheless, he still looked good and I want that electric blue raincoat he was wearing!" [3] 

 

 

II. 

 

Nine days later, and I went to see my pal Billy Bragg playing at a tiny club in the centre of Leeds: 

 

"Arrived at Tiffany's. My name was supposed to be on the door, but wasn't, so had to talk my way in by insisting I was from a London record company; I think they call this blagging. 

      Once inside and having got a drink from the bar, I went to say hello to Billy pre-set. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me and insisted I give him my new address so that he could send me a copy of photo he had taken up in Newcastle when he and Rotten were guesting on The Tube [4]. He also filled me in on the latest Charisma gossip and news of Lee Ellen [5].

      Unfortunately, Billy's set didn't go smoothly - he managed to twice break strings on his guitar. Fortunately, the small crowd (and it was very small) were clearly fans and so supportive; they requested (and were given) autographs after the show. So much for punk doing away with the idea of stars! But then Billy isn't really a punk, more a Clash-influenced folk singer. Hard not to like him though - he's always been friendly to me (and he's a fellow Essex boy)." [6]    

           

 

III.

 

Twelve days after this, having missed the chance to see them at the Rainbow on Boxing Day in 1978, I thought I would take the opportunity to finally see Public Image Limited play live (at Leeds University) - though it would again require talking my way into the gig, as I didn't have a ticket and Lee Ellen insisted there was no guest list: 

"Decided to go to the Faversham [7] for a drink prior to the gig. To my delight, Lorrie [8] walked in soon after I arrived, looking fabulously sexy in black leather trousers, a big black jumper, and dark glasses. Amazing hair and make-up too. We sat down and she popped some pills given to her, she said, by her doctor. 

      It was decided that, rather than wait for the people she was supposed to be meeting, she'd come with me to the PiL gig. As we were leaving, who should walk in but Miss Hall [9]. She appeared not to see me, however. But then she's so far up herself these days, that's not surprising.

      Managed to get myself and L. into gig without any problem, despite not having tickets; I told the people on the door I was Malcolm McLaren and that Lorrie was Vivienne Westwood. If you're going to lie or bluff then it's always best to lie big and bluff with confidence. People might still know you're bullshitting them, but they'll admire your audacity (that's the theory anyway).

      The support band weren't bad; the singer was young and had style as well as energy. As for PiL, well, it was great to hear songs with which one is so familiar played live - 'Low Life', 'Memories', 'Poptones', 'Chant', and - of course - 'Public Image' (with which they opened). Rotten looked great too; young and still amazingly charismatic. He told those who spat that they were out of date. The band finished with 'Anarchy in the UK'. The crowd went wild, but I just stepped aside and felt a bit sad to be honest.

      'If you want more, you'll have to beg', said Rotten. And they did. So they got a two-song encore consisting of 'This is Not a Love Song' and 'Attack'. And that was that. If Rotten left the stage with gob in his hair, I couldn't help feeling that the audience left with collective (metaphorical) egg on face. As I said after his appearance on The Tube, Rotten is offering us punk cabaret now (or even punk pantomime) - particularly with his jokey cover version of 'Anarchy'. But then perhaps he always was ...

      Shared some chips with Lorrie afterwards and said our goodnights. She agreed to come over on Sunday. She's a strange girl, but I like her a lot. Duck! Duck! Duck!" [10]              

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The single 'This Is Not a Love Song was released by Public Image Limited in 1983: click here to listen and watch the official video on YouTube.

      The song became the band's biggest commercial hit, peaking at No. 5 in the UK Singles Chart. A live version can be found on the album Live in Tokyo (Virgin Records, 1983) and a re-recorded version on the band's fourth studio album This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get (Virgin Records, 1984).

 

[2] The Tube was a live music show broadcast from a studio in Newcastle, which ran for five years on Channel 4 (from November 1982 to April 1987). In that time it featured many bands and a host of presenters, including, most famously, Jools Holland and Paula Yates.

 

[3] Entry from the Von Hell Diaries (Friday 28 October, 1983). To watch PiL's three-song performance on The Tube, click here.

 

[4] Billy did, in fact, send me the photo and it's reproduced at the top of this post. I hadn't known he was also on The Tube the same night as Rotten - had only seen the latter's performance.     

 

[5] Charisma Records was an independent label based at 90, Wardour Street, above the Marquee Club. Charisma marketed Billy's first release, a seven track mini-album entitled Life's a Riot With Spy Versus Spy (Utility, 1983). Perhaps the best-known track - 'A New England' - can be played (in a newly remastered version) by clicking here. 

      Lee Ellen Newman was the Charisma Press Officer whom I adored then and still adore now.   

 

[6] Entry from the Von Hell Diaries (Sunday 6 November, 1983).

 

[7] The Faversham is a well known venue in Leeds (est. in 1947). In the 1980s it was a popular place for punks, goths and students to meet or hang out.  

 

[8] Lorrie Millington - artist-model-dancer-writer and a well-known face on the Leeds scene at the time. I have written about her in several earlier posts; see here, for example.   

 

[9] Gillian Hall - ex-girlfriend; see the recently published post which included an extract from the Von Hell Diaries dated 3 October 1982: click here.  

 

[10] Entry from the Von Hell Diaries (Friday 18 November, 1983). It might be noted that the last line refers to the fact that Duck was my pet name for Lorrie (because she danced like one). The photo of myself and Miss Millington was taken shortly after events discussed here.

 

 

Being is Time: Life in the Present Perfect Continuous

Image credit: UCLA / Horvath Lab

 

Somewhat paradoxically, whilst having a minimal sense of self on the one hand, I've always possessed a strong sense of self-continuity through time on the other, and have never really bought into the Shakespearean idea of there being seven distinct ages into which a single life might be neatly divided up [1].

 

Thus, when someone asked in relation to a recent post adapted from the Von Hell Diaries [click here] whether it made me sad to realise that forty years had passed since the events described on 3 October 1982 - or frightened to think that I would soon be passing from middle age to old age - I had to say no, not really.

 

For like Jaz Coleman, time means nothing to me, and whether something happened forty years ago or yesterday, it's all the same to me [2]. I am that unity of past, present and future. That is to say, I understand time not just as something that can be measured by the ticking of a clock, but as fundamental to our being. Indeed, one might even say that being is time.     

 

And unlike the Killing Joke frontman, I don't even have to shut my eyes in order to remember childhood thoughts and feelings; for I still think those thoughts and experience those feelings. In other words, because I live in what might be termed by a grammarian as the present perfect continuous, I've no need to make an imaginative journey back in time, or to dream.      

 

But aren't you worried that you're just stuck in the past?, asks the same interrogator.

 

Again, the answer is not really. 

 

In fact, I'm more concerned - as a philosopher - with the consequences of privileging the present [3] and having a vulgar conception of time in which the past is denigrated as that which we must move on from and leave behind, as if no longer important, when, in fact, not only does the past inform the present, but it awaits us in the future too [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm thinking here of the famous monologue in Act II, Scene VII of Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It (1623) which opens with the line "All the world's a stage". However, I'm aware of the fact that this division of human life into a series of stages was a commonplace of art and literature and not something invented by the Bard of Avon. Whilst ancient authors tended to think in terms of three or four such stages, medieval writers liked to think in terms of seven for theological reasons.   

 

[2] I'm quoting from the Killing Joke song 'Slipstream', from the album Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions, (Noise Records, 1990): click here. The track was written by Jaz Coleman, Geordie Walker and Martin Atkins. Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group.

 

[3] I am increasingly sympathetic to thinkers such as Heidegger and Derrida who are concerned that the understanding of Being in the metaphysical tradition is dominated by an ontological primacy of the present; i.e., that the present is viewed as more real or immediate than the past or future, with the former seen as merely the 'no-longer-now' and the latter as merely the 'not-yet-now'. 

      This tradition has run all the way from Aristotle to Hegel and beyond; see, for example, Lawrence's 1919 Preface to his New Poems (1918), in which he writes of the incarnate Now as supreme over and above the before and after and of the quivering present as the very quick of Time. For Lawrence, the past and future are mere abstractions from the present; a crystallised remembrance and a crystallised aspiration.

      Lawrence's preface can be found as Appendix I to The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 645-649.      

 

[4] I think Heidegger refers to this ontological baggage in Being and Time (1927) as Gewesenheit (i.e., our been-ness).

 

 

The Von Hell Diaries: 3 October 1982

Jazz and Kirk from the Pandemonium Series 

by Gillian Hall (October 1982)

 

 

Between 1980-89, I faithfully kept a diary; a full page of A4 written every day for ten years. 

 

The entry below - written exactly forty years ago - has been slightly edited for the purposes of this post, but it still gives a good indication of my life at this time; the friends, the feelings, the music, the late-night snacks, etc.   

 

Sunday 3 October 1982

 

Woke up at midday, which is pretty late even by my standards, but I had been up until 4am talking with Kirk [1] and eating cheese on toast after we got home from another Saturday spent dancing the night away at the Phono [2]. Told Kirk I didn't think much of his new sidekick Jim, a first year student to whom punk is simply an escapist bit of fun. Eventually, of course, K. will tire of J. and we needn't have him tagging along and following us around. 

      After breakfast, I chatted with Hess [3], whom I do like, despite the fact he's a Stranglers fan. Thought about doing some work, but listened to the Buzzcocks instead. Then Gillian [4] came over looking awful - as if she had flu or something. Decided to go back to her place. Things still tense between us following our bust-up over her ex-boyfriend Rick. When Kirk came over later on he and Gill spoke about their paranormal experiences, whilst I sat in sceptical (almost scornful) silence. Gill then decided she wanted to try out a new camera, so Kirk and I posed on the wasteland at the back of Pandemonium [5], watched by stray dogs and laughed at by the local children. 

      Gill went home. Kirk and I then discovered we were locked out. Fortunately, he was able to climb up a drain pipe and get in to the house through an upstairs window. Later, I returned to Gill's. As her room still smelt of Rick, I insisted on spraying an air freshner, which didn't amuse her. I think we both realised that things were over between us; she expressed her hope we could still be friends (and perhaps part-time lovers) [6].

      Went home with tears in my eyes and sought solace in music and sleep (after yet another slice of cheese on toast; you have to eat, even with a broken heart).  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Kirk Field was my closest friend and partner in crime throughout my student years in Leeds; see the posts entitled 'Punk Friends Reunited' (9 April 2019) and 'Autobiographical Fragment: This is the Nine O'Clock News from the BBC' (20 August 2020). 

[2] Le Phonographique - or the Phono, as it was known - was a punky-gothic nightclub located underneath the Merrion Centre in Leeds, frequented by an assortment of spiky-haired youths who liked to dress in black and go heavy with the eyeliner. I spent many happy nights there in the period 1981-84 and it was where I met the artist, model, dancer and writer Lorrie Millington: click here.     

 

[3] Mark Morris was nicknamed Hess, after Rudolf Hess, not due to any Nazi sympathies, but because he had a tiny room resembling a prison cell in the house he shared with me, Kirk, and a hippie from Cambridge called Jonathan Ashman.

 

[4] Gillian Hall, girlfriend (1981-82): see the posts 'To Hull and Back (In Memory of Gillian Hall)' (28 March 2022) and 'The Bats Have Left the Bell Tower: Reflections on Graveyard Poetry and Post-Punk Goth' (10 March 2021); the photo credited to Kirk Field is of myself and Miss Hall staging a tender moment.

 

[5] Pandemonium was the name given to the large Victorian house in Kirkstall, Leeds, that Kirk, Hess, Jonathan Ashman and myself shared from the autumn of 1982 until the summer of 1983. The front door of the house had a brass knocker in the form of a goblin - intended to signify Kirk's love of magic mushrooms - and above that a golden cupid wearing a blindfold, indicating it was a house of ill repute (in our imagination at least). 

      One of the (now faded) photos of myself and Kirk taken by Gillian is reproduced at the top of this post.

 

[6] What would now be known, of course, as a friend with benefits - a term first used by Alanis Morissette in her song 'Head Over Feet' (1995).      

And from the soundtrack of my life, here's a track by the Buzzcocks which pretty much sums up how I was feeling in October 1982 thanks to the detriorating relationship with Gillian: 'Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)' ... Click here to watch them performing the single on Top of the Pops (September 1978) - two-and-a-half minutes of punk-pop genius.

On the Rise and Fall of Because

Image adapted from the sleeve to the Killing Joke album 

What's THIS for ...! (E.G. / Polydor Records, 1981) [1]

 

"He shall fall down into the pit called Because,

and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason." [2]

 

 

I. 

 

Although the Age of Reason didn't really establish itself until a few hundred years later, it was already assembling its vocabulary in the late 14th-century, including that crucial term because, which enters into English at this date modelled on the French phrase par cause. 

 

It's one of those words that people who love the abstract concept of causality - i.e., the capacity of a to determine b - often use to close down further discussion: There's no point arguing because the facts clearly demonstrate ... 

 

Because is thus the ultimate explanation - the metaphysical answer to the equally metaphysical question why? - and it has become implicit in the logic and structure of everyday language. Indeed, one might even, like Nietzsche, suggest that it betrays the presence of God within language ... [3]

 

 

II.

 

However, those of us who have long been anticipating the fall of because - by which we mean the overcoming of metaphysics, rather than the abolition of reason - are amused by a recent development in the English speaking world that has got some grammar nazis upset ... 

 

For it seems that because is now being used in an ironic manner by the young to convey a certain vagueness about the exact reasons for anything. Thus, whereas traditionally, because is a subordinating conjunction which connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other, now it's being used as a preposition (i.e. placed before nouns, verbs, adjectives, and interjections). 

 

And this new usage, not yet widespread but increasingly common - because social media - in some sense subverts the word's old grammatical function and authority, exposing the fact that we realise there's nothing we can really refer back to as a causal agent or fixed and final explanation of the world's chaos and mystery; i.e., that we know our rationale is often - like God - just a linguistic fiction that we hold on to because convenient and because comforting [4].   

 

As Megan Garber writes in The Atlantic, the word because hasn't fallen so much as exploded; it can now be used however the speaker chooses to use it, limited only by the confines of their own imagination: "So we get [...] people using 'because' not just to explain, but also to criticize, and sensationalize, and ironize [...]" [5]

 

 

 

III.     

 

So, what does all this signify exactly? That we're living in a post-Nietzschean (and post-Derridean) universe? Or that the Aeon of Horus has arrived as Aleister Crowley announced? 

Possibly. 

 

Or it could just mean that a generation who have grown up texting and tweeting are so lazy (and self-absorbed) that they can't be bothered to finish their thoughts and sentences, or waste time providing long and complex explanations: because emoji and the will to abbreviate ...?   

 

Notes

 

[1] The Killing Joke album What's THIS for ...! (1981) is one of the great post-punk albums and the opening track of Side A - 'The Fall of Because' - is a personal favourite. I'm assuming they took the title of the song from a line by Aleister Crowley (see note 2 below). Click here to listen to the 2005 digitally remastered version provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group.    

 

[2] Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (1909), II. 27. See also III. 20, where Crowley actually uses the phrase 'fall of because'.

      For those who don't know, this work - often referred to by enthusiasts with the Classical Latin title Liber AL vel Legis - is the central sacred text of Crowley's new religion (Thelema). According to Crowley, it was dictated to him by a supernatural being who called himself Aiwass, speaking through his new wife, Rose Edith Kelly, during their honeymoon in Egypt, in 1904. 

      With publication of this text, Crowley announced the arrival of a new phase in the spiritual evolution of mankind, to be known as the Aeon of Horus. The key teaching of the book - and this new age - is: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, meaning that adherents of Thelema should seek out and follow their own singular path in life (like a star). 

      As for what Crowley means by the fall of because, I suspect he's simply indicating that the Age of Horus is post-Enlightenment and thus open to the possibility that there are more things in heaven and earth than are understood within the framework of modern science, or Western reason.       

 

[3] See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, where he famously writes in the chapter entitled 'Reason in Philosophy' (5): "I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar ..."

       For Nietzsche, our faith in causal relationships (as a form of agency) is based upon a number of mistaken beliefs and correcting these four great errors will play a significant part in what he terms the revaluation of all values. 

      The reason, says Nietzsche, that we like to think events have causes (and actions have actors behind them), is because it's reassuring. Further, to trace something unknown (and thus threatening) back to something we can explain and make familiar is empowering. Essentially, we look to find ourselves in everything (even in God). See the chapter entitled 'The Four Great Errors', in Twilight of the Idols.   

   

[4] See note 3 above.

 

[5] Megan Garber, 'English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet', The Atlantic (19 Nov 2013): click here to read online. Readers interested in this topic might also like the post entitled 'Because and effect' (21 July 2014) by Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman on their Grammarphobia blog: click here.