Sunday, December 22, 2019

A Christmas Poem

This is a wonderful poem, one of my favourites. Chesterton finds a beautiful paradox at the heart of Christmas:

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost---how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Monday, December 16, 2019

The Noble Horace

A thousand bright stars lit the sky. With each second the stars grew brighter and more present. They were not a uniform colour: Horace could see red, yellow, purple, white, amber -- he counted the colours eagerly.

The stars seemed to move across the sky. Horace was sure they were murmuring to him. But he was not a curious creature, and so explanations had never mattered to him. He was content to simply enjoy the spectacle.

Several years ago a large probe, about the size of a ten storey building, had landed on Horace’s planet. It had remained untouched until one day, in one of his long solitary walks, Horace stumbled upon it. The screen on the probe lit up and began to ask what even Horace realised were questions. Each question used a simple pictogram format, and Horace had little problem answering most of them.

But when it came to one question he was particularly confused. Having taken a camera survey of Horace, the probe displayed a pictorial representation of Horace’s species. A very small slider then appeared at the bottom of the screen -- too small for Horace to handle with any delicacy -- which enabled him to increase the number of Horaces on the screen. The intention behind the question was to determine a planet’s population size. The empire that sent the probe had never encountered planets with more than a few thousand sentient lives, and so they believed a planet’s entire population could be represented on a big enough screen.

But Horace did not know what it meant. He guessed it might refer to age. He was not quite sure of his age; it was one of the few things that had puzzled him. Indeed, he could not remember not existing. So he pulled the slider to the maximum possible setting.

The 'stars' that now lit up the sky were in fact spaceships -- a planetary invasion initiated in response to Horace’s answer to the probe. They believed they would be colonising the most populous planet ever discovered. It was to be a source of great imperial pride.

But as the ships entered the planet’s atmosphere they saw no evidence of cities or indeed any signs of civilisation. In fact, they saw little evidence of any life at all.

It was only as they approached the surface that they began to see a figure waving at them. He was easily as tall as a skyscraper and had a ridiculous, innocent smile.

It was Horace.

Once they had landed Horace was thrilled to welcome his little guests. He took care not to tread on them and spoke to them in a soft, caressing voice, but which nevertheless felt to the aliens like a very strong wind.

The invading force tried tried to anaesthetise Horace, shooting him with thousands of needles. But this only served to send Horace into a fit of giggles. Having failed to conquer by force, the commander of the fleet, Lupegoggicol the Goiteneidarous, tried what is the last resort for any empire: diplomacy. First, he spoke through some means of amplification; when that failed he tried projecting a holographic image of himself, but his gestures were meaningless to Horace, who ended up imitating the commander as if he were being taught some form of dance.

After spending several days touring the planet, the aliens concluded that Horace was the only sentient inhabitant. As far as Horace could remember he had always been the only inhabitant. There were many fish and a few species of insects which Horace would play with (and occasionally eat), and which were at least twice the size of the aliens. But there was only one Horace. Indeed, Horace was fascinated to see other intelligent creatures like himself, even if they were less than one-eightieth of his size.

The aliens soon left. They realised it would be impossible to bring civilisation to a planet of one person. And so Horace again stood there, with his happy, ridiculous smile, waving the aliens goodbye.

Saturday, December 7, 2019

The Decline of Manners

Like most people, I don't pay much attention to studies unless they conform to what I already believe. I'm not sure they are particularly useful except as a rhetorical device. For modern man, a sentence beginning with 'Studies say that...' or 'They say that...' is used in the same authoritative way that classical quotations once were. There is an endless desire to back up one's argument with 'facts', however arbitrary, and preferably of the pseudo-scientific kind. I blame it on (most) university education, to which half of the population is now subjected, and in which one is marked not on logic or strength of argument, nor especially on clarity of thought or ingenuity, but on footnotes and bibliographies. Everything has to reference something else. And so people give studies and other nonsenses almost biblical authority.

There is a new study which says that traditional manners are considered 'outdated' by the young. The results are not interesting, but the subject is. I'm afraid that far too many people, though they can see for themselves the ever-increasing vulgarity of manners, refuse to believe it, often saying that they need to see some sort of study or evidence. Such a study doesn't exist of course, because no one admits the results of a study against which they are already prejudiced. One sees the same phenomenon with immigration, where people refuse to believe its negative effects and demand to be shown some sort of study. And when you do present such evidence, they refuse to countenance it. There are always hostile questions about who conducted the study, their 'biases', picking at possible flaws in the methodology; many simply ignore the study and instead offer a counter-study -- about which they are far less critical.

In this spirit I offer you the aforementioned study which tells us that manners are declining. As I have no wish to question the results of the study, I will gloss over the odd facts of the study's provenance (why, a sceptic might ask, was the study conducted by an insurance firm?) and I will gleefully ignore the limits of its methodology. The study tells us that young people consider 'please' and 'thank you' as outdated courtesies. Nor will most say 'bless you' when someone sneezes, or hold the door open for you.

Of course, I didn't need a study to tell me this. I sense that people don't like you being polite to them; they see you opening a door for them, pulling out a chair for them, or offering to take their coat as some kind of inconvenience -- perhaps even an insult to their selfist way of life. They want to keep to themselves, and they want you to keep to yourself.

I quite understand this. This attitude exists within me too, though unlike many I try to overcome it. Rudeness is often much easier than kindness, and indeed more immediately rewarding. Good manners are a way of making kindness and respect into a habit, because otherwise too many of us default to a sort of standoffishness.

Thursday, December 5, 2019

From Up on Poppy Hill

This is certainly one of the more underrated of the Studio Ghibli films. Like most of their films, its themes are family, place, nature, custom -- all those wonderful neglected things. Hayao Miyazaki may often be described as a left-winger, but if that's true he is one of the most conservative left-wingers around. Miyazaki a thoughtful man who finds much to hold onto from the past but equally does not shy away from criticising his nation's history. Neither does he fall into the modern trap of being enamoured with the glitzy hi-tech present; he knows what he would like to change (and often change back).

Poppy Hill, however, is much more about resisting change. Interestingly, those resisting change -- some horrible modern building supposed to replace a charming old university building -- are students. These students are not at all like the students (or young people generally) in modern British society. They are all impeccably polite and deferential, but without ever loosening their principles. They position themselves as custodians of the past against ruthless, cultureless modernity.

Miyazaki's vision is interesting because Japan not merely has an especially vicious imperial past, but moreover a vicious imperial past that ended in catastrophic defeat. One would think it would be hard for anyone to the left of Yukio Mishima to defend the past, yet Japan, even taking into account its astonishing modernisation and westernisation, seems less embarrassed of its history than most of the victorious end-of-history West.

Japan had the good sense after the war not to do away with millennia of tradition. Could the West learn from Japan? We have never had a more uneasy relationship with our past than we do in this century. I think the success of the Studio Ghibli films in the West -- which are truly great animated films unlike the wretched superficiality of modern Disney films -- shows an immutable longing for a world of mystery, tradition, continuity, wonder and goodness. These all can be readily found in British history, no less than in Japanese culture, and they can still be found in their most elemental form in the woods and forests of these islands, if only we would discover them.

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Some obscure (or at least neglected) books -- Part II

This is a book, I suspect, which is only known in the most narrow of academic circles and among the most peculiar of literary and antiquary people. An undeserved fate, perhaps, given that it can claim to be the earliest extant English autobiography, written by the minor Elizabethan composer and musician Thomas Whythorne.

Even for an autobiography it can be a tedious read. There are long Protestant theological musings, and often when you think you are about to get a juicy bit of social history, such as when he suddenly mentions being present during a plague outbreak, you instead get more pages of amateur theology.

It is redeemed, however, by what seem to be (apart from theology) his two main interests in life: women and music. The former is more interesting to a general audience, and indeed his attitude to and interactions with women are very curious. He is constantly finding himself in the company of amorous widows, servants and other 'dyverz young women’. And he is often issuing warnings and repeating sayings regarding women:

'lẏk all women, but loov nọn of þem'
'þei be az slippery as ẏs, and will turn az þe wynd and weþerkok'
'in kraftynes, flattering, dissembling and lyeng þei do exsell men'
'women be layzy, & low be lowd. fair be sluttish, and fowll be prowd'

There is also an amusing passage, at least for modern British readers accustomed to being the targets of such stereotypes, where Whythorne recounts travelling to 'low Duchland' and complains about the prevalence of drunkenness. He makes similar complaints about Germany and Italy: 'And whẏll I was in þọz kuntreiz I being sumwhat moleste[d] & trobled with drunkars þạr, bekawz I wold not drink karows and all owt when þ[ey] wold hạv had mee az þay did.'

'Þe Germans and Alman,' he later writes, 'be but blunt and riud, and also geven to delẏt in þeir dayly drink to much.' He then adds that, nevertheless, they aren't as bad as the 'french, Ita[l]iens, and Spanyardz'.

Let us end with a song by Whythorne, 'Buy New Broom':


Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Ben-Hur

We are approaching the 60th anniversary of the 1959 film. The film of course was based on Lew Wallace's 1880 book Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Both are extraordinary in at least one respect, and it's the one respect that most matters to me. Wallace's Ben-Hur is a historical novel more than a religious one. It does not, for me at least, elucidate any biblical themes or messages. What it does do is recreate biblical times in a way that is truly astonishing. This is true of the film too. Both are feats of noble imagination that seem to resurrect a dead civilisation, blowing off the dust and sand under which it is buried. Reading Ben-Hur gives one a newfound sense of place when reading the bible.

I am admittedly the sort of person who doesn't care much about plot. I love setting above all. When I watch a film I enjoy the visuals, the style, the facial expressions, the silences more than I do the action. When I read a book I enjoy most the descriptions not the events. I tend to linger a lot when reading. In this respect Ben-Hur is second only to those magical opening chapters of The Talisman in the Syrian desert, or perhaps those extraordinary descriptions when Waverley first enters the highlands. Or Vodolazkin's almost fantastical medieval Russia in Laurus. Those novels are somewhat better than Ben-Hur -- Wallace's prose is not as strong as Scott or Vodolazkin, though it nonetheless works. And for many, I suspect, Wallace is much easier to read than Scott.

One other thing that is great about the film of the score. This was a time when films had overtures and entr'actes. Miklós Rózsa's music for the film is the epitome of Hollywood musical grandeur. It's fantastic:


Friday, November 1, 2019

Some obscure (or at least neglected) books

I've decided to write the occasional post about obscure, or at least neglected, books that I am rather fond of. First up...

...two of the most interesting science-fictions novels. They are both short, overlooked works by two of the 19th centuries most successful writers: Trollope's The Fixed Period (1882) and Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race (1871). Granted, almost no-one reads Bulwer-Lytton anymore, and while I think this is a just fate for many of his novels, if any reader wants to find an evocative and engrossing novel set in Ancient Rome, you could do a lot worse than The Last Days of Pompeii; and if you want a thoughtful and surprisingly amusing science-fiction novel, I would heartily recommend The Coming Race. 

Both The Fixed Period and The Coming Race have the virtue of being short books: my copy of the former comes in at 150 pages, the latter 115. The Fixed Period has an unusually dark (for Trollope) premise: a breakaway British colony named Britannula, in the early years of its newly-established republic, votes with an overwhelming majority to euthanise anyone over the age of 67 -- 'the fixed period'. At 67, the unfortunate person would be sent to 'The College' -- a supposedly idyllic place for them to spend their final year -- then when they turned 68 they would be killed, euphemistically referred to as the 'departure'. In an age like ours of democratic excess, which has made mainstream such fanaticism, and such absurd ideas; where euthanasia is becoming less and less a dirty word; where a policy like the China's one-child (now two-child) restriction is much less controversial than it ought to be; where abortion for convenience is becoming more acceptable; in such an era The Fixed Period, for all its amusing Victorian fancy, does not seem as ridiculous as it should. President John Neverbend is a fanatic struggling with private doubts and a nagging conscience, but adamant to pursue what he has reasoned himself into believing is right. One of the things most frightening about him is his unrelenting earnestness. I find him a believable character, and often notice his type. 

The Coming Race, though the shorter of the two novels, is the more challenging read. The Fixed Period actually moves rather swiftly, whereas in The Coming Race there is an entire chapter on the Vril-ya language, which includes passages like, 'As the inflectional stage prevailed over the agglutinative, it is surprising to see...' (I bet you're eager to know how that sentence ends), and even includes a table demonstrating the declension of nouns in the Vril-ya language. Most chapters, however, are very short -- some only a page long. The chapter on the Vril-ya language is only five pages, and one could skip it and not have missed anything vital. Indeed, the novel does not really have a plot to speak of. A nameless narrator discovers an underground race of telepathic superhuman called Vril-ya, and he is invited to explore their technologically-advanced society. Eventually he has to escape after falling in love with his tour-guide (for want of a better term), Zee, and he then warns mankind of the dangers faced by the Vril-ya, who, through the mysterious substance vril, possess incredible powers of healing, metamorphosis and most of all destruction. The apparent utopia which the Vril-ya have created is entirely dependent on this terrifying power.

The novel is fascinating for readers like myself more interested in place and ideas than plot and incident. For many, however, what is most interesting about the novel is its legacy. It was spectacularly popular and the word 'vril' quickly entered common use. Bovril, for example, takes its name from bovine and, of course, vril. The idea of vril has also had a strange life in neo-nazi movements, the history of which can be readily found online. Indeed, a lot of conspiracy theorists and occultists seem to have taken up the idea of vril.

Though I can't say that vril, or the more science-fiction aspects of the novel, was what captured my interest. I enjoyed its conservatism, and was hooked from its first paragraph, which contains this bit of anti-democratic satire:
My family ... enjoyed a somewhat high social position in right of birth; and being also opulent, they were considered disqualified for the public service. My father once ran for Congress, but was signally defeated by his tailor.
It is a pleasure (though of a dark sort) to read a conservative dystopian novel. David A. Cowan wrote, a few years back, an excellent article at The American Conservative about the novel:
Egalitarian doctrine is embodied in the Vril-ya. Their society enjoys absolute equality of class and between sexes. Theirs appears to be a utopia in which crime, disease, and conflict do not exist. Leftist writers have conceived of such places in science fiction for decades, with Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek being the most prominent example of recent times. This progressive spirit has been elevated to theological heights by the Vril-ya, who base their religion on the “conviction of a future state, more felicitous and more perfect than the present.” But the narrator soon discovers that this serene paradise is in fact one of the most civilized hellscapes to grace science fiction.
The narrator soon discovers that this serene paradise is in fact one of the most civilized hellscapes to grace science fiction. The society produced by absolute equality of outcome is ultimately sterile and monotonous, as it has traded away individuality for the common good. There is no state coercion of any kind; instead, convention and custom govern the lives of the Vril-ya thanks to their ability to self-discipline their behavior through the aid of Vril. All the Vril-ya put the common good before all other considerations, thus producing an authoritarian order in which a single magistrate rules, albeit with no formal coercive power, and citizens abide by the motto "No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity." Language such as this calls to mind the totalitarian dystopias of George Orwell’s 1984 or Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. Individuality and the unequal distinctions that arise from it are actively repudiated by the Vril-ya, rooted in the belief that greed for status, privilege, and fame could only lead to conflict and poverty.
Having once admired utilitarian social reformers in the 1830s, Bulwer-Lytton was aware of the many utopian arguments that claimed the state could change people’s habits, and thus their character, through measures such as public education or teetotalism. The Vril-ya represent this approach in excelsis. With Vril supplying all needs, no one indulges in alcoholic intoxication, adulterous love, devouring meat, hunting animals, or rude language. The Vril-ya’s rational morality is utterly divorced from human emotion or animal instincts—at the cost of all artistic endeavor and spiritual expression. Blandness and mediocrity define their way of life. Without competition, there is no opportunity for greatness to emerge. Bulwer-Lytton’s narrator even goes so far as to say that if you took the finest human beings from Western civilization and placed them among the Vril-ya, “in less than a year they would either die of ennui, or attempt some revolution.” Egalitarianism is portrayed as a doctrine that can only destroy all the particularities, idiosyncrasies, and joyfulness of human existence.

Monday, October 28, 2019

The old trains were bad; the new trains are even worse

To get to concert at the weekend I had to walk 3.5 miles to the nearest operating railway station. A tree had apparently fallen on my usual line. I could have got the bus to the other station, but the buses here are ridiculously expensive for short journeys, so I opted to walk. A few miles is not that far, and I rather enjoyed the adventure of walking through heavy rain and frenzied blusters. Much better than the dull, oppressive, predictable heat of last summer.

My usual line has rather old trains with sad, sagging seats and all the beauty of a Cineworld entrance. The line I used the other day has new, clean trains with all the charm of the Scottish Parliament. Whereas the old trains at least have leg room (even if the seats do often slide off as you sit on them), the designers of the new trains realised that one can fit many more 'customers' into the train if you make them sit with their knees pressed to their chins, on seats so narrow I'm surprised anyone larger than Rory Stewart manages to fit. The corridor is curiously spacious, no doubt to stuff as many overcharged commuters in as possible, who have paid several thousands pounds annually for the privilege of travelling to London on this nightmare train.

And as if this wasn't all bad enough, to further cram in more standing 'customers', the carriages are now continuous. One of the virtues of the old trains is the ability to move carriage when faced with phone-yappers or hen parties. Now there is no escape. The sound of groups of young men making their idiosyncratic cavemen noises, or girls' hysterical gossip, or the business bloviator who probably sleeps with his earpiece in -- all this horrid miscellany of noise travels down the entirety of the train. 

Reading becomes impossible. I can read only in quiet, or in places so noisy that I can't distinguish one voice from another. With the old trains I have a good 50% chance of the former; with the new trains there is almost no chance, and depressingly, all I can hope for is enough noise to drown the rest of the noise out. If someone from centuries ago were transported to our crumbling 21st century civilisation, I suspect the thing he would find most intolerable is the inescapable, unrestrained level of noise.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Inevitablism

The way we are conducting Brexit is like how I wrote essays in school: I would have a week to write them, but I would wait until the last minute, assuming that the panic of the last moment would force me to write something. This strategy was never terribly successful, though I usually managed to do just enough to avoid a detention.

Actually, Brexit is more like modern education at a second-rate university. Britain is rather like the student in said university who never writes an essay on time; the EU is like the administration which has no qualms granting endless extensions.

Remainers, I'm afraid, are the most inevitablist of the factions, and certainly the dangerous. They think delays will lead to a reversion of Brexit. Quite amazingly, they are so inevitablist they believe if they hold a second referendum, they will undoubtedly win. I'm not sure most of them have ever countenanced -- or will ever countenance -- another leave victory. It is sufficient, for them, merely to 'get the ball rolling'. They believe they have history on their side, and they cannot believe -- if presented with the 'facts' -- that the majority could possibly disagree with them.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

'Challenging' Art

Great works of art, we are told, are challenging. Yet they are only ever challenging in one way: in support of the liberal worldview. When we read Daniel Defoe's great novel Moll Flanders, it presents a largely alien social and moral order, especially regarding women, one that challenges modern beliefs. Yet this isn't why it is considered challenging. No, it is challenging, we are told, because it is proto-feminist, progressive for its time by depicting a strong and independent seventeenth-century woman.

'Forward-thinking', 'enlightened', 'subversive' -- propaganda terms abound in the attempt to rewrite history by re-depicting works of art in a radical light. A work is praised for being 'ahead of its time', at some early stage in an inevitable march forward. It is nonsense, of course, but this kind of progressivism has become the atheist's version of providence.

The Defoe novel that offers the most unambiguous 'challenge' to our age is Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe's discovery of the value of solitude, and the novel's very Christian introversion, presents a true alternative to the modern lifestyle. But Robinson Crusoe is so often relegated to the status of children's book, with all the best theological bits excised. It is neutered, sterilised, made inoffensive to modern readers. If they read the original novel they would discover an actual challenge to their beliefs, a world that no longer exists, a world they have prejudicially rejected as 'backwards'.

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Questioning the Supreme Court's Judgement

I have seldom seen such uncritical glee as the reaction to the Supreme Court's decision. I too think the prorogation was deceitful and rotten, but it is no business of the courts. Please, instead of relying on what commentators say, read the judgement. Just because the Supreme Court rules something unlawful (even -- or perhaps especially -- if it does so unanimously) does not mean we all should submit to the decision uncritically. It is one's civic duty to scrutinise, a duty which one should not shy away from on account of silly unthinking people jeering 'what do you know?' or 'listen to the experts'. The opinions of Supreme Court judges have weight of course, but there is no such thing as judicial infallibility and one should not blindly accept the decisions of courts. They do and will get things wrong for all sorts of reasons.

I've read the judgement. (Read it here.) I cannot find any positive evidence in the document for their decision. I see not-especially-relevant cases cited to justify this encroachment into politics. And I see a lot of speculation and deduction, better suited to detective fiction than legal judgements.

They argue that they can find no 'reasonable justification' for the prorogation. They decide this by way of process of elimination: it can't have been x, y or z, therefore it must be this. As there is no direct evidence to support the government's reason for prorogation, they write that

'It is impossible for us to conclude, on the evidence which has been put before us, that there was any reason - let alone a good reason - to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament.' (paragraph 61)

By my reading, this is as if to say the government is guilty until proven innocent. Moreover, as there is no direct evidence, in other words no written document or statute -- which is the nature of constitutional conventions -- then how can this possibly be the business of the Supreme Court? It is a political matter. The Court surely does not, or rather should not, have the power to make convention into law.

One justification they give for their encroachment into politics is that

'the courts have the responsibility of upholding the values and principles of our constitution and making them effective' (paragraph 39). 

Actually, 'values and principles' are not things about which the courts should rule, unless these value and principles have been written explicitly into law.

In paragraph 49 they write,

'a prerogative power is therefore limited by statute and the common law, including, in the present context, the constitutional principles with which it would otherwise conflict.' 

On what grounds do they believe they have the authority to judge something as abstract as 'the constitutional principles [my emphasis] with which it [the prerogative power] would otherwise conflict'?

It sounds to me like the ridiculous idea of living constitutionalism popular in America. Indeed, the most important effect of this decision does not have to do with parliament but with the Supreme Court. It is a rebalancing of the constitution in the Court's favour. It will surely, therefore, become more like the US Supreme Court, which I for one certainly don't want.

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Is Conservatism Useless?

An amusing question to ask genuinely conservative-minded people is when did it all go wrong? The answer might be: 1997, 1960s, World Wars, French Revolution, Inudstrial Revolution, Reformation, and the most reactionary (and usually racialist) conservatives might blame Christianity. A few might say the loss of absolute monarchy, the introduction of female suffrage or the 1832 Reform Act, but they are mostly silly provocateurs (though I must confess I think the case against the Reform Act is underappreciated). Others might even say, or may well in the future say, the 2016 referendum; I would describe them as conservatives of a kind, though others would disagree.

This is, however, the mark of a conservative: someone who does not believe the present is better than the past. He might believe it is neither superior nor inferior to the past. He might refuse to draw any line between the past, present and future denoting general progress or decline. There are of course specific areas where one can observe progress or decline. A conservative will probably believe the latter is more common, and will likely hold things like spiritual decline to be more important than growing tolerance of exotic sexualities. Even when a conservative is happy to see some change, some genuine progress, his support usually comes in the form of 'yes, but...'

The paradox inside most conservatives is that while his primary motive is to conserve, as a pessimist he looks around and finds very little he wants to conserve. More honest and thoughtful conservatives either admit they are essentially defeatists, that they merely want to preserve what is left of what they love, thus slowing its decline, or that they want change or a revival, which hardly makes them conservatives.

I'm slowly and very reluctantly coming to the conclusion that conservatism is dead. I use it to describe myself because it still usefully indicates a temperament: the progressive looks forward for hope and inspiration, the conservative backward. It seems obvious to me that the latter is the preferable outlook. The Romans looked to the Greeks. The medievals looked to both the Romans and Greeks. 17th and 18th century Britons would have looked back to England's 'ancient constitution'.

However, none of these societies, nor any of the people one admires as conservatives, were actually 'conservative'. The temperament we know as conservative was, I suspect, the common worldview of western men until it no longer was, the same way classical music was simply 'music' until it no longer was. No one, then, called themselves a conservative. A Tory perhaps, or an aristocrat, but a rampant democratic like Chesterton was equally a 'conservative' as I would use the term, and I find a lot of what I consider to be conservatism in old socialists, even in old Engels and his excellent book The Condition of the Working Class in England. 

If you look in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary you will indeed find 'conservative', but the definition (there is only one) is probably not what you expect, though I rather like it:

'Having the power of opposing diminution or injury.'

Samuel Johnson was a great conservative, yet he clearly can't have been a conservative, for no such word existed to describe political thought. This is one of conservatism's great problems. Nearly all the great conservatives were pre-conservative. One reason for this, I would suggest, is because conservatism has very little political force. The term seems most effective when used to describe a political side which has lost, or is about to lose. To call oneself a conservative is almost to the sign a death warrant for those things one wishes to conserve.

I cannot think of an alternative term. Tory is of no use. Reactionary is a fun term, never a serious one except when used by one's enemies. Right-winger brings to mind either Moggists or Yaxley-Lennonists, neither of whom I wish to lumped in with. So we are stuck with conservative, I suppose.

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Last Night of the Proms

Having supposedly travelled from left to right in my politics, it is surprising how many of my opinions remain unchanged. I never did a 180 degree turn; I did not swing from one extreme to another as is the stereotype with converts. Rather, I discovered greater things which tempered and deepened my view of culture and politics (and of course continue to do so). Of the things that changed, I can think of only a handful: I no longer despise religion, I am much more suspicious of military interventions, I am no longer an egalitarian (born out in, say, my view on education), I now read books and listen to classical music instead of playing video games and listening to rock music, I am no longer an enthusiast for Britiain's membership of the EU. There are doubtless some others...

That may seem like quite few, and they certainly are important, but mostly they are a change in temperament, not necessarily policy. I supported nationalisation before; I still do. I was opposed to anti-Muslim types; I still am. I thought we should build more council houses; I still do. I didn't like Thatcherism, so-called; I still don't. I did and still do care deeply about the environment. I've always been opposed to drug legalisation. (I could go on...)

I was also patriotic before, in however vague a sense; in fact, whereas my patriotism used to encompass an enthusiasm for modern Britain, my patriotism now does not. In some ways one could say I'm less patriotic, as I see much of what I love about England in quick decline. That frightening but essential strength which compels a person to fight for their country has been extinguished in our society, and it has been extinguished in me.

One thing I disliked when I was left wing and dislike still is the Last Night of the Proms. Of course reasons change. I disliked it then because it was both elitist and old (classical music) and also populist in the worst sense (jingoist in other words). Now my tastes have changed I don't mind the music, though I can't say I get excited about it compared to the rest of the Proms season. If one looks at the Last Night of the Proms programmes from several decades ago, one will find much more substantial works (notably, there was always one concerto).

However, what particularly irks me is the daft and unthinking way that the crowds jubilantly sing, 'Britannia rule the waves...' in 2019. And it shows just how unthinking the whole thing is that the lefty EU-philes sing along too. I watch it and think, what delusions they have. What waves do we rule? Is this not some parody of patriotism -- 'the love that asks no questions', in the words of that silly hymn (which Holst himself rightly disliked).

Of course, it looks like the Last Night of the Proms is becoming more about the EU now than Britain. This is much more fitting for modern Britain, and once the transformation is complete it might finally make people realise that the world of Rule, Brittania! and Land of Hope and Glory is gone, and that their patriotism has little depth. The crowd will be singing 'Freude! Freude!' while waving an EU and, now inevitably, a rainbow flag. The preceding pieces will no doubt be songs from alleged musicals like Hamilton. Rule, Britannia! may still be included, and I fear a dwindling minority with their Union Jack flags will still be singing along unthinkingly. Maybe even the EU-philes and relentless modernisers will still be singing it too. It is the strange thing about songs -- one of the most powerful art forms -- that seldom does anyone pay much attention to the words.

Sunday, September 8, 2019

Chasing Airy Good

A country is entirely capable of pursuing policies that will cause it extraordinary harm. Some sort of vanguard, be it under the leadership of someone named Johnson or Blair, and usually claiming to represent 'the people' or 'progress', will stubbornly pursue a policy, even when it is obvious the devastation they are causing, because they believe it is the right thing to do -- morally and historically, a sort of secular providence. They did it with mass migration. They have done it repeatedly with foreign interventions. Other countries have certainly done it in pursuit of a communist society.

Brexit is not quite the same, but the same tendency is undoubtedly there. 'We must have a clean break with the EU,' we are told. 'We must follow the democratic mandate.' 'We must follow the will of the people.' As usually happens with democracy, a direct vote (i.e. the referendum) has empowered the most radical on the winning side. Indeed, it has turned people who once were infuriatingly moderate on or uninterested in the EU question into aspiring tyrants demanding complete political surrender to their 'clean' or 'true' version of Brexit. How fickle people are.

I want to the leave the EU. I think it is a worthy goal. As it stands, I see only one sensible, relatively safe compromise available. It's dull, half-hearted, will please almost no one, but the Withdrawal Agreement is the best way I see out of this crisis. I had an uncharacteristic spasm of hope upon hearing that the Kinnock amendment had passed (and moreover, was not rejected in the House of Lords). Our policy regarding Brexit should be to do as little as must be done (not sound policy in most important things, but politics is usually the exception). From that small first step many more steps towards exiting EU may come (I truly hope so).

It is much preferable to letting this country further ruin itself in yet another movement of ideological fervour. A society has possibly never changed so much as Britain has in the last half century. We should be increasingly careful in what policies we pursue; yet successive governments have shown the entirely opposite temperament. The foundations beneath us have been eroded, vandalised, surreptitiously replaced with money-saving short-life material; and with each stupid policy, with each economic and political catastrophe, we are nearing that final collapse, that Vesuvian disaster, when much of what we thought would always be is no longer.

Monday, August 26, 2019

A small victory for decency

I do love travelling by train, truly the best form of transport man has yet invented (and I suspect ever will). So I am always particularly angry when the experience is spoiled, whether because of government policy, poor management, or, as is most frequently the problem, fellow passengers. There are several such species of locomotive pest: drunkard, leaking-earphone-wearer, threatening male youth, phone babbler, selfish-git-with-his-feet-on-the-seat-opposite. And then of course there is the most common pest of them all: teenager. The teenager will usually be found in groups of three or more. It will invariably be slouching, and in its hands will be a phone towards which all its attention is directed. It seldom converses with its fellow teenagers, except to snicker or exclaim (usually by swearing), which is done in reaction to something asinine they have seen on their phone, and which they may or may not share. However, often the asinine thing in question is automatically shared with the entire carriage because the teenager, being a solipsistic and selfish creature, always has its phone speaker on maximum volume.

I had an encounter with a group of them the other day while travelling home. They were perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, with elaborate hairstyles and costumed in ludicrous tracksuits (the well-kept, expensive sort; ones their parents probably iron). Their demeanour was of a kind common around here: middle class, spoilt and unpleasant, clearly adherents of rap and other menacing subcultures, but not themselves thuggish. They had with them a portable speaker (always an ominous sign; the amplifier has surely been one of the most culturally and environmentally damaging inventions). Inevitably, they began to play something through it -- it was only the violent beat which suggested it might be music. At first the 'music' was relatively quiet (of course such music is never truly quiet). It was, nevertheless, loud enough that one could make out its extraordinarily ugly lyrics: everything up to and including the c word. 

(I would be mildly annoyed if someone was amplifying a Haydn string quartet on a train. It would still be a rude and inconsiderate intrusion. But to play such foul music makes the offence a thousand times worse.)

After a few minutes one of them said to turn up the volume. Suddenly it became loud. At the time I was trying to immerse myself in my book and block out the grisly aural discharge coming from the speaker. I was already failing, and with the sudden lurch in volume I lost all patience. I stood up and said, very abruptly: 'Turn it off. It's extremely annoying -- not to mention rude.'

I was fortunate. They were clearly incredulous that anyone would challenge their stupid behaviour, but nevertheless switched off their speaker. After a few moments, they began to ridicule me among themselves. And there was the odd seething remark directed to me, said with great sarcasm -- 'sorry to have stopped you reading your book', that sort of thing -- but I could not care: I had already won my victory. I returned happily to The Tempest (a delightful old Cassell edition which I had just bought, replete with those remarkable 19th century adverts for 'Mellin's Food for Infants and Invalids' and 'Shirley's Neuralgic Crystal: Invaluable to Clergymen and others who suffer from Headache caused by overwork and study'). Of course, one line from that play instantly came to mind: 'O brave new world, that has such people in it!'

I do not recommend anyone follows my example. It was foolish, not some courageous act but a moment of spontaneous anger which could have ended very badly for me. People do get attacked, even killed, for such confrontations. If those boys had the will they could have easily beaten me up -- or worse. Ideally there would be police (or conductors on the train) who would deter or stop such antisocial behaviour. It is amazing to think that police used to be able to this, alone and armed only with a truncheon and a whistle. Now they (including the transport police) have machine guns, body armour, tasers, sprays, and goodness knows what else, and yet one almost never sees them patrolling -- and if one does, they will be in pairs or groups, probably discussing sport or playing on their phones. They hardly deter crime, or indeed stop crime. I have seen groups of transport police, standing at the platform gates trying to detain people who do not present a train ticket; those without tickets just run away and jeer and swear at the police. A few guilty but somewhat admirable people stay behind, dutifully giving the police their details. But they are not the ones who are most deserving and in need of punishment.

Of course there should be no need for police to have to stop such antisocial behaviour. A healthy society should have some degree of self-regulation. Boys should be frightened of adults, not adults of boys. People generally should be self-aware enough to realise that other people might not enjoy their aural perversions. But if people will not regulate themselves, if decent people are powerless against the indecent, then it is quite justified to look to the police. People should be removed from trains if they misbehave. Why not make particularly egregious offenders spend a night in jail, when persuasion and warning is ineffective? The police will say they do not have the staff, time or resources. Yet they seem to be able to find the staff, time and resources to patrol social media in search of the silly things people say. Or to facilitate drug use at music festivals (in the name of 'safety testing'). They have the money to hire seemingly greater numbers of non-uniformed staff. And indeed, I believe the number of police officers per head has gone up decade after decade. Yet they hardly investigate, say, fraud or theft. They are seldom patrolling, except when whizzing by in cars. So why is it exactly that they cannot find the time and means to police antisocial behaviour?

Thursday, August 22, 2019

All the Latest Synthetic Religion

I first heard Monteverdi's Vespers and Bach's Matthew Passion in Norwich Cathedral. Hearing the Vespers was one of the greatest experiences of my life. There really is no better word than 'transcendent' to describe how it felt. Come the 'Gloria Patri' the last decaying vestiges of atheism finally fell from me. I may not have become a believer, but I became open to belief. I found myself, at the very least -- though many believers doubtless (and justifiably) sigh upon hearing this phrase -- becoming a 'cultural Christian'.

This great 12th century Cathedral, where I once sat in quiet ecstasy listening to Monteverdi and Bach, has now installed in its nave a lurid helter skelter:


It is a sad image. It reminds one of that passage in Brave New World, when Henry and Lenina are walking past Westminster Abbey in 26th century Britain. It has become Westminster Abbey Cabaret, and
from the façade of the new Abbey the giant letters invitingly glared. 'LONDON'S FINEST SCENT AND COLOUR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC.'
The Bishop of Lynn, the Rt Revd Jonathan Meyrick, delivering his sermon from the ride, told his congregation that 'God is a tourist attraction'. I'd like to know what he means by that astonishing statement. It stinks of crowd-pleasing right-on sentiment. It is certainly true that cathedrals are now little more than tourist attractions, more important historically than culturally, let alone religiously. To install a helter skelter in one only emphasises their cultural and religious unimportance.

Even the most hardened atheists like Richard Dawkins, A.C. Grayling and the late Christopher Hitchens, being men with a sense of goodness and beauty, would surely disapprove of what Norwich Cathedral has done. One gets the impression, correct or not, that the clergy dislike their church and want to see it debased even more than Dawkins et al.

The Reverend Canon Andy Bryant, from Norwich Cathedral, said he could see why people would be surprised to see the helter-skelter. 
But in addition to showcasing the roof, he said it was "part of the cathedral's mission to share the story of the Bible" and was a "creative and innovative way to do that".
'Creative' and 'innovative' are surely two of the most abused words in 21st century English. They are always used to justify cheap pleasure, sensationalism, self-indulgence, ugliness, prurience, novelty of the worst sort -- pretending that these are profound and penetrating qualities. We live in a society where merely to deviate from tradition is a virtue -- and the more one deviates the better. It does not have to have any greater purpose than to 'challenge' (whatever that means). Such 'deviance' should be considered at best conceited and pretentious.

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Growing a Beard

No, this is not a post about how to grow some tidy, hedge-like, fashionable beard. It is not about the alchemy of oils, supplements, conditioners and other horrid products that will guarantee you a full luscious beard in no time, as the marketing would go. There are few greater abominations than the modern 'hipster' beard, usually accompanied with skinny jeans and tattoos and scooters. Fye upon them all!

In fact, this post is not really about 'growing a beard', contrary to the title. The word 'growing' implies some sort of cultivation on my part; rather, I have simply neglected to shave. And what has resulted from this inactivity -- a sort of sprouting of many hairs on various parts of my face -- cannot with all honesty be called a 'beard'.

I have more 'coverage' on my face than many people my age. I have enough to form a moustache (though not, sadly, one of those marvellously fulsome Lord Kitchener moustaches), light and sparse hairs on my upper cheeks which just about join the moustache, fairly decent sideburns, a goatee but two large hairless gaps to either side, and enormous amounts on the neck and chinline.

Of course, they (the ominscient they) say that most men's beards never stop growing, and that many do not get full 'coverage' until well into their middle age. Not that I necessarily want such a beard.

Naturally, I have done extensive research to see the possible results if I were to let my beard grow out. All these roughly share my 'growth pattern' (oh, to be able to unlearn all this beard jargon):

Dostoevsky
Shaw

Shakespeare

Thoreau
The Thoreau neckbeard is certainly the most peculiar, made worse by his rather doleful, absent look. However, the neckbeard was not so freakish a style at the time, with at least one other great man, Richard Wagner, adopting the look. But however antiquated and unfashionable I may enjoy being, not even I could suffer the embarrassment that such a beard would cause.

The Shakepeare is of course the most agreeable and shapely beard, but I am rather partial to the wilder Dostoevsky and Shaw. I think one looks more interesting and important the longer one's beard. Particularly if the beard shows no obvious signs of grooming. The Trollopian beard exemplifies this:


Or perhaps Tolstoy:


What fine beards!

Monday, August 5, 2019

Darkly Watching

Dexter Morgan is among the greatest 'lonely' characters in fiction, up there with Don Fabrizio, Robinson Crusoe and Miss Havisham. Each is lonely in a different way, of course. Crusoe is shipwrecked on a desert island, and so is forced into loneliness; but it is through his solitude that he becomes the most virtuous of the three. Miss Havisham, as a consequence of trauma, becomes a horribly lonely figure who nevertheless has found the means to inflict much harm. Don Fabrizio is most often in company; as a prince, his life is by necessity a social one. But the moments he seems to most cherish are when he indulges his own fancy. When he lies on death bed, he reflects that most of his life was wasted on the tedium of his social role. He very much embodies the cliche of feeling 'lonely in a crowd'.

Dexter is most like Don Fabrizio in that he is someone whose life is a something of mirage, who feels his real self, as it were, exists in another life hidden to nearly everyone. Except Dexter's other life does not involve activities as mild as astronomy, shooting game or even (for the most part) copulating with mistresses. Dexter is a serial killer. Like Miss Havisham, a single traumatic event infected him with a 'darkness' (his term), and he has since then lived his life in the unending shadow of that moment.

The thing about Dexter, though, is that one always feels ambiguous about him. He even feels ambiguous about himself. He describes a need to kill, a 'dark passenger'. But it matters to him that only kills the 'right' people. His father, who quickly became aware of his son's psychopathy, taught him a code: Dexter will only kill those who deserve it. That is, he only kills (other) serial killers. All the while he maintains an ostensibly normal life working as a forensic expert at Miami Metro. He has a sister, for whom he genuinely seems to have affection. He wonders whether his affection is selfish in origin -- but this is something many of us wonder ourselves, to what extent our love is selfless. He also marries; the marriage was initially a cover, a normal life to help conceal his murders, but soon both we and he start to wonder if it is more than that. Eventually he has a child, whom it is clear he unambiguously loves. Later on, after the death of his wife, he even finds a woman who really is, for good or ill, the perfect woman for him. Indeed, over the course of the eight series of the programme one becomes conflicted about this most prolific of serial killers. After all, the only people he kills thoroughly deserve it, right? And isn't he such a caring father, brother and spouse? Isn't he clearly trying to overcome his own 'darkness'?

The programme tests one's morality. There is no doubt in my mind, intellectually at least, that Dexter deserved to face a court of law and be sentenced to death. Yet were I acquainted with Dexter and aware of his activities I would have hesitated to turn him in. My unwillingness would not be out of fear; I would not be able to do it because I rather like him. And not merely do I like him but I even 'relate' to him. I suspect many honest, thoughtful viewers do too. We all have a darkness, hidden evils, which we sometimes desperately struggle with. I certainly struggle with a melancholy, which can turn into devastating weakness and apathy, which I'm sure, in certain circumstances, would have the power to drag other people down to hellish levels. We all adopt external lives that are in part merely to get along. And we introverts (as psychobabblers call us) know how much life can feel like an act, and how much we can exist in our head, feeling misunderstood. Dangerously we ask ourselves, are we really that different from Dexter?

What does it mean that we empathise with Dexter? He is a monster, yet at the same time he is so human, capable of such love, but whose good instincts seem to be all perverted towards the wrong end. (This I think explains the universally hated ending, which I won't spoil, in which Dexter tries to do the right thing, but does it in entirely the wrong way and with the worst possible outcome.) I fear that one reason why audiences are so taken with him is because the modern doctrine of 'embrace who you are' features so strongly in our morality. He can't help it, we say to ourselves -- or more radically, he is merely 'different' -- and so we empathise with him.

It is an immoral TV series. Some people watching it could easily believe that the morality of Dexter is true. The one moment when Dexter seems to change, when he has someone tied up ready to be killed, he realises that he does not need to kill and so leaves the victim for the police to arrest. The victim certainly, following Dexter's code, deserves death, but Dexter, it then appears, transcends the pseudo-morality of the code. He tries instead to do the right thing by turning him over to the police. But all goes wrong: the victim manages to escape and kills someone close to Dexter. Doing the right thing does not necessarily result in better outcomes than doing the wrong thing. This is the problem with utilitarianism -- it is also the problem with Dexter's code. Maybe, if added it up on a spreadsheet, the world would be a better place with a handful of Dexters in it, but spreadsheets, calculations and studies are not adequate methods for determining values of morality and justice.

I somewhat worry that a programme like this is watched by so many, and as entertainment -- a thrill, a dark fantasy. Ideas and stories are dangerous. The show makes you fond of murderers. It does so in an intelligent and I believe useful way. But the idea that fourteen year-olds are watching this, or even just people without the necessary philosophical or moral backbone is rather unnerving. In a society of such relativism, where we are able to turn genuinely sinister freaks into virtuous dissidents, I worry that Dexter, the 'misunderstood' sociopathic outcast, is an all-too sympathetic -- even admirable -- figure for many.

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Reading Laurus

As I've been reading Eugene Vodolazkin's extraordinary novel Laurus, about the life of saint in 15th century Russia, I've become convinced that I can distantly hear Sofia Gubaidulina's music. Laurus reads like a sort of holy picaresque novel. There isn't necessarily a plot but rather a series of events, often strange and humorous, that make one extraordinarily fond of Arseny. He is always suffering, always experiencing setbacks, encountering the most peculiar of characters. And through his journey one gets a vivid impression of the Orthodox faith: magical and oddly dark, yet a constant vertical struggle towards what is good. And so, naturally, the glissandis and austerity and stark aural landscape -- so like I imagine the Russian landscape to be -- of Gubaidulina's music has never felt more powerful. Start reading Laurus, and then listen to this:


Gubaidulina must be one of the few great living composers. I think it's become clear that we're living either in a transitional period or an epoch of decline. Where are the great composers, novelist, poets, artists? Yes, there are some, and many good ones, but greatness seems to be an ever rarer quality. Some (I think mistaken) traditionalists believe it is because too few write tonal music. (The less intellectual critics complain about the lack of 'melodies' or more broadly 'tunes'.) I love Arvo Part and Morten Lauridsen too, but equally there are great composers like Gubaidulina and Messiaen and other (usually less known) composers who show that the modern idiom can produce great art.

Tonal/highly dissonant music is not, therefore, an important divide. But there are some divides worth noting. There do seem to be more great religious composers than great secular composers. I think there is a lot of promise in Central and Eastern Europe while Western Europe and the Anglosphere seems to be faltering. And I think the best composers now -- or at least the composers I most like -- are the ones looking back to the Renaissance more than the 19th century. As it happens, Vodolazkin believes that we are in new Middle Ages. And like him, I believe this could be a good thing.

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Jacob Rees Mogg's Style Guide

Why do journalists refer to Jacob Rees-Mogg as the 'member of parliament for the 18th century'? In terms of fashion, beliefs and manner he is more of a Victorian, perhaps an Edwardian. And in other respects he is very much a man of the 20th century. Of course to most people old is old, and they mistakenly draw a straight line from the past to the present, which denotes for them a transition from rigid formality to liberation.

Anyone familiar with the 18th century knows that it was quite unlike the 19th century. Read Defoe or Smollett, whose fictions could not possibly have been created in the 19th century. In terms of language (which shall be the subject of this blog post) it was still a time in which words could have multiple spellings, where dialects varied considerably, where grammar was not yet standardised. Samuel Johnson's compiled his Dictionary not in order to prescribe but describe. When we read it now we do not use it as instruction necessarily, but as an insight into the linguistic customs of the time. It was really a journalist effort to document how language was used.

The overly prescriptive approach to the English language is primarily, as far as I can tell, a 20th century obsession. Grammar lessons are no doubt to blame. Jacob Rees-Mogg, whom I shall hereafter refer to as Esquire, is clearly continuing the obsession. Esquire has sent a list of rules to his staff, banning words and phrases such as 'very', 'due to', 'ongoing' and 'got', and requring them to double space after full stops and to use 'Esq.' after non-titled males names (which, you may have noticed, I find rather silly; and it too is, I believe, solely a 20th century custom).

I agree with Esquire on a few of his choices. He insists on the use of imperial measurements. Good! The imperial system is a far superior and more tangible system than the metric alternative. The EU's Napoleonic directives calling for all member states to use the metric system exemplifies why Britain should not be a member. And phrases like 'no longer fit for purpose' are indeed useless and, moreover, irritating. 

But, goodness, who cares if 'due to' is used instead of 'owing to' -- what loss of clarity is there? 'Due to' no longer has the exclusive meaning it once had, and I can think of no reasons why this is a bad thing. 'Very' provides a very useful emphasis. And what is wrong with 'got'? According to a quick search in Google books, it appears four times in Esquire's dull little book, The Victorians. A book which, might I add, showed about a much literary flair as a 50 Cent lyric. After publishing such a book I would be quite reticent to advise others on their use of language.

Thursday, July 25, 2019

In Praise of Weather

There is a reason hell is found in the hot core of the earth and heaven is found in the cold vacuum of space. (Though I believe Dante (I haven't read him) might differ on this -- something about the devil flapping his wings and creating a chilling breeze.)

People always seem to want to love the heat. They rejoice when summer comes. The prospect of endless days of intense heat seldom fails to gladden them. Then they go out in it: their skin burns, they suffer heat stroke, dehydration, their risk of cancer multiplies, they feel entirely enervated, they have to cover themselves in gooey chemicals in order to help protect their skin -- yet they still think the heat is wonderful. Not even the frostiest of mornings has such adverse effects. The thing about heat is that, even while it slowly burns and drains you, you feel happily out of it, happily incapacitated, and that's a feeling most people unfortunately enjoy. They like submitting to the laziness heat demands of them. To enjoy the cold weather one has to enjoy struggle and activity. One has to like the sharp awakeness that the cold air brings.

Now, I do not particularly enjoy cold weather. Sure, I like the exhilarating feeling of a winter's walk, especially on a blustery day. But I am always relieved to reclaim my sedantry position at home. My favourite weather is found in spring. I enjoy the rain, the wind, the crispness in the morning, the gentle sun in the day, the cosiness at night. But I also enjoy autumn for its otherworldliness, even summer for its sudden and brilliant rainshowers. It's a sad thing about most adults that they seem to lose their childhood love of weather. All they want is dullness, weather that does not interfere, weather that is uneventful. How terribly boring.

Monday, July 22, 2019

Encountering Beauty

Buskers are usually a nuisance. They sing bad versions of already bad music, made a thousand times worse by the invention of the amplifier (which I'm convinced has done as much damage to the beauty of our environment as the car).

Yet today I heard the most wonderful busker. She was performing in a busy, commercial seaside high street, the sort of place where beauty is usually made unwelcome. She was from China and played a four-stringed plucked instrument called a 'pipa', which she described as the Chinese lute.

I heard her from across the street and there was something familiar about the music. As I approached and listened more closely I was ecstatic to realise that I knew what she was playing. It was the most unlikely of things: an almain by one of the great English lutenists. I had that extraordinary feeling wherein my whole body seems to tremble excitedly, as if an angel had just tickled my spine. For it felt like the impossible had happened, almost a miracle. What are the chances of hearing such an obscure piece on any instrument in any high street, then for a passerby to actually recognise it? And to hear it such an unlikely and unattractive town centre, on such an unlikely instrument?

She was improvising on the melody with great skill and musicality. I imagine Dowland, Bacheler, Johnson et al. would have done the same. The pipa had a very beautiful and characteristically Chinese tremolo, which was all the more impressive as she was not using a plectrum but rather her fingers. Any classical guitarist will tell you how hard an even and lyrical tremolo is to execute.
This really is the kind of multiculturism I can get behind. More pipas and Renaissance music, fewer pizza-kebab-burger shops. It was not some tasteless, hollowed-out crossover music, but a sincere and beautiful communion of traditions.

I have a particular love of music for solo instruments. I adore the Bach violin sonatas and partitas, the Weiss sonatas, the Milano fantasias, the Scarlatti sonatas, the Telemann fantasias (I could happily go on -- and on). It is the intimacy of one woman and her instrument. Particularly if it is an instrument one can hold or cradle, like the gamba or guitar (or indeed the pipa). They are quiet, reflective, so unlike most of modern life. They do not shout at you or compete for you attention; rather, they draw you in to their soundworld. This is why I was so affected hearing this busker. She was wonderfully out of place, such an unexpected reprieve from the noise and bustle that surrounded her. Her music was perhaps the one thing in that town that didn't repulse me, the one thing that drew me in. It was quiet and so fragile, yet by virtue of its exceptional beauty, which so clearly differentiated it from its surroundings, any sensitive person would have found it capable of penetrating even this, the most loud and viscous of aural landscapes.

Thursday, July 11, 2019

No More TV Debates

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Jeremy Hunt had their first (and I believe only) one-on-one debate. They both spoke like tedious graduates applying for internships, just as all the candidates had in the previous few leadership debates (well, somewhat less so with Rory Stewart). Count how many times you hear words like 'passionate' or 'vision' in such debates. And of course there is always at least one member of the audience who asks some painfully stupid question (because the audience, not the professionals, have to ask the questions in our pathologically democratic age). 'What is your opponent's great strength?' 'Why do you think you have the personality for the job?' This would all be bad enough if we lived in a republic. But we don't, so what possible excuse is there for making us suffer through this rubbish?

Monday, July 8, 2019

Go to the source

There seems to be a great deal of outrage online about a supposed Brexiteer boycott of a performance of Beethoven's Ninth. You can find coverage of it in the Observer (Brexiters boycott choral festival over EU’s Ode to Joy) and of course over at Slipped Disc (here and here).

Yet when one actually reads the articles the true scale of the boycott quickly becomes apparent. The headlines and rhetoric would lead one to believe a group of ardent Brexiteers are leading a campaign against the performance. But tucked away in the middle of the Guardian article one discovers:
A spokeswoman for the Three Choirs festival, which is held in Gloucester every three years, alternating with Hereford and Worcester, said that an email and a phone call had made the feelings of a small minority of local people very clear.
One email and one phone call. Both may well have been by the same person -- the article refers to only one complainant. One wonders why a national Sunday newspaper thought the story deserving of an article. Were the Observer all too eager to take up a story that fitted so well their worldview? Were the festival organisers desperate for some publicity in light of disappointing ticket sales?

One of the Slipped Disc articles, written by the festival's chief executive, says they have sold one hundred more tickets since the story broke. She also admits that 'all I can say with certainty is that two people are not attending this event because of a perceived connection with Brexit politics'.

I despair at how gullible people are. One constantly finds stories like these, massive exaggerations based on scant evidence, designed to encourage the blindest and phoniest outrage. They are stories written for those who love to be appalled and indignant, which is almost the entirety of the human race, bar the occasional saint. We are always told that people don't trust the news anymore, but I'm afraid this is only true insofar that people do not trust the news from sources they regard as 'on the other side'. Most blindly trust news that comes from their 'side'.

One thing that would make our public life infinitely richer is if every schoolchild is taught four vital words 'go to the source'. Do not really on secondary sources, do not rely on accounts, analysis, opinion, quotations, retellings. Find the earliest accounts of an event, find what those closest to the event had to say, find the core facts and ignore the many reactions and afterthoughts. Find what it was before it became a 'story', a process which invariably changes its nature. If it is a controversy about what someone said, find what they said -- not merely the quotations but the whole thing. If, like the Beethoven story, it is a controversy about a boycott, find out who is boycotting and why, look up who broke the story, who supplied the story, and form your own judgement.

I fear that the people who should be most aware of all this -- supposedly educated people -- are in fact the most gullible. Academic students are entirely reliant on secondary literature. Papers are mostly tedious documents overburned with hundreds of footnotes -- compilations of recycled thought as an exercise in exhibitionism and memorisation. They constantly reference other people's judgements -- absolutely everything has to be 'backed up' by some book, article, quotation or argument. Original thought seems to be mostly absent. Anyone who goes to university (at least most unversities) will likely come out knowing what to think but not how to think.

Thursday, July 4, 2019

Green MEP Magid Magid claims he was asked to leave EU parliament...

Magid Magid, a black newly-elected Green MEP, claims to have been asked to leave the EU parliament by an official who clearly was unaware Magid is an MEP. Magid believes his race is why he was asked to leave. 'I know I’m visibily [sic] different. I don’t have the privilege to hide my identity. I’m BLACK & my name is Magid. I don’t intend to try fit in. Get used to it,' he tweeted.

Yet is it not the tiniest bit possible that it had less to do with his being black and more to do with his walking about in shorts, a reversed baseball cap, and a t-shirt with the text 'f**k fascism'? Any official would naturally assume he is not a serious person, and most certainly not a parliamentarian. It is like something out of Idiocracy.

Magid prides himself on his supposed unconventionality, but his 'unconventionality' seems rather normal in modern Britain. If you want to be truly unconventional avoid swearing, forgo social media obsessions, be polite and thoughtful in your political discourse, and above all conduct yourself, especially when in a position of power, as a dignified and cultured person. I'm sure Magid has his virtues, but his personality, far from being refreshing, is merely a banal affirmation of the dominant values of our time.

Saturday, June 29, 2019

This Temple of Souvenirs and Trinkets is Dedicated to the Almighty Market

If one ever needed further proof of the BBC's decline from a 'Temple of the Arts and Muses ... dedicated to Almighty God' to a corporate den of iniquity (from today's Times):
The BBC is spending £3 million on branded hoodies, mugs, umbrellas and promotional knick-knacks. 
The freebies will be given to staff and viewers to promote programmes and “corporate identities”. The money, equal to nearly 20,000 TV licences, will also be spent on fleeces, fridge magnets and bags, according to a tender document circulated to potential suppliers.
So much for the Reithian 'prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.'

We now worship the Gods of the Market Place. Our braindead society is kept alive on the artificial respirations of consumerism and corporatism.When will the modern right realise that it created the vapid liberal culture that tyrannises us? When will they realise that the marketisation of society has turned once noble institutions like the BBC into a purveyors of hoodies and mugs, whose chief contribution to modern culture is soulless game shows, allegedly comedic panel programmes and other unwatchable and unlistenable drivel. Norman Tebbit has, admittedly, finally begun to realise the role of the Thatcherite right in all this. 'I sometimes wonder,' he said, 'whether our economic reforms led to an individualism in other values, in ways we didn’t anticipate.' But why did it take thirty years for him to just begin to realise this?
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
I truly worry that what has been good will be neglected, that we will live among great cultural ruins, if not physical ruins too. We are clearly in an epoch of rejection. We dislike the past, we mistrust its achievements, and instead we trust fully in 'Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind'.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
Kipling wrote that astonishing, unforgettable poem after the devastation of the First World War -- devastation which we now know is permanent, and which we seem to have endorsed. The war was the beginning of the end for the old world, and we are clearly happy about it. Bulwarks against this change, like the BBC, are all surrendering if they have not already. The alarming thing about our descent back into barbarism is that so many people seem to be willing it -- they enjoy it. They think they are advancing things, pushing forward with the times. It's so heart-wrenching to see.

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Our Empire of Ugliness

The recent violent attack against this lesbian couple has filled me with such anger. Late at night on a London bus, four men demanded the couple kiss for them. The men threw coins at them and made lewd comments. The couple naturally refused, and so the men beat up the couple, leaving them severely bloodied.

Sadly this story was all too familiar. I have not witnessed such physical violence before -- this attack is certainly an extreme but nonetheless relevant example -- but I frequently see vile behaviour by men (mostly) when travelling to and from London late at night. You hear men joking about gang rape, telling women they look like sluts, drunk men aggressively flirting with woman, men verbally sexualising a woman in every imaginable way, from her dress to her race, men telling less attractive women they look like men, men jeering whenever a young woman passes them in the carriage. An attractive woman, unless dressed in a burka, is likely to get several ugly remarks from men as she walks down a train carriage late on a weekend night. (And perhaps the women in a burka will receive ugly comments too, though of a different kind.)

(One never sees a conductor, though, and the transport police only seem to turn up once a year, usually in an almost empty train, or occasionally at the gates of a terminal station checking people's tickets -- which seems to be all they really do here, raising revenue for our confusing and overpriced transport system.)

We are an ugly society. We live in ugliness, we build ugliness, and so naturally our behaviour is ugly. It is an 'empire of ugliness', as Simon Leys called it. The beautiful is made pornographic. Selfish motives are the only ones that matter. Power is all that matters. 'Ignorance is not simply the absence of knowledge,' wrote Leys, 'obscurantism does not result from a dearth of light, bad taste is not merely a lack of good taste, stupidity is not a simple want of intelligence: all these are fiercely active forces, that angrily assert themselves on every occasion; they tolerate no challenge to their omnipresent rule.' These four young men were asserting themselves. They could not tolerate the fact that these young women refused to live down to their pornographic, primal expectations of society.

Do these men realise the consequences of violent attacks like this? I don't think people generally realise the severity of such violence. On top of the mental trauma, which can alter the habits and psychology of a person forever, it can remove a person's sense of smell or taste, it can damage their eyesight, their hearing. One of my greatest joys is to play music. But just break one of my fingers and I will never be the same again; you will have taken away years spent advancing my skill. A life forever changed, almost ruined. Usually for the stupidest, most horribly meaningless of reasons. I hope these women suffer no permanent damage. And I hope the men who did it do suffer a just punishment, which, we can only hope, changes them for the better.

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Oh, Fortuna, you degenerate wanton!

A Confederacy of Dunces is the most delightfully offensive and reactionary novel I've ever read. It might even surpass Tobias Smollett. Why is it that disgruntled reactionaries are always so much more fun than disgruntled idealists?

Ignatius J Reilly, medievalist and hot dog vendor, is a selfish, unfiltered reactionary. He should be entirely unlikable yet one cannot bear to part with his company. He possesses unrivalled rudeness, a capacity for wild fabrications and a love of being both appalled and appalling. His talk of mongoloids, masquerading sodomites, degenerates and abortions could fibrillate an entire university campus. I have read that there are many readers who just cannot find anything to like in Ignatius. But as far as I can tell such readers lack any understanding of theology and geometry.

Of course, Ignatius has no desire for their company or affection:

'I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.'

Monday, June 3, 2019

Charles Ives's Holidays Symphony

I have wanted to hear this symphony performed for more than three years now. Perhaps more than any other piece of music, it has had the most transformative effect on my life. It was the first piece of classical music that I truly loved. For about a month I was entirely obsessed with it. I did not yet understand Purcell or Shostakovich, Josquin or Rodrigo, Bach or Haydn -- they were all fathomless streams of notes to me -- but something in Ives's music gripped me. And none of his work gripped me more than the Holidays Symphony.

It is easy to deceive oneself into thinking one knows why an important event in one's past occurred. Nevertheless, looking back I think I became fascinated with Ives because he was at once a traditionalist with a love of the most modest manifestations of civilisation, yet also someone who saw the grander purpose in these things, how they too lead to something transcendent. I approached Ives less as music and more as a Chestertonian argument in favour of re-enchanting the ordinary. It was at this time that my worldview shifted from the dreary utilitarianism and sensualism that I had acquired by osmosis, to one formed in reaction to this and in pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness. I was looking for meaning, and in Ives I began to find it.

Music has changed me more than anything else. In music I found something about the world that truly filled me with wonder and joy. I never before knew such music existed; for I never knew there existed something more than the numbing superficiality and vulgarity of modern popular music. In our anaesthetised society we have forgotten the power music can have over us. One thing I appreciate about Islam is that it recognises the danger of music. Music is the reason for squalor of urban nightlife (which could not exist without its barbarous music; silence would reveal the stupidity and evil of it), it can be the sound and rhythm that motivates the soldier, it can be a means of avoiding introspection and manipulating people's decisions (e.g. shopping and advertisement). But it can also be the sounds that bind a community and a nation, the consolation in times of grief, the complexity that reveals our nature more than any novel, genetic study or, God forbid, psychology paper. Ives understood this social function of music, which too many composers and musicians seem to forget.

The fourth movement of the Holidays Symphony, 'Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day', is one of the most inspired and beautiful symphonic fourth movements. It far exceeds the tedium of Beethoven 9, and is far more rewarding than the buoyant life-affirming endings in most of the great symphonies (enjoy them though I do). 'Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day' is first menacing, then indulgently simple, then modestly grand. When the chorus enters at the end does not feel tacked on like Beethoven 9 -- nor did Ives have the impertinence, unlike Beethoven, to make you suffer through 20 minutes of it, ruining an otherwise decent symphony. What Ives includes is, as I said, the most modest and yet the most grand of things: a hymn. The movement starts out with dense symphonic brooding, gives way to the most beautiful of folk songs, and ends spectacularly and yet humbly with the hymn. When you hear it you realise how much you love life. But not in the way that Beethoven 5 does -- that joyous rollick. Rather, you realise how much you love the ordinariness of life, the texture of life itself, not merely the exciting moments in an otherwise flat existence. I used to view life the latter way. I think Ives helped me see it more as the former.

Sunday, May 26, 2019

Matthew Lewis -- The Monk

How often does a quotation actually portray the author's original intentions? I picked up Matthew Lewis's The Monk because of a quotation on the back of the book, in bold red ink, 'The Monk was so highly popular that it seemed to create an epoch in our literature'. Sir Walter Scott wrote these words. However, Scott was not necessarily saying what the quotation implies. The next sentence Scott wrote was, 'But the public were chiefly captivated by the poetry with which Mr. Lewis had interspersed his prose narrative.'

What The Monk is remembered for is certainly not its poetry, and any modern reader (and one has to assume the human race was not so different two centuries ago) is fascinated by the novel for the horror and the evil of its story. Scott, one suspects, was somewhat unworldy, not as fascinated by vice as most of us wretches. One never truly loathes any character in a Scott novel. As Chesterton wrote in his essay on Scott, 
He may deny a villain every virtue or triumph, but he cannot endure to deny him a telling word; he will ruin a man, but he will not silence him. In truth, one of Scott’s most splendid traits is his difficulty, or rather incapacity, for despising any of his characters. He did not scorn the most revolting miscreant as the realist of today commonly scorns his own hero. Though his soul may be in rags, every man of Scott can speak like a king.
The Monk has a much less generous view of human nature. And so for all its supernatural drama, it felt more realistic than a Scott novel (which is neither praise nor criticism of Scott nor Lewis, just an observation of difference). The dark journey on which Ambrosio, the titular monk, found himself will resonate with most people. We all know that the guilt of sin can almost be eliminated by way of familiarity. We can often persuade ourselves that if we sin in secret we have not done anything wrong, as if it were only the punishment that proves the sin. Ambrosio, in the beginning of the novel, was a man filled with pride and self-satisfaction -- the most virtuous of monks, a great teacher and orator admired by all. He was a man whose life relied on appearance and reputation, on comparing himself to the vices of others. He judged his own virtue by looking out externally for confirmation. Such a person is the most likely to end up regarding private sin not as 'real' sin -- that is, not the sort of sin that leads to hell. Only a loss of reptuation would convince him of his wrongness. Otherwise, it is his reputation that facilitates his sin: he hides sin behind holiness.

This of course makes one think of the scandals in the Catholic Church. This is most definitely an anti-Catholic novel to some degree, but I nevertheless found its depiction of moral corruption in a church hierarchy extremely convincing. It made me see, to some small extent, how priests could end up abusing deaf children and keeping nuns as sex slaves. (One narrative in The Monk even strikingly compares to the abuse in the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland.) I am nominally a Catholic, having been baptised into the faith, and though I am lapsed there is much I love in it. But the evil and degradation and corruption which has been revealed in my lifetime repels me from it. Although I do not think any other denomination or religion is necessarily much better, but that's hardly an excuse. They are corrupt in different ways and to different extents at different times. As an outsider, my impression is that the Catholic Church does suffer from excessive hierarchy and excessive superciliousness. Respect for order (which I strongly believe in in most areas of life) does not means uncritical deference to either those above you or your peers. The survival of a hierarchy depends on its integrity, on honesty and also fidelity to something outside the hierarchy, a greater truth -- these are undermined if one does not challenge corruption in those above. The body is a temple, but if it develops a tumour one needs to get over one's qualms about cutting into it in order to remove the tumour. The cutting into it may be unpleasant, but simply leaving the tumour would be far worse. This is surely what the Church has done.

What I've read, listened to and watched while under house arrest

I am too lazy at the moment to write this post in paragraphs, so it will instead take the form of a list. This suits me well as I am a compu...