Cutline on a poster for a health information seminar:
"1 in 8 Men are Expected to Develop Prostrate Cancer."
How exactly is this expectation conveyed I wonder? Any thoughts? Mass mailing perhaps? And how exactly do they pick the 1 in 8 they expect will shoulder this burden? Is it completely random or are there certain categories of exemption? Inquiring minds want to know.
Canvassers asking if you want to donate to a disease are already endemic.
"Would you care to make a donation to cancer?"
"I don't guess so, it's already had my testicles, I think that's more than enough to give in one lifetime."
"I'd just as soon keep the other breast if you don't mind. I might feel differently if I could afford reconstructive surgery."
"Care to give something to Alzheimer's?"
"I'm just about certain I already--isn't it lovely here in the islands, Jen?"
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
December 27, 2007
December 22, 2007
Ahh, Go Ahead. . . Follow Your Heart
"Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time."
--Jonathon Swift
There are cliches that have only the shallow meaning they typically display, but these are actually quite rare. Far more frequently a cliche is a phrase or expression capable of deep meaning in proper context, but in the present instant being used as a cover for shallow thought. It's easy enough to prove a saying false if you ignore its depth and focus on the shallowest of its available meanings, but what does that net you? A cliche rebuttal of a cliche.
It's possible I suppose to understand "Live each day as if it were your last" in the stunted and empty sense Jonathon Kay (Nat Post, Dec 11 '07) is at pains to refute, but who that took the idea seriously ever did mean what he accuses us of meaning by it? What's almost invariably behind a life lived in hellbound excess, without plan or goal, is an increasingly desperate attempt to cling to the delusion that one is untouchable--indestructible--will live forever. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, weeks before his untimely death, was saying to people "Stick close to me if there's an atomic war. You'll be in a safe zone, no bomb's going to kill me." He was right--no bomb did.
There's no necessary contradiction, on the other hand, between living each day as if it were your last and making plans--even long distance plans--in case it turns out not to be. There might be if you were obliged to live by one maxim and one maxim only, but how stupid is that? I recently finished, in a thirty day spurt of activity, a play whose first partial and abandoned draft I started twenty years ago. My awareness waxed and waned, but I always carried somewhere in my mind the intelligence that one day would be my last, and that I had no guarantee it would be twenty years, or twenty months, or twenty days away. So fine, make plans, recognizing they're all contingent, but recognize as well that each day is a gift that will not be repeated in the same form ever again, and may not be repeated at all. Don't grow so engrossed by plans for the future that you ignore this precious jewel of time and space, yours to shape (within limits) as you choose. (Definitely lay off any plans that'll take more than a century to realize.)
Kay is more cautious in attacking the maxim "Follow your heart"--he makes it clear he's talking about a common understanding whereby following any superficial impulse is described as "following your heart". Why accept the misuse of language then? Why not say what people really mean is "follow your nose" or "follow the prickling of the hairs on your forearm", or whatever superficial guide you prefer, rather than one so firmly embedded at the core of existence as the heart?
If I understand him correctly, Kay believes it's reasonable in youth to pursue the dream the heart prompts you to, and acceptable to continue if you succeed; if not, wise at some point to come up with a plan B. Not the worst advice in the world, but how likely is it that anyone with a deep passion will follow it? If Louis Armstrong had spent twnety years in the wilderness instead of achieving considerable success early in his career, do you think he'd have looked for a plan B? William Blake with his incredibly wide-ranging gifts could have succeeded in any number of careers other than the one he stubbornly clung to all his life, at which he only succeeded posthumously.
He was as politically astute as any British Prime Minister. He had as much unforced eloquence as any three combined. Only one of them might be considered--not by me--his equal as a writer. None was close to his equal as a painter, but then that's not exactly a Prime Ministerial qualification. Very likely that gift would disappear into doodling impulses during idle moments at session, and his great power as a writer be chained to partisan political discourse. Blake as Prime Minister. What countries would he have forced war on, in what far-flung corners of the globe, to vent the bitterness of his frustration over unacted desires?
Are there follies and even crimes associated with following the heart? I suppose. But the ugliest crimes human beings are capable of, the ones it freezes the blood even to have described? All of them, without a single exception, follow from stifling impulses of the heart.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
--Jonathon Swift
There are cliches that have only the shallow meaning they typically display, but these are actually quite rare. Far more frequently a cliche is a phrase or expression capable of deep meaning in proper context, but in the present instant being used as a cover for shallow thought. It's easy enough to prove a saying false if you ignore its depth and focus on the shallowest of its available meanings, but what does that net you? A cliche rebuttal of a cliche.
It's possible I suppose to understand "Live each day as if it were your last" in the stunted and empty sense Jonathon Kay (Nat Post, Dec 11 '07) is at pains to refute, but who that took the idea seriously ever did mean what he accuses us of meaning by it? What's almost invariably behind a life lived in hellbound excess, without plan or goal, is an increasingly desperate attempt to cling to the delusion that one is untouchable--indestructible--will live forever. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, weeks before his untimely death, was saying to people "Stick close to me if there's an atomic war. You'll be in a safe zone, no bomb's going to kill me." He was right--no bomb did.
There's no necessary contradiction, on the other hand, between living each day as if it were your last and making plans--even long distance plans--in case it turns out not to be. There might be if you were obliged to live by one maxim and one maxim only, but how stupid is that? I recently finished, in a thirty day spurt of activity, a play whose first partial and abandoned draft I started twenty years ago. My awareness waxed and waned, but I always carried somewhere in my mind the intelligence that one day would be my last, and that I had no guarantee it would be twenty years, or twenty months, or twenty days away. So fine, make plans, recognizing they're all contingent, but recognize as well that each day is a gift that will not be repeated in the same form ever again, and may not be repeated at all. Don't grow so engrossed by plans for the future that you ignore this precious jewel of time and space, yours to shape (within limits) as you choose. (Definitely lay off any plans that'll take more than a century to realize.)
Kay is more cautious in attacking the maxim "Follow your heart"--he makes it clear he's talking about a common understanding whereby following any superficial impulse is described as "following your heart". Why accept the misuse of language then? Why not say what people really mean is "follow your nose" or "follow the prickling of the hairs on your forearm", or whatever superficial guide you prefer, rather than one so firmly embedded at the core of existence as the heart?
If I understand him correctly, Kay believes it's reasonable in youth to pursue the dream the heart prompts you to, and acceptable to continue if you succeed; if not, wise at some point to come up with a plan B. Not the worst advice in the world, but how likely is it that anyone with a deep passion will follow it? If Louis Armstrong had spent twnety years in the wilderness instead of achieving considerable success early in his career, do you think he'd have looked for a plan B? William Blake with his incredibly wide-ranging gifts could have succeeded in any number of careers other than the one he stubbornly clung to all his life, at which he only succeeded posthumously.
He was as politically astute as any British Prime Minister. He had as much unforced eloquence as any three combined. Only one of them might be considered--not by me--his equal as a writer. None was close to his equal as a painter, but then that's not exactly a Prime Ministerial qualification. Very likely that gift would disappear into doodling impulses during idle moments at session, and his great power as a writer be chained to partisan political discourse. Blake as Prime Minister. What countries would he have forced war on, in what far-flung corners of the globe, to vent the bitterness of his frustration over unacted desires?
Are there follies and even crimes associated with following the heart? I suppose. But the ugliest crimes human beings are capable of, the ones it freezes the blood even to have described? All of them, without a single exception, follow from stifling impulses of the heart.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
December 15, 2007
Mulroney v. Schrieber
"Mulroney will triumph in the court of public opinion because he's up against Karlheinz Schrieber. If he were up against no one, he would lose."
--John Ivison, Nat Post, Dec 14 '07
I'm not so sure. A Breakfast Television poll may give early indication, and it was running better than 75% against Mulroney. I doubt Karlheinz Schrieber would have come out better in a poll answered by the same people, but see here's the thing: people do not necessarily and invariably choose sides in an adversarial contest. Sometimes they say 'a plague on both your houses'. They're particularly likely to despise, more or less equally, two adversaries who've had a bitter falling out, but were questionably allied for an uncomfortable length of time. As Ivison points out at the top of this article, Mulroney began by calling Schrieber's allegations 100% false and ended by citing the man as a character witness: "[Schrieber] told the Toronto Sun that accusations of bribery against Brian Mulroney were as much a hoax as the Hitler Diaries." Not a word-for-word quote I suspect, since it lacks that curious Karlheinz broken English flare: but it's syntactically and referentially challenged enough; 'twil serve.
(Incidentally years ago I saw an interview on television with one of the people who exposed those diaries as a fake, and he said they were written in ballpoint pen. With camouflage that cunning it's hardly a surprise they fooled so many of the world's major news bureaux for so long.)
Then again in his opening remarks Mulroney only said Schrieber's allegations in the affidavit that led to the inquiry were "completely false". Perhaps Schrieber has superstitions against lying to reputable newsmen? no wait, this was the Toronto Sun, he'd have to have reservations against lying to journalists of any kind. But I imagine the three envelopes of cash were cited in the affidavit, and Mulroney contests only the amount--75,000, not one hundred thousand. That allegation, then, is at least 75% true.
And there's a difficulty with Mulroney's claim. The amount he declared for tax purposes, six years later than he ought to have filed, was three hundred thousand. This was the amount admitted to by Mulroney and his press liaison, and I've never heard them contest it since. If he was given 75,000 a pop along with the coffee which was all he admitted to at the time of the airbus lawsuit, he met Schrieber four times. In which case it's a coin toss whose account is nearer the truth.
(Or was this the amount the Mulroney team admitted to at the beginning of all this pother? Commentators are already taking Mulroney's revision as read, which means either my memory is cloudy or theirs is convenient. I was pretty sure that's what I'd read though, and that I'd read it in statements from the Mulroney team as well as Schrieber. Did Mulroney take the totals Schrieber initially gave on faith, until he'd counted the amounts still left in the safety deposit boxes and checked them against expenditures?)
This is a problem likely to persist throughout Mulroney's testimony. Given the number of half truths, quarter truths and evasions both have insisted on as the whole truth and nothing but, is he or Karlheinz Schrieber more to be believed? At best you could give a shade or a shaving to one or the other on this point or that. And you'd be speculating at that. Give Mulroney maximum benefit of the doubt at every point and what do you come up with? Maybe not as dishonest as Karlheinz Schrieber. There's an accolade. Add in that your first known association with Karlheinz Schrieber was in 1983, when he spearheaded a team backing your successful bid for the Conservative Party leadership, which led to a ten year term in the PMO, during all which time you insist there was never any payback to a man who doesn't do favours withot expecting payback--well, I'd say the old legacy's pretty much built.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
--John Ivison, Nat Post, Dec 14 '07
I'm not so sure. A Breakfast Television poll may give early indication, and it was running better than 75% against Mulroney. I doubt Karlheinz Schrieber would have come out better in a poll answered by the same people, but see here's the thing: people do not necessarily and invariably choose sides in an adversarial contest. Sometimes they say 'a plague on both your houses'. They're particularly likely to despise, more or less equally, two adversaries who've had a bitter falling out, but were questionably allied for an uncomfortable length of time. As Ivison points out at the top of this article, Mulroney began by calling Schrieber's allegations 100% false and ended by citing the man as a character witness: "[Schrieber] told the Toronto Sun that accusations of bribery against Brian Mulroney were as much a hoax as the Hitler Diaries." Not a word-for-word quote I suspect, since it lacks that curious Karlheinz broken English flare: but it's syntactically and referentially challenged enough; 'twil serve.
(Incidentally years ago I saw an interview on television with one of the people who exposed those diaries as a fake, and he said they were written in ballpoint pen. With camouflage that cunning it's hardly a surprise they fooled so many of the world's major news bureaux for so long.)
Then again in his opening remarks Mulroney only said Schrieber's allegations in the affidavit that led to the inquiry were "completely false". Perhaps Schrieber has superstitions against lying to reputable newsmen? no wait, this was the Toronto Sun, he'd have to have reservations against lying to journalists of any kind. But I imagine the three envelopes of cash were cited in the affidavit, and Mulroney contests only the amount--75,000, not one hundred thousand. That allegation, then, is at least 75% true.
And there's a difficulty with Mulroney's claim. The amount he declared for tax purposes, six years later than he ought to have filed, was three hundred thousand. This was the amount admitted to by Mulroney and his press liaison, and I've never heard them contest it since. If he was given 75,000 a pop along with the coffee which was all he admitted to at the time of the airbus lawsuit, he met Schrieber four times. In which case it's a coin toss whose account is nearer the truth.
(Or was this the amount the Mulroney team admitted to at the beginning of all this pother? Commentators are already taking Mulroney's revision as read, which means either my memory is cloudy or theirs is convenient. I was pretty sure that's what I'd read though, and that I'd read it in statements from the Mulroney team as well as Schrieber. Did Mulroney take the totals Schrieber initially gave on faith, until he'd counted the amounts still left in the safety deposit boxes and checked them against expenditures?)
This is a problem likely to persist throughout Mulroney's testimony. Given the number of half truths, quarter truths and evasions both have insisted on as the whole truth and nothing but, is he or Karlheinz Schrieber more to be believed? At best you could give a shade or a shaving to one or the other on this point or that. And you'd be speculating at that. Give Mulroney maximum benefit of the doubt at every point and what do you come up with? Maybe not as dishonest as Karlheinz Schrieber. There's an accolade. Add in that your first known association with Karlheinz Schrieber was in 1983, when he spearheaded a team backing your successful bid for the Conservative Party leadership, which led to a ten year term in the PMO, during all which time you insist there was never any payback to a man who doesn't do favours withot expecting payback--well, I'd say the old legacy's pretty much built.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
December 7, 2007
This is Not an Art Critique
From the defense his roommate and fellow artist Peter Moheddin makes in a commentary (Nat Post, Dec 6, 2007), I hope Thorassin Jonsson has the sense not to call him as a witness, should his public mischief charge come to a trial. If I were a judge subjected to such nonsense in defense of somebody planting a fake bomb as an artistic statement, I'd find my thoughts shifting from a stiff fine or community service to moderately serious jail time.
Apparently Jonsson agrees with Moheddin's essential argument (whether point by point I don't know) since he's taken to expressing great pride in the success of his project--planting a realistic-looking bomb, labelled (after Magritte?) 'This is Not a Bomb' at the Royal Ontario Museum on Nov 28 and phoning in a 'no bomb' warning to the ROM switchboard. This replaces an initially apologetic tone. I think he's got the whiff of publicity up his nostrils.
Peter Moheddin begins his defense with a reference to the curious fact that audiences at 'The Great Train Robbery' were so startled by a shot of a train coming toward the camera full speed that they fled the theatre--an effect similar to that achieved by Thorassin Jonsson's 'not-bomb'.
It seems a curious example. Apart from the fact that this was not intended, who has ever talked about'The Great Train Robbery' as a serious work of art? Not even its makers. It occupies a place in the history of cinema as the first film to tell a sustained story, but if I were listing the great short films of movie history, I'd certainly name Mack Sennett's 'Teddy at the Throttle', Laurel and Hardy's 'Big Business', W.C. Fields' 'A Fatal Glass of Beer' among many others. I would certainly not name 'The Great Train Robbery'.
Coming down to present cases. After a long rambling paragraph about the controversy over the not-bomb, Moheddin concludes: ". . . the defining function of a bomb is that it can explode." And?
The implication here--and it's pretty well what you have to argue if you want to claim Jonsson's false alarm was a work of art rather than a high misdemeanour--is that the reaction of the bomb squad was stupid. Duh! guys, this is not a bomb, it can't explode, it even says so right on it. What are you so worried about? To which the obvious answer is duh! how do we know something that looks exactly like a functioning bomb isn't until we test it? It would have been stupid, if not criminally insane, to look at it, see the sign and say "Hey guys, look at this! Says here it's not a bomb. That's a relief! now we can all go home."
What was stupid, profoundly cynical or both (my money's on both) was Jonsson's imperviousnes to the actual consequences of what he was doing, the impact on people's lives as well as the possible juridical implications. The law student who assured Jonsson if he attached a note saying 'This is not a bomb', he'd be absolved of liability? I suspect--what's more I hope--he's getting nothing but Fs on all his courses. It's certainly the grade Jonsson deserves for this project.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
Apparently Jonsson agrees with Moheddin's essential argument (whether point by point I don't know) since he's taken to expressing great pride in the success of his project--planting a realistic-looking bomb, labelled (after Magritte?) 'This is Not a Bomb' at the Royal Ontario Museum on Nov 28 and phoning in a 'no bomb' warning to the ROM switchboard. This replaces an initially apologetic tone. I think he's got the whiff of publicity up his nostrils.
Peter Moheddin begins his defense with a reference to the curious fact that audiences at 'The Great Train Robbery' were so startled by a shot of a train coming toward the camera full speed that they fled the theatre--an effect similar to that achieved by Thorassin Jonsson's 'not-bomb'.
It seems a curious example. Apart from the fact that this was not intended, who has ever talked about'The Great Train Robbery' as a serious work of art? Not even its makers. It occupies a place in the history of cinema as the first film to tell a sustained story, but if I were listing the great short films of movie history, I'd certainly name Mack Sennett's 'Teddy at the Throttle', Laurel and Hardy's 'Big Business', W.C. Fields' 'A Fatal Glass of Beer' among many others. I would certainly not name 'The Great Train Robbery'.
Coming down to present cases. After a long rambling paragraph about the controversy over the not-bomb, Moheddin concludes: ". . . the defining function of a bomb is that it can explode." And?
The implication here--and it's pretty well what you have to argue if you want to claim Jonsson's false alarm was a work of art rather than a high misdemeanour--is that the reaction of the bomb squad was stupid. Duh! guys, this is not a bomb, it can't explode, it even says so right on it. What are you so worried about? To which the obvious answer is duh! how do we know something that looks exactly like a functioning bomb isn't until we test it? It would have been stupid, if not criminally insane, to look at it, see the sign and say "Hey guys, look at this! Says here it's not a bomb. That's a relief! now we can all go home."
What was stupid, profoundly cynical or both (my money's on both) was Jonsson's imperviousnes to the actual consequences of what he was doing, the impact on people's lives as well as the possible juridical implications. The law student who assured Jonsson if he attached a note saying 'This is not a bomb', he'd be absolved of liability? I suspect--what's more I hope--he's getting nothing but Fs on all his courses. It's certainly the grade Jonsson deserves for this project.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
December 1, 2007
What's Sushi Like?
All quotes below are from James Geary's 'The Art of the Aphorism' (Nat Post, Nov 29, '07). He may not have contributed the title, which seems to be error-free.
"There is an aphorism for everything, and everything its aphorism: That's my philosophy."
? Can a single sentence be a philosophy? Not if its redundancy serves only to make its intended statement incoherent.
". . . only a fool makes a speech in a burning house. Aphorisms must work quickly because they are meant for use in emergencies. We're most in need of aphorisms at times of distress or joy, ecstasy or anguish."
Ok, I'll bite. In what way do joy and ecstasy figure in moments of personal emergency? Sorting from this sentence the terms that do apply, I don't see how despair or anguish is likely to heighten anyone's appreciation of even so embattled an aphorism as Swift's "Is this an Age of Man to consider a crime improbable merely because it is great?" Anguish might make you more sensitive to emotion, though it's likelier to deliver you over to indiscriminate puddles of it; in neither case does it necessarily heighten sensitivity to sharp, precise thought; and despair tends to flatten response to thought and feeling both.
A little later he quotes, as an example of "the surreal one liners of standup comic Steven Wright:
'When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.' "
Not the sharpest one liner I've ever heard, and surreal? Put it in a box of four with 2.) a fur covered coffee cup, 3.) a landscape of melted watches, 4.) a man looking in a mirror at the image of the back of his head, and sing "One of these things is not like the others."
Geary himself manages an (unintentionally?) surreal effect though, in his final paragraph:
"Aphorisms are food for thought--always fresh, always in season, always delicious. Like sushi, they come in small portions that are exquisitely formed. And, like sushi, I can never get enough."
Sushi can never get enough of aphorisms? This I never heard.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
"There is an aphorism for everything, and everything its aphorism: That's my philosophy."
? Can a single sentence be a philosophy? Not if its redundancy serves only to make its intended statement incoherent.
". . . only a fool makes a speech in a burning house. Aphorisms must work quickly because they are meant for use in emergencies. We're most in need of aphorisms at times of distress or joy, ecstasy or anguish."
Ok, I'll bite. In what way do joy and ecstasy figure in moments of personal emergency? Sorting from this sentence the terms that do apply, I don't see how despair or anguish is likely to heighten anyone's appreciation of even so embattled an aphorism as Swift's "Is this an Age of Man to consider a crime improbable merely because it is great?" Anguish might make you more sensitive to emotion, though it's likelier to deliver you over to indiscriminate puddles of it; in neither case does it necessarily heighten sensitivity to sharp, precise thought; and despair tends to flatten response to thought and feeling both.
A little later he quotes, as an example of "the surreal one liners of standup comic Steven Wright:
'When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.' "
Not the sharpest one liner I've ever heard, and surreal? Put it in a box of four with 2.) a fur covered coffee cup, 3.) a landscape of melted watches, 4.) a man looking in a mirror at the image of the back of his head, and sing "One of these things is not like the others."
Geary himself manages an (unintentionally?) surreal effect though, in his final paragraph:
"Aphorisms are food for thought--always fresh, always in season, always delicious. Like sushi, they come in small portions that are exquisitely formed. And, like sushi, I can never get enough."
Sushi can never get enough of aphorisms? This I never heard.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
November 13, 2007
Mixed Messages
"At some point in all our lives, someone you love or know will be affected by diabetes."
.'all our lives, someone you know or love': pronoun agreement would seem to require 'we'.
.'someone you love or know': are the two, as this seems to imply, really mutually exclusive? The philosophical implications are staggering.
The poster for which this phrase is a cutline advertises a fundraising--wait for it--bake sale. Cakes, pies, cookies, doughnuts, cupcakes, brownies, the whole nine yards. Nice compacting of effects: help create the condition at the same time as you're raising funds for its cure. Me? I want to start a new career handling the bar concessions for Islamic fundraisers.
.'all our lives, someone you know or love': pronoun agreement would seem to require 'we'.
.'someone you love or know': are the two, as this seems to imply, really mutually exclusive? The philosophical implications are staggering.
The poster for which this phrase is a cutline advertises a fundraising--wait for it--bake sale. Cakes, pies, cookies, doughnuts, cupcakes, brownies, the whole nine yards. Nice compacting of effects: help create the condition at the same time as you're raising funds for its cure. Me? I want to start a new career handling the bar concessions for Islamic fundraisers.
Pearlies
PEARLIES
You learn something new every day. There's a new product called
'White Light': you pull back your lips and press this gizmo against
your teeth, and besides emitting an eerie white glow it gives you a
dazzling smile until it wears off and you need another pressing. How
many of these before you get gold?
What happens if you smile too broadly and expose the yellow at
opposing sides of the mouth where the light doesn't reach? Or
does its irradiation spread across the whole span of the teeth
and in that case, how does it know to stop before bleaching the
tonsils and adenoids the same glist'ning white? Does it bleach
the gums or only turn them a sickly pink? Are these the colours
of the future so far as the innards of the mouth are concerned?
How long before 'Yellow Light' comes on the market, for that
distinctive villain or lowlife look in Hollywood action
pictures and crime drama on tv? Instant and iconic visible
identifiers are required in drama whose heroes and villains
increasingly subscribe to the same code of ethics (or absence
of same). Yellow teeth might work as well as black hats once
did. The more visible idiosyncracies you supply villains
with the more viewers will subtly lean in their direction
philosophically.
That's why it's best to keep the weird inflections, gimpy legs
and such for your repertoire of endearingly hopeless sidekick
types. Then again yellow teeth, like scruffy unkempt facial
growth, might go from being the signifier of a villain, to the
signifier of a rebel against social customs, to a universal
symbol of male sensitivity, virility and lawfully constituted
authority. But a change like that would hardly
happen overnight--it could take months.
I don't know whether the most popular Egyptian tooth
cleansing agent--urine--would be much use in obtaining
this now-fashionable stain. There are disadvantages
which the most powerful mouthwash, even aided by cologne
or aftershave, would be hard put to remedy.
Almost inevitably the next phase would be an indisputably
high-class social marker--one with the stamp of history on
it. 'Black light' could give authority and the upper classes
the same polish it gave Japanese Lords and Ladies in the late
Middle Ages. White teeth--even those slightly yellowed for
rebel effect--would be shunned as what ordinary plebeian
brushing could produce.
But why stop at black if artificial colour's what you want?
Why not red, green, blue, violet--why not all the colours at
once? Be the first on your block with a smile like a rainbow.
There's no trick to it, or if there is--it's only a trick of
the light.
C Martin Heavisides 2006
You learn something new every day. There's a new product called
'White Light': you pull back your lips and press this gizmo against
your teeth, and besides emitting an eerie white glow it gives you a
dazzling smile until it wears off and you need another pressing. How
many of these before you get gold?
What happens if you smile too broadly and expose the yellow at
opposing sides of the mouth where the light doesn't reach? Or
does its irradiation spread across the whole span of the teeth
and in that case, how does it know to stop before bleaching the
tonsils and adenoids the same glist'ning white? Does it bleach
the gums or only turn them a sickly pink? Are these the colours
of the future so far as the innards of the mouth are concerned?
How long before 'Yellow Light' comes on the market, for that
distinctive villain or lowlife look in Hollywood action
pictures and crime drama on tv? Instant and iconic visible
identifiers are required in drama whose heroes and villains
increasingly subscribe to the same code of ethics (or absence
of same). Yellow teeth might work as well as black hats once
did. The more visible idiosyncracies you supply villains
with the more viewers will subtly lean in their direction
philosophically.
That's why it's best to keep the weird inflections, gimpy legs
and such for your repertoire of endearingly hopeless sidekick
types. Then again yellow teeth, like scruffy unkempt facial
growth, might go from being the signifier of a villain, to the
signifier of a rebel against social customs, to a universal
symbol of male sensitivity, virility and lawfully constituted
authority. But a change like that would hardly
happen overnight--it could take months.
I don't know whether the most popular Egyptian tooth
cleansing agent--urine--would be much use in obtaining
this now-fashionable stain. There are disadvantages
which the most powerful mouthwash, even aided by cologne
or aftershave, would be hard put to remedy.
Almost inevitably the next phase would be an indisputably
high-class social marker--one with the stamp of history on
it. 'Black light' could give authority and the upper classes
the same polish it gave Japanese Lords and Ladies in the late
Middle Ages. White teeth--even those slightly yellowed for
rebel effect--would be shunned as what ordinary plebeian
brushing could produce.
But why stop at black if artificial colour's what you want?
Why not red, green, blue, violet--why not all the colours at
once? Be the first on your block with a smile like a rainbow.
There's no trick to it, or if there is--it's only a trick of
the light.
C Martin Heavisides 2006
Abcedary
Aeolian. Byzantine. Copacetic. Duodenum. Elysium. Feldspar.*
Gelignite. Hymeneal. Iridescent. Jongleur. Kittenwood. Laproscope.
Marmoset. Necrophilia. Omphalos. Peripetaiea. Quirile. Rhodomontade.
Sequipedalian. Tarantella. Ucalyptus.* Vituperate. Widdershins.
Yellowjacket. Zamboni.
*Bet you thought I was going to say 'Firebreak'.
*All right, have it your way--Ukase.
Gelignite. Hymeneal. Iridescent. Jongleur. Kittenwood. Laproscope.
Marmoset. Necrophilia. Omphalos. Peripetaiea. Quirile. Rhodomontade.
Sequipedalian. Tarantella. Ucalyptus.* Vituperate. Widdershins.
Yellowjacket. Zamboni.
*Bet you thought I was going to say 'Firebreak'.
*All right, have it your way--Ukase.
November 7, 2007
November 6, 2007
Blood Clot
I've been having problems with an infected leg for a while, which as you can imagine is a special challenge if you're a walking courier. Monday I had to go to emergency because it wasn't responding to treatment. At emergency an ultrasound was taken to see if it mightn't be a blood clot instead of an infection. Which it turns out it is, for which reason I have an unexpected week off while I'm treated with daily needle injections of blood thinners. After a week of that I should be on tablets and able to work again, taking some precautions.
I'm going to make use of the time. Read through a few thick books on my shelf. Refamiliarize myself with the art books we have a solid row or two of. See what I can do about putting work up in files and submitting the files I already have up to as many markets as I can. (That'll depend on the ballooning in my leg not getting appreciably worse if I spend an hour with it not elevated--the treatment is lessening that effect though, so I think I'll be able to spend an hour or two a day on concentrated work.)
There's an interesting time paradox to my case. The nurse I saw this morning for my second round of injections wanted to know when exactly I'd come in, because according to the file she had in front of her, I'd come in on November 7, which is tomorrow. If I wasn't waiting six hours yesterday in emergency while I got through the ultrasound, awaited the results, had the results and awaited the needle--my wife went in at one point when I'd been waiting more than an hour after bloodwork, and found out they'd mislaid my case; the doctor came by when I was getting my injection and told us we could go, since I'd already had it--my leg turning a little more zeppelin each hour, if I didn't go through that yesterday as I say, it was certainly an unusually vivid and unpleasant hallucination. Don't look forward to going through it tomorrow.
I'm going to make use of the time. Read through a few thick books on my shelf. Refamiliarize myself with the art books we have a solid row or two of. See what I can do about putting work up in files and submitting the files I already have up to as many markets as I can. (That'll depend on the ballooning in my leg not getting appreciably worse if I spend an hour with it not elevated--the treatment is lessening that effect though, so I think I'll be able to spend an hour or two a day on concentrated work.)
There's an interesting time paradox to my case. The nurse I saw this morning for my second round of injections wanted to know when exactly I'd come in, because according to the file she had in front of her, I'd come in on November 7, which is tomorrow. If I wasn't waiting six hours yesterday in emergency while I got through the ultrasound, awaited the results, had the results and awaited the needle--my wife went in at one point when I'd been waiting more than an hour after bloodwork, and found out they'd mislaid my case; the doctor came by when I was getting my injection and told us we could go, since I'd already had it--my leg turning a little more zeppelin each hour, if I didn't go through that yesterday as I say, it was certainly an unusually vivid and unpleasant hallucination. Don't look forward to going through it tomorrow.
November 4, 2007
October 18, 2007
Stupid Song Lyrics
{a modest compendium; obviously it's scarcely possible to be comprehensive. For the most part I've avoided mentioning howlers like "In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, they're only made of clay", because I'm aware that 'stone' or 'rock', which would be correct, doesn't rhyme with the last word of 'Our love is here to stay', and a songwriter has to eat after all}
"Wo-o wo-o, hey hey
I love you more than I can say.
Love you twice as much tomorrow.
Love you more than I can say."
Math and language skills about equally challenged here. If you can't say how much you love somebody, it's a safe bet you can't coherently promise twice as much tomorrow--and why should the object of his affection settle for, at best, half the love he's capable of, today?
I don't know how many times over the years Crosby, Stills, Nash and Yonge have sung "Four Dead in Ohio", or how many times Neil Young has sung it solo. Thousands I'd imagine and in all that time it's never occurred to them that these lines
"Gotta get down to it, soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago."
means exactly the opposite of what they intend.
There aren't any intelligent lines in Neil Diamond's "I Am (I Said)" but I think the peak of stupidity is reached by the refrain
"I am, I said, to no-one there
And no-one heard at all, not even the chair."
Which is surprising when you consider what amazingly sensitive ears most chairs have.
The writer of these lines was exceptionally proud of them, since they're the only lyric heard (like it were a needle skipping) on a song running 4 minutes or thereabouts (I was in a bar and my drink wasn't finished, that's why I subjected myself to the nuisance)
"There's things I haven't told you
I go out late at nigh
And if I was to tell you
You'd see my different side."
I'll let that, and this blast from the past, stand in for all those songs whose invention stretches no further than the repetition of one exceedingly stupid lyric 'til you can practically see the drool tricking down the singer's jaw on both sides, and perhaps secretly wish it were copious blood
"I'm a Neanderthal man, you're a Neanderthal girl
Let's make Neanderthal love, in this Neanderthal world"
(I bet somewhere there's an errant Ph.d thesis comparing this lyric, not unfavourably, to the elegant thought twists of Wittgenstein, but stupid academic theses are a whole 'nother issue.)
"Whatever I said, whatever I did, I didn't mean it.
"I just want you back again."
Where do women dig up these bozos? (I don't mean that literally.) And why do so many otherwise intelligent women stick to them like glue? (I suppose the same question can be asked in reverse, and about same sex mismatches, but that doesn't make it any less puzzling.) Assuming the lady he's singing to has a legitimate grievance--and the evidence of these lines is enough for me on that score--the least she should expect is awareness of precisely what she's complaining about, and a particular apology. I'd advise dumping. Shag him one last time for auld lang syne if you must, if his cock's in better repair than his hart and brain, but after that's done, make like the birds and flock off.
'Norwegian Wood' isn't at all a stupid song, but in his last interview Lennon made an amazingly stupid remark about it: "I wanted to write about an affair, but I didn't want me wife to know I was writing about an affair.
"I once had a girl
Or should I say
She once had me."
Really smooth camouflage there, Johnny.
I won't pursue this any further, but I throw the comment board wide open to reader contributions. Please make your quotes as accurate as possible. Cheers.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
"Wo-o wo-o, hey hey
I love you more than I can say.
Love you twice as much tomorrow.
Love you more than I can say."
Math and language skills about equally challenged here. If you can't say how much you love somebody, it's a safe bet you can't coherently promise twice as much tomorrow--and why should the object of his affection settle for, at best, half the love he's capable of, today?
I don't know how many times over the years Crosby, Stills, Nash and Yonge have sung "Four Dead in Ohio", or how many times Neil Young has sung it solo. Thousands I'd imagine and in all that time it's never occurred to them that these lines
"Gotta get down to it, soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago."
means exactly the opposite of what they intend.
There aren't any intelligent lines in Neil Diamond's "I Am (I Said)" but I think the peak of stupidity is reached by the refrain
"I am, I said, to no-one there
And no-one heard at all, not even the chair."
Which is surprising when you consider what amazingly sensitive ears most chairs have.
The writer of these lines was exceptionally proud of them, since they're the only lyric heard (like it were a needle skipping) on a song running 4 minutes or thereabouts (I was in a bar and my drink wasn't finished, that's why I subjected myself to the nuisance)
"There's things I haven't told you
I go out late at nigh
And if I was to tell you
You'd see my different side."
I'll let that, and this blast from the past, stand in for all those songs whose invention stretches no further than the repetition of one exceedingly stupid lyric 'til you can practically see the drool tricking down the singer's jaw on both sides, and perhaps secretly wish it were copious blood
"I'm a Neanderthal man, you're a Neanderthal girl
Let's make Neanderthal love, in this Neanderthal world"
(I bet somewhere there's an errant Ph.d thesis comparing this lyric, not unfavourably, to the elegant thought twists of Wittgenstein, but stupid academic theses are a whole 'nother issue.)
"Whatever I said, whatever I did, I didn't mean it.
"I just want you back again."
Where do women dig up these bozos? (I don't mean that literally.) And why do so many otherwise intelligent women stick to them like glue? (I suppose the same question can be asked in reverse, and about same sex mismatches, but that doesn't make it any less puzzling.) Assuming the lady he's singing to has a legitimate grievance--and the evidence of these lines is enough for me on that score--the least she should expect is awareness of precisely what she's complaining about, and a particular apology. I'd advise dumping. Shag him one last time for auld lang syne if you must, if his cock's in better repair than his hart and brain, but after that's done, make like the birds and flock off.
'Norwegian Wood' isn't at all a stupid song, but in his last interview Lennon made an amazingly stupid remark about it: "I wanted to write about an affair, but I didn't want me wife to know I was writing about an affair.
"I once had a girl
Or should I say
She once had me."
Really smooth camouflage there, Johnny.
I won't pursue this any further, but I throw the comment board wide open to reader contributions. Please make your quotes as accurate as possible. Cheers.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
October 16, 2007
Baby Talk
"A ridicule deferred is a ridicule lost forever."
R.A. Lafferty
"Last fall, a Toronto lawyer who works at one of the city's bigger firms asked for two weeks of paternity leave so he could help his wife settle into a routine with their newborn daughter. For that, he was mocked endlessly.
" 'So,' his male colleagues would say, eyebrows cocked, 'paternity leave, huh?'
"This tone suggested no true lawyer would ever do anything so sissified.
" 'It drove me nuts,' says the lawyer, who asked not to be identified."
--Dave McGinn, Nat Post, Oct 16 '07
What follows is a balanced journalistic account of this issue as it works itself out in the contemporary marketplace. You know the drill: follow this example with one from a friendlier work environment, wing in a few more anecdotes and then bring on the sociological observation on how things are changing in the workplace and how further change might be managed. Give me the basic data and I could produce a dozen of these a day, so long as I could repress a constant urge to giggle. (Humour is strictly frowned upon in this sort of think piece, though a think piece without humour is like a rainstorm without water IMHO: it lacks a little something.)
It doesn't seem to have occured to the lawyer--trapped in this anecdote like a fly in amber--that he had at least two responses available to him. The first was to maintain a dignified silence, firm in his own principles. In practice that seems to be out, since he was actually so infirm in his principles that this teasing "drove him nuts" as it would have on the school playground when he was three. In which case what he needs is a quiverful of barbed responses.
He could ask those teasing employees to tell him--quick, off the top of their heads--the names and ages of their children? What milestones in their children's development were they present for and which did they miss? First word, first step, little league, first school performance, first run-in with the law? Right, you were sort of obliged to take notice of that since parents, who on earth knows why, are held somewhat responsible in those cases if their children are not yet of age. Even if, as in your case, involvement was so minimal you could hardly have done or said anything to set them so seriously off on a wrong path. Your part of the joint enterprise was completed by your part in making them. And what's kept you a stranger to your children all these years? Ah right, all those thousands of extra billing hours in Millstadt v. Hagler, which has been in litigation more years than you can count on the fingers of both hands and is unlikely to be resolved in as many more. One or two colleagues whose hobby is literature have taken to calling it Jarndyce and Jarndyce and won't tell you why. Drives you nuts.
Certainly there's nothing the least bit sissy about a man all gwowed up whose life's work is resolving (or resolutely leaving unresolved) the endless hissy fits of corporations. Civilizations have been known to totter and fall over less. But do you never feel you've given over a little more of your heart and soul than--oh now please! the office is no place for that kind of blubbering.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
R.A. Lafferty
"Last fall, a Toronto lawyer who works at one of the city's bigger firms asked for two weeks of paternity leave so he could help his wife settle into a routine with their newborn daughter. For that, he was mocked endlessly.
" 'So,' his male colleagues would say, eyebrows cocked, 'paternity leave, huh?'
"This tone suggested no true lawyer would ever do anything so sissified.
" 'It drove me nuts,' says the lawyer, who asked not to be identified."
--Dave McGinn, Nat Post, Oct 16 '07
What follows is a balanced journalistic account of this issue as it works itself out in the contemporary marketplace. You know the drill: follow this example with one from a friendlier work environment, wing in a few more anecdotes and then bring on the sociological observation on how things are changing in the workplace and how further change might be managed. Give me the basic data and I could produce a dozen of these a day, so long as I could repress a constant urge to giggle. (Humour is strictly frowned upon in this sort of think piece, though a think piece without humour is like a rainstorm without water IMHO: it lacks a little something.)
It doesn't seem to have occured to the lawyer--trapped in this anecdote like a fly in amber--that he had at least two responses available to him. The first was to maintain a dignified silence, firm in his own principles. In practice that seems to be out, since he was actually so infirm in his principles that this teasing "drove him nuts" as it would have on the school playground when he was three. In which case what he needs is a quiverful of barbed responses.
He could ask those teasing employees to tell him--quick, off the top of their heads--the names and ages of their children? What milestones in their children's development were they present for and which did they miss? First word, first step, little league, first school performance, first run-in with the law? Right, you were sort of obliged to take notice of that since parents, who on earth knows why, are held somewhat responsible in those cases if their children are not yet of age. Even if, as in your case, involvement was so minimal you could hardly have done or said anything to set them so seriously off on a wrong path. Your part of the joint enterprise was completed by your part in making them. And what's kept you a stranger to your children all these years? Ah right, all those thousands of extra billing hours in Millstadt v. Hagler, which has been in litigation more years than you can count on the fingers of both hands and is unlikely to be resolved in as many more. One or two colleagues whose hobby is literature have taken to calling it Jarndyce and Jarndyce and won't tell you why. Drives you nuts.
Certainly there's nothing the least bit sissy about a man all gwowed up whose life's work is resolving (or resolutely leaving unresolved) the endless hissy fits of corporations. Civilizations have been known to totter and fall over less. But do you never feel you've given over a little more of your heart and soul than--oh now please! the office is no place for that kind of blubbering.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
October 14, 2007
Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
This year, for a change, I approve of a Nobel pick--though I got a great kick out of seeing just how underwhelmed Lessing was when told the news. "I've won every bloody prize in Europe, why do you have to bother me like this?" Which might seem like an ungracious response to a microphone stuck in your face out of nowhere when you were peacefully steeping out the back seat of a car, but it's reported Lessing's been on the short list of the Nobel committee for 40 years. (Her story is that 40 years ago she was told the Nobel committee didn't like her. That wore off presumably, or the people who held that opinion died out.) Look over the list of the winners in that period--there certainly aren't any better writers than Doris Lessing on it (supposing that's a possibility) and probably not more than three that are arguably in her class. The writers who might be compared to Lessing are mostly conspicuous by their absence (going right back to the turn of the century) and in many cases--recently, Peter Barnes, R.A. Lafferty, Dennis Potter, Janet Frame--the error can never now be rectified. Assuming the committee is right now on a roll, what about Alasdair Gray next year? If he lasts as long as Lessing has, there's a 14 year window of opportunity, but where's the guarantee of that?
The Golden Notebook's the one everyone talks about, and scarcely needs my recommendation. Read it if you haven't, read it again if you have. Enjoy.
Shikasta may be just as good. (Thomas Disch said in an interview that Lessing's science fiction novels were dreadful, and about the other four I agree with him. One of them is 150 pages of weak rhetoric contending against rhetoric as a corrosion of language. Plato's argument, which she derives hers from, is equally weak but not quite so wordy.
About Shiikasta I'd quarrel with him though. It's a story that freely overleaps centuries and millenia and takes our entire planet for its locale. Here's a passage that stood out for me:
"This woman, this man, restless, irritable, grief-stricken, sleeping too much to forget their situation or unable to sleep, looking everywhere for some good or sustenance that will not at once give way as they reach out for it and slide off into reproach or nothingness--one of them takes a leaf up from the pavement, carries it home, stares at it. There it lies in a palm, a brilliant gold, a curled, curved, sculptured thing, balanced like a feather, ready to float and to glide, there it rests, lightly, for a breath may move it, in that loosely open, slightly damp, human palm, and the mind meditating there sees its supporting ribs, the myriads of its veins branching, and rebranching, its capillaries, the minuscule areas of its flesh which are not--as it seems to this brooding human eye--fragments of undifferentiated veins, but, if one could see them, highly structured worlds, the resources of chemical and microscopic cell life, viruses, bacteria--a universe in each pin-point of leaf. It is already being dragged into the soil as it lies there captive, a shape as perfect as a ship's sail in full wind, or the shell of a snail. But what is being looked at is not this curved exquisite exactness, for the slightest shift of vision shows the shape of matter thinning, fraying, attacked by a thousand forces of growth and death. And this is what an eye tuned slightly, only slightly, differently would see looking out of the window at that tree which shed the leaf on to the pavement--since it is autumn and the tree's need to conserve energy against the winter is on it--no, not a tree, but a fighting seething mass of matter in the extremes of tension, growth, destruction, a myriad of species of smaller and smaller creatures feeding on each other, each feeding on the other, always--that is what this tree is in reality, and this man, this woman, crouched tense over the leaf, feels nature as a roaring creative fire in whose crucible species are born and die and are reborn in every breath . . . every life. . . every culture. . . every world. . . the mind, wrenched away from its resting place in the close visible cycles of growth and renewal and decay, the simplicities of birth and death, is forced back, and back and into itself, coming to rest--tentatively and without expectation--where there can be no rest, in the thought that always, at every time, there have been species, creatures, new shapes of being, making harmonious wholes of interacting parts, but these over and over again crash! are swept away!--crash go the empires, and the civilizations, and the explosions that are to come will lay to waste seas and oceans and islands and cities, and make poisoned deserts where the teeming detailed inventive life way, and where the mind and heart used to rest, but may no longer, but must go forth like the dove sent by Noah, and at last after long circling and cycling see a distant mountaintop emerging from wastes of soiled water, and must settle there, looking around at nothing, nothing but the wastes of death and destruction, but cannot rest there either, knowing that tomorrow or next week or in a thousand years, this mountaintop too will topple under the force of a comet's passing, or the arrival of a meteorite.
. . .
"And when the dark comes, he will look up and out and see a little smudge of light that is a galaxy that exploded millions of years ago, and the oppression that had gripped his heart lifts, and he laughs, and he calls his wife and says: Look, we are seeing something that ceased to exist millions of years ago--and she sees, exactly, and laughs with him.
"This, then is the condition of Shikastans now, still only a few, but more and more, and soon. multitudes.
"Nothing they handle or see has substance, and so they repose in their imaginations on chaos, making strength from the possibilities of a creative destruction. They are weaned from everything but the knowledge that the universe is a roaring engine of creativity, and they are only temporary manifestations of it.
"Creatures infinitely damaged, reduced and dwindled from their origins, degenerate, almost lost--animals far removed from what was first envisaged for them by their designers, they are being driven back and back from everything they had and held and now can take a stand nowhere but in the most outrageous extremities of--patience. It is an ironic, and humble, patience, which learns to look at a leaf, perfect for a day, and see it as an explosion of galaxies, and the battleground of species. Shikastans are, in their awful and ignoble end, while they scuffle and scrabble and scurry among their crumbling and squalid artefacts, reaching out with their minds to heights of courage and . . . I am putting the word faith here. After thought. With caution. With an exact and hopeful respect."
Much of Lessing's work remains undiscovered country for me. I think I'll begin by tacking The Four-Gated City again. I've tried reading it through more than once, and while I've gotten through hundred page swatches with considerable pleasure, I've yet to succeed at that. It's about time I did.
If there were no better reason for celebrating than how much this award got up the nose of Mr. Tweed Suited Pretension himself, Harold Bloom, that might be almost enough. But there are far better reasons.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
This year, for a change, I approve of a Nobel pick--though I got a great kick out of seeing just how underwhelmed Lessing was when told the news. "I've won every bloody prize in Europe, why do you have to bother me like this?" Which might seem like an ungracious response to a microphone stuck in your face out of nowhere when you were peacefully steeping out the back seat of a car, but it's reported Lessing's been on the short list of the Nobel committee for 40 years. (Her story is that 40 years ago she was told the Nobel committee didn't like her. That wore off presumably, or the people who held that opinion died out.) Look over the list of the winners in that period--there certainly aren't any better writers than Doris Lessing on it (supposing that's a possibility) and probably not more than three that are arguably in her class. The writers who might be compared to Lessing are mostly conspicuous by their absence (going right back to the turn of the century) and in many cases--recently, Peter Barnes, R.A. Lafferty, Dennis Potter, Janet Frame--the error can never now be rectified. Assuming the committee is right now on a roll, what about Alasdair Gray next year? If he lasts as long as Lessing has, there's a 14 year window of opportunity, but where's the guarantee of that?
The Golden Notebook's the one everyone talks about, and scarcely needs my recommendation. Read it if you haven't, read it again if you have. Enjoy.
Shikasta may be just as good. (Thomas Disch said in an interview that Lessing's science fiction novels were dreadful, and about the other four I agree with him. One of them is 150 pages of weak rhetoric contending against rhetoric as a corrosion of language. Plato's argument, which she derives hers from, is equally weak but not quite so wordy.
About Shiikasta I'd quarrel with him though. It's a story that freely overleaps centuries and millenia and takes our entire planet for its locale. Here's a passage that stood out for me:
"This woman, this man, restless, irritable, grief-stricken, sleeping too much to forget their situation or unable to sleep, looking everywhere for some good or sustenance that will not at once give way as they reach out for it and slide off into reproach or nothingness--one of them takes a leaf up from the pavement, carries it home, stares at it. There it lies in a palm, a brilliant gold, a curled, curved, sculptured thing, balanced like a feather, ready to float and to glide, there it rests, lightly, for a breath may move it, in that loosely open, slightly damp, human palm, and the mind meditating there sees its supporting ribs, the myriads of its veins branching, and rebranching, its capillaries, the minuscule areas of its flesh which are not--as it seems to this brooding human eye--fragments of undifferentiated veins, but, if one could see them, highly structured worlds, the resources of chemical and microscopic cell life, viruses, bacteria--a universe in each pin-point of leaf. It is already being dragged into the soil as it lies there captive, a shape as perfect as a ship's sail in full wind, or the shell of a snail. But what is being looked at is not this curved exquisite exactness, for the slightest shift of vision shows the shape of matter thinning, fraying, attacked by a thousand forces of growth and death. And this is what an eye tuned slightly, only slightly, differently would see looking out of the window at that tree which shed the leaf on to the pavement--since it is autumn and the tree's need to conserve energy against the winter is on it--no, not a tree, but a fighting seething mass of matter in the extremes of tension, growth, destruction, a myriad of species of smaller and smaller creatures feeding on each other, each feeding on the other, always--that is what this tree is in reality, and this man, this woman, crouched tense over the leaf, feels nature as a roaring creative fire in whose crucible species are born and die and are reborn in every breath . . . every life. . . every culture. . . every world. . . the mind, wrenched away from its resting place in the close visible cycles of growth and renewal and decay, the simplicities of birth and death, is forced back, and back and into itself, coming to rest--tentatively and without expectation--where there can be no rest, in the thought that always, at every time, there have been species, creatures, new shapes of being, making harmonious wholes of interacting parts, but these over and over again crash! are swept away!--crash go the empires, and the civilizations, and the explosions that are to come will lay to waste seas and oceans and islands and cities, and make poisoned deserts where the teeming detailed inventive life way, and where the mind and heart used to rest, but may no longer, but must go forth like the dove sent by Noah, and at last after long circling and cycling see a distant mountaintop emerging from wastes of soiled water, and must settle there, looking around at nothing, nothing but the wastes of death and destruction, but cannot rest there either, knowing that tomorrow or next week or in a thousand years, this mountaintop too will topple under the force of a comet's passing, or the arrival of a meteorite.
. . .
"And when the dark comes, he will look up and out and see a little smudge of light that is a galaxy that exploded millions of years ago, and the oppression that had gripped his heart lifts, and he laughs, and he calls his wife and says: Look, we are seeing something that ceased to exist millions of years ago--and she sees, exactly, and laughs with him.
"This, then is the condition of Shikastans now, still only a few, but more and more, and soon. multitudes.
"Nothing they handle or see has substance, and so they repose in their imaginations on chaos, making strength from the possibilities of a creative destruction. They are weaned from everything but the knowledge that the universe is a roaring engine of creativity, and they are only temporary manifestations of it.
"Creatures infinitely damaged, reduced and dwindled from their origins, degenerate, almost lost--animals far removed from what was first envisaged for them by their designers, they are being driven back and back from everything they had and held and now can take a stand nowhere but in the most outrageous extremities of--patience. It is an ironic, and humble, patience, which learns to look at a leaf, perfect for a day, and see it as an explosion of galaxies, and the battleground of species. Shikastans are, in their awful and ignoble end, while they scuffle and scrabble and scurry among their crumbling and squalid artefacts, reaching out with their minds to heights of courage and . . . I am putting the word faith here. After thought. With caution. With an exact and hopeful respect."
Much of Lessing's work remains undiscovered country for me. I think I'll begin by tacking The Four-Gated City again. I've tried reading it through more than once, and while I've gotten through hundred page swatches with considerable pleasure, I've yet to succeed at that. It's about time I did.
If there were no better reason for celebrating than how much this award got up the nose of Mr. Tweed Suited Pretension himself, Harold Bloom, that might be almost enough. But there are far better reasons.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
October 6, 2007
Unconditional Love
The wide dispersion of this cliche in ordinary speech and on the printed page alarms me. It's usually possible, with divagation, to figure out what people mean by it; but what they mean is never anything resembling unconditional love. Small children might feel that or something very near it, until they're taught to discriminate what's worthy of love and what isn't. (You'd strip a great deal from the school curriculum if that lesson were removed, which would make for a lot of work; you'd have to replace it with things worth learning.) A Buddha perhaps or a figure of perfect enlightenment under under another name (for the sake of argument, let's say Louis Armstrong) might actually be so free and open to all experience as to love unconditionally. But please! "I love my children unconditionally."? Unless you're trying to set a record as a limbo dancer, that's setting the bar awfully low; 'my children' being itself a stated condition.
At a minimum you might speak of loving children unconditionally. To do that wouldn't necessarily make 'my children' an irrelevant distinction, but would certainly somewhat diminish its importance. And are children the only human creatures this teeming globe presents us with? Unconditional love would have to expand enough to include adults as well, and I know by considerable experience they're a far harder test. But where would the children we're to love unconditionally come from, if not the sweaty loins of adults?
And are people the only creatures with whom we share this ample earth? far from it I'd say. There are untold species of plant and animal life we haven't even discovered yet--a new breed of hummingbird was recently found in South America, and put on the endangered species list the same day. You've got to love a guy with a hard luck story like that. Not that there are any shortage of told species--you could probably google the number of distinct species we've catalogued and named, but trust me--the number is immense. The number we've put on endangered species lists is no small potato, nor the number that have grown extinct in the average baby boomer's lifetime. We'd be a lot more actively concerned about that if unconditional love were as thick on the ground as people are in the habit of claiming.
Personally I think we'd do well to act as if we loved all life on earth, even if we were faking it a bit, because all life exists within a complex web of interdependence and we're high on the list of the most dependent. A great many species might be extinguished if we continue or clear-cutting, gas-burning, air and water and land poisoning ways, but one of them will certainly be ours. Possibly as soon as our children's or grandchildren's generation reaches the age of majority. There's no way to love our children unconditionally if we don't love tree frogs, dolphins, fruit flies and house flies, rain forests and all the hyperabundant life that thrives in them. Tell that to the next person you hear boasting of unconditional love for anyone, and tell them I said so.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
At a minimum you might speak of loving children unconditionally. To do that wouldn't necessarily make 'my children' an irrelevant distinction, but would certainly somewhat diminish its importance. And are children the only human creatures this teeming globe presents us with? Unconditional love would have to expand enough to include adults as well, and I know by considerable experience they're a far harder test. But where would the children we're to love unconditionally come from, if not the sweaty loins of adults?
And are people the only creatures with whom we share this ample earth? far from it I'd say. There are untold species of plant and animal life we haven't even discovered yet--a new breed of hummingbird was recently found in South America, and put on the endangered species list the same day. You've got to love a guy with a hard luck story like that. Not that there are any shortage of told species--you could probably google the number of distinct species we've catalogued and named, but trust me--the number is immense. The number we've put on endangered species lists is no small potato, nor the number that have grown extinct in the average baby boomer's lifetime. We'd be a lot more actively concerned about that if unconditional love were as thick on the ground as people are in the habit of claiming.
Personally I think we'd do well to act as if we loved all life on earth, even if we were faking it a bit, because all life exists within a complex web of interdependence and we're high on the list of the most dependent. A great many species might be extinguished if we continue or clear-cutting, gas-burning, air and water and land poisoning ways, but one of them will certainly be ours. Possibly as soon as our children's or grandchildren's generation reaches the age of majority. There's no way to love our children unconditionally if we don't love tree frogs, dolphins, fruit flies and house flies, rain forests and all the hyperabundant life that thrives in them. Tell that to the next person you hear boasting of unconditional love for anyone, and tell them I said so.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
October 3, 2007
African Concept Album
In a BBC interview Mick Jagger, asked what he might have been if not a rock star, replied: "Maybe I'd be in Africa trying to help a beleaguered economy. Who knows? Or probably an ex-ballet dancer with bad knees." There was no follow-up question apparently. What is it with these slacker interviewers? I think I'd've pointed out to Sir Mick that while a ballet career at his age is probably out of the question--though if he tried it the bad knees would be sure to arrive in short order--a hale and hearty sixty is not at all a bad age to start pitiching in in Africa if this really is a long-repressed dream. Full time or between tours--the Stones are off the road more than they're on it after all. And there's this in favour of the idea--though when it comes to his personal fortune Jagger's reputed both greedy and stingy, he has a far wider practical streak than most of the celebrities who've been making the obligatory three-week junket to save Africa or at least one of its itty-bitty cutey-wooty babies. Jagger's never been a sentimentalist unless on the delicate issue of his male member, and unsentimental sympathy could do a power of good almost anywhere in Africa--anywhere the risk of being on the wrong side of automatic fire or artillery shelling isn't too great. Wouldn't expect a foreigner to risk that, I'd prefer it if Africans didn't have to. Yes, I can almost picture it.
Well it was a thought.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
Well it was a thought.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
September 17, 2007
Business by Other Means
I'm told the head, at the time, of the Krupp family and therefore the Krupp armaments concern submitted a bill to the Allied armies at the end of WWII. It seems an unexploded German bomb, discovered early in the war, revealed to the Allies the superior fuse the Germans employed and they promptly adopted it for their own use. Well! there was clear appropriation if not violation of copyright and patent here so you can imagine. But how to calculate the number of fuses owed for? As surely as severed umbilical cords entail live births, exploded bombs entail exploded fuses.
As it happens, perhaps not unexpectedly, the Krupps were able to calculate the effects of weapons of mass destruction to a fine statistical point. They knew quite precisely the ratio of civilian death to bombs dropped in a terror raid. They erred on the conservative side by a point or two--after all, where calculation is approximate, it's best to give your customer the benefit of the doubt. They were businessmen after all, not thieves.
Flush from recent victory, the Allies felt comfortable violating a legitimate commercial obligation, and simply refused to pay.
There's a lesson to be learned here. As little as patriotic feelings typically inspire what used to be called cartels and are now usually called multinationals, the side of any conflict they wind up on will affect their bottom line. IBM collected throughout the war on the first widescale practical application of the stippled card technique which would ultimately lead to the earliest computers--numbering for administrative purposes the prisoners in the Nazi death camps. (Tattooed on their arms were skin-imprinted replications of the numbers encoded on these stippled cards.) Nazi Germany having collapsed and surrendered with the last payment still due--bankruptcy with extreme prejudice you might say--the final cheque was delivered to an IBM representative by Allied High Command, within the shadow of Bergen-Belsen. Everything has hidden as well as visible costs--worth bearing in mind when you read a story like this online.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
As it happens, perhaps not unexpectedly, the Krupps were able to calculate the effects of weapons of mass destruction to a fine statistical point. They knew quite precisely the ratio of civilian death to bombs dropped in a terror raid. They erred on the conservative side by a point or two--after all, where calculation is approximate, it's best to give your customer the benefit of the doubt. They were businessmen after all, not thieves.
Flush from recent victory, the Allies felt comfortable violating a legitimate commercial obligation, and simply refused to pay.
There's a lesson to be learned here. As little as patriotic feelings typically inspire what used to be called cartels and are now usually called multinationals, the side of any conflict they wind up on will affect their bottom line. IBM collected throughout the war on the first widescale practical application of the stippled card technique which would ultimately lead to the earliest computers--numbering for administrative purposes the prisoners in the Nazi death camps. (Tattooed on their arms were skin-imprinted replications of the numbers encoded on these stippled cards.) Nazi Germany having collapsed and surrendered with the last payment still due--bankruptcy with extreme prejudice you might say--the final cheque was delivered to an IBM representative by Allied High Command, within the shadow of Bergen-Belsen. Everything has hidden as well as visible costs--worth bearing in mind when you read a story like this online.
C 2007 Martin Heavisides
September 16, 2007
September 9, 2007
Last News of Peter
My first experience of Googling was an attempt to learn what
new Peter Barnes projects might be coming up, which instead
led to the discovery that he'd died, suddenly and unexpectedly,
the previous summer; that put me off the service for nearly a
month. When I finally Googled Alasdair Gray it was with fear
and trembling, but last I checked he was doing fine.
There were other, happier surprises. The year before, his
second wife had given birth to triplets, which made him
briefly notorious in the tabs (triplets in your seventies
apparently being news in a way that merely writing a
significant number of the finest plays in the history
of the world is not), and inspired his last, most personal
work, BABIES (posthumously telecast by Granada).
Not long afterward I read that Christopher Fry died at 97
which was a surprise. I hadn't known he was still alive.
Certainly he'd done no new work in decades, even up to
the rather slight standards of his best work such as THE
DARK IS LIGHT ENOUGH.
Peter could have made good use of another 24 years. The amount
of fine work he was doing right up until the end suggests
there was every reason to picture him going on till his
dying day whenever that might be. He even wrote a
masterpiece of criticism in those last years--a study
for the British Film Institute of Ernst Lubitsch's TO BE
OR NOT TO BE. Masterpieces of criticism are far rarer
than masterpieces of drama or fiction because it's not
a requirement, any more than it is for journalism,
that a critic be able to write, and most never learn how to.
(Strictly speaking, it's no more a requirement in drama and
literature, but story-telling is a more primal urge, and
sometimes people will write, even thoughtfully, even
against explicit instructions from publishers
and producers.)
Two passages from this study can be conflated into an informal
artistic credo:
As in all the best comedy, the seriousness is *in* the
comedy, not outside it. Every good joke must be a small
revolution. In the great classic comedies of stage, film
or novel, the jokes and gags themselves contain the deeper
meaning critics crave. . . In the end I believe the only
thing in the theatre that has the ring of truth is comedy.
[. . . ]
Reality is more theatrical than the theatre. It is why
naturalism looks so unreal and comedy so much truer than
tragedy, which sentimentalises violence, misery and death
and poeticises rotting corpses by calling them noble. The
artistic rendering of the physical pain of those who are
beaten down with rifle butts and iron bars contains the
possibility that profit can be squeezed from it. Tragedy
makes the unthinkable appear to have some meaning. It
becomes transfigured, without the horror being removed,
and so justice is denied to the victims. Comedy does not
tell such pernicious lies.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE, pp.51-52,
p. 77
C 2005 Martin Heavisides
new Peter Barnes projects might be coming up, which instead
led to the discovery that he'd died, suddenly and unexpectedly,
the previous summer; that put me off the service for nearly a
month. When I finally Googled Alasdair Gray it was with fear
and trembling, but last I checked he was doing fine.
There were other, happier surprises. The year before, his
second wife had given birth to triplets, which made him
briefly notorious in the tabs (triplets in your seventies
apparently being news in a way that merely writing a
significant number of the finest plays in the history
of the world is not), and inspired his last, most personal
work, BABIES (posthumously telecast by Granada).
Not long afterward I read that Christopher Fry died at 97
which was a surprise. I hadn't known he was still alive.
Certainly he'd done no new work in decades, even up to
the rather slight standards of his best work such as THE
DARK IS LIGHT ENOUGH.
Peter could have made good use of another 24 years. The amount
of fine work he was doing right up until the end suggests
there was every reason to picture him going on till his
dying day whenever that might be. He even wrote a
masterpiece of criticism in those last years--a study
for the British Film Institute of Ernst Lubitsch's TO BE
OR NOT TO BE. Masterpieces of criticism are far rarer
than masterpieces of drama or fiction because it's not
a requirement, any more than it is for journalism,
that a critic be able to write, and most never learn how to.
(Strictly speaking, it's no more a requirement in drama and
literature, but story-telling is a more primal urge, and
sometimes people will write, even thoughtfully, even
against explicit instructions from publishers
and producers.)
Two passages from this study can be conflated into an informal
artistic credo:
As in all the best comedy, the seriousness is *in* the
comedy, not outside it. Every good joke must be a small
revolution. In the great classic comedies of stage, film
or novel, the jokes and gags themselves contain the deeper
meaning critics crave. . . In the end I believe the only
thing in the theatre that has the ring of truth is comedy.
[. . . ]
Reality is more theatrical than the theatre. It is why
naturalism looks so unreal and comedy so much truer than
tragedy, which sentimentalises violence, misery and death
and poeticises rotting corpses by calling them noble. The
artistic rendering of the physical pain of those who are
beaten down with rifle butts and iron bars contains the
possibility that profit can be squeezed from it. Tragedy
makes the unthinkable appear to have some meaning. It
becomes transfigured, without the horror being removed,
and so justice is denied to the victims. Comedy does not
tell such pernicious lies.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE, pp.51-52,
p. 77
C 2005 Martin Heavisides
August 24, 2007
Grace Paley 1922-2007
I haven't seen any obituaries yet in the local papers; perhaps I missed them yesterday. I heard the news through one of the offices in an online writer's workshop I belong to. People had memories of Paley as writer, teacher, activist--one even mentioned a reading he had attended where Paley had read some of her poetry. He'd often heard poets read their own verse badly, and all too often heard bad poetry read badly. It was refreshing to hear fine poetry read well.
I'll have to take his judgment of her merit as a poet on faith until I've read a little more of it. The only poem of hers I've read was a droning, agitpropish piece that sent me resolutely back to the astonishing wit, depth, breadth and tenderness of her short stories. I'd be happy to discover that poem was a rare or even unique misstep, and she'd discovered as fresh and original a voice in her poetry as in her fiction. It certainly doesn't surprise me that a writer with such precise command of speech rhythms would read her own work well.
Her body of work was small, but the ratio of successes to failures was very high--more like a golden glove fielder's than a winning pitcher's percentage. For that reason many far more prolific writers have produced considerably less that is likely to endure--for as long at least as humanity, and literacy as a human skill, endures.
C 2207 Martin Heavisides
I'll have to take his judgment of her merit as a poet on faith until I've read a little more of it. The only poem of hers I've read was a droning, agitpropish piece that sent me resolutely back to the astonishing wit, depth, breadth and tenderness of her short stories. I'd be happy to discover that poem was a rare or even unique misstep, and she'd discovered as fresh and original a voice in her poetry as in her fiction. It certainly doesn't surprise me that a writer with such precise command of speech rhythms would read her own work well.
Her body of work was small, but the ratio of successes to failures was very high--more like a golden glove fielder's than a winning pitcher's percentage. For that reason many far more prolific writers have produced considerably less that is likely to endure--for as long at least as humanity, and literacy as a human skill, endures.
C 2207 Martin Heavisides
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