87 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
88 To give these mourning duties to your mother:
89 But, you must know, your father lost a mother;
90 That mother lost, lost hers, and the survivor bound
91 In filial obligation for some term
92 To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
93 In obstinate condolement is a course
94 Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
95 It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
96 A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
97 An understanding simple and unschool'd:
98 For what we know must be and is as common
99 As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
100 Why should we in our peevish opposition
101 Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
102 A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
103 To reason most absurd: whose common theme
104 Is death of mothers, and who still hath cried,
105 From the first corse till she that died to-day,
106 "This must be so."[...]
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Who knows where the time goes?
In the small Flemish town of Poperinge yesterday they were having a Hops Festival. I was in town visiting Talbot House as part of a battlefields tour including Tyne Cot Cemetery, just one of many memorials in that area to a generation of boys and men slaughtered for ... what?
I'm standing there drinking a very hoppy beer when a man approaches and asks if he may take my picture. Surprised, I agree. He asks for my email address and moves on. Later I see him again, he snaps me again and explains he's studying photography at the academy in Bruges, and this is for a project called "Strangers Passing".
The same evening the two photos landed in my mailbox. God, I'm an old guy. I can no longer look at pictures of myself, because the naked reality they contain is just too much in conflict with my whole view of the world. I'm not the person you see when you look at me, and it horrifies me that you could make such a terrible mistake.
I have a friend who's 62, and I consider him an old man, but the difference between us is less than half the years that separate me -- in the other direction -- from Zoltan, my Hungarian friend I visited last week. He's more like my contemporary, except in actual fact.
Last Sunday, as I flew home from Budapest, would have been Daniel's birthday, September 11. He would have been 35, a fact that's simply too unlikely to contemplate. As it turns out, he never made it to 35, and never will. As the ceremony reminded us later at Ieper, and as it does every evening:
Above the square in Poperinge, the birds swooped and wheeled. Autumn is arrived, the season for old men. But a life is not a cycle; it is a wheel that turns in only one direction.
The birds are evoked in the first line of this song by Sandy Denny, who dies aged only 23. There are many versions her singing her own song on YouTube, but as I said in a post on Both Sides Now, the words better suit an older voice.
Update: my brother called this evening. My mother died this afternoon, no immediate COD. Autumn turns to winter in the space of a few hours. I put off going home when I should have. Then one day, the last opportunity is lost.
I'm standing there drinking a very hoppy beer when a man approaches and asks if he may take my picture. Surprised, I agree. He asks for my email address and moves on. Later I see him again, he snaps me again and explains he's studying photography at the academy in Bruges, and this is for a project called "Strangers Passing".
The same evening the two photos landed in my mailbox. God, I'm an old guy. I can no longer look at pictures of myself, because the naked reality they contain is just too much in conflict with my whole view of the world. I'm not the person you see when you look at me, and it horrifies me that you could make such a terrible mistake.
I have a friend who's 62, and I consider him an old man, but the difference between us is less than half the years that separate me -- in the other direction -- from Zoltan, my Hungarian friend I visited last week. He's more like my contemporary, except in actual fact.
Last Sunday, as I flew home from Budapest, would have been Daniel's birthday, September 11. He would have been 35, a fact that's simply too unlikely to contemplate. As it turns out, he never made it to 35, and never will. As the ceremony reminded us later at Ieper, and as it does every evening:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
Above the square in Poperinge, the birds swooped and wheeled. Autumn is arrived, the season for old men. But a life is not a cycle; it is a wheel that turns in only one direction.
The birds are evoked in the first line of this song by Sandy Denny, who dies aged only 23. There are many versions her singing her own song on YouTube, but as I said in a post on Both Sides Now, the words better suit an older voice.
Update: my brother called this evening. My mother died this afternoon, no immediate COD. Autumn turns to winter in the space of a few hours. I put off going home when I should have. Then one day, the last opportunity is lost.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
No jokes about faggots
Science is full of jokes: the chameleon; the eyes on a butterfly's wings or a peacock's tail; the light which burns on our retina from a star which has not existed for millions of years; the fact that the testicles, upon which all human life depends, have to be stored outside the body's protection, or they get too hot.
Christianity only has one joke:
The Jews, not surprisingly, have more, but only two: the sacrifice demanded of Abraham, when God popped out and went, "Only kidding!" And the Book of Job, which most fans of comedy would admit goes a bit too far -- farther even than Frankie Boyle.
Humanists can laugh at themselves. Scientists even make it a tenet of their activity: if you can prove my thesis wrong, I'll laugh at myself and move on. That's the scientific method.
The faithful don't have that facility. It will be remarked that aside from Jesus' stupid pun, the only jokes in the Judeo-Christian tradition we all hear about are of an extreme cruelty, and while that's not a bar to comedy -- see Fawlty Towers -- it doesn't exactly signal a group of people at ease with their philosophy.
Perhaps that's why the Vatican likes to burn heretics: it doesn't get the joke.
Christianity only has one joke:
Matthew 16:13-20A stupid pun on the word Petrus, in Latin, or if you like Kephas, in Greek, which it's unlikely Jesus, had he existed, would have appreciated.13When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
14And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
15He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
16And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
17And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
18And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
19And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
20Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.
The Jews, not surprisingly, have more, but only two: the sacrifice demanded of Abraham, when God popped out and went, "Only kidding!" And the Book of Job, which most fans of comedy would admit goes a bit too far -- farther even than Frankie Boyle.
Humanists can laugh at themselves. Scientists even make it a tenet of their activity: if you can prove my thesis wrong, I'll laugh at myself and move on. That's the scientific method.
The faithful don't have that facility. It will be remarked that aside from Jesus' stupid pun, the only jokes in the Judeo-Christian tradition we all hear about are of an extreme cruelty, and while that's not a bar to comedy -- see Fawlty Towers -- it doesn't exactly signal a group of people at ease with their philosophy.
Perhaps that's why the Vatican likes to burn heretics: it doesn't get the joke.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Loneliness
The last year's leaves are on the beech:
The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
To deeps byond the deepest reach
The Easter bells enlarge the sky.
O ordered metal clatter-clang!
Is yours the song the angels sang?
You fill my heart with joy and grief -
Belief! Belief! And unbelief...
And, though you tell me I shall die,
You say not how or when or why.
Indifferent the finches sing,
Unheeding roll the lorries past:
What misery will this year bring
Now spring is in the air at last?
For, sure as blackthorn bursts to snow,
Cancer in some of us will grow,
The tasteful crematorium door
Shuts out for some the furnace roar;
But church-bells open on the blast
Our loneliness, so long and vast.
John Betjeman
The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
To deeps byond the deepest reach
The Easter bells enlarge the sky.
O ordered metal clatter-clang!
Is yours the song the angels sang?
You fill my heart with joy and grief -
Belief! Belief! And unbelief...
And, though you tell me I shall die,
You say not how or when or why.
Indifferent the finches sing,
Unheeding roll the lorries past:
What misery will this year bring
Now spring is in the air at last?
For, sure as blackthorn bursts to snow,
Cancer in some of us will grow,
The tasteful crematorium door
Shuts out for some the furnace roar;
But church-bells open on the blast
Our loneliness, so long and vast.
John Betjeman
Friday, January 28, 2011
No more carefree laughter
This track, heard by chance in a cafe, may well be the best cover version I've ever heard.
Abba were a pop phenomenon, and one that keeps on being revived and revived. When on the radio they played the original back to back with this version, even Belgians sang along. That's how universal Abba became.
But their huge rise to fame came with the price of the break-up of the two relationships that formed the four-piece. Being consummate songwriters, they ploughed the stubble of their broken lives back into their work, and some of the later lyrics are among the most melancholic ever produced by mainstream pop.
The words of this song are an example. Despite the cheerful upbeat music, the feeling of loss, regret and finality is palpable. The very first line sets the tone:
A simple statement of fact you may feel (I do) relates to most of our lives, those of us who have reached a certain age, or a certain level of disillusion.
The rest of the lyrics repeat the sense of hopelessness:
What Arno has done in his version is to stress that sense of melancholy which pervades the lyrics, but was hidden by the Abba arrangement. He's pared it right down to a spare accompaniment, dominated by an organ to give it a real funereal touch. He's stripped out the backing vocals, and his own raddled voice is all that's left to communicate the song's sentiment.
When I heard it just now, I had to race back home to find a version I could post, so as to share it in a post on this blog which I've neglected for so long. That's how powerful the effect was. So powerful, in fact, that when the radio played Abba immediately after, I was already listening to the song in a whole new way, filtered through the consciousness that Arno had brought to the song, of things I'd always known but never realised were there.
Here's Arno's version.
Abba were a pop phenomenon, and one that keeps on being revived and revived. When on the radio they played the original back to back with this version, even Belgians sang along. That's how universal Abba became.
But their huge rise to fame came with the price of the break-up of the two relationships that formed the four-piece. Being consummate songwriters, they ploughed the stubble of their broken lives back into their work, and some of the later lyrics are among the most melancholic ever produced by mainstream pop.
The words of this song are an example. Despite the cheerful upbeat music, the feeling of loss, regret and finality is palpable. The very first line sets the tone:
No more carefree laughter
A simple statement of fact you may feel (I do) relates to most of our lives, those of us who have reached a certain age, or a certain level of disillusion.
The rest of the lyrics repeat the sense of hopelessness:
Here is where the story ends, this is goodbye
There is nothing we can do
Now there's only emptiness, nothing to say
This time we're through, we're really through
What Arno has done in his version is to stress that sense of melancholy which pervades the lyrics, but was hidden by the Abba arrangement. He's pared it right down to a spare accompaniment, dominated by an organ to give it a real funereal touch. He's stripped out the backing vocals, and his own raddled voice is all that's left to communicate the song's sentiment.
When I heard it just now, I had to race back home to find a version I could post, so as to share it in a post on this blog which I've neglected for so long. That's how powerful the effect was. So powerful, in fact, that when the radio played Abba immediately after, I was already listening to the song in a whole new way, filtered through the consciousness that Arno had brought to the song, of things I'd always known but never realised were there.
Here's Arno's version.
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