A Thousand Shades of Twilight

Yesterday's Heroes (and a Bloke on a Floe)

 

(Photo (detail) by Steve Shapiro in Life Magazine  from November 16 1964, article by Frank Kappler)

Here is Dr Norman Alcock, a Pacifist Physicist (and scourge of the tongue-tieable), standing on a Lake Ontario ice floe to dramatize his plea for peace. The image, unsurprisingly, accompanies an article about Jean-Paul Sartre(JPS).

According to Life, the picture above is an accidental but striking symbol of Sartre's beliefs. The Scientist on the ice floe not only looks as poignantly abandoned as M.Sartre says all men are, but just by being in this odd situation he shows that he has committed himself - as Sartre says all men are obliged to do if they are to escape a meaningless life'. And here was me thinking it was simply a Bloke on a Floe. (It would also appear, then, that I am not the only one who makes gargantuan, over-imaginative leaps in the interpretation of images).

Growing up, as I did, surrounded by Theologians, Existentialism and Humanism always had a certain forbidden allure for me. (In fact, I wanted to call this post "Sexistentialism On Ice!!" but found the inclusion of the word "sexist" in that title somewhat unpalatable.) You may have observed by now that one of my many missions in life is to demonstrate that even the Poignantly Abandoned can have a few feeble laffs now and then. So I need not expand much further on the appeal that this image and the article hold for me. But, as ever, I will.

The article exudes a general mistrust of JPS. It states that, like any good existentialist, he had for years acted on his thoughts with bravado. Most significantly, perhaps, it states that he was resigned to being walleyed and short.As if somehow that explained everything - the whole angst-ridden kit and kaboodle, a good deal of Twentieth Century Thought, hell being other people and all that. The writer is at pains to emphasise that, despite his potentially life-altering insight, JPS still had to live in a house and get about being all bourgeois and stuff. He coyly hints that the open relationship of Those Swingin' Sartre-De Beauvoirs' was really as conventional as any marriage, and equates JPS's Existentialism with religion. It is as though the author is saying, 'Ha! You fancy pants Existentialists are just like the rest of us mugs! Sucked in!' But, come now, what did the author expect? A Bloke on a Floe?

Existentialism seems rather quaint now. Does anyone still come up with these new, highly debatable philosophies? Philosophies that would have such an impact on popular culture as to appear on the pages of Life Magazine? Or are we all too preoccupied with buying bibelots and other forms of gimcrackery, destroying everything, or eking out some kind of tremulous existence from the dust? 

Finally, in discussing the ephemeral nature of Schools of Thought, I must explain that Jean Paul Sartre(JPS) is not to be confused with Australian singer from the 1970s, John Paul Young(JPY)*.  This is despite the alarming similarities between the two. JPY's first hit single was the eerily prophetic 'Yesterday's Hero' which, while not exactly Nausea, exhibited considerable self-awareness: 

Take a look at me, I'm yesterday's hero
Yesterday's hero, that's all I'd be-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee..

JPS, by comparison, once said:

I don't mind if my fellow men forget about me the day after I am buried. As long as they're alive, I'll haunt them, unnamed, imperceptible, present in every one of them just as the billions of dead who are unknown to me and whom I preserve from annihilation are present in me.

Uncanny, I know. But neither a patch on The Bloke on a Floe.

 

*or Sarah Jessica Parker(SJP), for that matter. Or Justices of The Peace(JPs). Or Pajamas(PJs). 

 

The World of Nonsense v The Howling Void

(Image shows detail from 'Focus' by Spanish painter Juan Genoves)

I remember reading an article in a music magazine in which the author shared, rather sheepishly, his madcap theory that I-PODs are, in fact, intelligent and can respond to their owner's needs and moods by shuffling accordingly. Imagine my surprise when last Monday morning, I found myself fleetingly toying with the notion that I was experiencing that very phenomenon. It seemed as if my I-POD was trying to tell me something. Something very important. That something very important was that I should leave work NOW!! and start doing something that I really dig instead. Not an original thought, I know. Well, not around these parts, anyway.

(I will not bore you with more details of my typical middle class malaise. Yes, work is loathsome. Yes, I feel trapped. But I am starting to bore even myself with my wailing and gnashing of teeth. And there is nothing worse than boring oneself. Well, actually, there are plenty of worse things such as leprosy and famine and circus clowns. So let us just say that I am trying to stay positive, taking each hour as it comes and putting out feelers wherever I can (as icky as that sounds)).

Anyway, there I was, staggering officewards in my Alarming Walking Outfit, when I heard the opening strains of that most bitterly joyous of songs,  'I want to see the bright lights tonight' by Richard and Linda Thompson:

I'm so tired of working everyday...

Amen to that, I sniggered, a wry smile flickering across my drawn and anxious dial.

The next tune was by Gillian Welch, the lovely Everything is free now which contains the lines:

Everything is free now,
That's what they say.
Everything I ever loved,
I'm going to give it away.
Someone hit the big score.
They figured it out,
That we're gonna do it anyway,
Even if doesn't pay...

And, more pointedly,

I never minded working hard,
It's who I'm working for..

That’s me! I thought, punching the air. No, I didn’t punch the air. I never, ever, punch the air.

The grand finale was hearing the anthemic strains of Sigur Ros as I trudged into the echoing foyer, unable to put off the inevitable start of the working week any longer. Now, I would like to think that Jonzi and Co were singing all about Stickin’ It To The Man and Following One’s Dreams. But, given that they sing in a made up language called Hopelandish, they could have been singing about pixies, apes and icecreams for all I knew. It mattered not. I enjoyed exiting the lift with the gracelessness of a sullen teenager, thinking all the while: You can steal my soul, but I will always have ‘The Music’!! And other equally stirring thoughts.

It soon dawned on me that thinking that my I-POD was trying to guide me was, in fact, sheer unadulterated nonsense.

But I have always had a soft spot for nonsense. I come from a family with parents who believe that the Lord will lead the way, and siblings who blithely start sentences with When our Alien Lords And Masters come to earth to teach us the true way to live… Hey, I have always been a Whatever-gets-you-through-the-(long)-(dark)-night-(of)-(the)-(soul) kind of cat. I would never judge another person’s brand of nonsense. And besides, nonsense can be an awful lot of fun. It can make life something of a treasure hunt.

I started life sharing my parents’ conviction about The Lord. But The Lord must be a supreme self-saboteur because she/he/it led me to the conclusion that she/he/it does not exist. I think my next big influence was, as much as I hate to admit it, daytime TV in the 90s. As a starving student and a no-good bum, I had oodles of time to watch Oprah and Sally Jessie and Ricki Lake. I watched and scoffed with a veneer of ironic, cool detachment. But, deep down, I must confess that Oprah wore me down with her nonsense about every single encounter with every single person happening for a reason. What a wearisome prospect. I am sure that the girl in the Seven Day Supermarket who told me that they had run out of newspapers today will be thrilled to know that she holds my future happiness in the palm of her hand.

I was always looking for the life lesson to be learned. I thought that anyone could reinvent themselves. Which is what got me into the pickle I find myself in today.

These days, however, I have embraced The Howling Void. I find it easier to keep the nonsense to a minimum. Instead, I focus on the small, happy tangibles:

A pizza. A Pride of Madeira. Daylight Savings.

My Darling gleefully throwing a ball to a dog. A good-natured game about movie stars. A sleeping baby.

Seeing the old house. Seeing some old, old friends. My Darling not putting anything horrible in the bed for a whole weekend.

Because of Daylight Savings, we had to put the clocks forward one hour this weekend. We lost one whole hour in the process. I am trying not to think about that precious lost hour too much. Indeed, I would actually love to wind the clocks right back to Friday afternoon instead and have the whole lovely long weekend all over again. But of course I cannot do that. And I do not see any point in torturing myself by wishing that I could. That would be nonsense.

Besides, things are looking up. My I-POD is now telling me to go and dig coal. In Arkansas. I swear.