Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The Nagai Kafu Way of Life

They say - someone said - that there's no friend as loyal as a book.

Sometimes I get really wretched thinking about my position in society and the state of my relations with other human beings. Not that I'm universally reviled or anything like that, but, without wanting to go into detail, I sometimes feel like I've committed a crime for which I can never atone, just by being who I am. At such times it feels like every word I utter and every act I make only serves to dig me deeper into the pit of my shame.

Luckily there's art in this world, and, for me, especially literature.

Recently, someone sent me a little package from Japan containing a book about one of my favourite authors, Nagai Kafu. It is his picture that you see on the right hand side of this screen, in a hat and raincoat, walking along a street away from his favourite cafe in Asakusa, Tokyo. The cafe still stands. It is called Arizona Kitchen, and I have visited there twice on pilgrimage.

The title of the book sent to me is Nagai Kafu to iu Ikikata, which translates roughly as The Nagai Kafu Way of Life. The little wraparound slip tells us:

"Living freely, as you please, in a manner true to yourself! Hints we may pick up from the great author on how to live a stress-free life."

Japan seems to be big on this kind of lifestyle book, and it's kind of amusing that such an ultimate individualist and contrarian as Kafu should become a model for one of them. The author, Matsumoto Hajime, has written a great deal on Kafu, and I think this was probably an angle suggested to him by the publisher.

Anyway, here's what the inside cover says:

"Life becomes more and more enjoyable with age. The name Nagai Kafu brings to mind a man of letters responsible for such peerless works as Pleasures and A Strange Tale From East of the River, which influenced an age. However, the life behind those works, too, is unique; without relying on relatives or in-laws, having no traffic with other writers, vilified as a miser and a womaniser, he lived a full seventy-nine years on his own and in his own way. In his diary, Dyspepsia House Days, which he kept continuously for forty-two years, right up until the day before he died, we find not only the deepest thoughts of Kafu the man, but also a precious record of social and sexual customs that spans the three ages of Meiji, Taisho and Showa."



I've read a little of the book already. Unfortunately, I can't read the whole thing yet because I'm still maintaining my policy of finishing four books before I start any other, so I only dipped into it. I read, though, of how he came by his pen-name. Sent to hospital at the age of fifteen, he fell in love with a nurse there, though he never divulged his feelings to her. Her name was O-hasu, which means 'lotus'. The character 'ka' in 'Kafu' also has a meaning of 'lotus'. In fact, the two characters of 'Kafu' together mean 'lotus-wind'. As Matsumoto Hajime remarks, in this way, Kafu kept alive the memory of his first love throughout his entire life:

"It is said that there are few men who knew as many women in their lives as Kafu, and so it's rather interesting that such a Kafu should employ a pen-name that paid tribute to his first love his whole life. Unfulfilled love, which ends before it begins, is not forgotten. If one has a full chance to enjoy the love of the other, there is always the chance that one will tire of it, or be disappointed. However, if one sets a seal on it before it begins, it remains beautiful."

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing.

It's easy to see why someone might want to write a book about Kafu as a sort of how-to on avoiding stress, because, well, reading Kafu does tend to relieve my stress. Everything in life suddenly becomes of merely aesthetic consideration. Not having read Matsumoto's book, I don't know exactly what lessons he will draw from Kafu's life, but off the top of my head, if there is a lesson to learn, it seems to me it's that Kafu just didn't give much of a damn what other people thought about him. Is that why life becomes more and more enjoyable as he gets older? One of my favourite photos of him shows him towards the end of his life, with a broad grin in which many of the teeth are missing.

I leave you with a quote from Kafu's diary, as translated by Edward Seidensticker:

"It has been four years since I commenced this life of solitude, living in the maid's room and cooking for myself. At first there was a certain novelty in the arrangement. Then, toward the end of last year, the ways of the military government began to grow more arbitrary, and there came a change in the world; and somehow the drab and inconvenient life of the bachelor has come to seem so appropriate to the moods of the days that I would not now find it easy to change. Indeed, my feelings and thoughts are quite beyond description when, on an evening of a sudden autumn rain, I drag my sandals along the cliff, taking care that the frayed thong does not break, and buy onions and radishes in Tanimachi. I am quite drunk with the melancholy poetry of it all. However malicious and arbitrary may be the ways of the government, it cannot keep one's fancies from running free. There will be freedom while there is life."

Why I Hate Politicians

Apparently Tony Blair has just about caught up with the rest of humanity and declared that we "must act" to tackle climate change. Reading the news article, I was vaguely encouraged that politicians are slowly beginning to take this idea on board. However, I was also deeply depressed by certain other aspects of the article. We need to look no further than the first sentence, in fact:

The world will suffer irreversible economic damage without immediate action to combat climate change, the Prime Minister has said.

Notice the use of the word 'economic'. No mention of the destruction of the natural environment, or the loss of plant, animal and human life. No, if there's no money involved, it doesn't register on the political radar. This depresses me so much that it's truly beyond my power to put into words. After all, it's this political obsession with money, economic growth and so on, that has brought us to this crisis in the first place. I don't see us getting out of it by maintaining the same obsession. And the thing is, money is the biggest fiction, the least important thing in the world. I found this idea expressed admirably in a comment on the blog of David Miliband, Secretay of State for Environment. Someone signing himself as Mike Bennet writes as follows:

Hi David. I realise this is part of the upcoming announcement about new nuclear power stations to which I am totally opposed. I just wanted to make clear that there are two value systems going on here. Business and the Government work pretty much by money - if the case works financially then it's fine.

But the real world is far more complex than that - it doesn't recognise money at all in fact. And out here we citizens and our descendants are the ones who will bear the full effects of these decisions. And those effects are not financially measurable and are not included in your decisions really.

So I believe the starting point can't possibly really be public safety as you say - preparing for new nuclear power stations is not a path to go down if you truly value public safety.

David, you're in a good position to start to bring some honesty into politics - this would be a good place to start.

Incidentally, if anyone can help me out on this information, I'd been obliged. I saw Jeremy Paxman talking to some kind of government spokesman about the environment on Newsnight a week or two ago. I don't think it was David Miliband, strangely, though it's possible I just didn't recognise him. Anyway, the interview was fascinating, hilarious, depressing and scary. Basically, Paxman asked the spokesman, in view of Gordon Brown's statement that climate change is the biggest problem facing the planet, what exactly the government are doing to tackle that problem. The spokesman was completely unable to come up with anything that they were actually doing. He was really crumbling on camera. "So, climate change is the biggest problem facing the world. Can we therefore have a commitment from the government for some kind of action?" "Well, it's too early to talk about commitment." Blah blah blah. It also transpired that the respective figures for government spending on the environment and on the Iraq war were 100 million pounds (over one or four years, I can't remember) and five billion pounds. The most important problem in the world - 100 million pounds. Slaughtering a load of foreigners for reasons no longer intelligible to anyone - five billion pounds.

So, that's why I hate politicians.

No Comment

I think I'm basically a misanthrope, and with good reason. However, I like to think of myself as a friendly misanthrope. Friendly is my default setting. It changes to unfriendly when I encounter the stupidity of human beings. In this way, because of my friendliness, my default setting on this blog was to allow anonymous posters, especially because I have friends who I know are not memebers of Opera. However, I have recently been receiving a great number of anonymous comments on one of my blog entries that I have really begun to find tiresome, so, sorry all you well-meaning anonymous posters out there, I have changed the setting of my blog to disallow anonymous comments. The truth is, I hate anonymity anyway. If you've got something to say then put your name to it, or your pseudonym, if that's the way it must be.

Since I like to have the last word on things, let me now examine the anonymous comments I've received and thereby explain exactly why I am a misanthrope.

Let's start with the first comment:

Anonymous writes:

this is fucking shit.

Well, that's really enlightening. It's funny how words can sometimes give us a glimpse into a person's mind. I imagine a brain here empty of all things but the four words, 'this is fucking shit'. Whoever this person is - apparently nobody, which I can readily believe - they don't even have the wherewithal to start a sentence with a capital letter.

... writes:

BORING!!!!!!!THIS IS RUBISH

Another illiterate. There are two 'B's in 'rubbish'. And, of course, this nobody is, like all the other interchangable nobodies, desperately inarticulate. The single brain cell plods around seeing 'Boring' and 'Rubish' (sic) wherever it goes.

jooeee writes:

I don't even like crocodiles so eat your foot i hate you go and smell your head and eat a mole and maybe chuck a bowl of cornflakes at your child.

Interesting. Creative. I quite like the bit about throwing cornflakes at your child. I also like the freedom that is allowed by the use of the word 'maybe'.

a stabbed little mole writes:

this website is so camp i wanted to kill myself when i read it so i want to tell you to change it or i will shoot you with a gun knife shooter mule and ity will sting so much you weill eat a beach ball so you will not live for another 7 years only 8 and 3 eighths AND I ALSO WANT TO NOT EAT A CRAB PUFFABLE GIRAFEE CALLED ALEX HANRDXTON AND IF YOU DONT READ THIS I WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN AND NOT PICK YOUR NOSE WIV A SPANNER BUT A SEED DRILL.

Judging by the style this is the same person who left the previous comment. Quite a nice line in surrealism going on here, with all surrealism's inherent violence. The first line also made me laugh, so, well done, a-stabbed-little-mole.

a stabbed little mole writes:

IM BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!.

Hmmm. Trying to spook me?

jooeee writes:

mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole small gay rat mole mole mole mole.

Notice the way the post-modern use of repetition is startlingly interrupted by the enigmatic 'small gay rat'.

a stabbed little mole writes:

cheese filled rat toy with checkered tights and a yacht.

I can see some themes developing here. I would encourage a-stabbed-little-mole to take up poetry.

Anonymous writes:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z .

Yes, I know the alphabet, thank you.

At this point I made a response to a-stabbed-little-mole as follows:

"this website is so camp i wanted to kill myself when i read it"

Why didn't you? Obviously I have failed in my job..

There were also some friendly comments in with the mix. Here's one of them:

Sir Poe-a-lot writes:

interesting, good info for school, may the horror of Poe, Stoker and Shelley be upon all your heads, you dont even understand the importance of the Gothic influence in your pitiful lives.

I responded at length to this one. I was thinking of how to deal with the anonymous comments, and I gave my thoughts in the response:

Thank you, Sir Poe-a-lot.

I think you have noticed what I believe are called 'trolls', cluttering up the comments section of this entry.

I considered deleting them, but I'm not fond of censorship. However, it occurred to me after discussion with another blogger that, since anyone is free to set up their own blog and, for instance, dedicate it to the criticism of Quentin S Crisp, that to delete comments here is not really censorship. It is merely acting as the editor of one's own blog. Even so, I have refrained from deleting any of the troll comments here, because they are basically harmless, and even vaguely amusing. My only concern is that they might constitute an eyesore to readers such as yourself, so, if they do, I apologise.

I may yet delete comments, and will feel no compunction if I do so.

As you say, some of those here are lamentably unconscious of the forces of which they are mere puppets - the long Gothic shadows of history.

They probably don't even know that the Goths and the Vandals were allied tribes..

Then we had another troll:

Anonymous writes:

i hate goths they are faggs.

This one annoyed me. Unlike the mole character, this fellow was not creative in any way whatsoever. I wrote a brief reply:

Anonymous, you clearly have no idea what the word 'goth' means. The same is true of many who call themselves goths. Of course, had you actually read my post you might have been able to learn something, but clearly you made your own comment without reading, thus exposing your ignorance..

I could have added that he resembled all of his kind in the following ways:

A) He is illiterate (there is only one 'G' in 'fag').
B) He is ignorant (i.e. a moron). I take it that, when he says "goths" he is referring to people who dress in black and listen to Fields of the Nephilim. I find it hard to believe that what he really means is "I hate members of the barbarian tribes of Europe who ended up sacking Rome, because they are all homosexuals". And yet, in my blog entry, I made no mention of the former species of Goth, only the latter.
C) He is a bigot. He seems to believe that stating someone is homosexual is some kind of insult. His antipathy towards "goths" is also questionable on other grounds. I would certainly rather be a "goth" than a homophobic, illiterate, arrogant, bigoted moron.

Now we come to the last straw. The following comment:

Anonymous writes:

this is really dumb and stupid stuff to look at..

Really? Well, I wonder what you mean by 'dumb' and 'stupid'? For instance, let's take an example story. Imagine that someone was reading someone else's blog and they didn't like what they read. He (because it's bound to be a he) says to himself, "I really hate looking at this blog, but what can I do?" He struggles but it doesn't occur to him simply to choose not to look at the blog. Could that possibly be an example of 'dumb' and 'stupid', I wonder? Well, obviously not, since that person has shown such incredible wit, panache and expressiveness in his comment, that I am left speechless. We are clearly dealing with someone of superior intellect here.

I find it so depressing to think that there is so much pond-scum of this variety out there in the world, that I no longer want to know about it. And so I have, as I said, disallowed anonymous posters. Sorry to those of you who are not pond-scum. A battle of wits with plankton is frankly tiring.

So Sing It Now

I've been poking about on YouTube quite a bit recently. YouTube really makes it easier to create interesting blog posts, I think. Or maybe it just makes it easy to be lazier.

In any case, I've been delving into lots of Morrissey and Smiths footage, and there's a lot of interesting stuff to choose from. I would blog about my favourite (so far) interview footage of Morrissey, as there's a great deal I feel I could say about it, especially in as much as it seems to show a more loquacious Morrissey than we seem to see these days. However, it's late, and I feel that it might be a little redundant of me to blog it, since it has already been blogged.



Instead I will blog the YouTube clip inset. I don't know who Johnny Carson is, but it's a clip from his show. Morrissey performs two songs, both from the flop album of the early nineties, Kill Uncle. The first of these is the hugely under-rated Sing Your Life. Morrissey is at the height of his rockabilly phase here, and his performance is quite astonishing. I felt quite revivified after watching it. The second song is the fairly forgettable There is a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends. This version is a little more interesting than the album version.

And remember, "you have a lovely singing voice/a lovely singing voice/and all of those who sing on key/they stole the notion from you and me".

Someday My Prince Will Come

One of those chance snatches of conversation that sticks with you - I remember someone saying, on the set of a film in which I had a minor part, that when middle class people grow up they listen to classical music, and when working class people grow up, they listen to the music of their childhood.

I suppose that makes me more working class than middle class. I do listen to some classical music, though. And I don't always listen to the music of my childhood. However, I think it is generally the music of my childhood that moves me most deeply.

The first film I ever saw at the cinema was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I must have been very young indeed. I don't think I really understood the concept of cinema at the time. I thought we were going to see Snow White and her seven giraffes. I imagined it would be a small zoo enclosure, or maybe a bit like a circus, with a beautiful young lady showing us all her giraffes.

I don't remember actually sitting in the cinema and watching the film. What I do remember is that we had a soundtrack of the film on record in our house (presumably after we saw the film), and this would be played fairly often. Even though children do not have much experience of life, songs tend to move them deeply, as if they understand exactly what it is like to love and lose someone and so on. At least, that's how I remember it. I found the record utterly transporting, and Snow White's contralto voice was unearthly.



I have been trying to find clips of the songs from the film on YouTube, but for some reason, it seems impossible to find the English versions of the clips. Is this because of Anglo-Saxon uptightness over copyright, I wonder?

Anyway, I have found a number of versions of the songs. Someday My Prince Will Come and I'm Wishing are the two I remember best. Even in a foreign language, hearing Snow White's voice echo her antiphonally in the wishing well makes me weep. I'm not joking. I find it indescribably goosebumpily beautiful. I don't really care if it's all a lie. It has the same kind of beauty, for instance, as Oscar Wilde's 'The Happy Prince', which I cannot read without tears pouring down my face.

I remember reading somewhere the opinion that fairy tales are basically pornography for children. When we grow up 'fairy tale' is also a synonym for falsehood. These, however, are some pretty enduring, compelling and powerful falsehoods. I suppose I respect that. More than anything else, I want life to be like that. Except that I'm not so keen on Prince Charming. It's pretty obvious she got the wrong man there. She should have stuck with Dopey.

Saints and Superheroes

On Friday the 9th of September, 2005, I went along to the Battersea Arts Centre, to see a one-man show called Radioplay. I thought at the time of doing a review of the show, but, as often happens with this blog, other things claimed my attention, time passed, and after a while it was rather too late to give a proper review.



On Friday the 13th of October, 2006, I went along to the Battersea Arts Centre, to see a two-man show called Saints and Superheroes. The show was the work of Flywheel Productions, the same team responsible for Radioplay. Ed Gaughan, who was the one man in that one-man play, was one of the two men in this two-man play, the other being Andrew Buckley, familiar to some as Gobbler from Ricky Gervais' Extras. Respectively, Gaughan and Buckley were Brother Dominic and Brother Stephen, the resident monks of Trengwithey lighthouse (and monastery), just off the coast of Cornwall. The show began with an animated sequence projected onto a screen above the stage. We zoomed in to a revolving planet Earth to the accompaniment of dramatic string music that segued into warm and welcoming jazz as we found ourselves closing in on the island and then climbing the stairs of the lighthouse to the very top. And here was Brother Dominic, giving us, the audience, a guided tour. So began Saints and Superheroes and thus we were ushered into the world of Brothers Dominic and Stephen, who would, during the course of the evening, provide a particularly intimate guided tour of their lives. Whether or not we were to believe anything we were told was another matter.



We learnt, during the course of the evening, that Brother Stephen was sent in search of Brother Dominic by Saint Peter, who appeared to him in a vision outside the Hacienda in Manchester. Saint Peter, approaching the then doorman, Stephen, enjoined him in broad Mancunian to provide succour to Brother Dominic, who was in need of help. Brother Dominic was and is, indeed, in need of help. As Brother Stephen says to him at one point, in the guise of a comforting and motherly Joan of Arc (don’t ask), "Things do bother you, don't they?" Brother Dominic likes to "pretend" things. Early on he suggests to Stephen that they can pretend the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, with Dominic being Saint Francis and Stephen being "a bear, or a dove, or a pig". Dominic is a sensitive, frustrated and embittered fantasist. It is his envy of Stephen's vision, in fact, that leads Stephen to explain it to him - and us - in detail via the 'pretending' of which Dominic is so fond.

Pretending, in fact, is very important throughout. As mentioned, there are two actors in this show, but rather more characters, as the two Brothers become Saint Peter, Joan of Arc, a Satanist member of the Irish upper class and his New York wife, a blind crocodile judge who talks like Al Pacino - the usual suspects.

No doubt the above sounds a little confused, and I hesitate to give a plot synopsis because a) I'm not sure I can and b) you might want to go and see the show yourself when it returns to the stage. As a matter of fact, although there is a plot, in a way it's not the plot that seems important. Or rather, it's not the what-happens-next that's important so much as the what's-happening-now, which includes some fascinating and hilarious digressions, often in the form of Brother Dominic's outlandish flights of fancy. You might have thought that it would be unnecessary to even make such a caveat in our sophisticated age, but apparently ideas of beginning, middle and end are still tediously ingrained in the minds of many. I suppose I make this point because I have a certain amount of fellow-feeling here with those who produced this show. I prefer a story to be a fascinating labyrinth rather than a simple ride from A to B. And fascinating labyrinth is certainly what Flywheel Productions seem to do.

Now, if you read this blog a lot, you might know that I am acquainted with the two actors involved here. I realise that this might seem to make me biased, but, after all, it's not like the fellows are on trial or anything, and no one has asked me to write this. I mention my acquaintance because it does provide me with some behind-the-scenes insight. I was wondering how to describe, in broad, general terms, just what it is that these fellows do. Obviously it's theatre, and it's also comedy. There's music there, too. At this point it becomes rather more difficult to describe. We already know it's not stand-up, and I know that Ed's no great fan of so-called 'observational' comedy. There are characters here, but this is not exactly the comedy of impersonation, though that element is not entirely absent, either. Similarly, I'm not sure that Ed would appreciate the label 'surreal', although I can see many people being tempted to apply it. I must admit, I'm rather tempted, too, if only for the sake of convenience. But, after all, it is rather a lazy label. While pondering this question, I had the following thoughts: It's often said that comedy does not age well, that it's a mere ephemeral trick of language, and when one watches a comedy that is, say, thirty years old, often this proves to be the case. However, I have read novels by Dickens, well over a hundred years old, in which the humour seemed extraordinarily fresh and modern. Wondering to myself why this is, I came to the tentative conclusion that the humour in Dickens' novels retains its freshness because humour was not the sole purpose of those novels. It was an integral, living part of a larger whole. And I suppose I feel something similar about what is on offer here. Comedy seems the easiest way to label it, but the comedy is part of a larger whole. And perhaps all comedy really should be this way, but for the most part one finds that it isn't. For the most part comedy is presented to us in the form of a kind of gag industry.

I will take this idea a little further and say that what Flywheel Productions are doing is bringing art to comedy. I have no idea what the fellows themselves will think of such a statement, and I don’t mean to suggest any kind of stilted self-consciousness. Quite simply, I see this play as a purely creative piece of theatre. It happens to be creative in a playful sense, and thus it is comedy. But it does not seem part of the many professional genres of comedy that tend to offer mechanical templates for producing laughter. This notion came to me after I was watching one of those dreadful ‘top 100’ kind of programmes that have proliferated on television of late. The programme in question concerned the top 100 albums of all time. One of the many talking heads on the programme said of the Velvet Underground that they were the first band to bring art to popular music. Such statements – they were the first to, they were the last of – are generally not actually true, or at least highly debatable. Nonetheless, people sometimes find they help to focus our ideas about things. I remembered that the two Brothers had sung a hymn during the proceedings; the hymn was in fact the Velvet Underground’s Jesus. Perhaps, it occurred to me, Flywheel Productions are doing with (or to) comedy what Velvet Underground did to popular music. Hmmm.

There is something about the two-men-on-an-island situation that is intriguing in this play. It brings to mind a number of things. When I saw that Brothers Dominic and Stephen were going to share a bed (the former, of course, stealing all the bedclothes), I thought immediately of Morecambe and Wise, the kind of childish innocence of their comedy, in which two grown men could go to bed together each night without the audience thinking there was anything either sexual or strange about it. There must have been something in this instinct, because reference was later made to Eric Morecambe, and Brother Stephen adroitly waggled his glasses in the Morecambe manner. The childishness of this relationship is emphasised in many ways, not least of all by Brother Stephen’s reading of comics in the bed that they share, and by his preoccupation with superheroes.



I think also of the kind of loser double-acts that are part of comedic tradition – men who have been rejected by the world and found themselves together on that account. One of the earliest examples of this type is Laurel and Hardy, but the tradition is also to be seen in the likes of Bottom, perhaps reaching its apotheosis in Withnail and I, in which there is a kind of cathartic wallowing in failure on the part of the two friends. There is pain and consolation here. At one point Brother Dominic encourages Brother Stephen to drink some wine (or some pretend wine, since it is actually beer), and tells him he must sniff it first, and say what he smells. Brother Stephen begins to smell an English summer day, with cut grass, cricket and so on. His description becomes more and more detailed: “The sun begins to set and Fatty Jenkins watches Lillian, wondering if he will be able to pluck up the courage to ask the question.” However, the vision begins to turn sour. The skies darken. Clouds thicken. There’s a hint of coming violence. “Something is going to fall like rain, and it won’t be flowers”. (Larkin? No, Auden.) The beer has an aftertaste. Brother Dominic asks if Fatty Jenkins ever did ask Lillian the question. “I don’t suppose so,” he replies, “Do you?” And here is the pain that has brought them together to torment and console each other. Fatty Jenkins will never ask Lillian. That is life. Life is two men isolated in a lighthouse with their fantasies. As if to emphasise this fact, even the toaster seems to be against the two of them. When Brother Stephen decides to make some toast, Brother Dominic says bitterly, “Well, go on then, and see what happens.” What happens is, when the toast pops up, it defies gravity completely, as if by dint of some particularly cruel miracle, and goes directly up to meet the maker. “I haven’t had a slice of toast for eleven years,” says Brother Dominic in a voice of great pathos.

I know the feeling.

Pain and consolation.



However, the show does not end on a down but an up. Apart from the fact that we are treated to a dance routine (the audience voted between a dance routine and a lecture, and the dance routine won, much to Brother Dominic’s annoyance) in the Morecambe and Wise tradition, complete with spinning umbrellas, we are also given an ad-hoc moral of the story, delivered by Brother Stephen when Brother Dominic, relieving himself of responsibility, asks him to sum the whole tour/lecture/childhood-regression-primal-scream-session up: “Go on, you know. Tell them the… thing.”

I feel it would be spoiling things rather for me to reproduce that summing up here, but it is masterfully done by a nervous, extemporising Brother Stephen. The moral of the story, as such morals tend to do, verges on the sentimental, but just where the tightrope walker began to wobble he recovered. I could not fault it as a moral, and it’s just a pity that I cannot say here what it is. Only that it is a compassionate moral that I totally condone, and that it was extrapolated from Brother Stephen’s interpretation of the eighties film, Adventures in Babysitting.



More than that, now, I do not wish to say. I have a cold and I’m not feeling well. I intend to catch the show again when it returns to the stage. I would also urge others to do so. I’ll post any news on this blog. Also, please excuse me if I have misquoted at any point – which I almost certainly have – as I have had to write this all from memory.

One more thing: Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from the show, and as yet there are none online, so I've had to post pictures here that are related, vaguely or otherwise.

A Night at the Opera

I went along to the Opera Backstage event in London last night. You can read about it here. Unfortunately, I don't have time for a big write-up at the moment, and I'm probably not best qualified to write the event up, anyway, as I'm not very technically inclined when it comes to computers, and there was a definite technical slant to the evening.

I can report that it was pleasant to meet and chat with other members of the Opera community. And here is a picture:

I'm Not the Man You Think I Am

The title for this entry comes from Pretty Girls Make Graves, one of my favourite songs by The Smiths, if not one of my favourite songs full stop. Even the title of the song alone is a powerful statement. Four words can say so much, and I feel I know the emotional truth of these words, having been, in my time, what is described in the lyrics of the song as "Sorrow's native son". If pretty girls are basically Life, with a capital L (which also begins those sister words 'Love' and 'Lust'), then Sorrow's native son knows that something has barred him forever from getting on that particular ride, which leads, through social Darwinism, to genetic immortality. In the words of the song: "I could have been wild and I could have been free/But nature played this trick on me". Therein lies the pain that digs the grave.

The line in question (that which is the title of this entry), is delivered by Sorrow's native son to a girl who appears intent on his seduction:

End of the pier, end of the bay
You tug my arm, and say : "Give in to lust,
Give up to lust, oh heaven knows we'll
Soon be dust ... "

Oh, I'm not the man you think I am
I'm not the man you think I am.



In this context the word 'man' takes on an interesting double meaning. The statement can mean something like, "I'm a different man to the one you think I am". Or, alternatively, it can mean, "You think I'm a man, but I'm not". Both readings are, I think, relevant, but the second one takes on a bitter poignancy in context, since the song seems to be about sexual impotence:

And Sorrow's native son
He will not rise for anyone.

Somehow that line, "I'm not the man you think I am", fascinates me and resonates with me. In many ways it can be seen as a kind of summary of Morrissey's career. In the documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey, Will Self described Morrissey's artistic stance as an eccentric one: "'I am what I am' he seems to say, 'But you're not allowed to know what I am'. And that's a very eccentric position."

"I'm not the man you think I am" also echoes the defiant position taken by Arthur Seaton, hero of Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Arthur Seaton, a young, determined hedonist (or perhaps not), declares, "Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not." Morrissey, something of a film buff, is known to be a fan of this film. (This quote has also, recently, provided The Arctic Monkeys with the title of their album.) Coming from the mouth of the young, pugnacious Arthur Seaton, there's an almost Zen-like wisdom to his pronouncement. I believe I thought of this line after being told, by someone who had read my work, that I was old-fashioned.



Just before the release of his album You Are the Quarry, Morrissey made a fascinatingly awkward appearance on the talk-show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. At one point, Jonathan asks Morrissey, "Can I be your friend after the show?" To which Morrissey replies, simply, "I don’t think so." When Jonathan asks him how many friends he has, he replies immediately, "Seven." (Single word answers seemed quite prevalent in the interview.) This issue of friendship was pushed by Jonathan, and, at one point, there was the following exchange:

JR: What about people who work with you? What kind of relationship do you have with them, then? Does it ever blur and you ever feel awkward that they want to be more friendly and you don't want to let them closer?

M: Yeah, it's happened in the past. It has happened in the past.

JR: (Laughs) We're talking about a long time ago, I imagine then?

M: No.

JR: No? Recently?

M: It has happened. It does become difficult sometimes. Errrm. But... errrm... then it ends. Remarkably. When they've found out what I'm really like. (Laughs.)

JR: What are you really like, then? What do you mean by that?

M: I haven't a clue. I've got no idea.

This last line is delivered in a rather faint voice so that it is hard to tell if that is what he was really saying.



On the album You Are the Quarry is a track called How Could Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel. At first, this seemed to me one of the cruder tracks on the album, but recently I feel that I understand it more. In some ways it could be seen as revisiting the themes expressed in Pretty Girls Make Graves, especially with reference to the line, "I'm not the man you think I am". Perhaps one significant difference in viewpoint is that, while Pretty Girls Make Graves belongs to the debut album and was therefore written and recorded before Morrissey had achieved fame, the later song was written by someone very much in the midst of fame:

She told me she loved me, which means, she must be insane.
I've had my face dragged in fifteen miles of shit, and I do not, and I do not,
And I do not like it.
So how can anybody say they know how I feel?
The only one around here who is me, is me.

Once again there is someone who mistakes the singer for someone else. If she loves me, she's insane. In other words, her love is a delusion. I've heard more than one person express irritation at this song because it seems to disavow the devotion of Morrissey's many fans. In interview, however, Morrissey has said that probably everyone feels the things expressed in that song at some time. In a broad, universalistic reading, the song is simply this: When someone tells you they love you, look out. They could be projecting a fantasy onto you, and ultimately such projection is also imposition. They want you to conform to the fantasy. They want to use you. Otherwise they will be disappointed, and love will disappear. It will be revealed for the lie that it is. I'm sure it will not come as a totally alien idea to people who read this if I say that those who tell you they love you are often those most likely to drag your face through the shit. When Morrissey sings, "So how can anybody possibly think they know how I feel?" he is effectively trying to struggle free of the many grasping hands reaching out to him, unwilling to conform to the fantasies imposed on him.

Relating this back to Pretty Girls Make Graves, if it's true that "I'm not the man you think I am" when you find me attractive, it's also true that "I'm not the man you think I am" when you're disappointed in me.

I thought about all of this on Friday night in connection with a very trivial episode that I will relate here.

I had gone to see a show called Saints and Superheroes at the Battersea Arts Centre. After the show, the bar was very crowded. I was struggling through the press of people when I thought I heard an American accent. I suppose I was curious enough to turn my head. The accent seemed to belong to a tall blonde girl. However, when I turned my head, it was a man standing near her who immediately caught my gaze and said hello. As it turned out, he was American, too.

Anyway, he greeted me as if he knew me. "How have you been?" - that kind of thing. Now, this is a very common occurrence in my life. I don't know why it is - maybe there's a horde of doppelgangers of me out there doing mischeif in the world - but very often, especially if I'm in a crowded place, people will come up to me and greet me as if they know me. Sometimes they even do know me. For instance, after I had settled down in my seat before the show began earlier, a young lady had set next to me and said hello, and it turned out she really did know me. A little embarrassed, I said that I could remember her face, but didn't recall the circumstances under which we had met. She explained those circumstances very convincingly. Besides which, she actually knew my name without me telling her. However, in the case of the American man, I had to 'remind' him of my name. "Have we met before? We do know each other, don't we? At the um..." He was obviously beginning to doubt his original conviction. "I don't know," I said, "Maybe."

The man gave me his name (let's call him 'Norton') and introduced me to the young ladies with whom he had been talking. There was the tall blonde, someone I don't recall quite as well now, and a shorter blonde, with an English accent. They had apparently just put on a show in the same theatre under the title of "Whatever you Desire" or some such thing. I was beginning to feel a little awkward having been introduced to these ladies on the assumption that I was a friend of Norton. It was clear that Norton was trying to chat the ladies up, and maybe he thought he stood a better chance with two of us, so that he didn't look like a lone shark. I didn't want to just walk away, but there were some uncomfortable pauses in the conversation.

"So, what are you doing here?" asked one of the ladies.

"Well, I came to see Saints and Superheroes," I said.

"No, don't tell them that," said Norton from the side, "You've come here to see them."

The conversation continued in this way. I remember Norton saying to one of the girls, even after I had given my real reasons for being there:

"He's come all the way from Oslo just to see you."

Oslo?!?

The girl sounded surprised, as if she actually believed him. I've been on the rounds with a womaniser before, and it always amazes me just the kind of whopping tall tales they get away with.

After a while, the shorter blonde (let's call her Hortense) began to talk to me.

"How do you know Norton?" she asked.

I laughed. I'd had enough of the charade.

"I don't know. People come up to me and tell me they know me. I don't actually remember. I feel terrible, really."

I didn't add that Norton was clearly a liar. I wasn't going to interfere with all that. I'm no do-gooder. Let him lie, if he wants, and let them believe him if they want. And the truth was, I didn't feel terrible. I suddenly felt much better now that I had relieved myself of the fantasy that Norton had placed on me. I relaxed.

Thank god, I was no longer under any pressure to chat these girls up. Hortense, under what compulsion I do not know, led me to the corner of the bar, and introduced me to an acquaintance of hers. He turned out to be Japanese, so I spent a while talking to him about my time in Japan until Ed (star of Saints and Superheroes and, I'm afraid to say it, close personal friend), entered the bar, and I went over to catch up on stuff.

When I left, I noticed that Norton was chatting up some other girl. I nodded to him.

I walked to the station alone and caught the train home.

Ibogaine

I have just watched a documentary film titled, Ibogaine - Rite of Passage.

There are many things in this world that give me occasion to think that the values of human beings, at least in what is generally referred to as 'civilisation', are topsy turvy. Or, to use a word with a little more gravitas, they are inverted. They are upside-down.

Watching the abovementioned film reminded me of this once more.

I had heard of the drug ibogaine before. It was represented to me as a hallucinogenic derived from the root of a plant in Africa, which, when ingested, induces a three-day trip that effectively cures drug addiction. I was, naturally, interested. Wouldn't you be? I found when I watched the film that the information I had received was accurate (as, after all, I had expected).



Not everyone is interested in ibogaine, however. For instance, those who you might expect to be most interested - to wit, the pharmaceutical companies - are not. Why? According to Howard Lotsof, former heroin addict, who broke his habit using ibogaine and is now president of NDA International, the pharmaceutical companies that he tried to interest in ibogaine all gave the same reasons for not wanting anything to do with the drug:

1) As pharmaceutical companies their job was not to do whatever was most beneficial to public health, but what was most likely to produce a profit for their shareholders.

2) The mortality rate amongst drug-addicts is very high, and they did not wish to be associated with any section of society where the chances of liability for such things were increased.

3) Drug addiction itself has a social stigma with which they did not wish to be associated with in any way, even if their association was through helping to cure addiction.



It has also been suggested that other reasons the companies are not interested in ibogaine is precisely because it does cure addiction. That is, it is a one-time cure. It is not like methodone treatment, which swaps one drug with another. In other words, if the addict is not coming back for more, where can the companies make their profits? If we follow this line of enquiry it doesn't take us long to begin to see the pharmaceutical companies basically as legal drug barons. Certainly their stated aims (see #1 above) would seem to support such a view.

Personally, my impression is that ibogaine is suppressed (it is actually illegal in the USA) because it cures addiction. Addiction in one form or another is precisely what the governments of our civilised nations require of us. How could they have a drug war without addiction? How could they get their votes without a drug war?

Anyway, I am posting this merely because I wish to increase the circulation of such information.

I would recommend watching the film. Apart from anything else, it is beautifully shot, and, although it does not go into great detail about the visionary and psychological nature of the cure, there is enough here to hint at something of relevance to the whole human race beyond the limited world of literal drug-addiction.



If you or someone you know would like to try the ibogaine cure, unfortunately, so far it is only available in certain countries. These are, as mentioned in the film, Canada, Mexico and the Netherlands. In terms of city, that is Vancouver, Rosarito (I think) and Amsterdam.

A final note: I have been using the word 'cure' here, but as one or two people in the film cautioned, ibogaine is, more accurately, an addiction-interrupter. It will relieve the patient of the physical and mental symptoms of addiction, but thereafter the subject must also change his or her habits in such a way that he or she does not return to the addiction. This might involve, for instance, ending associations with people who have previously fed and encouraged the addiction.

The Friendly Album

Well, this will probably be a slightly unusual review.

Some people out there will know that I have been extremely depressed of late. Since last night that depression has lifted. The reason seems to have something to do with the album I am about to review. Let me explain.

Exactly a week ago today I bought Momus' latest album, Ocky Milk. I don't know if it's just because I'm a bit world-weary, but Momus is one of the few musicians that I can actually bring myself to care about these days. That and long-standing lack of money meant that this was the first CD I had bought in some months. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting. In fact, I think I bought it without much thought at all.

However, I was aware of the manifesto behind the album. Momus described that manifesto on his blog before he began to record the album. An entry from the 9th of March, 2005, perhaps marks the conceptual inception (publicly, at least) of what Momus referred to at the time as "The Friendly Album":

"Let me go back to the music. When I imagine the music of pleasure, I imagine static music. There should be no yearning, no tension in this music. It has arrived at a plateau of pleasure. I can put a record of it on -- or, regally, command a lute player to strum away in my royal bedchamber -- and I expect it to decorate the air with elegant scrolls, but not to develop in any way, or build expectations, or dominate me. It should be self-effacing music, music which defers to my pleasure even as it subtly structures it... I'm planning my next album, 'The Friendly Album'. And I want to make something as static, as friendly, as consensual, as self-effacing, as Japan itself. It will be a feminine record and a friendly record. It will -- it should -- contain the deep sensuality of Renaissance lute music, or bossa nova. You should be able to put it on and just let it hover in the background all the way through, structuring your contentment in a self-effacing, classical, cool and elegant way. I don't know if I'm capable of making music that serene and sensual, but I want to try."

If you go to the comments section of that entry, you might find a comment from yours truly, partly in response to the idea that friendship is more pleasurable than love, because it is more static, as the proposed music of the friendly album would be:

"I, too, would value friendship over love. I like the idea of a friendly album. One of the first things that attracted me to The Smiths was that I sensed a lack of 'trying to be hard' in the music that was very different to the desperate, grasping street cred of the norm, and quite radical. Of course, there is also a vicious streak in the music of The Smiths/Morrissey that interests some (like me) and puts off others. In terms of friendly music, I personally find Kate Bush very agreeable in a friendly sense, though she does not make the kind of music you describe."

Later on in his blog, if I recall aright, Momus was to remark that, after having started work on his album, inevitably, it wasn't quite following the direction he had planned for it.

When the official title of the album was announced, it was no longer "The Friendly Album", but Ocky Milk. I can't remember the whole rationale for this title, but the 'O' at the beginning marked it as "the third in Momus' 'Stories of O' Berlin trilogy", the first and second being Oskar Tennis Champion and Otto Spooky. There is, of course, an allusion here to Bowie's Berlin trilogy of Low, Heroes and Lodger.

All this information was lurking somewhere in the back of my head when I bought the CD. On the day I bought it, after playing it once or twice without forming a particularly strong impression, I posted a small notice on Momus' blog, which read:

"I bought Ocky Milk yesterday.

"I feel it's too early for me to say anything particularly intelligent about it, but at the moment I like Nervous Heartbeat, Permagasm and Zanzibar. I'm not yet at the point where I can easily put the titles to the tracks, but these ones stand out so far.

"I recently came to the conclusion that Oskar Tennis Champion is my favourite Momus album."

I suppose I was feeling that Otto Spooky, despite having some great tracks, and despite being consistently inventive and interesting, had somehow failed to engage me as other Momus albums had, and wondering if Ocky Milk would be similar. Behind my mention of Oskar Tennis Champion was the fact that, for a long time after I first bought it, I felt it was an album with a great beginning and end, but no middle, since which time, I have come to appreciate almost all of the tracks from beginning to end (The Last Communist being a possible exception), and I half-wondered if such a thing would happen with the other stories of O, too.

Since I posted that comment, my impressions of Ocky Milk have grown somewhat firmer. First of all, I can say that it is very definitely a feminine album. This, of course, is nothing new for Momus. In the same way that I was attracted to the lack of testosterone in The Smiths, I have always found the lack of the same in Momus' music to be a great virtue. In relieving oneself of the testosterone that fuels the monotony of rock'n'roll, the musician becomes free actually to be creative. This I like. And Ocky Milk is even more feminine than previous Momus albums. It does not seek credibility in the way that is almost de rigeur in Western art these days - through confrontation - but, if it seeks credibility at all, it seeks it through exploration. So far, at least, everything is as according to the Friendly Album manifesto. To give one example, the opening track, Moop Bears employs backwards vocals (I believe that the title was something 'heard' in such vocals as pictures might be seen in an inkblot) to create a loop effect in the song. This is Teddybears' Picnic as it might be written by Dr Seuss for the Hello Kitty demographic. The song doesn't particularly seem to go anywhere, but circles around the celebration of cute little Moop bears, whatever they are. However, there is some deviation here from the friendly plan, too. It's not just the slightly sinister quality that might be read into the cuteness of these bears - who are repeatedly exhorted to "shoot, shoot, shoot" - there's also something being said here. In other words, the music is not completely self-effacing as per the manifesto. And there are dramatic tensions. A line like "Moop bears on the idiot sea" is even reminiscent of the kind of histrionic cut-up poetry that Bowie was employing on an album like Lodger.

And it's this kind of mix, with variations, that is in evidence throughout the album. Momus has always been very good at song narrative, and I feel that he has not quite been able to rid himself of his narrative habits in order to make the truly 'static' music that he originally intended to. At first, I wondered if this constituted failure. The album reminds me of David Bowie's Low in some ways. Bowie was very enamoured of Brian Eno's idea that the voice should be just one more instrument in the mix of the songs, seemed to drift in and out of the music. However, with Low, the lyrics are extremely spare, and have an ambient rather than an intellectually stimulating quality. This ambience was taken to its conclusion when, instead of sining actually lyrics, Bowie chose to sing made-up phonetics on the largely instrumental track Warzawa. At first I thought Momus was attempting something similar here to Bowie's slightly android-like vocals on Low, and that the words were little more than phonetic decorations for the music (the lyric "Like aeroplanes on snow/We're only people" strikes me as very Low in atmosphere), but it soon occurred to me that, either such an attempt really was a failure, or Momus was doing something different here. And I have decided that the latter is the case. The narrative of the songs is not as linear as it has been in the past with Momus the singing auteur, but is instead looped or prismatically shattered. Nonetheless, there is a kind of narrative. And sometimes - often, even - we find the tension and yearning in that narrative that was to be avoided in the original manifesto.

Having said that, I think enough of the original manifesto remains here for the album to be satisfying from that point of view. But we have more moods here than a merely static 'friendly'. In fact, overall, I find the album just a little more spooky (another Momus forte) than friendly. Birdcatcher is a peacock's tail of bad-trip imagery:

After the ritual suicide of Mr Mickey Mouse

On his outrageous throne of blood in Cinderella's House

On the blue suburban line I met a careless god

Past the pines by the glassy meadow

Where the coaches jerk a little

The bird catcher of Hades took his net of flesh and bone

The headless horse was talking on the kitten's telephone

In the house of horrors I had recently burnt down

All this is set to an elegantly restrained and fey mix of disco and Japanese enka. This is followed by Nervous Heartbeat, seemingly influenced by J-pop love ballads, and trembling beautifully just this side of slushiness. Elsewhere we have the slowly unfolding, balmy meditations of Permagasm and Pleasantness. 7000 BC has an eerie, half-falsetto vocal set over sparse, eccentric plucking on different stringed instruments. Zanzibar has the haunting quality of Tennyson's 'The Lotos-Eaters'. There seems little doubt of the presence of yearning in this particular song. Being something of a dreamer, I have found myself listening to this one rather wistfully, conjuring up in my head opium visions of waterfalls and warm, spice-scented winds over desert sands, and other things harder to describe, but composed of some otherwordly sadness and fragments of half-forgotten dream and reality, in a compound that achieves an exquisite balance of pain and pleasure:

And the pain goes

Further and further

And deeper and deeper inside

And the time goes so slow

In the winter time

Rolling in straw and hay

For a fox-hunting man

Who can stand in the fire

And just fade away

You are lovely of face

You are lovely of body and soul

These are some of the intricate moods that Momus has managed to weave out of the original tesselations of the Friendly Album's static patterns. However, I will not list the songs one by one. Not all of them work equally for me, and I dislike shopping-list reviews, anyway. Suffice it to say that, despite my declining lack of interest in what is happening with music, Momus remains essential for me, still managing both to satisfy and surprise.

Before I finish, I would just like to say that this review was prompted by the fact that, last night, I came across the video to the song Frilly Military on YouTube. I watched it and immediately, although it had been one of the weaker songs on the album for me before, it struck me as absolutely joyful and brilliant in a way that I could not hope to describe. Silly, ephemeral, but nonetheless, art-for-art's-sake. It seems to have nothing to prove, somehow. It's enough that it's there. I realised after watching the video, with some surprise, that I was not depressed. I was thinking about all the fascinating, gorgeous, sensual things in the world around me just waiting for me to explore and play with. There was the Soseki novel, Mon, in its lovely fabric bookcover. How wonderful that the Kanji were streaming down the aromatic paper of the pages like waterfalls, just waiting for me. There was my tea-burner, and all my packets of green-tea given to me by friendly folk from Japan. There were all the stories I'm in the middle of writing. There were Momus albums galore. It really is the strangest thing.

I have no idea how long my current mood will last. I know from experience that, as Blake puts it, "He who binds to himself a joy, Does the winged life destroy", and I would not be surprised by another terrible crash of mood at any moment. But it will be interesting to see how long this lasts. Wouldn't it be strange if the depression never came back?

Anyway, I sincerely hope that Momus will come to Britain to play this material live.

The Age of Consent

I'm slightly drunk now, so probably not in the right state to be articulate. Anyway, I was in a pub this evening and went to the toilet, and, as I stood in front of the urinal, I read the writing on the condom vending machine. I hope you'll appreciate that, although I very much wanted to, I thought people around me might think me strange if I actually took the writing down in my notebook. As a result, I probably can't reproduce it verbatim, but the slogan on the machine was something like this:

Before you insert, make sure you get a definite yes.

Below this was some slightly smaller writing (only very slightly smaller), warning that sex without consent can result in prison sentences. At the very bottom was another slogan, in yet smaller writing, to the effect that, If you don't get a yes/Don't have sex.

There was also a website address, which was: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/

Am I the only person who finds this totally fucking imbecilic?

How many people honestly go to the trouble to get a definite verbal yes before they have sex? And should it be in writing?

Heaven Knows I'm Missing Him Now

I thought I was going to elaborate on this, but I realise the futility of explanation and I think that's really all I can say.

Miscellaneous

Unless I'm researching something specific, I usually find very little of interest when 'surfing the net'. However, having sifted through the entire web for you, like a whale sieving plankton, or something very similar, I am now prepared to offer you the very best in Internet... er... stuff.

First of all, the loveliness of possible reconciliation in the following podcast, containing a New Scientist interview with biologist E.O. Wilson, in two parts:

Part one.

Part two.

I also recommend the blog, Interbreeding. Some penetrating insights here.

But perhaps the best website ever to appear on the Internet, is this one here.

Because I'm Worthless

I haven't yet really made up my mind whether Banksy is an annoying, pretentious pseud, or whether he's a genius of guerilla art. The Wikipedia entry on Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris' Nathan Barley makes brief mention of Banksy, and I have heard it suggested that Banksy is one of the models for the title character, who is "a fictional twentysomething loathsome London media type... (f)latteringly described by his own creator as a 'meaningless strutting cadaver-in-waiting'". (The same article mentions my musical hero Momus as another model for Nathan Barley, though this doesn't seem to make much sense to me.) However, if anything persuades me that Banksy is the latter (genius) rather than the former (pseud), it is this particular work of his:



Is it because I'm born in the year of the rat that I find particular resonance in this? In any case, its twisted, bitter echo of the L'Oreal advertising slogan struck a chord. I'm not sure if I can think of an advertising slogan more loathsome, and Banksy's inversion of that slogan reveals its inner loathsomeness brilliantly. In fact, I can't think of a direct way of articulating exactly why that slogan is so loathsome. There is something transcendent about its loathsomeness that defies rational, conversational explanation, which is why Banksy's inversion of it is so precious and so appreciated by some (me, for example). I do know that the first time I heard that slogan on television, I immediately felt a bolt of anger and hatred shoot through me. Because I'm worthless? Maybe.



I have quietly, in my own way, been investigating what might be called the New Age, as it is manifest in both philosophy and therapy. Of course, the New Age draws on many different traditions and ideas, and in a way it hardly seems fair to refer to them all under one umbrella. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I attended an intensive seminar that involved a kind of therapeutic inner journey. Despite having my reservations about the presentation, I felt that there was something going on here that was, well, worth investigating. In fact, I was familiar with certain aspects of the process already. I know a little bit about inner journeys. Anyway, what I discovered on this particular inner journey was a great deal of anger. It seems to me that I have so much anger that I can hardly even speak it. I have even been writing some lyrics about it under the title, 'The Mute's Revenge'. The lyrics are not finished yet, and are a bit rough, but maybe lines such as the following will give some idea of the kind of feelings it deals with: "The time will come, that time is soon/You will pay for the day/You cut out my tongue/And the pain you gave as you made me mute/You cauterised into this bloody root/Making sure I'd never speak it/Always keep the pain a secret".

Not long after this seminar, I went along to a meditation group, and someone recommended me the talks given by a particular 'guru', whom I shall not name here. I was, in fact, given flyers for a whole number of talks by such gurus. Some of those at the meditation group expressed admiration that these gurus were uncompromising in insisting there was no meaning in anything. That may well be true, I thought to myself, but if it comes to that, I might as well read a French existentialist novel - it would be cheaper, for a start, and the language would probably be more creative and interesting.

At the moment I'm actually fed up with gurus and spiritual teachers of all kinds. I read up on one of the teachers whose flyers I had been given - the one who was recommended to me. Since he is, by his own account, nobody, and since he apparently has no ego, he won't mind if I quote from his book without crediting him by name, though his name does appear on the book:

The death of the mind/body is only the ending of the illusion of a journey in time.

The awakening to unconditional love is immediate. We are enveloped in our original nature regardless of anything that apparently happened.

When the body/mind is dropped there is no intermediary process or preparation or purification. How can there be? Who was there? All ideas of a personal "after life" or re-incarnation are merely the mind wishing to preserve the illusion of its continuity.

The story is over. The divine novel has been written and, regardless of how the mind might judge, not one jot could have been different.

The scenery evaporates and the characters have left the stage... their apparent existence begins and ends with the dream that has been played out.

For we are the ocean and the waves, the darkness and the light.

Why is it that something ostensibly about "unconditional love" should be so utterly depressing to me? Well, it seems there are various reasons for this. For a start, there is something in me that simply cannot go along with the Eastern concept of selflessness, which seems to devalue the particular in favour of the general, which is nothingness. In particular, this, to me, contradicts the idea of love, unconditional or otherwise. If there is no one there, how are they enveloped by unconditional love? If this love is what some people call 'God', and the illusion of self disappears to reveal the fact that there is only God, then that means God is loving itself, which seems utterly perverse, especially when one considers that it loves itself by creating and destroying these puppets of suffering illusion known as human beings. The whole notion is diseased and repugnant. Now, doubtless such objections are nothing more than indicators of my own lack of understanding (that's what these teachers always say, anyway), in short, I have such objections because I'm worthless.

But this leads me to another reason that this kind of passage depresses and angers me. How is it that the author of this work can be so damned right? How is it that he knows everything, and I know nothing, even though I seem, from where I'm standing, to be the very centre of existence? How is that? After asking such questions I have concocted a formula long simmering within me that goes something like this: Whoever is right is a cunt, and to the extent that I am right in making such a statement, I am a cunt, too.

And here comes in the voice telling me not to speak my anger. How can I imply that the author of the above passage is the nasty word I just used? Well, because I'm wrong. Because I'm always wrong and have to be wrong, and I don't wish anyone to consider me as anything but wrong. I do not want the loathsome rightness of the man who wrote that passage, the ego-less man who wrote a book telling other people what to think, who says he has nothing to teach or offer, but charges people ten pounds a time to come and hear him teach and offer nothing. I do not want that rightness, so you can assume right away that my use of the word 'cunt' is also wrong. No, I do not want the same rightness that cut out my tongue when I was still a child. Instead I protest my right to be wrong.

It's all right - I'm only primal-screaming.

You see, I'm the youngest in a large family, and I am long used to the idea that everyone else in the world but me has authority. And even now that I'm getting on, this feeling holds. And it builds into a murderous rage. How are all these people so certain about the things they say? Why don't they just shut up?

And I know that people who only know me from this blog will find such assertions strange, since I must seem hugely opinionated on this blog, and lately, even in real life, people will probably find me forthcoming with actual opinions. But this blog is really an orgy of self-loathing. I always feel dirty after giving my opinion about anything. And the fact that I am forthcoming is only the result of years of bottling my opinions up while others blithely pour their opinions on me. So, if you ever hear me utter an opinion, just remember that I'm wrong, not right. I never want to be right. I will fight for the right to be wrong.

And blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

And if I become enlightened does that mean I too must write insipid books and give dreary workshops encouraging people to give up their dreams and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.