Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Not Waving But Drowning

It's strange how some poems come back to you seemingly unbidden. Recently Stevie Smith's 'Not Waving But Drowning' has been calling to me to be re-read. It's a very terse verse, but there's some power in it that stops it from becoming the 'old saying' that it seems always on the verge of being. Perhaps there are people out there who are familiar with the title, as a sort of idiom, but who have never read the actual poem. It's one of those. I'm never too sure about global relevance, those kind of things, but if such is needed, perhaps I could say that, even those who are only waving now will probably soon be drowning, as the 'quiet desperation' of the 'civilised world' collapses and gives way to simple desperation:



Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

The Inbuilt Hypocrisy of the Writer

Amongst the presents I got for Christmas this year was a copy of Alan Moore's From Hell, a graphic novel based on the story or legend of that seminal serial killer, Jack the Ripper. I found it to be a fascinating piece of work and I have, all of a sudden, conceived an interest in the Ripper case. However, I don't intend to write here about From Hell or Jack the Ripper. I mention From Hell because a certain section of it reminded me of something I've been meaning to write for a very long time. In Chapter Nine, the officer investigating the case expresses his disgust at the ghouls who have gathered at the scene of one of the murders, some of them selling souvenirs, such as walking sticks:

"It's all a load of tom, shifting a few old walking sticks off the back of some poor murdered tart. And 'er barely cold. Makes me sick."

He goes on to say:

"Mark my words, in 'undred years there'll still be cunts like 'im, wrapping these killings up in supernatural twaddle. Making a living out of murder."

The work is heavily annotated in its appendix, giving a thorough account of Moore's research and other commentary. As part of his commentary on this page, Moore writes:

Abberline's eerily precognitive comments on page 2 are my own invention. They are also, in their way, a form of shamefaced apology from one currently making part of his living wrapping up miserable little killings in supernatural twaddle. Sometimes, after all you've done for them, your characters just turn on you.

This was just one more example of an idea that I had been toying with for over a year, to wit, the inbuilt hypocrisy of the writer. I say 'inbuilt', because how could Alan Moore have possibly written about Jack the Ripper and not been, at some point or other, a hypocrite?



But perhaps I should try to clarify my point with further examples. I'm not sure when the notion first occurred to me - and maybe, in different words, it was actually years and years ago - so I won't attempt to put these examples in chronological order. However, before coming across this little detail in From Hell, I was thinking of starting this piece with a quote from Thomas Ligotti, if I could find it. As a matter of fact, I can't find it, but it was along the lines of, "There is no literary voice for depression". At the time I thought this a strange thing to say. After all, aren't a great many writers somewhat depressive, and does this not influence their writing? People are always saying this or that writer is depressing. However, I feel that I have come to understand what Ligotti means. However much a writer might wish to express depression, what he or she ends up expressing is fascination, or something else of the sort. Writing cannot reproduce the feeling of depression. As Ligotti says in another interview (or possibly the same one), "Literature is entertainment or it is nothing". If the reader is not feeling, in some way, entertained, then he or she will simply stop reading. And since depression is not entertaining as it is actually experienced, there is no literary voice for depression.

Well, that's my second example now, but I have many, many others, which I hope will display the many sides of this concept.

For instance, I remember thinking about the hypocrisy of the writer quite consciously whilst reading John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids. I had long meant to, but I was doing it partially to prepare myself mentally for the coming armageddon. I know, it sounds ridiculous, and perhaps this motive helped to highlight for me the aspect of inbuilt hypocrisy. Because, if Mr Wyndham were really contemplating the apocalypse, would he sit down in his study and tap away leisurely at his typewriter to write a book about it, which he then published commercially, so that readers like myself could sit in the comfort of their own homes and pass away a pleasant few hours dreaming about the end of civilisation?

Perhaps the quintessential example of the inbuilt hypocrisy of writers, however, comes in the form of a jisei. A jisei is a kind of Japanese poem - often, but not always a haiku - that was written when the subject knew that he or she was going to die. It was a kind of farewell to the world, and there are many left to us from famous Japanese poets, Buddhist monks and so on.

The poem in question is by someone called Toko, who lived from 1710 to 1795:

Jisei to wa
Sunawachi mayoi
Tada Shinan.

Death poems
are mere delusion -
Death is death.

Hmmm. This begs the question, if death poems are mere delusion, or, as it says in the original, "Jisei are, basically, indecision, if you're going to die, die", then why the hell did he bother to write one? Well, because he really wanted to express the idea of how stupid and futile it is to express anything. We have here the same kind of logical contradiction to be found in a statement like, "Everything I say is a lie". Star Trek fans should be familiar with that one.

I remember once - and I've never been able to track down who this was or what it was all about - many years ago, I saw a trailer on television for a programme about someone (a scientist, I believe), who had come up with a theory that actually we don't exist. Great, I thought, if we don't exist, why are you bothering to tell us? I'm serious.

The examples of this hypocrisy are endless. How about this one, which is, inevitably, from the man himself, Morrissey, part of a song called Reader Meet Author?

You don't know a thing about their lives
They live where you wouldn't dare to drive
You shake as you think of how they sleep
But you write as if you all lie side by side

This is one hypocritical writer writing hypocritically about the hypocrisy of other writers. And I am a hypocritical writer writing hypocritically about the hypocrisy of another writer writing hypocritically about the hypocrisy of another writer.

Phew!

And it's not only the writers who are hypocritical. What about the readers? Aren't they basically in the same boat? They want the writers to give them something real, or something that feels real, but they don't want to know how this is done. And if they suddenly find themselves to be the writer's subject matter, and the result is not flattering, well, suddenly what the writer does is beyond the pale.

In this connection, I was recently sent a copy of a book in which I have an essay. That book is Horror Quarterly. My essay was on Japanese horror, and dealt in part with the questions of voyeurism and sadism in art. Here is a quote therefrom:

One day a friend of mine, who has since disappeared into the depths of the comic-book world, turned to me and said, "If you're not the audience, and you're not the cameraman, and you're not the assailant, you must be the victim." I have never been able to forget it. Shakespeare wrote grandly that all the world is a stage. Ladies and gentlemen, I tell you that the world is, in fact, nothing more than a vast snuff film. We are all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, assailants, and there's one thing else that's sure, we none of us get through this life without also being victims. Sadistic art, exploitation, fake snuff films - if these things sicken us then it must be because they confront us with this obscene and horrifying truth.



I suppose what I'm trying to get at by quoting myself here is that maybe this hypocrisy goes beyond writing and writers, and is a fundamental part of what it means to be human. To make my point clearer, let me ask the question, how could a writer avoid hypocrisy? Presumably the writer is trying to capture something real - a kind of raw experience of the basic meaningless universe in all its glory. Or, if they're more morally inclined, well, they might be searching for a different kind of truth, but, nonetheless, something 'real'. And this is what I do, too. However, just as light dispells darkness wherever it goes, so does language dispell meaninglessness. It cannot help but be a projection onto reality. If someone says, "Life is meaningless" they have created the kind of logical contradiction mentioned above. Meaning is inherent in language, and the effort of expression is nothing if not an attempt to create a meaning, even if that created meaning is that "life is meaningless". It seems to me that, contrary to what many people seem to think, it is not a meaningful life that is hard or impossible to come by, but a meaningless life. The writer strives for that meaningless reality - and the credibility that comes with it - again and again; again and again she fails. She ends up with mere meaning - in other words, hypocrisy. It's inbuilt.

This begs the question, is that meaningless reality anywhere out there at all?

Ultimately, of course, I don't have the answer. However, I will leave you with a few thoughts in connection with my own hypocritical writing. I find that the writing process is, for me, one in which synchronicity plays a large part. Call me a flakey crackpot if you will - and I probably am, so who cares? - but that's the truth of the matter. And in keeping with that truth, I have found this idea of the hypocrisy of writers worming its way into the novel on which I am currently working, Domesady Afternoon. Everything I'm living seems to go into the mix, as if I'm some sort of synchronicity blender. Anyway, here's an excerpt from a recent passage in the novel:

Sincerity. Reality. How far off these destinations still seem. If I could be single and alone, without mirrors, but maybe, after all, the human mind will always erect the mirrors of self-examination that keep us from being real and sincere. Sometimes, indeed, it seems to me that to write at all is to be a hypocrite. And to write, in the end, is no different than to think.

I tried to address this to no one, but I must confess that something looms and casts a shadow on these pages, so that, even in my greatest loneliness, I cannot help but address... address... someone or something. You, whoever you are, or perhaps myself, or God, or some combination of these three. In any case, I address.

So, it seems, the inbuilt hypocrisy of the writer is the closest I have come to proving the existence of God.

(Irony engine disengaged.)

No Man is a Failure Who...

I can't sleep. The year draws to a close.

Recently I bought a copy of Elliott Smith's Figure 8. I can't remember all the song titles, but there's one with the lyric, "I've got a long way to go/And getting further away". Actually, I think the song is called something like, Maybe I Should be Quiet Now. I certainly know the feeling - the feeling that anything I say now will only dig me further into my hole, so I should just shut up and hope that one day, one fine and distant day, I can live things down, pay off my debt, etcetera.

I have become a stranger to myself.

This evening I watched It's a Wonderful Life. It was on my Christmas list, but I was actually a little afraid to watch it. I thought that I might have misremembered it and find it, upon second (third?) viewing, unbearably sugary and sentimental. This fear reared its head as the film began, and some celestial coves up in the cosmos started talking to an apprentice angel called Clarence about his mission to save one George Bailey. One of the voices sounded a little bit too much like the patronising narrator of a fifties public information film. However, it really was not too long at all before I forgot my fears and simply got caught up once more in the film, which contains some fascinating details, into which I shall not go at this moment in time.

Now, if ever someone was going to commit suicide and turned to me for help, I think I'd say to them, "Well, why don't you sit down and watch It's a Wonderful Life with me?" It's true there's a lot of stuff about angels and praying and so on in it, which might be off-putting to some, but the heart of the story is more effectively life-affirming than any other single piece of art that I can think of right now. Besides which, I think I'm pretty useless at cheering people up myself, so it's always good to have something like this - ready made, so to speak - near at hand.



Now, as I said, I think you can ignore the fluff about angels without really losing the heart of this film, which is the idea of what a single person contributes to the lives of others, and the world in general, without even knowing. I won't give a long synopsis, but our hero, George Bailey, gets into financial trouble, an angel called Clarence saves him just as he's about to jump off a bridge, he then wishes he had never been born, and Clarence grants this wish. George gets to see the world as it would have been - or is, if you're into parallel universe theory - without him. He then realises just how rich and wonderful his life, which he had considered a failure, really is. This whole sequence, from the suicide attempt, through his horrified exploration of the world in which he'd never been born, to his ecstatic reinstatement in the world, is so skillfully done it has the power of some kind of mystical hallucination.

I really can't think of a better 'quick fix' for anyone who's feeling like opening their veins.

I only really have one significant problem with the film, and that is the problem of Evil. For there is conspicuous in this film the old Christian paradigm of Good and Evil.

George Bailey, our hero, is manifestly good.

He struggles to give the townsfolk good homes, and sacrifices his own desires many times in order to achieve this.

Mr Potter, the villain, is manifestly evil.

He hates people and they hate him. This tyrannical slum-landlord cares only about making money and increasing his own power.

What would have happened if the film had been made from the point of view of Mr Potter? Would he have been shown, after wishing he had never been born, a world in which everyone was happier for his not being there? Should the title of the film be, then, "It's a Wonderful Life, as Long as You're Not Like Mr Potter"? Because, as any student of religious philosophy will tell you in a trice, if Mr Potter is simply damned then his damnation creates a permanent blot upon creation itself, and life becomes, well, a little less wonderful.



And what if our viewer, hoping for life-affirmation, finds that he is closer to Mr Potter than George Bailey?

What if I look back on a life of weakness, selfishness and cowardice, rather than one of fortitude, selflessness and courage? What if, when I think of the effect my life has had upon others, I see the faces of those who shed tears - and not of joy - on my account? What if I see a sorrowful influence in all I said and did, which imparted sorrow to the lives of those around me?

What kind of things would I discover, I wonder, in the world in which I had never been born?

Because, the truth be told, I do feel rather like George Bailey's description of Mr Potter. How did it go? In the great scheme of things you're nothing more than a scurvy spider spinning your webs. Something like that.

I started something I couldn't finish

I've been informed in the comments section of my last post, and by private message, that I've been tagged again. Oh no! Apparently I started all this on Opera! That is, in fact, possible, since I was tagged from outside Opera.

Okay, maybe I should make use of the out-takes from my previous five incredible tag-revelations:

1) When I was at primary school I was chosen along with a number of other 'gifted' children to attend weekly classes at secondary school, where we were to discuss philosophy, poetry and so on. The teacher whose pet project it all was must have considered me promising, but when I actually went to secondary school properly, and turned out to be less than interested in lessons there, my relationship with him soured considerably.

2) While I was living in Amersham, I enrolled for evening classes in clowning. To me it was the perfect extension of a lot of my philosophies and predilections. I was, at that time, keen to transform my world into something that was simply a stage for my imagination to play upon, and to this end I wished to be able to present myself through mime, gesture, make-up and so on as a 'persona' in my everyday life. I wanted every day to be choreographed by my imagination. However, in the end, not enough people enrolled for the course, and, like just about every dream I've ever had, it was cancelled.

3) I spent a few days at a Buddhist monastery near Hemel Hempstead some years ago. I spent the whole time in meditation, which really meant sawing firewood, polishing brass, doing the washing up and so on. I have occasionally considered joining a monastery for good and all, but I don't think I could really make that commitment.

4) When I was very young I had tonsilitis, but I never had my tonsils out.

5) Sometimes I think the song Missing, for which I wrote lyrics and played some of the twinkly guitar bits when I was in The Dead Bell, is all I've ever really wanted to say.

Well, now, I think I must introduce a new rule to this tag. The second time you've been tagged you don't have to tag anyone else. You can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Blog-Tag Drive-By
Well:

I hate to do a drive-by on you, Quentin, but...

Tag. You're it!.

I am now, officially, 'it'.

I have been blog-tagged by Amber Simmons.

Despite the fact that I have recently given a list of one hundred factoids about myself, I am now under the inescapable obligation to give five more. There will by a slight difference, however, since the previous one hundred were the first things to come into my head. This time I am working under one of the guiding principles of blog-tag, to provide five facts about myself that are not commonly known. This is difficult, because I think I have, by now, given away just about all that I'm willing to. I'm practically public property, in the words of someone or other, "easy meat and a reasonably good buy".

Nonetheless, after much rumination, I managed to come up with the following:

1) For a period in my life I was quite into transvesticism, and would wear a dress about the house, and sometimes go out for walks in that condition. However, I never had enough money to buy really nice dresses, and I wasn't very convincing. I had a kind of daydream of someday being a princess for a day and being utterly beautiful and irresistible, but it never happened. I even knew a girl for a while who wanted to go out on the town with me as a lesbian couple, but that never materialised, either, unfortunately. And now I'm older and all hope of me attaining such beauty, if it ever existed, has flown.

2) I started smoking at about the age of twelve. However, I wasn't really a heavy smoker, and never became really addicted until I went to Japan, in my twenties, where cigarettes were very cheap and life - for me - was very stressful. For a while in my life smoking was just about my only pleasure. I used to wash down my anti-depressants with green tea and go and stand on the balcony and smoke another wakaba cigarette, gazing out at the ugly sprawl of roads and buildings below.

3) I used to be a big fan of Tori Amos. I have seen her in concert a number of times (at least three). On the last occasion, I went with someone I did not know very well. I even paid for his ticket. He drove me there, but refused to go in, because he'd recently broken his arm and was afraid of getting it hurt. I tried to explain to him that Tori Amos gigs were not like that, but he wouldn't have it. He gave the ticket, instead, to a friend of his. When we came out he said he had sat in the car throughout and heard the whole caterwauling thing. I haven't actually listened to her music for some time. I wonder what she's doing at this very moment.

4) Obscurity is interesting to me in and of itself. For that reason, I like to get ultra-obscure references into the stories I write. I was very pleased when a friend and fellow-writer appreciated the Stryper reference in one of my stories. In the novel I am currently writing, one of the characters is based on an actress called Elizabeth Banks - no, not that Elizabeth Banks - who had a quirky little role in a short-lived children's magazine programme for the disabled on British television many years ago.

5) One of my all-time favourite films is Parents, directed by Bob Balaban. It concerns a young boy who suspects that his parents are feeding him human flesh. It is directed throughout from a child's-eye point of view, and reminds me very much of David Bowie's After All. I used to think it was quite significant that I share with Bowie the astrological conjunction of Moon and Pluto, which supposedly gives one a direct line to the unconscious. I remember a remark he is supposed to have made about LSD, that it didn't do much for him, because he was already in touch with his imagination.

Well, that's my five.

I now tag the following people. Should they wish to accept the challenge, their mission is to, well, do what I've just done:

Panda Shaving Torture, or possibly, Pandas Having Torture.

Wicked Lizard.

Lokutus Prime.

Cristolfo.

Science - The Rohypnol of Philosophy

In the 50th anniversary issue of New Scientist, there is an article on a recent symposium of scientists at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. The symposium had the title, "Beyond belief: Science, religion, reason and survival", and those gathered were to discuss three questions: Should science do away with religion? What would science put in religion's place? And, can we be good without God?

I found the article to be very interesting and well-balanced. It starts off in a lightly satirical tone:

It had all the fervour of a revivalist meeting. True, there were no hallelujahs, gospel songs or swooning, but there was plenty of preaching, mostly to the converted, and much spontaneous applause for exhortations to follow the path of righteousness. And right there at the forefront of everyone's thoughts was God.

It then proceeds to give a precis of the main points under discussion with quotes from prominent speakers and reactions from attendees. Overall, the writer seemed to attain a distance and self-awareness that, if the quotes attributed to them were anything to go by, seemed absent in some of the speakers.

Sometimes I get a yearning myself to write something that is calm and well-balanced. I do feel that my writing on this blog tends towards the rant-like, and I don't suppose that such a fact can enhance my image in the mind of the reader, or increase my powers of persuasion. But then again, what is it that I am hoping to achieve? I certainly don't want to pull the wool over your eyes. Persuasion is not really my game. And I'm not especially writing to inform, either. I think more than anything, I simply desire to express a point of view that I don't see being expressed elsewhere. So, I will apply to my writing no cosmetics, and let you judge for yourself whether or not it is balanced, and whether, indeed, it should be balanced.

So, let us proceed to my POV:

There did seem to be some fairly moderate voices at the symposium, to counteract the fanatical voices that were also much in evidence, but even the author of the article didn't pick up on one glaring point that I found rather disturbing. The point is this: if scientists really want to ditch the whole scheming-megalomaniac image, they've got to be a bit more self-aware when they ask questions like, "Should science do away with religion?" Let's examine the wording here for a minute. I really have a problem with this. First of all, the big one, the obvious one, the bloody risible one: What makes them think that it's in any way up to them? There seems to be the assumption in the question that science can actually do this, and has just been rather avuncular and indulgent so far. "All right. We've been running this religion lark for a while now, just to try and persuade people with the old reverse psychology that there really is nothing to compare to science, but perhaps it's time we did away with it. Dicky, how are you fixed for four o'clock tomorrow? We should be able to get the job done before seven, I'd say."

I'm reminded of how Germaine Greer, really deep thinker and star of Celebrity Big Brother, once stated on Have I Got News For You? that, if it were up to her, men would not have access to their own sperm. To which Ian Hislop made the very simple response that, actually, it wasn't up to her.

Now, secondly, what's all this "do away with" about? What's going on there, exactly? It makes it sound as though they're planning to hire a bunch of thugs with poisoned stiletto knives and have them waylay religion in the catacombs or something.

Okay, change the wording! Would the human race be better off without religion? There, easy! I have no problem with that. It's a question that should be asked, a bit like the question, would the human race be better off without science, which the scientists are, perhaps understandably, less eager to debate at symposiums. Once you say "Should science do away with religion?", though, well, that sounds exactly like what it is - arrogant interventionism. "Hey, you, ordinary unscientific folk, we've been watching you from up here on Olympus, and we've decided it's time to change your ways!" How are you going to do that, exactly? Oh, I forgot, humans are all just machines. We can be reprogrammed, and it's up to those with the greatest depth, understanding and morals to do so. And who could that be? Why, of course - the scientists! Come to think of it, perhaps it’s even a good thing that scientists are so socially naïve as to pose this kind of question, because at least it gives us an insight into their true psychology, and, just as with my ranting on this blog, while, being unbalanced, it is less persuasive, it is also, inadvertently or otherwise, more honest.

I have a number of problems with science, and I have mentioned them now and then in the past. I'm not sure I can remember them all on the spot, but I shall try and recap the main ones here:

1) Arrogant technocracy - We all share a world, but there seem to be those in the scientific community who believe that only scientists are qualified to have a say in how that world should be.

2) Materialism - Science depends upon making predictions and therefore upon the ultimate reality of the physical world about which one can formulate physical laws. If anything transcends the physical to render the universe ultimately unpredictable, in other words, if the universe is alive rather than just being a predictable machine for science to manipulate, then science is fucked. Scientists know this. They have everything riding on materialism, which just happens to be... the most destructive force in the world right now.

3) Scientific Newspeak - I believe that science is bent on eradicating the possibility of spiritual experience by eradicating our spiritual vocabulary. To a scientist - I know because I've had discussions with them - unless you couch something in scientific language, it's not valid. You lose. And if you do couch something in scientific language? You're not a scientist! Why are you trying to use scientific language? How pathetic! You lose. This is the trick - define scientific language as the only language with any meaning. Make sure no one else has the right to speak it. Now your monopoly on power and authority is guaranteed in perpetuity.

4) The myth of objectivity - See #3 above. Everyone in the human race is subjective. Scientists alone have the key to objectivity. Paper wraps stone. Objectivity pisses on subjectivity. Science fucks us all up the arse.

Well, many people, I'm sure, will sniff at my attempt to deconstruct scientific objectivity there. Sam Harris, neuroscience researcher and author, tells us:

"Of course, individual scientists may or may not be privately honest or personally deluded. But the scientific method, with its institutionalized process of peer review, double blind trials and repetition of experiments, is beautifully designed to minimize the public effects of personal bias and self-deception. Consequently, science has become the preeminent sphere for the demonstration of intellectual honesty."

And this is tied in with the big one that I encounter continually if ever I do have this kind of discussion with an advocate of science, or eavesdrop on someone else's discussion: Science gets results in the real world. Science gets results. It's like a line from an American cop show. Well, he's unorthodox, beats up all the wrong people and occasionally puts a bullet in the wrong brain, but, dammit, he gets results.

But seriously, I do get the speech, you know, "Think of all the things that science has done for us: metal birds in the sky, instant communication across continents, non-stick frying pans, the ability to vaporise millions of people in a second, agent orange, CFC gases, thalidomide, catalogue babies - the list of miracles, or, should I say 'wonders'?, goes on and on."

Perhaps I wouldn’t mind so much if it weren’t for #1 above – technocratic arrogance; “You can’t do without us.” Oh, really?

Here’s Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute, Colorado, whose task it was to give an answer to the second question at the symposium (What would science put in religion’s place?):

“If anyone has a replacement for God, then scientists do.”

(That’s funny, those who defend science to me are always saying that science has nothing to do with questions of the meaning of life, or with the paranormal. But, ahem, what is this symposium all about if it’s not to prove that all you need is science in every area of your life?)

The article continues to paraphrase her:

Science provides an aesthetic view [is that what it is?] of the cosmos that could replace that provided by religion - a view that could even be celebrated by its own iconography, Porco added. Images of the natural world and cosmos, such as the Cassini photograph of Earth taken from beyond Saturn, Apollo 8's historic Earthrise or the Hubble Deep Field image, could offer a similar solace to religious artwork or icons.

I see, so science is to take credit now for inventing nature? That's really weird, because I always had the impression that science was a great and leering despoiler of nature.

You see, it seems to me that this whole 'science gets results' spiel is the same as saying "rohypnol gets results".

So, here's your date for the evening, Mother Nature. Well, philosophers have been trying to woo her - stalking her, you'd say - for centuries now, but they've got nowhere. Sitting at home in their rooms, rehearsing their lines. Actually, they're scared of her moods, her vagaries. You'll show them. You slip your concoction into her drink, all the while eyeing the object of your experiment. Because, let's face it, she is an object, not a living, thinking being like the man who is soon to be her master. The drug takes effect. Her eyelids droop. "Result!" you cry, "What did I tell you? I must be intellectually honest here and say there's no love involved. No, it's all just chemicals. Or it is with me, anyway," you cackle triumphantly.

O, noble science! We can wave aside the trauma of Mother Nature, and the fact that this relationship is utterly unsustainable. After all, your 'intellectual honesty' and your 'procedural rigour' are so admirable, and you get results time after time after time.

Well, there's so much more I could say on this subject.

Here's Richard Dawkins:

"I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion."

Me and Richard are so alike. You see, I feel exactly the same about science.

Dawkins, incidentally, has made the laughable comparison between secular scientists 'coming out' and the coming out of gay men in the Sixties. I suppose I might feel that way if I was born and grew up in America, but neither I nor Dawkins were. We're both British, and I can tell you (if you don't live here and don't know), Britain is just not like that. I can't remember anyone ever assuming that I was Christian or any other religion here in Britain. When people have assumed I'm something, it has only ever been an atheist assuming that I'm also atheist. That 'coming out of the closet', coming from Richard, seems to me disingenuous. Certainly if he just means in stating that he is atheist. He knows that we're all yawning at that. So what! Come one, shock us, Richard! Or does he mean coming out of the closet about the fact that he wants to wipe religion from the face of the Earth? Well, that's slightly more controversial. You'll sell more books with that one. The God Delusion is currently a bestseller here in Britain, I hear. Yes, it must be really hard for poor old Richard at the moment, coming out of his closet.

Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, commenting on the statistic that 85 per cent of the members of the US National Academy of Science do not believe in a personal God, leaving 15 per cent who do:

"How come that number isn't zero? That should be the subject of everybody's investigation."

This statistic was also his reason for suggesting that scientists should be a bit more (rohypnol?) pro-active in re-educating the public, who aren't going to just convert themselves to the cause of science:

"How can [the public] do better than the scientists themselves? That's unrealistic."

Of course. We've already covered this above, I think. Scientists, are, in fact, superior beings.

Anyway, here's a YouTube clip of deGrasse Tyson explaining 'stupid design'. He's a good talker, and I can imagine this might have been the highlight of the symposium:



For some reason this reminded me of the famous speech from Hamlet:

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

I notice there's a Freudian slip in deGrasse Tyson's speech when he says "aborted faeces" instead of "foetuses". Hmmm.

Okay, as Mr deGrasse Tyson himself says, I'm almost done.

"We're in a one-way expanding universe as we wind down to oblivion."

These, again, are the words of deGrasse Tyson as he dwells upon why the universe is so unsuited to life, so badly designed, and so obviously proof of the meaninglessness of existence. Space is vast and hostile; we are small and transient.

Well, there's nothing there I particularly disagree with. There's nothing there that is new to me. Believe it or not (and I suppose some people who have read my stories will believe it), I have contemplated the howling void of the universe for many, many years. I feel a little, watching this kind of thing, or reading the article in New Scientist, that I am witnessing a school debating lesson. Of course, the language is, in many ways, much more sophisticated, but there still seems to be this fixation on the crude dichotomy of science and monotheism, and I can't help thinking that's because the two are conjoined twins. It's Descartes' Deus Ex Machina, basically. Descartes believed that animals have no souls, that they are merely biological machines. The world, too, is a machine, made by God, who sits outside it. The machine belongs to science, and now, since we cannot even access God, and the machine is not always to our liking, we jettison the God that we exiled to a realm beyond the machine in the first place. But the God - the ghost - returns to haunt the machine. It will not go away. And the machine of science and the ghost of religion continue to do battle.

It would be nice if we could move beyond such crudities.

For my own part, in answer to the question whether we would be better off without religion, ultimately, I don't know. In answer to the question of whether we would be better off without science, again, ultimately, I don't know. However, I do not think that the best way to get your result is with rohypnol. If we're to move beyond religion, it must be a natural process of growth, not because some coven of overgrown schoolboys have decided it's not fair that their rival and relative is getting so much attention.

And as to how I would replace religion (and science) in terms of a meaning to life. Well, look, honestly, unlike these scientists, I don't know anything. I'm a mere nobody. I only wrote this out of a kind of resentment at the actions of a bullying Goliath, and thought that, even if I lose, I might as well make my little pea-shooter challenge. And, at my best, which is not particularly good, I suppose that's my attitude. Maybe 'science' is 'right' about the ultimate reality of physical matter, the meaninglessness of the universe, and so on. Let's suppose for a moment it were possible to prove that and that it had been proven. It's not as if I've never felt that way about life, anyway, and, I suppose I'd just have to accept it. The difference between myself and the scientist is that I could never ally myself to that hostile, meaningless universe. I could never preach it. I could never take the winning side, just because it is winning. That's intellectual honesty, apparently. "Meaningless materialism is winning - quick, let's jump ship and join it." No, I don't think so. As Jorge Luis Borges said, and as I've quoted before, "For the gentleman, only the lost cause should be attractive."

I Cannot Tell a Lie

Well, this is not the first time it's been in the news, but just to prove that I don't live in a paranoid fantasy land (all the time), I found this news item today, which verifies my anti-Royal Mail rant of a few days ago.

'The Man' (A Sequel)

Time was when I felt that, if I ever wanted to keep a secret from my family and friends, I could do no better than to write a story about it and get it published somewhere. However, time passes, and of late evidence accumulates that forces me to accept the fact that some people out there are actually reading what I write.

I encountered more evidence of this kind last night, when I attended an open night of the British Fantasy Society at Ye Olde Cock Tavern. This evidence was not merely the fact that someone asked me to sign a copy of Rule Dementia!, or the talk I had with the publisher who has recently accepted a novella of mine. No, it was specifically a chat I had with someone who was previously mentioned on this blog. The entry in question is my account of a previous BFS open night, at which the man to whom I am referring told me he had read one of my stories and that (he liked it despite(?) the fact) it was old-fashioned. I went to great lengths in that blog entry to defend myself against the accusation of being old-fashioned, before finally concluding that I actually was. It has been suggested to me since that my work is not really old-fashioned, but I think I was being at least partially tongue-in-cheek in what I wrote on the subject.

Anyway, the man was once again in attendance. I noticed him before we spoke, and it did cross my mind that somehow he might have read the entry. Sure enough, later on in the evening, he approached me and it was revealed that he had, indeed, read it. I have to say, I felt a bit embarrassed. The original blog entry hadn't been written in any spirit of animosity, but, nonetheless, the fact I had taken issue at such length with the man's pronouncement could, I supposed, have been taken 'the wrong way'. Not only that, I think there is a certain embarrassment simply in being 'found out' as a writer. Writers do take things from their own experience quite as if simply dipping their brush into the colours of a palette. In other words, anyone who comes into contact with a writer might find themselves, in some form, appearing in a piece of writing later, and might wonder to themselves, "Was he thinking about using me for his story the whole time? He didn't mention a thing about it. Is it all just grist to his mill?"

Anyway, the man seemed to have taken it in good part, simply expressing that he was surprised (I think he said "shocked") to have made such an impression. Perhaps it was just my alcohol-lubricated imagination, but I also seem to remember him saying the piece was well-written, and it was quite nice to be 'The Man' in the story. I spoke a little about how blogs are strange things, and laughed nervously. Since the whole subject seemed to put a kind of artificial constraint or sense of self-consciousness on the conversation, I rather felt like changing it to something else, but couldn't really think of anything. I explained what must have been my fairly obvious embarrassment by saying that I'm socially awkward, to which he replied, "Who isn't?"

He asked me, too, whether I would write a piece about this meeting. I said I probably would. I expect I'll see him again at another of these gatherings. So, until then, hello to The Man.

Penal Reform

Leafing through old notebooks, one is apt to come upon some very curious pieces of writing. Since I've been taking advantage of my unemployment to carry out a lot of the donkey-work of my fiction writing - wordprocessing and so on - I have had occasion recently to be looking through my stack of notebooks, and just now came across a short piece that seemed, at first, entirely unfamiliar to me. In fact, I thought it must have been written by someone else, and that for some reason I had copied it out in order to edit it for them, or something of the sort. However, I soon realised that this was, indeed, something I had written, which had become quickly buried under the shifting sands of my memory. Slowly I was able to unearth the dim recollection of having applied for a position as prison correspondent with a newspaper. The piece in question had been part of my application. Needless to say, I didn't get the job, but anyway, here's what I wrote, which I was able to read as if the words of a stranger:

Penal Reform

With recent advances in research on human genetics, the age-old debate on free will is receiving fresh attention. It is not unthinkable that this will prove the most important debate in human history. If human beings really are no more than complex, reactive machines then an individual can no longer be held responsible for his actions, and concepts such as behavioural reform and rehabilitation become, to a lesser or greater extent, obsolete. The pronouncement of the death of free will, if it comes, will necessarily raise new questions. Is it constructive, or even justifiable, to punish a person for something over which she had no effective control? Is social reform even possible? Perhaps the conclusion that free will is dead will be used to justify genetic methods of rehabilitation that treat human beings like machines in need of repair.

The assumption behind any philosophy of behavioural predetermination is that the mind is ultimately a closed system. As a means of considering the validity of such a philosophy we could view the closed system of prison as both a symptom of and a symbolic microcosm of the social system at large. If we are unable to think our way out of the system in which we find ourselves, we are doomed to cyclical patterns of behaviour resembling addiction.

My own interest in penal reform, unlikely as it may sound, stems from my artistic calling as a writer of horror fiction. Many of the issues that perplex me with regard to art seem to parallel issues of penal reform. Are the horrors I generate in a piece of fiction a symptom of morbidly addictive patterns of thinking? Can I, in fact, use creativity as a means to break out of those patterns?

Perhaps this last question is the most pertinent. If a denial of free will precludes any possibility of humane forms of rehabilitation, the only viable alternative must be the use of creativity and imagination – the positive declaration that there is free will. The human prisoner must first imagine a world beyond the closed system that imprisons him; only then can he hope to inhabit it.

Many of us are familiar with the lateral thinking test which is comprised of nine dots arranged in a square with the challenge to obliterate each dot by drawing four straight lines without doubling back or taking one’s pen from the paper. As long as the mind sees the dots as a square the task is impossible. It is only when the mind breaks out of this system by carrying one line into the blank outside the square that there is room for the challenge to be met.

Of course, all this is theoretical, but I have worked with one organisation that attempts to put this theory into practice. Using drama as a tool, Wolf and Water Arts Company encourages people to imagine themselves out of their addictive systems. Wolf and Water have run projects of this kind in prisons and areas of conflict such as Kosovo. Although my own work with the company was limited to other areas, perhaps it was from my time with them that I first came to see drama and similar forms of creativity as a possible means of escape from behavioural loops that make places like prisons necessary. It seems to me this is an idea worth further investigation.

100

I saw this on Sanshan's blog, and it suddenly struck me as quite an interesting thing to do actually to just write the first one hundred things about yourself that come into your head. So I did:

1. I was born in 1972.
2. I am the youngest of five children.
3. My parents did not know when they gave me my name that I was to share it with the author of The Naked Civil Servant.
4. At school I was teased relentlessly because of my name.
5. In adult life I still have trouble with my name. People often refuse to believe it’s my real name, so I carry my passport with me.
6. I don’t support Blair’s ID card scheme.
7. I am told that my first word was ‘brontosaurus’.
8. When I was younger I wanted to be a palaeontologist.
9. As a child I could not bear cruelty to animals. I grew up in the countryside, and other children used to torment me with accounts of what they had done on fox-hunts when they had been ‘first-blooded’.
10. I was the only vegetarian at my school.
11. I was suspended from school twice, once for giving a boy stitches in the back of the head, and once because I was (falsely) suspected of selling drugs at school.
12. I have always wanted to sing, but I can’t.
13. When I was at school and the teachers were recording us singing songs for the school play, I was told to sit further away from the microphone because my voice was ruining the song.
14. I hated school.
15. I never wanted to be a teacher.
16. For a long time I was ashamed of that fact that I’m not an atheist.
17. I’m not a Christian either, but I’m not ashamed of that.
18. I don’t actually know what I am, philosophically speaking.
19. My middle name is St.John. I was named after the character in Jane Eyre. When I read Jane Eyre, I hated the character St.John.
20. I used to wear shorts to school everyday, even in the snow, and as a result was considered eccentric.
21. People believed absurd things about me when I was at school.
22. I was crap at sports at school, and to this day I loathe all team games and the very concept of ‘a team’.
23. I have always felt myself to be very ugly. When I first saw The Huncback of Notre Dame, with Charles Laughton, as a young child, I identified absolutely with Quasimodo. I repeated to myself the line, “I must be about as shapeless as the Man in the Moon.” I always thought that someday I would meet my Esmerelda, and she would leave me for some handsome hero.
24. There are some things I would never consider revealing in a list like this.
25. I cried when my dog died.
26. I have never, as far as I can recall, cried at the death of a human being.
27. I cried when Tom Baker quit Doctor Who.
28. When I was quite young I had a toad called Goose Pimple. I wrote a story in which he was the hero.
29. As a teenager, I was in love with Kate Bush.
30. I blush to recall it, but she has apparently read a poem I sent her (so I was told).
31. I’m not a good swimmer.
32. I always expect any new person I meet to hate me.
33. I always expect anyone who receives an e-mail or similar communication from me to hate me.
34. When I was at school my teachers always tried to make me wear my glasses, but I didn’t want to.
35. I feel like I’m running out of things to say.
36. I don’t like fruit. The variety of fruit which I can bear to eat seems to decrease with each passing year.
37. I have recently been listening to the music of Elliott Smith.
38. There have been a number of great disappointments in my life. One of these was that the band I was in for five years – The Dead Bell – split without ever getting a record deal.
39. I lived in Amersham for a while and hated it more than any other place on Earth.
40. While I was there I tried to make a living as a Tarot reader. I even had business cards printed up.
41. Life has been a continual disappointment to me.
42. I don’t actually like myself very much at all.
43. I tend to think of Devon as my spiritual home.
44. I don’t know if I could ever actually live there again.
45. The time I have been single outweighs the time I haven’t many times over.
46. I once had a long green scarf of which I was very fond, but I lost it.
47. I tend to treat clothes a bit like security blankets. I like clothes that I have worn for years and that are a bit, um, uncool.
48. I have lived abroad three times, maybe four.
49. I am fluent in Japanese, but you knew that already.
50. Nobody understands me.
51. I am one quarter Italian.
52. I used to be into heavy metal; I have seen Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax and Celtic Frost live.
53. I have taken various forms of medication for depression and none of them have ever worked.
54. I don’t actually believe that it’s all ‘chemicals in the brain’.
55. For a while I lived with a barber.
56. I have met John Hegley, kind of.
57. When I was at A-level college someone told me that it was generally agreed I was one of the most likely there to be dead by the age of thirty.
58. I am now past thirty and wondering what went wrong.
59. I am a great admirer of Mishima Yukio, and when asked recently to name my favourite book ever, I cheated by naming four books – The Sea of Fertility by Mishima Yukio.
60. I drink a lot of green tea.
61. I didn’t actually enjoy myself in Japan very much at all.
62. I don’t have a favourite food.
63. I’m sorry for all the things I’ve done wrong.
64. As a youth I had a strong sense of destiny. When, at school, I was made to see a careers advisor, I simply told her that I did not need her advice, since I would not have a career; I was going to be famous.
65. I don’t actually believe there is such a thing as reality (don’t tell anyone).
66. I don’t know if I’ll make it to one hundred (items on this list).
67. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a ‘right to have children’.
68. I’ve never had much money. I’ve spent a lot of time unemployed.
69. Thinking about death is often a great comfort to me, since it helps me to feel detached from this world, where all that matters is power in relationships and chasing money.
70. I feel that the most profound and important stuff that Bill Hicks ever said is the stuff that is most generally overlooked. Strangely, his summation of the drug experience as a mystical experience in which we are merely consciousness dreaming ourselves has struck a stronger chord with me than the revelations of many of the oldest mystical traditions. But I don’t talk about it much, because it would obviously be silly to live one’s life by the words of a semi-obscure comedian, wouldn’t it?
71. I have been to Little Rock, where Bill Hicks died.
72. I have also visited the grave of Nagai Kafu, one of my favourite writers.
73. It was very close to the grave of Natsume Soseki.
74. I don’t think of myself as cynical.
75. I’m currently reading The Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens. It’s not one of his best.
76. I really only want to be loved.
77. I went to America when I was so young I can hardly even remember it.
78. I’ve been back twice since then, each time passing through O’Hare Airport.
79. My childhood was full of different animals. My father used to keep bees, and I would accompany him to collect the honey. As a result, I have never been afraid of bees.
80. Other animals with which I had contact in childhood include frogs, snakes, chickens, multitudes of rodents, lizards, preying mantises and ferrets.
81. I have the feeling I’m regurgitating the same old biographical fragments that I always do when pressed to, or when I’m in a maudlin mood.
82. It will be a miracle if I manage to surprise myself before the end of this list.
83. I grew up in a haunted house, where I used to play with magic wands.
84. I honestly still feel like a child.
85. I’m thinking now about Combe Martin, the village where I spent the first ten years of my life. I’d often go for walks along the coast path, to the top of the hill called Little Hangman. I always hate it when people cut down trees and vegetation in such places.
86. As a child, I spent a lot of time at the beach.
87. I like to wear fingerless gloves when the weather gets cold.
88. I once knew a girl who gave me a scarf. At the time I was in the habit of playing with a yo-yo. She seemed to want to look after me, and I have no idea why. We never did more than hold hands. I never questioned this at the time. Thinking about it now, it seems like an ideal relationship. As usual I’m sorry.
89. I do think that Morrissey is probably the greatest lyricist that ever lived, although Momus must also be a candidate for this.
90. “So rattle my bones all over the stones/I’m only a beggar man who nobody owns/Oh see how words as old as sin/Fit me like a glove/I’m here and here I’ll stay/Together we lie, together we pray/There never need be longing in your eyes/As long as the hand that rocks the cradle is mine…” It seems to get right inside me.
91. I’m beginning to feel confident of my posterity as a writer, though such feelings can always change in an instant.
92. Strangely, and nonsensically, it seems like I do value posterity.
93. I have two tattoos.
94. I used to be a big fan of Takahashi Rumiko.
95. I once met Yang Lian, the Chinese poet, but ended up feeling like a fool for some reason, like I was trying to monopolise his attention. Probably just one of those things.
96. Sometimes I get very scared that I might be Garth Marenghi, horror author, dreamweaver, visionary.
97. I sometimes think that James Bond has the best job in the whole world.
98. I seem to become more and more squeamish the older I get; I often have to look away when there are violent or gory scenes in films.
99. I very much like Tod Browning’s Freaks. I want to write a novel about freaks one day.
100. Images, by David Bowie, is one of my all-time favourite albums.

The Big O

Well, I've decided to change the tone slightly and talk a little - before I go to bed - about the things I love and admire. Well, perhaps one example will suffice for today.

I feel like I should write more on this blog about the writers whose work is an inspiration to me, and tonight I would like to recommend the work of a little known writer who goes by the name of Ulrich Haarburste (there should be two dots over the 'u'). I discovered his oeuvre a few years back when a friend pointed me in the direction of his website. Haarburste is a true artist, and I take my hat off to him. His best work is all available to read, without charge, on his website. In fact, he is an extraordinarily concise writer, so his pieces each take perhaps a minute to read. They have, however, enriched my life beyond calculation. I especially like the one set in the massage parlour.

I notice that, since I last looked at this site, there has been posted news about a novel in the offing. I am aquiver with expectation.