Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Mystery

I'll be back soon-ish, I promise.

In the meantime...

I suppose you could say this is my life story.

In fact, it's positively

Spooky:

The Best Things in Life are Tax-Free (For the Present)

Sorry it's taking me a while to get back to people about things. I'm currently having to fill in a tax-form, which is claiming most of my psychic and emotional energy, I'm afraid. I suffer from some strange form of dyslexia when it comes to filling in forms. I look at all the blanks, and my mind goes... blank. I would not be surprised if one day this particular deficiency of mine lands me in prison. Anyway, I hate forms. There are no words for my loathing of forms. I'm sure there'll be a great deal of paperwork to fill in when I get to Hell.

So, in the meantime, please enjoy these pictures I took yesterday during the brief interval that the snow settled here:





The entire photo album is here.

Desert Island Clips

I had a conversation the with someone the other day about Desert Island Discs. For those of you who don't know, Desert Island Discs is a programme on British radio (apparently the longest running music-related radio programme in the world), in which a guest is asked each week to choose a selection of eight pieces of music (discs) that they would like to take with them to a desert island if they were in the predicament of Robinson Crusoe (minus Man Friday, I presume). They are also allowed one book and one non-practical luxury item. In order to avoid lots of boring redundant choices of the book (I presume again) there are also a copy of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare awaiting the castaway on the island.

The conversation that I had centred around the writer Edna O'Brien who, as of the time of writing, was the latest guest on the programme. I suppose I began to think, as we talked, about what I would take with me. I think it turns out to be a very philosophical question, and not one as simple as naming one's favourite pieces of music. These pieces of music, and the book and luxury, should be specifically chosen in order to nourish one in what will be a lifelong isolation, away from all human contact. Some pieces of music, or some books, even if they are your favourites, might, under the circumstances, prove to be undermining to the spirit, or might suddenly seem meaningless. I think, if it were me, I might want to swap the copy of the Bible for the Tao Te Ching, the original text of Taoism. Having said that, the former is a doorstep, the latter a mere pamphlet, so I suppose there might be some disadvantage in that. I may well take a volume of the tales of H.P. Lovecraft with me as my own choice of book, partly because, of all the writers I have read, his work is the work I have re-read the most. I have recently read Michel Houellebecq's H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, a cracking read that also includes two of Lovecraft's stories (in this edition). I haven't re-read any Lovecraft for years, but since it was there staring me in the face, I decided to do so and find, after all, even now I am not disappointed. I have not outgrown him. Also, his work is not concerned with matters of human interest, with society and so on, but with things on a cosmic scale, in which human life pales into insignificance, so they would not remind me so much of the society to which I could never return, only inspire in me thoughts of awe about the cosmos in which I had my brief existence. But to be honest, that's just a choice off the top of my head, and if, for some strange reason, I really were to be marooned on a desert island for the rest of my life, I might want to think more carefully about my choices. (Incidentally, there was a very distressing item on the news last night about some islands in the Pacific whose inhabitants are having to leave because of rising sea levels. So we might not have desert islands for much longer. God, why don't we all just kill ourselves now and get it over with!)

Anyway, I haven't really had the time or the energy to think seriously about my own desert island discs, but what I have decided to do is compile my desert island clips, that is, my YouTube clips. This selection probably won't be that representative, as my discovery of YouTube is only fairly recent, and I haven't really saved that many to favourites as yet. But it will be representative of something, I suppose. In any case, I thought it would be an easy way to write a reasonably entertaining blog entry. So, without further ado, here are my eight desert island clips:

1) Laurel and Hardy, Western Dance - Well, some things are beyond words. This is just about as ineffable as it gets:



There were a number of good Laurel and Hardy clips, and I almost chose this one as a piece of kitsch erotica and for the postmodernist value of watching a fake 'desert island' dance on a real desert island, and also just because.

2) Kate Bush, Violin - In one of the Austin Powers films, Dr Evil is incredulous with joy when his son gets him a very special birthday present: "You haven't got me fricking man-eating sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads?" I think I felt something similar when I discovered this next clip. "Kate Bush in a fricking bat costume singing fricking Violin and dancing with two men dressed as actual fricking violins one of whom actually fricking tries to strangle her before a really fricking tall man does a guitar solo?!!!" What more could you want?



3) Brass Eye, Pulp Spoof - I'm a relative latecome to Brass Eye. I'm most familiar with Chris Morris' work in Jam and Blue Jam. I'm also a fan of Pulp. I have no idea exactly how far Chris Morris wanted to stick the knife in on this one, but I like it anyway. It just happens to be a really great angle to take for an especially good impression of Jarvis Cocker and Pulp:



4) Thousand-Hand Guan-Yin - This clip was introduce to me by Lord Whimsy. I don't really know what to say about it. It's like some kind of hallucination. Just watch it:



5) Aidan Smith, Early as the Trees - I found this clip on the blog of Aidan Smith. No, not that Aidan Smith, the other Aidan Smith. Or another Aidan Smith. Anyway, it appealed to me for some reason. I tend to hate music videos, but not this one. Rather fey and whimsical. I know nothing about Aidan Smith, though, either of them:



6) Elliott Smith, Lucky Three - This is a very simple 'documentary' showing Elliott Smith playing three of his songs and wandering around Portland, Oregon. I find it incredibly poignant for some reason:



7) Kigurumi, Tarako Tarako Tarako - I think if I ever needed to drive myself all the way into insanity as an escape from loneliness on my desert island, I'd just watch this clip over and over until my mind was finally ground down into gibbering idiocy. Actually though, it is quite cute:



8) Morrissey, I've Changed My Plea to Guilty - Well, it was very difficult choosing one Morrissey clip, but I settled on this one, because it's a particularly good performance, and because the song might be soothing to me when I was feeling very lonely. I almost chose The Last of the Famous International Playboys, though.

Till Domesday

The world is ending. Okay, so some form of life - maybe even human life - might possibly survive, but it will only be in a world unrecognisable to us. We are on the deck of a sinking ship, and we don't even have the option to jump overboard. So, what, exactly, do we do? What do I do? I spend a lot of my time wondering just what the correct response to ecologocial armageddon could possibly be. Not long ago I read an article in a newspaper about this issue. I don't have the newspaper any more, as it has now been recycled, so I can't remember what it said in any detail. It was something about doom-mongering and other such self-flagellation being perhaps understandable but ultimately pointless. Then, a little later, I read an item in Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? (Volume Two), about ethical consumerism. The verdict seemed to be that it was a fairly shallow response to the problem. It is, said the book, a bit like looking at the impending armageddon and saying, "It wasn't me!" Well, what are we supposed to do, exactly? To be fair, the authors of the book do concede that even ethical shopping is "all to the good". And, if I were feeling petulant, I could point out that Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur are merely two dry British wits selling cynicism as Christmas stocking-fillers. Actually, though, they are quite funny, and they do, on the whole, pick the right targets, and shoot with great accuracy, as here.

Anyway, the point is, there are various people pointing out the inadequacy of our various responses to THE END OF THE WORLD THAT IS NOW UPON US, but there doesn't really seem to be anyone who is coming up with an adequate response. Perhaps there just isn't one. It's not as if anyone has even been inspired to say something profound in the time that's left to us. It's the usual trivia. For instance, Supermodel Naomi admits maid attack, or Complaints of racism on Celebrity Big Brother increase. It's almost as if there really is nothing profound to be said, anyway, as if, maybe the very banality of the universe is what has brought us here to the brink of utter destruction. We just couldn't find anything worth living for. There is a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, and he is Light Entertainment.



Even I (makes extravagant dramatic gesture) cannot think of anything to say that is really worthy of the occasion. And my general response to the end of the world, is, apart from the lame old ethical consumerism kind of thing, I'm afraid, usually to get really, really depressed and generally not want to get up in the mornings or talk to anyone or do anything at all (what's the point, after all?). Not very edifying is it? But what's the alternative? Choose life, as they say? In other words, a family of more consumers of the world's resources and a job to support them that also diminishes or pollutes those resources. There's no way out of it really. So, let's all join in a chorus of, "We're all going to die!"

I can state clearly that I do not like this world and I do not like life, but previously there have been consolations. One of my favourite writers, Nagai Kafu, spent a lifetime lamenting the encroaching modernism that was destroying all that he most love about his native country, Japan. He also had a philosophical, fatalistic streak in him, though, and occasionally would sigh in a literary sort of way, and, figuratively, say, Oh well! On one such he wrote that, however much the natural beauties that once surrounded Tokyo, and the more picturesque ways of life that once flourished there, might be destroyed, at least beauty would remain in the eternal cycle of the seasons, in the geese flying south for winter overhead and so forth. I remember thinking these beautiful and deeply consoling sentiments when I first read them. Unfortunately, we now know better than Kafu. Not even the seasons are eternal. The encroaching cities have destroyed them as they have everything else - it was naive to think the seasons were separate from the rest of nature in this regard. Vile science has made a marriage of materialism with rampant commerce - the issue of this union is plain to see all around us. Now nothing in nature remains undistorted, and since nature is the ultimate source of all beauty, all beauty has gone from the world, and there is nothing left for me, except, perhaps, in memories and dreams.

And what do I do? Well, as I said, I get depressed, and in other news, I write. Yes, I continue to write, like the Emperor Nero fiddling with himself as Rome went up in flames. As a matter of fact, I have been engaged, as many of you will know, in the rather pointless and hypocritical composition of a grand, apocalyptic novel called Domesday Afternoon. It looks like being such a vast undertaking that the world will probably end before I finish it, anyway, and even if I do finish it, well, it's not as if its publication will somehow avert disaster or have any useful effect whatsoever. So why am I doing it? Well, I don't really know, to be honest, except that, in my life, writing has always been one think I actually can do, perhaps, in a way, the only thing, though I don't necessarily do it well.

I have asked myself why I bother to carry on such a task any number of times. A little while back I came upon something that seemed close to being an answer. It is, in fact, an interview with the late singer/songwriter Elliott Smith:



The interviewer talks to Elliott about the rationale behind the title of his album Figure 8, and reads out a quote (his quote) to him: "I just like the idea of figure 8, of figure skaters trying to make this self-contained perfect thing that takes a lot of effort but essentially goes nowhere."

Funny, I expected 'figure 8' to be some sort of reference to the moebius symbol of eternity that reembles a figure 8 on its side. However, Elliott confirms the interpretation suggested by the quote. The interviewer expressed some surprise, asking if he really feels that music is pointless, to which he replies, "Yeah, of course. I mean, what's the point? Is music supposed to be a tool to get you somewhere else? No, it's just worth doing on its own."

I may have removed a few "like"s and "kinda"s from the quotation there.

Just in case anyone is wondering how I can think that life is inherently meaningful - as I seem to suggest in this blog entry - but ultimately purposeless, I suppose I should add that I think meaning and purpose are two different things. Meaning is diffuse, like the air, and allows freedom of movement in all directions. Purpose, however, is linear and one-track. Purpose builds roads. Usually to nowhere. Or over a cliff, as it now seems. Because purpose has behind it the notion of progress. But to what are we ultimately progressing? How can there be anything? Science, for instance, eschews meaning, but champions progress, or uses progress as an excuse for its own purposeful agenda. But where are we going with this? Who can plot the ultimate destination that the course we are on will take us to, the genetic tampering, so redolent of Nazi ideas of a master race, the mechanisation, artifical intelligence? If we survive that long, it will take us - this is my guess - to a utopia in which life will not be worth living, since there is no meaning, no soul left to live it anymore, only machines (biological or otherwise) purposefully building and maintaining more machines.

(Incidentally, this post is prompted in part by the fact that, at 5.49 pm on the 14th of January, 2007, I finished the longhand version of the first draft of the first volume of Domesday Afternoon. In longhand, the first volume comes to 1,284 pages. I am currently typing it up, and have typed about half. I will send copies of this first draft out to anyone with my e-mail address who writes to me and expresses an interest.)

More Than One Kind of Love

On Monday I finally finished reading Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop. Of the works of Dickens with which I am familiar, this is far from being my favourite (which distinction probably belongs to Great Expectations). However, it was not without interest, and particular increased in fascination for me when Little Nell and her grandfather eventually arrive at a sanctuary after all the tribulations of their long flight, and Little Nell's mind turns towards the contemplation of Death.



There are also, as always, many incidental points of interest in the novel, and one of these, for me, was a little passage just before the very end, in which Kit and Barbara are shown courting. Kit has been invited to go along with several gentlemen who have previously been concerned with the fate of Little Nell on a mission to rescue her. He has had no idea, for some time, of Nell's whereabouts, and of her fate, and he is very keen to see her again. However, it seems that Barbara is jealous. Nothing is made of the fact that Barbara is, apparently, jealous of a girl in her early teens (I'm not sure of Nell's age at this stage of the novel, but I think she must be about fourteen), thereby conferring on her the status of rival. Well, that is not particularly surprising. It is merely an indication that ideas have changed in the intervening time. It's very hard to judge exactly how the audience of the day would have taken the whole scene and whether there would have been much - or anything - in the way of sexual overtones for the reader. Certainly, Kit does not appear outraged at Barbara's implied accusation, only wishing to defend himself that his affections belong properly to Barbara and not Nell, as he would if the object of jealousy had been any other woman. For the modern reader, I think, ideas of paedophilia raise their heads either distantly or conspicuously when they encounter this passage. And why? Well, my guess is that, in our current age, love itself has become narrowed down to something purely sexual; it is increasingly hard to imagine it as anything else. The passage in question, however, is not intended as controvesial or disturbing, or anything other than cheerful and touching, as far as I can discern:

Now, Barbara, if the truth must be told - as it must and ought to be - Barbara seemed, of all the little household, to take least pleasure in the bustle of the occasion; and when Kit, in the openness of his heart, told her how glad, and overjoyed it made him, Barbara became more downcast still, and seemed to have even less pleasure in it than before!

'You have not been home so long, Christopher,' said Barbara - and it is impossible to tell how carelessly she said it - 'You have not been home so long, that you need be glad to go away again, I should think.'

'But for such a purpose,' returned Kit. 'To bring back Miss Nell! To see her again! Only think of that! I am so pleased too to think that you will see her, Barbara, at last.'

Barbara did not absolutely say that she felt no great gratification on this point, but she expressed the sentiment so plainly by one little toss of her head, that Kit was quite disconcerted, and wondered in his simplicity why she was so cool about it.

'You'll say she has the sweetest and beautifullest face you ever saw, I know,' said Kit, rubbing his hands. 'I'm sure you'll say that!'

Barbara tossed her head again.

'What's the matter, Barbara?' said Kit.

'Nothing,' cried Barbara. And Barbara pouted - not sulkily, or in an ugly manner, but just enough to make her look more cherry-lipped than ever.

There is no school in which a pupil gets on so fast, as that in which Kit became a scholar when he gave Barbara the kiss. He saw what Barbara meant now - he had his lesson by heart all at once - she was the book - there it was before him as plain as print.

'Barbara,' said Kit, 'you're not cross with me?'

Oh dear no! Why should Barbara be cross? And what right had she to be cross? And what did it matter whether she was cross or no? Who minded her!

'Why, I do,' said Kit. 'Of course I do.'

Barbara didn't see why it was of course, at all.

Kit was sure she must. Would she think again?

And so on. I must admit that I laughed at the depiction of Barbara's jealousy here. Some things, I thought, have not changed in the intervening years. When Kit eventually understands what is happening, he defends his affection towards Nell in the following terms:

'...I think I could almost die to do her service... I have been used, you see, to talk and think of her, almost as if she was an angel. ... When I think of myself, it's as her old servant, and one that loved her dearly, as his kind, good, gentle mistress; and who would have gone - yes, and still would go - through any harm to serve her...'

This explanation is apparently satisfying to Barbara. As I read it, I remembered the song by Joan Armatrading, More Than One Kind of Love. It certainly seems as if there were more kinds of love to choose from in Dickens' day. Kit doesn't say, I love her as a brother, or, as a friend, but that he loves her as a servant. I suppose that's one particular kind of attachment that is troubling to the modern sensibility, although it was apparently palatable in fantasy form in the relationship between Frodo and Sam in the recent Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Perhaps these archetypes are still latent within us. Whatever one may think of such an attachment, at least it has the virtue of showing that not all affections must be either of blood or sex if they are not to be entirely tepid.



A typical exploration of the idea of love today, might be, for instance, When Harry Met Sally, a film that famously poses the question of whether men and women can ever be friends without the whole sex issue getting in the way, and seems to answer a resounding NO. The relationship is not valid unless it is in the sexual/romantic mould. Well, this is not surprising coming from Hollywood, for whom the so-called 'happy ending' of the heterosexual pact is the stock-in-trade. However, I have been surprised to find that people in real life hold this view, as if it were self-evident. Not only is sexual love more important than friendship, it is actually All THERE IS. I have always felt something like the opposite. I feel as if we are living in a society where love is increasingly narrowed down to the field of the sexual. It's little wonder that such relationships seem to break down so often, when there is so much pressure for them to provide all the meaning and affection in the lives of the two individuals involved. And in the end, it is even questionable whether this is love at all. After all, of all kinds of love, sexual love is surely the most self-interested. It demands the attentions of the other, and often enough ends in bitterness and disillusion when lies, insecurities, neediness and so on, come to the fore.



I'm not sure how much Dickens is exaggerating the normality of Kit's affections, his strength of loyalty, his innocent love, but it does seem like a very natural and homely way to live to me, even if it's not a way I have actually achieved - to love all those who are a part of one's life.

But then it's very much the mode to doubt that there can be anything 'higher' or unselfish, and perhaps people prefer the grubbiness of disillusionment, if it means they can continue to reap the sexual fruits thereof, to the hard work of sacrifice, even if it meant that one day they might feel, like Sydney Carton standing before the guillotine, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done."

If I Ever Had a Fan...

A friend sent me this episode (in two parts) of something called Tenacious D. Some of you out there may be familiar with it already. The episode in question is called The Fan. I think this is what will happen if I ever get one. Be warned.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Changing the subject slightly, the first unregistered vistors after I revoked my ban on anonymous comments were... well, let's just say I deleted them. For some reason, they went straight for the Gothic literature post, the original source of the trouble. What's happening there, exactly?

It wasn't a great start to the day. I think that, if this kind of anonymous visitor outnumbers unregistered visitors with something actually to say and who abide by the simple rules I set out of providing a name and Internet address, then I will have to ban anonymous comments ONCE AGAIN. It's very disappointing - to me, too - that I can't just rise above this sort of thing, but apparently I can't, so I suppose I should just accept that. I honestly think the people responsible should be throttled. On the whole, I don't support the death penatly, but in the case of bad manners, I make an exception.

Happiness

In the comments section of a recent entry, I posted a poem by Stevie Smith, the title of which is 'Happiness':

Happiness

Happiness is silent, or speaks equivocally for friends,
Grief is explicit and her song never ends,
Happiness is like England, and will not state a case,
Grief, like Guilt, rushes in and talks apace.

This reminds me of Henry de Montherlant's maxim that "happiness writes white", and of Tolstoy's assertion that all happy families are alike, but unhappy families are each unique in their misery.

I was thinking of writing an entry on happiness anyway, partly because there's a song on Elliot Smith's Figure 8 album called Happiness that I have very much taken to lately. The song seems to be about the way in which two people in a (romantic) relationship mutually engineer their unhappiness. That's how I've been reading it, anyway, although it has to be said that it seems like Elliott Smith (who was, incidentally, orginally Steven Smith) seems to be very deliberate about keeping his songs ambiguous. The song ends with the repeated couplet, "What I used to be will pass away and then you'll see/That all I want now is happiness for you and me", suggesting that behind the mind games there lies a kind of indestructible hope or desire for an end to the mind games.



I suppose I have a similar feeling about happiness; it's there waiting, if we only knew how to end these mind games. So far, I don't know how to end them, or if they ever will end, but just this morning I wrote out a few notes for a story called 'A Cup of Tea', which, if I write it in full, will deal with this theme.



Thinking about happiness, and the fact that we are, to quote John Hegley, in Winter's hinterland, I remembered one of my all-time favourite passages of literature ever, which happens to deal with the subject of happiness. Most people, if asked to present happiness as a picture, would probably have sunshine in it, and maybe even go as far as to have palm trees and the like. The picture of happiness presented by Thomas De Quincey, author of the sublime Confessions of an English Opium Eater is somewhat different, and I must say, I am much in sympathy with his version of happiness. People talk about SAD - I can't now remember what the acronym stands for - but personally I find nothing more agreeable than to have to wrap myself up in scarfs, gloves, coat and many layers beneath to brave cold winds and rain or snow. I like the feeling of being buried alive in my own memories and subconscious that the long darkness of autumn and winter brings. I have never understood this desire that people seem to have for heat, heat and more heat. In the words of Morrissey, from the song The Lazy Sunbathers, "The sun burns through to the planet's core/And it isn't enough, they want more".



Anyway, please enjoy a picture of happiness, as dictated to a painter by the English opium eater:

From Confessions of an English Opium Eater:

I have said already, that on a subject so important to us all as happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any man’s experience or experiments, even though he were but a plough-boy, who cannot be supposed to have ploughed very deep into such an intractable soil as that of human pains and pleasures, or to have conducted his researches upon any very enlightened principles. But I who have taken happiness both in a solid and liquid shape, both boiled and unboiled, both East India and Turkey — who have conducted my experiments upon this interesting subject with a sort of galvanic battery, and have, for the general benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as it were, with the poison of 8000 drops of laudanum per day (just for the same reason as a French surgeon inoculated himself lately with cancer, an English one twenty years ago with plague, and a third, I know not of what nation, with hydrophobia), I (it will be admitted) must surely know what happiness is, if anybody does. And therefore I will here lay down an analysis of happiness; and as the most interesting mode of communicating it, I will give it, not didactically, but wrapped up and involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every evening during the intercalary year when laudanum, though taken daily, was to me no more than the elixir of pleasure. This done, I shall quit the subject of happiness altogether, and pass to a very different one — the pains of opium.

Let there be a cottage standing in a valley, eighteen miles from any town — no spacious valley, but about two miles long by three-quarters of a mile in average width; the benefit of which provision is that all the family resident within its circuit will compose, as it were, one larger household, personally familiar to your eye, and more or less interesting to your affections. Let the mountains be real mountains, between 3,000 and 4,000 feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, not (as a witty author has it) “a cottage with a double coach-house;” let it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls and clustering round the windows through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn — beginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending with jasmine. Let it, however, not be spring, nor summer, nor autumn, but winter in his sternest shape. This is a most important point in the science of happiness. And I am surprised to see people overlook it, and think it matter of congratulation that winter is going, or, if coming, is not likely to be a severe one. On the contrary, I put up a petition annually for as much snow, hail, frost, or storm, of one kind or other, as the skies can possibly afford us. Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside, candles at four o’clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without,

And at the doors and windows seem to call,
As heav’n and earth they would together mell;
Yet the least entrance find they none at all;
Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall.

Castle of Indolence.

All these are items in the description of a winter evening which must surely be familiar to everybody born in a high latitude. And it is evident that most of these delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very low temperature of the atmosphere to produce them; they are fruits which cannot be ripened without weather stormy or inclement in some way or other. I am not “particular,” as people say, whether it be snow, or black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr. --- says) “you may lean your back against it like a post.” I can put up even with rain, provided it rains cats and dogs; but something of the sort I must have, and if I have it not, I think myself in a manner ill-used; for why am I called on to pay so heavily for winter, in coals and candles, and various privations that will occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good of its kind? No, a Canadian winter for my money, or a Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the fee-simple of his own ears. Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter that I cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past St. Thomas’s day, and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances. No, it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine. From the latter weeks of October to Christmas Eve, therefore, is the period during which happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters the room with the tea-tray; for tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual; and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum internecinum against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person, who should presume to disparage it. But here, to save myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages, unless a good deal weather-stained; but as the reader now understands that it is a winter night, his services will not be required except for the inside of the house.

Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is somewhat ambitiously styled in my family the drawing-room; but being contrived “a double debt to pay,” it is also, and more justly, termed the library, for it happens that books are the only article of property in which I am richer than my neighbours. Of these I have about five thousand, collected gradually since my eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you can into this room. Make it populous with books, and, furthermore, paint me a good fire, and furniture plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table, and (as it is clear that no creature can come to see one such a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray; and, if you know how to paint such a thing symbolically or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot — eternal à parte ante and à parte post — for I usually drink tea from eight o’clock at night to four o’clock in the morning. And as it is very unpleasant to make tea or to pour it out for oneself, paint me a lovely young woman sitting at the table. Paint her arms like Aurora’s and her smiles like Hebe’s. But no, dear M., not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty, or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly pencil. Pass then, my good painter, to something more within its power; and the next article brought forward should naturally be myself — a picture of the Opium-eater, with his “little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug” lying beside him on the table. As to the opium, I have no objection to see a picture of that, though I would rather see the original. You may paint it if you choose, but I apprise you that no “little” receptacle would, even in 1816, answer my purpose, who was at a distance from the “stately Pantheon,” and all druggists (mortal or otherwise). No, you may as well paint the real receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine-decanter as possible. Into this you may put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum; that, and a book of German Metaphysics placed by its side, will sufficiently attest my being in the neighbourhood. But as to myself — there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the foreground of the picture; that being the hero of the piece, or (if you choose) the criminal at the bar, my body should be had into court. This seems reasonable; but why should I confess on this point to a painter? or why confess at all? If the public (into whose private ear I am confidentially whispering my confessions, and not into any painter’s) should chance to have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the Opium-eater’s exterior, should have ascribed to him, romantically an elegant person or a handsome face, why should I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a delusion — pleasing both to the public and to me? No; paint me, if at all, according to your own fancy, and as a painter’s fancy should teem with beautiful creations, I cannot fail in that way to be a gainer. And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my condition as it stood about 1816-17, up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man, and the elements of that happiness I have endeavoured to place before you in the above sketch of the interior of a scholar’s library, in a cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter evening.

But now, farewell — a long farewell — to happiness, winter or summer! Farewell to smiles and laughter! Farewell to peace of mind! Farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep.

Available For Comment (Not Available For Fucking)

A while back I decided to disallow anonymous comments on my blog, for reasons detailed here. I have decided to reverse that decision for a number of reasons, including the fact that I know people who have tried to comment here and been put off by having to register, or have forgotten their passwords, or that kind of thing.

I also felt a bit petty disallowing such comments. I wondered why they annoyed me so much. I noticed, after my infestation of trolls, that Momus, for instance, allows anonymous posters and doesn't seem to delete them no matter what they say, and this seemed rather admirable to me.

However, I think I know now why it is that I consider all anonymous comments to be basically ill-mannered (the Internet, is, I honestly believe, eroding manners rapidly). I was aided in this realisation by an anonymous comment left on the entry Science - The Rohypnol of Philosophy, on my spare version of this blog.

At first I thought that the poster was not anonymous, because he, she or it left a name, to wit 'dejah'. However, although the name at first seemed to be a hypertext link, in fact, it led nowhere. This is what 'dejah' wrote:

Kindly get over yourself, please.

The rest of us have no use for ravening hypocrites who think that if scientists speak their minds then the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. Yet, when Christians come out with overweening bullshit, the rest of us are supposed to be respectful?

Like I said. Get over yourself.

I doubt you'll publish this comment. Unlike scientists, who do embrace criticism and grow by it, bloggers such as yourself rarely do.

Because I was tricked into thinking this was not an anonymous post, and because the poster seemed to allude to the idea of discussion by talking about criticism and people speaking their minds, and the expression of that risible doubt about whethre I would publish the comment, I thought that this person or thing actually wanted some kind of discussion. Therefore I published the comment (Blogger blogs have this screening function for comments) and gave a polite reply. Was any discussion forthcoming? No. Could I then go to dejah's internet home and leave a comment on his/her/its comments section? No. That's why I hate anonymous posting. Anonymous posters have you at a disadvantage. I find it utterly cowardly. I realise I'm one of the few people who doesn't use a pseudonym on the internet, and maybe in these times of stalkers and surveillance, that's deeply foolish. Nonetheless, I cannot deny an instinctive distaste at anonymous posting. As I said in my entry about why I was banning anonymous comments, it's not like having a conversation, it's as if someone shouts something through your letterbox and then runs away, just as 'dejah' also ran away after I answered it.

So, now that I no longer feel the need to be civilised, let me go through dejah's comments again:

Kindly get over yourself, please.

Nice opening gambit, a ready-made phrase of no particular meaning. How, exactly, am I supposed to 'get over' myself? What does this entail? I suppose 'dejah' also tells people to 'get a life', and to stop being 'sad', or whatever the current adolescent cliches are.

The rest of us have no use for ravening hypocrites who think that if scientists speak their minds then the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket.

The rest of us? The rest of who? Speak for yourself, 'dejah'. If you want to talk about hypocrisy, how about yours for trying to brow-beat out of speaking my mind? Besides which, your comprehension of what I wrote is slender to say the least, as if I care about people speaking their minds.

Yet, when Christians come out with overweening bullshit, the rest of us are supposed to be respectful?

I don't remember saying that anywhere.

Like I said. Get over yourself.

Oh? So you've already exhausted your 'argument'.

I doubt you'll publish this comment.

Fucking hilarious. You must have a high opinion of yourself if you think I don't even dare to publish your piffling little comment, as if I'm going to crumble before it.

Unlike scientists, who do embrace criticism and grow by it, bloggers such as yourself rarely do.

Here's the hypocrisy in full swing. So, dejah, the self-appointed ambassador of science, tells me that scientists embrace criticism. Why doesn't he take a leaf from their book - if that's what they actually do - and embrace mine? And how about embracing this, dejah, if you're out there - you are a fuckwit.

Anyway, I think part of the reason that I disallowed anonymous comments is that I have very limited patience with this sort of thing, and there are still maybe one or two people out there who believe I'm a nice person and I don't want to have to disillusion them. Therefore, I wanted only people with names and internet addresses here, so that conversation could remain civilised and I could appear to be a vaguely pleasant, enlightened kind of guy. But, as I have had occasion to remark to someone just this morning, I'm tired of wanting people to like me. In the words of the great Jimi Hendrix, I'm the one who's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.

Therefore, I hereby revoke my ban on anonymous comments with the following proviso: If you post a comment using the anonymous poster function, and do not include a name and a valid link to an internet address where I can visit and leave comments, then I shall not consider you to be a real person. I will consider you a mere 'dejah', and feel free to delete your comment, mock it, deride it, edit it, splice it with pornography, metaphorically shred it, shoot it down in flames and invoke ancient curses against it.

If you do include a name and a valid link, you will find me quite civilised, I hope.