Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Morrissey's Blog



I often feel that the comments section is the best part of this blog, which is why I also feel it's a shame that I don't get that many comments, in a way. I'm not complaining, actually, as if I got too many, I probably wouldn't be able to respond to them all, anyway. However, this preamble is my way of leading up to the fact that Abbass very kindly posted a link to a Morrissey song recently in the comments section of this entry. I responded by talking about what the song title (The Lazy Sunbathers) referred to, and by posting some links of my own (though I neglected to point out the Noel Coward reference in the lyrics of The Lazy Sunbathers). One of the links I posted was to the Moz song above. However, it has occurred to me that this song is just too good for me to let the link to it remain hidden in a corner of the comments section, so here it is on the main page, at the top of this entry, the wonderfully titled, Mama Lay Softly On the Riverbed.



I'll come to some of the reasons I think this is an excellent song in a minute. Hmmm, first of all, to address Abbass's observation that I do post rather a lot of Morrissey. He was kind enough to say that there was nothing wrong with this, but this does seem to be a point of contention. So, I'd like to look a little at this contentious bone and then I promise I won't mention Morrissey for at least a week. The David Quantick 'review' to which one of those links should lead, really sums up just about everything that anyone seems to hate about Morrissey. I don't actually want to go through this point by point, because I want to have my lunch soon. What it seems to boil down to is two things: The accusation that Morrissey is racist and the opinion that his latest work is a let-down after the genius of The Smiths. Oh, there's a third thing - that Morrissey is a "vanity-stricken egoist with a persecution complex", but I just don't care about that third thing enough even to analyse it, probably because I'm one too and know how it feels. So, the first point - racism. Until recently I suppose I've thought that the question is a matter of no one being entirely free of racism or the potential for racism. Therefore, those who demand that Morrissey should prove he is not racist should first prove they are not. They can't. I suppose they are trying to prove they aren't by tediously throwing accusations at others, but I've had enough of this kind of prick. So, I have just tended to think that, within the qualification that no one is entirely either racist or un-racist, that I don't really know what Morrissey is, but don't find it, anyway, to impinge on his artistic output. However, having recently re-listened to Irish Blood, English Heart I found myself really struck by it for the first time. (It's never really struck a chord with me before.) I found it suddenly to be a very honest and intelligent response to accusations of racism - a response that is not 'drawn in' in the way his accusers would wish him to be drawn in.

Irish blood, English heart, this I'm made of,
There is no one on Earth I'm afraid of.

I think the word 'afraid' is key here. Inter-racial and inter-cultural relations should be conducted without fear, should they not? I felt this was exactly the right choice of word. Not to be afraid of who anyone else is, and not to be ashamed of who you are - that is what I felt the song to be about.

So, on this score, the mud of the muddied waters is settling for me now. Controversy continues, but I am more inclined to see this as instigated by those who want to make themselves look good.

To continue to the second point: Morrissey is not as good as he used to be/as good as The Smiths. Well, this is, in my opinion, true. I mean, I'm not sure how to be anything else but subjective here. However, I would make the qualification that Morrissey is not consistently as good as he used to be. Sometimes Morrissey the solo artist is as good as The Smiths, and that is something that is rare enough in pop music to be remarkable. In particular, I think he came up to Smiths standard with some of the material on Viva Hate and Vauxhall and I. In fact, You Are the Quarry, his 'comeback album' is pretty much in the same league as those two, in my opinion, particularly if you take some of the B-sides into account.

I think that Morrissey has certainly lapsed into artistic redundancy at points. I didn't hate Kill Uncle as much as many people seemed to, but I didn't rave over Your Arsenal the way some did. Southpaw Grammar and Maladjusted I find to be patchy, but pretty good, with some underrated gems on them.

This brings us to the last album, Ringleader of the Tormentors (dodgy commentary in that link), which came out in 2006, and which I have therefore lived with now for almost two years. To review it in brief, I'd say I really like some of the songs, but overall find it a little stodgy and a little bombastic. It was produced by legendary producer Tony Visconti, but, the truth is, I don't think I actually like the production, well, particularly not on I Will See You in Far-off Places and Life is a Pigsty. Some, such as writer Doulgas Coupland, have really rated this album. But I suppose I felt that if this had been Morrissey's school project and I had been a teacher, I would have been writing something like, "Could do better" on his report.



Unfortunately there then followed All You Need is me and That's How People Grow Up, which were 'not bad'. But I should not be describing a Morrissey song as 'not bad'. This is not a good state of affairs. The release of the Greatest Hits album compounded this sense of redundancy. People were beginning to mutter the words 'Las Vegas period'. I think some of them still are. I'm not.

And the reasons I'm not are largely due to some of the newest songs leaked in live form on Youtube, songs such as I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris, and, of course, Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed. These songs don't seem to feature quite the attention to detail lyrically as Morrissey has made his trademark in the past. I do remember one reviewer sayinf that Sheila, Take a Bow did not display Morrissey's usual ability to surprise us with words, and, compared to much of Morrissey's recent output, that song seems to feature surprising words in abundance. However, Throwing My Arms Around Paris does feature a lovely melody, and the incredible line: "Only stone and steel accept my love". And Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed?

At first I found the words disappointing, reminding me of Elvis Costello's claim that Morrissey writes brilliant titles and then forgets to write a song for them. Some of it even seemed awkwardly phrased to me: "Life is nothing much to lose". And there was some laziness going on, too: "Was it the pigs in grey suits persecuting you?" The triteness of the word 'pigs' is slightly mitigated by the combination with the also trite 'grey suits' to make something that, together, is not as trite as the sum of its parts, but still.

However, I have been listening to/watching this clip a great deal, and even my doubts about the lyrics have evapourated. The tale seems to be one of a mother who is driven to suicide by drowning, Opelia-like, in a river. What I like about this is that, although the words themselves don't feature much of Morrissey's well-known invention and wit, the lyrics start from an unusual premise, and present the story with an unusual angle.

Mama, why did you do it?
Mama, who drove you to it?

There are many things to focus on in this world of ours, but Morrissey has asked us to focus not on sailors fighting on the dancehall, but on mother. Who drove you to it? Yes, indeed, what nefarious machinations are taking place here? The persecution of the mother brings into sharp focus the evils of an impersonal society. We can feel it. When asked about Morrissey in an interview once, I responded thus:

I recently had a conversation with a Morrissey fan. I hope she won’t mind me alluding to the conversation here, as it’s possible she’ll read this. She described Morrissey as ‘sacred’. In other words, she wasn’t prepared to accept criticism of him. And I understand the sentiment. I suppose I am slightly more prepared to accept criticism of him now than when I was younger, but the point is, whatever he may be like as a person (and I don’t know) he has managed to express something that to many people is sacred. I think this is to do with people’s innermost feelings about themselves, to which Morrissey has found his way. In Reel Around the Fountain, there’s the line, “It’s time the tale were told/Of how you took a child and you made him old.” It’s really the child that is the sacred thing – that innocence that is destroyed by a corrupt world. I think that’s what people identify with. It’s like when people say, “You can say anything you like about me, but don’t you dare say anything about my mother.” It’s a kind of displacement. The mother is really their innermost self. Or should that be, the Mozzer is really their innermost self?

And here is the Mozzer, in this song, after all, saying, do what you like, but if you touch my mother, I'll kill you:

Bailiffs with bad breath
I will slit their throats for you.

And in the clip you can see that he makes a slitting motion as with an old-fashioned cut-throat razor as he sings this. And who amongst us has not felt this at some time, that nothing mattered, as long as they could storm the offices of the Inland Revenue, or wherever the appropriate place might happen to be, and in the name of vengeance, slits the throats of every fucker there?

And then, that line that at first I thought was awkward:

Life is nothing much to lose.

It's so true, especially in a world that is full of 'un-civil servants', 'bailiffs with bad breath' and all the rest. It also reminds me of a Japanese death poem (jisei) I once read that was translated as something like: "Seen from outside, this world is not worth a box of matches." When there is nothing worth dying for, there is also nothing worth living for, and this line, which is not only true, but is also sung with feeling, brings us a little closer to whatever that very private thing is that is worth dying for, after you have spat out your venom on this putrid and despicable world.

I don't believe Morrissey is a celebrity for this reason - when I listen to his music, I don't want to be him, I feel okay about just being me.

And then, at the end

We're going to run to you
We're going to come to you
We're going to lie down beside you, Mama.
We're going to be with you
We're going to join you
We're going to lie down beside you, Mama.

This reminds me somehow of the bit in Blackadder where Doctor Johnson is trying to explain the plot of the dictionary to Kind George. "There is no hero, unless it be our Mother Tongue." "The mother's the hero? Nice twist."

It feels very right to me that Morrissey should very explicitly place himself on the losing side, on the side of the mother, here, at the end.

Well, I didn't call this entry 'Morrissey's blog' because that's what this blog is becoming, despite what some might think. No, I called it that, because that's pretty much how I'm coming to look at Morrissey's musical output. I don't think he's in a hurry to produce a masterpiece anymore. He's putting out whatever comes to him. He doesn't need more ammunition. Some of the shots he fires off will miss the target, but when they hit, well, you get something like this, something that reminds you, after all, that

Life is nothing much to lose.

Labels: Morrissey

What Is and What Should Never Be

Yesterday I wrote a little about the Monkey's Paw principle of the universe, which one might describe, if one has a pathological need to rhyme things, as the 'Universe Perverse'. Briefly stated, this principle is that, contrary to, or further than, the lyric of the Rolling Stones that declares "you can't always get what you want", actually, you can never get what you want. To quote, as is my wont, from William Burroughs, "How long does it take for a man to learn that he does not, cannot, want what he wants?"



I'd like to explore this principle further today with an illustration provided by Annette Funicello, in the song The Monkey's Uncle's Paw, to which I posted a link recently. Despite the brash and upbeat surface of the song, a look at the lyrics reveal it to be an intricate piece full of implied tensions and secret trapdoors of unexplored obsession. In terms of our theme for today - wishes and how they never turn out the way you want them to - the most important line must be, "And I wish I was the monkey's aunt". Not a particularly unusual line on its own, the kind, in fact, to be heard in every other pop song since 1963 (when sexual intercourse began). However, juxtaposed with the previous line, "I love the monkey's uncle", it takes on new and complex significance. We must approach this with care.



First of all, let us ask, why "the monkey's uncle"? If the monkey's uncle is, in fact, a monkey, why not simply, 'I love the monkey'? We canot discount, in this case, the possibility that the word 'uncle' was included for rhythmical and metrical reasons, however, the relation, so to speak, with 'aunt' suggests that this is no accident. Is the monkey's uncle, then, not a monkey himself? Is he some kind of Lovecraftian Arthur Jermyn figure? Such a hypothesis is supported by a line elsewhere in the song which runs, "Call us a couple of missing links". However that may be, after stating her erotic love for 'the monkey's uncle' (Uncle Arthur?), Annette proceeds to wish that she was 'the monkey's aunt'. "What a nutty family tree!" she exclaims later. Indeed. If she and the uncle are siblings of different parents then no blood relation is necessarily implied, and this may, in fact, be the scenario painted in the song. Is such a scenario accidental, or are there esoteric reasons behind its surface pattern? If so, it would not be the only part of the song to present a cryptic aspect. Another example comes in the surprise scene of the wedding:

[BB:] Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa
[Annette:] On the day he marries me
[All:] What a nutty family tree!
[Mike:] A bride!
[Brian:] A groom!
[BB:] A chimpanzee!

And there is the peculiar denouement, the twist in the tail, if you like - who is the mysterious chimpanzee? What does this enigmatic wedding guest desire? The twist in the tail here is that there is no tail. The chimpanzee cannot be the groom's nephew (the eponymous monkey), since he is not a monkey, but an ape. Has he come, like Mr. Mason in Jane Eyre, to interrupt the wedding with the revealing of some dark secret? Or is he an indication of just how nutty the family tree is becoming?



I'm afraid that I'm wandering off into speculation now. Let us take the other fork in the road. What if the monkey's uncle and the monkey's aunt were siblings to the same parent? Is this not the true implication of the "nutty family tree"? As well as expressing a desire to break the bounds of the taboo proscribing inter-species love, in her passion she wishes she could add to this transgression the transgression of incest. However, inter-species love and incest are mutually exclusive taboos. One is the taboo that results from the lovers being too far apart on the great family tree of life, and one the taboo that results from them being too close together. Our Annette wishes to have both at once! And who can blame her? Such is the nature of human desire. How long does it take for a very talented singer and actress to learn that she does not, cannot, want what she wants? She wants a family tree so nutty that the closest relatives are also the furthest away. Can such a thing be?



At this point I'd like to such the resolution to this conundrum by means of a further complication. I wrote in my post yesterday that "I'd very much like to be Annette Funicello". What if, right? What if, Annette became the monkey's aunt and I filled in the position that she had just vacated? It sounds like a dream come true. But I'm sure you already know what would happen. As Annette I would find myself gazing enviously at the monkey's aunt as she carried on her incestuous relationship with the monkey's uncle, scornful of the world's regard. Annette as the monkey's aunt would find it no longer so extraordinary to be in a relationship with the monkey's uncle, despite the novelty of incest, and also the possible novelty that Uncle Arthur was a monkey-human hybrid, because she would now be her own primate world, and the glamour would have vanished. And what would have happened to the consciousness formerly inhabiting the monkey's aunt? That's anybody's guess, but perhaps she would have migrated to my former mortal habitation, and I can tell you, I'm pretty damned sure that she'd be disappointed with that.



What can I say? It's a depressing world.

Anyway, I hope you don't mind me going on about Annette Funicello so much. I mean, which would you prefer, for me to go on about Annette, or for me to go on about Morrissey? Or, if you like, you could have both.

I suppose you're wondering, if you're particularly dense, what the attraction of Annette actually is. Am I being ironic? Well, of course not. In one of the Annette clips on Youtube, someone has left the following comment:

Annette was so bloody cute! How could anyone not have adored her? These must have been the days, now all we have is Britney Spears :(

To which someone has replied:

I agree!

It wasn't me, but it could have been.

She even manages to laugh faintly but almost convincingly at Frankie Avalon's utterly abysmal joke about sand boxes.



So, I suppose that my attraction is precisely (?) the attraction that Annette herself has towards the monkey's aunt. If I were ever actually to meet Annette, I imagine that I would be invisble to her, since I exist on an entirely different frequency. She is one of those people who makes me think it's a very strange planet indeed that is home to both of us. Maybe it's something like matter and anti-matter. If they actually come together the universe implodes or something ridiculous like that (someone correct me here). And, I'm sure that's exactly what would happen if I were ever to meet, on the same frequency of existence, Annette Funicello. Wishful thinking?

Labels: Annette Funicello, H. P. Lovecraft, Morrissey, The Monkey's Paw

Negotiating with Terrorists

Continuing from my recent post about Morrissey, immigration and racism, I think I should make a distinction clear here (the problem with my blog is that I write almost all posts in one sitting, and there's always something left unaddressed). I started off by talking about James Watson and saying that I felt uncomfortable calling him racist. I then went on pretty much to say that saying negative things about immigration did not make Morrissey racist, and it could have been inferred (incorrectly) that I thought Watson's and Morrissey's remarks in some way equivalent. Of course, they're not. If racism is an unfounded belief in the inferiority of a particular race, then saying that one's country is losing its identity because of the number of immigrants is clearly not a racist statement. Suggesting that Africans inherently (as a matter of genetic inheritance) have lower intelligence than caucasians, with no evidence, would seem, almost by definition, racist. In the case of Watson, in the quotes of which I am aware, he referred vaguely to tests that showed Africans to have lower intelligence, and stated his belief that in a few years we would discover that there is a genetically determined lower intelligence among Africans. There are a number of things to be said about this. It would appear to be part of the whole scientific racism phenomenon, of which one famous example is the 1994 best-selling study The Bell Curve. Scientific racism is, in itself, a huge subject, so I'll have to really limit my remarks here. First of all, I'm not aware that anyone has yet come up with a satisfactory definition of intelligence that would make it possible to reliably test for it, anyway, so that all tests so far must be assumed to be in one way or another biased. Secondly, Watson seemed intent on anticipating a future discovery of genetically lower intelligence. There are all kinds of questions here, as to why he would even wish to anticipate that, and so on, but, once again, I will limit myself. How will something as nebulous and indefinable as intelligence be correlated with DNA? That's my question. In the same way that it's correlated with answers to culturally-biased examination papers today? I mean, first of all, you have to decide whether or not someone is intelligent in order to correlate it with genes, surely? Without spending paragraphs and paragraphs on the subject of racist science, I'm going to stick my neck out and say, quite simply, that I think Watson is wrong. At the moment, I don't really feel the need to say more than that.



Perhaps, given the fact that Watson's comments so well fit the bill for the definition of racism above, you might wonder why I feel uncomfortable calling him racist. I think there are a number of reasons for this, and one of them is that I feel that people have become trigger-happy with the word in recent years. I do think that people have recognised that they can shift attention away from themselves and their own shortcomings by pointing at someone else and saying, "Racist!" I also think this is a deeply cowardly and unhelpful tactic. Since I don't particularly like Watson, I felt there was an element of that in my own accusation, and I didn't really like that. To be honest, whether or not Watson is racist was, for me, almost a side issue. What I found myself taking exception to were his values as expressed in the kind of society he would apparently like to engineer (genetically) - a society in which "all girls are pretty". If he's being serious here, and I assume he is, then I can only say that I think his aims are vile. I don't think that his vision could ever be acheived, anyway, but it's a 'master-race' vision. His comments about Africans were therefore interesting to me because, of course, racism is a huge factor in any 'master-race' vision. I was keen to speculate about whether there might be something inherently racist and 'master-race' within the ethos of the whole field of genetics, and it was pretty convenient for me to rope Watson in to support my speculation. In the end, I don't have daily (or any personal) dealings with Watson, and there's no actual need for me to comment on whether or not he is racist. But since his comments are in the public domain, I can still comment on them. Beyond that, I'd rather give him the benefit of the doubt, as I would hope that people would give it to me.

There's another factor in why I would rather not sling about accusations of racism. That is, I think that racism is one part of a wider problem, and the basic problem of being human, which is simply how to live with other people's differences. If I were to give a single word to the wider problem of which racism is part, I would call it 'dehumanisation'. In other words, by characterising a particular race as inferior, you are dehumanising them. But it's as easy - perhaps easier - to dehumanise someone by calling them racist, as it is to dehumanise them through the use of derogatory racial stereotype. I don't believe that people are born with a tattoo behind the ear saying "racist" or "not racist". As I've said before, I think anyone is capable of racism. Racism is as nebulous as identity. If someone expresses a racist view, surely it's far more helpful to talk about it than to turn them into an outcast. (Yes, I know some people are more difficult to reach than others, and do present a very real problem.)

This brings me back to Morrissey, who has now issued a statement in response to the NME article. It's a fairly interesting read, though I note that Morrissey is not really as good a prose writer as he is a lyricist. I noted in particular his full support of the Love Music, Hate Racism campaign. I found this interesting because I'm not sure I would support that organisation myself (incidentally, despite being a vegetarian and oppoosed to vivisection, I don't particularly support PETA, either; I don't like Pete Singer's utilitarian philosophy). Why am I unsure? Because they oppose the invitation made to the BNP to speak in an Oxford debate about free speech. As a writer, if I am passionate about anything, then it has to be free speech. My impression is that the people of Love Music, Hate Racism, like many, many people who would probably say they support free speech, don't actually understand what free speech is. It's very tedious to have to say this for the thousandth time, but free speech doesn't mean letting people say anything as long as you agree with them. It means letting people say anything even if you don't agree with them. It's always better to talk than to fight, surely? I suppose that the invitation to the BNP could be seen as a deliberate move to stir things up a bit, but really, what's the point of even having a debate on free speech if you're only going to invite people who agree with each other?



I'm reminded here of the stance inevitably taken by governments with regard to terrorism. "We don't negotiate with terrorists," they always say, as if to prove how strong and morally upright they are. This is really another permutation of the pointing a finger at someone else to distract people from one's own shortcomings. Now, though, instead of "racist" we have the word "terrorist". They're terrorists, we're not. They're racists, we're not. No negotiation. No talking about things. If we talk to racists, that makes us racist. If we talk to terrorists, that makes us terrorists. And we wouldn't want that, because we're good people, aren't we? And the fight goes on.

I'm going to wander off into left-field a bit, here, I'm afraid, and say that my final musings in my blog post about the whole Morrissey debacle - the musings about whether or not nations should exist - have a lot to do with the idea of enlightenment. As in, yes, Zen and all that. I mentioned that I almost always write my posts in one sitting, and I'd like to do that this time, too, and now I've only just got onto another VAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSTTT subject. I'm beginning to flag, but I shall try to rally. Let me just get some water.

So, where was I?

It occurred to me that one possible problem with my thinking on questions of race and immigration was the tendency to look at some abstract big picture and take things to their 'logical conclusion' (always a bad idea). I did mention what has often been my antidote to logical conclusions and 'big picture' thinking - individualism, or my own version of it, which is simply taking each person as I find them and each moment as it comes. I don't want to dismiss the immigration debate entirely, but as I'm sitting here writing this, immigration is certainly not a problem for me, and perhaps, as Eckhart Tolle suggests, nothing is really a problem in the here and now. This is linked with an old idea of mine, and one which I'm almost certain is not originally my idea, that the answer to all our social and international frictions is not political, but spiritual - that we will continue having violence on an individual and a mass level until everyone is enlightened.

By the way, I hope that no one reading this is imagining that I'm going to come to some great conclusion at the end of all this? No? Good.

Enlightenment is something that interests me deeply. I'm not even sure if it exists, but it seems to me that it might constitute the only possible redemption for the individual and the race.

What is enlightenment? Er... don't ask me, Guv. Apparently it's pretty fucking ineffable. For those not overly familiar with the 'concept' I'll try and give some (undoubtedly unhelpful) pointers in a minute.

I am not aware that I've ever actually met anyone who is enlightened, though I am informed by someone I trust that he has. Still, I'd rather rely on my own experience in being able to say definitively that enlightenment is 'natural and real'. There are, however, many, many accounts of enlightenment available, in books, on the Internet, and all over the place.

Some time back, the writer Thomas Ligotti published, for a limited time, his long essay The Conspiracy Against the Human Race on the Internet. The essay was a discussion of horror fiction heavily slanted towards an exploration of pessimistic philosophy, with the overall effect of being an argument for the voluntary extinction of the human race in order to put an end to human suffering. One by one, Ligotti examined and dismissed possible answers to suffering. Naturally, one of these possible answers was enlightenment. This was dismissed, too, as something that only ever happens accidentally, and that very rarely, and which, if it happened wholesale, would reduce us to beings interested in nothing more than our next meal, if that. I found this exploration of the subject of enlightenment (and by extension, the essay as a whole) to be weakened considerably by the fact that it seemed to rely on the figure U.G Krishnamurti as the ultimate authority (or anti-authority) on all things enlightened. U. G. seems to present us with a particularly curmudgeonly version of enlightenment, and blasts all other enlightened beings (apparently including the original Buddha, by which I suppose is meant the prince Gautama Sakyamuni) as charlatans. However, there are other accounts of the subject to be taken into consideration, such as that, for instance, of Suzanne Segal.

For myself, I find that I have become, over the last few years, strangely interested in the reputedly enlightened figure of Eckhart Tolle, author of a number of books on the subject (more-or-less) of enlightenment, most notably, The Power of Now. I mention him here in particular, because of certain remarks he has made on the subject of group identity:

The self does not want to be free of that; that's not where the longing for freedom comes from. The longing for freedom does not come from self. The self speaks of freedom, but then sabotages it continuously. It says, 'I'm looking for peace', and then creates conflict. And then you can see how it operates collectively, the same mindset operates collectively. 'Let's have another peace conference.' And in the meantime they produce massive amounts of weapons. So... 'Let's talk about peace.' The peace process. They're still talking about the peace process, and they're continually throwing grenades and machine-gunning... The peace process. Peace - they don't want peace. Because the mindset depends on non-peace for its survival. And so whether your sense of self is predominantly a personalised sense of sense or whether it's predominantly a collective egoic sense of self - a religion, or a nation, or a racial thing - then it can be even stronger than the personalised; it's actually exactly the same principle at work, exactly the same mechanism at work, but can be even more mad than the personalised sense of self, which is mad enough. But you can see how mad humanity can become when they identify with a collective 'me'. That's the height of madness.

As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, it is identity itself (the self itself), that appears to be the source of all conflict. This is something that Tolle says, and something that I'm inclined to agree with. The thing is, I personally don't know what to do about such a situation. I appear to have a self, and it doesn't seem to be disappearing anytime soon. Also, in the same way that there's some lingering doubt in me that we should simply do away with national identity, I can't help feeling there's something of value in the self, too. For instance, I'm not sure how love is possible without a self. (Who would be loving whom?) But I'm aware of counter-arguments - that it's precisely the self that obstructs love. In any case, if enlightenment exists, it doesn't appear to be something that can be understood or arrived at by reasoned argument. It seems to be in the nature of a quantum leap of consciousness that happens without being willed, and does not happen when it is willed.

All of this is an ongoing internal debate for me, that I engage in, and then let go, engage in and let go...

On the question of whether Eckhart Tolle is himself enlightened. Well, first of all, I'm not sure such a question is even important, but I'd be disingenuous if I said it wasn't a question that interested me. I'm inclined to think that, of all the examples of reputed enlightenment I have encountered, he is the most convincing candidate so far. I cannot fault anything he says. I find no pettiness there, nothing pernicious or manipulative or wilfully obscure. I am, however, not without reservations on the question, which, just for the record, I will list below, though they probably serve as a list of my own shortcomings more than anything else:

1) I have reservations simply because I am a doubting kind of person in many ways. I think doubt is an important part of keeping an open mind.

2) I hate the title 'The Power of Now', which reminds me of the song The Power, by Snap!. It's a curious question as to whether being enlightened should enhance one's taste. Why should I anticipate that it should? (And why should I put such faith in my own taste?) Nonetheless, this kind of thing bothers me. I remember seeing the website of someone who claimed a near death experience, and gagging at how tacky it was. "If you've died and gone to the shining edge of the cosmos and back," I thought to myself, "how come your poetry is so utterly shite?"

3) Tolle changed his first name from 'Ulrich' to 'Eckhart', apparently post-enlightenment, as an allusion to the mystic Meister Eckhart. If the basis of enlightenment is having no identity, why change your name, which shows a concern with identity?

4) Does being enlightened oblige you to write the same kind of insipid self-help books as everyone else? This is a bit of a worry for me, as I'd rather keep writing a rather dark vein of... stuff. Also, there's a samey-ness here that's not entirely attractive.

5) After having read pretty much everything Tolle's written and watched his DVDs and so on, I still don't feel especially enlightened, which is bound to be my fault. However, even assuming that Tolle is enlightened, and this is my fault, what's the use of going on reading the books and watching the DVDs?

6) It's not only me. I haven't actually heard of a case of anyone becoming enlightened after reading any of his books or watching his DVDs.

7) Tolle's apparently quite wealthy now, and continues to make money from his teachings. This does bother me a bit. But then, maybe this is a problem with perceptions of enlightenment. Why shouldn't someone enlightened have money, as long as they're not attached to it, and as long as that's not what motivates them? I suppose one answer to that question would be that they might want to avoid more than average material wealth simply in order not to hoard.

8) He's 'too nice'. This sounds like complaining for the sake of complaining, but I think I do trust people a bit more if they show their dark side. I like the tai chi symbol that shows darkness and light intertwined. Is it possible to deny the darkness? That's not a rhetorical question. I think it's worth considering. I mean, I'm not sure I want violence to continue forever just for aesthetic reasons. I'll give an example of Tolle being 'too nice': He's blandly dismissive of drug use. Okay, so he doesn't take an authoritarian tone, and what he says is fair enough (if you have highs, you'll have lows), but he seems unwilling to look at the fact that it's possible even to have 'noble' drug use, as in certain tribal rites of passage. This strikes me as a slightly 'radio-friendly' approach.

9) Not showing one's dark side, somehow, also seems to have implications about sexuality. I haven't entirely fathomed why this is. I suppose that I tend to subscribe to the Woody Allen view that "Sex can be dirty, but only if it's done right." I find it hard to imagine healthy, wholesome sex without wanting to puke. Eckhart does talk a little about sex, describing it as "the most deeply satisfying experience you can have on a physical level", and does apparently have a partner (no prurience here, please), but I honestly find sexual desire and the kind of enlightenment he presents to be somehow incongruous. Interestingly, Buddhism, too, has a tradition marked with asexuality. There is the celibacy of the monks, of course, and there's even the fact that there's no Buddhist wedding ceremony. As someone who has at least a nodding acquaintance with sexuality, I suppose I'd like a better idea of how that fits in the enlightenment picture without having to resort to castration or something.

Actually, I think that's pretty much it - my list of petty excuses for not being enlightened, but, like everyone else, contributing to all the horrible conflict of human society. I suppose that makes me a terrorist, too. But I think, as we're all terrorists together, we should try and negotiate with each other.

Labels: Eckhart Tolle, Enlightenment, Immigration, James Watson, Morrissey, Racism