waste of space

Dru tells me, with all due respect, that I haven’t yet developed my blogger’s voice.  She means that I write like I always write.  I haven’t managed that intimate but off-beat tone that she does so well herself.  But then Dru has unfair advantages as a blogger.  She does loads of stuff.  She’s been having an adventure-a-day, against doctor’s orders, since before blogs were first used as solid fuel.  Take a look.  This is how it should be done.

Instead of adventures, I make a habit of sitting at my desk doing nothing much, though I do have an idea for an art installation that will be a speeded-up film of my day at work.  The lucky audience will get to see exactly how often I drop my head into my hands.  It will be fascinating.

Meanwhile, and in the absence of shipwrecks and poetry readings, there’s Dru on a walk through Leigh Woods stumbling across ‘a stone. It’s Welsh slate, carved with the words AND STONES MOVED SILENTLY ACROSS THE WORLD. It was put there by Alyson Hallet.’

This stone serves the perfect function of public art, in that it’s not very noticeable or thoughtful.  Public art needs to be inconspicuous.  It gets installed in public places.  If the passing-by audience become animated in any meaningful way then the council fears a traffic hazard or an incitement to vandalism.  Public art is therefore chosen for being whatever art isn’t  -passers-by must pass it by. 

Fountains are the second-lowest point for public art  - they often get turned off, as if they were never there.  The highest contempt, however, should be reserved for public sculptures of human figures on town-centre benches.  They’re rubbish art.  But they’re also taking up a space on a public bench.  What good to the public is that?

'He knows where you live'

If Heaven is one place ( and it surely is, because the people who go there won’t mind sharing) then it has many quarreling embassies on earth.  Most of these will make you feel welcome, because on the whole, with some obvious exceptions, religious people try to be nice, especially if you’re new.

Just keep the moonlighting a secret.

Spiritual double-dating is one of the underappreciated pleasures of the post-enlightenment.  The Greeks one Sunday, and the Russians the next.  In Paris there’s an excellent basement filled with guitar-playing South Americans.

Nothing quite so exotic here in the English countryside, but enough god-in-buildings to keep a recent arrival interested.  The Anglican vicar in the church above the river lives in fear of central directives.  She points out the emergency exits before we acknowledge the Almighty.  Then reassures us that due to swine flu no chalice will pass from hand to hand or lip to lip.  We are advised not to shake hands when offering the sign of peace.

Come on, I’m thinking, have a little faith. 

I like the peace.  I like its duelling quality, and the  sense of passive-aggressive confrontation.

‘Peace be with you.’

‘No.  Peace be with you.’

In the local Catholic church the avuncular priest is on holiday, replaced by the Emeritus Professor of Moral Philiosophy from Lodz University in Poland.  We are encouraged to take turns cooking his dinner, because his celibate mind is busy on the grand design:  The resurrection is misunderstood, he says, because of its misunderstandability. 

That’s very good.

Then out on a walk yesterday we came across a hidden stately home that is the global retreat centre of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University.  ‘It provides a supportive atmosphere to people of all backgrounds wishing to explore the possibilities of personal growth’.  There is a nice lady at reception dressed in white.  She doesn’t have a name tag, and why should she – names can be so hectic.

We are free to wander around, explore the gardens. 

‘The spiritual university, a registered charity, has 8500 teaching centres in over 100 countries and works for world peace through personal change.’

I’m in for that.

'High Expectations'

In the local library, which I visit once a week, they have  a Mystery Book on the Issues counter.  It is hidden inside a plain white A4 envelope.  On four consecutive Saturdays, I have been able to resist.

This week I cracked.  I had to have it.

They wouldn’t let me have the Mystery Book on the counter.  Underneath the desk, there is a pile of plain white envelopes.  I get the one on the top, and leave the library without opening it.

I’m expecting a middle-brow novel.  It would be great to have a handbook on gyro-copter mechanics, or a guide to the sacrificial customs of Ancient Mesopatamia.  However, I can’t quite believe a library will let its mystery books be as mysterious as that.  I’m betting on a middle-brow novel or perhaps a safe biography, someone like Mary Queen of Scots or Lenny Henry.

They call it the Lucky Dip.  I open my white A4 envelope.  It is a novel called The Clematis Tree, by Ann Widdecombe.  I guess I’m just lucky.

No, really.  I would never have chosen this book for myself.  And I mean never in the sense of never ever ever never ever.  That’s the whole point.  The Lucky Dip worked – I have a blind book date that I’d never have chosen with my eyes open.

I think it’s safe to say that as a politician Ann Widdecombe made no great effort to be liked, and effortlessly succeeded .  She carries the same gung-ho attitude into her author’s biog: ’[She] writes her novels on long train journeys and in Singapore, when she visits her Chinese nanny.’

This is the secret I’ve been searching for, and which so far I’ve been unable to share with the students at the Academy.  No Chinese nanny, no published novel.

I’m looking forward to giving it a go, though I’ve now reconsidered the selection policy of the librarians as they scout round the shelves with their fresh white envelopes.  The Clematis Tree has not been stamped (it was inside an envelope), nor has the bar code been scanned.  Maybe they only pick books that no-one would want to steal.

'no, seriously dude, where are my ear-goggles?'

On a bootleg Jimi Hendrix album called Mr Pitiful (German sleeve, Swiss pressing) Jimi has a shambolic stab at a studio recording of Wooly Bully.  He is long gone dogbone stoned, and has lost his earphones.  He finds this hilarious, but nobody else knows what he’s looking for.  You know, he giggles, the ear-things, man, the ear-goggles. 

I always loved that.  And since i-pods came out even more so.  Tuck in the plastic ear-goggles and see the world differently, in your own chosen way.   My music, my timing, my world.  I-pod, me-pod.

The i-pod is a wonderful invention, but I can’t help feeling there are some unanswered design questions.  I don’t use my ipod on the bus, not since I was made jumpy by the full tincan trash of overheard Gangsta Crap Classics on the 994 bus to Perry Barr.   I started to wonder whether i-pod earphones, at high impact, would do more damage to my knuckles or to a person’s inner ear.

I thought probably the latter, and he wouldn’t even hear me coming.

That’s why I stopped listening to my ipod in public.  There are nutters about. Many of them get enraged by the tin-tinny sound, and it’s not your music, your timing, your world.  It’s theirs as well, it’s mine, so be careful out there.  The world is bigger than your i-pod can make you think.

If i-pods are such a great invention (and they are) and Apple is such a great company (and it is) why can’t they make earphones which don’t spill so much sound in the wrong direction?  I’d like to take that question seriously.  I’d like to go and talk to someone at Apple about it.  Who made the decision that the earphones could be rubbish?  Who’s working at sorting it out?  If I can get someone to pay me to ask the questions I might well go ahead.

In the meantime, the tunnel ear-vision of the i-pod reminds me of a song by those old phonies The Levellers.  I always thought the lyrics went:  ‘There’s only one wavelength, and that’s your own (that’s your own, that’s your own).’  I could never understand that: the Levellers were supposed to be neo-anarchists but they were writing lyrics for Herman Goering.

I just looked it up .  The song is called One Way, and the lyrics go ‘There’s Only One Way of Life, and that’s your own (that’s your own, that’s your own)’.  Even worse!  Plugging in the i-pod can be like this, tone-deaf and goggle-blind to the desolation of the ‘only me ‘ idea.  My music, my world. 

Still, those me-pod moments appeal to the apocalyptic teenage egoism that hangs around in all of us.  The same self-absorption that can make the teenage years so lonely.  Truly, no-one else exists.  The full surround-sound blindness.