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Directory of Lost Causes

November 2009

( Monthly archive )

Unknowing


The Windmills of Your Mind



Economic anecdote

Allow me to repeat an anecdote about the study of economics. It's fairly depressing. Someone I know was taking a course in economics. One of the early seminars focused on the issue of rape looked at in terms of economics. Economically analysed, was the idea of eliminating rape, or reducing it, viable? There were all kinds of questions about how often rape is reported, how often a conviction is made and so on. After all the economical analysis was covered, the conclusion of the seminar was that it was not economically viable to do anything about the issue of rape.

Next question.

Plague and printing press

Recently I've had this strange feeling that CDs are over. It's strange because I don't normally care about that sort of thing. For a long time now I haven't bought more than one or two CDs a year, but that hasn't been because I thought CDs were over. Now I don't really feel like buying any CDs ever again. I suppose I will at some point. I'm not taking any vows. But I'm not at all excited by or interested in the technologies that are replacing CDs, either. It's all come to seem like diminishing returns of one damned thing after another. The only thing I really look forward to now is death. I pretty much despise this world.

Anyway, I still play CDs, because most of my music is on CD. There's a CD player downstairs that has five trays, or whatever. You put five CDs in and it revolves them. To be honest, I don't like the design. You can only play one CD at a time, after all. All this design does is encourage you (or me, anyway) not to think about what music you want to listen to. (Okay, let's say 'me', not 'you'.) I can go for weeks with the same five CDs in there, revolving and revolving, and eventually I sigh and decide to replace one of them, or some or them, or all of them. Recently I replaced three of them.

Currently, the CDs in the machine are as follows:

1) Letters from Quentin by Kodagain

Yes, this is the famous Kodagain CD for which I have written the lyrics, and it's great. I'm really not sure how to describe it, except that I think Sasa (singer/songwriter) himself described it as "relaxed and proud", which seems a fairly good description, as does 'majestic'. The restrained production reminds me a little of the Velvet Underground, but the songs are somewhat more melodic than that, often featuring Sasa's layered and eccentric backing vocals. I am going to have to inset videos from two of the album's songs here again, even though I've inset them before on this blog.



This kind of thing could persuade me that CDs are not over, after all, especially as there is a beautifully designed lyric booklet with comments on each song from me. (I suppose that CDs at least still have currency as gifts, things to be sold at live events, and so on, and, in this case, hopefully as collector's items.)

If you want to buy a copy you can always write to Listen Loudest. I understand that this might not be thought of as convenient by some people, though (don't know if they use PayPal). Therefore, I've been trying to work out how I can distribute some of the CDs from the UK. I have a PayPal account, so that's half the battle. I think I might end up just taking orders through my blog (I'm not much of an entreprenuer, as you can tell). Don't make your orders just yet, though, as I don't have the CDs in stock yet. I'm going to work out a few more things - such as costs of postage and packing - then borrow some money from someone who has offered some capital for such a venture, and then I'll let you know.



Can you see my face in the background of that last video?

Anyway, I have a stinking cold at the moment, and can't write as well as I should, but this album is one of the few beautiful gleaming things in the general darkness of my life.

2) Forever Changes by Love

3) Ocky Milk by Momus

4) I don't know what this one's called, actually, or what it is. It sounds kind of Native American, like peyote trance music. I believe it's meant to balance the alpha waves in your brain or something like that. I can't remember.

5) Life Journey by Górecki

I'll try and write something about each CD when I have some energy.


Ain't Got No/I Got Life



Spoiler

, , , ...



Where will it end?

I found myself asking this question the other day, out for a walk, and I thought of the above song.

The lyric does something quite common in pop music - takes a common idiomatic expression and gives it a new meaning in a different context.

At present, the human race exists in time, in history, with the suspense of the question, where will it end? I'm not sure that that is the meaning of the song, but that's what I was thinking about. In fact, I was writing about suspense just the other day.

There's a film that I often recommend that people watch if they are feeling depressed. It is Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters. Actually, I haven't watched the film for some time now.

I'm going to post a couple of clips from it here, from the end of the film. Needless to say, the clips contain 'spoilers'. In what to me is the crucial scene, the Woody Allen character describes the resolution of his long existential crisis. If you don't have time to watch the whole film and you don't mind spoilers, here are the clips, with the scene in question starting about seven and a half minutes into the first clip and going over just a little into the second clip.





Now I'm going to write something that's a bit of a spoiler, so read no further if you want to avoid such: The basic message is that we don't know where it will all end, but that we might as well enjoy it while we're here. Sounds trite when written like that, but in the film it's not trite (I don't think). There's also, to me, a suggestion that part of the enjoyment of life comes in the not knowing, a sense that perhaps the most rewarding attitude to take to life is that one takes to a film or story, not knowing how it will end, and not wanting to have any spoilers.

Earlier today, I read this article (or one like it) about Obama's declaration that it was too early for a climate deal to be agreed at Copenhagen. I read some of the comments under the article, too (which I can't find under this one, so it must be a different article). On the whole, I find comments on the Internet depressing, and something of a reminder of what many people claim are the shortcomings of democracy. This was another such depressing experience. I can understand, to a degree, skepticism about climate change, but what I don't understand is the very prevalent denial. In very simple terms, if a number of people were sitting in a house and one (or most of them) said, "I can smell burning", what kind of person would say, "Shut up! Nothing's burning, you irrational, religionistic doom-monger!"? The answer, of course, is someone who was afraid that something was burning but didn't want to believe it or do anything about it. And this is the feeling I get from those who think that climate change is a hoax.

On the other hand, there is something, I think, that exacerbates this kind of denial. I have e-mail subscriptions to newletters from a number of environmental organisations. I got an e-mail from one of these with the title, "Who is the Scariest Climate Action Opponent?" I almost expect the words "of them all" to be tacked on at the end. I find this tone to be patronising. It's a talking down, as if to children (who shouldn't be talked down to anyway). Unfortunately, I've noticed just this tone more and more in the e-mails I receive, and I begin to think that it's no wonder people have the impression green activists are "religionistic", or whatever ridiculous, illiterate, Internet-age, made-up word they want to use, if this is a sample of the tone and attitude of the activism.

I suppose - I'm just guessing, in a writing-a-blog-post kind of way - that what the deniers and this particular kind of fixated activist have in common is fear. Of death, probably.



Where will it end?

I actually think, at the moment of writing, that it would be a shame if we let the film come to a premature end, through one kind of fear or another. To be accepting of the fact of death, of the end of the film, might make the film more enjoyable, and might make it possible to watch for longer. I suppose it has to end some time, but it seems to me that we haven't got to the really good bits yet. If there are any.

Sorry if this is trite.

I was going to link in David Bowie's Saviour Machine to this theme somehow, but I'm not sure I have a neat, seamless way of doing it now. I'll inset the clip, anyway.


A Warning to Young Couples

Sorry. Haven't been answering much of late. Will get round to it. In the meantime:



Beware

, ,

The Ex Occidente site is currently experiencing turbulence. I've notified the publisher and website manager that there's a problem, but it seems it's not fixed yet (I'll have to try on another computer to make sure).

There's a "reported attack site" warning; the diagnostic page is here. From what I can gather reading the information there, a third party has tried to knobble the site in some way:

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, www.exocccidente.com did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

How did this happen?

In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.



For those wishing to buy All God's Angels, Beware!, you can now also buy it from online retailers:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Quentin-S-Crisp.-ALL-GOD%27S-ANGELS-BEWARE-(Ex-Occidente)_W0QQitemZ310177881510QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxq20091029?IMSfp=TL091029187002r7692

http://order.fantasticliterature.com/books.php?sku=FC09.901

I think there are other places (such as Cold Tonnage), but I can't find specific links at the moment.

Remember, even if the Ex Occidente site is down, you can make enquiries at the following e-mail address:

exoccidente@gmail.com


Oh, Dance, Baby!

I've just been watching bits of Season 2 of Flight of the Conchords. One of the few times I regret not having a TV:



Trapped in the Web of Love!

Each man kills the thing he loves

, , , ...



I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty place

He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

From 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', by Oscar Wilde.


Death Education

Amongst my current reading is Closer to the Light, by Melvin Morse, M.D.. It's an account of the author's reseach into near death experiences. From the second chapter:

... doctors don't like to research death. Although most people die in hospitals, the subject of death is almost taboo there.



I recall a conversation with a doctor in which she insisted that it was impossible to come to terms with death. "For you, maybe," I thought, and rather lamented the fact that this was the attitude of someone whose job was to preside over death. It seemed a narrow-minded and immature view, a frozen view, and didn't inspire me with confidence in the medical profession.

From the fourth chapter:

Geoffrey Gorer, an authority on death and dying, says that death has replaced sex as the forbidden topic. Today, sex education is part of the schoolchild's curriculum. Death education is ignored. Says Gorer: "One has the right to cry only if no one else can see or hear. Solitary and shameful mourning is the only recourse, like a sort of masturbation."



Early on in my reading of Closer to the Light it occurred to me that the mystery surrounding death, perhaps being the greatest mystery known to us, is what allows the mental and imaginative wiggle room for the creation of fiction. It is the ultimate guarantor of suspense. Fiction, and art generally, is a kind of questioning within the suspense of mortality. What if all the suspense were suddenly gone? And yet, on the other hand, that art and fiction can 'entertain' at all, rather than simply horrify with the fact that it is a groping in the unknown, suggests a safety net, an intuition that fiction is only fiction. Human life then, is perhaps composed of a kind of balancing act between the creative freedom of suspense and the safety net of intuition. Perhaps.

We don't know yet.

Recently, someone started messaging me and sending me e-mails, to which I responded in, I think, a neutral-to-friendly fashion. For some reason, the conversation got onto the subject of the existence of the soul. My correspondent seemed to wish me to convince him that the soul exists, since I had mentioned some ideas on the matter. I told him that I wasn't interested in persuasion and debate. Although he said he understood this, still the message didn't seem to get through, as soon enough he was repeating his demands, more forcefully, that I prove to him the existence of the soul. Since I found this rather tedious and boorish, and since it indicated to me that he had not understood anything I'd said, anyway, I wrote a rather brusque reply, which may have been an overreaction. Even if it had been, it was a necessary one as it ended what seemed like a doomed correspondence. The guy wrote back with an e-mail of abuse and told me not to bother replying. I didn't.

I've just had a quick look through that correspondence now but can't find what I was looking for. Basically, as I recall, my correspondent mentioned some research currently being conducted into NDEs in which pictures would be placed on high shelves, face up, in hospitals, to see if people who experienced clinical death really leave their bodies and are therefore able to see the pcitures on those shelves. He mentioned this research apparently without knowing the outcome, as he was eagerly anticipating the proof that near death experiences are a hallucination.

Reading Closer to the Light I have thought to myself, whatever my consciousness is, and wherever it goes, at the moment all that I'm reading about is simply contained within my consciousness. This is a book, like any other book. It is not my own experience. For me, it is hearsay. I decided to do a little online research about the author. Since I don't have much energy or patience at the moment, I didn't do that much research, but from what I can gather, and for what it's worth, Melvin Morse, M.D., seems fairly well-known. In the course of this research, however, I turned up articles on what appears to be the study mentioned by my correspondent. I also read a notice on the study by its organiser, one Dr. Parnia. Since I had heard of this study from someone very much hostile to the idea of the existence of the soul, I somehow associated it with that attitude, and was mildly surprised (though I shouldn't have been) to find the tone of the notice very different to the tone adopted by my correspondent. It's probably best if you read it yourself, as I'm bound to be guilty of 'interpretation' if I attempt a precis. In any case, Dr. Parnia does not appear unduly hostile to the idea that there might be such a thing as consciousness separate to the body.

The question for me now, is, whatever the results of the study ultimately turn out to be, whether reassuring or otherwise, from the point of view of one whose entire existence has revolved around the endless suspense and questionng of fiction, do I really want to know?

Richard McBeef

,

I've been thinking a lot about Cho Seung-Hui this evening.

My chain of thought, to arrive at Cho Seung-Hui went something like this. I was watching Toyah Willcox performing I Want to be Free again, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that she was, in the video, trying to break out of a prison of her own making. Let me explain. She is depicted as being confined in some kind of cell with two representatives of normality peering in at her through a window. But this is, of course, a set - a film set. It is not actually a cell, but a stage that has been built for her. Presumably it cost money. Who was paying? It must have been the record company, Safari Records. I don't know enough about that company to be able to say whether they represented 'the establishment' in some way. But Toyah was also given a stage (or platform) to play at being imprisoned and escaping from that prison on Top of the Pops, The Kenny Everett show, and so on. You could say that society had accepted her. The stage they gave her was a safe prison cell from which she could escape safely. (And since the cell was counterfeit, perhaps her escape was, too.)



This reminded me of what Morrissey said in interview about the occasion on which he was questioned by the FBI:

I don't belong to any political groups, I don't really say anything unless I'm asked directly and I don't even demonstrate in public. I always assume that so-called authoritarian figures just assume that pop/rock music is slightly insane and an untouchable platform for the working classes to stand up and say something noticeable.



But what if the authorities do not allow this film set of a prison cell, in which members of the working class can safely rampage and throw plastic spoons about? Or what if someone can't even break into this film set of a prison cell?



That's when I thought of Cho Seung-Hui.

This is what I wrote in an e-mail to someone at the time of the Virginia Tech Massacre:

I've been kind of interested in the Virginia Tech massacre, too. Obviously, it's kind of unimaginable what it would have been like to be there and the whole thing is horrific, but when I read the newspaper reports and they focused on the writing of this character, which those around claimed was "surreal" and "morbid" and so on, I couldn't help feeling like I might have been Cho Seung-Hui in a past life or something. I mean, I feel like it could easily have been me. And there was something about a play or story he wrote in which a father (step-father?) was choked to death by his son - choked to death with a rice-crispie bar.

That's such an unexpected image. It's weirdly pathetic.

It occurred to me that perhaps the only difference between myself and Cho Seung-Hui is the fact that maybe I can write a bit better. I don't know why, but I feel confident that I am a better writer, even though I haven't actually read any of his stuff. And that this is the difference, and somehow the reason, or the most telling symptom of the reason, why I'm not doing the same thing he did. I mean, I have often and explicitly thought of writing as a kind of revenge, somewhat in the way you described in a previous e-mail.

I kind of feel that Cho Seung-Hui is basically Mizoguchi, from Kinkakuji, but maybe I'm projecting that. Anyway, I certainly feel I understand the idea of being a kind of total loser who feels himself in some way 'forced into this' because people are simply unable to accept him. There is no doubt he has now had an incredible impact on a great many lives.





I was prompted by my various thoughts on the matter to look up information on Cho Seung-Hui again this evening, and I finally got round to reading the play referred to in my e-mail - Richard McBeef. I've also now seen it performed. There are a number of versions on YouTube. I think my favourite so far is this one, though they all have their different virtues.

What do I think of the play? It's not the work of someone savvy with regard to getting published or garnering critical acclaim, but it is undoubtedly a work with resonance. I can imagine that some people who were taking the same class as Cho Seung-Hui were turning in assignments mechanically, or as a bit of fun. This is neither of those things. There is some matter there. This is a person with a desperate need to say something. I don't think I am able to say precisely what I would think of the work without the association of the massacre, but it has the fascination of a rancid piece of meat with flies buzzing around it.

My e-mail about is dated the 19th of April, 2007. At around this time a novella of mine had been accepted for publication, and at some later date, I was asked if there were any particular illustrators that I was keen on for the cover of the book. After some thought and research, I sent an e-mail giving the name of my first choice. I received an e-mail back telling me that, indeed, the artist would have been a good choice, but, unfortunately he had been killed in the Virginia Tech Massacre. I was shocked. How could this be? I visited the artist's website again. According to the website he was living happily with his wife and cat. For whatever reason, the website had not been taken down or updated since his death.

Ian MacFarlane, former classmate of Cho Seung-Hui apparently passed on Cho Seung-Hui's plays with a note to AOL News. This is from the note:

As far as the victims go, as I was heading to bed last night, I heard that my good friend Stack (Ryan Clark) was one of the first confirmed dead. I didn't want to believe that I'd never get to talk to him again, and all I could think about was how much I could tell him how much his friendship meant to me. During my junior year, Ryan, another friend and I used to get breakfast on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Shultz Dining Hall, one of the cafeterias on campus, and it was always the highlight of my day. He could talk forever it seemed and always made us laugh. He was a good friend, not just to me, but to a lot of people, and I'll miss him a lot.



I wonder what would have happened if Cho Seung-Hui had been a better writer, or had, in some way, managed to break into a film-set prison cell, where he could have safely pretended to wreak his revenge and get out.

There are all kinds of possibilities, I suppose. If he had been a really good writer, he might have been good enough to defuse his homicidal urges, but may easily have just ended up committing suicide when he was a little older, perhaps being forgotten, or if remembered, only by a very few. That would have been far more obliging of him.



This is also from MacFarlane's note, about Cho Seung-Hui's writing:

When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn't pressure him to give closing comments.



I do really wonder how my own writing would have been received by the same people. There is a question in my mind. I suppose it's indelicate, but it's only a question, and not a statement. I shall write it here: Was there, I wonder, anything of self-fulfilling prophecy in the worry that Cho was a shooter? Clearly he was regarded as very strange by his classmates. Then again, the way that MacFarlane expresses it, perhaps they did not worry enough:

While I "knew" Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him, but I couldn't think of anything. As far as notifying authorities, there isn't (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say "Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!" If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday's tragedy more than anything.



To complicate matters further I found a video on YouTube that suggested that Cho may not have been the killer at all. I can't seem to find it now. Perhaps I hallucinated it.

Addendum from Justin Isis:

We are not so different from the Aztecs; we give more attention to Cho killing people than we do to anything beautiful. Killing people to get attention says as much about the society that gives it media coverage as it does about the murderer. We already live in a factory farm, it`s called human society, and in it we are all abused and all eventually die. Why play by the rules of the factory farm? Wouldn`t it be better to blow it up?






Thought for the day (X2)

1) It is possible to regret being born. It is not possible to regret not being born.

2) Friends are just people who come to your funeral.


For the purposes of this interview I am Toyah Willcox



I've just watched this a number of times in a row.

Of course, she never did turn suburbia upside down, or this world inside out, but when someone makes such beautiful promises it seems cruel to remind them if they fail to keep them.

And here she is doing battle with wedding cakes and plastic cutlery while early eighties representatives of middle age look on in bewildered disapproval:



I am Toyah Willcox, actually, and I am gonna be free!

I am, literally, Toyah Willcox.

You unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you, I will do such things! What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be the terrors of the earth.

I hate everything.

I'm so depressed.

Prospect





Till the roses turn to ashes, till the organ turns to rust

Yessss!

Best song ever:



"Till the roses turn to ashes, till the organ turns to rust, oooohh!" Etc.

Best song ever:



"She smoked in my bed because she thought it would annoy me, but I love to see the girl smoke in my bed, oooh! Circle of the tyrants!" Etc.

Best song ever:



"Gloria’s freckles just titter and tease, but they’re no bloody use to me, No bloody use to me. Oooohfff! Death is my joy! Major Tom!" Etc.

Another best song ever:



"Akashia no ame ga yamu toki aozora sashite hato ga tobuuuu. Oooh! Blood and sand mark the way! The usurper's tears guide my sword! Ziggy played guitar!" Etc.

I think there was at least one more best song ever, but I've forgotten now. Maybe it'll come to me...



Happy Life Day

Never fear, Princess Leia is here to warm your cockles:



Also featuring a touching scene of domestic Wookiee life.

Association

It's driving me mad. My thinking is very associational, so a whole paper-chain of thought can collapse if I forget one of the associations. There's something I've been thinking about recently, and because I've mentally misplaced one of the associations, I can't remember what the whole thing is. Anyway, I'm going to put the associations that I can recall down here, in the hope they will jog my memory:



The Cave Of The Unborn

Thomas Hardy

I rose at night and visited
The Cave of the Unborn,
And crowding shapes surrounded me
For tidings of the life to be,
Who long had prayed the silent Head
To speed their advent morn.

Their eyes were lit with artless trust;
Hope thrilled their every tone:
“A place the loveliest, is it not?
A pure delight, a beauty-spot
Where all is gentle, pure and just
And violence is unknown?”

My heart was anguished for their sake;
I could not frame a word;
But they descried my sunken face
And seemed to read therein, and trace
The news which Pity would not break
Nor Truth leave unaverred.

And as I silently retired
I turned and watched them still:
And they came helter-skelter out,
Driven forward like a rabble rout
Into the world they had so desired,
By the all-immanent Will.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism#Philosophical_skepticism



Something's missing...

No Future

, ,

I watched this interview with Richey Edwards out of The Manic Street Preachers the other day:



I'm not sure what year it's from, but presumably some time before 1995 (when Richey vanished from the face of the Earth).

The first question the interviewer asks is as follows:

Your role in the band has included the writing of lyrics. All of these have had what might be called a negative or pessimistic tone. Do you think that will change in the future?



I actually can't quite make out all of Richey's words distinctly, but he says something like the following:

I think the whole first world, its suffering is very self-indulgent. There's no reason to be unhappy, but I think everybody feels melancholia quite regularly.



As far as I can make out, the interviewer's next question is:

And that falling into melancholia (before you know it), is that the way your own path in life has taken you?



From Richey's reply:

My father is really, really happy, and his standard of living when he was my age was nothing compared to mine. And yet, I sit in my house and I moan and complain, and he just doesn't understand. And, I don't know why, it's just the way our generation is, I suppose.



I've been thinking about this. Of course, my own feelings are similar (though I don't agree with everything he says in this interview). I don't really want to go into details, but, despite my standard of living being well below the British average, I am also aware that, materially speaking, I am living in relative luxury. Relative, that is, to other countries in the world, and to the foreign country that is the past. I do appreciate the luxuries I have.

What I don't have, however, is any sense that there's a reason to get out of bed other than the fact that things will ultimately end up being harder for me if I stay in bed. I really don't see any future for myself or anyone else now alive unless benevolent aliens swoop down on golden beams of light in 2012 and tell us we've graduated to the 'cosmic party' stage of consciousness.

Of course, Richey references The Smiths later on in his interview, and this is telling. I wonder what it is that many people 'don't get' about The Smiths. Some have the sense that it was all moaning about nothing. And yet, millions of people have felt extraordinarily in tune with that particular moaning about nothing. Some kind of fall had taken place in people's outlook and emotions over the space of a generation or two.



That's how it seems, at least, and if I question what that seeming depends upon, then the immediate answer is popular culture. Popular culture now is vastly more nihilistic than it was in, say... the fifties. For instance, I watched the video of Animal Collective's Peacebone the other day:



Maybe I'm wrong, but I have the feeling if this song, and this video, had come out in the fifties, they would have been extremely shocking. Watching this video just the other day, though, my reaction was a giggle or two, and a yawn. It is 'cute nihilism'. (Probaby more 'cute' than 'nihilism', actually.)

Of course, between the fifties and now there was... the sixties. I can't help wondering whether something in the sixties threw open the doors of the human id to let all the monsters out.

But that's really a wild stab in the dark, and perhaps the kind of theorising that I've heard described as 'coffee-table psychology'. Basically, I don't know.

Since the sixties, of course, we've had all kinds of backlashes (or lashings back). For instance, the writer Michel Houellebecq is well-known for excoriating the hippie ideals of his parents, and for baiting the kinds of liberals who are the cultural descendents of those ideals.

Here's one of my favourite Houellebecq rants:

I had decided at that particular time to remain in Madrid all week, and two days later I had a little argument with Esther on the subject of Ken Park, the latest film by Larry Clark, which she had been keen to go and see. I had hated Kids, and I hated Ken Park even more, the scene where this dirty little shit beats up his grandparents was particularly unbearable. That film-maker completely disgusted me, and it was no doubt this sincere disgust that made me incapable of stopping myself from talking about it, whilst I strongly suspected that Esther liked him out of habit and conformism, because it was generally cool to approve of the representation of violence in the arts, and that she liked him without any real discernment, in the same way she liked, for example, Michael Haneke, without even realising that the meaning of those sorrowful and moral films by Michael Haneke was completely different from that of those by Larry Clark. I knew that it would have been better for me to keep quiet, that abandoning my usual comic character could only bring me trouble, but I couldn't, the imp of the perverse was the stronger. We were in a bizarre, very kitsch bar, with mirrors and gold fixtures, full of paroxysmal homosexuals who buggered themselves silly in adjacent backrooms, yet which was open to everyone, with groups of young boys and girls calmly drinking Coca-Colas at neighbouring tables. I explained to her whilst rapidly downing my iced tequila that I had built the whole of my career and fortune on the commercial exploitation of bad instincts, of the West's absurd attraction to cynicism and evil, and that I therefore felt myself ideally placed to assert that among all the merchants of evil, Larry Clark was one of the most common, most vulgar, simply because he unreservedly took the side of the young against the old, because all his films were an incitement to children to treat their parents without the least humanity, the least pity, and that there was nothing new or original about this, it had been the same in all the cultural sectors for the last fifty-odd years, and this supposedly cultural tendency in fact only hid the desire for a return to a primitive state where the young got rid of the old without ceremony, with no questions asked, simply because they were too weak to defend themselves. It was, therefore, just a brutal regression, typical of modernity, to a stage preceding all civilisation, for any civilisation could judge itself on the fate it reserved for the weakest, for those who were no longer either productive or desirable, in short Larry Clark and his abject accomplice Harmony Korine were just two of the most tedious - and artistically the most miserable - examples of the Nietzschean scum who had been proliferating in the cultural field for far too long, and who could in no way be put on the same level as people like Michael Haneke, or like me, for example - who had always made sure to introduce a certain element of doubt, uncertainty and unease into my shows, even if they were (I was the first to admit it) otherwise repugnant. She listened to me with a sad expression, but with great attention, she hadn't yet touched her Fanta.

The advantage of giving a moral lecture, is that this type of argument had been under such strong censorship, and for so many years, that it provokes an incongruous effect and immediately attracts the attention of the interlocuter; the disadvantage is that the interlocuter never manages to take you completely seriously. The serious and attentive expression on Esther's face threw me for an instant, but I ordered another glass of tequila and ploughed on, whilst becoming conscious that I was getting excited artificially, that there was something false about my sincerity: apart from the patently obvious fact that Larry Clark was just a small, undistinguished merchant and that to cite him in the same sentence as Nietzsche was already in itself something derisory, I felt in my heart of hearts scarcely more concerned about these subjects than by world hunger, human rights or any rubbish of that kind. Nevertheless, I went on, with increasing acrimony, carried away by that strange mixture of nastiness and masochism, which I perhaps hoped would lead me to my destruction, after it had brought me fame and fortune. Not only did the old not have the right to fuck, I continued ferociously, but they no longer had the right to rebel against a world that nevertheless crushed them unsparingly, made them defenceless prey to the violence of juvenile delinquents before dumping them in ignoble twilight homes where they were humiliated and mistreated by decerebrated auxiliary nurses, and despite all this, rebellion was forbidden to them, rebellion too - like sexuality, like pleasure, like love - seemed reserved for the young and to have no point for other people, any cause incapable of mobilising the interest of the young was disqualified in advance, basically, old people were in all matters treated simply as waste, to be granted only a survival that was miserable, conditional and more and more narrowly limited. In my script The Social Security Deficit, which hadn't seen the light of day, and this appeared highly significant to me, I continued, almost besisde myself - I incited instead the old to rebel against the young, to use them and to show them who's boss. Why for example should male and female adolescents, voracious and sheep-like consumers, always greedy for pocket money, not be forced into prostitution, the only means by which they could modestly reimburse the immense efforts and struggles that were made for their well-being? And why, at a time when contraception had been perfected, and the risk of genetic degeneration perfectly localised, should we maintain the absurd and humiliating taboo that is incest? Those are the real questions, the authentic moral issues! I exclaimed angrily; now that was no Larry Clark.



I think one telling detail here is that the narrator admits that he's basically peddling the same kind of nihilism as Larry Clark, but is passionate about certain nuances in the nihilism that make a difference, as if nuances of nihilism is all that we have left.

I wonder if every cultural backlash we will have now will simply be a backlash from one nuance of nihilism to another.

Not that there can be many cultural backlashes left to us now, with time and resources running out as they are.

I suppose one could seek the causes of our general nihilism in the past, and could speculate about the effect that the mere existence of nuclear warheads and so on, have on the human psyche. One could berate a collective figure embodying Richey Edwards's uncomprehending father with the words from Bowie's Changes: "Don't tell them to grow up and out of it/Where's your shame? You've left us up to our necks in it." One could talk about affluenza, about deteriorating education, loss of faith, the breakdown of the family, but I wonder if, after all, our nihilism does not come from the future, and the fact that we are fast approaching its end, and that there is nothing now worth doing, and that the fact that we are, as humans, essentially and irredeemably alone, and moving towards death alone, is increasingly inescapable.

Looking back into the past again, here's another one of those backlashes within the nuances of nihilism: