File this one under: a bad day. Don't feel I can do this. I'm ragged. Physically, mentally. Down to the bone. A cosmic horror has got my soul shoved into the grindstone of the universe, and it is grinding, crushing until all that is left is bloody stump.
I felt better at work this morning, with drugs in me I felt the worst of the flu was over, and pub was quiet, and it was nice to joke around with Zoe and Liz, take it easy, have a laugh.
Then we were not quiet, and I could not handle it. I was dizzy, faint, couldn't concentrate, every step was exhausting, I was on an uneven keel. Got to 5pm and I grabbed my coat and bolted, left the pub a mess and everyone struggling, which, like, I hate to do, but I haven't called in sick the last three days, so you get what you get. Came home and made Earl Grey, got into bed, passed out.
Now it's 11pm. I haven't eaten. I'm working the close tomorrow with minimum staff, because last year was quiet, but I'm worried this year won't be quiet, and I'm running at 40 or so percent right now...
And, more, I'm just struggling right now. I'm lost. I feel I'm going nowhere with the writing, it's all I can do to force myself to write this little blog every night, but I'm building no momentum, working towards nothing, it all feels harder rather than easier day by day.
I guess that's not true. Guess I am improving, though it never feels like it in the moment. It's always struggle, but that is life, you feel caught in marshland, slippery stones under foot, the way ahead hazy, but you look back, and you have journeyed from where you were.
And the writing has improved. I don't feel the anxiety of people seeing me imperfect and unguarded that I did. I'm better at putting up rough pieces and moving on. And those pieces, all first drafts, which everyone involved in creativity agrees is the stage to be loose, to make mistakes, to get it wrong - some of those first drafts have actually been very good. Sometimes there is energy, and there are intriguing sentence constructions, and I can feel the music, and I am borne along. And when there are not these things there are still words, one after the other, forming some kind of structure, and it is always worthwhile to have done that. On the worst days there is still this.
And maybe that cosmic horror isn't grinding down my soul, but my ego. The process is unbelievably painful, exhausting, but the shards that fly off are in the end everything that wasn't me. And maybe the cosmic horror is not a horror, but God, disguised, as all horror truly is, and he is simply trying to make me small enough to fit through the eye of a needle.
Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
......
Music: Don't Delete the Kisses, by Wolf Alice. Oh, man, I adore this electro indie 80s throwback stuff. Driving rhythm, breathless vocals, aching longing etched in neon moonlight. Gorgeous.
Monday 31 December 2018
Saturday 29 December 2018
Day 246: Creaking
Flu hasn’t abated. Woke up creaking, sore, decidedly unwell. Had to push myself to finish the post last night - was I writing about dinosaur nomenclature? Huh? - and when I finished I was wiped out. Tried to meditate but everything ached, my brain was on fire, so crawled to bed with my book, managed half a paragraph, before slumping down into delirious slumber.
Work now. Ten hour shift on what, if yesterday is anything to go by, promises to be a disgusting Saturday filled with roaming packs of feral dad-lads unleashed from their families and stalking the streets, searching for meaning in the bottom of pints of mainstream lagers.
If I worked in an office I’d call in sick today. Just going to have to load up on paracetamol and caffeine and wade on through.
......
Well, I’m home. Work was quiet. Thank God, was all I could do to be there, to stay upright, to exist. Spent time organising staff files, pottered on glasses, downed pints of Lemsip Max. Left early, had tea, been sat half asleep in front of PC for the last hour.
Open tomorrow, then not in till the close NYE, so an evening then a morning to recuperate. Luverly.
......
Music: Stan Getz and The Oscar Peterson Trio. JAZZ!
Work now. Ten hour shift on what, if yesterday is anything to go by, promises to be a disgusting Saturday filled with roaming packs of feral dad-lads unleashed from their families and stalking the streets, searching for meaning in the bottom of pints of mainstream lagers.
If I worked in an office I’d call in sick today. Just going to have to load up on paracetamol and caffeine and wade on through.
......
Well, I’m home. Work was quiet. Thank God, was all I could do to be there, to stay upright, to exist. Spent time organising staff files, pottered on glasses, downed pints of Lemsip Max. Left early, had tea, been sat half asleep in front of PC for the last hour.
Open tomorrow, then not in till the close NYE, so an evening then a morning to recuperate. Luverly.
......
Music: Stan Getz and The Oscar Peterson Trio. JAZZ!
Day 245: Stegosauruses
Well, I've got nothing else to write tonight, so I'm going to talk about stegosauruses.
No, I'm not. I am going to talk about Stegosaurus, but I'm not going to write it "stegosauruses".
OK, so here's where I'm coming from. My cousin sent a screenshot from a listicle of "17 mind-blowing facts" or whatever to our family Whatsapp group yesterday, with the mind-blowing fact in question explaining that Stegosaurus is older than grass, which grass apparently evolved "as we know it" a good 60 million years after the last of those dinosaurs popped their scaly clogs and slid, clogless, off this mortal coil.
Which, fair enough, is mildly interesting. But here's how the listicle spelled Stegosaurus: "stegosauruses".
The writer, and pedant, and dinosaur lover, in me cannot let that stand. No way.
Dinosaur names, you see, are terms for the taxon - the label within the scheme of taxonomic classification for lifeforms - rather than for individuals within that taxon. As such they can never be plural.
Remember that old hierarchy of taxonomy from biology lessons? Life > Domain > Kingdom > Phylum > Class > Order > Genus > Species. Dinosaur names tend to refer to a species or genus. Triceratops is a genus. Tyrannosaurus rex is a species (Tyrannosaurus is the genus, and the rex suffix distinguishes the species.
There can only ever be one of each genus, or species, so the issue of how to pluralise it technically never arises.
For extant species, of course, we do have colloquial terms for groups of members of that species. So where Panthera leo and Panthera onca are the scientific names of two species in the Panthera genus, we more commonly refer to them as "lions" and "jaguars". There is only one Panthera leo, but it's fine to say "Oh, no, Dave, there are three lions charging at you right now." (Or shout, more like.)
Similarly, we ourselves belong to the species Homo sapiens (singular form, Latin for "wise man"), of the genus Homo, but we use "humans" to talk about groups of us.
For dinosaurs, however, because there are no more dinosaurs, there's never been such a pressing need to develop such a system.
Except that we're fascinated by dinosaurs, and we can't help imagining them loping about the lands. We're forever making films where they're cloned from the DNA of sap-covered mosquitoes (the family Culicidae, comprising many thousands of fly-species), or writing fantasy books where children are transported back to the Triassic era, or compiling thoughtless listicles about the temporal existence of dinosaurs in relation to grass (the family Poaceae).
And, in these cases, well, it's important to talk about herds of triceratops, or a mating pair of T-Rexes, or those three velociraptors hunting Robert Muldoon through the underbrush.
Yes, the pedantry exists because there's a genuine gap where the correct usage comes up short. This often happens when there are large numbers of people making spelling or grammar mistakes. The mistake highlights a need, and there's a change, and the language slowly evolves. That's why pedantry can so often be tedious and enervating - old bores grumpily refusing to move with the times.
But there's also a reason to uphold standards, to point out and stick to the rules. Let everything be of equal value and order quickly breaks down, you descend into chaos, and precision and discernment become impossible.
So, in summary, here is my guide to dinosaur names:
In informal conversation go wild. T-Rex, T-Rexes, stegosauruses, velociraptors, whatever floats your boat. There's no universally agreed standard for dinosaur groups, as there is with "lions" or "humans". And life's too short to pause a conversation every time you need to work out whether it's "Gerald and I" or "me and Gerald", let alone to worry about formal scientific taxonomy. Does the person to whom you're talking get your meaning? That's good enough.
In writing, however, I'd take more care. If you're writing formally, always abide by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, and use italics and capitalisation of the first letter. Tyrannosaurus rex. Compsognathus. Velociraptor. The genus name can be abbreviated, as in T. rex, or V. mongoliensis (a species of Velociraptor), but you should never, ever, pluralise.
If your writing is less formal, on a blog like this, or in a listicle, then writing closer to speaking might be more appropriate. "The last individuals belonging to the taxon Stegosaurus roamed the Earth 60 million years before grass evolved..." is perhaps too stuffy. But "stegosauruses" will make certain people wince - especially as the plural of saurus, if you're insisting on pluralising, should be sauri.
If you're breaking the rules you should know when you're doing so, and why. It's always a compromise, so ensure you understand the trade-off, and make your choice consciously.
Signalling to your audience that you know about things like this is the best way to appear elegant, to build confidence, and thus to have your thoughts heard, trusted, and believed. A little care goes a long way.
......
Music: Pristine, by Snail Mail.
No, I'm not. I am going to talk about Stegosaurus, but I'm not going to write it "stegosauruses".
OK, so here's where I'm coming from. My cousin sent a screenshot from a listicle of "17 mind-blowing facts" or whatever to our family Whatsapp group yesterday, with the mind-blowing fact in question explaining that Stegosaurus is older than grass, which grass apparently evolved "as we know it" a good 60 million years after the last of those dinosaurs popped their scaly clogs and slid, clogless, off this mortal coil.
Which, fair enough, is mildly interesting. But here's how the listicle spelled Stegosaurus: "stegosauruses".
The writer, and pedant, and dinosaur lover, in me cannot let that stand. No way.
Dinosaur names, you see, are terms for the taxon - the label within the scheme of taxonomic classification for lifeforms - rather than for individuals within that taxon. As such they can never be plural.
Remember that old hierarchy of taxonomy from biology lessons? Life > Domain > Kingdom > Phylum > Class > Order > Genus > Species. Dinosaur names tend to refer to a species or genus. Triceratops is a genus. Tyrannosaurus rex is a species (Tyrannosaurus is the genus, and the rex suffix distinguishes the species.
There can only ever be one of each genus, or species, so the issue of how to pluralise it technically never arises.
For extant species, of course, we do have colloquial terms for groups of members of that species. So where Panthera leo and Panthera onca are the scientific names of two species in the Panthera genus, we more commonly refer to them as "lions" and "jaguars". There is only one Panthera leo, but it's fine to say "Oh, no, Dave, there are three lions charging at you right now." (Or shout, more like.)
Similarly, we ourselves belong to the species Homo sapiens (singular form, Latin for "wise man"), of the genus Homo, but we use "humans" to talk about groups of us.
For dinosaurs, however, because there are no more dinosaurs, there's never been such a pressing need to develop such a system.
Except that we're fascinated by dinosaurs, and we can't help imagining them loping about the lands. We're forever making films where they're cloned from the DNA of sap-covered mosquitoes (the family Culicidae, comprising many thousands of fly-species), or writing fantasy books where children are transported back to the Triassic era, or compiling thoughtless listicles about the temporal existence of dinosaurs in relation to grass (the family Poaceae).
And, in these cases, well, it's important to talk about herds of triceratops, or a mating pair of T-Rexes, or those three velociraptors hunting Robert Muldoon through the underbrush.
Yes, the pedantry exists because there's a genuine gap where the correct usage comes up short. This often happens when there are large numbers of people making spelling or grammar mistakes. The mistake highlights a need, and there's a change, and the language slowly evolves. That's why pedantry can so often be tedious and enervating - old bores grumpily refusing to move with the times.
But there's also a reason to uphold standards, to point out and stick to the rules. Let everything be of equal value and order quickly breaks down, you descend into chaos, and precision and discernment become impossible.
So, in summary, here is my guide to dinosaur names:
In informal conversation go wild. T-Rex, T-Rexes, stegosauruses, velociraptors, whatever floats your boat. There's no universally agreed standard for dinosaur groups, as there is with "lions" or "humans". And life's too short to pause a conversation every time you need to work out whether it's "Gerald and I" or "me and Gerald", let alone to worry about formal scientific taxonomy. Does the person to whom you're talking get your meaning? That's good enough.
In writing, however, I'd take more care. If you're writing formally, always abide by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, and use italics and capitalisation of the first letter. Tyrannosaurus rex. Compsognathus. Velociraptor. The genus name can be abbreviated, as in T. rex, or V. mongoliensis (a species of Velociraptor), but you should never, ever, pluralise.
If your writing is less formal, on a blog like this, or in a listicle, then writing closer to speaking might be more appropriate. "The last individuals belonging to the taxon Stegosaurus roamed the Earth 60 million years before grass evolved..." is perhaps too stuffy. But "stegosauruses" will make certain people wince - especially as the plural of saurus, if you're insisting on pluralising, should be sauri.
If you're breaking the rules you should know when you're doing so, and why. It's always a compromise, so ensure you understand the trade-off, and make your choice consciously.
Signalling to your audience that you know about things like this is the best way to appear elegant, to build confidence, and thus to have your thoughts heard, trusted, and believed. A little care goes a long way.
......
Music: Pristine, by Snail Mail.
Friday 28 December 2018
Day 244: Leaky
Back home. Christmas all done for another year. I’ve unpacked my presents, sorted my room, now sat shivering with full-on lurgy, viscous liquid leaking from my nose. Head is swimming, brain bubbling somewhere around a thousand degrees. Tried doing a cryptic crossword but I’ve got no brain power - Mrs Simpson’s spread (5) was easy, as was Truce for review of Erica’s fee (9), but what’s Only heads can negotiate a lock on this? (5)? Or B, C or D, for example, in harmony (9)? I can sense the answers out there, floating muddily in the quagmire of my consciousness, but I can’t wade out far enough to find them.
I’m going to get in bed and read that Welcome to Night Vale novel Mike bought me; somehow the ghost stories of sentient houses, faces in the desert, doors to other dimensions, and predatory street sweepers seem appropriate for my current state of mind. I’m pretty much in Night Vale already, I only need the gentlest of nudges.
Oh, and it’s CONSONANT, right? “B, C and D, for example”. And “in harmony”. Consonant.
Work tomorrow morning. Don’t even.
……
Music. Missed this the last few days, being on my phone and all (“all” = “writing at 1am in bed just wanting to get it done and get to sleep”). Today: Burning, by The Whitest Boy Alive, one of the bands Jamie introduced me to. Jangly, upbeat guitars, tinged with a low octane insouciance. Like Los Campesinos!, played on a slowing tape deck at the bottom of the ocean.
I’m going to get in bed and read that Welcome to Night Vale novel Mike bought me; somehow the ghost stories of sentient houses, faces in the desert, doors to other dimensions, and predatory street sweepers seem appropriate for my current state of mind. I’m pretty much in Night Vale already, I only need the gentlest of nudges.
Oh, and it’s CONSONANT, right? “B, C and D, for example”. And “in harmony”. Consonant.
Work tomorrow morning. Don’t even.
……
Music. Missed this the last few days, being on my phone and all (“all” = “writing at 1am in bed just wanting to get it done and get to sleep”). Today: Burning, by The Whitest Boy Alive, one of the bands Jamie introduced me to. Jangly, upbeat guitars, tinged with a low octane insouciance. Like Los Campesinos!, played on a slowing tape deck at the bottom of the ocean.
Thursday 27 December 2018
Day 243: Chirpy Cheep
Sitting up in bed tapping onto my phone screen, soft lamplight caressing the covers, stretching up the walls. First night I've almost plain forgotten to write the blog. Liz went to bed early, exhausted, and Jamie and I ate a cheese board and listened to bossa nova post-punk covers and shoegaze indie from Berlin, while Mum, who's got no game, talked about songs from her teenage years, American Pie and Spirit in the Sky and Chirpy Chirpy Cheep.
Mum looking for song names on her phone to jog her memory, accidentally playing samples, at full volume, The Eagles, Creedance, drowning out the underground singer songwriters Jamie is introducing me to. Oh bugger it, Mum yells. Blasted thing. Oh Where's the button gone? The whole screen has disappeared now! Bloody useless thing.
God I love her so much. But she's seriously got no game whatsoever.
Eventually we run out of cheese, Mum runs out of seventies radio hits with which to interrupt our playlist, and Jamie and I walk her back to her hotel down deserted Westminster streets. We come back and mean to go to bed, but then sit up for another hour talking about music production, and writing, and then videogames from our teenage years, Prince of Persia and Counter Strike and Grand Theft Auto 3, our voices rising, our eyes sparkling with the thrill of remembering.
Jamie and I have also got no game whatsoever.
I'm back up to Sheffield in the morning. I'm full of flu, I've got no clothes washed, my room is a tip, I've got a million things to sort out, and I'm back in work first thing Friday, but I wouldn't have traded these days for anything. Family means the most. Even if none of us have got any game.
It's all family. And cheese. The cheese was good, too.
Mum looking for song names on her phone to jog her memory, accidentally playing samples, at full volume, The Eagles, Creedance, drowning out the underground singer songwriters Jamie is introducing me to. Oh bugger it, Mum yells. Blasted thing. Oh Where's the button gone? The whole screen has disappeared now! Bloody useless thing.
God I love her so much. But she's seriously got no game whatsoever.
Eventually we run out of cheese, Mum runs out of seventies radio hits with which to interrupt our playlist, and Jamie and I walk her back to her hotel down deserted Westminster streets. We come back and mean to go to bed, but then sit up for another hour talking about music production, and writing, and then videogames from our teenage years, Prince of Persia and Counter Strike and Grand Theft Auto 3, our voices rising, our eyes sparkling with the thrill of remembering.
Jamie and I have also got no game whatsoever.
I'm back up to Sheffield in the morning. I'm full of flu, I've got no clothes washed, my room is a tip, I've got a million things to sort out, and I'm back in work first thing Friday, but I wouldn't have traded these days for anything. Family means the most. Even if none of us have got any game.
It's all family. And cheese. The cheese was good, too.
Wednesday 26 December 2018
Day 242: Parakeets
Liz and J just gone to bed, exhausted from hosting. Mum is back in her hotel. I'm sat up under the Christmas tree, last of my green tea cooling in the mug, heater element clicking down to silence. Arya and Rey are having manic minutes chasing scrunched balls of wrapping paper about the room, before they slink round the door and into bed with their snoring humans.
It's been a good Christmas Day. I'm coming down with a cold, it's making my head swim, my joints ache, my throat burn. But I've pumped myself with vitamins - Jamie insisted I eat a peeled lemon with him, he swears by it - and I'm powering through the best I can.
We went walking through St James's Park once we were all showered, held out crushed nuts to the parakeets, felt thrills as they swept down and clamped feet around fingers, ate off our hands. We came home past the £20-million apartments, all deserted, and opened simple presents of books and mugs and new pants. I got an old charity shop collection of haiku by Basho, a new maroon shirt to replace last year's shirt, some aftershave, the weight of the parakeets on my arm, a peeled lemon, a mother and sister and brother-in-law (soon-to-be), two kittens chasing wild circuits around the room.
Jamie's parents and sister came by for the evening meal, with Liz sweating and stressing about coordinating the food, the conversation, the night. She needn't have worried; it all was beautiful. We ate and chatted about the episodes of Holby City and Doctor Who Jamie's father had directed, posed for a group photo perfectly ruined by leaping cats.
J's family left, and we sat fatigued on the sofas. I read the Welcome to Night Vale novel my friend Mike got me, ate mince pies, played with the cats.
Falling asleep now. Got tomorrow here to do nothing, gorgeous, sprawling nothing, at most a cryptic crossword with J while Liz and Mum go wedding dress viewing, and then back up north on Thursday, and back to work. Before that, though, decorations glinting in candlelight, homemade food, mugs of tea, kittens, sofas, sleep.
Lots and lots of sleep. Merry Christmas x
It's been a good Christmas Day. I'm coming down with a cold, it's making my head swim, my joints ache, my throat burn. But I've pumped myself with vitamins - Jamie insisted I eat a peeled lemon with him, he swears by it - and I'm powering through the best I can.
We went walking through St James's Park once we were all showered, held out crushed nuts to the parakeets, felt thrills as they swept down and clamped feet around fingers, ate off our hands. We came home past the £20-million apartments, all deserted, and opened simple presents of books and mugs and new pants. I got an old charity shop collection of haiku by Basho, a new maroon shirt to replace last year's shirt, some aftershave, the weight of the parakeets on my arm, a peeled lemon, a mother and sister and brother-in-law (soon-to-be), two kittens chasing wild circuits around the room.
Jamie's parents and sister came by for the evening meal, with Liz sweating and stressing about coordinating the food, the conversation, the night. She needn't have worried; it all was beautiful. We ate and chatted about the episodes of Holby City and Doctor Who Jamie's father had directed, posed for a group photo perfectly ruined by leaping cats.
J's family left, and we sat fatigued on the sofas. I read the Welcome to Night Vale novel my friend Mike got me, ate mince pies, played with the cats.
Falling asleep now. Got tomorrow here to do nothing, gorgeous, sprawling nothing, at most a cryptic crossword with J while Liz and Mum go wedding dress viewing, and then back up north on Thursday, and back to work. Before that, though, decorations glinting in candlelight, homemade food, mugs of tea, kittens, sofas, sleep.
Lots and lots of sleep. Merry Christmas x
Tuesday 25 December 2018
Day 241: Mince pies
Smooshed in back of taxi next to my sister and mother. Jamie, my soon-to-be brother in law, is in the passenger seat, wine drunk, glorious, making friends with the taxi driver. Jamie has this way about him. Talking about driving being a sense of freedom, about areas of London, about the taxi company he used to use as a kid… now they're on to the driver's wedding in Glasgow, how Glasgow is different from London, a million other things. Jamie is interested in everything, passionate about everything, looking for friendship and flowing energy and joy in every single thing.
Night with family, big bourgeois family of red wine and Surrey suburbs and month-long holidays in Costa Rica. Love them so much but what is there for a scraggy limping bartender like me to say to all that, slouching and stumbling from one day to the next? They talk of honeymoon and minimoon plans and I slurp tea, sit in dark crow thoughts, feel my lids drooping.
I needed a week off to sleep before coming here. I close my eyes and I'm back on the bar, bodies pressing in at me, mind taut with tension of getting everyone served. Open eyes. I'm just in the dining room, I'm off, relax. Eyes close: I'm back in the thrumming black of the bar, customers groaning all around.
But then we eat mince pies and play board games, and I wake up a little. My team wins both rounds, my cousin's fiancé who hates to lose loses twice, and I try really hard to be magnanimous. I fail.
Then midnight taxi ride hurtling into Central London, Jamie quizzing driver, and I snooze. And back to play with cats, make a brew, suck a strepsil, and fall to bed.
Night with family, big bourgeois family of red wine and Surrey suburbs and month-long holidays in Costa Rica. Love them so much but what is there for a scraggy limping bartender like me to say to all that, slouching and stumbling from one day to the next? They talk of honeymoon and minimoon plans and I slurp tea, sit in dark crow thoughts, feel my lids drooping.
I needed a week off to sleep before coming here. I close my eyes and I'm back on the bar, bodies pressing in at me, mind taut with tension of getting everyone served. Open eyes. I'm just in the dining room, I'm off, relax. Eyes close: I'm back in the thrumming black of the bar, customers groaning all around.
But then we eat mince pies and play board games, and I wake up a little. My team wins both rounds, my cousin's fiancé who hates to lose loses twice, and I try really hard to be magnanimous. I fail.
Then midnight taxi ride hurtling into Central London, Jamie quizzing driver, and I snooze. And back to play with cats, make a brew, suck a strepsil, and fall to bed.
First Christmas Eve I haven't been drunk since I was 16. Coming up on 250 days straight blogging. That's really something.
I will sleep now. Already it is Christmas.
Monday 24 December 2018
Day 240: This is the end
Chopper blades spinning. Ka-thunk. Ka-thunk. Jim Morrison wailing. Music fades. Rotor blades resolve into overhead fan. Table top. Brandy bottle, tumbler. Pack of smokes. Menu holder.
Our grizzled hero lies in a booth in a deserted pub, his legs dangling from the bench, wild eyes staring up at the ceiling.
"Booth 18. Shit. I'm only in Booth 18."
Picks up glass of fruit juice, raises to lips with shaking hand.
"When I was home from my first Christmas it was worse. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there all I could think of was getting back on the bar. I'm here all morning now, waiting for a mission ... Getting softer. Every minute I stay in this booth, I get weaker ... And every minute Charlie, and Kev, and Ian, all the Dad-Lads, they roam the streets, getting stronger."
The Doors start up again, then abruptly shut off. Too early for that 60s Spotify playlist.
"Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission. And for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it over like breakfast."
Two starched-collar team-leaders saunter over, swinging key fobs.
"Rob, we have orders to take you-"
"-What are the charges?"
"...There are... no charges. You have orders to report to the Manager, as soon as you're free. Come on, Supervisor, let's get you cleaned up."
They lift our man under the armpits, hoist him to his feet, brush pain au chocolat crumbs from his beard...
IN THE MANAGER'S OFFICE:
The Manager is sat with his assistant. Plates of food scattered about. They look up as our supervisor enters.
"Hiyaaa. Well, we're eating. We've got, let's see ... sweet potato fries, and usually they're not bad. Perhaps we'll pass both ways to save time. Supervisor, I don't know how you feel about this pumpkin ravioli, but if you eat some, you'll never have to prove your courage in any other way."
Supervisor takes a spoonful, tears it apart, chews slowly.
Manager passes Supervisor a piece of paper.
"This is today's rota. I'm going home. I was here at 2am last night, and I was back at 7am this morning. My methods have become ... unsound. You guys can take it from here."
Manager goes home. Supervisor stands on bar with Assistant. Their troops arrive, just kids, barely old enough to shave. Together they enter the heart of darkness of the Sunday two days before Christmas with no functioning ice machine, no change in the safe, hordes of amassing attackers arrayed in glowing comedy Christmas jumpers, Santa hats, Barbour jackets. One group wrapped in silver paper, throwing tampons about the pub. It's a whole thing. Another unclipping the rope being used to cordon off an area and attempting to clip it through their noses. Gas goes. A beer line snaps. Bar is like the last operating base upriver in Vietnam. Bodies everywhere. "Who's in charge here?" "Shit, man, ain't you?"
Then it's done. They've made it through. Then customer comes to the bar. "Just thought you should know, someone's been sick out of the gents' toilet, and across the landing, and all down the stairs."
"The horror. The horror."
......
Music: BAM BAM BA BA BAAAM BAAM, BAM BA BA BAA BAAM....!
Our grizzled hero lies in a booth in a deserted pub, his legs dangling from the bench, wild eyes staring up at the ceiling.
"Booth 18. Shit. I'm only in Booth 18."
Picks up glass of fruit juice, raises to lips with shaking hand.
"When I was home from my first Christmas it was worse. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there all I could think of was getting back on the bar. I'm here all morning now, waiting for a mission ... Getting softer. Every minute I stay in this booth, I get weaker ... And every minute Charlie, and Kev, and Ian, all the Dad-Lads, they roam the streets, getting stronger."
The Doors start up again, then abruptly shut off. Too early for that 60s Spotify playlist.
"Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission. And for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it over like breakfast."
Two starched-collar team-leaders saunter over, swinging key fobs.
"Rob, we have orders to take you-"
"-What are the charges?"
"...There are... no charges. You have orders to report to the Manager, as soon as you're free. Come on, Supervisor, let's get you cleaned up."
They lift our man under the armpits, hoist him to his feet, brush pain au chocolat crumbs from his beard...
IN THE MANAGER'S OFFICE:
The Manager is sat with his assistant. Plates of food scattered about. They look up as our supervisor enters.
"Hiyaaa. Well, we're eating. We've got, let's see ... sweet potato fries, and usually they're not bad. Perhaps we'll pass both ways to save time. Supervisor, I don't know how you feel about this pumpkin ravioli, but if you eat some, you'll never have to prove your courage in any other way."
Supervisor takes a spoonful, tears it apart, chews slowly.
Manager passes Supervisor a piece of paper.
"This is today's rota. I'm going home. I was here at 2am last night, and I was back at 7am this morning. My methods have become ... unsound. You guys can take it from here."
Manager goes home. Supervisor stands on bar with Assistant. Their troops arrive, just kids, barely old enough to shave. Together they enter the heart of darkness of the Sunday two days before Christmas with no functioning ice machine, no change in the safe, hordes of amassing attackers arrayed in glowing comedy Christmas jumpers, Santa hats, Barbour jackets. One group wrapped in silver paper, throwing tampons about the pub. It's a whole thing. Another unclipping the rope being used to cordon off an area and attempting to clip it through their noses. Gas goes. A beer line snaps. Bar is like the last operating base upriver in Vietnam. Bodies everywhere. "Who's in charge here?" "Shit, man, ain't you?"
Then it's done. They've made it through. Then customer comes to the bar. "Just thought you should know, someone's been sick out of the gents' toilet, and across the landing, and all down the stairs."
"The horror. The horror."
......
Music: BAM BAM BA BA BAAAM BAAM, BAM BA BA BAA BAAM....!
Sunday 23 December 2018
Day 239: Working in a bar over Christmas
Working in a bar over Christmas is like being drafted to fight in a war. The only difference is that in a bar no one actually gets shot. Well, you hope no one gets shot. In all other regards, though, it is the same.
You march into battle day after day, on a prolonged campaign that cannot possibly keep taking from you, yet does, for the longest weeks of your life, with dwindling supplies and declining ranks and wave after wave of enemy piling in at you in inexhaustible numbers, and you stand and you hack away, you hold the line, you pray to whatever gods you find in those lonely moments that the onslaught will cease.
It lets up in the early hours. You gather your wounded, redig your trenches, stock up on supplies. You make hasty repairs. You crawl into some hole and spoon food from a can and sleep for two, maybe five, hours … and then you return for another day, the enemy hordes descending at first light, rattling your barricades … and before you know it you’re overwhelmed in combat once again.
There is the same adrenaline rush, flinging your arms in fluid motions, moving your body elegantly in time with your fellow comrades, lost in the flow of the moment as rarely happens - is not required to happen - back in the mundane tranquillity of civilian life.
There is the same battle against bodily pain, fatigue, despair - the battle against time itself - that grinds and gnaws at your brain second after second after second. Please let it be over. Please let it be over. I cannot do this. I cannot go on. No, I can. There is no choice. I’ve got this. We’ve got this. We will beat it. We will win. No, I was wrong, I can’t, no more. On and on, as the seconds become minutes become hours.
There is the kinship that develops under extreme stress. The reliance on your fellow soldiers. The ones who you know will be standing where you need them to stand, moving where you need them to move, the ones who you know, when you are back to back with them, fighting the last ditch defense, will not fall if you do not fall. And living through such times in the crucible of horror forges a bond deeper than personal friendship, or preference. People whom you might not know in peacetime, with whom you might not be friends, yet whom you trust with your life. Regardless of background, age, or class, you stand together, and you fight together, and you are kin. You were there, on those days, and they were there, and the people back home will never understand.
There is the journey to other bars, other battlefields, on excursions to swap equipment, scrounge supplies, trade resources. Hail, brothers, sisters, how goes the war on this front? And perhaps it goes badly, and you see in their eyes, and there is nothing to do but nod, ask their stories, listen while they tell of exploits that will be written in the annals. Or maybe their war goes well, they’ve barely been hit, the brunt was taken elsewhere down the line. Yet still they prepare, they gather, they wait. Who knows where the next attack will fall? And there’s always tomorrow. And the day after that.
There is the leadership under pressure, the hierarchy, everyone given a job to do. Some you know will do their jobs well, others, less so. There are the privates who blame the commanders, the commanders who blame the privates, the NCO supervisors skirting both worlds.
And there is, among the suffering, the terror, the misery, another side to it. The quiet sharing of a smoke or a cup of tea. The evenings when an anticipated attack fails to materialise, and the troops end up sat around on upturned crates, chatting, looking at photos from the outside world, savouring the calm like never before.
You march into battle day after day, on a prolonged campaign that cannot possibly keep taking from you, yet does, for the longest weeks of your life, with dwindling supplies and declining ranks and wave after wave of enemy piling in at you in inexhaustible numbers, and you stand and you hack away, you hold the line, you pray to whatever gods you find in those lonely moments that the onslaught will cease.
It lets up in the early hours. You gather your wounded, redig your trenches, stock up on supplies. You make hasty repairs. You crawl into some hole and spoon food from a can and sleep for two, maybe five, hours … and then you return for another day, the enemy hordes descending at first light, rattling your barricades … and before you know it you’re overwhelmed in combat once again.
There is the same adrenaline rush, flinging your arms in fluid motions, moving your body elegantly in time with your fellow comrades, lost in the flow of the moment as rarely happens - is not required to happen - back in the mundane tranquillity of civilian life.
There is the same battle against bodily pain, fatigue, despair - the battle against time itself - that grinds and gnaws at your brain second after second after second. Please let it be over. Please let it be over. I cannot do this. I cannot go on. No, I can. There is no choice. I’ve got this. We’ve got this. We will beat it. We will win. No, I was wrong, I can’t, no more. On and on, as the seconds become minutes become hours.
There is the kinship that develops under extreme stress. The reliance on your fellow soldiers. The ones who you know will be standing where you need them to stand, moving where you need them to move, the ones who you know, when you are back to back with them, fighting the last ditch defense, will not fall if you do not fall. And living through such times in the crucible of horror forges a bond deeper than personal friendship, or preference. People whom you might not know in peacetime, with whom you might not be friends, yet whom you trust with your life. Regardless of background, age, or class, you stand together, and you fight together, and you are kin. You were there, on those days, and they were there, and the people back home will never understand.
There is the journey to other bars, other battlefields, on excursions to swap equipment, scrounge supplies, trade resources. Hail, brothers, sisters, how goes the war on this front? And perhaps it goes badly, and you see in their eyes, and there is nothing to do but nod, ask their stories, listen while they tell of exploits that will be written in the annals. Or maybe their war goes well, they’ve barely been hit, the brunt was taken elsewhere down the line. Yet still they prepare, they gather, they wait. Who knows where the next attack will fall? And there’s always tomorrow. And the day after that.
There is the leadership under pressure, the hierarchy, everyone given a job to do. Some you know will do their jobs well, others, less so. There are the privates who blame the commanders, the commanders who blame the privates, the NCO supervisors skirting both worlds.
And there is, among the suffering, the terror, the misery, another side to it. The quiet sharing of a smoke or a cup of tea. The evenings when an anticipated attack fails to materialise, and the troops end up sat around on upturned crates, chatting, looking at photos from the outside world, savouring the calm like never before.
And even in the hell of the melee, in the darkness, with bodies and liquids flying through the air, the clamour, the din rising all around, every direction you look another companion bogged down in close-quarter fighting, a million personal struggles against the forces of darkness and despair - even at such times there are the strange snatches of serenity that arise during combat. Existence utterly in the present moment. The physicality of objects. Coming to and looking at faces pressing on all sides, at the commotion, the panic, and seeing it all to be empty, your body weighing nothing, your ego stripped away, simply existing, noticing wood, metal, glass, skin - the way a light shines overhead - the simple and ineffable beauty of the world.
Life pulses. It breathes. You are part of the flow of the universe. Inside the loudest noise there is silence. Within the busiest action is calm. All goes liquid. All smooth. You are here and you do what must be done. And you do it and you do it. All of you together. And the night passes.
And finally there is only one more day to go.
Life pulses. It breathes. You are part of the flow of the universe. Inside the loudest noise there is silence. Within the busiest action is calm. All goes liquid. All smooth. You are here and you do what must be done. And you do it and you do it. All of you together. And the night passes.
And finally there is only one more day to go.
......
Music: Have You Passed Through This Night? by Explosions in the Sky. Exquisite post-rock with that beautiful quote from The Thin Red Line, perhaps my favourite war film, and my favourite Terence Malick film, encasing the director's dreamy, languid spirituality within just the right amount of mainstream film structure. Mm, yes, and it's a good song.
Saturday 22 December 2018
Day 238: Helical
Town before work, Christmas shopping. Walking on the wet cobblestones of the shopping precinct, Van Morrison whispering down from speakers in the walls. Look up into the echoing cold above the store fronts, above the Christmas lights, at the empty rafters, the unadorned fixtures; dirty glass, smeared bird droppings, two pigeons fluttering. Paint chipping grime encrusted interstitial spaces, forgotten and lonely, sighing down, mocking all human endeavour. Hurrisome noise fading into oblivion.
Coffee house, hanging tangle of fairy lights, golden lamps, shoppers ducking in away from the crowds. Chinese student on Macbook. Bearded rumpled man with Lenovo laptop. Girls in hoodies slurping iced lattes out of red-and-white helical striped straws.
The smell from the fishmongers, pungent and warm. The chintz of moulded merry-go-round horse, whinnying round to nowhere. John Lewis perfume department, escalators, coruscating glassware, and the threadbare corners of carpet, the sneaker-smudged varnished floors, the wooden veneers cracked and peeling.
Take in these moments, these truths, the quiet thusness of the world before the lashing hell of the bar shift, swirling cacophony of cackling jostling humans, sallow, slack-jawed faces, clamouring for salvation, rushing into mindlessness, the very opposite of what any of us need.
Back tomorrow morning for ten more hours. Then ten more hours Sunday. Then I’m off for Christmas. I can’t wait.
……
Music: If you want me to stay, Sly and the Family Stone.
Coffee house, hanging tangle of fairy lights, golden lamps, shoppers ducking in away from the crowds. Chinese student on Macbook. Bearded rumpled man with Lenovo laptop. Girls in hoodies slurping iced lattes out of red-and-white helical striped straws.
The smell from the fishmongers, pungent and warm. The chintz of moulded merry-go-round horse, whinnying round to nowhere. John Lewis perfume department, escalators, coruscating glassware, and the threadbare corners of carpet, the sneaker-smudged varnished floors, the wooden veneers cracked and peeling.
Take in these moments, these truths, the quiet thusness of the world before the lashing hell of the bar shift, swirling cacophony of cackling jostling humans, sallow, slack-jawed faces, clamouring for salvation, rushing into mindlessness, the very opposite of what any of us need.
Back tomorrow morning for ten more hours. Then ten more hours Sunday. Then I’m off for Christmas. I can’t wait.
……
Music: If you want me to stay, Sly and the Family Stone.
Friday 21 December 2018
Day 237: Spider-Verse
Better day. Morning with my dad, talking global warming and politics over coffee, setting the world to rights, then to the cinema, nothing on except Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which turned out to be brilliant, an irreverent and self-knowing animation by the team behind The LEGO Movie, similar in feel, with a healthy dose of Pixar’s The Incredibles mixed in - the world building was spectacular, the set-up so much fun, rich, filled with sight-gags, and barrelling along with colour and vibrancy, although the second half was more generic, there was more joy in stating and exploring the premise than in telling the paint-by-numbers hero's journey, but still, it was really great - then after the film an evening wander around the Christmas market with the lights all shining, then I came home for a meal with the housemates, Phace had cooked the kind of food that brings you back from the dead, reinvigorates your spirit, warms you all the way to your core, and we sat around the table eating second helpings and listening to funk and soul and blues on Spotify, the two of them drinking wine and Buck’s fizz, me on the Sicilian lemonade, as the night passed languorously and the moon moved across the sky.
Tomorrow is Mad Friday and is going to be the worst. Going to get some rest now, then get up tomorrow and put my head down and deal with it. See you on the other side.
Music: I Forgot to be Your Lover, by William Bell. Smooth, soulful, sonorous, beautiful.
Tomorrow is Mad Friday and is going to be the worst. Going to get some rest now, then get up tomorrow and put my head down and deal with it. See you on the other side.
Music: I Forgot to be Your Lover, by William Bell. Smooth, soulful, sonorous, beautiful.
Thursday 20 December 2018
Day 236: Spiders
Kelham Island with work lot, met them after my shift ended at 10. They were getting trollied, the first bar was warm and close and good, but by the Irish bar on West Street I had spiders down the spine, got an Uber home by myself, sober, lonely, came back to my PC and a cup of Earl Grey.
Social anxiety was spiking. Bars at midnight are not made for sobriety, everyone losing themselves in a rush into something, me stood on the outside, cold. And I’ve been feeling icky and weird of late. Christmas is really taking it out of me, every shift at work is horrendous, and I don’t have any time to give to writing, and I feel stretched so thin, my mental health is suffering.
Ung, not a good day. Remember all the things. Remind myself of all the things. I never learn. It never goes in. Nothing changes. No. That’s negative voices. Inner critic. He can fuck off.
Keep going. Final hurdle, and then four days off for Christmas, and then January will be quiet. I can make it.
……
Music: Night Shift, by Lucy Dacus. I like it when the fuzz guitar kicks in.
Social anxiety was spiking. Bars at midnight are not made for sobriety, everyone losing themselves in a rush into something, me stood on the outside, cold. And I’ve been feeling icky and weird of late. Christmas is really taking it out of me, every shift at work is horrendous, and I don’t have any time to give to writing, and I feel stretched so thin, my mental health is suffering.
Ung, not a good day. Remember all the things. Remind myself of all the things. I never learn. It never goes in. Nothing changes. No. That’s negative voices. Inner critic. He can fuck off.
Keep going. Final hurdle, and then four days off for Christmas, and then January will be quiet. I can make it.
……
Music: Night Shift, by Lucy Dacus. I like it when the fuzz guitar kicks in.
Wednesday 19 December 2018
Day 235: The sleet and the mud
Oof, feel bleak, and I don’t want to write a word. This happens to me, I feel depression coming on and I write a post about it as if I had it dealt with, had something figured out, and then the next day it is there and worse again, and the day after worse than that.
I really don’t want to have to write right now. I’m tired and I’m glum.
I had a good evening though. It was good, wasn’t it? I met Steve and Alan after work and it was like old times, nights out drinking years ago. I had three non-alcoholic beers, then a Pepsi, then I had a third of beer, just as a Christmas treat with old friends. Shhh. Anyway, we laughed a lot, we talked a lot, we talked about when we were kids, we talked about Alan being a father, we talked about politics and parents with cancer and love and about dumb, stupid things. It was sad, and funny, and good. It was a good night.
Now I am home and feeling flat. I missed tea, didn’t even think about it, because I went from a busy, stressful shift to standing on the other side of the bar with Alan and Steve, and then six hours had gone by. And I missed lunch, because it was a busy, stressful shift. Just had a bowl of cereal now when I came in. No energy to make anything more.
I’m OK. I feel flat but that is OK. I don’t have much to write, but I can’t switch on my writing brain at will. I turn up, and sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not. There are days when you score goals from the halfway line, and days when you grind out nil-nil draws in the sleet and the mud. But you turn up to every match regardless.
Even if I had a year’s worth of nil-nil draws, or of stinging losses, it would still be a beautiful and worthwhile achievement to have played them all. And I don’t, I’ve got plenty of winners in here among the rest.
And I’m proud of them all. Proud to be playing, day after day after day.
That’s all the victory I need.
……
Music: Vessel of Love by Hollie Cook - some insouciant, sun-kissed reggae pop to bring the evening to a close. Lovely.
I really don’t want to have to write right now. I’m tired and I’m glum.
I had a good evening though. It was good, wasn’t it? I met Steve and Alan after work and it was like old times, nights out drinking years ago. I had three non-alcoholic beers, then a Pepsi, then I had a third of beer, just as a Christmas treat with old friends. Shhh. Anyway, we laughed a lot, we talked a lot, we talked about when we were kids, we talked about Alan being a father, we talked about politics and parents with cancer and love and about dumb, stupid things. It was sad, and funny, and good. It was a good night.
Now I am home and feeling flat. I missed tea, didn’t even think about it, because I went from a busy, stressful shift to standing on the other side of the bar with Alan and Steve, and then six hours had gone by. And I missed lunch, because it was a busy, stressful shift. Just had a bowl of cereal now when I came in. No energy to make anything more.
I’m OK. I feel flat but that is OK. I don’t have much to write, but I can’t switch on my writing brain at will. I turn up, and sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not. There are days when you score goals from the halfway line, and days when you grind out nil-nil draws in the sleet and the mud. But you turn up to every match regardless.
Even if I had a year’s worth of nil-nil draws, or of stinging losses, it would still be a beautiful and worthwhile achievement to have played them all. And I don’t, I’ve got plenty of winners in here among the rest.
And I’m proud of them all. Proud to be playing, day after day after day.
That’s all the victory I need.
……
Music: Vessel of Love by Hollie Cook - some insouciant, sun-kissed reggae pop to bring the evening to a close. Lovely.
Tuesday 18 December 2018
Day 234: Clean your bathroom
I felt depressed today, so I cleaned my toilet. There’s nothing better for depression than cleaning your toilet, scrubbing your sink, unclogging the hair from your shower drain, and scouring the pink mould from your tiles.
I’m not being facetious. If you’re depressed do these things. They will help. Clean your bathroom. Shower. Put on fresh clothes. Eat a piece of fruit. Walk somewhere.
It might make you feel better. And if not at least you’ll have a clean bathroom, smell nice, etc.
Depression, I find, twists about your ankles, creeps up your legs, makes its way to your throat, where it swirls down into your soul. Sometimes the basic act of doing something worthwhile, however mundane, when you start to feel those first coiling tendrils moving up your feet can be a radical act in fighting the disease.
Of course, the trick is in making yourself do these things when you're already beginning to feel depressed and they’re the last things you want to do. As to that, I have no real answers. Don't do it enough times, and suffer the consequences, that you eventually start to see how silly that course is, perhaps. Notice how when you let the depression climb up you it lays you out flat, turns everything to dirt, ruins you for days. Watch this happen, time and time again, until finally you're just bored of it. Start to get curious about what's actually going on inside you, be mindful of the actual size and shape and weight and emotional valence of depression, as it comes on, and get better at noticing the inciting incidents, and their repercussions.
And then stand up, walk yourself to your bathroom, and get scrubbing.
It will help.
......
Music: Mainland by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - jangly indie rock with melodic vocals and a languid, shifting weightlessness. Nice.
I’m not being facetious. If you’re depressed do these things. They will help. Clean your bathroom. Shower. Put on fresh clothes. Eat a piece of fruit. Walk somewhere.
It might make you feel better. And if not at least you’ll have a clean bathroom, smell nice, etc.
Depression, I find, twists about your ankles, creeps up your legs, makes its way to your throat, where it swirls down into your soul. Sometimes the basic act of doing something worthwhile, however mundane, when you start to feel those first coiling tendrils moving up your feet can be a radical act in fighting the disease.
Of course, the trick is in making yourself do these things when you're already beginning to feel depressed and they’re the last things you want to do. As to that, I have no real answers. Don't do it enough times, and suffer the consequences, that you eventually start to see how silly that course is, perhaps. Notice how when you let the depression climb up you it lays you out flat, turns everything to dirt, ruins you for days. Watch this happen, time and time again, until finally you're just bored of it. Start to get curious about what's actually going on inside you, be mindful of the actual size and shape and weight and emotional valence of depression, as it comes on, and get better at noticing the inciting incidents, and their repercussions.
And then stand up, walk yourself to your bathroom, and get scrubbing.
It will help.
......
Music: Mainland by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - jangly indie rock with melodic vocals and a languid, shifting weightlessness. Nice.
Monday 17 December 2018
Day 233: Soup
Another long day, in an hour early to take pub photos, stayed half an hour late because every fucker came in for Christmas drinks. Then down to Sarah and Jordan’s with Lizzie. Zoe and Em Fitz there as well; goofing around. Cat’s Pyjamas for curries that all mysteriously tasted like Heinz tomato soup, even the poppadom dips were tomato soup, creamy soup everywhere, not what we wanted, it wasn’t the cat’s pyjamas, it turned out, not even the bee’s knees. Then back to Sarah and Jord’s, smooshed on sofas under blankets, all legs on thighs and heads on shoulders, Zoe’s arm round Lizzie, Liz stroking Zoe’s hand - Steph home later from her bar, Jord downloading a copy of The Grinch to assuage Liz’s petitions. Rufus asleep on the floor, his face mushed into his bowl, his fur dragging in his water. Steph on the beanbag. Jord trying for tornadoes with his vape smoke. And Sarah decorating the tree. Everything warm, snug, comfortable; my shrivelled heart, like the Grinch’s, starting to beat back into life.
……
Music. I dunnoooo. I’m running on fumes here. Anything. Umm. Dancing in the Moonlight, King Harvest. Did you know the Toploader song was a cover? It is. This original version is a whopping seventeen times better. That’s just scientific fact. Listen and find out for yourself. It’s indisputable.
……
Music. I dunnoooo. I’m running on fumes here. Anything. Umm. Dancing in the Moonlight, King Harvest. Did you know the Toploader song was a cover? It is. This original version is a whopping seventeen times better. That’s just scientific fact. Listen and find out for yourself. It’s indisputable.
Saturday 15 December 2018
Day 232: Take the praise
Ohhhh buddy I super need to do some writing and get myself to bed. It's been a busy old day. I'm trying to stay awake to write this but sleep is prowling the perimeter of my mind, the guards are edging closer together, exchanging worried glances; it's only a matter of time...
Been a good day though. I'm doing damned well. I've been on opens the past two days, another tomorrow, and I've been going in an hour early to get stuff done, social media photos and the like, and I've been getting up half an hour earlier than even that, just to be up, to give myself a more leisurely rise.
I mean, all that means is that I've been getting up at half seven to be in work for nine, which is what half the world does every day, but...
You know, no. That's a thing I always do, minimise positives about myself, deflate any sense of accomplishment, explain away better times as fluke or mistake or what everyone else already has anyway.
It's skewed thinking, is what they teach you in cognitive behavioural therapy, and we'll have no truck with it tonight.
It doesn't matter if everyone else on the planet finds it easy to get up early (although they don't). What's important is that it's something with which I struggle, and I've been doing loads better of late.
I've been up, I've been working hard, I've been eating fruit and cooking proper meals for tea, going in to work early and staying late to help with Christmas, writing my blog, reading, playing small amounts of the videogames I feel it's worth completing, not looking at social media, staying on top of washing and cleaning, getting early nights.
And when depression has come calling I've been better equipped at dealing with him. He has been holding less and less sway over me.
That's good. I've been doing good.
So take the praise, even if it is from myself. Don't look back. Don't panic. Don't sabotage myself. Keep doing what I've been doing, quietly, steadily, and trust that inch by inch, month by month, things are changing. And let that change happen.
......
Music: Missing U, by Robyn. Sleep-wolves leaping barricades. Guards down. Blackness sweeping in. Robyn good, pop good, pulsing synth-tinged dance pop never sounded so bittersweet. This track is classic Robyn. That's good. We like Robyn. We go sleep now. Byeeeeeeee x
Been a good day though. I'm doing damned well. I've been on opens the past two days, another tomorrow, and I've been going in an hour early to get stuff done, social media photos and the like, and I've been getting up half an hour earlier than even that, just to be up, to give myself a more leisurely rise.
I mean, all that means is that I've been getting up at half seven to be in work for nine, which is what half the world does every day, but...
You know, no. That's a thing I always do, minimise positives about myself, deflate any sense of accomplishment, explain away better times as fluke or mistake or what everyone else already has anyway.
It's skewed thinking, is what they teach you in cognitive behavioural therapy, and we'll have no truck with it tonight.
It doesn't matter if everyone else on the planet finds it easy to get up early (although they don't). What's important is that it's something with which I struggle, and I've been doing loads better of late.
I've been up, I've been working hard, I've been eating fruit and cooking proper meals for tea, going in to work early and staying late to help with Christmas, writing my blog, reading, playing small amounts of the videogames I feel it's worth completing, not looking at social media, staying on top of washing and cleaning, getting early nights.
And when depression has come calling I've been better equipped at dealing with him. He has been holding less and less sway over me.
That's good. I've been doing good.
So take the praise, even if it is from myself. Don't look back. Don't panic. Don't sabotage myself. Keep doing what I've been doing, quietly, steadily, and trust that inch by inch, month by month, things are changing. And let that change happen.
......
Music: Missing U, by Robyn. Sleep-wolves leaping barricades. Guards down. Blackness sweeping in. Robyn good, pop good, pulsing synth-tinged dance pop never sounded so bittersweet. This track is classic Robyn. That's good. We like Robyn. We go sleep now. Byeeeeeeee x
Friday 14 December 2018
Day 231: Why meditate?
It's the obvious question. If meditation is so difficult and frustrating and boring and slow, why do it? Why spend ten minutes every day of your life sitting still with no phone and no TV and no music, no entertainment, no stimuli, simply counting your breath over and over again?
The answer: because we have lost control of our brains. Our thoughts are running amok. We have evolved to be so good at thinking that we do not know how to let go of thinking, we do not know how to be grounded and present, rather than lost in thought, and this is lessening the value of our lives.
You've heard the aphorism that to the man with a hammer everything begins to look like a nail? Well we are like that with thought, with the narrow thinking of the intellect, the voice in our heads, which is but a minuscule portion of the far more diffuse and disparate and complex system that is the mind. We bring our intellect to bear on the world to such an extent that soon we forget that not everything in the world needs to be dealt with intellectually.
Rather than a hammer, picture a man with a sword. This is the intellect. Its great strength is that it cuts. It separates the world into component pieces - cuts Northern from Southern Hemisphere, cuts Europe from Asia, and Britain from Europe, us from them, cuts the self from the environment, one from two, nouns from verbs, now from then, observer from observed.
We've needed this swordsman to survive, to fight our way out of the primordial swamps and on to success. He has won us many battles, many wars. We have promoted him from guard to lieutenant to captain to general, and his confidence, and arrogance, has grown. He has started ruling for us, in our stead, and we have let him, because he did such a good job of getting us here.
But he isn't a wise and benevolent king. His heart is that of a simple swordsman, and thus, whenever a problem arises, whatever the problem may be, his first thought is to reach for his blade...
The intellect is vital to us. We need it when handling our company's accounts. When rewriting complex laws. When studying economics. When attempting our maths homework.
But what about when taking in a sunset? Admiring a work of art? When walking alone through a forest in the pale morning light with the spring's first bluebells coming to bud? When lying naked in bed with a lover?
Of course we always require the intellect to some degree. The swordsman must always be at our sides. But how much use is it, how worthwhile, to be stood on a mountaintop staring out at the expanse of land stretched below, and to be able to only focus on your little swordsman as he jabbers about this and that and the other, what happened last Tuesday, why Linda didn't reply to your email, when the next season of so-and-so is coming out, why it is that you'll never be happy?
Meditation is the antidote to this. It is a technique for putting the swordsman back in his place.
By focusing on your breath, or the sounds coming to you, or a repeated mantra ("om mani padme hum") you are giving your swordsman a block of wood. He has to be alert, has to be chopping continuously, to be prepared for danger, but with meditation you are giving him a block of wood and saying, Here, chop this!
And he chops at the wood, chop, chop, chop, and he chops away from the wood, and at the ground, and the air, and pretty soon he's chopping everything in your awareness again. And you bring him back to the wood, No, chop this!
And he chops at the wood, and away from the wood, and at...
No, chop this!
And you keep bringing him back. And slowly you give him a distraction while you build the strength of all the rest of your awareness. While you concentrate on ruling, and appreciating, this existence that your swordsman has won for you.
Because everything that the intellect does is about keeping you alive. But there's a whole depth of mindfulness within you that isn't just trying to stay alive, but is the reason for living.
We're talking sunsets, bluebells, lovers, croissants. Saint-Saëns. Tarkovsky's Solyaris. Sundays by the fire with the dog.
These things don't need cutting apart, analysing, measuring, weighing. They need experiencing. You don't think about them. You exist with them.
Meditation is a way to deepen your ability to exist with the world.
You should try it.
......
Music: The Swan, from The Carnival of the Animals, by Camille Saint-Saëns.
The answer: because we have lost control of our brains. Our thoughts are running amok. We have evolved to be so good at thinking that we do not know how to let go of thinking, we do not know how to be grounded and present, rather than lost in thought, and this is lessening the value of our lives.
You've heard the aphorism that to the man with a hammer everything begins to look like a nail? Well we are like that with thought, with the narrow thinking of the intellect, the voice in our heads, which is but a minuscule portion of the far more diffuse and disparate and complex system that is the mind. We bring our intellect to bear on the world to such an extent that soon we forget that not everything in the world needs to be dealt with intellectually.
Rather than a hammer, picture a man with a sword. This is the intellect. Its great strength is that it cuts. It separates the world into component pieces - cuts Northern from Southern Hemisphere, cuts Europe from Asia, and Britain from Europe, us from them, cuts the self from the environment, one from two, nouns from verbs, now from then, observer from observed.
We've needed this swordsman to survive, to fight our way out of the primordial swamps and on to success. He has won us many battles, many wars. We have promoted him from guard to lieutenant to captain to general, and his confidence, and arrogance, has grown. He has started ruling for us, in our stead, and we have let him, because he did such a good job of getting us here.
But he isn't a wise and benevolent king. His heart is that of a simple swordsman, and thus, whenever a problem arises, whatever the problem may be, his first thought is to reach for his blade...
The intellect is vital to us. We need it when handling our company's accounts. When rewriting complex laws. When studying economics. When attempting our maths homework.
But what about when taking in a sunset? Admiring a work of art? When walking alone through a forest in the pale morning light with the spring's first bluebells coming to bud? When lying naked in bed with a lover?
Of course we always require the intellect to some degree. The swordsman must always be at our sides. But how much use is it, how worthwhile, to be stood on a mountaintop staring out at the expanse of land stretched below, and to be able to only focus on your little swordsman as he jabbers about this and that and the other, what happened last Tuesday, why Linda didn't reply to your email, when the next season of so-and-so is coming out, why it is that you'll never be happy?
Meditation is the antidote to this. It is a technique for putting the swordsman back in his place.
By focusing on your breath, or the sounds coming to you, or a repeated mantra ("om mani padme hum") you are giving your swordsman a block of wood. He has to be alert, has to be chopping continuously, to be prepared for danger, but with meditation you are giving him a block of wood and saying, Here, chop this!
And he chops at the wood, chop, chop, chop, and he chops away from the wood, and at the ground, and the air, and pretty soon he's chopping everything in your awareness again. And you bring him back to the wood, No, chop this!
And he chops at the wood, and away from the wood, and at...
No, chop this!
And you keep bringing him back. And slowly you give him a distraction while you build the strength of all the rest of your awareness. While you concentrate on ruling, and appreciating, this existence that your swordsman has won for you.
Because everything that the intellect does is about keeping you alive. But there's a whole depth of mindfulness within you that isn't just trying to stay alive, but is the reason for living.
We're talking sunsets, bluebells, lovers, croissants. Saint-Saëns. Tarkovsky's Solyaris. Sundays by the fire with the dog.
These things don't need cutting apart, analysing, measuring, weighing. They need experiencing. You don't think about them. You exist with them.
Meditation is a way to deepen your ability to exist with the world.
You should try it.
......
Music: The Swan, from The Carnival of the Animals, by Camille Saint-Saëns.
Thursday 13 December 2018
Day 230: Meditation
Here's one I've been meaning to write for a while now. I've begun meditating again, and I want to say something about it.
I’ve been meditating off and on (mostly off) for a decade now, and I want to talk a little about my process, and what I see as its point, because I think there’s still a fair amount of confusion about these things.
Meditation is a programme of training to help you pay attention to the present moment on purpose. Paying attention to the present moment on purpose is where we want to be. It’s like “being strong” in bodybuilding terms. It’s the end goal.
Meditation is the lifting of the weights. It’s how we get our minds strong.
Here’s how I do that:
I kneel on the floor upright and alert. I kneel on one cushion, and put another between my calves and thighs, to stop my heels digging into my bum. I rest my hands in my lap, palms upward, one on top of the other.
If I could get into the lotus position, or half lotus, or a similar pose, then I would do that. These are very stable positions, if you possess the flexibility for them. Conversely, if I couldn’t kneel then I would sit upright on a chair. If I couldn’t do that I would lie down. What’s important is that you feel comfortable, but alert, that you can breathe deeply, and that your posture embodies a willingness to face this moment, not slouch away from it.
Next I take a few deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, because this is a nice thing to do. If I’m feeling particularly stressed I might do a body scan, which involves focusing on my toes, then the balls of my feet, my heels, my ankles, shins, calves, knees, up through my body, spending a little time with each area, gently, in no rush, noting where there is tension, letting the tension go if it feels appropriate to do so.
And then I start meditating. And what, precisely does this occult, mystical process involve?
It involves paying attention as I breathe in and out.
That’s it. Sometimes I count my breaths, once after every out-breath, up to ten, and then start again from one. Sometimes I focus on the sounds around me instead, letting whatever comes to my ears be the object of my attention, holding it in loving awareness, simply watching it, allowing the sound to exist. Sometimes I repeat a neutral word, like “flower”, or “river”, over and over again. The object of attention doesn’t hugely matter; it is the attending to it, with mindfulness, that is important.
I pay attention as if this out-breath, this sound, this word, was the gaze of a lover, or a newborn child, or a treasure brought forth from the deep. I pay attention to this mundane moment of my life wholly, and lovingly, and with unquenchable wonder.
And what happens when I do this, when I attend to my breath, or to a repeated phrase, with watchful, loving, mindful awareness?
I get distracted. The voice in my head starts up, chundering on, and I lose myself in thought.
This usually takes a second or two to happen.
I get distracted. I cough, renew my focus, bring attention back to the breath. And I get distracted. I kick myself - you dummy - I shift my weight, get comfortable again, bring attention back to the breath. And I get distracted. I realise I’ve been thinking about… something or other, down twisting rabbit holes of thought, for minutes. I get annoyed. I feel anger rising. I quash the anger down. I feel despair that I’m spending my meditation time quashing down anger, that I can’t obey even the simplest of instructions, that I’m not a venerable Zen master cloaked in billowing robes immovable as a rock. I picture myself, kneeling on a dusty cushion on a carpet I should have hoovered weeks ago, and I… dammit, I bring attention back to the breath. And I get distracted. On a dusty cushion on a carpet I should have hoovered weeks ago. And I haven’t washed my sheets. Or done last nights dishes. And then there’s that presentation for work next week, I haven’t even started that. I sag. It’s hopeless. No. It’s not hopeless. I force myself to focus. I do it. I sit up straight again. I wrench my awareness away from negativity, bring attention back to the breath.
And I get distracted...
This happens. It happens to me. It happens to meditation teachers. It happens to billowy-robed Zen masters. And it will happen to you.
This is meditation. Bringing your attention back is meditation. If your attention didn’t need bringing back then you wouldn’t need meditation. If you could magically lift a car in one hand then you wouldn’t need to do bicep curls and press-ups.
Maybe Superman can just be strong without effort, because he's a special alien. And maybe there are super-meditators who are equanimous and tranquil as the morning sun’s first shining rays, with minds like softly bubbling brooks. But the rest of us need practice.
Meditation is practice. It isn’t having a calm mind. It is the training of calming your insanely fractured and ever-leaping mind. And it takes a lifetime. You don’t do ten press-ups and then find yourself able to lift a car forever afterwards. You do ten press-ups every morning, and gradually, over many months, you find your strength improving, your physical grounding in the world becoming more vibrant and active and alive. And if you stop doing those daily press-ups, you lose it.
Of course some people become obsessed with bodybuilding, and spend every hour of every day lifting enormous weights. There are good things that can come from this: being part of a community of like-minded individuals, developing a life with structure and routine, setting and achieving difficult goals - and there are bad things that can come from this: obsession, addiction, the feeding of the ego, the irony that the singular fanatical drive to be strong in many ways only shows that underneath it all you are so very weak.
Similarly, there are people for whom meditation becomes their all. They join clubs, post in groups, obsess over correct posture, argue about schools of Buddhism, pay large figures to attend intensive meditation retreats.
And if you want to do this, more power to you. It’s not wrong. But be aware that the necessity for meditation is the necessity to assuage ego and overthinking, and devoting yourself to the cult of meditation can increase your vulnerability to precisely these problems of ego and overthinking.
(But then so can everything. I have to be aware that my ego is playing the game here, playing at being modester-than-thou. We all have egos, and they all do ego things. Meditation is in fact a great way of watching the ego, accepting it, and not taking it too seriously.)
What I’m saying is: don’t worry about not being fully invested. You don’t need to shave your head and sit in zazen, just as you don’t need to bench-press like Hulk Hogan. In many ways doing so can make you less whole. Ten press-ups and five minutes meditation a night is a fine way to live.
So, then. Sit down. Bring your attention to your breath. Every time your mind wanders, bring it back. When you notice yourself feeling pathetic at how many times your mind wanders, simply ask, are you still lost in thought right now, or are you bringing attention back to the breath? When you find yourself thinking how bored you are, simply ask, are you still lost in thought, or are you bringing attention back to the breath? When you’re thinking about how you’re going to bring your attention back to the breath, simply ask, are you still lost in thought, or are you bringing your attention back to the breath?
There is only the bringing of attention back to the breath. Everything else is distraction. You will have a mind full of distractions. These are your weights. Lift them. Bring attention back to the breath, over and over and over again.
This is meditation.
Next time: but why?
I’ve been meditating off and on (mostly off) for a decade now, and I want to talk a little about my process, and what I see as its point, because I think there’s still a fair amount of confusion about these things.
Meditation is a programme of training to help you pay attention to the present moment on purpose. Paying attention to the present moment on purpose is where we want to be. It’s like “being strong” in bodybuilding terms. It’s the end goal.
Meditation is the lifting of the weights. It’s how we get our minds strong.
Here’s how I do that:
I kneel on the floor upright and alert. I kneel on one cushion, and put another between my calves and thighs, to stop my heels digging into my bum. I rest my hands in my lap, palms upward, one on top of the other.
If I could get into the lotus position, or half lotus, or a similar pose, then I would do that. These are very stable positions, if you possess the flexibility for them. Conversely, if I couldn’t kneel then I would sit upright on a chair. If I couldn’t do that I would lie down. What’s important is that you feel comfortable, but alert, that you can breathe deeply, and that your posture embodies a willingness to face this moment, not slouch away from it.
Next I take a few deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, because this is a nice thing to do. If I’m feeling particularly stressed I might do a body scan, which involves focusing on my toes, then the balls of my feet, my heels, my ankles, shins, calves, knees, up through my body, spending a little time with each area, gently, in no rush, noting where there is tension, letting the tension go if it feels appropriate to do so.
And then I start meditating. And what, precisely does this occult, mystical process involve?
It involves paying attention as I breathe in and out.
That’s it. Sometimes I count my breaths, once after every out-breath, up to ten, and then start again from one. Sometimes I focus on the sounds around me instead, letting whatever comes to my ears be the object of my attention, holding it in loving awareness, simply watching it, allowing the sound to exist. Sometimes I repeat a neutral word, like “flower”, or “river”, over and over again. The object of attention doesn’t hugely matter; it is the attending to it, with mindfulness, that is important.
I pay attention as if this out-breath, this sound, this word, was the gaze of a lover, or a newborn child, or a treasure brought forth from the deep. I pay attention to this mundane moment of my life wholly, and lovingly, and with unquenchable wonder.
And what happens when I do this, when I attend to my breath, or to a repeated phrase, with watchful, loving, mindful awareness?
I get distracted. The voice in my head starts up, chundering on, and I lose myself in thought.
This usually takes a second or two to happen.
I get distracted. I cough, renew my focus, bring attention back to the breath. And I get distracted. I kick myself - you dummy - I shift my weight, get comfortable again, bring attention back to the breath. And I get distracted. I realise I’ve been thinking about… something or other, down twisting rabbit holes of thought, for minutes. I get annoyed. I feel anger rising. I quash the anger down. I feel despair that I’m spending my meditation time quashing down anger, that I can’t obey even the simplest of instructions, that I’m not a venerable Zen master cloaked in billowing robes immovable as a rock. I picture myself, kneeling on a dusty cushion on a carpet I should have hoovered weeks ago, and I… dammit, I bring attention back to the breath. And I get distracted. On a dusty cushion on a carpet I should have hoovered weeks ago. And I haven’t washed my sheets. Or done last nights dishes. And then there’s that presentation for work next week, I haven’t even started that. I sag. It’s hopeless. No. It’s not hopeless. I force myself to focus. I do it. I sit up straight again. I wrench my awareness away from negativity, bring attention back to the breath.
And I get distracted...
This happens. It happens to me. It happens to meditation teachers. It happens to billowy-robed Zen masters. And it will happen to you.
This is meditation. Bringing your attention back is meditation. If your attention didn’t need bringing back then you wouldn’t need meditation. If you could magically lift a car in one hand then you wouldn’t need to do bicep curls and press-ups.
Maybe Superman can just be strong without effort, because he's a special alien. And maybe there are super-meditators who are equanimous and tranquil as the morning sun’s first shining rays, with minds like softly bubbling brooks. But the rest of us need practice.
Meditation is practice. It isn’t having a calm mind. It is the training of calming your insanely fractured and ever-leaping mind. And it takes a lifetime. You don’t do ten press-ups and then find yourself able to lift a car forever afterwards. You do ten press-ups every morning, and gradually, over many months, you find your strength improving, your physical grounding in the world becoming more vibrant and active and alive. And if you stop doing those daily press-ups, you lose it.
Of course some people become obsessed with bodybuilding, and spend every hour of every day lifting enormous weights. There are good things that can come from this: being part of a community of like-minded individuals, developing a life with structure and routine, setting and achieving difficult goals - and there are bad things that can come from this: obsession, addiction, the feeding of the ego, the irony that the singular fanatical drive to be strong in many ways only shows that underneath it all you are so very weak.
Similarly, there are people for whom meditation becomes their all. They join clubs, post in groups, obsess over correct posture, argue about schools of Buddhism, pay large figures to attend intensive meditation retreats.
And if you want to do this, more power to you. It’s not wrong. But be aware that the necessity for meditation is the necessity to assuage ego and overthinking, and devoting yourself to the cult of meditation can increase your vulnerability to precisely these problems of ego and overthinking.
(But then so can everything. I have to be aware that my ego is playing the game here, playing at being modester-than-thou. We all have egos, and they all do ego things. Meditation is in fact a great way of watching the ego, accepting it, and not taking it too seriously.)
What I’m saying is: don’t worry about not being fully invested. You don’t need to shave your head and sit in zazen, just as you don’t need to bench-press like Hulk Hogan. In many ways doing so can make you less whole. Ten press-ups and five minutes meditation a night is a fine way to live.
So, then. Sit down. Bring your attention to your breath. Every time your mind wanders, bring it back. When you notice yourself feeling pathetic at how many times your mind wanders, simply ask, are you still lost in thought right now, or are you bringing attention back to the breath? When you find yourself thinking how bored you are, simply ask, are you still lost in thought, or are you bringing attention back to the breath? When you’re thinking about how you’re going to bring your attention back to the breath, simply ask, are you still lost in thought, or are you bringing your attention back to the breath?
There is only the bringing of attention back to the breath. Everything else is distraction. You will have a mind full of distractions. These are your weights. Lift them. Bring attention back to the breath, over and over and over again.
This is meditation.
Next time: but why?
......
Music: kinda want to do some dirty Run the Jewels hip hop, for the incongruity, but no. Let's go with the lilting, soaring Tibetan folk of Tenzin Choegyal and the Metta String Ensemble. It's no Run the Jewels, but it's pretty good.
Day 229: Wailing
Pffffft. Brain fog of depression is here again. Hello, you. Nice to see you. No, that’s a lie, it’s HORRIBLE to see you, because you’re a JERK. I was trying to be be polite. It’s good to be polite. And, hey, don’t wail out there in the cold. Come in and sit by the fire. I’ll make you a brew. Crumpet? Croissant? Help yourself.
Partly I’m saying that because I’m so nice, and partly because I know you’re not going away. You’ll either wail outside the door in the cold, and I’ll plug my ears and mush my head between my cushions and turn the TV volume up to full, yet still I will hear you - or I’ll let you in and you’ll sit here in my front room and… be nice? You’ll be nice, right?
No, OK, you’ll sit here and wail. OK. Well that’s pretty annoying. But I know you’re hurting, so just stay here, and we’ll do the best we can.
Umm. Let me try to think. It’s hard. I’ve been off today. I’ve washed clothes, eaten fruit, read my book, checked in with the news, thought about Christmas presents, done weights and push-ups, finished a quick crossword (cheated a few times), cooked proper food, washed up, tried a few blog post ideas that didn’t work, and played Zelda on Switch to inch closer to completing it.
Day hasn’t been bad. But here’s this foggy depression jerk sitting here wailing.
Well, what you gonna do? When I try to push him away he just wails louder, stamps his feet, screams until the walls begin to shake. So I’ll let him stay, bring him cups of tea, try to get on with things. It isn’t easy, but nothing ever is.
Partly I’m saying that because I’m so nice, and partly because I know you’re not going away. You’ll either wail outside the door in the cold, and I’ll plug my ears and mush my head between my cushions and turn the TV volume up to full, yet still I will hear you - or I’ll let you in and you’ll sit here in my front room and… be nice? You’ll be nice, right?
No, OK, you’ll sit here and wail. OK. Well that’s pretty annoying. But I know you’re hurting, so just stay here, and we’ll do the best we can.
Umm. Let me try to think. It’s hard. I’ve been off today. I’ve washed clothes, eaten fruit, read my book, checked in with the news, thought about Christmas presents, done weights and push-ups, finished a quick crossword (cheated a few times), cooked proper food, washed up, tried a few blog post ideas that didn’t work, and played Zelda on Switch to inch closer to completing it.
Day hasn’t been bad. But here’s this foggy depression jerk sitting here wailing.
Well, what you gonna do? When I try to push him away he just wails louder, stamps his feet, screams until the walls begin to shake. So I’ll let him stay, bring him cups of tea, try to get on with things. It isn’t easy, but nothing ever is.
Wednesday 12 December 2018
Day 228: Leaping and rolling forever
That makes my head spin.
I can remember pouring over previews in N64 Magazine for months before the game came out, scanning screenshots for any new information, sitting and daydreaming about the magical lands and the wild adventures that were waiting for me. One of my friends had read that if you put all of the levels from Mario 64 next to each other they still wouldn’t be as large as the play area in Zelda, which was one joined area rather than individual levels, not a set of challenges, but a living, breathing world. There was a mountain you could climb, with rock people living inside. There was a forest with a musical instrument hidden deep in its mazes. Villages in which you could play little games and buy swords and shields in shops. There was a castle, Hyrule Castle, and within that castle was Princess Zelda, and she was waiting for you to find her, because she had something to tell you that you needed to know...
My mind was alive, swirling, with the excitement and possibility. I couldn’t wait.
And then the game was delayed. And the months that stretched ahead felt interminable.
And then it was delayed again. Nintendo games were always delayed. I could tell that this was an immutable law of the universe: the things that you desired most had to be earned. Waiting was earning. The delay was necessary; the best game in the world would take time. I had to wait.
But I couldn’t wait.
My friends and I would spend rainy playtimes in the school library leafing through old magazine articles.
The day a new issue of N64 Magazine came out was a mini Christmas in itself: convince your mum she needed to do the shopping, go with her down to Tesco and leap out of the car and skip to the magazine racks at the front of the shop. You mum couldn’t be trusted herself, she’d pick up N64 Pro Magazine, or, worse, Official Nintendo Magazine (bleurgh). But you knew what was what. You’d see the inimitable, and starkly named, N64 Magazine peeking from the bottom rack, and you’d grab for it, and spend the rest of the shop - the only shop that you didn’t fight your mum for sugary cereals or Sunny D - browsing the pages, looking for any info you could find on the soon-to-be-released Zelda.
And in this way most of a year passed. Finally, the game could be delayed no longer. It had a new title, Ocarina of Time (what was an ocarina? What did it mean?), and it was coming out at Christmas. The perfect time. The last few months, my friends and I barely spoke of anything else.
And then a Saturday in December, and we were spending the day cruising about town, as we always did. A number 3 bus to the Moor, look in Virgin Megastore, get a bacon and sausage bap the size of a human head from the Great Big Sandwich Shop, and then to the top floor of Debenhams to the Electronics Boutique to peruse the video games.
And halfway up the last escalator I saw it. They had a display cabinet with an N64 hooked up inside, and on the screen was…
It was there. They had it. They had Zelda.
The noise I made at that moment, my friend will swear even today, was not a noise he had ever heard before, or has ever heard since.
We stayed in Debenhams for hours that day. I remember there were two older boys playing on the cabinet as we arrived, and they were discussing the similarities with the previous Zelda game, which had been only 2D, on the Super Nintendo. These boys struck me as impossibly old, and impossibly wise. We stood behind them and I said things about the game to my friends (“Look, that’s what they call z-targeting!”) hoping to impress the older boys.
Eventually the boys moved off, and it was our turn. I’m not sure if there was any argument about who would take control. I assume my friends decided that some battles just weren’t worth fighting.
So we crowded around the cabinet, and my friends crowded around me, and I clasped my hands around the controller, and we dove into Hyrule.
We watched Link shudder in nightmares. Saw visions of a dark rider and a muffled princess on a storm-drenched night. We awoke in Kokiri Forest, and went to play in a secluded woodland realm. We found rupees in tall grass, under rocks. We squeezed and crawled through a tiny passage and into a hidden maze, and we found our very first sword. We hacked down more grass, chopped at signposts, and found enough rupees to buy a shield. We went to meet a giant tree, the guardian of the forest, and he ushered us inside him to defeat the evil that was poisoning him from within.
And we went all the way through that first dungeon, lighting torches, firing slingshots, stepping on switches, burning cobwebs, fighting horrific monsters. And we came out the other side, and learned more about the story, and set off on the long journey to Hyrule Castle, to deliver the guardian spirit’s message to the princess of destiny…
And finally someone checked their Casio watch and saw that we had been there all afternoon, and we were going to be late home. We reluctantly left Link plodding through Hyrule Field, and we descended back into the cold night air, with the Christmas lights above us, the shops all lit up, the magic of the game we had just played alive in our hearts.
… And that day was 20 years ago today.
I am 33 now. But as I boot up the N64 emulator on my modern PC, and run a downloaded Ocarina of Time ROM (it's not piracy; I still own the original cart somewhere)... as I listen to that gentle, bittersweet midi theme take flight... as I load a new save file, and watch Link shudder in his troubled dreams once again - suddenly I am 13 again, and it all is fresh, all magical, and I am reminded that the stories, the games that really mattered to us in our childhoods, they stay with us, they are not forgotten - that somewhere deep inside this depressed and cynical man is a small space where a young boy in a green tunic with tufts of ginger hair leaps and rolls and yells HIYYYAAA into the darkness, now and forever afterwards.
Thanks, Ocarina, for everything.
......
Music? Well, it's got to be the Ocarina of Time soundtrack, right? Sure. Oh, boy, I feel funny.
Tuesday 11 December 2018
Day 227: Pushing it
It’s pushing it to write my daily blog at four in the morning after napping half of the night, but what are you gonna do? I’m all about pushing it.
I’ve been struggling the last few days. It’s been creeping up on me. The old feeling that everything is inescapable fucked, that I’m too far gone, that I can’t write for shit and… all the usual stuff.
It’s not reality. It’s not. Just negative voices, always saying the same things. Judgements, skewed thinking, with ulterior motives. Uhhh. It’s hard though. It’s so hard.
I get better for a few days, I’m productive, I’m enthused, I have newfound energy. And then I fall back into the clutches of depression. And I go through the routines, but it feels like there’s nothing beneath it, no warmth to my soul, that it’s all a sham, everything is a sham.
But I come back out again. I do. There are days when the depression isn’t there at all, or where it’s retreated enough for me to find space to breathe.
That’s better than it was.
Depression is a poisonous gas that seeps in, entwines around all your cells. It takes supreme effort to rise above it, to hoist yourself out of the miasma, hand over hand. When you’re tired you start to flag, you climb slower, maybe slip, and the fog begins to wrap around you again. And once the fog is in you it’s even harder to climb, and you are caught even worse.
But I’m used to all this. And it’s better than it was.
I will go back to bed now, try to sleep, to put no more pressure on myself. We’re all doing the best we can. It’s not an easy climb. No one said we had a right to an easy climb - no one who was telling the truth, at least. But we do get to try. And, despite everything, that’s still pretty cool.
Keep going.
I’ve been struggling the last few days. It’s been creeping up on me. The old feeling that everything is inescapable fucked, that I’m too far gone, that I can’t write for shit and… all the usual stuff.
It’s not reality. It’s not. Just negative voices, always saying the same things. Judgements, skewed thinking, with ulterior motives. Uhhh. It’s hard though. It’s so hard.
I get better for a few days, I’m productive, I’m enthused, I have newfound energy. And then I fall back into the clutches of depression. And I go through the routines, but it feels like there’s nothing beneath it, no warmth to my soul, that it’s all a sham, everything is a sham.
But I come back out again. I do. There are days when the depression isn’t there at all, or where it’s retreated enough for me to find space to breathe.
That’s better than it was.
Depression is a poisonous gas that seeps in, entwines around all your cells. It takes supreme effort to rise above it, to hoist yourself out of the miasma, hand over hand. When you’re tired you start to flag, you climb slower, maybe slip, and the fog begins to wrap around you again. And once the fog is in you it’s even harder to climb, and you are caught even worse.
But I’m used to all this. And it’s better than it was.
I will go back to bed now, try to sleep, to put no more pressure on myself. We’re all doing the best we can. It’s not an easy climb. No one said we had a right to an easy climb - no one who was telling the truth, at least. But we do get to try. And, despite everything, that’s still pretty cool.
Keep going.
Monday 10 December 2018
Day 226: Clatter and din
I write to you on my phone, from bed, after work and post-work curry with friends. I've got about three minutes until I pass out, so I'd better be quiche. No, autocorrect, no. That's just not on. You know I meant 'quick' there, play ball would you?
Work was... sludgy. Always more people than we could serve, never time to get off the bar to clean lines or print ale badges or sort breaks, crowd would thin enough to give hope, but then another family would walk in with pushchairs and howling kids, and a group of men behind them, and another family in the other door, and suddenly the bar would be swamped again. All cappuccinos and mochas and food with awkward swaps and five cocktails at once. Working only with two staff and up against it the entire day. Was trying to put a new beer on from midday to five, and didn't have five minutes spare once. Ended up staying an extra hour just to catch up with everything I'd had to abandon
And its only the 9th. Going to be a fun fortnight, I can tell.
But then Ashoka with Zoe and Lizzie and Tom, squeezed into a petite booth like the dining carriage on the Orient Express, table full of plates, dips, bottles, sides... legs pressed into legs, faces close... voices rising in the clatter and din, feeling enclosed and warm and safe, then peering round and realising the room had emptied and we were yammering full pelt about sexual conquests and uni initiation dares and Fungus the Bogeyman into a restaurant silent apart from the two couples politely trying to ignore us.
Lowering voices, slowly rising, lowering again, finally stumbling out into the night in laughter and cheer, down the road to a craft bar with cosy seats and framed animal skulls on the walls between twisting fairy lights. Conversation swirling, jokes, barbs, drinks.
OK, nope, brain is switching off. I'm done. I must sleep. Im out.
Music today: Poor in Love, by Destoyer. Heard this on Welcome to Nightvale. It's good. Sleep now. Sleeeeep.
Work was... sludgy. Always more people than we could serve, never time to get off the bar to clean lines or print ale badges or sort breaks, crowd would thin enough to give hope, but then another family would walk in with pushchairs and howling kids, and a group of men behind them, and another family in the other door, and suddenly the bar would be swamped again. All cappuccinos and mochas and food with awkward swaps and five cocktails at once. Working only with two staff and up against it the entire day. Was trying to put a new beer on from midday to five, and didn't have five minutes spare once. Ended up staying an extra hour just to catch up with everything I'd had to abandon
And its only the 9th. Going to be a fun fortnight, I can tell.
But then Ashoka with Zoe and Lizzie and Tom, squeezed into a petite booth like the dining carriage on the Orient Express, table full of plates, dips, bottles, sides... legs pressed into legs, faces close... voices rising in the clatter and din, feeling enclosed and warm and safe, then peering round and realising the room had emptied and we were yammering full pelt about sexual conquests and uni initiation dares and Fungus the Bogeyman into a restaurant silent apart from the two couples politely trying to ignore us.
Lowering voices, slowly rising, lowering again, finally stumbling out into the night in laughter and cheer, down the road to a craft bar with cosy seats and framed animal skulls on the walls between twisting fairy lights. Conversation swirling, jokes, barbs, drinks.
OK, nope, brain is switching off. I'm done. I must sleep. Im out.
Music today: Poor in Love, by Destoyer. Heard this on Welcome to Nightvale. It's good. Sleep now. Sleeeeep.
Sunday 9 December 2018
Day 225: Quotidian imperfection
Absolutely demolished again. Decimated. Destroyed. Christmas is not a good time to work in a bar. Not when you want to be writing but you have to earn money to be able to write and you spend so many days working to earn the money that you have no energy left when you come home with which to write.
Pttch. Rubbish.
Spent my evening checked all the way out, watching Always Sunny, nodding in and out of consciousness. Kept meaning to either wake myself up enough to do something worthwhile with my night, or at least get to bed and nap properly before winging off this blog, but instead I just sat there, head lolling, as three, four episodes swam by.
There’s something quietly tragic about adult life at times, isn’t there? The solitary moments aware of how much more you could be, all the ways in which you don’t live up to your potential, all the ways in which you have settled for … whatever this is.
A glass of red when you’ve already made your way through two bottles this week. Another Deliveroo meal because cooking = sadness. The tupperware in the bin; slick with oil, it’s too much, too much, to run soapy water and wash the stained tubs and take them down to the recycling in the dark. Realising it’s a Saturday night and that means nothing to you, the distant cries of cavorting crowds only intrude upon another rerun of Friends on Netflix. The One Where You Were Alone. Rain lashing outside. The room dark, the wind attacking the windows, a chill creeping down your spine. Cold all through your body, right down to the marrow, as you sit and think on how there’s nothing more than this.
Nothing more than this. Yes. Quotidian imperfection. Brain running on fumes. Bumbling along, making the best of things, not at this moment defeating life or imposing yourself onto it, but simply living it. And that is all right. The yammering TV set, the storm raging outside, you meandering through another night.
The humblest, least impressive moments are the ones most in need of your love. It’s easy to love the exciting times. They make you love. It’s here, in this dim streaked light of now, that you have to do the work of loving. The work of living.
Breath in and out. Be good to yourself. All is well.
Pttch. Rubbish.
Spent my evening checked all the way out, watching Always Sunny, nodding in and out of consciousness. Kept meaning to either wake myself up enough to do something worthwhile with my night, or at least get to bed and nap properly before winging off this blog, but instead I just sat there, head lolling, as three, four episodes swam by.
There’s something quietly tragic about adult life at times, isn’t there? The solitary moments aware of how much more you could be, all the ways in which you don’t live up to your potential, all the ways in which you have settled for … whatever this is.
A glass of red when you’ve already made your way through two bottles this week. Another Deliveroo meal because cooking = sadness. The tupperware in the bin; slick with oil, it’s too much, too much, to run soapy water and wash the stained tubs and take them down to the recycling in the dark. Realising it’s a Saturday night and that means nothing to you, the distant cries of cavorting crowds only intrude upon another rerun of Friends on Netflix. The One Where You Were Alone. Rain lashing outside. The room dark, the wind attacking the windows, a chill creeping down your spine. Cold all through your body, right down to the marrow, as you sit and think on how there’s nothing more than this.
Nothing more than this. Yes. Quotidian imperfection. Brain running on fumes. Bumbling along, making the best of things, not at this moment defeating life or imposing yourself onto it, but simply living it. And that is all right. The yammering TV set, the storm raging outside, you meandering through another night.
The humblest, least impressive moments are the ones most in need of your love. It’s easy to love the exciting times. They make you love. It’s here, in this dim streaked light of now, that you have to do the work of loving. The work of living.
Breath in and out. Be good to yourself. All is well.
......
Musique? Sycamore Trees, performed by Chrysta Bell. Yes. This is what my soul needed. The return to Twin Peaks was my favourite thing about television in 2017, terrifying and unsettling and enigmatic and often times awful. But often times transcendent. And always fascinating. Here David Lynch's sometime muse Chrysta Bell sinuously slinks and wails through a version of the song originally performed for the show by Jimmy Scott. Utterly delicious.
Saturday 8 December 2018
Day 224: Structural integrity
Better get this written quickly before my brain disintegrates entirely. Turns out three hours sleep isn’t enough to sustain you for a 10 hour shift when we’re this close to Christmas and the pub is heaving all cocking day long.
It’s 11pm now and I’m just home; I’m back up at 7am for the open.
Oh hello, though, two cheeky semi-colons in two paragraphs? Ambassador, with these luxurious punctuation marks you’re really spoiling us!
So… yeah…. Loss of neurological efficacy has begun. Brain integrity at… 54%, and falling fast!
Try to reroute some… Blork. I’m too tired to do that bit. Imagine I’m doing a funny bit transposing the tiredness of my brain into the trope of a damaged Star Trek ship. Make a joke about the egregious use of lens flare and how the bit must be being directed by JJ Abrams. You can do it. I’ve got faith.
I’ll just sit here and finish my Lady Grey. Mmm. Lady Grey - for the times when drinking Earl Grey just isn’t effeminate enough!
It’s 11pm now and I’m just home; I’m back up at 7am for the open.
Oh hello, though, two cheeky semi-colons in two paragraphs? Ambassador, with these luxurious punctuation marks you’re really spoiling us!
So… yeah…. Loss of neurological efficacy has begun. Brain integrity at… 54%, and falling fast!
Try to reroute some… Blork. I’m too tired to do that bit. Imagine I’m doing a funny bit transposing the tiredness of my brain into the trope of a damaged Star Trek ship. Make a joke about the egregious use of lens flare and how the bit must be being directed by JJ Abrams. You can do it. I’ve got faith.
I’ll just sit here and finish my Lady Grey. Mmm. Lady Grey - for the times when drinking Earl Grey just isn’t effeminate enough!
I'm joking. Man is what man does, and this man here luuuuurves his delicate Lady Greys. And Jordan Peterson can suck it.
I was only going to do a short post last night. It was past midnight. And then I started writing about God and that, and next thing it was 3:30am and I realised I’d done it again. And then lying in bed I kept letting go of my body and letting the sounds of the falling rain envelop me and letting my brain go loose… and immediately some thought would come to me about a blog post to write or something that needed noting down, so I’d sigh and sit up and turn on the light and grab my notebook and write the thought out - because experience says you’ve always forgotten by the morning, and the idea has gone forever, and this is the job, whether you want it to be or not. And so I’d get it down, close the notebook, turn off the light, lie back down, listen to the rain, feel the weight of my body, close my eyes… and, Phoooosh, another wildly important thought that I knew I had to jot down.
Or, not even wildly important. Most of them end up as nonsense. But you have to plant enough seeds that some of them sprout, and if you refuse to plant the seeds that probably won’t make it you end up with none that make it. So you have to treat each one as if it’s the only thought in the world, be serious about it, give it the room it needs, give it nourishment, dig out enough soil, pop the seed in there and cover it up.
And then you read back the next day and think, What the hell was I on last night?
But you have to do it. You have to do it.
So my brain, I guess enlivened by the God chat, had shaken it’s schema of understanding, and now bits of detritus were floating downstream into my consciousness unbidden, and it was my job to scoop them out and clean off the mud and put them in a safe place for later.
Mixing metaphors there. But I kept thinking of things to write until half six in the morning, is what I’m saying. And then I was up at half nine for work. Yuk yuk yuk.
OK. That was some words. I've done my words. That’s me out. Last of brain’s structure is collapsing, the warp core is flickering, time to crash this bastard into San Francisco and have an anticlimactic fist fight on top of a hovercar, or something.
I’m outtie.
……
Dammit, music. Unnnnn. High Horse, by Kacey Musgraves. She sounds like the cast off from an excised first-draft stanza of Jabberwocky. "All kacey were the musgraves, and the mome raths outgrabe."
I was only going to do a short post last night. It was past midnight. And then I started writing about God and that, and next thing it was 3:30am and I realised I’d done it again. And then lying in bed I kept letting go of my body and letting the sounds of the falling rain envelop me and letting my brain go loose… and immediately some thought would come to me about a blog post to write or something that needed noting down, so I’d sigh and sit up and turn on the light and grab my notebook and write the thought out - because experience says you’ve always forgotten by the morning, and the idea has gone forever, and this is the job, whether you want it to be or not. And so I’d get it down, close the notebook, turn off the light, lie back down, listen to the rain, feel the weight of my body, close my eyes… and, Phoooosh, another wildly important thought that I knew I had to jot down.
Or, not even wildly important. Most of them end up as nonsense. But you have to plant enough seeds that some of them sprout, and if you refuse to plant the seeds that probably won’t make it you end up with none that make it. So you have to treat each one as if it’s the only thought in the world, be serious about it, give it the room it needs, give it nourishment, dig out enough soil, pop the seed in there and cover it up.
And then you read back the next day and think, What the hell was I on last night?
But you have to do it. You have to do it.
So my brain, I guess enlivened by the God chat, had shaken it’s schema of understanding, and now bits of detritus were floating downstream into my consciousness unbidden, and it was my job to scoop them out and clean off the mud and put them in a safe place for later.
Mixing metaphors there. But I kept thinking of things to write until half six in the morning, is what I’m saying. And then I was up at half nine for work. Yuk yuk yuk.
OK. That was some words. I've done my words. That’s me out. Last of brain’s structure is collapsing, the warp core is flickering, time to crash this bastard into San Francisco and have an anticlimactic fist fight on top of a hovercar, or something.
I’m outtie.
……
Dammit, music. Unnnnn. High Horse, by Kacey Musgraves. She sounds like the cast off from an excised first-draft stanza of Jabberwocky. "All kacey were the musgraves, and the mome raths outgrabe."
The Guardian reckons this is the 18th best song of the year. It’s… not for me. I’m, uhh, not the target demographic. And I’m watching the music video, and I never watch music videos any more, I don’t think I’ve even been on a music channel on TV since about 2007 (or been on a TV, for that matter), and isn’t it just so fucking astonishing that if you want to be a singer, in 2018, and you’re a woman, part of the bargain to get famous is still that you have to strut around in hot pants and little dresses and plunge tops, fluttering your lashes, in full makeup, prancing coquettishly? Maybe it’s because I was expecting this to be Radio 6 music, because I found it on the Guardian, and it's Radio 1 music. But, like, what’s being an objectified acquiescent little plastic doll got to do with singing? When did we conflate using vocal tonality and rhythm as an artform with being an object of titillation for adolescent boys? Oh my God, it can fuck off. That whole music machine can cock the fuck off. I’m going to bed. Good night.
Friday 7 December 2018
Day 223: What tills the soil?
Mmm, tired. Been watching Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson discussing the nature of self today, and thinking about that whole bag. What are we, eh? What’s all this? It’s mad. Life is mad. All the LEGO blocks that made us up a little while ago were making up armies in glistening chain mail, or robed Roman statesmen, or plodding dinosaurs. There were really dinosaurs, actual bloody dinosaurs, bumbling about where we now sit and watch YouTube!
And more, when you look down at those LEGO blocks that make us up now, that once made up dinosaurs, you see the blocks are only structures of smaller blocks, and those blocks again are structures of even smaller blocks, and even further until you can’t tell the difference between the block and the structure - until you get wave-particle duality.
And it’s not that we are made of atoms, or quarks, or molecules, or our physical bodies, or our experiential ur-sensation of Mind, or that we’re but cogs in the machine of societies, or planets, or solar systems. On every level you look there is structure manifesting some essential… what?
God? Tao? Reality?
Even after all these years I still catch myself having to lay out existence in really simple terms like this, to try to draw forth its inherent craziness and splendour, make me face up to it, because I know it’s… I guess… something on some level I flat out do not believe.
The part of me that has learned what I am through the bias of language we use, how we interact with one another, commonly held assumptions about life, that part of me wants to be a thing. I want to be the thing. Something solid and meaty and real. But everything we know about quantum mechanics, metaphysics, ontology says that there are no things. Or, rather, everything that is a thing is only a passing form, a temporary manifestation of… whatever does the manifesting. Call it God if you want.
I was thinking earlier that the brain is an interface between Self and Other. Between individual mind and external reality.
Which doesn’t mean there is parity between these two things. The boundary between them isn’t like that between two countries, or even between two sides of a coin. Mind on one side, external reality on the other. It’s more that the self, experience, is something that arises out of underlying reality. It’s like the self is a flower that blossoms upon the plant of reality.
I am not you. I am not this keyboard upon which I type. The flower is not the leaves, the stem, of the plant. OK. But they are not mechanical things, like parts of a car, put together. The flower wasn’t screwed onto the plant. The flower grows from the plant. If you look down carefully at the boundary, the stalk, you find one becoming the other.
Is this the brain? I think so. I mean, my physical body, to an extent that already exists in the realm of reality, of Other, right? I have control over it, but that statement already implies the "it" is separate from the "I" that controls it. It’s like the lower part of that stalk beneath the flower, without which the flower would not exist. This is obvious when part of it gets cut off. If I lose an arm, a finger, a toenail, even. If this happens I haven't lost myself, I've lost something attached to myself. I guess it’s at the boundary, the liminal space, where it’s not wholly Self, and not wholly Other.
And so you have the flower, a unique, exquisite thing, unlike any other flower. And it buds forth from a plant, which is external reality, from which the flower cannot be detached (while it still lives).
And what’s more, this plant, with its leaves of objects out in the world - keyboards and desks and cars and yoghurt pots - is the same plant upon which all other flowers bloom. So I look across at you, and I have no doubt you are a flower, like me, but you’re also part of the plant of Other. You are part of my external reality. And I am part of your external reality.
Wild, man.
So we’re all intimately joined, right? We are flowers brought forth from the same plant, all different, but all manifestations of the same living process.
And that process, the plant, all the objects and physical structures in our universe, is rooted in some underlying soil. (Excuse the “rooted” pun there, which I didn’t make on purpose. And note to myself here, when looking back at these crazed ramblings [because let’s be honest, who else are they for?]: is this a meeting of Chomsky’s universal grammar and of Jungian archetypes, the idea that the concept of “rooted” has some deeper ground (ha!) of meaning that applies to relationships between both plant and soil, and physical and metaphysical; that you can use the same word for both?)
Uhh, what was I saying? So brain is the interface between Self and Other. And the reality that holds both of these is maybe the interface between… process and structure?
Structure, the plant and its flowers, is our world, what the world looks like, how it is formed. It is you, it is me, it is the environment in which we live, from which we arise, to which we in death we retreat.
Process is… the breath that animates us. The spirit forming itself into every rock, every wall, every home. It is the Tao. Mystery of mysteries. It is what someone might call God.
And that word is so loaded with so much rubbish, but the thing is in secular society today we don’t pay a whole lot of attention to this underlying essence from which everything in existence manifests. Which surely we should, because we don’t know anything about it, and it’s fascinating. But I think a lot of us instinctively turn away from thinking about it, because it doesn’t compute with our subconscious assumptions about who we are, which are unfortunately still informed by outmoded concepts of body and soul, matter and spirit, concepts from Greek thought, from medieval beliefs, from the Enlightenment, from Victorian science (which was too dependent on narrow-beam thinking, showing a picture of mechanical, individual things). When thinking evolves it does not necessarily throw out and replace how we used to think, but rather subsumes it, often keeping hold for a long time of elements that are no longer congruous.
I think that has happened with us, and the current views of quantum mechanics and ontology - of modern science, essentially - are actually incompatible with some of the older assumptions about existence we still cling onto in our brains.
And this is scary, because it involves letting go of your entire sense of self, of the rock you cling to in the tempestuous ocean of an uncaring universe. It involves acknowledging that the rock is imaginary, in fact, that it is a mirage.
And suddenly you’re drowning in darkness and everything is coming apart and meaning itself is falling away.
But then you breathe. And you carry on breathing. And you find that if it’s true that the rock doesn’t exist then the rock never existed. So what have you been clinging on to all this time?
You’ve been floating by yourself. Let go. Relax. Everything in you already knows how to live. You are not an object bobbing in the ocean, but the ocean itself. Its storming is your storming. You are alive.
And only I think after we've been honest about this can we seriously debate what we mean by terms like "God", what it is that pulses rhythmically through the central stem of the plant of Other, that rustles the petals of Self; what it is that tills the soil of the ground of existence from which all things grow.
And more, when you look down at those LEGO blocks that make us up now, that once made up dinosaurs, you see the blocks are only structures of smaller blocks, and those blocks again are structures of even smaller blocks, and even further until you can’t tell the difference between the block and the structure - until you get wave-particle duality.
And it’s not that we are made of atoms, or quarks, or molecules, or our physical bodies, or our experiential ur-sensation of Mind, or that we’re but cogs in the machine of societies, or planets, or solar systems. On every level you look there is structure manifesting some essential… what?
God? Tao? Reality?
Even after all these years I still catch myself having to lay out existence in really simple terms like this, to try to draw forth its inherent craziness and splendour, make me face up to it, because I know it’s… I guess… something on some level I flat out do not believe.
The part of me that has learned what I am through the bias of language we use, how we interact with one another, commonly held assumptions about life, that part of me wants to be a thing. I want to be the thing. Something solid and meaty and real. But everything we know about quantum mechanics, metaphysics, ontology says that there are no things. Or, rather, everything that is a thing is only a passing form, a temporary manifestation of… whatever does the manifesting. Call it God if you want.
I was thinking earlier that the brain is an interface between Self and Other. Between individual mind and external reality.
Which doesn’t mean there is parity between these two things. The boundary between them isn’t like that between two countries, or even between two sides of a coin. Mind on one side, external reality on the other. It’s more that the self, experience, is something that arises out of underlying reality. It’s like the self is a flower that blossoms upon the plant of reality.
I am not you. I am not this keyboard upon which I type. The flower is not the leaves, the stem, of the plant. OK. But they are not mechanical things, like parts of a car, put together. The flower wasn’t screwed onto the plant. The flower grows from the plant. If you look down carefully at the boundary, the stalk, you find one becoming the other.
Is this the brain? I think so. I mean, my physical body, to an extent that already exists in the realm of reality, of Other, right? I have control over it, but that statement already implies the "it" is separate from the "I" that controls it. It’s like the lower part of that stalk beneath the flower, without which the flower would not exist. This is obvious when part of it gets cut off. If I lose an arm, a finger, a toenail, even. If this happens I haven't lost myself, I've lost something attached to myself. I guess it’s at the boundary, the liminal space, where it’s not wholly Self, and not wholly Other.
And so you have the flower, a unique, exquisite thing, unlike any other flower. And it buds forth from a plant, which is external reality, from which the flower cannot be detached (while it still lives).
And what’s more, this plant, with its leaves of objects out in the world - keyboards and desks and cars and yoghurt pots - is the same plant upon which all other flowers bloom. So I look across at you, and I have no doubt you are a flower, like me, but you’re also part of the plant of Other. You are part of my external reality. And I am part of your external reality.
Wild, man.
So we’re all intimately joined, right? We are flowers brought forth from the same plant, all different, but all manifestations of the same living process.
And that process, the plant, all the objects and physical structures in our universe, is rooted in some underlying soil. (Excuse the “rooted” pun there, which I didn’t make on purpose. And note to myself here, when looking back at these crazed ramblings [because let’s be honest, who else are they for?]: is this a meeting of Chomsky’s universal grammar and of Jungian archetypes, the idea that the concept of “rooted” has some deeper ground (ha!) of meaning that applies to relationships between both plant and soil, and physical and metaphysical; that you can use the same word for both?)
Uhh, what was I saying? So brain is the interface between Self and Other. And the reality that holds both of these is maybe the interface between… process and structure?
Structure, the plant and its flowers, is our world, what the world looks like, how it is formed. It is you, it is me, it is the environment in which we live, from which we arise, to which we in death we retreat.
Process is… the breath that animates us. The spirit forming itself into every rock, every wall, every home. It is the Tao. Mystery of mysteries. It is what someone might call God.
And that word is so loaded with so much rubbish, but the thing is in secular society today we don’t pay a whole lot of attention to this underlying essence from which everything in existence manifests. Which surely we should, because we don’t know anything about it, and it’s fascinating. But I think a lot of us instinctively turn away from thinking about it, because it doesn’t compute with our subconscious assumptions about who we are, which are unfortunately still informed by outmoded concepts of body and soul, matter and spirit, concepts from Greek thought, from medieval beliefs, from the Enlightenment, from Victorian science (which was too dependent on narrow-beam thinking, showing a picture of mechanical, individual things). When thinking evolves it does not necessarily throw out and replace how we used to think, but rather subsumes it, often keeping hold for a long time of elements that are no longer congruous.
I think that has happened with us, and the current views of quantum mechanics and ontology - of modern science, essentially - are actually incompatible with some of the older assumptions about existence we still cling onto in our brains.
And this is scary, because it involves letting go of your entire sense of self, of the rock you cling to in the tempestuous ocean of an uncaring universe. It involves acknowledging that the rock is imaginary, in fact, that it is a mirage.
And suddenly you’re drowning in darkness and everything is coming apart and meaning itself is falling away.
But then you breathe. And you carry on breathing. And you find that if it’s true that the rock doesn’t exist then the rock never existed. So what have you been clinging on to all this time?
You’ve been floating by yourself. Let go. Relax. Everything in you already knows how to live. You are not an object bobbing in the ocean, but the ocean itself. Its storming is your storming. You are alive.
And only I think after we've been honest about this can we seriously debate what we mean by terms like "God", what it is that pulses rhythmically through the central stem of the plant of Other, that rustles the petals of Self; what it is that tills the soil of the ground of existence from which all things grow.
......
OK, that's enough late night rambling. Sorry for the waffle. It's what's in my head. I can only put down what is in my head, communicated as clearly as I can manage in the time available, and not worry about where I fall short.
Music: something appropriate. I Never Lose, Never Really, by Belong. Beautiful!
Thursday 6 December 2018
Day 222: Mushy
Short one today. Just home from work, brain gone mushy, did a lot of writing during the day but nothing to put up here yet.
How am I doing? Let’s check in. I’m in that stage, I’ve been in it before, where I feel like crap, but I’m not worried about feeling like crap. I guess I’m depressed, anhedonic, my brain isn’t producing/reacting to healthy amounts of serotonin and dopamine - but that’s fine. I’m busy, and I’m building positive habitual behaviours, and I’m doing doing better at recognising patterns of negative thoughts when they arise, and bringing attention back into the present, and letting the negative thoughts trundle on with the last of their internal energy, and then dissipate, and disappear.
I’m in a good track for writing of late, accepting the roughness and imperfection of what comes out of my head, and not concentrating on the ways I know it doesn’t work, but simply letting what is in there come out, in the form it wants to take, and not sweating the rest.
This is good. This is the way. I must carry on like this.
….
I forgot to do music yesterday. So I’d better find some good music for today. How about… Aluminum or Glass, by Negativland? OK, this isn’t new; I probably came across this a decade ago, but I love it the most. “Heightened reality vignettes” is one of those phrases that just pops into my head at the strangest of times, apropos of nothing, and makes me smile. Song is wry, cynical, intelligent, and oddly rapturous. Aces.
How am I doing? Let’s check in. I’m in that stage, I’ve been in it before, where I feel like crap, but I’m not worried about feeling like crap. I guess I’m depressed, anhedonic, my brain isn’t producing/reacting to healthy amounts of serotonin and dopamine - but that’s fine. I’m busy, and I’m building positive habitual behaviours, and I’m doing doing better at recognising patterns of negative thoughts when they arise, and bringing attention back into the present, and letting the negative thoughts trundle on with the last of their internal energy, and then dissipate, and disappear.
I’m in a good track for writing of late, accepting the roughness and imperfection of what comes out of my head, and not concentrating on the ways I know it doesn’t work, but simply letting what is in there come out, in the form it wants to take, and not sweating the rest.
This is good. This is the way. I must carry on like this.
….
I forgot to do music yesterday. So I’d better find some good music for today. How about… Aluminum or Glass, by Negativland? OK, this isn’t new; I probably came across this a decade ago, but I love it the most. “Heightened reality vignettes” is one of those phrases that just pops into my head at the strangest of times, apropos of nothing, and makes me smile. Song is wry, cynical, intelligent, and oddly rapturous. Aces.
Wednesday 5 December 2018
Day 221: Lanterns in the dark
I’ve been watching a lot of right-wing rhetoric of late, trying to get myself out of my echo chamber, out of my bubble.
I’ve been watching Doctor Professor Sir Daddy Jordan Peterson, current darling of YouTube, who claims he isn’t right-wing, but says a lot of right-wing things. I actually find some of what he says very astute. A lot is very banal, but wrapped in so much academese to obfuscate it that at first you assume it to be astute, simply because you can’t understand anything he’s saying. But you whack through the tangled verbiage and it’s just truisms, that, yes, aren’t incorrect, but aren’t exactly insightful, either. Most of his writing falls under this category - which of course left-wing academics do all the time as well. And then some of his stuff is outright insane. His Judeo-Christian values and belief in a post-modernist neo-marxist plot to undermine the West and his weird obsession with not calling trans people by their preferred pronouns (although, yes, I understand that he will do so in his everyday life, but he refuses as a principle in public discourse to prove that he can’t be compelled by law - which, again, yes, I partially agree is an encroachment on the freedom of language). And his deeply ingrained sexism that manifests in his theories about the nature of the essential God-energy of the universe being masculine, and the over-valuation of anything masculine, and the under-valuation of anything feminine. And on. Three good videos from ContraPoints regarding this stuff: the JP one, the pronoun one, and the West one.
I’ve been watching Ben Shapiro, who also refuses to use preferred trans pronouns, believing that it is the first step to the utter degradation and dissolution of… you’ve guessed it... Judeo-Christian values. Shapiro is Jewish, but JP is fairly Christian, so they like to say “Judeo-Christian values” and that way they can maintain a united front against… post-modernist neo-marxist social justice warriors. By which I think they mean black and trans people. And women.
Shrugs.
I’ve been watching more Steven Crowder, who I childishly referred to as Steven Chowder the last time I wrote about him. Crowder - whose name, if you squint, looks a bit like “Crowbar” - which coincidentally is a blunt tool that forces its way into places it doesn’t belong, causing extensive harm on the way - likes to think of himself as a comedian.
But I guess he and I must have differing opinions on what constitutes comedy, because for me it is a weapon used to skewer the powerful and reveal hidden truths that excite us and liberate us and draw us into a primal, spiritual state… and for Steven Crowbar it is a way to make fun of teenage rape-survivors so that lonely white boys will feed his ego on the Internet.
Shrugs.
Anyway, a common thread I’ve noticed running through these right-wingers’ world views is a reliance on the importance of facts and logic. “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” is Shapiro’s catchphrase. Big Daddy JP often discusses the necessity for cold facts when cutting through unwarranted compassion. And Steven Crowbar likes to purposefully anger and traumatise young college students who disagree with him and then when they start yelling at him calmly tell them that he’s not wrong, he’s telling the truth, he’s not wrong.
The thing is, there’s a huge error in thinking here. Facts and logic are not in opposition to feelings and emotions. Feelings are factual. They aren’t imaginary. They aren’t illogical. In truth we exist primarily as emotional beings at least as much as we exist as logical beings.
What they’re really talking about is different types of attention we can bring to the world. And these types of attention draw out different attributes of the world, manifest different realities.
Imagine you’re in a dark room with a torch with a very bright but narrow beam. You sweep the darkness and you see a world of glinting tusks, of trunks, of stomping feet and flaring nostrils.
Now imagine the same room but you have a lantern with a low but diffuse light that bathes the scene. You see two elephants clashing with one another.
Maybe the elephants are fighting. Or maybe they’re mating. In the diffuse light, you can see - because you have context. The narrow torch beam wouldn’t give you this, in fact without the prior context of seeing elephants in diffuse light you wouldn't have any way of knowing they were elephants. All you’d see would be unconnected individual details.
But perhaps one of the elephants has a damaged foot. Or an infected tusk. The torch beam would be very good for spotting this, because it blacks out everything around it, and focuses you on one small space. The lantern on the other hand, in this analogy, simply emits too dim a light to make out such details. You see widely with the lantern, but precisely with the torch.
Human attention is like this. We have two different modes of attention, each grounded in one of the two hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere pays close attention to pieces, to what it sees as discrete, mechanical parts, while the right pays broad attention to the gestalt, the overall picture. (I'm aware I'm rushing through this. Go look up Ian McGilchrist's work to see current thinking on hemisphere competition in the brain.)
We have evolved to require both. Sometimes it matters that we see the individual tusks. Sometimes the whole elephants. Sometimes we need to see the trees, sometimes the wood.
I would argue that the right-wingers I’ve been watching - and I don’t mean to imply this is a problem with right-wing thinking, but a problem with these specific people who have millions of followers on YouTube and are influencing, poisoning public discourse in large part because it gets them followers and strokes their egos - these people have placed far too high an importance on the first mode of attention, the narrow beam, to the detriment of their overall intelligence.
To the man with a hammer everything begins to look like a nail. And to the YouTuber who overuses their narrow beam of attention, the world begins to look like it is comprised of facts.
It is not - nor is it comprised primarily of feelings. This is the opposite problem, exhibited by some on the left.
In truth facts and feelings are attributes that manifest from the same reality, depending on how you approach that reality.
Facts and logic and the scientific method are great tools for navigating through life at the micro level. But they don’t come instinctively and habitually in the way that feelings and emotions do. At the macro level in fact all of us, right and left wing together, navigate via feeling and emotion far more than Shapiro et al would like to admit. We first glance at the unknown with dim lanterns to get a vague idea of what we’re dealing with - ahh, it’s two elephants in a room - and we engage the narrow torches to make adjustments or to notice details once we're situated in context.
The Shapiro/Crowbar method is I would say to shine their torches on everything they dislike - left-wing politics, fair pay for women, chosen pronouns for trans people, Black Lives Matter - to the extent that they see only mechanical pieces, and to highlight the pieces that don’t align, and to point and scream about these as if they invalidate everything their opponents say, while missing the overall picture. They point to, for example, the odd gap in logic in sexism debates - which is inevitable, because we’re feeling our way through this, we’re making halting progress - and they miss the fact that generally it’s a better world when women get paid better, have more voices higher up in hierarchies, and when black people aren’t systematically murdered by the police, and when we afford trans people respect that helps them a great deal and hinders us barely at all.
Or they enter college campuses - Steven Crowbar, I'm talking to you - shouting about the little model they have made of the world by assembling the bits they have seen in their narrow torch beams - that statistically rape is punished when it is reported, that statistically rape victims are believed when they have proof, which proof is a prerequisite of all law, otherwise how would we arbitrate anything, therefore rape culture doesn't exist - and what they fail to see is what is abundantly, startlingly clear in the dim lantern light: that they are hurting people, causing them pain, by saying this stuff. They have lost context, appropriateness; they cannot see the wood for the trees.
And one final thing. We all navigate, as I said, on the macro level with our dim lanterns more than our narrow beams. And this is true for Shapiro and his gang as well. And this means that there are no end of left-wing videos on the Internet making these guys look supremely ridiculous by pointing out all the times they themselves do not follow logic, the times they act like snowflakes, make ad hominem attacks, equivocate, talk from the gut, do all the things they hate so much when they see on the left.
Because that’s another thing with the narrow beams. We tend to be really good at shining the beams in places we want to go - at the people we hate, to “dismantle” and “destroy” them, as the YouTube argot goes - and really bad at shining them into the black scary places inside into which we fear to tread.
So that’s my jumbled analysis of right-wing YouTube. There are elements that are elucidating. Shapiro and JP and Crowbar have all said things that I found difficult, and ultimately necessary, to hear. But too often they fail to use their unquestionably bright torches on themselves, and in that darkness inside them I sense monsters growing.
I’ve been watching Ben Shapiro, who also refuses to use preferred trans pronouns, believing that it is the first step to the utter degradation and dissolution of… you’ve guessed it... Judeo-Christian values. Shapiro is Jewish, but JP is fairly Christian, so they like to say “Judeo-Christian values” and that way they can maintain a united front against… post-modernist neo-marxist social justice warriors. By which I think they mean black and trans people. And women.
Shrugs.
I’ve been watching more Steven Crowder, who I childishly referred to as Steven Chowder the last time I wrote about him. Crowder - whose name, if you squint, looks a bit like “Crowbar” - which coincidentally is a blunt tool that forces its way into places it doesn’t belong, causing extensive harm on the way - likes to think of himself as a comedian.
But I guess he and I must have differing opinions on what constitutes comedy, because for me it is a weapon used to skewer the powerful and reveal hidden truths that excite us and liberate us and draw us into a primal, spiritual state… and for Steven Crowbar it is a way to make fun of teenage rape-survivors so that lonely white boys will feed his ego on the Internet.
Shrugs.
Anyway, a common thread I’ve noticed running through these right-wingers’ world views is a reliance on the importance of facts and logic. “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” is Shapiro’s catchphrase. Big Daddy JP often discusses the necessity for cold facts when cutting through unwarranted compassion. And Steven Crowbar likes to purposefully anger and traumatise young college students who disagree with him and then when they start yelling at him calmly tell them that he’s not wrong, he’s telling the truth, he’s not wrong.
The thing is, there’s a huge error in thinking here. Facts and logic are not in opposition to feelings and emotions. Feelings are factual. They aren’t imaginary. They aren’t illogical. In truth we exist primarily as emotional beings at least as much as we exist as logical beings.
What they’re really talking about is different types of attention we can bring to the world. And these types of attention draw out different attributes of the world, manifest different realities.
Imagine you’re in a dark room with a torch with a very bright but narrow beam. You sweep the darkness and you see a world of glinting tusks, of trunks, of stomping feet and flaring nostrils.
Now imagine the same room but you have a lantern with a low but diffuse light that bathes the scene. You see two elephants clashing with one another.
Maybe the elephants are fighting. Or maybe they’re mating. In the diffuse light, you can see - because you have context. The narrow torch beam wouldn’t give you this, in fact without the prior context of seeing elephants in diffuse light you wouldn't have any way of knowing they were elephants. All you’d see would be unconnected individual details.
But perhaps one of the elephants has a damaged foot. Or an infected tusk. The torch beam would be very good for spotting this, because it blacks out everything around it, and focuses you on one small space. The lantern on the other hand, in this analogy, simply emits too dim a light to make out such details. You see widely with the lantern, but precisely with the torch.
Human attention is like this. We have two different modes of attention, each grounded in one of the two hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere pays close attention to pieces, to what it sees as discrete, mechanical parts, while the right pays broad attention to the gestalt, the overall picture. (I'm aware I'm rushing through this. Go look up Ian McGilchrist's work to see current thinking on hemisphere competition in the brain.)
We have evolved to require both. Sometimes it matters that we see the individual tusks. Sometimes the whole elephants. Sometimes we need to see the trees, sometimes the wood.
I would argue that the right-wingers I’ve been watching - and I don’t mean to imply this is a problem with right-wing thinking, but a problem with these specific people who have millions of followers on YouTube and are influencing, poisoning public discourse in large part because it gets them followers and strokes their egos - these people have placed far too high an importance on the first mode of attention, the narrow beam, to the detriment of their overall intelligence.
To the man with a hammer everything begins to look like a nail. And to the YouTuber who overuses their narrow beam of attention, the world begins to look like it is comprised of facts.
It is not - nor is it comprised primarily of feelings. This is the opposite problem, exhibited by some on the left.
In truth facts and feelings are attributes that manifest from the same reality, depending on how you approach that reality.
Facts and logic and the scientific method are great tools for navigating through life at the micro level. But they don’t come instinctively and habitually in the way that feelings and emotions do. At the macro level in fact all of us, right and left wing together, navigate via feeling and emotion far more than Shapiro et al would like to admit. We first glance at the unknown with dim lanterns to get a vague idea of what we’re dealing with - ahh, it’s two elephants in a room - and we engage the narrow torches to make adjustments or to notice details once we're situated in context.
The Shapiro/Crowbar method is I would say to shine their torches on everything they dislike - left-wing politics, fair pay for women, chosen pronouns for trans people, Black Lives Matter - to the extent that they see only mechanical pieces, and to highlight the pieces that don’t align, and to point and scream about these as if they invalidate everything their opponents say, while missing the overall picture. They point to, for example, the odd gap in logic in sexism debates - which is inevitable, because we’re feeling our way through this, we’re making halting progress - and they miss the fact that generally it’s a better world when women get paid better, have more voices higher up in hierarchies, and when black people aren’t systematically murdered by the police, and when we afford trans people respect that helps them a great deal and hinders us barely at all.
Or they enter college campuses - Steven Crowbar, I'm talking to you - shouting about the little model they have made of the world by assembling the bits they have seen in their narrow torch beams - that statistically rape is punished when it is reported, that statistically rape victims are believed when they have proof, which proof is a prerequisite of all law, otherwise how would we arbitrate anything, therefore rape culture doesn't exist - and what they fail to see is what is abundantly, startlingly clear in the dim lantern light: that they are hurting people, causing them pain, by saying this stuff. They have lost context, appropriateness; they cannot see the wood for the trees.
And one final thing. We all navigate, as I said, on the macro level with our dim lanterns more than our narrow beams. And this is true for Shapiro and his gang as well. And this means that there are no end of left-wing videos on the Internet making these guys look supremely ridiculous by pointing out all the times they themselves do not follow logic, the times they act like snowflakes, make ad hominem attacks, equivocate, talk from the gut, do all the things they hate so much when they see on the left.
Because that’s another thing with the narrow beams. We tend to be really good at shining the beams in places we want to go - at the people we hate, to “dismantle” and “destroy” them, as the YouTube argot goes - and really bad at shining them into the black scary places inside into which we fear to tread.
So that’s my jumbled analysis of right-wing YouTube. There are elements that are elucidating. Shapiro and JP and Crowbar have all said things that I found difficult, and ultimately necessary, to hear. But too often they fail to use their unquestionably bright torches on themselves, and in that darkness inside them I sense monsters growing.
Tuesday 4 December 2018
Day 220: Wires
‘Ello. I’ve been writing and reading and watching and thinking a lot today, about Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin, about their lord and saviour Dr Professor Sir Daddy Jordan Peterson… about the alt-right, about the difficulties in holding together a worthwhile yet highly complex system (our fairly liberal democracy) versus the ease in which said highly complex system can be undermined by those seeking simply to destroy (harder to keep many spinning plates in the air and keep the plate spinners focused and fed and happy than to run around tickling under armpits). I’ve been thinking about the kinds of attention we bring to things, and how they, the kinds of attention, actually manifest different realities - or rather manifest inherently different aspects of perhaps the same reality. I’ve been thinking about logic, and the limits of logic, and how often we use logic to justify gut feelings - on abortion, trans rights, hot button topics - that we often come to initially from a level far below logic. How logic can at times be a perspicacious tool to cut through our prejudices, and at others simply a way of reinforcing prejudice, depending how we wield the tool, whether we turn it on ourselves, or use it only to dismantle our adversaries, and keep a strange blind spot for our own assumptions, à la Steven Crowder.
So I’ve been thinking about a lot, but it’s all rough and nebulous at the moment, so I won’t talk about it anymore today.
I’ve also been introducing Mike to The Wire, which show is, quelle surprise, one of my favourites of all time. Watching early episodes back I’m again thrilled by the complex clockwork world David Simon et al have created, a world of hierarchies and structures, of police departments and judicial systems and newspapers and political networks, and of the parallel and often times more brutal, often more direct, equally as valid organisations of the streets.
But also how this is not a cold, mechanical world Simon has constructed. Talking of types of attention and ways of manifesting reality - there’s an essential humanity to The Wire, an inherent compassion, used to populate these opposing structures with real people, with characters who, from the most minor to the most major, from the lowliest corner boy “sucking on a 40, yelling ‘5-0’” to the highest police commissioner, are all imbued with genuine life. Simon sees people. He has a keen eye for order and arrangement and framework, and it is often this that gives the show its dizzying verisimilitude, but underpinning this ordering of discrete information is a deep and profound well of empathy, of understanding, of love. The Wire, as Simon has often stated, is a Greek tragedy of the modern American city - and it can only be such because he cares so much.
If you have not yet watched it I would urge you to do so. Easy-going? No. But over the course of its five seasons I unquestionably became a deeper, wiser, better person. Get to it.
……
OK. Music. Let’s go with… Love, by Lana Del Ray. I’ve never sought Lana Del Ray out. This came on on Spotify playlist, and I found myself digging it. Her voice is really sensuous, no? Voluptuous, even. It’s like drowning in a tempestuous ocean of 80% cocoa fairtrade dark chocolate. Silken and sunless and purring with an edge of danger. I likes.
So I’ve been thinking about a lot, but it’s all rough and nebulous at the moment, so I won’t talk about it anymore today.
I’ve also been introducing Mike to The Wire, which show is, quelle surprise, one of my favourites of all time. Watching early episodes back I’m again thrilled by the complex clockwork world David Simon et al have created, a world of hierarchies and structures, of police departments and judicial systems and newspapers and political networks, and of the parallel and often times more brutal, often more direct, equally as valid organisations of the streets.
But also how this is not a cold, mechanical world Simon has constructed. Talking of types of attention and ways of manifesting reality - there’s an essential humanity to The Wire, an inherent compassion, used to populate these opposing structures with real people, with characters who, from the most minor to the most major, from the lowliest corner boy “sucking on a 40, yelling ‘5-0’” to the highest police commissioner, are all imbued with genuine life. Simon sees people. He has a keen eye for order and arrangement and framework, and it is often this that gives the show its dizzying verisimilitude, but underpinning this ordering of discrete information is a deep and profound well of empathy, of understanding, of love. The Wire, as Simon has often stated, is a Greek tragedy of the modern American city - and it can only be such because he cares so much.
If you have not yet watched it I would urge you to do so. Easy-going? No. But over the course of its five seasons I unquestionably became a deeper, wiser, better person. Get to it.
……
OK. Music. Let’s go with… Love, by Lana Del Ray. I’ve never sought Lana Del Ray out. This came on on Spotify playlist, and I found myself digging it. Her voice is really sensuous, no? Voluptuous, even. It’s like drowning in a tempestuous ocean of 80% cocoa fairtrade dark chocolate. Silken and sunless and purring with an edge of danger. I likes.
Monday 3 December 2018
Day 219: Failing forwards
Home from work. What do I feel like inside? I feel like dust and emptiness and garbage. And what does that feel like? Mmmmmm. It feels horrible. OK, and what does that “horrible” feel like? … Uhhhnnnn. Hmmm. Well, no, I feel... panic and stress and exhaustion, I guess. Why panic? Because I haven’t done a blog post and it’s so late and I need to get to bed and I’ll stay up and ruin tomorrow trying to write something tonight that no one will read anyway and I’m grinding myself to the bone and this isn’t healthy and I can’t sustain it…
OK. Woosh. So… why not just end the blog post here then, I’ve done a few words, why not post it up and go to bed?
Because I have a responsibility, and I have to try, even though I’m not living up to it.
Is that the panic? Maybe. That I’m striving so hard to produce so little of worth. That I’m struggling and kicking so hard just to keep from drowning, and barely any energy can go into, like… what I am able to shout when my mouth is above the surface of the water. The writing is so…
No. I’m not sure that’s true.
I don’t want to post up what little I’ve got and go to bed because… because I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to be a failure. I don’t want to be seen as a failure. I want to write until I have something impressive to show for myself.
Ung, that’s so ugly. But it is true. What did Eugene Gendlin say?
“What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.”
I’m afraid of failure. I’m terrified of failure. Maybe to such an extent that it is getting in the way of my ability to be successful.
So... why not try failing, on purpose, with a glad heart, and see what happens? Just write a really crappy post, the crappiest, the loosest, shortest...
… Although, well... In teasing out that idea I’ve now written a respectable amount… and I’ve got the Gendlin quote in there, that added some intellectual cachet. And I guess the whole striving-to-fail idea is a kind of cutting of the Gordian Knot, which isn't very much like failure at all.
Wait. Am I feeling disparaged by that? By the fact that even my attempt to fail is failing? Jeez. Self-defeating much? If the post is a success then it’s a success, and that’s great. And if it’s a failure than I get to fail on purpose, and explore my fears, and conquer them, and that’s great.
Everything is great!
Phew. Glad I got that sorted out.
OK. Woosh. So… why not just end the blog post here then, I’ve done a few words, why not post it up and go to bed?
Because I have a responsibility, and I have to try, even though I’m not living up to it.
Is that the panic? Maybe. That I’m striving so hard to produce so little of worth. That I’m struggling and kicking so hard just to keep from drowning, and barely any energy can go into, like… what I am able to shout when my mouth is above the surface of the water. The writing is so…
No. I’m not sure that’s true.
I don’t want to post up what little I’ve got and go to bed because… because I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to be a failure. I don’t want to be seen as a failure. I want to write until I have something impressive to show for myself.
Ung, that’s so ugly. But it is true. What did Eugene Gendlin say?
“What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.”
I’m afraid of failure. I’m terrified of failure. Maybe to such an extent that it is getting in the way of my ability to be successful.
So... why not try failing, on purpose, with a glad heart, and see what happens? Just write a really crappy post, the crappiest, the loosest, shortest...
… Although, well... In teasing out that idea I’ve now written a respectable amount… and I’ve got the Gendlin quote in there, that added some intellectual cachet. And I guess the whole striving-to-fail idea is a kind of cutting of the Gordian Knot, which isn't very much like failure at all.
Wait. Am I feeling disparaged by that? By the fact that even my attempt to fail is failing? Jeez. Self-defeating much? If the post is a success then it’s a success, and that’s great. And if it’s a failure than I get to fail on purpose, and explore my fears, and conquer them, and that’s great.
Everything is great!
Phew. Glad I got that sorted out.
......
Music? Music. Uhh. Singularity, by Jon Hopkins. I love Hopkins’ 2013 album Immunity, full of glitchy and driving and transcendent ambient-techno wonders. This new single… Yeah. I like it. I prefer the opening moments, brooding and oppressive, to where it ends up. Maybe less insistent than the stuff on Immunity, but maybe it’s the kind of thing best reserved for a full album coming through your headphones as you pace unknown city streets in the depths of night, as opposed to highlighting one song as a video on YouTube. I shall listen more.
Music? Music. Uhh. Singularity, by Jon Hopkins. I love Hopkins’ 2013 album Immunity, full of glitchy and driving and transcendent ambient-techno wonders. This new single… Yeah. I like it. I prefer the opening moments, brooding and oppressive, to where it ends up. Maybe less insistent than the stuff on Immunity, but maybe it’s the kind of thing best reserved for a full album coming through your headphones as you pace unknown city streets in the depths of night, as opposed to highlighting one song as a video on YouTube. I shall listen more.
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