It looks inevitable that this week I will only think about the blog when I have little time to jot down any more than vague ramblings. 'What's new?' I hear you say. Well, okay. It is a fair point.
But in good old blog tradition, let me ramble. The PhD is in a delicate state presently. Monday simply had to be a day of rest, or at least a break from the laborious process of proping up the rushed arguments and wild citations mascarading as proofs in Chapters 1-4. Accordingly I spent most of the day making job applications.
But one bright moment in the fuzzy gloom that has descended on me ever since my glasses needed changing was the rediscovery of Stephen Fry's glorious 'Jeeves' and Hugh Laurie's marvellous 'Bertie Wooster'. Dad's new DVD machine and 20" TV - 20" screen, woooooooooooww - has never seen more worthy service. Goodness, Wodehouse was a philosopher, even if he somehow got embroiled with the Nazis! I must glean some of Bertie's gems and relate them on this august forum, before I return to Lyon on Saturday. Here's one. 'You cannot be blamed for somehow becoming engaged to Honoria Glossop, Jeeves. Honoria Glossop is an act of God'. How very true that sounds, especially applied to certain females!
Another philosopher who has wandered into my life, but who this time was on the Nazis' hitlist, is the incredible Dietrich Von Hildebrand. Here's another worthy subject for more blogging at a later date. You have to admire anyone who was writing about the 'Metaphysics of the Community' in the 1930s, an age when metaphysics was discredited, and community was thought of - bizarrely - as communist. More on him in due course.
Meanwhile, with less than 50 minutes to go before Lent, I must go and mediate on all possible meanings of the word 'repent'. If only it was the same as the Latin 'repente', which is so beautifully rendered in French as 'rapidement'.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
Erratic service
The old blog has taken a backseat this week as I travelled back to the UK and began the final push for the submission of my thesis. Still, the old brain (the old Brian) is grinding away in the background, especially with a view to completing the User's Guide to WHY? in the next day or two.
I cannot decide at the moment if the thesis is a new, original and substantial contribution to scholarship, or a total dog's breakfast.
More thoughts on this very soon.
Anyone for some pedigree Chum?
I cannot decide at the moment if the thesis is a new, original and substantial contribution to scholarship, or a total dog's breakfast.
More thoughts on this very soon.
Anyone for some pedigree Chum?
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Death, death, death!
Positively my favourite moment in cinema comes from the third part of Lord of the Rings. The Roherim - if that is the spelling - arrive during the battle of the Pelenor Fields (?) before Minas Tirith ... I think Tolkein fans will simply have to attribute my erratic spelling to my virus ... and King Theoden rides along their ranks shouting "death" and touching all their spears with his sword. I know it doesn't quite happen like that in the book, but so what? It is great cinema, and I still remember watching it for the first time, and feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as, to the accompaniment of the folksy violin Rohan melody, the horsemen of Rohan charge to their death or to the destruction of the forces of Mordor.
Death is much in the news at the moment. I refer not to the death everyone seems to be so excited about. I refer rather to the death of Ian Richardson whose demise deprives us of one of the greatest Shakespearean actors since World War II. I was alarmed when I saw his picture, since at first I thought Charles Dance had shuffled off this mortal coil, and that, accordingly, the portrayal of the Dickesian baddy was perhaps at an end. That day will surely come, but thankfully not yet. But what struck me about Richardson's obituary was not his many achievements, but the sheer humility of the man, notably, his avowal that it was Alec Guinness who had taught him to act for the camera.
In the way my mind is wont to wander these days, I took off on a flight of reminiscence about Sir Alec Guinness, whose My Name Escapes Me is No. 2 on my list of all-time great autobiography titles (No. 1 being Eric Sykes's inimitable If I don't write it, nobody will). Guinness made his money late in life thanks to negotiating a royalties deal for his minor role in Star Wars. Musing over the script of the first film, Harrison Ford told George Lucas candidly, 'You can write this shit, but you can't say it, George.' Which, of course, makes Guinness's achievement all the more commendable.
If there is any synchronicity here, it is simply that this is the second time this week I have stumbled across the Guinness trail. I covered a review of David Lean's Great Expectations with my cinema class the other day, in which film Guinness plays Magwitch, if I am not mistaken. And, feeling great sympathy for my students, whose course requires them to watch the appalling Paris, Texas, I recommended Guinness's tour de force Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he plays eight members of the same family, all of whom are assassinated. Death, encore une fois. It is hard now to get the measure of such a thing. I cannot think of any film that even comes close to this vauderville-like capacity for make-believe and acting acumen, all wrapped up in the same performance. Eddie Murphy has since caught the vauderville, but hardly the acting acumen. (Can I have 'acting acumen' or is that forbidden by the Abused Alliterations Act?). I found myself walking away from the cinema class, thinking it was about time I taught the students the expression, 'Mine's a Guinness'.
Which all brings me in another word-association-football kind of way to the news from HQ that my eldest nephew and godson has done us all proud and turned in a sterling performance as Mercutio - Death, once again - in Oldham Sixth Form College's production of Romeo and Juliet.
He's a talented chap, and so, in the time-honoured family tradition, I couldn't resist a swipe at him this evening.
'So', I texted him, 'I heard you died on stage'. And apparently, it just sailed right over his head, for he thanked me in his response.
I'd probably have to be a Richardson or a Guinness to get that line just right.
Death is much in the news at the moment. I refer not to the death everyone seems to be so excited about. I refer rather to the death of Ian Richardson whose demise deprives us of one of the greatest Shakespearean actors since World War II. I was alarmed when I saw his picture, since at first I thought Charles Dance had shuffled off this mortal coil, and that, accordingly, the portrayal of the Dickesian baddy was perhaps at an end. That day will surely come, but thankfully not yet. But what struck me about Richardson's obituary was not his many achievements, but the sheer humility of the man, notably, his avowal that it was Alec Guinness who had taught him to act for the camera.
In the way my mind is wont to wander these days, I took off on a flight of reminiscence about Sir Alec Guinness, whose My Name Escapes Me is No. 2 on my list of all-time great autobiography titles (No. 1 being Eric Sykes's inimitable If I don't write it, nobody will). Guinness made his money late in life thanks to negotiating a royalties deal for his minor role in Star Wars. Musing over the script of the first film, Harrison Ford told George Lucas candidly, 'You can write this shit, but you can't say it, George.' Which, of course, makes Guinness's achievement all the more commendable.
If there is any synchronicity here, it is simply that this is the second time this week I have stumbled across the Guinness trail. I covered a review of David Lean's Great Expectations with my cinema class the other day, in which film Guinness plays Magwitch, if I am not mistaken. And, feeling great sympathy for my students, whose course requires them to watch the appalling Paris, Texas, I recommended Guinness's tour de force Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he plays eight members of the same family, all of whom are assassinated. Death, encore une fois. It is hard now to get the measure of such a thing. I cannot think of any film that even comes close to this vauderville-like capacity for make-believe and acting acumen, all wrapped up in the same performance. Eddie Murphy has since caught the vauderville, but hardly the acting acumen. (Can I have 'acting acumen' or is that forbidden by the Abused Alliterations Act?). I found myself walking away from the cinema class, thinking it was about time I taught the students the expression, 'Mine's a Guinness'.
Which all brings me in another word-association-football kind of way to the news from HQ that my eldest nephew and godson has done us all proud and turned in a sterling performance as Mercutio - Death, once again - in Oldham Sixth Form College's production of Romeo and Juliet.
He's a talented chap, and so, in the time-honoured family tradition, I couldn't resist a swipe at him this evening.
'So', I texted him, 'I heard you died on stage'. And apparently, it just sailed right over his head, for he thanked me in his response.
I'd probably have to be a Richardson or a Guinness to get that line just right.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
You can't hide your tired eyes
The saucer joke of Monday's post was too close to the truth. I am struggling a bit with computer screens at the moment, so probably no more posts until the weekend. I might even have to start printing things to edit them. Imagine going back to paper. Positively medieval!
Monday, February 5, 2007
Clogspot
The landlady mentioned yesterday that she thinks I am losing my marbles (and she only just noticed!). I don't know about losing my marbles but everything is a bit on top of me at the moment. My eyes are going like saucers from staring at computer screens, I've begun eating raw fish, and it is said that ghastly whispers can be heard coming from my room at night which sound like
'Myyyy Thesisssssssssss (gulp).
Time for some Wordsworth, me thinks:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
'Myyyy Thesisssssssssss (gulp).
Time for some Wordsworth, me thinks:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Friday, February 2, 2007
WHY? A User's Guide Part I
There is an urban legend which recounts the story of a prospective student going to sit an entrance examination for one of the Oxford colleges. The professor who set the entrance examination that year was something of a clever-dick, a man anxious to keep the standards in college as high as possible. Accordingly, he pored over the problem he wanted to set the prospective students with more than his usual scholarly assiduity.
When our prospective student opened his paper during the examination, his eyes fell on the following instuctions:
Please answer the question as fully as possible. Ask for extra sheets of paper as necessary.
Question. Why?
Answer. ...
*************
After the examination, the examiner, our clever-dick professor, bowled back to his Oxford fellow's den with something of the effeminate bustle acquired by many disorganized intellectuals. Donning his reading glasses, and opening the first paper in the pile of examination papers (as it happens, the paper of our prospective student), his eyes fell on the following response to his carefully crafted puzzler:
Question. Why?
Answer. ...Why bloody not?
************
The legend is enticing, although one has to suspect that if it is true, the student in question had already decided he would not go to Oxford and that he might as well pass out of his interview with flying colours (to use those famous lines from the cartoon legionary Beau Peep: 'Have you heard of the expression "with flying colours?'" 'Yes?' 'Well, I have to tell you that you failed "with flying colours"').
There are all kinds of formulations of the question 'why', but the most memorable, at least in the twentieth century are associated with war. I grew up in the age of that anti-nuclear war poster with the mushroom cloud and the word "Why? across the bottom. The one artistic gaff in the Sergei Bondarchuk's wonderful film Waterloo, sees a British Grenadier drop his rifle in the midst of the battle and start running about yelling 'Why?' like some mad Greenham Common peacenik. To be fair, its artistic highlight is also during the battle when the music of a waltz, danced in an earlier pre-battle scene, accompanies a slow-mo passage of Wellington's cavalry at full charge.
Robert Graves did his own marvellous version of 'Why?' in a poem the title of which escapes me for a moment. He takes the Romantic convention of the lonely man wandering in the wood, and blows it to pieces. His lonely man in a wood is a dead 'Boche' whose decaying body has turned green and whose face is a mass of coagulated blood.
But, heck, this is the Internet, and so, in a clickstant, I can find it:
'A Dead Boche'
TO you who’d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)
"War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.
Obviously, there are different questions tied up in all these examples, but they all go back eventually to 'why?'
How does one begin to answer such a question? It depends I suppose what level you are speaking about. With minimal technical difficulties, the 'why' of the pathologist is going to come down to about the same, regardless of whether the subject is lying under the sunny canopy of a forest in the Ardennes or on a chilled mortuary slab. The physical 'why' eventually comes down to a cessation of the biochemical system suporting life.
The human or philosophical 'why' is more elusive; of that there is no doubt. The frustration captured by Graves and even by Bondarchuk's Napoleonic peacenik used to be called the 'problem of evil'. It goes a lot further than the battle field, of course, even if its most potent symbols are found there.
But this is a blog, not a thesis, so I'll cut to the chase.
There has to be an answer to 'why?'. How we actually comprehend the answer is quite another matter. Some people regard it as an agnostic mystery that is destined always to be obscure. Others, like me, are happy to confess the mystery, but live, waiting for some kind of understanding slowly to emerge from the sometimes awful silences of God.
But there has to be an answer, even if it difficult to discern. The alternative is simply too terrible to contemplate. This is not because absurdity in itself is too terrible to contemplate. There is no time now to deal with Freud's reductionism about religion, but it can pretty safely be concluded that it is not a flight to an ideal world of childhood; more like an adult opening of eyes to one's own limitations and those of one's existence. Tragedy and comedy either have a hinterland of meaning; or, as for Ionesco, it's all just tragedy in the end, even it it's comedy.
No, it is unthinkable – pace Freud and Ionesco - that 'why?' should not have both a hinterland and an answer. In that case, 'why?' means nothing at all, or at least no more and no less than anything in a universe of absurdity.
And in that case, 'why?', as our prospective Oxford student could have told us, might as well be rephrased:
Why bloody not?
When our prospective student opened his paper during the examination, his eyes fell on the following instuctions:
Please answer the question as fully as possible. Ask for extra sheets of paper as necessary.
Question. Why?
Answer. ...
*************
After the examination, the examiner, our clever-dick professor, bowled back to his Oxford fellow's den with something of the effeminate bustle acquired by many disorganized intellectuals. Donning his reading glasses, and opening the first paper in the pile of examination papers (as it happens, the paper of our prospective student), his eyes fell on the following response to his carefully crafted puzzler:
Question. Why?
Answer. ...Why bloody not?
************
The legend is enticing, although one has to suspect that if it is true, the student in question had already decided he would not go to Oxford and that he might as well pass out of his interview with flying colours (to use those famous lines from the cartoon legionary Beau Peep: 'Have you heard of the expression "with flying colours?'" 'Yes?' 'Well, I have to tell you that you failed "with flying colours"').
There are all kinds of formulations of the question 'why', but the most memorable, at least in the twentieth century are associated with war. I grew up in the age of that anti-nuclear war poster with the mushroom cloud and the word "Why? across the bottom. The one artistic gaff in the Sergei Bondarchuk's wonderful film Waterloo, sees a British Grenadier drop his rifle in the midst of the battle and start running about yelling 'Why?' like some mad Greenham Common peacenik. To be fair, its artistic highlight is also during the battle when the music of a waltz, danced in an earlier pre-battle scene, accompanies a slow-mo passage of Wellington's cavalry at full charge.
Robert Graves did his own marvellous version of 'Why?' in a poem the title of which escapes me for a moment. He takes the Romantic convention of the lonely man wandering in the wood, and blows it to pieces. His lonely man in a wood is a dead 'Boche' whose decaying body has turned green and whose face is a mass of coagulated blood.
But, heck, this is the Internet, and so, in a clickstant, I can find it:
'A Dead Boche'
TO you who’d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)
"War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.
Obviously, there are different questions tied up in all these examples, but they all go back eventually to 'why?'
How does one begin to answer such a question? It depends I suppose what level you are speaking about. With minimal technical difficulties, the 'why' of the pathologist is going to come down to about the same, regardless of whether the subject is lying under the sunny canopy of a forest in the Ardennes or on a chilled mortuary slab. The physical 'why' eventually comes down to a cessation of the biochemical system suporting life.
The human or philosophical 'why' is more elusive; of that there is no doubt. The frustration captured by Graves and even by Bondarchuk's Napoleonic peacenik used to be called the 'problem of evil'. It goes a lot further than the battle field, of course, even if its most potent symbols are found there.
But this is a blog, not a thesis, so I'll cut to the chase.
There has to be an answer to 'why?'. How we actually comprehend the answer is quite another matter. Some people regard it as an agnostic mystery that is destined always to be obscure. Others, like me, are happy to confess the mystery, but live, waiting for some kind of understanding slowly to emerge from the sometimes awful silences of God.
But there has to be an answer, even if it difficult to discern. The alternative is simply too terrible to contemplate. This is not because absurdity in itself is too terrible to contemplate. There is no time now to deal with Freud's reductionism about religion, but it can pretty safely be concluded that it is not a flight to an ideal world of childhood; more like an adult opening of eyes to one's own limitations and those of one's existence. Tragedy and comedy either have a hinterland of meaning; or, as for Ionesco, it's all just tragedy in the end, even it it's comedy.
No, it is unthinkable – pace Freud and Ionesco - that 'why?' should not have both a hinterland and an answer. In that case, 'why?' means nothing at all, or at least no more and no less than anything in a universe of absurdity.
And in that case, 'why?', as our prospective Oxford student could have told us, might as well be rephrased:
Why bloody not?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
In medio vitae summus in morte
Amanda Simpson is one of many remarkable people that I have had the privilege and pleasure to know from our former colonies across the Atlantic. A down-to-earth-gal from South Carolina, Amanda is something of a scientific whizz. She used to juggle radioactive nuts and bolts on nuclear submarines in the US Navy, and now teaches nuclear physics or some such ethereal subject, still with the US Navy. She is the kind of doughty person who doesn't mind spending long periods in a long metal tube under water. It takes all sorts, of course, and our Amanda is one of them.
Amanda is also a lapsed atheist. As a Maths major (she would say a Math major, of course) in college, she spent her days working through the quantifiable problems of the universe, and her nights pondering the qualitative ones, a process that ultimately led to her baptism in the Catholic Church probably about ten years ago.
I last saw Amanda in Oxford about fifteen months ago. She was on her way back from World Youth Day in Germany, and I took her on a tour of some of the Oxford colleges (okay, and pubs too, I believe). She is a photo buff and snapped away throughout the tour; here's one she took of the back of my head in Christ Church dining room
http://amasimp.phanfare.com/album/13119/13120/556140
Well, who would take a photo of the front?
Not long after she returned to the States, she got engaged to be married to John Bianco. I never met him, but his photo on her website shows a gentle, bemused man with a broad smile and the high forehead of a thinker
http://amasimp.phanfare.com/album/183359/235977/10744775
The photo turns out to have been taken during John's last Christmas. Amanda posted this message on a message board on Tuesday of this week:
My fiancee, the love of my life, John Bianco died on Sunday of sudden cardiac arrest. We were to be wed in a tridentine high Mass this April. He was 32. We were just having a conversation and he suddenly stopped breathing. I called the paramedics and he was transported to the ER, but there was nothing they could do. I managed to get him conditional Last Rites, but he was already dead when the priest arrived. He needs all the prayers for his soul that he can get. He read this forum nearly everyday and I'm sure he would appreciate all your prayers. I, too, could use your prayers as I struggle to find meaning in all of this. It seems so cruel that God would take him away three months before we were to marry. We all have crosses to bare, but this is one I cannot bare alone. I am struggling to find how this all fits into His Divine Plan. So, I beg all of you, get out your rosaries, if you know priests have masses said for him, offer up your Communions and indulgences, please, please, pray for the repose of the soul of my John. He was a good man, a good traditionalist Catholic, and he will truly be missed. Thank you all. Amanda.
The Lord bless you, and keep you, John. The Lord show his face to you, and have mercy on you. The Lord turn his countenance to you, and give you peace.
I have no news as yet from Amanda but I hope to have some soon.
Amanda is also a lapsed atheist. As a Maths major (she would say a Math major, of course) in college, she spent her days working through the quantifiable problems of the universe, and her nights pondering the qualitative ones, a process that ultimately led to her baptism in the Catholic Church probably about ten years ago.
I last saw Amanda in Oxford about fifteen months ago. She was on her way back from World Youth Day in Germany, and I took her on a tour of some of the Oxford colleges (okay, and pubs too, I believe). She is a photo buff and snapped away throughout the tour; here's one she took of the back of my head in Christ Church dining room
http://amasimp.phanfare.com/album/13119/13120/556140
Well, who would take a photo of the front?
Not long after she returned to the States, she got engaged to be married to John Bianco. I never met him, but his photo on her website shows a gentle, bemused man with a broad smile and the high forehead of a thinker
http://amasimp.phanfare.com/album/183359/235977/10744775
The photo turns out to have been taken during John's last Christmas. Amanda posted this message on a message board on Tuesday of this week:
My fiancee, the love of my life, John Bianco died on Sunday of sudden cardiac arrest. We were to be wed in a tridentine high Mass this April. He was 32. We were just having a conversation and he suddenly stopped breathing. I called the paramedics and he was transported to the ER, but there was nothing they could do. I managed to get him conditional Last Rites, but he was already dead when the priest arrived. He needs all the prayers for his soul that he can get. He read this forum nearly everyday and I'm sure he would appreciate all your prayers. I, too, could use your prayers as I struggle to find meaning in all of this. It seems so cruel that God would take him away three months before we were to marry. We all have crosses to bare, but this is one I cannot bare alone. I am struggling to find how this all fits into His Divine Plan. So, I beg all of you, get out your rosaries, if you know priests have masses said for him, offer up your Communions and indulgences, please, please, pray for the repose of the soul of my John. He was a good man, a good traditionalist Catholic, and he will truly be missed. Thank you all. Amanda.
The Lord bless you, and keep you, John. The Lord show his face to you, and have mercy on you. The Lord turn his countenance to you, and give you peace.
I have no news as yet from Amanda but I hope to have some soon.
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