Friday, October 31, 2008
Fine sunny morning
A fine sunny morning here in Exeter. A pleasure to poodle in along the canal. New livestock in the form of a herd of black and white cows along the way and a large black cormorant flying over the weir at the entrance to Exeter docks. Oddly, despite the recent freak rain over the way over the Otter, the weir was not flooding. Maybe they pitch the neighbouring sluice gates so that it doesn't when there are trainee canoeists about - which is most of the time.
Also reminded of the time when I asked a South African jazz musician, on him telling me of his cows back home, what colour his cows were. I think he thought I was making a crack at his colour - but, then, fortunately, decided that, having taken on some beer, I was just interested in his cows. It turned out that he had black and white cows just like ours: no exotica from the veldt.
Noticed an obituary the other day of a lady who, so the headline claimed, spent twenty years of her life as an agent of the powers for good in the heart of the powers for evil, that is to say the British Communist Party. Leaving aside the question of whether it is not time for the securocrats to move on to a new target, it must be an odd business spending a good part of one's day for twenty years pretending to be someone that one was not. One would, presumably, make real friendships or more over that sort of time. One would be deceiving people that one had worked and played with for years on a continuous basis. A grubby, if arguably necessary, business which cannot be good for the soul. Not helped in my case by lack of belief in reward for the soul in the hereafter in the glow of the Lord who understands all. I wonder if people carrying on such trades are brigaded with the untouchables in India - always having had a sneaking regard for the honesty which recognises grubby and isolating trades (like slaughterhouse men and funerary beauticians) for what they are and does not try to pretend otherwise.
For similar reasons, must be an odd business being an actor. To spend one's quality time pretending to be a succession of other people; inhabiting cardboard cut outs of other people, cut out by still other people. Perhaps coupled with a gap in oneself, or with a desire to hide from oneself? Certainly coupled with the greed for the sound of clapping hands.
Getting on well with L Durrell, the four volumes of whose Alexandrian quartet are on loan from Gallivan's Tooting lending library. Have dispatched Justine and Balthazar and am now getting into Mountolive. Starting to come around to Huxley in the sense that Durrell, around twenty years or so older, derives much of the quartet from his own life and is prone to inserting lectures on this and that into the mouths of his charectars. And the interest for me lies in the emphasis he puts on the very partial view we have of any other person. A partial view which is apt to be very differant from someone else's partial view. How idea of a person having a stable and coherent charectar is perhaps convenient and comfortable, but essentially untrue. Perhaps an artefact of its narration from one partial point of view.
But there is a much stronger streak of violence in his writing that there is in Huxley - although, for such a civilised person, it is by no means absent in this last. The story, for example, of a minor diplomat's wife who went missing from her car out in the desert one night. The police got around to making enquiries in a Bedouin tent where any knowledge was denied - when suddenly an old lady slipped and a head rolled out of her apron. The inference being that the minor diplomat's wife had been killed for the gold that could be bashed out of her teeth. The various severed heads, deaths and murders in the heart of posh Alexandria. The story of the tortoises which were loaded live into barrels which were then used as ballast for ships on the way to London. There, if dead, the tortoises were dumped in the dock, presumably stinking; otherwise they were sold as pets. Also much talk of niggers and nigger music (presumably jazz): he is not being prejudicial, unpleasant or intentionally rude, but it is not language which would get past an editor these days.
Also reminded of the time when I asked a South African jazz musician, on him telling me of his cows back home, what colour his cows were. I think he thought I was making a crack at his colour - but, then, fortunately, decided that, having taken on some beer, I was just interested in his cows. It turned out that he had black and white cows just like ours: no exotica from the veldt.
Noticed an obituary the other day of a lady who, so the headline claimed, spent twenty years of her life as an agent of the powers for good in the heart of the powers for evil, that is to say the British Communist Party. Leaving aside the question of whether it is not time for the securocrats to move on to a new target, it must be an odd business spending a good part of one's day for twenty years pretending to be someone that one was not. One would, presumably, make real friendships or more over that sort of time. One would be deceiving people that one had worked and played with for years on a continuous basis. A grubby, if arguably necessary, business which cannot be good for the soul. Not helped in my case by lack of belief in reward for the soul in the hereafter in the glow of the Lord who understands all. I wonder if people carrying on such trades are brigaded with the untouchables in India - always having had a sneaking regard for the honesty which recognises grubby and isolating trades (like slaughterhouse men and funerary beauticians) for what they are and does not try to pretend otherwise.
For similar reasons, must be an odd business being an actor. To spend one's quality time pretending to be a succession of other people; inhabiting cardboard cut outs of other people, cut out by still other people. Perhaps coupled with a gap in oneself, or with a desire to hide from oneself? Certainly coupled with the greed for the sound of clapping hands.
Getting on well with L Durrell, the four volumes of whose Alexandrian quartet are on loan from Gallivan's Tooting lending library. Have dispatched Justine and Balthazar and am now getting into Mountolive. Starting to come around to Huxley in the sense that Durrell, around twenty years or so older, derives much of the quartet from his own life and is prone to inserting lectures on this and that into the mouths of his charectars. And the interest for me lies in the emphasis he puts on the very partial view we have of any other person. A partial view which is apt to be very differant from someone else's partial view. How idea of a person having a stable and coherent charectar is perhaps convenient and comfortable, but essentially untrue. Perhaps an artefact of its narration from one partial point of view.
But there is a much stronger streak of violence in his writing that there is in Huxley - although, for such a civilised person, it is by no means absent in this last. The story, for example, of a minor diplomat's wife who went missing from her car out in the desert one night. The police got around to making enquiries in a Bedouin tent where any knowledge was denied - when suddenly an old lady slipped and a head rolled out of her apron. The inference being that the minor diplomat's wife had been killed for the gold that could be bashed out of her teeth. The various severed heads, deaths and murders in the heart of posh Alexandria. The story of the tortoises which were loaded live into barrels which were then used as ballast for ships on the way to London. There, if dead, the tortoises were dumped in the dock, presumably stinking; otherwise they were sold as pets. Also much talk of niggers and nigger music (presumably jazz): he is not being prejudicial, unpleasant or intentionally rude, but it is not language which would get past an editor these days.
# posted by Jim @ 4:02 AM 
