On Not Knowing

I count my lack of any real knowledge of what is broadly termed celebrity-culture as one of the great positives of my life. But sometimes I surprise myself when I realise I know stuff about some of the players involved, not really understanding how this came to my conscientiousness, usually wishing it hadn't.

Such has been the case this week in relation to the trial of a well-known British comedian in which a most unpleasant light has been shed on his predatory behaviour towards women. I'm complacently happy to say I never found the guy funny, and didn't quite understand why others did, but it's difficult to be complacent regarding the culture that fostered him and contributed to his disturbing sense of being beyond the constraints of decent behaviour. And today another case involving an equally famous name - famous enough for me to know who he is and exactly what he is famous for - has come to light (despite an attempt to employ legal injunctions to keep it in the dark) and I've found myself taking in the details without really meaning to, if you know what I mean. And the details are just depressing all round.

The problem is that taking any kind of interest in this stuff is of itself an exercise in negativity. I suppose it's good to be aware of the dark depths, but occasionally I feel it might just be better to remain in the shallows; and it's always better to foster awareness of the possibility of ascending to some kind of height.

Good Taste

That moment as you slake your thirst with cool, hard water biting through the accumulated drudgery of deep-breathing dreary effort. A reward worth all the sweat unleashed to achieve. Almost as good as the first sip of liquid after a day of fasting.

Good to have the opportunity to experience both.

Recuperating

The plan had been for me to hit the gym this evening, but that's been shelved. For no particular reason I'm aware of the nerves on the outward side of my left leg, the upper bit, decided to announce they are in pain from early this morning, and said pain has failed to settle down, remaining sharp & debilitating. I'm hoping that this eases by tomorrow, but previous experience suggests these attacks are unpredictable in terms of ferocity and duration.

I've had no choice but to take things very gently today, and in some ways have enjoyed doing so. Read a couple of pages of Finnegans Wake, Tennyson's A Dream of Fair Women, and a fair few pages from both Kotkin's Stalin bio and Waugh's The Sword of Honour, so the day hasn't been wasted, but I've also drifted into aimless dozing more than once.

Oh, and I've basked in Bill Frissell's Good Dog, Happy Man, which I've never heard before, and discovered a new composer, one Anna Sigríður Þorvaldsdóttir. She's Icelandic and sensationally good, but not in a pretty way. (The music, I mean, not the lady.)

So, all in all, on a day when not much has happened, there's been plenty going on, if you see what I mean.

Uneasy Reading

Making slow progress in Stephen Kotkin's Stalin: Paradoxes of Power 1878 - 1928, but the brilliantly dense text isn't exactly made for speed reading. It's now November 1919 and somehow the Bolshevik regime has survived. The extreme ruthlessness of Messrs Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin et al has had a lot to do with survival, but sheer good luck has made a major contribution. If I ever feel the need to remind myself that history is basically a mess then rereading Kotkin's account of the revolutions in Russia and the war that followed will certainly do the trick.

And if the reader had ever suffered in any degree from some kind of hero-worship of any of the major players, this is the book to cure them.

New Ways Of Thinking

In a meeting this morning a colleague referred to AI snobs. I think she was talking about people who automatically look down on anything generated through some form of artificial intelligence. It seems this is the default position of quite a number of young people.

Odd really. The idea that AI might be capable of producing something of genuine artistic value seems to me very exciting. Also very disturbing. But not something to regard with a kind of weary contempt.

Almost Forgotten

For some reason I found myself today thinking of the significance of this date for me when I was a kid more than I normally do. And it was very clear that my memories of Bonfire Night and its attendant excitements are very patchy indeed. A search on YouTube for something that would stir the embers of memory proved fruitless. Whatever's on there is just vaguely generic, pointlessly nostalgic.

Perhaps such poverty of recall isn't such a bad thing. Some things are best left behind.

The Results Are In

Not quite sure whether it was the United comeback against Roma or the midterms wipeout of POTUS & his minions made me happier today. On balance, probably the news out of the US. But in the sober darkness of evening it strikes me that it's by no impossible that both may signal a false dawn. Still, best to enjoy the moment, eh?

Senses Dulled

Started reading Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy as a follow-up to The Red and the Black. I roundly detest Waugh as a personality whilst hugely admiring the early novels, especially Vile Bodies, At one time I rated Brideshead Revisited highly, but came to think that the Catholic aspects just don't work - it all seems a bit performative to me, as does the Catholicism of Guy Crouchback, the central figure in the war trilogy, at least from my reading so far. But these are early days and the war has hardly got going.

In fact the opening chapters struck me as pleasingly dull, in contrast to the high energy of Stendhal who absolutely demands alertness in every paragraph. Sometimes you need to read something that plods along as a way of winding down, and that certainly suits my mood as things stand.

Of Good Cheer

Life has been pleasantly smooth-sailing of late. Not quite what I expected at this time of year, but very welcome. So today was a day for feeling very cheerful indeed. 

But even if things hadn't been quite so tickety-boo, one look at the picture of Arissa above would have made the world an unreasonably cheerful place. (Books courtesy of the vouchers I get for my involvement in the annual lit seminar.)

Full Of Surprises

So much of Stendhal's The Red and the Black took me by surprise that I just don't know where to start in summing up how I felt reading the novel. This is true simply at the level of story: I had no idea what was going to happen next right up to the final lines, which floored me. And it's true at the more sophisticated level of style: I couldn't figure out whether Stendhal just didn't know what he was doing and was making it up as he went along; or if the constant shifting of point of view and consequent ironies was cunningly, meaningfully, crafted from the get-go in every particular.

How does a writer manage to create a central character so entirely despicable, yet wonderfully sympathetic?

And how does a reader process a work that defies all categorisation?