For me, as, I imagine, for many others, autumn 2008 was a season with something of the sulphurous breath of death about it. For one thing, I attended a funeral. But it wasn't just that. I seemed to be hearing, all the time, from people I knew, about friends and relatives who were seriously ill, or dying, or who had just died. In other words, although not bereaved myself, I was impressed for some reason (and also for some specific reasons that I won't go into) with the omnipresence of death. I don't know if there really was – objectively, so to speak – anything more deathly about the autumn of 2008 than there has been about other seasons throughout my life, but it has certainly felt that way. And, since the new year has begun, I have also learned of other late 2008 deaths of which I was not aware at the time. One of these was that of someone I have never met, but who has been a part of my life at the very least in as much as she has explicitly been the muse for a story I wrote, which was published in my collection Rule Dementia! in 2005.
It was the last time I spoke to Mr. Wu on the telephone. He wanted to inform me of a play on the radio he thought I would enjoy, by Yasutaka Tsutsui, called The Last Smoker (I'll have to see if I can catch that on the BBC iPlayer). But he also mentioned that Bettie Page had left us in December. Earlier today, I looked at a couple of obituary articles. The Times gives the following information:
Bettie Page, the bombshell pin-up queen who both titillated and outraged Americans during her legendary career as a model and actress in the 1950s, has died at the age of 85.
Page never regained consciousness after suffering a heart attack last week in Los Angeles, said her agent, Mark Roesler. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.
I'm not going to attempt an obituary of my own, here. I think my blog is really too casual for that kind of thing, and I'd want to do a decent job of it. I'll just say that, although I'm not the kind of person who is usually affected by the deaths of people he has never met, this news made me sad. I hope she is now wherever she most wants to be.
This could be the cue for ruminations about turning points in history, and how we may well be at one now, and how this might be the last chance anyone has to die in a human world, before we all have chips with our credit-card details implanted in our brains and so on, but I suppose I'll leave it for another day.
Before I sat down to write this, I was also planning to write a scathing attack on all deities, and on the cosmos in general, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, which I am intending to excerpt in a short story I've been contemplating, with the title of 'Suicide Watch', but I'm not really sure I have it in me. I can't find the right bit, but in an interview just before he died, Dennis Potter referred to God as "a rumour", saying that, whenever God or god becomes more than a rumour, it becomes a vile and tyrannical means of blaming humans for their suffering. I'm not sure if my paraphrase is accurate, but that's how I remember it. Words will always fail to capture truth, but I more or less agree with this sentiment. The difficulty then is in a choice of betrayals – whether to betray by being on the side of a tyrannical god, or whether to betray by being on the side of meaningless suffering. Either way, it seems, the human loses. This is a long-winded way of saying that, if possible, I'd like to avoid both betrayals, and that I wish for Bettie what I'd wish for anyone who has made the world more bearable, who is facing death, or has died – that they are with the rumour.
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“I was also planning to write a scathing attack on all deities, and on the cosmos in general”That would be a very long blog post. There are quite a few deities and taking on the whole cosmos would be impressive.”Dennis Potter referred to God as “a rumour”, saying that, whenever God or god becomes more than a rumour, it becomes a vile and tyrannical means of blaming humans for their suffering. I’m not sure if my paraphrase is accurate, but that’s how I remember it. Words will always fail to capture truth, but I more or less agree with this sentiment. The difficulty then is in a choice of betrayals – whether to betray by being on the side of a tyrannical god, or whether to betray by being on the side of meaningless suffering. Either way, it seems, the human loses. This is a long-winded way of saying that, if possible, I’d like to avoid both betrayals”Yes, the trick of the matter is in these two choices of betrayal. I’m always looking for something in between these two or else a third choice entirely. Ligotti seems content in his own way about accepting the latter choice of a meaningless existence. I’ve never understood how someone could embrace this choice fully without either going mad or killing oneself. Does one just find distraction in everyday pleasures and general mindlessness? Or maybe is it that one doesn’t embrace it fully but merely assents to it? I don’t know. Maybe Ligotti is a happier person than I am that the meaningless of existence doesn’t paralyze him in despair and terror. If so, I need to be taking whatever drugs he is taking.
Betty is real danger girl Too dangerous for the likes of me, I’m afraid. I have to admire from a distance. Close up, I would need protective clothing of some kind.That would be a very long blog post. There are quite a few deities and taking on the whole cosmos would be impressive.Yes, I know, and there’s not even a convenient business directory with all their names in, which is typical. Actually, I think I like Burroughs’ idea of the many gods, who are mortal. It makes them more sympathetic. Mind you, they’re supposed to guide you on your way to immortality. I’m not sure how that works.Yes, the trick of the matter is in these two choices of betrayal. I’m always looking for something in between these two or else a third choice entirely.I think there is something, but for me, at least, it’s a corner-of-the-eye thing, and talking about it makes it go all wrong, and I begin to grimace. I think I’m very generous, too, in catering to other people’s pessimism. Maybe Ligotti is a happier person than I am that the meaningless of existence doesn’t paralyze him in despair and terror. If so, I need to be taking whatever drugs he is taking.Although there is no right or wrong (probably), I find myself, recurringly, thinking that Ligotti is right about everything, but that this is also a question of personality, and, while I agree with what he expresses philosophically in many ways, my personality is bound to certain things that are valuable to me whether they are true or not. Then again… there’s something else, at the corner of my vision.
I guess I like Burroughs’ idea of the many gods, but I don’t fully understand his take on it. Mortal gods… that is a view that reminds me of Daoism and Tibetan Buddhism.I’m also of the mind that Ligotti’s arguments, intellectually, are quite convincing. In my comment, I was partly thinking about a response Ligotti gave to why he doesn’t kill himself. His response was very good and I mostly agreed with him, but I can’t help thinking that such answers wouldn’t stop me from killing myself if I was somehow capable of embracing pessimistic meaninglessness.Fundamentally, my personality too “is bound to certain things that are valuable to me whether they are true or not.” No matter how great the argument, words and logic can’t capture that something (or maybe a crowd of somethings) at the corner of vision.
Peter A Leonard writes:
Potter once claimed God was “a code word for all kinds of humbug and hypocrisy and institutionalized pap.” Which, of course, is very true. Ultimately he said “I think of God as someone I can abuse and who will abuse me back. Nevertheless, there is a relationship.” What I had most sympathy with was his insistence that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was destroying British culture. He even jokingly nicknamed his cancer “Rupert.”All the best.
miserable that she has died
Potter once claimed God was “a code word for all kinds of humbug and hypocrisy and institutionalized pap.” Which, of course, is very true. Ultimately he said “I think of God as someone I can abuse and who will abuse me back. Nevertheless, there is a relationship.” What I had most sympathy with was his insistence that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was destroying British culture. He even jokingly nicknamed his cancer “Rupert.”While I agree with Potter about this and that kind of thing, and even, to a significant degree, what you have quoted there, I also recognise, from seeing him interviewed, that he is of a very English type that is immediately identifiable and to which I do not belong. Variations of it are everywhere, for instance, in the form of Charlie Brooker, who, from a distance, I like and find funny etc. It’s clear that I’ve had a very different upbringing and background to these people, though, and their code words are not necessarily mine. I may use the same words to mean different things. Some of the characteristics of the type in question are that they despise sentiment, and everything outside of intellectual consciousness is non-existent for them. Potter varied from type enough to be able to give some credit to the workings of the unconscious in things like The Singing Detective. Actually I was thinking about this whole ‘English type’ issue just the other day, and was thinking of writing an entry on it, explaining the English type by quoting the lyrics of Half Man Half Biscuit, a band I used to enjoy very much, but who I’m perhaps more inclined these days to feel are trapped in a rut of narrow-minded cynicism. That’s not meant as a wholly damning statement. It’s merely a difference I’ve observed again and again between myself and many of my peers. For instance, there’s this:I asked if you would like to go along to
See the Rocky Horror Picture Show
You said you’d love to so I murdered your family
‘Cos I hate the Rocky Horror Picture ShowIt’s fairly funny, but it’s also the same savagery-by-numbers that is repeated again and again in overrated English ‘humour’. Having lived here (well, I’m in Wales now, but I don’t want to have to explain that I know the difference between Britain and England every single time I use one word or the other) since my birth, I understand the social environment from which such brittleness (and bitterness) grows, but I have never really been wholly identified with it myself (well, apart from the bitterness part, perhaps).miserable that she has died.We must soldier on. Live so as to be always worthy of her memory, in a way of which she would be proud.
His response was very good and I mostly agreed with him, but I can’t help thinking that such answers wouldn’t stop me from killing myself if I was somehow capable of embracing pessimistic meaninglessness.At the very least, I can’t see that it is ever compatible with procreation. Of course, it’s not for Ligotti. For some people, bizarrely, it seems to be.
i was once in such dire straights that i went to a four square church, basically protestant, and when the minister said, does anyone wish to admit that he accepts god and jesus etc., who needs gods help. then he said everyone close your eyes and if you need god’s help raise your hand. i raised my hand. sometime during the rest of the service, someone slipped a fat envelope in my hand. i couldn’t wait to get to my car that i was living in to count the money. it turned out to be propaganda about the church.anyway, if there is a god, i don’t think he even knows about us.man is so lonely on the earth, no matter how he amuses himself that he is not totally alone, that he naturally spreads rumors he doesn’t even believe himself about how god is watching. the only one watching me is myself.
I’ve noticed that I usually regret whatever I say on the subject, in either or any direction. I didn’t start out the above post with any thoughts of making some point about god either existing or not existing (an argument that I actually think is beside any kind of point), I just wanted to write about death and Bettie Page dying. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with dying, though I may be wrong about that (as Sappho’s poem, to which I linked, suggests), but I’ve noticed in my life that people want me to think there’s something wrong with dying and want me to be afraid of it. I think dying is a personal thing, and when my time comes, I certainly don’t want people crowding around with their beliefs or their fears. I don’t really want to overanalyse what I wrote above, because it was just something that I wrote on the spur of the moment. I think people are capable of conceiving, however vaguely, of something good. Some people associate that ‘something good’ with a Christian God. I don’t. But this, in many ways, is a language problem, anyway. Whatever that something good is, I would rather be on its side than against it. But when you start to fly flags it usually ends up that good is bad and everything goes horribly wrong. So, that’s how I interpreted Potter’s remark about the “rumour”. Whatever you love or find sacred – there’s a hint, a rumour, that there’s something worth protecting or preserving. I simply found myself wishing, for Bettie and for all us lonely humans, that we’ll find that thing. That we will, if you like, abide with it. But I’m very familiar with the feeling of the universe as a hostile vacuum. That’s not something I really need tutoring in.It’s something, in fact, that I can churn out endlessly, because I find people want and expect it from me, and it’s far, far easier to give people the despair they want than it is to give them hope – in my experience. In fact, I’m currently writing a short story called ‘Suicide Watch’, with which I hope to give people lashings and lashings of the despair that they want. I’m perfectly capable of joining in and going further than most. Words, it seems, are made for despair. So, with the coin of language I will render to the Caesar of despair what belongs to him. Nothing of any value can ever be put into words, which is a sad realisation for someone as language-orientated as myself. But there’s also an aphorism I remember from somewhere – a Scottish poet if I recall correctly – that goes: “Words are difficult to put into words.” So I simply do what I have to do with words and hope that they have some suggestive value as objects, the way that sculpture has. I also hope, from this point of view, that people will interpret those words generously, although I might make that difficult sometimes. In short, I have very little – or no – hope of ever expressing anything true, and I think people – maybe – would be able to breathe a little easier if they realised that they didn’t have to take other people’s words at all seriously. And I still feel like I haven’t got anywhere near what I was trying to say.
http://www.ianhamiltonfinlay.com/The fellow who said, “Words are difficult to put into words”. If you Google that, in speech marks, you will find one entry in the whole of the Internet. Or, I did just now, anyway.
These are the lyrics to one of my favourite songs:http://phespirit.info/momus/20030115.htmPerhaps these, in fact, express something of what I want to say better than I have myself. I don’t think that anything is philosophically ‘true’. There is only experience. I play with ideas and I express feelings, and I think that people then presume I have a particular philosophical loyalty or something, but that’s not how I think of myself at all. I think I’m probably just a fairly normal human being. I’d like to be happy, but I’m not. In certain moods, I’d like everyone else to be happy, too. Perhaps there’s a permanent soul, perhaps there isn’t. In any case, it would be nice to see everyone’s faces finally at “the glamorous party”, as the lyrics express it, to which many of our friends have already departed. To me, there’s no question of is it true or isn’t it – it’s a feeling that is part of my experience of existing.
i know. and yet we must try to speak. it’s a logical imperative. even though we may feel we haven’t expressed our honest take on life, the attempts add up and somewhere someone a thousand years from now will hear something like. “unless today is differnt tomorrow will be the same.”and that will put the fuel in that reader’s tank to take him past his ‘impasse’. personally i feel a great obligation to preserve the spirit of inquiry. to ‘decry complacency’. (that was a banner i saw once on a bus.)…talking about the effect of words.
I’ve just been watching this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjZ-lSn0A3MI'm glad that Pat Condell is making videos that apparently annoy some people and putting them on Youtube, but repeated self-examination leads me repeatedly to the conclusion that I cannot repeat such sentiments myself. I mention this because it’s one of the problems of self-expression for me. There are various battles taking place around the world, and often these are battles of words. In fact, there are many words that have become almost the equivalent of battle-flags, signifying a cause, and implying an enemy of some kind. It tends to lead into the if-you’re-not-with-us-you’re-against-us mentality. People are often so focused on a particular enemy that if you don’t use the right words, they immediately assume you are that enemy.I think what I really want is simply freedom – what Pat says he wants here. But, of course, freedom for me is not freedom to be Pat Condell. When so many words have been used as battle flags by someone or other over the course of time, simply to express yourself using words can be to wave all kinds of flags signalling hostilities when you had only meant to signal semaphore. It’s not that I never feel hostile or aggressive, but I think I’m relatively uninterested in the historial ‘sides’ of battle with which words are associated. I’m on my own side. For this very reason I’m perhaps excessively concerned about being misunderstood. But yes, we must try to speak. I do, and continually regret it. Complacency, in that sense at least, is not one of the problems with which I have to contend. I don’t know, perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps I am too complacent. There are times when I forget that I know nothing.
i watched the you tube video. it irritated me just as much as preaching does. then i watched one of the associated videos. she was kind of pretty and much funnier.
it irritated me just as much as preaching does.Yeah. I’m not really sure what to say about this kind of thing anymore. I’ve already said a lot about it on my blog, anyway, and I think I’ve probably become just as preachy and irritating as a result. I’d have to rewatch the clip again now and go through it line by line to even give a vaguely accurate account of what I really thought about it, and even that would be misleading at some point. The thing is, Britain must actually be the atheist capital of the world. There’s nothing wrong with having no religion. That’s great. And if Pat Condell really feels free, then that’s great, too. But, in my daily life here in Britain, I am never NEVER oppressed or browbeaten by monotheists in any way. The last time was some time in my teens, when some wandering born-agains told me and some friends, after they had failed to persuade us of anything, “You’re going to hell, you hippy scum!” That was over sixteen years ago. I don’t think, since then, I’ve ever felt even vaguely oppressed by religion, oh, except that recently you’re not allowed to say anything bad about Islam, so I appreciate that Pat Condell pulls no punches there. What I have felt in that time, is that I’m surrounded by people like Pat Condell who seem to think that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and see the shadow of monotheism at every turn. That’s what has really turned me off atheism. And, of course, it’s obligatory for every stand-up comedian to be a card-carrying atheist, and to think they’re being edgy by doing exactly the same routine about religion in their act as every other stand-up comedian (only a couple of comedians, such as Bill Hicks and Eddie Izzard have managed to vary this routine to the extent that it is funny and interesting), and it gets very boring, and I begin to think they’re protesting too much. But then, I didn’t have a church upbringing to kick against. I was talking to someone on the telephone recently – an international phonecall – and he said he couldn’t remember the last time he’d met someone professing to be an atheist or saying atheist things, so the rest of the world is probably very different to Britain in this regard. So, people from outside Britain may be puzzled by some of the things I say. Then again, people inside Britain may be puzzled by them. I’ve heard statistics recently that suggest that even in Britain most people are not atheist. If so, then it must be something to do with the circles I move in. And, I think, it must also be something to do with the fact that religious people here seem far less vocal than elsewhere. If you hear people sounding off about religion in Britain, more likely than not, they’re atheist. For the most part, I think you’d never guess the religious people are religious unless you knew them for about twenty years and happened to end up facing death in the desert together or something. On the other hand, atheists will tell complete strangers how silly they think god is, just in order to be edgy and eternally vigilant. I don’t know – that’s how it seems to me. I suppose I should – if I were mathematically consistent with my usual personality – just side with the minority (if, indeed, atheists are the minority that some statistics say they are here), and that’s probably why I’ll listen to Pat Condell and re-examine myself, but, in the end, I can’t help the way I feel. I very much support freedom of speech and freedom generally, but that means my freedom to be myself, too. If I felt I was surrounded by religious people trying to tell me how I think, I would be reacting against that. In my own personal life, I am not surrounded by such people.
i guess there must be a creator. he doesn’t talk to me. but i am not so ignorant of arguments which are logical. the first being of course that i perceive that there is a world. i am certain, well not totally certain, that i didn’t create it.but i am not in favor of religions, mainly because they tend to throw their weight around unjustly.i know that dying is not going to be the easiest thing i’ve ever done. but i just hope i can do it bravely. i haven’t done anything really terrible so far so i am not afraid of judgement. i purposely avoided being in a position to kill anyone. and i have made some mistakes but they mostly just hurt me. so if there is a heaven and a hell, i guess old st. peter will let me in. 😆
I wrote an answer to this last night, but the connection was lost before I could post it. I’ll probably try again later.