The little guy's big adventure

(click to enlarge ...) Send your messages of hope here.

The story of the off-centred handle Part IV

Some froze. Some ran. All were begged: "It's obvious isn't it?". But despite repeated assurances that no air meant no combustion, each person within range of the violent vindaloo, some with children and pets to protect, would wring their hands and gibberishly offer impractical solutions -- e.g. "Smother it with a slice of prosciutto", "Take a handful of rock salt and will it to end ", "Encourage that woman's dachshund to roll on it", and "Or lift its leg on it".

You're too late to get your supper

From the liner notes of Bruce Springsteen's joyously up We Shall Overcome -- The Seeger Sessions:

An antique fiddle tune, often used for square dances, made famous around 1843 when Dan Emmett, one of the greatest early minstrel singers, wrote a version of these lyrics for his group, the Virginia Minstrels.

Old Dan Tucker

Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man
Washed his face with a fryin' pan
Combed his hair with a wagon wheel
And died with a toothache in his heel

Get out the way, Old Dan Tucker
You're too late to get your supper
Get out the way, Old Dan Tucker
You're too late to get your supper

Old Dan Tucker come to town
Riding a billy goat, leading a hound
The hound dog barked and billy goat
jumped
And landed old Tucker on a stump

chorus

Old Dan Tucker got drunk and fell
In the fire and kicked up holy hell
A red-hot coal got in his shoe
An oh my Lord the ashes flew

chorus

Now Old Dan Tucker came to town
Swinging them ladies all round
First to the right then to the left
Then to the gal that he loved best

chorus

repeat


Old Dan. Did he have any teeth not in his heel? Why the jostling in the soup queue? Is that what it was? I feel sorry for him. So he'd had a few. The man needed to eat for Christ's sake (probably). But he had a gal, I suppose, even if she only existed in the wooden world of square dance patter.

The story of the off-centred handle Part III

They were told that it wanted to escape and explore the kitchen. That there were two handles this time -- one little, one not. "The lid's handle. Take it between your fingers and lift", they were gently urged. "That's all you need to do. It'll hoist itself out when there's enough room". But each person who primed the stove would stand, some in contemplation of the concept of freedom, wipe sweat from their eyes and take another pan.

Too many kids with too many tellys

I read an essay recently called What About Me? The new narcissism by Anne Manne (The Monthly Jun 06). Here's a response (which, a la Alan Ramsey, includes hefty chunks of the author's text).

Did you know that "there is a TV set in the bedroom of most American children by the time they are in primary school"? Or that "more than half of all Australian children have a TV in their bedroom" and that "they spend more time in TV-viewing than any other activity"?

Manne introduces these facts following a discussion of how young peoples' sensibilities and inner lives are shaped. She wonders about the influence of a "predominantly visual culture" on this process. Her interest is more than philosophical given that her own country childhood was relatively unaffected by such a culture -- "we had no television at home until well into my teenage years" --, and that as a young woman her "consciousness, sensibility, sense of self and way of seeing were formed by a radically different view of the world, one embedded in [nineteenth century] novels". This literary engagement endowed her with a "moral narrative" through which she was able to see herself both "from the outside -- one's respect in the community -- and, more deeply, from the inside". It also awakened her to an important distinction between the authorial voice as accessed via a novel (where a special connection is made with the writer's inner life) and via a television program. She notes:

The visual culture has extended and intensified the importance of the presentation of self in everyday life. Self-presentation is increasingly regarded as revealing the 'true' self. All this carries with it a reshaping of sensibility.

And what is preoccupation with the self but ... narcissism? Manne describes a strain of this affliction whose intensity goes beyond the "healthy" self focus and confidence most of us enjoy. She characterises the malignant narcissist as one whose

self has expanded so as to occupy all of consciousness. Whatever is good for the self is good. The malignant narcissist is prone to magical thinking about the grandeur of their life and achievements. It is all or nothing; mediocrity is not tolerated: never good, but always great. They posses an exceptional sense of entitlement, of being uniquely special. Often intensely competitive, they have to be superior to those around them. They can only be up if the people around them are down. They are often harshly critical of others, sometimes to the point of self-righteous contempt. But they are also prone to savage envy. Their arrogance means that taking responsibility for a wrong is impossible. The malignant narcissist is the captain on a ship of fools.

(If you've ticked any of these items, seek therapy NOW. But be warned: if you are a bone fide case, your de-narcissification may be very difficult. You will have to "spend a long time looking at the humiliated shadow lurking beneath [your] grandiose self-image". Also, it is most likely you will eventually subtlety undermine your therapist "by saying how bored [you] are with all this navel-gazing".)

The root cause of the lily pond malignancy is easily identified but far less easily understood:

We all know the story of Narcissus and how he fell in love with his own reflection, withering away by the lily pond, unable to move into life or relate to others, finally dying. But an excess of self-love is not, in any uncomplicated way, the problem with the narcissist. The narcissist is, in fact, an exceptionally shame-prone individual. The grandiose self-image is held up to defend against a central terror: that they amount to nothing at all.

In order to explain where this terror emerges from in the first place, Manne's analysis gets a little Freudian. She invokes such psycho-miscellany as emotional history (stored in the unconscious), the child-parent relationship and emotional regulation (specifically "conservation and withdrawal" as a reaction to manic upness, for example) to explain the abnormalities of the nascent narcissist toddler. Her description of the narcissist's emotional history is illuminating:

The first year is a time when, all going well, the dominant emotions of Your Majesty the Baby are very positive. By the beginning of the second year, as they learn to walk and move, toddlers feel elated at their newfound power. But pride, as the old adage says, goes before a fall. They fall down, break things, get fingers into light sockets and spill milk all over the floor. For the excited toddler there's a shouted prohibition every nine minutes, on average. It is very deflating. They are often humiliated and angry. Toddler-hood is also now recognised as the most aggressive period of any of the human life-cycle. Toddlers are filled with ambitions; without the skills to realise them they are also filled with shame. Every day they are spinning through the cycles of grandiosity and deflation faster than any manic depressive. It is hardly surprising, then, that they get rather pissed off at the whole thing and throw, from time to time, an almighty tantrum - nor that they require a lot of empathy, tact and sensitivity in handling. But at this time the toddler is also noted for a new and importantly human quality: sobriety. Although it's a wilder, bumpier ride than any at Luna Park, slowly they develop the ability to admit flaws in the self; and a related ability, to admit they have capacity to injure others.

It is extremely important that the small child gets help in toning down and pepping up, in being comforted and not excessively shamed. The narcissist has got through the Your-Majesty-the-Baby period nicely. Their problem is dealing with shame. Some have been too harshly shamed: subjected to shame so overwhelming that it cannot be acknowledged. In a mental conjuring trick, they create a perfect self of astonishing grandiosity, one who is always adorable, admirable, holding away the unbearable truth that, in reality, they were not seen as worth loving.

So how does all of this relate to the suggestion that in modern society "self-presentation is increasingly regarded as revealing the 'true' self"? If narcissism is just some statistical blip applying only to niche groups such as celebrities or Eastern suburbs property auctioneers, why all the psychobabble? Why all the theorising? Manne's conclusion is sobering:

By any historical standards, our society is marked by a radical individualism obsessed with the self. And it is a very particular self. It is a self on display, measured by externals and appearance, in pursuit of success and material prosperity more than care for others, of popularity and notice more than respect.

The problem is not just that the cult of self interferes with the good. It is that our values have shifted so far in favour of the ethos of narcissism that the pursuit of our self-interest now defines what we consider good. As [American sociologist Robert] Bellah concludes, "the only measure of the good is what is good for the self". And that, as a defining habit of the heart, is profoundly troubling.

All right kids, got the message? Too much TV means too much immersion in a value system that isolates you -- that is, the trim, tanned and popular SURFACE YOU -- as the centre of everything. And this is bad cos it'll almost certainly result in a long and dribbling descent into total inconsequence in some outer-suburban nursing home where your only visitor will be Mr Shuffles from the adjacent ward who urinates on your armchair and steals your mints.

370 incidents.

I first knew she was sick when I heard a sharp spurting noise behind me and saw clear liquid running past my feet. We were on the bus. The woman's face was red and convulsive. Her lips were glossy with saliva and maybe bile.

A passanger opposite the woman crossed her arms and, for the benefit of everyone, snapped "unbelievable!". Another passenger, a young woman, walked the length of the bus calling for a plastic bag. When one was eventually found and handed over, an atmosphere of concern (or for some I'm sure: pity) surrounded the distressed woman. I mentioned that the Prince of Wales hospital was only a few stops on. Then I spoke to the driver to make him aware of what he had probably already seen in his mirror. He was totally impassive; it felt like I was talking to a wall. Not wanting to judge but judging, I got off.

As I walked, the bus pulling away, I thought: for all the attention and fuss, that woman seemed in another place all together. She took the bag but not an offer of water. Her eyes rolled so as to avoid meeting anyone else's. Of course, it's possible she was a junkie, but who really knows, and besides should that change anything?

The story of the off-centred handle Part II

"Don't you want to know what 'generic' means?" they were asked. But each person who paused at the pot, some with fingers poised, would silently shake their head and move on.

The story of the off-centred handle Part I

People would look at the objects floating inside but flinch when asked to fetch one. The reason, the apology, was the off-centred handle.

Stupid stupid stupid poem

I can't let it out like this -
knotted, confused by itself,
uselessly tautlessly a thing
of play.

It. Tit. Titti.

Instead I'll send it on
to the 'vagaries'
where it might recoil
or reform.

What, or who, is the 'something'?

Patrick White: 'Look into a passing bus, and more often than not you will see something you would rather not'.

I read this sentence on the bus this morning. I can't recall what happened immediately afterwards, probably nothing poetic or noteworthy, but it would have been cute, kind of symmetrical or something, if at the full stop I had lifted my eyes from the page to see an open-mouthed woman glaring at me from the passing pavement. It would have been even cuter if, shamed by our contact, she had then stooped sharply to gather her chaotic and billowy shopping bags and shuffled off into a throng of school kids.

A poem by Robert Adamson (1997)

The language of oysters

Charles Olson sat back in his oyster-shed
working with words - 'mostly in a great
sweat of being, seeking to bind in speed' -

looked at his sheaf of pages, each word
an oyster, culled from the fattening grounds
of talk. They were nurtured from day one,

from the spat-fields to their shucking,
words, oysters plump with life. On Mooney Creek
the men stalk the tides for corruption.

They spend nights in tin shacks
that open at dawn onto our great brown river.
On the right tide they ride out

into the light in their punts, battered slabs
of aluminium with hundred-horse Yamahas on the stern
hammering tightly away, padded high-tech -

sucking mud into the cooling systems,
the motors leave a jet of hot piss in their wakes.
These power-heads indicate

the quality of the morning's hum.
The new boys don't wake from dreams
where clinkers crack, where mud sucks them under,

their grandfather's hands fumbling
accurately, loosening the knots. Back
at the bunker the hessian sacks are packed ready

and the shells grow into sliding white foothills.
A freezing mist clenches your fingers,
the brown steam now cold as fire:

plunge in and wash away last night's grog,
in the middle morning, stinging and wanting
the week to fold away until payday.

On the bank, spur-winged plovers stroll in pairs,
their beak-wattle chipped by frost,
each day blinking at the crack of sun.

Stalking for corruption? Signs.
Blue algae drifts through your brother's dream
of Gold Coasts, golf courses. The first settlement.

Searching for a vein (heroin chic is NOW)

Ribbed pickings ... pastel fantastel

Pick the difference

From The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought.

life style.

(1) In psychoanalytic theory (see PSYCHOANALYSIS), an ADLERIAN term for a child's method, modified continuously throughout its life, of coping with feelings of inadequacy and of attaining superiority and STATUS.

(2) In popular usage, all the observable characteristics of a person, e.g. his manner of dress, way of speaking, personal appearance, domestic habits, and choice of friends, which serve to indicate his value system and attitudes towards himself and aspects of his ENVIRONMENT. These characteristics serve as a social signal to others, who react accordingly with feelings of trust, admiration, liking, etc., or the opposite.

Who's talking about who?

... or the method of contrology ...

The banality of love

(click to enlarge ...)

When the rectangles fail

In this light vivid sharpens into grey and
Blue, one imposed on the other as if
Pasted

Massing upwards and zig-zagging on bitumen
Over stone, the sky, these stark stacked frontages seem to
Jiggle and thrum

I'm conscious of the tapping of
My hands

"This is the city", I think, "and
I feel like dying"

I feel like dying and yet I must have
Reached the Right Place for at my feet a
A man kicks out like a stricken fish

He is keening and still the thrum

"Perhaps the far off is not too far
Now", I say to him. "When the rectangles fail, or fade,
You will find disorder like everyone
Else"

Doubtful rissoles (taken from Alan Marshall's In Mine Own Heart)

Florrie's love for him was deep and unselfish, though it demanded from her occasional displays of calculated thoughfulness.

"Don't have rissoles today", she would say theatrically, talking from the side of her mouth as she bent over the table arranging the cutlery.

This unnecessary advice, unnecessary since no person in his right mind would eat rissoles in a cafe, always imbued rissoles with a more sinister quality than the most doubtful of them deserved. But Arthur regarded this warning as evidence of great thoughtfulness.

Have you ever felt like your kebab is watching you, or talking to you?

Bambooghoul!

Flyyaghoul!

Canker Candy

Hard Candy

Director: David Slade.
Screenplay: Brian Nelson.

Margaret Pomeranz (3.5): '... you come out and you think, "Where do I stand morally with regard to this film?"'.
David Stratton (3.5): 'You come out asking a lot of questions ...'.
Paul Byrnes (4): '... this swamp gets very murky indeed. Bring your moral compass'.
Philippa Hawker (2.5): 'There is something a little limited ... about the direction Brian Nelson's script takes, no matter how many plot twists, quasi-revelations and nasty physical confrontations are thrown into the mix'.
Luke Buckmaster (2.5): 'David Slade has managed to horrify his audiences without flashing them a series of grisly pictures, and has taken that logic to a place which can only barely justify its means'.

Call me old fashioned but using an issue as complex and sensitive as paedophilia as the basis for a horror-thriller film -- whose main function is entertainment -- is offensive. At the end of it, I certainly was asking a lot of questions, still am, but I doubt they're the same ones that DS refers to.

Somehow I can imagine the rock-video-trained former ad man Slade wetting his lips as he pored over the early drafts of Nelson's script. I can imagine him thinking 'Let's make this taboo mainstream! That's what it is isn't it? Anyway, audiences'll LOVE IT! And for the doubters, the ones who think we're off compass, we'll weave in a moral subtext -- subtle stuff, sophisticated stuff. No kid or parent or (god forbid) victim need see every ambition of this film. God forbid, that's obvious (ha ha ha). And hey, the Japanese'll LOVE IT! It's gotta be one of the last taboos over here. That's what it is isn't it? And hey, the Russians'll LOVE IT!'

White space

Directing traffic with his tongue

I haven't read much Shakespeare nor seen many of the Puffy Panted One's plays but I thought this description of him (and his 'tongue'), included in a three page 'Note on Shakespeare' by a 20 year old Harold Pinter, was funny.

He belongs, of course, ultimately, to a secret society, a conspiracy, of which there is only one member: himself. In that sense, and in a number of others too, he is a malefactor; a lunatic; a deserter; a conscientious objector; a guttersnipe; a social menace and an Anti-Christ.

He is also a beggar; a road sweeper; a tinker; a hashish-drinker; a leper; a chicken-fancier; a paper-seller; a male nurse; a sun-worshipper and a gibbering idiot.

He is no less a traffic policeman; a rowing blue; a rear-gunner; a chartered accountant; a best man; a bus-conductor; a paid guide; a marriage-guidance counsellor; a church-goer; a stage carpenter; an umpire; an acrobat and a clerk of the court.

His tongue is guttural, Arabic, pepperish, composed, parsimonious, voluminous, rabid, diarrhoeic, transparent, laundered, dainty, mellifluous, consonantal, stammering, scabrous, naked, blade-edged, one-legged, piercing, hushed, clinical, dumb, convulsed, lewd, vicious, voracious, inane, Tibetan, monosyllabic, epileptic, raucous, ministerial, sudden, Sudanese, palpitating, thunderous, earthy, whimsical, acrimonious, wintry, malicious, fearsome, blighted, blistered, mouldy, tantalizing, juicy, innocent, lordly, gluttonous, irreverent, blasphemous, avaricious, autumnal, blasted, ecstatic, necromantic, gentle, venomous, somnambulistic, monotonous, uproarious, feverish, austere, demented, deathly, fractious, obsessed, ironic, palsied, morbid, sanctimonious, sacrilegious, calm, cunning, cannibalistic and authoritative.

Character of character

Harold Pinter speaking at the National Student Drama Festival in Bristol in 1962.

Given characters who possess a momentum of their own, my job is not to impose upon them, not to subject them to a false articulation, by which I mean forcing a character to speak where he could not speak, making him speak in a way he could not speak, or making him speak of what he could never speak. The relationship between author and characters should be a highly respectful one, both ways. And if it's possible to talk of gaining a kind of freedom from writing, it doesn't come from leading one's characters into fixed and calculated postures, but by allowing them to carry their own can, by giving them legitimate elbowroom. This can be extremely painful. It's much easier, much less pain, not to let them live.

An 'old chestnut' (or just something time-fritterers talk about)?

Angela Bennie's essay in the SMH (Spectrum, Jul 29-30) challenges the idea that 'it is a critic's right to be subjective'. She asks:

... what happens to a work of art in a culture that sees criticism as nothing more than a democracy of free-falling, free-floating subjectivities?

And answers:

Within such a culture the work of art loses any possibility of, or claim to, aesthetic distinction, or difference. It would be just one more commodity in a culture that reduces everything towards the mean, that thrives on the exaltation of the average, to use Patrick White's unforgettable, spine-tingling description of Australian culture.

I'm tempted to brush this 'old chestnut' aside as forever philosophically impenetrable, but then I'm a fairly simple man when it comes to these issues and I know that on many occasions I've come to value a work of art more after learning something of its history, religious significance or technical detail, for example, all delivered (and I'm feeling a tad self-conscious here) ... objectively. (And very often by a critic -- in the broad sense of the term.)

Yet it turns out I might not be receiving the best customer service in this regard. Bennie highlights the ominous possibility that far from 'analysing the evidence in the work' or steering intelligently around such things as 'the sway of opinion over judgement', the use of 'banal' critical language' or 'the promotion of the ideological status quo' (a collection of perceptions of Australian critics from abroad (!)), 'the [Australian] critic's fundamental critical task is to give opinion, the stronger the better, especially opinion clotted with bile'.

They'll be copping an email from me in the morning, that's for sure!

She also provides a couple of lovely lines from Rebecca West's 1914 essay The Duty of Harsh Criticism. Forgive the third-handedness of this, but I'm going to transcribe these lines as they appear in Bennie's piece before tracking down the primary source myself - assuming I don't get distracted or become disinterested. West warned:

Decidedly, we shall not be safe if we forget the things of the mind. Indeed, if we want to save our souls, the mind must lead a more athletic life than it has ever done before and must more passionately than ever practise and rejoice in art. For only through art do we cultivate annoyance with inessentials, powerful and exasperated reactions against ugliness, a ravenous appetite for beauty. These are true guardians of the soul.

There's a book or two in that paragraph but it certainly won't be mine. I'd get too hung up on the definitions for a start. And while I like the idea that through art 'we cultivate annoyance with inessentials', I'm not sure I agree with the 'only'.

Light and shade

Is this a conversation you have heard?

A: They turned him over?
B: Yes, more than once.
A: More than once?
B: Yes.
A: More than twice?
B: No.
A: So twice.
B: (pause) Yes.
A: And what did they see?
B: What could they have seen?
A: Marks, scars, a wound?
B: No wounds.
A: Marks then, or scars?
B: A bruise above his hip.
A: god!
B: But it was not caused by the accident.
A: Not?
B: No.
A: Anything else?
B: No.
A: So nothing?
B: No.
A: Nothing?
B: Other than him being there.
A: But then how do they know it wasn't him?
B: They don't ...
A: ... But ...
B: ... They were speculating. Nothing is certain.
A: god ...