Monthly Archives: February 2014

Poem: When times are hard and old friends fall away

Published by peter on 2014-02-16 in Poetry. 0 Comments

A sonnet by George Santayana, inspired by Shakespeare’s Sonnet #29. Santayana has cleverly kept the first line of the sextet.

When times are hard and old friends fall away
And all alone I lose my hope and pluck,
Doubting if God can hear me when I pray,
And brood upon myself and curse my luck,
Envying some stranger for his handsome face,
His wit, his wealth, his chances, or his friends,
Desiring this man’s brains and that man’s place,
And vexed with all I have that makes amends,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, –
By chance I think of you; and then my mind,
Like music from deep sullen murmurs rising
To peals and raptures, leaves the earth behind:
For if you care for me, what need I care
To own the world or be a millionaire?

And here is Shakespeare’s #29:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

In memory of fast wit

Published by peter on 2014-02-14 in Obituaries. 0 Comments

There is always a particular sadness when someone one has known since high-school dies.  If the friend dies young, then the absurdity and the fundamental lack of fairness of our earthly existences are manifest again. If the friend dies in middle age, however, there is a different type of unfairness, since at least they were able to fulfill some of their potential, even if not all. If the friend dies near to 50 and is recently married and with a young child, then it seems that what was not fully realized includes their relationships with their family. In other words, it is not only unfair for the friend that they died before their time, but unfair for their family, whose lives also will now include tragedy.

Friends as well as family are sad, since we are unable now to enjoy the company of the deceased.  In the case of my school-friend Tony Meale, who has died quickly after an unexpected illness,  the pleasure of his company was particularly great. He was one of the funniest people I have ever met. All of his comments – razor-sharp and rapid-firing – were delivered with the deadest of pans, and thus were often confusing to those who did not know him well. The straight face fronting the dry, sardonic sarcasm, of course, made any comment deemed offensive by the listener very plausibly deniable, which may or may not have been his intention. His straight face may also have been because he did not necessarily see the humour himself.  I am convinced that truly eccentric people almost never believe themselves to be eccentric – they think it is they who are perfectly normal, and the other 99.9% of the population who are askew – and TM was perhaps one of these. In any case, one did not ever spend long in his company before doubling over in laughter, something all of us who knew him experienced. Perhaps he inherited his ability from his uncle, also renowned for being a mordant wit.

I can count on two imperial hands the people I have met with Tony’s sharp and rapid wit. Indeed, I want to list them here in order of encounter, for the benefit of any fifth millenium readers: PMH, John McBurney, Tony Meale, Steve R, Tererei Munyaradzi, Reg Ngonyama, JMG, Henry Van Demark, SP, Andrew T, Trevor Bench-Capon, WPN, Alister M. (I use full names only for those who have passed on.) Although important only to me and (perhaps) to my close friends, I want to acknowledge Tony’s membership of this select and awesome circle.

On one never-forgotten occasion in Canberra in 1985 one of these fast-witted friends encountered another, and the verbal fireworks were stunning and immediate. The two are very different in gender, age, education, social position, interests, and background. One would not have predicted that they would spark as they did. As part of a larger group, they first each recognized one another’s verbal dexterity, and then – instinctively, and without explicit co-ordination – engaged in a game attempting to outwit one another, with each utterance issued as both clever and funny reply to what came before, and as a challenge to the other to best it. Were it were not for the fact that both their spouses were present, we would have thought they were flirting, despite the generational difference in age. The rest of us retired from the conversation as this duel proceeded, in laughter and awe. It was similar, I imagine, to watching Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley spark at the Algonquin. They’ve not met since, and perhaps such a performance was a product of its particular moment, and could not be repeated.

TM’s untimely death brought that ancient evening again to mind.

And though the after world will never hear
The happy name of one so gently true,
Nor chronicles write large this fatal year,
Yet we who loved you, though we be but few,
Keep you in whatsoe’er things are good, and rear
In our weak virtues monuments to you.”

From Sonnet IV, To W.P., by George Santayana.

Police report: Romeo and Juliet scam

Published by peter on 2014-02-09 in Culture, Reviews, Shakespeare and Theatre and Drama. 0 Comments

Police report of “Romeo and Juliet” Confidence Scam

Location of crime:  Upstairs Foyer, Greenwood Theatre, Guy’s Campus, King’s College London.
Date of crime:  Evenings of 5th, 6th, 7th February 2014.  The crime may also have been “rehearsed” before these dates on unwitting spectators.
Financial sponsors:  A group calling itself King’s College London English Literary Society.
Nature of crime:  Deconstruction of playwright’s text without single reference to post-colonial or feminist perspectives.   Co-conspirator “The Friar” tore out pages of “Romeo and Juliet” text to manifest true nature of crime.
Key victims:  William Shakespeare, women.
Perpetrator:  Unknown.   Calls himself “The Director”.   Identity: Elusive.  Real identity unknown.  May use pseudonyms: W. Nash, Rookie Monster, DPR, Edward Snowden.
Known Co-conspirators:  Marcus “The Friar” Bazley, Hillary “The Counsellor” Chua, Laura “Juliet” Deering, Jackie “Lady Capulet” Edwards, Matthew “Romeo” Hodson.  Others involved in supporting the scam thought to be:  Catherine Walters, Elena Gillies, Emma Lawrence, Aja Garrod, Aggi Cantril, Sophie Omar, and Kate Gardener.  Notes found at crime scene indicate others may also have assisted, almost certainly without realizing the consequences.
Modus Operandi:  Perp takes out-of-copyright play text, reducing number of characters, even using unwitting mark in audience to play role in deception.  Play cut down and cut up, and done as crime scene investigation, with scenes “reconstructed” by “actors”.  Legal counsel present to narrate events and give illusion of objectivity.
Perp uses intelligence and wit to produce amusing, clever, and sophisticated version of play, which is used as a “script” that is then executed (“performed”) by co-conspirators in front of marks.   Performance of script of professional standard, and very realistic.  Thus, marks easily deceived and soon suspend disbelief.   

Only one of the known co-conspirators is believed to actually make his living in theatre.  Remaining co-conspirators possibly being groomed.

Co-conspirators take on “roles” to execute script.  Thus, “The Friar” is a Cockney ex-junkie offering life advice to the other conspirators, along with marriage ceremonies and store-and-forward messaging services;   “Romeo” is a lovestruck young man, writing dreamily in his Moleskine; “Lady Capulet” is a tyrant of the household interior, a dictator of the domestic.  The different “roles” cleverly interleave, and jointly enable confidence scam.  Indeed, witnesses report that the acting was so intense that it approached the threshold of caricature, but without ever crossing  that threshold,  making the performances thrilling to watch.  Co-conspirators all appear to be under direct influence of Perp.

Co-conspirators use a variety of names, including real names, to confuse audience about when co-conspirators are “acting” in their “roles”, and when not.   Humour and wit used to distract attention of audience from reconstruction of double suicide, following madness of young love, set amongst inter-gang warfare in inner-city Italy.

Toying with nature of “acting” indicates this is crime of real sophistication by people with extensive experience in deception and illusion.   Perp and co-conspirators may have worked in Elizabethan theatre before.  Crime shows many hallmarks of two known literary deceivers and wits with Elizabethan previous, Thomas Nashe and Kit Marlowe.  Neither likely involved:  Nashe believed deceased, Marlowe either deceased (Deptford Regional Office view) or living in exile in Italy.

Production involves post-coitus scene, drugs, violence, suicide, and death.  No rock and roll, but.   One person injured by vicious slap.   Music deployed very effectively to “set the scene” and relax audience in preparation for confidence scam, and at various times during the operation to manipulate emotions of marks.

Use of Barber’s Adagio for Strings obviously intended as subtle allusion to FDR’s funeral and Oliver Stone’s film about Vietnam.  This double allusion should allay concerns of English Department about absence of references to post-colonial oppression and the wickedness of US global hegemony, as well as providing a warm glow of self-satisfaction to the one person who caught the allusions.

Related scams:  West Side Story, High School Musical.
Known beneficiaries of scam:

  1. Perp and co-conspirators
  2. KCL English Literary Society
  3. Greenwood Theatre
  4. King’s College London
  5. The Horseshoe Inn, Melior Street, London
  6. The London theatre world
  7. The audience.

Progress of investigation:  Police seeking the 132 witnesses to garner further information.
Public warning:  These people are armed with professional acting skills and are very dangerous.   Perp may be serial dramaturge, intent on career in intelligent theatre or deception.  Co-conspirators capable of superb acting at the highest level.
Deptford Regional Office reports rumour that next confidence scam may take place in Copenhagen.

Conspirators also believed to hold raucous after-play parties to celebrate success of scam, involving alcohol, tobacco, witty conversation, and profound arguments about the existence of God and the nature of relationships.  Kit Marlowe would feel at home.  US State Department Advisory:  Americans visiting London particularly at risk.
Note:  Potential side-effects of scam include reviews written as police-reports, pretentiously imitating style of the production itself.

Actions creating beliefs

Published by peter on 2014-02-02 in Religion. 0 Comments

I miss reading the posts of the late Norman Geras, over at Normblog.   His views were always interesting, and his arguments very often acute. (I say this despite some condescension and ill-temper in his personal emails to me.  He clearly thought those of us who disagreed with him about religion were fools, and did not bother to hide his feelings.)
For all his mental incision in general, however, he had a blind spot when it came to religion, as I argued here.  His blind spot marked him, despite his lack of religious beliefs, as a person of the post-Reformation confessional view of life:  the view that thinking does (and always should) preceed acting, and that thinking leads to considered beliefs.  This is a peculiarly modern, western view, a view not shared by most of humanity, neither now nor in the past.  The entire weltanshauung of Zen Buddhism, for example, is that beliefs (in the form of enlightenment) are the consequence of religious practices, not necessarily their cause.  Norm, western philosopher to his fingertips, never got this.
S. Brent Plate makes a similar criticism of a recent questionnaire aimed at ranking US cities by their “Bible-mindedness”:

The assumptions of the pollsters betray a larger misconception concerning who religious people are and what they do. Questionnaires are still mired in the mostly-Protestant notion that religious people read holy books and have “beliefs” in their heads. It makes for good fodder on the religion news circuits but necessarily leaves out the lived realities of religious existence. For religious life in these United States, the potluck is just as important as the preacher. The soup kitchen as important as the scriptures.
What if we had polls that were indeed about religion and society? What would this mean? How would we ask? Who would we ask?
At the least, this would require the work of bodies, of actual breathing, eating people. We’d find that we social beings might believe things, but more importantly, we behave in particular manners. Our bodies move with other bodies in private and public ways, singing and swaying, seeing and smelling.
We don’t act out our beliefs as much as our beliefs are created through our actions.