The (Sh)Ape I’m In
Appalled at the thought that you might be 'descended from monkeys'? Me too. No, I’m only joking. Sure, chimps are brilliant, except that they don’t have opposable thumbs. And, anyway, we aren’t ‘descended’; we share a common ancestor.
There is, though, one species of modern man that is descended directly from the lowest, least intelligent primates. This is homo spiritus. Too dense even to believe in God, homo spiritus intuits a most particular 'spiritual' dimension to existence ... a oneness, a wholeness ... something ethereal behind it all, which they pressgang into a 'relationship' based on profound, but imagined, levels of uniquely personal mental and emotional communion.
Religion's no good to them; it doesn't give full expression to how important they are in the big picture. They say, I'm not religious ... I'm more, you know, spiritual ...
As if they've advanced into something other than even more vainglorious fruit-loopery.
How To Attract The Chicks
Ask yourself: is there something rather than nothing? Well, how do we define 'nothing'? What are its properties? And if it is ever caught having properties doesn't that make it 'something'?
'God' is the answer? So, why is there God rather than nothing? Assuming we can ever define 'nothing', why should 'something' be a more natural state of affairs than 'nothing'?
Wow! As a betting man I reached for my docket and pencil stub when I recently heard the news that physicists and cosmologists have established there is a 60% probability of there being something rather than nothing!
To Live Without My Music Would Be Impossible
Here they are ... ! The 12 inspirational tracks that got me through lockdown hell, Partygate, and the Platinum Jubilee:
1) Desolation Row - Bob Dylan;
2) It's the end of the world as we know it - REM;
3) New York Mining Disaster, 1941 - Bee Gees;
4) Not dark yet (but it's getting there) - Bob Dylan;
5) Eve of destruction - Barry McGuire;
6) Who'll stop the rain? - Creedence Clearwater Revival;
7) High water everywhere - Charley Patton;
8) Don't come around here no more - Tom Petty;
9) King Midas in reverse - Hollies;
10) Busted - Ray Charles;
11) It's all over now, Baby Blue - Bob Dylan;
12) When I'm dead and gone - McGuinness Flint.
Genesis
Lay out (my dog) Miss Lotte Lenya's skeleton next to mine . . . almost identical. You might think there has be some relation, some common descent. But don't be fooled. Evolution is only a theory.
6004 years ago, before God was an astronaut, he sent space cadets (Adam and Eve) to populate earth. Dogs were already there. Originally from a planet called Jor-El in orbit around the star Sirius, they fled to Earth just before Sirius became a red giant and engulfed Jor-El.
So Adam and Eve were the first people to domesticate a dog. In fact they had no choice, for without its help in foraging and hunting, they wouldn't have survived their first seasons. Strangers in a strange land. The dog's name was Old Blue, and it died after a few years. Adam missed it so much that when he himself died some time later, the first thing he did on getting to Heaven was to whistle for Blue.
Long ago a girl said vehemently to me, Well ... you might be descended from a monkey, but I'm certainly not! She knew we were special ... even though we'd already gone to the dogs ...
My Contribution To Urban Blues
It all reminds me of a conversation I had many years ago with philosopher of science Karl Popper, over coffee at a pavement café in Vienna.
You know, Michael, he said, I wonder about this psychoanalysis ...
What, I asked, you didn't want to kill your father and sleep with your mother ... ?!?
It's not falsifiable, he said ... every bit of evidence, including people denying that they are motivated by unconscious wishes, is taken as further proof that psychoanalysis is valid ...
And? I asked.
Statements about the unconscious can't be tested, he continued, because there is no imaginable evidence that could show them to be false ... ! So, psychoanalysis isn't a science, it's based on unfalsfiable hypotheses, and can't give us knowledge in the way a real science can. I mean, it's conceivable that you might prove Einstein wrong, but not this phallic Blackpool Tower stuff ...
So thanks to Popper, and Bob Dylan, of course, Subterranean Homesick Blues has got to the heart of the matter, nailed it, job done. Stop fretting.
No More Auction Block
If there's a work of art that is the equal of Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding album, I've always assumed it to be Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice. Now it turns out that with no upfront, unequivocal denunciation of slavery in her work, she must have been rooting for the slave market all her days. There was a black guy on TV the other night who said that when he encounters her lack of appropriate abolitionist credentials, Austen's work becomes 'difficult' for him.
I know how he feels, for his plight led me to think of Bob Dylan, and my attitude to him ... Some years ago Bob 'found' Jesus, with the result that he turned into the most obnoxious, judgmental and offensive bigot (or maybe Jesus just released that side of him). So much so that his record company, to get him to wise up, had to tell him if he attempted to hector, harangue, and sermonise his way through any more loony 'Christian' albums they'd be dropping him.
It is surely right then, that we, from the high hill of our informed correctness, should call these people out for what they are. Stonewall Jacksons, the whole bloody lot of them. I don’t know about you, but I won't read Austen, or listen to Bob, ever again.
Temporarily Like Achilles
There's another thing about Bob Dylan and me, I said to Jean.
In the absence, for some reason, of any enquiry as to what additional information I might impart, I continued:
There's quite a number of his songs that if Bob hadn't already written them I definitely would have.
Really? she said.
Well, think of Positively 4th Street, I said. To write a bitter rant like that you'd have to be a seriously paranoid, twisted, spiteful, insecure, weak, browbeating, and profoundly unpopular guy who hates everybody and ...
Well, that description rings a bell all right, she interrupted.
And Desolation Row, I said. It's quite obviously about the existential horror reflective beings like Bob and me feel when trapped in a dreadful, depressing dump, populated by grotesques, inbreds, and pea brained blockheads; somewhere entropy, chaos, decay, and mediocrity reign supreme ...
Yes, she said, and you have indeed been living in Armagh for years ...
There’s No Success Like Failure
My top speed on the old pushbike yesterday was 45.5 mph ... ! All along the Shore Road. Ok, with a strong tailwind. But going so fast that cars didn't bother overtaking me. What man can say he has failed in life, if he's done that?
I've failed in life, I said to Jean.
Yes, I went on, hopeless husband, flawed father, useless in the sack, career flop, ramshackle guitar player, no friends, impractical, lazy, boring, self-obsessed, opinionated, DIY gormless, wimpish upper body development ...
True enough, she said, but on the plus side, you still have some of your own hair, and it's a nice shade of blonde ...
Tombstone Blues
After rising without trace in Downpatrick last Saturday, Miss Lotte Lenya and I resumed our usual busking station in Belfast yesterday. People were scarce, and so is money, but I think it's important in times of trial that folk still have the chance to hear (imperfectly) Blind Blake, free of charge.
There's an oul boy round these parts who sings hymns in a foghorn type voice and hands out leaflets from a shoulder bag. He turned up eventually. Standing just a few feet away, he began Abide With Me.
When I opined he was being a bit ignorant, he replied, Spreading the word ... !
Don't worry, son, he added, I never stay in one place too long.
How many people have you saved over the years, do you think? I asked.
Couldn't put a number on it, he said. Would you be interested yourself?
No, I replied, I'm a lapsed Catholic, and I have to go to Hell because any friends I have will be there.
Hell is nothing to joke about joking, he admonished me, and then added loudly and theatrically, For the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day and night ... ! Revelation 14:11.
Sure that describes old age perfectly. Faith-wise though, Revelation is a shed load of psychotic, overhyped shite, but it's no good arguing with these men. They have mundane, barren, tedious visions: horsemen; the anti-Christ; the Rapture next week; apocalypse, in a tin hut, with a few like minded nutters.
When everything is revealed, nothing is revealed, I ventured.
I'll pray for you, he said.
It's heads they win, tails you lose ...
⏩Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast . . . when he can get a pitch.
Appalled at the thought that you might be 'descended from monkeys'? Me too. No, I’m only joking. Sure, chimps are brilliant, except that they don’t have opposable thumbs. And, anyway, we aren’t ‘descended’; we share a common ancestor.
There is, though, one species of modern man that is descended directly from the lowest, least intelligent primates. This is homo spiritus. Too dense even to believe in God, homo spiritus intuits a most particular 'spiritual' dimension to existence ... a oneness, a wholeness ... something ethereal behind it all, which they pressgang into a 'relationship' based on profound, but imagined, levels of uniquely personal mental and emotional communion.
Religion's no good to them; it doesn't give full expression to how important they are in the big picture. They say, I'm not religious ... I'm more, you know, spiritual ...
As if they've advanced into something other than even more vainglorious fruit-loopery.
How To Attract The Chicks
Ask yourself: is there something rather than nothing? Well, how do we define 'nothing'? What are its properties? And if it is ever caught having properties doesn't that make it 'something'?
'God' is the answer? So, why is there God rather than nothing? Assuming we can ever define 'nothing', why should 'something' be a more natural state of affairs than 'nothing'?
Wow! As a betting man I reached for my docket and pencil stub when I recently heard the news that physicists and cosmologists have established there is a 60% probability of there being something rather than nothing!
To Live Without My Music Would Be Impossible
Here they are ... ! The 12 inspirational tracks that got me through lockdown hell, Partygate, and the Platinum Jubilee:
1) Desolation Row - Bob Dylan;
2) It's the end of the world as we know it - REM;
3) New York Mining Disaster, 1941 - Bee Gees;
4) Not dark yet (but it's getting there) - Bob Dylan;
5) Eve of destruction - Barry McGuire;
6) Who'll stop the rain? - Creedence Clearwater Revival;
7) High water everywhere - Charley Patton;
8) Don't come around here no more - Tom Petty;
9) King Midas in reverse - Hollies;
10) Busted - Ray Charles;
11) It's all over now, Baby Blue - Bob Dylan;
12) When I'm dead and gone - McGuinness Flint.
Genesis
Lay out (my dog) Miss Lotte Lenya's skeleton next to mine . . . almost identical. You might think there has be some relation, some common descent. But don't be fooled. Evolution is only a theory.
6004 years ago, before God was an astronaut, he sent space cadets (Adam and Eve) to populate earth. Dogs were already there. Originally from a planet called Jor-El in orbit around the star Sirius, they fled to Earth just before Sirius became a red giant and engulfed Jor-El.
So Adam and Eve were the first people to domesticate a dog. In fact they had no choice, for without its help in foraging and hunting, they wouldn't have survived their first seasons. Strangers in a strange land. The dog's name was Old Blue, and it died after a few years. Adam missed it so much that when he himself died some time later, the first thing he did on getting to Heaven was to whistle for Blue.
Long ago a girl said vehemently to me, Well ... you might be descended from a monkey, but I'm certainly not! She knew we were special ... even though we'd already gone to the dogs ...
My Contribution To Urban Blues
It all reminds me of a conversation I had many years ago with philosopher of science Karl Popper, over coffee at a pavement café in Vienna.
You know, Michael, he said, I wonder about this psychoanalysis ...
What, I asked, you didn't want to kill your father and sleep with your mother ... ?!?
It's not falsifiable, he said ... every bit of evidence, including people denying that they are motivated by unconscious wishes, is taken as further proof that psychoanalysis is valid ...
And? I asked.
Statements about the unconscious can't be tested, he continued, because there is no imaginable evidence that could show them to be false ... ! So, psychoanalysis isn't a science, it's based on unfalsfiable hypotheses, and can't give us knowledge in the way a real science can. I mean, it's conceivable that you might prove Einstein wrong, but not this phallic Blackpool Tower stuff ...
So thanks to Popper, and Bob Dylan, of course, Subterranean Homesick Blues has got to the heart of the matter, nailed it, job done. Stop fretting.
No More Auction Block
If there's a work of art that is the equal of Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding album, I've always assumed it to be Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice. Now it turns out that with no upfront, unequivocal denunciation of slavery in her work, she must have been rooting for the slave market all her days. There was a black guy on TV the other night who said that when he encounters her lack of appropriate abolitionist credentials, Austen's work becomes 'difficult' for him.
I know how he feels, for his plight led me to think of Bob Dylan, and my attitude to him ... Some years ago Bob 'found' Jesus, with the result that he turned into the most obnoxious, judgmental and offensive bigot (or maybe Jesus just released that side of him). So much so that his record company, to get him to wise up, had to tell him if he attempted to hector, harangue, and sermonise his way through any more loony 'Christian' albums they'd be dropping him.
It is surely right then, that we, from the high hill of our informed correctness, should call these people out for what they are. Stonewall Jacksons, the whole bloody lot of them. I don’t know about you, but I won't read Austen, or listen to Bob, ever again.
Temporarily Like Achilles
There's another thing about Bob Dylan and me, I said to Jean.
In the absence, for some reason, of any enquiry as to what additional information I might impart, I continued:
There's quite a number of his songs that if Bob hadn't already written them I definitely would have.
Really? she said.
Well, think of Positively 4th Street, I said. To write a bitter rant like that you'd have to be a seriously paranoid, twisted, spiteful, insecure, weak, browbeating, and profoundly unpopular guy who hates everybody and ...
Well, that description rings a bell all right, she interrupted.
And Desolation Row, I said. It's quite obviously about the existential horror reflective beings like Bob and me feel when trapped in a dreadful, depressing dump, populated by grotesques, inbreds, and pea brained blockheads; somewhere entropy, chaos, decay, and mediocrity reign supreme ...
Yes, she said, and you have indeed been living in Armagh for years ...
There’s No Success Like Failure
My top speed on the old pushbike yesterday was 45.5 mph ... ! All along the Shore Road. Ok, with a strong tailwind. But going so fast that cars didn't bother overtaking me. What man can say he has failed in life, if he's done that?
I've failed in life, I said to Jean.
Yes, I went on, hopeless husband, flawed father, useless in the sack, career flop, ramshackle guitar player, no friends, impractical, lazy, boring, self-obsessed, opinionated, DIY gormless, wimpish upper body development ...
True enough, she said, but on the plus side, you still have some of your own hair, and it's a nice shade of blonde ...
Tombstone Blues
After rising without trace in Downpatrick last Saturday, Miss Lotte Lenya and I resumed our usual busking station in Belfast yesterday. People were scarce, and so is money, but I think it's important in times of trial that folk still have the chance to hear (imperfectly) Blind Blake, free of charge.
There's an oul boy round these parts who sings hymns in a foghorn type voice and hands out leaflets from a shoulder bag. He turned up eventually. Standing just a few feet away, he began Abide With Me.
When I opined he was being a bit ignorant, he replied, Spreading the word ... !
Don't worry, son, he added, I never stay in one place too long.
How many people have you saved over the years, do you think? I asked.
Couldn't put a number on it, he said. Would you be interested yourself?
No, I replied, I'm a lapsed Catholic, and I have to go to Hell because any friends I have will be there.
Hell is nothing to joke about joking, he admonished me, and then added loudly and theatrically, For the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day and night ... ! Revelation 14:11.
Sure that describes old age perfectly. Faith-wise though, Revelation is a shed load of psychotic, overhyped shite, but it's no good arguing with these men. They have mundane, barren, tedious visions: horsemen; the anti-Christ; the Rapture next week; apocalypse, in a tin hut, with a few like minded nutters.
When everything is revealed, nothing is revealed, I ventured.
I'll pray for you, he said.
It's heads they win, tails you lose ...
⏩Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast . . . when he can get a pitch.
I love this writing - wry, subversive, witty, insightful, Voltairean in its mocking of the god-botherer.
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