The Wicked Messenger
Heidegger, Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus are gone. And I’m not feeling great myself. But I still strive to square circles and recover the satellites. Not shallow stuff like why are we here? how should we live? where are we going? Any corner boy will fill you in there - if you're too dim to realise your mother gave birth, you shouldn't dog folk around and, and you ain't going nowhere ... well, head to A&E and ask for a transfusion of intelligence.
No ... I chew over fundamental existential questions ... Even the biggest one of all: how come His Royal Bobness is a towering genius in the history of music, when he hasn't, in fact, made a decent album since 1967 ... ?!?
Having time to kill, and probably because my degree is in Philosophy, I'm finally able to answer that one. As an Artist Bob peaked with John Wesley Harding (1967); thereafter, if he continued to grow, it was only as a singer-songwriter and performer.
Next time: why Van Morrison peaked just before he formed Them.
Talkin’ Roger Whittaker Blues
We are in Armagh Planetarium's Solar System garden. If you look carefully, south of Miss Lotte Lenya's bum (see photograph) you can see Pluto. That's how big it is compared to Neptune next door. Last time we were here, Pluto had been stolen.
Its orbit crosses inside of Neptune's for 20 years out of every 248 years, and last crossed inside Neptune's orbit on February 7, 1979, and temporarily became the 8th planet from the Sun.
A man passed by. I said to him, Pluto is only a dwarf planet now, but at least it's back.
Eh? he replied.
Returning home, however, more great news awaited. The 'Orchard County' GAA team (GAA is Irish for 'wanker') had gone down in defeat to Kerry. By a single point ... !! Yippee ... !!!
My poor neighbour: bedraggled Armagh flag drooping limply in the front garden; baseball cap (of the genus Mickey Harte), usually worn at jaunty, upturned, we-own-being-Irish angle, now pulled down over despairing eyes; his grief-stricken children plodding grimly off to school to sigh with their chums; his cats given no quarter and brusquely dismissed from our garden because they bully an aging Miss Lotte Lenya ...
That's Armagh. Armagh ... Oh, to work for the Education Authority, and have at least one child at the Royal School ...
Suddenly a fog lifted. I said to Jean:
We have to get out of this fucking dump of a town ...
U and non-U
Kent University says that everyone should be called 'they', until their preferred pronoun is known, Jean told me this morning.
Mind At The End Of Its Tether is the title of H G Wells's last book. I know exactly how he felt ...
The problem with demanding that all staff and students declare their pronouns and, presumably, use each other's preferred pronouns, is that it requires some of them - gender critical feminists, orthodox Christians - to affirm something they don't believe to be true, i.e., that it's possible for a person to change sex.
Busking
I too, like Gwendolen Fairfax, believe you should always have something sensational to read on the train. So for me that's Thomas Hardy, and, as you will easily imagine, after a good dose of stuff like this I am ready to confound the Opera Guy and all his works.
As we get off at Gt Victoria Street I see that dreadful actor and Prod who plays Jim McDonald in Corrie. He's waiting for a Bangor train. He says hello to Miss Lotte Lenya, but I drag her away from any possible contamination.
Buskers are everywhere. Finally I start in Anne Street, but the Opera Guy and his Opera Girl, to my left, in the Cornmarket, and the Roumanian accordionist further up to my right, are too loud and off putting for a true son of the Delta.
Later on, as I'm playing in Donegall Place, Cecelia Daly, weather girl, walks by. She's very small. Fearfully made up. God, her Facebook page ... pass the sick bag, Alice ...
A young girl gives me a lollipop as she passes. Her sister comes back to tell me that the lollipop is from both of them. Then a woman gives me a sandwich, plus, for Lotte, a small bag of dog food.
A man stops to say that if I had a CD he'd buy it. I don't get carried away. I'm not a salesman, but a missionary, my gospel a threadbare representation of the divine and glorious revelation available to all ... if you will only search, say, Blind Blake, on YouTube.
[Photo 2 here]
Cruising along in my automobile
We were driving somewhere. In my car.
Just for once, said Jean grimly, may we listen to something other than Elmore James ... ? Put on my Carpenters CD ... !
Of course, I'd offloaded that rubbish yonks ago. So I put on the next best thing - Chester Burnett.
Also known as The Howlin' Wolf, Chester was 'a primal, aggressive, ferocious blues belter with [ ... ] a sandpaper growl of a voice'. He was a big figure; no-one could match him for the singular ability to rock the house down to its foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of their wits. His earliest recordings are fantastic; primitive, menacing masterpieces.
Like any great savant, though, Wolf understood mankind's situation inside out and upside down. And he keeps it simple. For instance –
i) his take on the universal predicament, and our rightful response to it:
Well, somebody knocking on my door (2x);
well, I'm so worried, don't know where to go ...
Well, somebody calling me, calling on my telephone,
well, somebody calling me, over my telephone;
well, keep on calling, tell them I'm not at home ...
He knew only too well that even though you might be paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you;
ii) women. Wolf's been there, done that, and is now out of hospital:
How many more years have I got to let you dog me around?
How many more years, oh, I got to let you dog me around?
I'd as soon rather be dead, sleeping six feet in the ground ...
The unexpectedly beautiful elegance of that inelegant final line. You've lived a poor excuse for a life if you haven't heard him deliver that;
iii) the human condition. Can we be content, satisfied?
Well, long way from home and can't sleep at all,
you know another mule is kickin' in your stall -
that's evil, evil is goin' on wrong,
I am warnin' you, brother, you better watch your happy home ...
After about ten minutes of this stuff Jean asked, Why are you always so nasty and selfish ... ?
I'm not nasty and selfish, I replied, I'm evil, which is a different thing altogether ...
You are going somewhere
Have you ever been to Ardress House? I asked Jean.
No, she replied.
But how do you know you've never been there, I said, if you've never actually been there to realise that you haven't been there before ... ?
I'd remember, she said.
But you're forgetting quantum mechanics, I said. You see, we've all, in fact, been everywhere, because with enough time and enough alternative universes, it's even inevitable that one morning you'll step out of the house here and find yourself on Mars ...
Notes from underground
I'm in this Facebook group that celebrates all things Beatle.
Anyway, members tend to be fiercely partisan about their chosen Beatle. So much so that an awful lot of hyperbole is expended, particularly on George Harrison and his contribution to the success of the group. A favourite trope is that George was actually a seismic talent, cruelly stifled and thwarted by the preening, arrogant and uncaring Lennon and McCartney.
Because there is no evidence to support the claim that George had anything even close to the consistency, breadth, depth and sheer quality of his mates' output, I thought it would be a quare geg if I put a comment on claiming that George and Ringo were the true creative dynamos in the band, but suffocated artistically by bully boys John and Paul.
Fair enough, most of the members are from the USA and that railroad in search of a country, Canada, so I suppose, to quote the lads themselves, I Should Have Known Better.
Well, Lance-Corporal Zelensky doesn't really know what Armageddon is.
No ... I chew over fundamental existential questions ... Even the biggest one of all: how come His Royal Bobness is a towering genius in the history of music, when he hasn't, in fact, made a decent album since 1967 ... ?!?
Having time to kill, and probably because my degree is in Philosophy, I'm finally able to answer that one. As an Artist Bob peaked with John Wesley Harding (1967); thereafter, if he continued to grow, it was only as a singer-songwriter and performer.
Next time: why Van Morrison peaked just before he formed Them.
Talkin’ Roger Whittaker Blues
We are in Armagh Planetarium's Solar System garden. If you look carefully, south of Miss Lotte Lenya's bum (see photograph) you can see Pluto. That's how big it is compared to Neptune next door. Last time we were here, Pluto had been stolen.
Its orbit crosses inside of Neptune's for 20 years out of every 248 years, and last crossed inside Neptune's orbit on February 7, 1979, and temporarily became the 8th planet from the Sun.
A man passed by. I said to him, Pluto is only a dwarf planet now, but at least it's back.
Eh? he replied.
Returning home, however, more great news awaited. The 'Orchard County' GAA team (GAA is Irish for 'wanker') had gone down in defeat to Kerry. By a single point ... !! Yippee ... !!!
My poor neighbour: bedraggled Armagh flag drooping limply in the front garden; baseball cap (of the genus Mickey Harte), usually worn at jaunty, upturned, we-own-being-Irish angle, now pulled down over despairing eyes; his grief-stricken children plodding grimly off to school to sigh with their chums; his cats given no quarter and brusquely dismissed from our garden because they bully an aging Miss Lotte Lenya ...
That's Armagh. Armagh ... Oh, to work for the Education Authority, and have at least one child at the Royal School ...
Suddenly a fog lifted. I said to Jean:
We have to get out of this fucking dump of a town ...
U and non-U
Kent University says that everyone should be called 'they', until their preferred pronoun is known, Jean told me this morning.
Mind At The End Of Its Tether is the title of H G Wells's last book. I know exactly how he felt ...
The problem with demanding that all staff and students declare their pronouns and, presumably, use each other's preferred pronouns, is that it requires some of them - gender critical feminists, orthodox Christians - to affirm something they don't believe to be true, i.e., that it's possible for a person to change sex.
Busking
I too, like Gwendolen Fairfax, believe you should always have something sensational to read on the train. So for me that's Thomas Hardy, and, as you will easily imagine, after a good dose of stuff like this I am ready to confound the Opera Guy and all his works.
As we get off at Gt Victoria Street I see that dreadful actor and Prod who plays Jim McDonald in Corrie. He's waiting for a Bangor train. He says hello to Miss Lotte Lenya, but I drag her away from any possible contamination.
Buskers are everywhere. Finally I start in Anne Street, but the Opera Guy and his Opera Girl, to my left, in the Cornmarket, and the Roumanian accordionist further up to my right, are too loud and off putting for a true son of the Delta.
Later on, as I'm playing in Donegall Place, Cecelia Daly, weather girl, walks by. She's very small. Fearfully made up. God, her Facebook page ... pass the sick bag, Alice ...
A young girl gives me a lollipop as she passes. Her sister comes back to tell me that the lollipop is from both of them. Then a woman gives me a sandwich, plus, for Lotte, a small bag of dog food.
A man stops to say that if I had a CD he'd buy it. I don't get carried away. I'm not a salesman, but a missionary, my gospel a threadbare representation of the divine and glorious revelation available to all ... if you will only search, say, Blind Blake, on YouTube.
[Photo 2 here]
Cruising along in my automobile
We were driving somewhere. In my car.
Just for once, said Jean grimly, may we listen to something other than Elmore James ... ? Put on my Carpenters CD ... !
Of course, I'd offloaded that rubbish yonks ago. So I put on the next best thing - Chester Burnett.
Also known as The Howlin' Wolf, Chester was 'a primal, aggressive, ferocious blues belter with [ ... ] a sandpaper growl of a voice'. He was a big figure; no-one could match him for the singular ability to rock the house down to its foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of their wits. His earliest recordings are fantastic; primitive, menacing masterpieces.
Like any great savant, though, Wolf understood mankind's situation inside out and upside down. And he keeps it simple. For instance –
i) his take on the universal predicament, and our rightful response to it:
Well, somebody knocking on my door (2x);
well, I'm so worried, don't know where to go ...
Well, somebody calling me, calling on my telephone,
well, somebody calling me, over my telephone;
well, keep on calling, tell them I'm not at home ...
He knew only too well that even though you might be paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you;
ii) women. Wolf's been there, done that, and is now out of hospital:
How many more years have I got to let you dog me around?
How many more years, oh, I got to let you dog me around?
I'd as soon rather be dead, sleeping six feet in the ground ...
The unexpectedly beautiful elegance of that inelegant final line. You've lived a poor excuse for a life if you haven't heard him deliver that;
iii) the human condition. Can we be content, satisfied?
Well, long way from home and can't sleep at all,
you know another mule is kickin' in your stall -
that's evil, evil is goin' on wrong,
I am warnin' you, brother, you better watch your happy home ...
After about ten minutes of this stuff Jean asked, Why are you always so nasty and selfish ... ?
I'm not nasty and selfish, I replied, I'm evil, which is a different thing altogether ...
You are going somewhere
Have you ever been to Ardress House? I asked Jean.
No, she replied.
But how do you know you've never been there, I said, if you've never actually been there to realise that you haven't been there before ... ?
I'd remember, she said.
But you're forgetting quantum mechanics, I said. You see, we've all, in fact, been everywhere, because with enough time and enough alternative universes, it's even inevitable that one morning you'll step out of the house here and find yourself on Mars ...
Notes from underground
I'm in this Facebook group that celebrates all things Beatle.
Anyway, members tend to be fiercely partisan about their chosen Beatle. So much so that an awful lot of hyperbole is expended, particularly on George Harrison and his contribution to the success of the group. A favourite trope is that George was actually a seismic talent, cruelly stifled and thwarted by the preening, arrogant and uncaring Lennon and McCartney.
Because there is no evidence to support the claim that George had anything even close to the consistency, breadth, depth and sheer quality of his mates' output, I thought it would be a quare geg if I put a comment on claiming that George and Ringo were the true creative dynamos in the band, but suffocated artistically by bully boys John and Paul.
Fair enough, most of the members are from the USA and that railroad in search of a country, Canada, so I suppose, to quote the lads themselves, I Should Have Known Better.
Well, Lance-Corporal Zelensky doesn't really know what Armageddon is.
When the smoke cleared for a few moments, I pointed out that we have a tradition in Western Europe of lampooning, mocking and satirising 'heroes', and that nobody had been killed.
An earnest lad from Utah chastised me for indulging in 'troll humour'. This, he said, is when you go out, deliberately, to post comments that will upset others. And he was upset.
I'm a troll. An internet bully. I blame the priests at St Colman's College ...
Table talk chez Praetorius
Life is a hideous thing, I said to Jean, and from the background behind what we know of it peer demoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.
Yes, said Jean.
Science, I added, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species - if separate species we be - for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.
Yes, said Jean.
The most merciful thing in the world, I went on, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Yes, said Jean.
She’ll not be mastered ...
It came to a head this morning. Finally.
Just why do you hate me so much, darling ... ?!? I asked Jean.
No reply.
Is it because I’m a Fenian bastard ... ?
Yes, she said.
But I've been an atheist now for years ... ! I said.
Once a Taig, always a Taig, she snapped.
This is, of course, the heart of the matter for all these bloody black Prods, and you don't have to dig very deep to unearth it in them.
As this entry from an 18th century encyclopedia illustrates ...
An earnest lad from Utah chastised me for indulging in 'troll humour'. This, he said, is when you go out, deliberately, to post comments that will upset others. And he was upset.
I'm a troll. An internet bully. I blame the priests at St Colman's College ...
Table talk chez Praetorius
Life is a hideous thing, I said to Jean, and from the background behind what we know of it peer demoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.
Yes, said Jean.
Science, I added, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species - if separate species we be - for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.
Yes, said Jean.
The most merciful thing in the world, I went on, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Yes, said Jean.
It came to a head this morning. Finally.
Just why do you hate me so much, darling ... ?!? I asked Jean.
No reply.
Is it because I’m a Fenian bastard ... ?
Yes, she said.
But I've been an atheist now for years ... ! I said.
Once a Taig, always a Taig, she snapped.
This is, of course, the heart of the matter for all these bloody black Prods, and you don't have to dig very deep to unearth it in them.
As this entry from an 18th century encyclopedia illustrates ...
Tail wags man
No, answered the man handing out saved-type leaflets in Newry, when I asked him if Miss Lotte Lenya can come to Heaven with me. His was a strictly subdue-and-have-dominion-over approach. To a wholly unrelated category of creature he called 'the animals', as if, somehow, his bones aren't nearly identical in form and function to those of all the other mammals on earth.
Consider me out walking with Lotte, I waxed philosophically ... there is complexity to my and her make-up, compared to the relatively simple structure of the inanimate universe we inhabit, in as much as we can know it at all. Thinking about this as we walk, I'm striving for some shallow, uninformed significance. But Lotte isn't. She holds no grudges, asserts no doctrine or creeds, flies no flag, imposes no meaning, demands no faith or formulas. In other words, a more deserving candidate for a place in paradise would be hard to find.
A dog has no soul, God's frontman informed me witheringly, from the lofty heights of sterile enlightenment and banal revelation.
He didn’t have the time or inclination to notice, but Lotte was wagging her tail.
The Flight of the Gaels
More busking drama. The train was full. No vacant seats, so Miss Lotte Lenya wasn't able to sit on my lap and look out the window for rabbits.
And when I got to my usual pitch there was a group of young diddly diddly players nearby, scraping and squawking and scratching on fiddles, and hooting and pooting through tin whistles. At maximum bloody volume. There's nobody appreciates the sacrifice Connolly made in 1916 more than I do, but honestly, when I hear that 100 mph caterwauling crap, it makes me wonder if it was worth it.
I started up anyway. Soon I was, by my standards, playing rather well, the sound of the Resolectric affirmingly primitive and metallic. Eyes closed, in the moment, I thought, You can't beat this: I play exactly what I want, mostly whenever I want. If I win the X-factor I’ll lose all this ...
What are you up to ... ? asked a gruff voice, shattering my reverie.
It was your man, the Chief De Valera, in charge of the young Gaels.
I’m playing the blues, I answered.
Can you play them less loud ... ? he said crossly.
‘Loudly’, you mean, the English teacher replied.
What age are you? he demanded. Grow up, would ya? These youngsters have worked at this for weeks, keeping a tradition going ...
Don’t start that tradition shite with me, I interrupted.
Dinosaurs like you, he said. There’s two communities here, you know, whether you like it or not ...
Listen, a chara, I said, I’m from your community, but please cancel my subscription to Micky Harte and the baseball caps, and the diddly diddly racket, and if you want me to turn it down a bit, you can ask the Fianna down there to do the same, for the sake of an Irishman playing the blues ...
He let this treachery sink in.
Huh ... ! You call yourself an Irishman ...
And away he went. Minutes later the Irish boys and girls packed up their instruments of torture and departed. To unite Ireland elsewhere.
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