Tweets from a funeral

Someone boasts he’s taken a photo of me with my tongue hanging out.

“Be histrionic as you like at the funeral” -

display of emotion is socially approved there,

1930s crematorium purpose-built

for bourgeois ritual, convenience-grief.
(but not alone at home, in bed at night,

nor in the street, outside the shops,

nor by the river in the dark,

the places where other animals freely howl)

- No, thanks.....

We are sorry you feel that way

The modern art of the narcissistic apology

An apology is not an apology when it is qualified by "I am sorry you feel that way..." which is the formula nowadays for all organizations, whether town hall or pharmaceutical company, internet provider or hospice, to fend off criticism or legal action even in cases when there is no ambiguity about the facts. An apology should start with an acknowledgment of responsibility ("I am sorry we made a mistake"..."I am sorry for all the inconvenience/expense our stupidity/our computer glitch has caused you") not an implicit denial of wrongdoing by suggesting that subjective emotionality on the part of the complainant has warped their perception. The effect is as conciliatory as "Keep calm, dear".

If you get a reply like that, my advice is, complain again - whether they've got something to hide or are just being arsy, they need to look in the mirror. If a friend you love resorts to the phrase, you'll forgive them, because you know they don't want to hurt your feelings; if you don't love them, you'll never trust them again.

"WE ARE SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY"

There are things one does not write
(remark attributed to Napoleon by Stendhal, in The Red and the Black)

Detail of APOLLO REVEALING HIS DIVINITY by Boucher, 1750.  

The apollonion messenger stood us up...

life through DvP's eyes

 

The statue of Fragonard and his muse in Grasse 

(photo by PJR)

Plain packaging, good taste

I am not, and never have been, a smoker, but now I'm considering it. Can't bear the smell of cigarettes, or the ugly stinking piles of their ash, they give me asthma and make my eyes water, and I can't afford them anyway; I don't want nicotine stains on my remaining teeth, there's a history of cancer in the family and I think when you have smoked and alcoholically poisoned your organs away you've got some cheek expecting new ones on the NHS, but if I hear one more, smug, prissy, overpaid to be sanctimonious idiot preach the virtues of plain packaging, or packets decorated with skulls and health warnings, I shall go out and buy a pack of 200 to blow in their faces....

Tell us how you feel, Hecuba

We still need catharsis, we are addicted to it, but it isn't morally improving anymore.

Nowadays, sometimes more out of self-gratification than sympathy, we like to vicariously experience other people's extreme emotions and subject them, whether jubilant or suffering, to instant inquisition. Empathy is recognized as a professional tool that could sometimes be mistaken for politeness ("I hope your  journey here was alright?", "I'm sorry about that") and as a fashionable attribute, usually mistaken for compassion.

Traditionally this sort of feelgood factor used to be regulated, produced artificially through dramatic representation, a consensual imaginative act given the morally improving name of catharsis. Only the emotion aroused in the audience was real. How the actor and dramatist achieve their ends, through application of techniques or painful substitution of themselves, does not matter; it is the powerful mystery of their art. 

The intoxicating effects of this emotional communion were acknowledged in ancient Greek civilization by associating theatre with, of all the gods, mood-altering, self-gratifying, subconscious-dwelling Dionysus, not the rational Apollo, overall patron of poetry and the performing arts. The same experience has been undergone by mystics of all religions, reproducing the passion of sacrificial gods and saints. The downside of this was scapegoating and witch-hunting, practices condemned by modern society.

We still need catharsis, we are addicted to it, but it isn't morally improving anymore. Sated with simulated realities, we demand confessions from real living persons. We are angry and suspicious if they deny us with "no comment" or "how the **** do you think I feel?" The description of feeling has become an evasion, more vital to us than the real thing. 

We do not always make a moral distinction between sharing someone else's joy and our own Schadenfreude. We applaud ourselves for feeling empathy, like trainee professionals awarded extra marks for showing it to patients or clients, regardless that compassion as a virtue is not enjoyed, but given to alleviate the suffering of others. We are upset if anyone suggests our interest is motivated by addiction to gossip rather than selfless concern about other people's lives and deaths; a good murder is as alluring as a wedding. 

It's the modern secular game, the coveting of souls for entertainment. The thrill wears off; we need to move on to the next one. Like tragedies in five acts, the limits of compassion for an individual are set for the comfort of the wider community. What's Hecuba to any of us, or us to Hecuba, after three hours?  

"How do you feel?" 

Detail of Antonio Tempesta's print, c.1600, of Hecuba, the inconvenient mourner who took her grief too far for the communal good, lamenting over the corpses of her children.

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Please don’t ask me: “How do you feel?” In the garden of how I feel nothing....