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.

**********************************

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

The falsified self, continued

PRISONER OF FREE WILL

There are worse jobs: shielded by tree bark from harassment, she is free to be beautiful, intellectual and adorable forever. 
But is she happy?

Mortal anguish made exquisite through artistic metamorphosis:  
detail of Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, Marble, 1622 - 25, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

The transformation of Daphne from chaste nymph into laurel tree is portrayed by both Ovid in poetic form and Bernini in sculpture as a sexual experience, even though it is ostensibly sex that she is running away from. Ovid emphasizes the languor of her surrender to a consummation she has prayed for, the death of carnal existence in exchange for spiritual and cerebral life. Revulsed by the lust her beauty stimulates in other people, perpetually in flight from sexual contact - and Ovid in Metamorphoses constantly reminds us how fast she is, one of those athletic women who outrun men in classical mythology - she is an ethereal, wistful being even before she is changed from human to plant form, a dutiful daughter who doesn't want to grow up and bear children of her own, who slips away from flesh-pains as gently as Sleeping Beauty, acquiescent to her new vocation as a symbol of other people's triumphs, conferring prestige without feelings or sensations of her own. There are worse jobs: protected by bark from sexual harassment, she is allowed to be decorative and intellectual forever. 

The significant point about Ovid's Daphne is that she wants to be changed, though she has no say in how or to what. Bernini's Daphne, pursued by Apollo, is traumatized, less of a conflicted personality than a victim of attempted assault, caught in the moment of violent transition....

The falsified self

HECUBA AND THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION

part two

Magic cloak

Fashionable sports' kit for female athletes, 
4th century AD. 
Detail of mosaic in a private room of
Villa Romana del Casale, Siciliy
where it is always warm enough to wear bikinis.

Awe and Wonder during Austerity for £27 million 

We know sporting spectacles have always been political, even before the first chariot race in the Colosseum. They have never promoted peace - ancient Greek city-states suspended civil wars to send athletic teams to compete at sacred sites, and then resumed killing each other as soon as the games were over - but they have been invaluable public pacifiers and propaganda tools for governments....

Disinterested used to mean impartial

HECUBA AND THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION

part one

Every time a TV arts programme critic describes a film or performance as "visceral", I imagine piles of cocktail sausages, when I'm sure I should be seeing shining entrails. The word doesn't cut the mustard any more. I don't feel my fingers touching vile jelly, like Cornwall does when he plucks out Gloucester's eyes.

HECUBA TRANSFORMED BY GRIEF INTO A DOG

AFTER GOUGING OUT THE EYES OF POLYMESTOR IN REVENGE FOR THE DEATH OF HER YOUNGEST SON

detail of Johann Wilhelm Baur's illustration to Ovid's Metamorphoses,1659 edition

"....Hecuba,

....was driven mad by sorrow

and began barking like a dog...

Such mighty power had grief to wrench her soul"
Dante, Inferno 

When, in the cause of truthful citation, I put the quotation from the thirtieth Canto in Roman numerals, my blog was overrun by lascivious spybots...

World's End gentrification

                 “Mad bitch, mad bitch,

                     we hear that thing you do -

                          laughing that turns to crying -

                        mad bitch, it’s got to stop"....

RE-BEGOT

Please don’t ask me how I feel

because I don’t think you’ll believe me.

What I feel is bigger than me, inside and outside me,

dark matter swallowing and swallowed;
weight of emptiness, a heavy heart,
pulls down rocks and torrents
a storm raging that no-one else sees or hears,
a vacuum filled with shrieking motion.
Her death: event horizon.
My grief: crossing where I’m torn apart
This is not pathetic fallacy;
it is the geography of me....

Patriotism is not enough

GOD IS NOT AN ENGLISHMAN (OR SCOTS)

When Madame la Pompadour addressed Louis V as "France" in bed, it was not in tribute to his sexual heroics.....

Boy next door

Statue of a boy holding a basket of flowers, standing in a niche above a private doorway in Tunbridge Wells. 

Photo by Martin Huebscher Photography

Playing Carice Elgar

ELGAR, STIRRING THE SPIRIT

Cast: David Graham, Pippa Rathborne

Musicians: The Locrian Ensemble

Edinburgh, London & National Tour 2004 - 2007

production photo by The Locrian Ensemble

Rational creatures

Motherhood for the personal and common good: illustration by William Blake for the frontispiece to the 1791 edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's children's book, Original Stories from Real Life. Image source: Wikipedia

I must have been mazed by the weekend's progeny of evils, financial and torrential, because while watching Sharon Osbourne being interviewed on TV, I thought Cherie Blair in one of her desperate fashion attacks had dyed her hair crimson. I think these two powerful women share identities, the one grown rich on ruthlessly promoting dubious acts, boastfully hectoring audiences, and guarding a mad husband's reputation, and the other a talent show panelist....

face, voice, 2008

MHP CASTING PHOTOS

phony

I pressed the eject button within 10 minutes of watching Meryl Streep....

Still running

  Atalanta by Heinrich Keller, 1802,  Kunsthaus, Zurich. Image source: Web Gallery of Art

It was a time of high taxes, low wages, rising unemployment, failed revolutions, reactionary oppression, and deepening social inequality while the poor despaired and the rich luxuriated in power....

Heredity and Rebellion

NEOCLASSICAL GODDESSES AND ROMANTIC HEROINES 

testing the limits of self-determination
 

part ten: Heredity and Rebellion

  Atalanta by Heinrich Keller, 1802,  Kunsthaus, Zurich. Image source: Web Gallery of Art

Atalanta, or "equal in weight": the princess had a sort of masculine rigour*

A might-have-been of history, one of the lost heirs to the throne, and the only one known for “rolling about”, Princess Charlotte of Wales is significant as a catalyst for national catharsis by dying young, not for any achievements in her life. Her real character was buried under decorous veils of Victorian sentiment, concealing the tension and flux of her personality, the combined result of inheritance and of her own response to the spirit of her times. Her individuality was puzzling to contemporaries, who tried to reduce it to "masculine rigour" and "acts" similar to Queen Elizabeth I's. 

Like Blake’s Little Girl Lost, her impetuosity and candour, her instinctual behaviour, her sensual appetites, her enthusiasms, her wildness were disapprovingly held in check by adults. “Doucement, chèrie”, her urbane husband (the future “Uncle Leopold” of her cousin Victoria) would whisper to her whenever she got out of control in public, as if he was breaking in a horse....