Everything Else

“When I remember as far back as I can, I’d say that there was hardly any separation between inside and outside. When I crawled towards something, it came on wings to meet me; when something important happened, the excitement was not just in us, but the things themselves came to a boil. I won’t claim that we were happier then than we were later on. After all, we hadn’t yet taken charge of ourselves.

In fact, we didn’t really yet exist; our physical condition was not yet separated from the world’s.  It sounds strange, but it’s true: our feeling, our desires, our very selves, were not yet quite inside ourselves. What’s even stranger is that I might as easily say: they were not yet quite taken away from us.

If you should sometime happen to ask yourself today, when you think you’re entirely in possession of yourself, who you really are, you will discover that you always see yourself from the outside, as an object. You’ll notice that one time you get angry, another time you get sad, just as your coat will sometimes be wet and sometimes too warm.

No matter how intensely you try to look at yourself, you may at most find something about the outside, but you’ll never get inside yourself. Whatever you do you remain outside yourself, with the possible exception of those rare moments when a friend might say that you’re beside yourself.

It’s true that as adults we’ve made up for this by being able to think at any time that ‘I am’- if you think that’s fun. You see a car and somehow in a shadowy way you also see ‘I am seeing a car’. You’re in love, or sad, and see that it’s you. But neither the car, nor your sadness, nor your love, nor even yourself, is quite fully there.

Nothing is as completely there as it once was in childhood; everything you touch, including your inmost self, is more or less congealed from the moment you have achieved your ‘personality’ and what’s left is a ghostly hanging thread of self awareness and murky self regard, wrapped up in a wholly external existence.

What goes wrong? There’s a feeling that something might still be salvaged. Surely you can’t claim that a child’s experience is all that different from a man’s? I don’t know any real answer, even if there may be this or that idea about it. But for a long time I’ve responded by having lost my love for this kind of ‘being myself’ and for this kind of world.”

Isn’t that the most incredible description of growing up you’ve ever read?

From Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities” which still captivates me like no other work of art. Maybe I should make this blog entirely about Musil.

I found myself ordering Guinness for the last two nights in London. I like Guinness but I don’t drink it as a rule. This has taught me two things. Firstly, Guinness in London is potentially just as good as Guinness in Dublin. A pub near where I am right now, in Kensington, had better Guinness than many places back home.

The second thing I’ve learned is more disturbing. It seems I drink Guinness more in London than I would in Dublin as some desperate statement of identity. My current programme is very multi-cultural and I guess it sort of makes being Irish seem less of a burden. It’s really interesting how even the least nationalist or patriotic person can still feel conscious of their birthplace like this once they no longer live there.

It’s blatantly clear that soon I’ll be at every one of Christy Moore’s London gigs in an aran sweater, all the while munching on blight infested potatoes.

Here are some things I’ve noted about London and since I moved there.

1. Queuing: You have to queue for everything, there are more people here than you could possibly imagine.
2. Yuppie Shame Redux: I now have a Muji bedsheet, mirror, and hand towel.
3. London has gloriously resisted the cancer of Centra and Spar that has spread throughout Dublin. It’s a joy to have choice.
4. Pub closing times are annoyingly early.
5. Nu-rave still very big, judging by people you see around.
6. I have zero idea what I want to do for a living anymore, even if I know I want to be a journalist.
7. Living in a hotel is intensely boring.
8. Moving from the city you grew up in after 25 years is a pretty euphoric experience.

If you Google “hard working band”, it’s no surprise that two of the first 10 results are Irish. We are a Catholic country, and it’s a Catholic meme.

Don’t you dislike it though? Personally I can’t stand this romantic idea of “the hard working band” or “the hard working artist”. Firstly, it is not actually “hard work” to be in a band. Not relatively. If anyone thinks so, try being a nurse, or a doctor, or cleaning toilets, or driving buses, or flipping burgers. What job do you do? Maybe you’re there right now. I’d wager whatever it is, it’s probably harder than being in a band.

Now don’t get me wrong, a band on the up may indeed be working hard, just as anyone who is trying to succeed at their career is. Indeed many bands or artists may rehearse a great deal and put in a lot of work. In fact, every band probably does. That’s why it’s irrelevant.  If a band or artist doesn’t give you a creative output you enjoy, then who cares how hard they work? You don’t hear hard work when you press play, nor should you.

The reality is that for a band or artist to really move us, they must create something we love or feel strongly about. That creative process does not necessarily include any “work” whatsoever. It may do, but it’s not a key component. I mean, if Paul McCartney had decided to add a long rapidfire guitar solo to “Yesterday” it may have been harder work, but would it actually have made the record sound better?

Creativity is what matters. Ideas are what matter. Work is just the realisation of both. Can we end this fetish once and for all?

I am currently reading these, having only flitted in and out of Dublin Waterstones and Piccadilly Waterstones.

Gustave Flaubert-Sentimental Education  and Hermann Broch-The Sleepwalkers. I didn’t have anything for breakfast this morning, in case you were wondering. Though a Berocca and a banana is the ultimate breakfast of champions.

The new Lost, “The Other Woman” is here this week. And it’s about her in the picture. I don’t think I like her anymore after a full episode.

Watch from around 4 minutes in.

Zaysen: After all, in the end what everyone really wants is peace.
Colonel Trautman: The Kremlin’s got a hell of a sense of humor.
Zaysen: Please explain.
Colonel Trautman: You talk peace and disarmament. And here you are wiping out a race of people!
Zaysen: We are wiping out no one. I think you are too intelligent to believe such propaganda. Now again. Where are the missiles?
Colonel Trautman: I don’t know anything about the missiles!
Zaysen: Of course you do. But you do not seem to realize I’m providing a way out for us both.
Colonel Trautman: You expect sympathy? You started this damn war, now you have to deal with it!
Zaysen: And we will. It is only a matter of time before we achieve a complete victory.
Colonel Trautman: You know there won’t be a victory. Everyday your war machines lose ground to a bunch of poorly armed, poorly equipped freedom fighters. The fact is that you underestimated your competition. If you’ve studied your history, you’d know that these people have never given up to anyone. They’d rather DIE than be slaves to an invading army. You can’t defeat a people like that. We tried, we already HAD our Vietnam. Now you’re going to have yours.

(Oh dear, and there’s more just a little later)

This is Afghanistan… Alexander the Great try to conquer this country… then Genghis Khan, then the British. Now Russia. Afghan people fight hard. They never be defeated. Ancient enemy make prayers about these people. You wish to hear? Very good. May God deliver us from the venom of the cobra, teeth of the tiger and the vengeance of the Afghan.”

Reminds me of George W Bush’s one truly (if accidentally) great and revelatory quote: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.”

Go here to watch last night’s episode of Lost. It is perhaps one of the best episodes in the entire four seasons. I am completely gobsmacked by this. NB: you really need to be willing to go with the writers/creators by now. If Lost is a curry, and some people don’t like spicy food, they’ve begun to drop bags of chillies into it week after week.

If you have listened to Irish radio, ever, then the name “BRENDA” will be instantly familiar.

BRENDA was on 2FM, maybe she still is. BRENDA is often on RTE Radio 1. BRENDA’s voice is possibly the worst thing about her. I actually imagine her mouth to be two filthy ashtrays, one on top of the other, belching forth smoke and fag butts as she speaks. Today, on air, BRENDA said “can’t a woman get a tan-job in peace”. BRENDA must be orange.

BRENDA never has her own show, instead she attaches herself to the body of healthy, living shows, and survives on their biological excess of vacuous banter. Nobody has any idea what BRENDA actually is for. Nobody asked for BRENDA and nobody would say “where has BRENDA gone” if she was fired. What is the point of BRENDA?

I think I would like it if I never heard BRENDA on the radio again! Thankfully in London BRENDA will not be on the radio.

I got 110 Euro in book vouchers today, as my bonus from when I worked in Waterstones. Anyone got any tips on what to buy?

I’ve been reading spaced out philosophical stuff, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil obviously and Elias Canetti. At least that’s what’s been working for me so far. These are all fiction too. But feel free to suggest anything really. Or else I’ll exchange them for HMV Vouchers and buy Guitar Hero on the Nintendo Wii. And we wouldn’t want that would we?

Yesterday I saw the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

It was a really interesting experience: a museum where the very architecture of the building is an essential part of making you think about the exhibits in a certain way. Daniel Libeskind’s angular and odd design makes the place seem sort of sparse and a little eerie at times. It’s quite a slow burning walk through Jewish history, gradually letting you think about some of the exhibits.

Of course, a significant part of this history is the Holocaust. I’ve always found the Holocaust really compelling, even as it is horrifying. When you first enter the museum, there are numerous pictures, letters, and belongings on display. By personalising victims, such as a 7 year old boy or a popular Jewish entertainer in her almost burlesque costume, the Holocaust becomes one brutal murder after another, as well as the mass event we tend to think of it as.

It’s quite disturbing. Some of the placques or pictures show happy scenes such as weddings or parties, but almost all end with “was murdered by the Nazis in 1942″.  One man has written the story of a friend (17) who was forced to hide in a brothel when his parents were captured by the Nazis. He was unable to help him find some other place to live and eventually the Pimp informed the police he was hiding a Jew. The boy jumped from a 5 story building while in Nazi custody.

You read many stories such as these, and then the grandiose design of the building provides some moments to reflect on them. There are two “voids” that comprise part of the tour. The first is a triangular darkened room with a huge high ceiling. The dimensions of the room are odd and disconcerting. It’s quite powerful to step into this strange black and off kilter silence after being forced to think about Holocaust victims by name, and look at their pictures.

The next void, a floor further up, is even more impressive. It’s an amazing work of art by Menashe Kadishman, called “Fallen Leaves”. Kadishman has laid out thousands of iron sculpted human faces that form a long path in another huge high ceilinged “void” in the building. A notice informs you that the artist has requested that visitors walk on the sculpted faces. As you do a high pitched clanging reverberates around the room.

Beyond the morbid and eerie nature of the walk, and the feeling of walking on contorted fearful human faces, it’s a stunningly intelligent work of art. It’s amazing to see an artist using space and minimalism to convey such a powerful image, and perhaps a testament to what modern artists can do if given such resources to work with. The video below gives some sense of it.

Further into the museum, the subject matter switched to Jewishness in general, and even wider ideas of prejudice. One interesting element were 3 machines that asked you one question each along the way. The first said “Do people in your circle of friends harbour prejudices against Jewish people?”. I pressed “no” and it said that 47 per cent of people answered “yes”.

At this stage I wondered if it was better for me to say “yes my friends do or at least may harbour prejudices against Jews” than to deny that they did without knowing for sure. I wasn’t sure what the point of the question was, or whether this sort of thought process was it. I mean, prejudices aren’t necessarily overt are they? I’m sure I must have some ideas about Jews or Jewishness that are inaccurate, since I have never met a Jewish person. But I am not a deliberate or hateful anti-semite.

Another question later on asked: “Do you have reservations about Turkey joining the EU?”. I said “no” but then as I thought about it I wondered about their human rights record or similar issues. Is any reservation like this a matter of prejudice? I couldn’t really be sure.

The third question was this: “Would you feel comfortable if your child married someone from another race or religion?”. I said “Yes” for this one, but I can’t say I felt as though I was being entirely honest. I had to admit I feel it might pose problems for my child’s children, or that it might make their marriage harder as different religious issues clashed. Ultimately if my child loved the person then that would be the main thing, but it was interesting having your conscience pricked.

I liked the fact that the questions were ambiguous and didn’t claim to have any right or wrong answers. If you’re in Berlin I highly recommend a trip to the museum. I’ve always found the Holocaust worth thinking about and discussing as a way of trying to understand how prejudices turn into dehumanising hatred, or mass group behaviour.

The museum humanised it a lot more than I was used to.  With so many stories and letters on display, you really became immersed in the sense of desperation as families fled Germany, and tried in vain to persuade those left behind to follow. I also found it interesting to see the word “murdered” used over and over again. If you were watching a TV documentary, I think they’d say “killed by the Nazis”, yet I suppose it was always “murder”. Perhaps the point the museum was making here is that that’s the word we should use.