Ahoy Facebook #10

This article brilliantly debunks some of the horrible thinkers that some lecturers foist on you at university.

https://areomagazine.com/…/how-french-intellectuals-ruined…/

Load' was my first ever album - I received it for my 10th birthday. It has been derided as Metallica's sell-out album, when they abandoned any semblance of their trash metal roots.

I hadn't listened to Metallica for years, as I had found better music which appeared to render it pointless. However, I have revisited their early albums and found that it actually is rather good after all. So, I decided to revisit their sell-out album, which does happen to have a lot of sentimental value to me.

Most of it is not very good, however it has two very good songs on it, namely 'Bleeding Me' and 'Outlaw Torn.' The latter track is made up of simple and slightly bluesy riffs, but they develop and build up, like their earlier music does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoQHRyh03_8

I was thinking recently about what modules I would like to take if I were to return to university. Hence, I have designed an imaginary ‘Simon King Studies’ course, which is wildly interdisciplinary. ALL post-WWII French intellectuals are proscribed from this course, however.

YEAR 1

FIRST TERM

Jazz and Democracy: Comparing the Form of Jazz with Democratic Principles (15 Credits)
Nascent Liberalism: Tracing Nascent Liberalism and Individualism in Ancient Antiquity and the Medieval Ages (15 Credits)
The Sublime in Cinema: Comparing Romantic Paintings with the Cinema of Herzog, Tarkovsky, Kubrick and Malick (15 Credits)
German Idealism: Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer (15 Credits)

SECOND TERM

Politics and 20th Century Classical Music: Comparing 20th Century Political History and Ideologies with 20th Century Classical Music (15 Credits)
Industrial Relations in Post-War Britain: A Comparison Between Trade Union and Financial Monopolies (15 Credits)
Croslandite Social Democracy: Its Successes and its Failures (15 Credits)
Social Contract Theory: Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau (15 Credits)

YEAR 2

FIRST TERM

The End of History: Did Francis Fukuyama Get it Wrong? (15 Credits)
Transgression in Contemporary Literature: J. G. Ballard, Georges Bataille and Bret Easton Ellis (15 Credits)
Paganism and Catholicism: A Linear Progression (15 Credits)
Southern Gothic: Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy (15 Credits)

SECOND TERM

Economic Decline and Cinema: A Comparison Between the End of Keynesianism and the Cinema of the 1970s (15 Credits)
Pre-Socratic Philosophy (15 Credits)
Post-War Paranoia in American Fiction: DeLillo, Pynchon and Joseph Heller (15 Credits)
Dream Interpretation: A Comparison Between Ancient Antiquity and the 20th Century (15 Credits)

THIRD YEAR

FIRST TERM

Unreality and Politics: A Comparison Between Magic Realism/Surrealism and Political History in 20th Century Latin American Fiction (15 Credits)
Nominalism vs. Realism: Plato vs. Aristotle (15 Credits)
Individuals who Change History: A Comparison Between Oliver Cromwell, Luther, Hitler and Lenin (15 Credits)
The Intersection Between British Socialism and British Liberalism (15 Credits)

SECOND TERM

Musical Cranks: Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra, Frank Zappa and Mark E. Smith (15 Credits)
Robotic Consciousness: 2001, A Space Odyssey and Robocop (15 Credits)
Post-War British Satire (15 Credits)
The Limits of Philosophy and the Limits of Science (15 Credits)

I had an interesting thought about a week ago. Basically, all life on this planet originates from water and can only survive with it. Indeed, it is assumed that life originated here around 3.5 billion years ago when water vapour liquefied.

Interestingly, all human knowledge starts with water, too. Western philosophy starts with Thales and the 'Milesian School.' Thales, the first philosopher/proto-scientist, claimed that all life originates from water and that all matter is comprised of water. So, yes, everything seems to start with water, even philosophy and knowledge.

I have chosen Carlo Gesualdo de Venosa this week. His music alone would have guaranteed posterity, but then he also has one of the most fascinating - and bizarre - biographies.

Gesualdo was prince of Venosa. He found out that he was wife was having an affair, so he murdered his wife and her lover. He looked at his child's eyes and thought that it was an illegitimate offspring, so he strangled it. He mutilated the corpses, as he wasn't sure if they were dead. He swapped the couple's clothes and dragged them out to the front of his house for the entire town to see. Italian Renaissance times had a peculiar law whereby the Italian nobility were barred from prosecution.

He fled to Ferrara and wrote his most innovative music during this period. In his later years, he isolated himself from society completely and he was wracked by guilt. He was a sadomasochist and he had a whole team of people who would torture him.

Gesualdo wrote as an amateur, not as a professional composer. As such, he had the freedom to write as he wished. (He didn't have to write to please a king etc.) His music, written during the Renaissance, even sounds modern today. He wrote madrigals, which were secular pieces written for voices and two instruments (usually a lute and a harp). He wrote chromatically, meaning that he would write musical voices which would use notes that did not belong to the diatonic scale that the rest of passage was written in. He would superimpose non-chromatic voices on top of these. His music is quite volatile and has abrupt changes in tempo. This music was written in the late 16th century and wouldn't reappear until the late romanticism of the 19th century or even the modernism of the early 20th century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZAs9LjJAHU

I love jazz and John Coltrane, for me, is the cream of jazz. I especially like the period between 1960-64, with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. They were all astonishing musicians and they clicked incredibly well. Coltrane practised insanely hard - he would practise until his gums would start bleeding (hence, perhaps, The Simpsons character 'Bleeding Gums Murphy). He had an incredible tone on the sax and his solos were insanely creative, beautiful and would go on for ages (hence perhaps why he never had any other wind/brass players in his band). His solos were very 'free,' but they were imbued with so much skill.

He also wrote some incredible tunes - and this one, Naima, is my favourite one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTMqes6HDqU

Fucking hell, Argentina, that was embarrassing! Awful, piss poor football!!!

A guy called Prof. Colin Talbot said the following on Twitter. It's both amusing and true: 'As I have pointed out before, if support for expanding markets signifies being a neoliberal, then Lenin and Trotsky were neoliberals when they introduced the New Economic Policy.'

Seeing this performed live in Sheffield was one of my greatest musical experiences ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTm_KdxqPPk

Spain, even at their peak, have always played such monotonous, lethargic, sideways-passing crap. Mother Russia deserved to go through.

It always does my head in when intellectuals complain about consumerism. They seem to ignore these five basic points: 1) They are also part of consumer culture, 2) They wouldn't sell as many of their books and lead a comfortable life it weren't for consumer culture, 3) consumerism has created all the wealth in their society, which means that they can enjoy a comfortable life, 4) If everyone consumes more, everyone pays more VAT, which means that governments have more revenue for schools, hospitals, roads, fire stations, councils, etc. Their ilk often lashes out against spending cuts, 'neo-liberalism' and similar nonsense. 5) It's smug and pompous to think that people are defined by the products that they buy.

Belgium vs. France should be the final. : (

Early jazz sounds so joyous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwkIZ_xGsiI

A few years ago I had a dream involving British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton. I was completing my last year at university and my motivation/work rate had dwindled.

In this dream, Scruton was working at the School of Arts at the University of Kent. He came out of his office and went to his car to collect an essay of mine that he had marked, which had a score of 38%. When I asked him why that essay received such a low mark, he said 'Not enough of an original argument.' Following this, he returned to his office. (And indeed, my marks were free falling, but nowhere near as low as that particular score.)

Oddly enough, two nights ago Roger Scruton appeared in another dream of mine. I was at his house, he was very nice to me, he opened his fridge and he gave me some food. (That all I remember.) So maybe my mind is telling me that I should be a conservative, I dunno.

I've always thought that Jim Callaghan and Gordon Brown were very good prime ministers, given the circumstances.

https://amp.ft.com/content/759afbb8-8b4d-11e8-affd-da9960227309?__twitter_impression=true

This piece, for me, embodies what's exciting about so much modern classical music. It's fascinating to hear how these seperate lines drift off into separate directions and occasionally interlock. Carter wanted to capture the modernity of cities - and how they harbour so much activity. He cited Edgard Varese as a big influence (he saw a performance of one of his pieces in the 1920s) and, although they are quite different, both composers were interested in exploring aspects of rhythm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTR1vnBeXzA&app=desktop

I bought these three items with a cheque that my grandmother sent to me for my birthday. :)

Ancient Greece in cinema

Ancient Greece in Cinema

There are not many cinematic recreations of Greek antiquity. Hollywood has more of a penchant for Ancient Rome – Ben Hur and Spartacus come to mind – because it is more associated with action whilst Greece is more associated with thought. Another reason why Hollywood might have shied away from Ancient Greece is its fetishisation of young men, which might potentially prove to be sensitive. Socrates was, after all, suspected of ‘corrupting the youth of Athens.’ One of the few exception is 500, however it is a war film that is far more action-oriented.

But why hasn’t arthouse cinema tackled the topic more often? . Arthouse cinema has tackled morally taboo subjects, so it would not shy away from depicting paedophilic courtship. Greece’s main arthouse export, Angelous Thelopolous, mainly focused on modern Greek history.

All this is very surprising Ancient Greece does lend itself to cinematic adaptations. They had Dionysian rituals, which were devoted to the God of wine. Such rituals involved sacrifice and drunken debauchery, which would lead to rich carnivalesque imagery. A film about a Pythagorean cult would be sinister and creepy. It would follow them praying to mathematical symbols, avoiding beans and Pythagoras murdering anyone who questioned the accuracy of his mathematical equations.

Additionally, several Greek philosophers led very interesting and unusual lives. This would not simply involve dry intellectualising, it would lead to exciting drama. It is very surprising that there is no major film about the trial of Socrates. It would be a film about a martyr sacrificing himself in the name of his beliefs and his virtue. There are many films about other inspiring martyrs such as Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ, but there is no major film about the trial of Socrates. It was chronicled in the writings of Plato and Anaxamides, so a screenplay writer would have a solid foundation.

Alternatively, turning a Socratic dialogue like Meno into a film would be an interesting experiment. An accomplished director would simply use Plato’s text as his script and select the most appropriate camera angles to make it uniquely cinematic and bring the dialogue to life. Close ups are said to reveal the underlying personality of a person, so it would be fascinating to reveal underlying psychology of Socrates as he grapples with the definition of ‘virtue.’

Other eccentric philosophers who led ‘interesting and unusual lives’ include Empedocles, Diogenes and Heraclitus. A film about Empedocles jumping into a volcano would be cathartic whilst a film about Diogenes would be oddball and fun. It would follow him surrounded by dogs, carrying a lantern in broad daylight, calling for an honest man, sleeping in a barrel and telling Alexander the Great to move away from the sun. A film about Heraclitus would be artful and contemplative; it would be comprised of long artful shots of him stepping into rivers.

There is a wealth of cinematic potential here, as there are plenty of arresting and symbolic imagery in Greek cults and movements. Like all other societies, there is power politics. However, Greece is the foundation for all of our knowledge whilst cinema is the archetypal modern medium, as it always exploits the latest technological advancements. It would be interesting for this modern medium to grapple with the knowledge that shaped who we are.