New acquisitions. 
Seven books: The Republic and the Laws by Cicero, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Selected Philosophical Writings by Thomas Aquinas, Medieval Europe by Chris Wickham, Pericles: A Biography in Context, How to be a Conservative by Roger Scruton and Edward Heath: A Biography by John Campbell.
I want to write an essay about 'nascent liberalism in ancient antiquity and the medieval ages.' Liberalism is associated with the start of the enlightenment, and earlier societies placed a lot more emphasis on the community than the individual, but I wanted to find examples of liberalism in these times. I bought books by Cicero, Marcus Aurelius and Thomas Aquinas so as to detect traces of 'nascent liberalism.' I also bought a book about Pericles, an early democrat. I also bought a book about medieval Europe so to include a bit an essay about Medieval culture/society.
I bought this intriguing book by Roger Scruton. Scruton examines liberalism, socialism, conservatism, capitalism, environmentalism and internationalism. This book looks interesting because it seems to unbiased and even-handed, as it examines the strengths and weaknesses of each ideology.
I bought this biography about Edward Heath. I find him interesting as a person, as he was a very shy and awkward man, but he became prime minister. He was also the first prime minister to probably be a virgin, although this was after the start of the age of permissiveness. I also find his period as prime minister very interesting, as he took the UK into Europe and he struggled with industrial unrest, rising unemployment and the end of consensus.
New acquisitions.
Eleven CDs: Third by Soft Machine, Soundtrack of Le Mepris by George Delerue, The Essence of Woody Herman by Woody Herman, The Complete Early Recordings of Skip James by Skip James, Greatest Hits by Abba, An Elpee and two Epees by Ivor Cutler, Jazz in a Silhouette by Sun Ra, The Magic City by Sun Ra, My Favourite Things by John Coltrane, Les Espaces Acoustiques by Gerard Grisey and The Inner Mounting Flame by The Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Jazz fusion, film soundtracks, swing, blues, pop, novelty music, modern jazz, modern classical music.... I like having an eclectic musical taste.
I'm moving into my own - rented - apartment soon.
New acquisitions.
Ten DVDs: The Wild Bunch by Sam Peckinpah, Cross of Iron by Sam Peckinpah, Straw Dogs by Sam Peckinpah, Pat Garett and Billy the Kid by Sam Peckinpah, Blind Chance by Krzysztof Kieslowski, The Bridge on the River Kwai by David Lean, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp/A Matter of Life and Death by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, The Devils by Ken Russell, The Third Man by Carol Reed and The Silence of the Sea by Jean-Pierre Melville.
Sam Peckinpah is an astonishing filmmaker and the images in his films linger in my mind. His films are about violence, honour and revenge. These are four of his films.
This film by Kieslowski was made in communist Poland. It imagines three different scenarios each time the protagonist either misses or catches a train. In one scenario, he becomes a communist activist, in another one he is an anti-communist activist and in another one he is not involved in politics. Kieslowski is one of my favourite filmmakers.
This film by David Lean is an epic about British held soldiers held captive as prisoners of war by the Japanese during WWII. They are subjected to gruelling labour and forced to build a bridge. For my money, it has one of the best endings in the history of cinema.
I bought this classic film by Powell/Pressburger, which offended Churchill so much that he tried to have it banned. It also comes with A Matter of Life and Death and I already own another copy of that.
This film by Ken Russell is surrealistic and has some awesome images. It is about some nuns who claimed to have been possessed by the devil.
This film by Carol Reed is set in Austria after WWII and it has a memorable cameo appearance from Orson Welles.
This film, 'The Silence of the Sea,' is about a Nazi officer who tries to convince this French couple that Germans are good people and that Germany is a good culture. It has a surrealist slant to it.
New acquisition.
A punching bag.
I've been struggling with anger/negative thoughts the past few years. I can start shouting and I can get quite nasty. This isn't who I am, however, as I am sure that I am a decent/nice person. Someone at work suggested that I buy a punching bag, which seemed like a good idea. So, the next time I get irrational/angry thoughts for some unfathomable reason, I'm going to punch the living shit out of this punching bag.
New acquisitions.
Three CDs: Stoner Witch by Melvins, Houdini by Melvins and The Bootlicker by Melvins.
One book: Ritual in the Dark by Colin Wilson.
Melvins are a group that I've enjoyed for a while. They're kind of grungey but quirkier. They were a big influence on Nirvana.
Colin Wilson wrote this novel alongside his non-fiction book The Outsider, which catapulted him to fame age twenty-four. It is a crime thriller about a serial killer.
Meandering Pontification 1/2 *
I am interested in a lot of things… Literature, music, film, philosophy, history, politics… And I’m starting to get interested in science, too. The thing is, though, is that I am not an expert in anything… I admire people who can focus and hyper-specialise… I can’t do that.
I find philosophy very interesting. My interest in it is completely amateurish, though. As I said earlier, I am not an expert in anything – I am an amateurish dilettante.
However, I find a lot of philosophy very infuriating. The philosophers that I find most interesting at the moment are John Rawls, Martha Nussbaum and Karl Popper. They write in crystal clear English/German (they don’t use wanky phrases like ‘the negation of the negation’) and I can comprehend what they are going on about. I find a lot of what Kant and Hegel said very interesting, but the primary texts are a fucking nightmare to read. I’d probably have to wade through dozens of secondary sources before they start to make sense. When I read primary sources, I don’t digest all of it, which probably goes to show what an amateur I am.
I get that there is a need for precision in all this and that you need to use terms, but a lot of the ‘continental’ stuff seems to be deliberately obscured. (I can be extremely imprecise, obscure and vague myself, which is something that I need to work and improve on.) All of the ‘postmodernist’ stuff seems to be a like a waste of time for me. I lost motivation with my MA… I did a module in Comparative Literature and I had to do a presentation on Roland Barthes. I could not find the primary source in the library – all the books had been taken. I cobbled together a presentation from secondary sources that I found in the library… The lecturer said that it was great (or maybe she said that it was shite, she spoke really obscurely) … When it came to writing the 5,000 word essay for that module, I started it three days before it was due and received 58% for it… (Something similar happened with my MA dissertation.) There might be a lot of substance behind all the obscurity, but all the postmodernist philosophy seems to be a whole load of pseudery to me… This might not be true, but I’m glad that I don’t have to deal with it anymore.
Maybe I should have done a degree in philosophy, history, politics or maybe even economics. My BA was really soft… I was reading through one of my essays that received 85% and it made me wonder how such a fluffy little essay could receive such a high mark… (I also threw in loads of Foucault/Deleuze into my undergrad dissertation without really understanding it and received 75% for it… I’d never use that stuff in one of my essays now!!!) It seemed to confirm that grade inflation IS a thing and that my degree was really soft.
* I try to avoid writing about this kind of thing on Facebook because these topics are divisive by their very nature and will piss off a large section of your friends… This is the kind of thing that will make people delete you, but… fuck it.
Meandering Pontification 2/2 *
The world is not fair and just (and it never will be)… so there is every good reason to make it more fair and just. There are good reasons for being a leftist – to make the world a fairer, more just, equal etc. place.
However, I would not want to get involved in left-wing politics… Every time I’d express an original thought that deviates from the party line or ideological orthodoxy, people would shout at me for being a ‘bourgeois individualist.’ I joined the Labour Party, but I let my membership expire for precisely this reason. Anyway, I would not want to spend my free time attending political meetings… I’d rather spend my free time reading books, writing books, watching films and listening to music instead. (Each to their own, though…) Denis Healey said that the Labour Party membership are not representative of Labour Party voters… Labour Party members are more ideological, more left-wing and more inclined to spend their free time attending political meetings. Labour Party voters are less ideological and more moderate, but they are less inclined to spend their free time attending political meetings. Denis Healey was correct.
The more extreme currents of leftist thought are just palpably silly – people like Paul Mason, Aaron Bastani, Grace Blakeley and Ash Sarkar… I can get why you might be an anti-capitalist or some sort of utopian anarchist in your early 20s, but I don’t understand how you can keep adhering to that stuff in your late 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s etc. (Again, each to their own!) I used to find that stuff appealing in my early 20s, but I grew out of it. Bastani’s idea of ‘fully automated luxury communism’ sounds like some sort of Monty Python sketch. Paul Mason goes on about ‘globalised neo-liberalism’ as if we should know what that means. This is his definition of neo-liberalism: ‘By neoliberalism I mean the global capitalist system shaped by a core of neoliberal practices and institutions, themselves guided by a widespread and spontaneously reproduced ideology, and ruled by an elite which acts in a neoliberal way, whatever conflicting and moderating ideas it holds in its head.’ Ok then!
Anyway, there is a good case for social justice, but never when it crushes individual freedom. (People can get a bit silly with social justice and go over the top with it – all those ‘Social Justice Warriors’ etc., but there’s always a good case for it.) It reminds me of the film ‘Dr. Zhivago’ by David Lean… A Russian poet is involved in the Russian revolution because he wants to do something about the injustices in Tsarist Russia… Come the revolution, one of the Soviet commissars addresses him… He says that he admired his poetry very much, but that in the new communist society there is no need for that ‘bourgeois’ nonsense. That’s the problem with leftist politics at its worst – its authoritarianism, its dogmatism and its contempt towards individualism, pluralism, tolerance, diversity, autonomy and personal goals. (In other words, leftist politics is bad when it is illiberal… And a lot of leftists are actively hostile to liberal values…)
As I said earlier, there are good reasons for making the world a fairer and more just place and there are good reasons for being a leftist, but so much of left-wing politics is such a load of crap.
* I try to avoid writing about this kind of thing on Facebook because these topics are divisive by their very nature and will piss off a large section of your friends… This is the kind of thing that will make people delete you, but… fuck it.
Meandering Pontification 3
In literature, music and film I tend to like stuff that is more ‘out there’ and experimental. I do like things that everyone else knows about… I do like Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare, I do like groups like Abba, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, I do like composers like Bach and Beethoven and I do like films like The Godfather and series like Breaking Bad… But there’s something about the stuff that is experimental, pushes boundaries etc. etc. (insert endless cliches here) that appeals to me… It’s hard to explain, as taste is often so emotional and arbitrary.
A composer like Harry Partch certainly belongs to the latter category. An archetypal outsider, he did everything on his own terms. He actively enjoyed being a hobo, he railed against European modes of tuning, he incorporated music from Antiquity and the orient into his music and since he could not have his ‘microtonal’ music performed on conventional instruments, he built his own.
Anyway, I’m trying to buy stuff that I really like on CD/record and to stop streaming stuff. I bought Partch’s ‘Delusion of the Fury’ on vinyl and I tried buying his album ‘Eleven Intrusions’ on CD… It’s been out of print for years, so I ordered a second-hand copy several months ago… And they never delivered it.
So, last night I dreamed that I was at this book/record shop… And I dreamed that I found new editions of Delusion of the Fury (well, I already have that), Eleven Intrusions and The Bewitched on vinyl… And I was overjoyed… And the people who worked there had no idea who Harry Partch was… So, very few people in the world dream about finding new editions of Harry Partch, but… who knows, there might be?
New acquisitions
Two records: Raw Delta Blues by Son House and Easy Rider by Leadbelly
One DVD: Ghost World by Terry Zwigoff.
I really like delta blues from the 1920s... This is also the decade in which jazz first emerged. These musicians really had it rough... Economic hardship, racial injustice... And they made great music out of it.
I really like this film by Terry Zwigoff, mainly because I relate to the character played by Steve Buscemi... Ultimately, a lot of novels/films are about human relationships, not the organisation of society/the nature of reality etc. etc.
New acquisitions.
Four CDs: The Artistry of Christopher Parkening by Christopher Parkening, A Bach Celebration by Christopher Parkening, Strathclyde Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 by Peter Maxwell Davies/Scottish Chamber Orchestra and String Quartets 6 and 15 by Franz Schubert/Kodaly Quartet.
Two books: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and An Introduction to Medieval Europe: 500-1500 by James Westfall Thompson and Edgar Nathaniel Johnson.
I really like the sound of classical guitar and I really like Bach. Christopher Parkening was one of the most accomplished classical guitarists of all time and he played a lot of Bach, so I bought two discs by him.
I've bought a lot of records by Schubert at charity shops. My second favourite piece by him (after his 'death and the maiden' quartet) is String Quartet No. 15. I thought that I owned a vinyl copy of it, but I don't, so I purchased a copy of it online.
I've always known of the name 'Peter Maxwell Davies' and I always knew that he was the most famous British composer of modern classical music. However, I don't think I'd heard a piece by him before, which is why I bought this disc by him (and I'm hearing it right now).
I wrote a philosophical science fiction novel which was heavily influenced by Tarkovsky's film 'Solaris.' That film was based on a novel, which I've bought so that I can finally read it.
I'm about to start an essay which uses source on medieval history. I saw this at a charity shop and I thought that another book on the topic would be helpful. This is a 1.000 page book and I might read it from cover to cover one day, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment