Blog ingredient list

I ran this wordcloud program for the blog. Reminds me of the honest man who was advised to sue his face for libel.

The home life of the famous 2: Jennifer Lopez

"Come on, J-Lo- we'll be late for the awards ceremony!"
"Sorry, I'm just still not sure about my dress."
"What about it?"
"Well, can you tell me honestly- does my bum look big in this?"
"Yeah, I suppose it does"
"Ok then - let's go!"

More of this sort of thing in
The homelife of the famous 1.

Priorities

Gordon Brown, in his Budget speech, said that he wanted to provide financial support for the athletes who would become the champions of the 2012 London Olympics. But I think he ought to spend his money on people in the UK.

The worst crime in the world

There is something specially terrible about the deliberate destruction of books. Chesterton once said that we say that a man is acting like an animal when what we mean is that he is acting like a man: animals do what they do, whatever its effects, because they see no choice, but people do evil on purpose. I can still remember the shock I felt when I first read Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, opening with the destruction by officious customs officers of the manuscript of a novel.

One of the clearest signs of a regime that has lost its footing in reality is when it starts to think burning books is a good idea. Even the Soviet Union, which was quite capable of burning people if it thought it helpful, would only lock books up and restrict access to the trusted few (well, not only do that: they would also lock up the writers and readers too, but the books they left). In the 1930s, anyone who was in any doubt as to the reasonableness and bidability of the Nazis should have reached a conclusion as the ashes settled. It takes a special sort of culture to believe that books as physical objects have such power that they must be erased. Not so special these days, alas.

The first and greatest loss was that of the Great Library of Alexandria. I know it, and you know it, but I was surprised to find when researching my poem The last librarian that while it is generally agreed that it as burnt down and that much knowledge was lost as a result, who did it, and when, is still open to question. You could see this as a sort of paradox: after all, where would the Book that Named the Culprit have been shelved when all shelves have gone? But it appears (to be brief) that there were a series of fires, probably starting with Julius Caesar in the 40sBC, another one in 395 AD, and another in the 650s, which neatly shares the blame between Romans, Christians and Muslims (the latter two on purpose). Hypatia (who I call the Last Librarian in the poem although she wasn't in fact in charge of the library: her father was) was an astronomer and mathematician who was (so the story goes) killed a few years after the Christian torching of the library at the behest of Cyril the Patriach of Alexandria.

Penllergaer Upper Falls

A short guide to Russian literature

I've just started reading War and Peace, on the grounds that I ought to make a start if I wanted to be sure of finishing. It make not be the greatest book ever written, but it's certainly one of the longest. I said to my wife, in astonishment, that it wasn't surprising that it was so long since in the first 50 pages the only thing that had happened was that someone had been to a party. She said she'd read a Russin novel once in which absolutely nothing happened; she then corrected herself: they had gone on a carriage ride once.

Fact and fiction and the Da Vinci code

The recent Court case between Dan Brown and authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is quite funny, really. The Bloodites claim he copied their book from his book. But they seem to have forgotten something. Dan Brown's book is a novel. It's fiction. It's made up. (I agree it's a little confusing that he says at the start that it is all true: a little post-modern prank, I think). But to say that his fiction rips off their book is to admit what they would usually try desperately NOT to admit, that THEIR book is fiction, made up, a story, NOT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. Because if their work was sober fact, that inspired someone else to write a novel, they would have no case, since copyright protection excludes creative works. Unless their lawyers decide to prove that Dan Brown's work is also sober fact. Now that might be worth watching, like his book might be worth reading. Oh. No it's not.

Overheard

"Which part of 'La la la, I'm not listening!' don't you understand?"

Matters of life and death

I heard an interview with someone who'd been campaigning against the death penalty: she brought out her trump card, that a large fraction of those condemned to death are later freed on appeal. I used to follow this line too: obviously if someone's been executed it's a bit late to find out they're innocent. But I'm not sure this argument holds: for while you cannot bring someone back to life, neither can you restore the health, liberty and freedom lost to someone under a long sentence, even if they are released eventually. The case for having a judicial system that doesn't make mistakes is a strong one: the precise nature of the punishments an ineffective one misapplies is not really relevant. I know there are subsidiary arguments: that juries will be wary of finding someone guilty if they know they are sentencing them to death. But then they damn well should be - that's the whole point of 'beyond reasonable doubt'. For me, the clinching argument has to be the paradox that those who argue for the sanctity of human life (in terms of murder victims) are those who wish the state to ignore such sanctity. This reminds me of the animal rights extremist who ended up justifying terrorist attacks on animal laboratories "I must do something to stop this animal holocaust, and if some people get killed in the process, well, the end justifies the means", when of course their objection in the first place was that no end could justify the application of immoral means.

In place of a profile

My user profile is rather enigmatic, containing no useful information. This post is intended to provide readers with some background about my poetry at Complete and Utter Poetry and related topics.

Q. There's a lot of Christian imagery in your poems. Are you a Christian?

A. No, I am, like Douglas Adams, a 'radical atheist' (a term he invented to avoid the 'I'm an atheist' 'Don't you mean agnostic' 'No, I mean atheist' conversation). However, my upbringing was very Christian, and as a result, the Anglican liturgy, hymns, and the Bible form part of my language. My shift towards agnosticism and then atheism was quite quick, and can be explained by the total absence of any spiritual experience: by the application of Occam's razor, the simplest solution, No God, stands until or unless this becomes untenable. However, Christian and Biblical stories are very useful in addressing philosophical issues; in much the same way Anglo-Saxon missionaries re-branded Christ as a hero-warrior, he can be re-packaged in several ways.

I have no interest in 'proving' that the Bible is wrong or inconsistent, although I do get a bit exasperated by fundamentalist arguments that it is all true and all correct and not at all inconsistent or open to interpretation. Thus when I looked at Genesis http://http://locock.blogspot.com/2005/10/theology-101.html and noted that God appeared to mislead Adam by saying that eating the Fruit would make him die, and it didn't, I later came across an explanation that when God said this he meant that Adam would start to die after eating it, not die on the spot. To which you might reasonably respond that God might have been a bit clearer on this fairly important issue.

I have no time for the woolly vague sort of Christian who believes that the world is a nice place in which nice things happen thanks to God; I do have some respect for the more thoughtful sort who acknowledge that much that happens is bad and that God is in no position to prevent it.


Q. Where do you think poems come from?

A. Mine emerge slowly from the subconcious. I will often feel an idea at the edge of my mind, and wait for it to emerge. It's usually a scenario or mood rather than a phrase. But as I say in my poem Ars poetica, that is really only the start of the work. I try to write down a narrative, not caring too much about the sound or form, and then rigorously edit it down so that it says only what needs to be said.

It is probably something to do with how Creative Writing is taught that so many people seem to think that having the inspiration is all that is needed.


Q. You use a range of poetic forms: how do you choose them?

A. In general, I will use a form if I can fit the thought to it. Ideally, a poem should effortlessly sit in its structure as if that is how it would have been written anyway. The great advantage of forms like the haiku / senryu is that they provide an organising principle without constraining the content. It is a commonplace to say that free verse is usually terrible; I would add that so is most rhyme, because the most worthless poem might be held to have some merit if it rhymed. No. My advice to aspiring poets is to forget rhyme, and concentrate instead on economy of expression and clarity of thought. The other main form I use is the villanelle, which allows a refrain structure without imposing an unnatural word order or stress.

Q. How would you define poetry?

A. There's a lot to be said for Auden's definiton as 'memorable speech'. That leaves it quite open, while reflecting the basic principle that it is a medium in which the words matter. In fact my definition would be 'carefully chosen words'.

Q. Which contemporary poets do you admire?

A. I don't read much poetry, I must say. This is partly because I don't have much time for reading at all, but in any case I find that reading modern poetry is hard work. Published, literary, poetry, seems too smug and complicated; internet poetry too simple and banal. Ideally, I'd like to read short, snappy, witty, clever, poems, conscious of literary forms, and not mentioning rainbows, cats or gardens. Wendy Cope's good. Of earlier poets, I like Larkin and Amis, Eliot and Auden.

Q. You often include quotations as part of the titles of your poems. Why?

A. The inclusion of epigraphs wasn't something I had thought about: it seemed natural at first, since all of those I mentioned do it quite a lot. It's not intended to show off: I try to find quotations which bear on the subject of the poem, hinting at its approach. For example, the long poem Seven Cities starts with a quote from the book of Jonah and another from Eliot so that before starting the poem proper, the reader is already being led to expect an allegory about destruction, cities, and salvation. It's only recently that I realised how old-fashioned the inclusion of epigraphs looks, not that that will stop me.

Armed and dangerous

I was reading someone complaining about a proposed law on gun ownership in California; he said he had this nightmare vision of a future in which only the police and the criminals had guns. Strangely enough, my nightmare vision would be the exact opposite. Quite apart from the practical dangers associated with having guns in the house- accidents and domestic disputes; there's also the question of suicide. One of the surprising but consistent findings of research into suicide attempts is that, rather than having made a firm decision to die the suicidee chooses a method and carries it out, they are rather in a state of not minding either way. This leaves libertarians like me in a dilemma, since we would endorse the right of those who wished to kill themselves to do so, but would nevertheless be obliged to try to prevent them in case they hadn't quite made their mind up. [Attempting suicide is still treated by many countries as a crime (because you are robbing the state of your contribution to it); according to my son, they take a very dim view of it, and they sentence repeat offenders to death]

But crime is where it matters most. Guns change things. Almost all interactions with others are bound by social norms as much as anything. This is why a small old woman can scare away a crowd of teenage yobs: although they could easily physically overpower her, their brains respond with instinctive respect for an older person who is in the right. A weaker version of the same moral force allows teachers to subdue unruly classes. It is this moral force which keeps the law. That's why riots are followed by copycat disturbances: people suddenly relaise that there is very little that the few police can do to enforce the law. Chesterton says somewhere that the countryside is full of sin, because of the absence of others to observe. But put a gun in the equation and social factors are set aside.

Everybody loathes Elton

Ben Elton is often mentioned by British comedians as the most-hated man in the business. It's a bit hard to see why, exactly, it's just that he is rich, successful and mainstream, and makes musicals with Andrew Lloyd Webber (which is at least three strikes in most people's eyes, I suppose). His career has been odd, though: starting as a political firebrand and anarchist Young Ones writer, then moving to the high wit of Blackadder, before blanding out in his Man for Auntie sketch show and The Thin Blue Line anaemic police comedy, underusing Rowan Atkinson as almost a straight-main. From here it's easy to see his early radical days as a careerist stunt: that was where the buzz was at the time. I'm not sure that's right, though- his novels continue to reflect his passionate intensity, and even the Thin Blue Line was quite advanced in its philosophy considering its positioning: there were a lot of jokes about sex (that's not quite true: of the jokes there were, a lot were about sex), but the characters' sexual orientation and colour was never exploited, as it would have been in most comparable sitcoms. Given the widespread wish for Elton to fail, it's surprising how little anyone has had to say about his latest masterpiece, the couple-with-young children sitcom Blessed. Now, this may come as a revelation, but young children cry, and need feeding, and make a mess. Sometimes the parents get tetchy as a result. With hilarious consequences. Or not. Actually it's not entirely laugh-free. But what amuses is the plotting and the frustrated rants of the lead character, rather than verbal agility. One problem is the inaccuracy of the cultural references. The record producer hero has to deal with a manufactured Spice Girls grrl group, with the moral issues that raises about whether he should insist on his rights to his creative work or let them steal it in return for lots of money. The trouble with this is that he is starting from the view that groups should be talented and creative, not manufactured. It's hard to believe this when for a start, he works as a jobbing music producer churning out advertising jingles and backing tracks, and is hardly therefore at the 'art for art's sake' end of the business, but more importantly, his views are anachronistic: after all the Idols and X Factors, nobody seems to mind that stars and groups are designed by marketing consultants, publicised by publicists, and sold to the media in bite-size chunks from 'wow I won' to 'ex-singer in drug shame' to 'who?'. After Darius lost out to much laughter in the first Pop Idol, or whatever, and dismissed as a talentless poser, I thought I'd heard the last of him; I hardly expected him to crop up in 2005 as a credible and successful artist with fans and No. 1s and everything. So Elton here is being misled by what he thinks and feels, which is not believable as what his character thinks. The characterisation has another major flaw: the ageing rocker guitarist. With his wrinkled, twitching face and leathers, he models himself on Keith Richard. But Elton tries to have it both ways: sometimes, he is clearly a delusional loser whose pose is just that, masking an empty and tragically wasted life; but sometimes he really is a star, able to charm groupies and acquaintances. In general, I would think that the series owes its origins to Elton's life experiences, and would have been better if it had accepted the fact rather than mask it by, say, changing the father's job from comedian novelist living in London with his young family, to something totally different, like, record producer living...

What I don't understand, after all this, is the eerie silence. Shouldn't the airwaves be jammed with pundits queueing up to say it's terrible and Elton is finished? I can only suppose they have realised it's more cutting, in the long run, tosay nothing, just walk away.

Pranks and japes

The latest reality TV series, Space Cadets, has exposed what has lain mainly hidden in its predecessors like Game for a Laugh, Beadle's About, and Candid Camera: that its humour is derived from cruelty, or at the very least from exploitation of dramatic irony (the audience knowing something the protagonist does not). Hence it is an act of collusion by the viewers at the expense of the participants.

This is a strong but largely unexamined part of traditional humour. The attraction of the 'surprise party' is surely for the other attendees, who can smirk to themselves as they lead the dupe to believe that everyone has forgotten. And a similar pattern can be seen in the initiation of apprentices, who were sent off in search of tartan paint or for a long weight (wait): a rite of passage intended to remind the new workers that, however cocky they may be, in the workplace they are at the mercy of their bosses and colleagues. The humour is anaemic verging on albinoism: but humour is not the point.

TV programmers may not realise the danger they face. Newspapers these days very rarely present April Fool's stories; I think this is because they have realised that they rely on their readers gullibility, which offends them, or undermines the paper's credibility. If your newspaper tells you that Elvis is alive and well and living on the moon in a WW2 bomber, you are hardly likely to pay much attention when they tell you which political party to support. We do not expect, when being bombarded with information, to have to distinguish not just between hard fact and soft fact and opinion, but between fiction masquerading as fact and simple fact.

The irony is that the hapless and charmless space cadets, whose desire to be famous exceeds any talent that might justify such a desire, have proved to have some strength of character. Everyone else is smirking, but they have trusted in the
reliability and safety of Russian aeronautics, and have demonstrated that the Right Stuff can be found in all sorts of containers.

Winds of change

So Tony Blair's solution to future energy needs is the safest, cheapest and most efficient method, (nuclear energy, if you hadn't guessed). Not sure whether he's going to deal with the £4.5 billion decommissioning costs and storage of the nuclear waste from the last generation of cheap, clean energy first.

Credit where credit's due, though, he's right to take hard decisions to fulfil his Kyoto commitment to reduce CO2 emissions (and not just the hard decision of how to get out of it without anyone noticing). The tireless opposers of windfarm developments who have contributed so maturely to the energy debate over the last decade can take some comfort in their victory: for surely it is the recognition that any substantial increase in renewable exploitation would inspire protests that would make the pro-hunting lobby look like blood-stained sadists pussycats that lies behind this courageous step.

Of course, it leaves the problem of where to put the new nuclear stations- there's going to be a lot. Luckily, they don't spoil views for miles by intruding on the skyline, so presumably right next door to the NIMBYs would suit them fine. Or are they going to start whingeing about that too? Surely not!

Weasel words

The Vocabulary Reclamation Project has raised the interesting question of Word Tanking, meaning the avoidance of using thenatural or correct term because it has acquired unwanted baggage. He says:

I tend to de-emphasize the word "Christianity." Instead, I employ phrases like "following Christ" and (rather obviously) "spiritual journey." It's often awkward to speak this way, but I find myself doing it—using ambiguous terms like "friend" and "follower" and "disciple" and "journey," and then qualifying them with the word "Jesus" or "Christ." In a very real sense, "Christianity" carries with it a host of connotations that I'd just as soon not deal with. I want people to think about what I'm saying, rather than be side-tracked by negative (and unrelated) associations.

There is always a tension between pedantically insisting on the 'correct' word and being understood. Sometimes this is cultural: there is the story of the American and British students who had gone see their lecturer, and upon being told by her secretary that she would be 'with them presently', the British student went back to the library and the American waited at the office. Or as my webstats page now says "the data will be displayed momentarily", probably meaning "in a moment" rather than "for a moment" (although with BlogPatrol's reliablity you cannot be sure).

I read a comment on the news coverage of Katrina that one startling change was that people were using the word 'poor' rather than 'disadvantaged' or 'economically deprived' or whatever. And on the whole it seems a more honest word, unless (as may be the case), the rich feel that it carries with it the implication that the poor will be always with us (and so nothing need be done about them) or that they are poor because they are made that way ditto).

Other words have dropped out entire. I was shocked to hear on 'Will and Grace' someone say "So that's Dr Motley- I imagined he was an old Jew saying 'You call this dinner?'". Not because it is intrinsically shocking (the speaking character was Jewish, by the way), but because I have grown completely unaccustomed to the use of the word 'Jew' in any sort of comic sense. What is still a bit troubling is that the joke was clearly using the word to imply a stereotype. Children's joke books have problems these days- the great stock-in-trade of Irish (Polish, etc.) jokes reliant on their butts' stupidity has become almost unusable that that they have to be re-cast as "did you hear about the stupid person who did something stupid?". Small loss, perhaps. It is notable that the 19th century Punch cartoons that kicked off the Irish joke tradition was less coarse than is often said. When the Irish peasant tells the lost motorist who asks for directions "I wouldn't start from here", the joke is on the motorist. Much more objectionable are the Punch cartoons whose humour relies on the stupidity of servants in interpreting the words of their wiser, richer, lazier, and better-educated masters. Ha bloody ha.

Word fashions come and go. To UK ears, the American 'person of color' hardly seemed an improvement on Negro, although that may not have been the word it was replacing. I think it will be something of a Red Letter day, though, on the first time I actually call someone a nigger on the grounds that they would want me to.

Sometimes people resist word tanking: Bob Dylan, on 'Time out of mind' goes out of his way to use the word 'gay' in its older, non-sexual, sense: "strumming a gay guitar", "I've been to London and I've been to gay Par-ee". In general, though, we have to face the fact that communication is communication, and it is our readers' verbal associations we must consider, not our own. This is the reason I would never say "I am a poet"; "I write poetry" is not just less of an extravagant claim, it also attempts to sidestep the opinion held by many that anyone making such a statement is bound to be sentimental, alcoholic, dying, or impractical.