Modern Life Is (Still) Rubbish

And, dear Reader, let's face it, if Blur thought this was the case back in 1993, when they released their Modern Life is Rubbish album, it's difficult to argue that things have improved. We've got greater wealth inequality since then, our public services have been all but decimated by a seemingly never ending austerity, we've had a global pandemic which claimed the lives of millions of people, social media has exploded into our lives, dividing people more than ever, and we are on the brink of a global depression because of the war in the Middle East, and, like a sparkling icing on the top, we face the ever closer threat of ecological disaster due to climate change.

Ace. Just bloody ace.

 

I very recently discovered the work of the artist Rebecca Lightbody, and I responded to her work in a very positive way, as she seems to sum up so much that is fiercely irritating about our culture, but with a dark sense of humour at the same time:

There is something about this particular image that really amused me. Designed in the style of the hundreds of business cards that used to be found in telephone boxes in London, by ladies (and gents) of the night in the 1980s and 90s (and perhaps still do, who knows), but with a fabulous twist: "Call For Pain - I'll send you straight to voicemail." I don't exactly know why but I actually laughed out loud when I read that. For me, it just seemed to sum up so much about our current society. It used to be so very easy, if you wanted something from officialdom, or had a query about a venue or an electronic device you were interested in buying, or wanted to make a doctor's appointment, to just pick up the phone and call somebody. But now, it is practically impossible to do this. You either press the numbers requested when the phone answers, only to reach the end of the options with the instruction to email your question. Or you will be put on interminable hold, with Vivaldi blasting your eardrums, which is then periodically interrupted by a voice saying that the company are experiencing an unprecedented high number of calls, and advising that there will be a long delay. Thirty minutes later you are still waiting and have to hang up as you have other calls to make as well. I don't know about you, dear reader, but I despise this part of our society. And it doesn't have to be like this! It's a choice by the collective people who run the show.

This T-shirt design by Rebecca also caught my attention...

Albert Camus and the existentialists, eat your heart out!

With all this in mind, each day I become increasingly grateful (and reliant) on the simply priceless website that is the Internet Archive. And my latest discovery has really fired my imagination. For, instead of perusing through our dreaded contemporary newspapers or magazines on a weekend, I can now pretend that I am sitting in the lounge of The Cadogan Hotel, in 1896, sipping Earl Grey tea whilst reading The Savoy magazine of literature, art and criticism (which was published by Leonard Smithers and who was a friend of Oscar Wilde), with piano concertos by Chopin and Liszt playing away softly in the background or on my headphones.

I am currently two-thirds of the way through the 1st issue of The Savoy (which was published in January, 1896), and I have enjoyed the articles immensely. Here are its literary contents:

I am eagerly anticipating reading Aubrey Beardsley's Under the Hill, which is the last story in the collection, but so far my favourite has been The Binding of the Hair by W.B. Yeats, which has a strange, ghostly ending that I was not expecting. The piece by Havelock Ellis on the novelist Emile Zola, Zola: The Man and his Work, was intriguing and informative, as was the piece entitled Dieppe by Arthur Symons. This article had extra interest for me as I spent some time in Dieppe circa 1990/91, and although I don't have any recollections of any of the places Symons discusses, it still brought me closer to the time I spent there, and I could feel the warm heat and hear the soft sound of the sea as I read his evocative descriptions. 

- Dieppe, Illustration in The Savoy (1896)

I have been enjoying perusing The Savoy as if I'd discovered treasure that had been buried deep at sea for over a hundred years, and, in a sense, that is an accurate description. Of course, this find doesn't make me richer from a financial perspective, but the richness of its contents from an intellectual and emotional standpoint, and the way it has fired my imagination and allowed (nay, encouraged) me to find a way to extend my reality to how I would have felt if I had been living in 1896, has been priceless. To imagine myself reading this rather risqué, brand new decadent publication in the lounge of a beautiful London hotel, whilst sipping Earl Grey tea, in 1896, is an added delight. We all have many possibilities in us, and seeing that I am an individual who is sympathetic, eclectic, cosmopolitan, full of curiosity and abounding in the "historic sense," why wouldn't I delight in imaginatively exploring these myriad selves, given that such a rich opportunity for doing so has thus been presented to me? And not only that, it has given me a space where I can ignore some of the things in modern life that I described above which drive me to a barely concealed fury. The other fabulous news is that all eight issues are available to read on the Internet Archive, and I fully intend to make the very most of this situation by leaving the same interval between each edition as I would have had to do when they were published back in 1896, rather than just devouring all eight as soon as possible. A rather dandified and dignified way to go about this particular experience, I would suggest.

Anyway, gentle reader, with that in mind, I am now going to make myself a fine pot of Earl Grey tea, settle down in a chair in the lounge, put a Liszt piano concerto on in the background, and read what's remaining for to me to read in Issue 1 of The Savoy, whilst pretending I'm sitting in the lounge of The Cadogan Hotel, wondering if at any moment Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Claude Debussy, or even Pierre Louys will walk through its famous doors, and join me for tea. Maybe you should do the same?

And yes, in my opinion, modern life is still rubbish.

 

The Savoy Magazine at Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/sim_savoy_the-savoy_1896-01_1

I'm a Weirdo: My Experience of Max Richter's 'Sleep'

"Ah God! that it were possible

For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell us

What and where they be."

- Alfred Lord Tennyson,

Last year, I discovered that Max Richter's Sleep had been performed, live, in concert, with the audience members offered beds to sleep on during the performance, which began at 10pm and finished at 8am the following morning. Immediately, this struck me as inspired, and I was rather saddened that I had missed it. When I told my wife about the concert, she came back with an inspired suggestion: we would recreate it at home and have the album playing (the album lasts 8 hours) from 10pm until 8am the following morning. That sounds great, I thought. Let's do it this weekend. The timing was increasingly perfect for us, as the weekend we decided to do it (December, last year), fell on a New Moon, which from a Daoist perspective is the best time to do something of this nature. 

With the date confirmed, we arranged our diary so we had nothing we had to do the next day, and made sure everything was done, including all my time-consuming late evening medical treatments, so that we were ready and prepared for bed, with lights out, to start the Max Richter album, Sleep. 

At 10pm exactly, I pressed play on Spotify.

Now, dear reader, just to bring you up to speed, I had read some wonderful reviews by people who have listened to Max Richter's Sleep, whether that be on album or the fortunate people who had experienced it live. Almost unanimously they waxed lyrical about how incredibly relaxing it had been, many saying they had experienced the best, most refreshing night's sleep they had had in decades. A few compared it to Brian Eno's ambient albums. Well, let me prepare you in advance: my experience was anything but relaxing and rejuvenating.

During the first ten minutes there was something profound about the feelings that the music created, and I recall my wife and I clutching hands during this time. Gradually, though, we both disengaged our fingers from each other and changed positions as partners do when falling asleep. And then suddenly, in the pitch darkness, memories began to invade my consciousness from many different episodes of my life. And these weren't just fleeting memories. These were intense, and it was like being back in those situations. I saw my life as a boy in the little terraced house in North Wales where I lived until I was seven. Crystal clear memories (more like a lived vision, in all honesty), of things I loved as a boy: my train set, my pet rabbit, train memorabilia that I had collected but which has long gone, my Flockton Flyer book, my uncle, and, of course, my Mum and my Nain and Taid. I recall sobbing and asking them for their forgiveness, asking them if they knew how much I loved them, hoping beyond hope that they did. Oceanic feelings of guilt swept in, leaving me shattered. I hope I returned your love, was about all I could say.

I then recall Lydia woke suddenly and needed a drink, which I helped her to do, and after doing this she very quickly fell asleep again. I knew this as I could hear her gentle purring and feel the change in her breathing next to me.

The next stage I experienced intense feelings and visions of death; my own, the people around me who I love, even the death of the animals and the universe. I could feel myself breaking at this point, and just when I thought I couldn't take much more, a complete change came about in my thoughts and memories. In what seemed like an instant, I was then recalling vividly some of the most ecstatic and euphoric happenings of my life. Some of mine and Lydia's favourite places, being on stage in Les Misérables, and most intriguingly, memories of mine and Lydia's date nights, with her wearing some of her clothes that I love her wearing. But, just then, something changed. It was as if a force, an energy, was trying to deceive me. Deep inside my psyche I knew this was not now Lydia making me feel these things, and this sudden knowledge helped me break this particular spell. I managed to force myself to wake and sit up in bed. But, as I lay back down, things changed again. We have deep green velvet curtains over our windows and it was pitch black in our room, except for the slightest chink of light coming from the speaker that was in the floor in the corner and which was mostly hidden by the ottoman. I desperately tried to get to sleep, changed position a few times, but found it impossible. Richter's haunting music enveloped the room and completely invaded my body, mind and soul. In an attempt to sleep - even though by doing this I knew I was letting the side down - I put my headphones on so I could listen to the TV series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, a tactic which usually works very well for me when I am struggling to get to sleep. But it was no use. I could hear the bass and haunting singing above the headphones, and the eeriness was utterly  overwhelming. I now felt like there were most definitely spirits in the room with me. In the dark corner by the mirror, the small speaker light was barely shining but I was too petrified to look in that direction even though my attention was constantly trying to do so. I contemplated sitting up and having the courage to just look brazenly into that specific corner of darkness and see if anything happened. But I simply could not do it; I could only glance nervously and then quickly away. Once again I swapped positions multiple times. I did some photo art on my phone to try and distract my mind as it was all becoming too much. I was caught completely between desperately wanting to see somebody like my mum, Nain or Taid, yet at the same time being gripped by the fear that it might actually happen. I was completely torn between feeling terrified that they might be upset with me over the kind of things my mind had been thinking of earlier, yet wondering if this might be my one and only opportunity to connect with them again in this world. It was an intolerable impasse and I was now exhausted beyond words. I looked at my phone and saw that it was now 5.30am, and I knew that I simply couldn't take any more. I decided I had to turn the Max Richter album off as it was all becoming too distressing, and I knew that if I continued there would be no chance of me getting any sleep, and I was already utterly physically and emotionally shattered. So I turned off what remained to be played of Max Richter's Sleep album, and very hesitantly found the small light on our landing, and turned it on so I could go to the bathroom. I recall thinking how I could never have gone into our bathroom had everywhere been in pitch darkness, so thank goodness for the immediate convenience of that small night light. After this, I came back to bed and, eventually, managed a restless doze. At 9.40am our doorbell rang (which I answered) and then at 10am (the time Max Richter's Sleep was scheduled to finish) Lydia's alarm went off and she woke up. When I came back into our bedroom, I felt a very real need to open both our windows and let some fresh air in, and Lydia said later that I must have intuitively known what to do, as, through her knowledge of Daoism, that is what she would have suggested. She also asked me to bless the corner of the room that I had found so mysterious and haunting, just to make sure that if there were any supernatural happenings occurring there, especially if it involved loved ones, to let them know that everything was fine and that there were no bad feeling towards them, and which would also, at the same time, clear the space if unwelcome and uninvited spirits had been hanging around, which, due to my experience, was most likely to be the case.

And with that ended my "relaxing and rejuvenating" experience with Max Richter's album, Sleep. I have read many more reviews of this album, since then, and, as far as I can tell, no one who has written has had an experience even remotely similar to mine. All of their reviews tell of a similar tale: relaxing, rejuvenating, deeply soulful, a spiritual awakening, etc. Lydia, too, remembered very little of the night and she slept very well. But no, this wasn't what occurred with me. My experience had been the complete opposite. It was incredibly difficult at times, but I don't regret doing it. Perhaps I conversed with spirits in the otherworld, or maybe I connected in a very profound way with memories that are usually hidden so deep that I can't reach them (or they me). I guess I will never know for certain exactly what happened. But, either way, my experience, when compared with everyone else's, confirmed only too well what I am already painfully aware of:

I'm a weirdo.

- Henry Fuseli,
The Nightmare (1781)