Stagnation Unto Death

Nighttime is when my brain is most likely to reflect actively on things. Politics, the universe, society, history, science-without-the-maths. All very interesting. Worthy stuff. Except that I'm being quite disingenuous, as most of my nocturnal reflections (when they happen at all) are concerned with myself: the passing of my life, my lack of participation in sport, a general worsening of health, approaching demise, my appearance (the ruthlessness of ageing, nighttime overeating and its natural consequences, my fading and questionable good looks, etc, ad nauseam), anxiety, autism, family relationships (Australian and British), friendships (the lack of them here in Australia and the missing of them back in the UK) and the fact that my self-obsessed, anxiety-ridden and insecure minute-to-minute living has, throughout my adult life, obstructed so much creative design. And this last phenomenon has only worsened as I've aged.
Not only do I no longer act (to be fair, this is circumstantial given my move to a small city without opportunities for professional thesps, although to be equally fair my intention to bring together a group of like-minded creatives to make short films in the tropics has remained a really good idea), but my poetry output has slowed to treacle-pace. This also may be a result of life changes: Getting married and living with actual, breathing human beings. However, I can't with good faith invoke the old adage of the pram in the hallway being the enemy of art, for two reasons: My stepsons were not babies when I moved here; and I've hardly experienced a sudden drought following years of creative monsoon.
I write a fresh poem once or twice a year. There has been no middle years renaissance. In my 20s, I might have spewed out a couple of poems every month, although most of them have decidedly not passed the test of time. Output in my 30s was slower but the substance was much-improved. Since turning 40, and then 50, bar the very rare burst of activity, the muse has bought an RV and become a Grey Nomad. Those intense experiences of inspiration, usually taking place during the stillness of night or in the din of a coffee shop, and varying in length and satisfaction, are painfully rare. It is often assumed that a drying up of the creative wellspring will be offset by an increase in consumption: of films, books, art, theatre, etc. Well, yes, about that...
I suffer from that peculiarly developed world affliction: decision paralysis. The sheer number of TV channels, video and audio streaming services, eBook providers, internet shopping opportunities and generally unfettered consumption is, on paper, a tremendous thing (or, perhaps, a disgraceful paean to the Me! Here! Now! growth-fetish extremes of late capitalism, depending on which way you dress). This democratisation of data has only intensified my stagnation. I have never previously owned or had access to so many readable, watchable or listenable commodities, and yet my shelves bow with unread books and unwatched DVDs, and my Spotify Library and Netflix To Watch list expand perpetually. For sure, lack of time on a daily basis is sometimes the issue (with the corollary that so much is now being produced, often of high quality, that another century would be insufficient to consume it all), but this is not the main concern. It is that I frequently cannot decide what to consume, and will revert to the easy, the familiar, the short and the sweet. So YouTube clips have replaced Netflix shows, which in turn had replaced art-house films or difficult theatre. I have succumbed to Idiocracy.
Now, I'm sure many of you who've made it this far will reasonably be thinking: 'What makes you so special? We're all in the same boat here with the superabundance shit!' And of course, many intelligent, discerning people are also beset by this. However, as Homer Simpson once splendidly said when repeating Marge's point back to her: "Yeah, but this is me talking!" This is my account of travelling down the slide to Dumbtown; you write your own.
I don't act anymore so I can't call myself an actor. I write so rarely that calling myself a poet would be a misnomer (and very probably a pompous thing anyway). I'm surrounded by books I don't read and films I don't watch. I peruse articles, but only the easily digestible ones. YouTube is my mistress, with short films and prank clips my dates of choice. It might actually be merciful that I shan't live another hundred years (and there's more grist to the nighttime thought mill): I won't have to catch myself in the mirror, watching 24-hour prank channels on my 80" holographic TV, sitting in my toilet armchair, grunting and mumbling between bites of Centenarian Pizza™ (Soft-baked for Your Toothless Convenience).
There was naturally a lot more I intended to talk about in this post (my first for aeons, appropriately), but Q.E.D.
See you back here in a year or two.

Grief, and the Interior World

I lost my father just over two months ago. His passing wasn't unexpected given his advanced age and the Alzheimer's disease he'd been suffering from for at least two years. Any death is still a shock of sorts, even the most inevitable and natural. My experience of my father's death was complicated by our physical distance: I've lived in tropical Australia for over three years, which has presented its own set of challenges and difficulties regarding family, friends and connections thousands of miles and several time zones apart.

I learnt of his passing from my brother, at around 1.30am Australian Eastern Time. After the initial news, and the obviously fairly sleepless night, we texted a little. I then existed in an oddly quiet bubble for a week or so. It's not that my wife wasn't supportive and loving, far from it. It was that all the activity associated with someone's death and its immediate aftermath was occurring half a world away. Except for booking flights back to England, I had nothing to do. I worked a little, I went to the shops, I cycled a bit, but my father's death was something I didn't really own. Everything about it was going on without me. Was it perhaps just a horrible ruse on my family's part?

You'd think that might have been an ideal opportunity, free from the shackles of post-death duties, to get on with the grieving process; but no. There didn't yet feel like there was anything concrete to grieve. There was the conception that the man who had fathered me half a century ago, was no more. But I'd seen him once in three years and our phone calls had become more and more rare since his illness had worsened (my guilt surrounding this is another matter). It wasn't like I was visiting my dad every month or two, or chatting on the phone with him twice a week, as I'd done when I lived in the UK. There was no sudden change of circumstances, no physical space where he'd been. He still existed in my head, where he'd resided for the best part of three years. And on top of this, there was packing to consider, and preparing for the trials of a late-booked 34 hour journey of three flights.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I'm back in the Australian early Summer. The funeral was a humanist ceremony: Dignified, respectful and peppered with laughter. Stories and memories were shared, some of dad's favourite music was played, and at the wake he and my mother were remembered very fondly. I spent over a week sorting through the bungalow where he had lived for 23 years (12 with my mum until her death). I caught up a little with friends and family, despite a growing wish to cocoon myself. And then I steeled myself for another mammoth journey home.

I had expected, during that peculiar week before I flew back to England, to feel the full force of grief when I arrived there. "That's when it'll really hit me" became my mantra. Only I didn't. Still I appeared to resist The Proper Course of Things: The breaking down in tears, the crushing impact of loss, the sense of amputation. They eluded me when I first saw my brother; they eluded me when I first entered the empty house; they eluded me before, during and after the funeral, and they eluded me when I was gutting the house of the things which had made it a home for nearly a quarter of a century. I had my moments: Emptying the bag my brother had packed for dad's planned respite stay in the nursing home (which turned out to be his final ten days), I felt enormous sadness. It passed. I was so busy, had set myself goals (a room a day to sort into Things to Keep, Things to Donate and Things to Go) and - as is my character - became locked on target. In retrospect, clearing the house was a sobering experience and I'm sure it lowered my mood, even as it was quite satisfying to be completing a project (how much of that was due to my Asperger's, I couldn't say). But it wasn't 'Grief' grief.

The first week and a bit back home was pure jet lag. Probably the worst I've ever experienced. The second week was taken up with doing some house clearing of our own, and then working quite intensely. It's only very recently that I've been feeling textbook grief: variously emotional and numb, teary, sad, detached, seeking solitude, irritable, tired, aching, etc etc.

I know, in principle, that grief is a unique and flexible process. The Five Stages model is almost as outdated as Female Hysteria. That hasn't stopped me wanting to conform to what is expected when you lose a loved one. Does that expectation, though, emanate from outside in or inside out? Does Western society still have a pattern - a template of emotional response to trauma - behaviours anomalous to which are deemed odd, cold, repressed, histrionic, self-indulgent, weak? Or do many of us, in the face of loss, hold ourselves unreasonably to standards which are wholly unrealistic, given the individual nature of feeling?

Every relationship between someone bereaved and their lost loved one is different, even if they're siblings, partners, etc. No one reacts the same way to anything, good or bad, significant or trivial. Everyone has a distinctive interior landscape, weathered or nurtured each day by experiences and decisions of all magnitudes, and created according to character and temperament (which in turn are being minutely affected by daily living). As much as we value our individuality, most humans also take great solace from commonality, connection and fellow-feeling, particularly at times of great sorrow and distress. We want to feel like we're doing it 'right', as others do and have done, that we're going through something in a healthy and recognised way. We may crave solitude, but we want that to be a craving shared by most other humans in similar boats.

It's as important to recognise the need to conform in the face of adversity, not just from fear of being cast as The Other but also because it's comforting and stabilising, as it is to acknowledge that each of us will actually experience the process like no one else. That strange, quiet week following the news of my father's death; how I prepared for and behaved at his funeral; my efficient work clearing his house; how I felt about socialising with family and friends; my exceptional jet lag; and now the 'classic' symptoms of grief - they all have been part of the process, all necessary, all reflective of my personality, my situation and my relationship with my dad. And so it will continue.

Try not to be too hard on yourself at any time in life, but especially when circumstances conspire to do that for you.

Look Out!

A few thoughts regarding the Look Up video, which has gone viral:

Firstly, given that it advocates stopping using technology, it's not (as many have claimed) ironic at all that it's popular online. To be fair to the makers, they are trying to reach out to technophiles; if you were trying to get fishermen to trawl less, you'd head to the coast. Being Luddite serves no purpose here. But that's probably where my sympathy for this 'piece of work' ends. I think it's reductive, condescending nonsense, shot through with enough sentimentality to give it the appearance of gravitas and substance. And don't get me started on the sub-sixth form poetry slam delivery.

I assumed it was aimed mostly at teens, given the false belief that teenagers are constantly 'looking down', never interacting in the real world, and are more atomised than ever before. Let's despair at the behaviour of our older children: plugged into the mainframe, atrophying, sun-starved, juggling their various devices. I don't buy that vision. Sure, some children do spend more time using technology than is good for them. Sure, many parents are far more 'protective' and stranger-wary nowadays than they were in, say, my generation or those before me. But children playing out less in the street doesn't equal children not socialising beyond tech. Many more now have sleepovers, see friends at each others' houses, go shopping, bowling, etc: activities where the parents feel they can better monitor and surveille their kids. And anecdotally, I often see groups of teens - unsupervised - wandering around suburban shopping centres. Yes, sometimes they're texting or instagramming or snapchatting (I'm not stalking them, honest!), but mostly they're being, well, teenagers. No Matrix-style alienation here. And I - together with those in Britain of my vintage - can remember a very popular kids' programme called Why Don't You?, which used the medium of television to encourage children to "Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead". I did both: watched some telly, then went out to play with my mates.

And yet the narrative of the video seems to concentrate on a pair of 20somethings, playing out a Sliding Doors-syle alternative reality message: look up, or you'll die sad and alone. But surely we are engaging all the time with what might have been. Every single decision has consequences of some magnitude. This is a cheap trick which simplifies the unfathomable complexity of our lives to suggest that, if only you closed that laptop or left that phone at home, your life would be massively improved in every way. For a start, you'd find your soul mate. Well, I (and millions of others) would not have known of the existence of my partner, and my life would not be taking the turn it is about to take, were it not for that damnable Facebook. Positives and negatives: they're there in everything we do.

The crux for me lies in moderation. Good old Aristotle proposed that one's best actions lay between excess and deficiency. It feels almost as simplistic as the accursed video to recommend this, but surely technology - with its proven benefits - has a part to play in the human project. Overdoing anything is detrimental - I don't have to give examples. So yes, by all means use Facebook, Twitter, all the other social media platforms, and connect in ways which weren't feasible 20 or 30 years ago. I have learned so much about the minutiae of life in Australia, America, other European countries and parts of Asia, through people I've related to on Facebook; things which guidebooks and television programmes don't detail. And, beyond even the edifying aspects of it all, I enjoy using technology. There is no shame at all in saying that, dammit! I am also aware that sometimes I binge on it. But that is my issue. Facebook is not an inherent evil, enticing me to the rocks of isolated insomnia with its notification pings, any more than television in the 70s, when the most popular programmes on the Big Two channels in the UK would garner 20+ million viewers, was destroying civilisation. If you watched TV for six to eight hours every single evening, however, then your brain would probably begin to jellify.

As for whether this modern demon of technology is ruining our species, I would be very interested to read a sophisticated history of human interaction, up to and including the technological age, rather than have this proselytising sledgehammer of a video doing the rounds. How technology has changed and continues to change the world of work; the fetishisation of progress and how that informs the profit-driven need to upgrade devices; how planned obsolescence assists this unfettered growth; the part played by technology in the obesity boom of developed nations; the use of technology in aiding developing countries; technology's role in sustainable development - for me, these issues are far more important and fundamental.

I think I've had enough of writing this now. I'm going out to buy a massive slab of chocolate. Yep, moderation in all things; and that includes moderation...

Meet The New Boss; Same As The Old Boss.

Whenever someone has an issue with a self-styled revolutionary, their 'movement' or any of their ardent followers, it's easy to paint them as at best a cynic, at worst a defender of the status quo. In my case, with regard to that charismatic world-changer-wannabe de nos jours Russell Brand, the latter is very much untrue; I'm not sure about the former, given that one person's cynic is another's realist. Of some things I am far more certain, and am prepared to be accused of fusty conservatism (small c) in order to set out my position.

Perhaps it is the case that as one gets older, one's political positions mellow and centralise. That said, my world view is no less critical, radical and non-conformist than that of my 19 year old University student self. What has altered is that I have come to see idealism for what it truly is: a belief in the positive mutability of people, their relationships and their social and political systems. Belief - the key word here. But one that, however far back into history one travels, is met by the unyielding weight of fact: empire building, growth and collapse; revolutionary change, consolidation and corruption; warfare and persecution. Cycles. Boom and bust, growth and recession - terms used to describe the machinations of late capitalism apply equally to human historical endeavour.

The political philosopher John Gray - probably a genuine misanthrope and cynic - writes brilliantly about what he calls The Myth of Progress. This can refer to a religious belief in enlightenment, a secular faith in the advancement of human knowledge (nowadays via science) or the inevitability of socio-political revolution. It strikes me that every generation - often when young, energetic and unaware of subtler shades of grey - believes itself to be the one which will change the world. The revolution (political, social, scientific, artistic, etc), like any longed-for destination, is always just over the next hill. Even within my microcosm of existence, so it was with the neo-Marxist political groupings of the 60s onwards, so it is now with various Occupy and 99% movements.

My belief (yes, we've all got 'em!) is that we are just passing through, strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage. To live as well as possible - to be kind, considerate, generous, loving, and to fight injustices where we can, to take stands where we can - is the best we can do. Because we belong to a species of animals which will not undergo sudden wholesale change, but will be subject to petty squabbles, ambition, greed, envy, territorialism, parochialism - I won't, but could, go on.

Accept all those things which humanise us and try to maximise the positive aspects while you still have breath. The rest is ego, hubris and selling tickets for your latest tour.

Scuse me, love, can I 'ave a word?

When - for whatever reason - you don't write a lot of blog entries, there build up many layers of Things I Was Going To Say in your mind. It's virtual archaeology in there. And as the weeks progress, the earliest Was Going To Say's become fainter and less retrievable. Just a sense remains that there was that something you intended to write about, had you only had the time/ energy/application. I can say at this moment that there are at least six strata, and can remember the content of the top two or three. And there simply isn't the urgency any more to spell them out. Their moment has passed. Which is unfortunate, because at the time they would have been the Finest Blog Entry You Have Ever Read. And you'll just have to take my word for that.

All of which leaves the one that burst through. This little topic has managed to commit me to the keyboard, on account of listening again to a superb song by The Beat (The English Beat in The States - but they're just wrong, because their American The Beat doesn't count). Too Nice To Talk To was a single for the band 33 years ago (yes, indeed, we are all old). It recounted, articulately and movingly as ever in lyrics by Dave Wakeling, unrequited love-lust. However, like so much good (concept warning!) art, its meanings are various. So, on the surface we're looking at a boy bemoaning his lack of success when it comes to connecting with the object of his desire (presumably at a nightclub or party); but so many of the lines cut far deeper. We have the lost opportunities; the temperamental inability to act decisively (The Prince of Denmark springs to mind); the simple twists of fate (Thomas Hardy springs to mind); the self-loathing and how that feeling might be transferred ("my heart is retarded", but "your emotions so guarded", so it could well be your fault after all).

That last example touches on the shadowy realm of Healthy Relating, and the problems intrinsic to interaction in general. Nevermind those endless plains of thwarted opportunity and loneliness: if you finally do get to connect with another soul, you're far from out of the woods. Bin that can and open another. Mmm, juicy worms. Communication with your beloved is dotted with existential potholes, and can be just as difficult as making that leap to talk to the person you've only ever worshipped from afar. Can one ever properly connect with another? Where does deep connection become gooey with co-dependency? Where do you build the fences, and how high should should they be? Can I ever know that what I say is received, processed and understood the way I meant it? And so on and so forth into the multi-million dollar world of the Relating Industry.

I still look back upon my fallow emotional years as the wasted ones, and those spent with the former potential ex-Mrs Cole's (erm, girlfriends would probably have sufficed) as something else. Often far from great years; some dreadful times. But never wasted. And not from a "Whatever doesn't kill you..." perspective, either. I suppose it's more that, however rocky and maddening and frustrating and incomplete the connections could be, I'd had a go. I'd done something human. I'd discovered she actually wasn't too nice to talk to after all. Nobody is.