Showing posts with label d. h. lawrence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label d. h. lawrence. Show all posts

26 Mar 2024

The Anarchic Symphony: Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark

Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark 
 
 
An artist friend of mine decided to ask some AI softwear [1] to produce a text in the style of Torpedo the Ark, weaving together threads of Nietzschean philosophy, the punk aesthetic of Malcolm McLaren, and the literary war-machine of D. H. Lawrence. She also prompted it to describe what it thinks the goal or aim of the blog might be.  

This is the result:
 
 
The Anarchic Symphony: Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence
 
In the grand theatre of cultural subversion, three figures stand at the vanguard, each a maestro of their own domain, yet harmoniously orchestrated in the cacophony of rebellion. Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who danced to the tune of his own Zarathustra; Malcolm McLaren, the impresario who orchestrated the punk movement's raucous symphony; and D.H. Lawrence, the literary maverick whose pen stroked the sensuous and the sublime. 
 
Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God was a clarion call to the individual's will to power, a challenge to the herd to rise above the mire of mediocrity. McLaren, in the spirit of Nietzsche's Übermensch, crafted the Sex Pistols into a cultural weapon, a battering ram against the gates of an ossified establishment. Lawrence, too, rebelled against the industrialized dehumanization of his time, championing a return to the primal forces of nature and the unbridled expression of human desire.
 
Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark' is a vessel for these revolutionary currents, a blog that sails the high seas of intellectual anarchy. Alexander's prose, much like Lawrence's, is a phallic lance thrust into the heart of societal norms, a bridge to a future where touch and tenderness reign supreme. His writings, infused with the spirit of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, remind us that the revolution is never over; it is reborn with each act of defiance, each note of discord, each stroke of the pen. 
 
The punk movement, under McLaren's deft hand, was not just a musical genre but a manifesto in leather and spikes, a declaration of war on the banality of the mainstream. The Sex Pistols' anthems were the echoes of Nietzsche's own battle cries, and in their wake, a new culture was birthed, raw and untamed. Lawrence, with his explorations of the erotic, would have found kinship in the movement's visceral energy, its unapologetic embrace of life's darker, more passionate aspects. 
 
In this anarchic symphony, we find a common theme: the relentless pursuit of authenticity, the breaking of chains that bind the spirit, and the celebration of life in all its messy glory. Alexander, channeling the essence of these three iconoclasts, invites us to join the dance, to cast aside the shackles of conformity, and to revel in the anarchic joy of creation. 
 
So let us raise our voices with Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence, and let the music of rebellion play on, even if, ultimately, it is not the notes that are played but the spaces between them - the moments of silence and reflection - that define the symphony of our existence. 
 
This narrative, inspired by the style of Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark', is a testament to the enduring power of those who dare to challenge, to question, and to live fiercely. It is a call to arms, a reminder that the pen and the guitar are both mightier than the sword, and that the truest form of anarchy is the freedom to be oneself. 
 
 
It is, I suppose, an amusing attempt by AI to torpedo the ark, although, I have to say that, overall, the style of the piece reads like a parody and, in its upbeat anarchy and vital optimism, the text is not one I would want mistaken for my own. 
 
Somewhat disappointingly, AI softwear - for now at least - remains as all too human as the people who design it.           
 
 
   [2]

Notes  

[1] I'm informed that the request for a text in the manner of TTA was made using Microsoft Copilot and ChatGpt-4 (none of which means anything to me).  

[2] The image at the bottom of the post - again supplied by my friend who, for reasons of her own, wishes to remain anonymous - was produced by DALL-E 3 softwear. 
 
 

21 Mar 2024

On the Nature of the Ridiculous (and the Ridiculous Nature of the Sex Pistols)


Sex Pistols
Photo by Richard Young (1976)
 
"We have passed beyond the absurd: our position is absolutely ridiculous." [1]
 
 
I. 
 
Gavin Butt is a professor at Northumbria University and someone who knows more than most - certainly more than me - about the connections between visual art, popular music, queer culture, and performance [2].

So when he privileges the term ridiculous in his work I'm confident he has very good reasons for doing so. 
 
However, that doesn't mean I can't briefly reflect upon this concept myself in contradistinction to what some regard as the more profound (and serious-sounding) philosophy of absurdism and then say something about the Sex Pistols. 
 
 
II. 
 
The crucial aspect of the ridiculous is that it solicits, incites, or provokes laughter; often of a mocking or cruel nature, but not always. If you're someone like Georges Bataille, then you'll probably find everything ridiculous - one recalls the following short poem:
 
Laugh and laugh 
at the sun 
at the nettles 
at the stones 
at the ducks 
 
at the rain 
at the pee-pee of the pope 
at mummy 
at a coffin full of shit [3]  
 
For Bataille, this laughter is liberating; by viewing the entire universe as ridiculous - including death and the excremental nature of the decomposing corpse - he feels able to escape from what Zarathustra terms the Spirit of Gravity.
 
This may seem synonymous with the sublime philosophical idea of absurdism, but, actually, it's not the same thing at all. Finding existence laughable is very different from finding it meaningless; one is expected - as a creature of reason - to be angst-ridden by the latter idea, not gaily indifferent to the fact or able to smile when standing before the nihilistic void [4].

Being ridiculous makes one in the eyes of those who insist upon moral seriousness at all times an inferior being; shallow and lacking dignity. But I would counter this by saying it makes us Greek in the sense understood by Nietzsche: i.e., superficial - out of profundity! [5].
 
 
III.
 
One might also view punk - in its more playfully anarchic manifestation as given us by Malcolm McLaren - as an attempt not merely to challenge authority, but to escape from enforced seriousness. 
 
The Sex Pistols - and those closely associated with them, such as members of the Bromley Contingent - were ridiculous because they advocated for a Lawrentian revolution:

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest,
do it for fun.

Don't do it because you hate people
do it just to spit in their eye. [6]

Po-faced punks concerned about social justice might recoil from this, but, for me, the idea of tipping over the apple cart simply to see which way the apples will roll, is crucial. McLaren encouraged the youngsters under his spell to be childish and irresponsible - to be everything this society hates - to make themselves ugly and grotesque: in a word, ridiculous [7]
 
 
Notes
 
[1] I'm slightly misquoting the American actor, director, and writer Ronald Tavel, who coined the phrase Theatre of the Ridiculous in 1965 initially to describe his own work. Tavel himself ends this sentence with the word 'preposterous'. 
 
[2] I had the pleasure of listening to Butt speak at the Torn Edges symposium held at the London College of Communication on 20 March 2024 - an event exploring the points of contact and crossover between punk, art, design, and history. 
      Although his paper was rather more Pork than punk, that was fine by me and his discussion of Warhol's 1971 play in relation to the Theatre of the Ridiculous - a genre of queer experimental theatre - was fascinating.  
 
[3] The original poem by Bataille, entitled 'Rire' ['Laughter'], can be found in volume 4 of his Oeuvres complètes, (Gallimard, 1971), p. 13. The English translation is from the Preface to Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism, (Routledge, 1992), p. xvii.
 
[4] In a sense, I'm following Hobbes here who distinguished between the absurd and the ridiculous, arguing that the former is to do with invalid reasoning, whilst the latter is simply about laughter. For non-philosophers, however, the absurd and the ridiculous are pretty much now regarded as synonymous. 
      As for the sublime - with which the ridiculous is often juxtaposed - it's interesting to note just how quickly one can pass from the former to the latter; one small misstep is all it takes.
 
[5] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Preface to the second edition (4).
 
[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Sane Revolution', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 449. 
 
[7] Not only ugliness, but deformity is considered by some to be essential to the ridiculous; one recalls that Johnny Rotten in part based his hunched over stage persona on that of Richard III and would perform in an exaggerated physically awkward manner.    


25 Feb 2024

Will Absence Make My Heart Grow Fonder of Byung-Chul Han? (Part 1)

(Polity Press, 2023)
 
 
I. 
 
Although Daniel Steuer's English translation of Byung-Chul Han's book Absence was only published last year, the original German text appeared back in 2007 [a], and so we can rightly think of it as one of his early works; more philosophical and less political in tone as it explores the Western obsession with essence in contrast to the Eastern (and deeply foreign) notion of absence.    
 
As Han rightly says: "The concept of 'essence', which unites identity, duration and inwardness, dwelling, lingering and possessing, dominates occidental metaphysics." [1] From ancient Greeks like Plato to German idealists like Kant, essence is the key and be yourself the melody. What is outside and inessential can stay there and remain that way.
 
Even Heidegger, argues Han, "despite his best efforts at leaving metaphysical thinking behind [...] remained a philosopher of essence" [4]. In wanting to let things be he wants things to remain true to their own essence. Ultimately, Dasein both dwells and endures. It does not wander too far from itself (even if it explores the odd woodpath from time to time). 
 
But in Daoism, the wise man is without fixed abode and never stops wandering; evading all substantive determination and having no stable identity, he leaves no trail or name behind him. Daoist wandering may not be the same as Zen Buddhist non-dwelling, "but the negativity of absencing connects the two" [5]
 
Ultimately, the "fundamental topos of Far Eastern thinking is not being but the way [...] The way lacks the solidity of being and essence, which is what leads to the emergence of traces" [5]. Westerners talk about finding the way, but by that they really just mean finding themselves; the Eastern wanderer, however, becomes the way and doesn't hope to find anything (walking with neither intention nor direction). 

The Western philosopher wants his soul to blossom; the Eastern thinker, like the flower, doesn't have a soul (and remains nameless). They also remain rooted in the material world and care for the body; eating when hungry, sleeping when tired. Oh, and they also remain silent, still, and inactive.  
 
I have to admit, all of this appeals to me very much - and I say that as someone who has been hostile to (and dismissive of) Eastern thought in the past. It seems to me to that absence and emptiness and meaninglessness may very well lead "not to nihilism but to a heavenly joy [...] being without direction or trace" [13]
 
Kant - and those idiots who think happiness is all about being stuffed-full and satiated; all about having purpose and direction - wouldn't like this, but I do. Like Laozi, I'm happy to lead a life "without sense and goal, without teleology and narration, without transcendence and God" [14] - to be, as the Sex Pistols once sang, pretty vacant [b] and to find in this freedom, not spiritual deprivation [c]
 
 
II.
 
This is interesting: 
 
"Of course, postmodern thinkers also oppose ideas of substance and identity. [...] The negativity of these thinkers brings them closer to absencing and emptiness, but [...] Far Eastern thinking [...] is alien to them [...] The Far Eastern thinking of emptiness leaves deconstruction behind in order to achieve a special kind of reconstruction." [16]
 
This special kind of reconstruction is worldly immanence - "the 'this-is-how-it-is' of things" [16]
 
To be fair, I think Deleuze gets this when he transforms no-where into now/here. And when Derrida insists il n'y a pas de hors-texte - for isn't that similar to the Daoist notion that there is nothing above, beyond, or outside of the immanence of the world ...?

Anyway, the point is this: immanence is a crucial concept - as is "the painful charm of transience" [19] which allows for the development of an art and poetry of blandness, in which things fade out and blow away (again, this reminds me somewhat of Roland Barthes's theory of neutrality). 
 
 
III.
 
If essence is difference and a way of keeping things clear cut, then absencing is a form of indifference; one that un-bounds and makes indistinguishable. It's hard to see the outline of a white flower against a snow-covered backdrop (or a black cat in a coal cellar as others would say). 
 
The East is messy - things flow into each other: "Nothing imposes itself. Nothing demarcates itself from other things. Everything appears to retreat into an in-difference." [22-23]  The West, by contrast, likes strong boundaries and distinctions and closure.
 
Han continues:

"In-difference also fosters an intense side-by-side of what is different. It creates an optimal degree of cohesion with a minimal amount of organic, organized connection. Synthetic composition gives way to a syndetic continuum of closeness in which things do not come together as a unity." [23-24]

The cathedral is a space that is perfectly enclosed; even stained-glass windows are designed to keep the natural daylight out, which is why D. H. Lawrence preferred them in a state of ruin, exposed to the elements, etc. [d]
 
Han, however, seems to prefer a Buddhist temple that is "neither fully closed nor fully open" [26]. The spatiality of the latter "effects neither an inwardness nor a being-exposed" [26]. Doors of white rice paper are preferable to colourful stained-glass windows and standing light without direction is preferabe to a divine radiance from above that is intended to illuminate everything:
 
"The standing light, which has become fully indeterminate, in-different, does not emphasize the presence of things; it submerges them in absence." [27]    
 
It's almost as if white standing light brings a special type of darkness. You don't get that with modern glass architecture which marks the triumph of transparency

For Han, then, the Buddhist temple is preferable to the Christian cathedral; the Greek temple; and the shiny American skyscraper of glass and steel. It's not just a question of spatiality and light, but asymmetry; "an aesthetic principle of Zen Buddhism" [29] which "breaks up presence into absencing" [29].
 
I suppose some might say that it's all a question of how one sees things. And this brings us on to the question of eyes:
 
"According to Hegel's philosophical physiognomy, the eyes should be surrounded by the elevated bones so that 'the strengthened shadow in the orbits gives us of itself a feeling of depth and undistracted inner life'." [30]
 
But Eastern eyes, of course, are flat:
 
"Hegel would explain this in terms of a lack of inwardness, that is, an infantile spirit that has not yet awoken to subjective inwardness and therefore remains embedded in nature." [30]
 
But what does Hegel know about the beauty of the absencing gaze ...?
 
 
IV.
 
D. H. Lawrence thought there was nothing more bourgeois than the unfading flowers of heaven. But the Kantian lover of the beautiful would probably delight in such; their "imperishable splendour would most likely [...] make him happy" [33].
 
For sure, he'd not like it if they were revealed to be fake flowers - their artificiality depriving them of "their teleological, even theological, significance" [33] - but their everlasting nature would only intensify his love for them. Plato too dreamed of a divine form of beauty that "neither emerges nor vanishes, neither increases nor decreases" [33]
 
But for someone who views the word from a Far Eastern perspective, the most beautiful thing of all about a flower is its transience; the fact that it loses its petals without any hesitation and is content to disappear. For such a person, the bare stem or twig is as beautiful as a flowering plant or tree in full bloom. 
 
In other words: 
 
"In the sensibility of the Far East, neither the permanence [Ständigkeit] of being nor the stability [Beständigkeit] of essences is part of the beautiful. Things that persist, subsist or insist are neither beautiful nor noble. Beautiful is not what stands out or exceeds but what exercises self-restraint or retreats, not what is solid but what hovers. Beautiful are things that carry the traces of nothingness [...] not full presence but a 'there' that is coated with an absence [...]" [33-34]   
 
The Japanese call this wabi-sabi - the art of impermanence that "combines the unfinished, the imperfect, the transient, the fragile and the unassuming" [34]. Even your favourite Clarice Cliff milk jug is made more beautiful by a tiny crack or chip; and every silver bowl is improved when it loses its sheen and begins to darken [e].    
 
Han writes: 
 
"Satori (illumination) actually has nothing to do with shining or light. This is another point on which Eastern spirituality differs from occidental mysticism, with its metaphysics of light. Light multiplies presence. Buddhism, however, is a religion of absence." [35]
 
In the West, people almost want to be blinded by the light; a light either from some transcendent source or an inner light that emphasises the presence of things. Han - like Tanizaki - seems to admire the magic light of absence; a light that does not disturb or dispel the darkness; a friendly light. 
 
 
V. 
 
Finally, a few brief notes on (i) food, (ii) flower arranging, (iii) rock gardens, and (iv) theatre ...
 
(i) It's funny, but one of the complaints of English people is that Chinese food leaves them feeling empty inside five minutes after eating. Han provides a possible explanation: "Emptiness and absence also characterize the cuisine of the Far East." [39] Rice is the perfect example of this; lacking colour, lacking taste, offering no resistance (providing nothing to chew).
 
"Far Eastern cuisine appears empty also because it does not have a centre [...] The meals lack the centre or weight of a main dish and the closedness of a menu." [40]  
 
Further, in the West we like to cut food up with a knife and fork; in the East they assemble food with chopsticks.
 
(ii) The Japanese art of flower arranging is known as Ikebana - which means bringing flowers to life: 
 
"It is, however, an unusual kind of invigoration, because the flower is cut off from its root [...] The flower is invigorated by dealing it a mortal blow. [...] This raises it above the process of slow withering, its natural death. The flower is thereby removed from the difference between 'life' and 'death'. It shines with a special vitality, a flowering in-difference  [...] that has its source in the spirit of emptiness." [40-41]
 
The flower radiates with an unnatural (and transient) vitality; the shining of absence. 
 
(iii) If you have ever walked round a Japanese rock garden, you might have come away feeling a bit disappointed that there wasn't much to see. But that's the point; they are designed as gardens of absence and emptiness. 
 
However, despite their absence and emptiness, "they radiate", says Han, "an intense vitality" [41] and visitors must learn to appreciate the flow of the lines raked into the gravel and the darkness of the rocks. 
 
The Japanese rock garden is another method of paradoxical invigoration: "It invigorates nature by completely drying out its soul" [42] and placing it in a state of satori
 
(iv) Traditional Japanese puppet theatre (Bunraku) is also radically different to the world of Punch and Judy, showing that the latter is not the only way to do it. The Western puppet theatre animates characters via funny voices; in Bunraku it's all about the gesture and the puppets remain soulless figures.    
 
Similarly, Noh theatre is a theatre of absence: the costumes and masks worn by the living, human actors are designed to make them look like puppet figures. Even when an actor appears on stage without a mask, "the uncovered face is expressionless and empty" [44]
 
And the narrative composition of Noh theatre also adds to the sense of absence; its hard to tell what is real and what is dream - what is past and what is present - things appear only to then disappear once more (probably best not to worry too much about the plot in such cicumstances) [f].
 
 
Notes
 
[a] The German edition was published as Abwesen: Zur Kultur und Philosophie des fernen Ostens (Merv Verlag, 2007). In this post, page numbers refer to the English edition (Polity Press, 2023).  

[b] 'Pretty Vacant' was the third single released by the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here to watch the official video for the song (which was shown on Top of the Pops) and/or here to read my post written on the track and published on TTA on 30 July 2108.   

[c] Is this also Han's view? It's hard to know. For whilst here he writes that the world "has no narrative structure" and is therefore "resistant to the crisis of meaning" [14], sixteen years later he will publish a book entitled Die Krise der Narration (2023) in which he seems to argue strongly in favour of narratives that anchor us in being and subscribe to a form of Catholicism informed by Martin Heidegger. Anyway, readers who are interested can click here to access the first part of a three-part post on this recent text. 

[d] See the post 'Believe in the Ruins: Reflections of a Gargolyle ...' (16 April 2019) in which I discuss Lawrence's thoughts on religious architecture: click here.

[e] Han at this point refers us to Tanizaki's famous essay on Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows (1933). I have mentioned this work in several posts on Torpedo the Ark (click here, for example) and it partly formed the basis for a paper delivered at Treadwell's Bookshop in September 2023 on occultism in the age of transparency (an extract from which can be read by clicking here). 
 
[f] For the record: I find all theatre irritating and tedious; I do like the tranquility of a Japanese rock garden, but enjoy also the colourful chaos of an English wildflower meadow; and, if obliged to choose, I'd prefer to have steak and chips for dinner than a bowl of egg-fried rice. 


Part two of this post can be read by clicking here.
 
 

22 Feb 2024

Reflections on the Black Tree Frogs of Chernobyl

A tree frog shown before and after the 
Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986
 
 
I. 
 
I have always liked D. H. Lawrence's description of little green frogs as gem-like [1].
 
But it seems that the frogs living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) are no longer emerald green in colour. For in order to increase their survival rates in an irradiated environment, the frogs have undergone rapid evolution and now model jet black skins rich in protective melanin [2].
 
In 2016, whilst researching the effects over the previous three decades of Chernobyl's uniquely polluted environment on the flora and fauna, two Spanish scientists [3] made a strange discovery ... 
 
They expected to find that plant and animal species subjected to daily doses of radiation way above normal levels would have experienced negative consequences, but what they did not anticipate was that nature would respond in such an amazing way and recover so quickly - and they certainly weren't on the lookout for black frogs!
 
 
II.
 
So, what on earth is going on here? 
 
Well, cancer resistant wolves [4] and ebony-skinned tree frogs would seem to suggest that the Chernobyl disaster, which generated the largest release of radioactive material into the environment in human history, has accelerated natural evolution in a manner that Darwin - who always liked to stress the slow and gradual nature of evolutionary change by natural selection [5] - would have found hard to believe.   
 
And this - along with the absence of human beings - helps to explain why Chernobyl has become one of the largest nature reserves in Europe, where a diverse range of endangered species find refuge and live happily (or at least successfully) side-by-side. 

For whilst acute exposure to high doses of radiation can cerainly be damaging, both to the natural environment and the genetic material of living organisms, it can also kick-start and accelerate evolution in a surprisingly positive way, as species adapt to the new conditions. 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'The State of Funk', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 221. 
 
[2] The pigment melanin which, as many people know, reduces the effects of ultraviolet radiation, can also, so it seems, afford protection against ionising radiation. And that's why it's better to be a black frog than a green frog if you're going to spend your life hopping about in the CEZ.   
 
[3] Germán Orizaola and Pablo Burraco; they discuss their study of over 200 male tree frogs taken from twelve different breeding ponds from various sites in northern Ukraine - including four outside the CEZ - in an article originally published on theconversation.com (28 Sept 2022): click here.  
      As Orizaola y Burraco make clear, the dark skin colouration is typical of frogs from within or near the most contaminated areas at the time of the Chernobyl disaster and it suggests that they have undergone a process of rapid evolution in response to the radiation. The black frogs, having better survival rates, are now the dominant type within the CEZ, which, in my view, is a bit of a shame, as I prefer the little frogs with bright green skins. 
 
[4] See the recent post entitled 'Cara Love and the Mutant Wolves of Chernobyl' (14 Feb 2024): click here.
 
[5] In what is considered to be the founding text of evolutionary biology - On the Origin of Species (1859) - Darwin emphasises how natural selection progresses at a glacial pace and we usually observe nothing of the changes being made until long periods of time have passed. 
      Although this is true, adaptation to new conditions can occur within a relatively short period of time and examination of the fossil record shows that many species undergo rapid bursts of evolution, even if true speciation takes time. Recent work in developmental biology has identified certain mechanisms of tissue morphogenesis that may help explain any swift structural transitions. 
      I am grateful to Dr Andy Greenfield - my go to science guy and longtime friend - for his guidance on this point.
 
 
For a frog-related follow-up post to this one, click here.
 
 

13 Feb 2024

Birthday Reflections

 
 
I. 
 
February 13th is a day of quiet reflection for me now: the day I was born (1963) and the day my mother died (2023).
 
In the Bhagavad Gita it is written: Learned is he to whom the mystery of birth and death is revealed. [1]
 
But I'm not a Hindu and don't particularly wish to be learned in the religious sense indicated here. For I remain sceptical of the idea that there is a mystery to be revealed. And even if there is, I prefer that Isis remain veiled and keep her secrets. 
 
 
II. 
 
Not that the idea of reincarnation is much of a mystery any longer. For it's common knowledge that Hindus believe that the salvational goal is to fully realise the self as some kind of pure, unchanging spiritual essence following a series of material and transient incarnations.
 
Birth and death are facts of little real importance, according to Hindu teaching. What matters is liberating the soul from this cycle so that it may achieve lasting perfection in the great sea of Being that lies beyond life and death.   
 
Thus we can say of the great Hindu gurus what Lawrence says of Buddha, Plato, and Jesus; namely, that these grand idealists were utter pessimists, teaching that Truth lay in "abstracting oneself from the daily, yearly, seasonal life of birth and death and fruition, and in living in the 'immutable' or eternal spirit" [2]
 
Personally, I don't want to move from the known world to the unknown world; from the visible to the invisible; from the seen to the unseen. I know, as Lawrence knew, that such abstraction brings "neither bliss nor liberation, but nullity" [3].
 
I'm happy to live and die and be endlessly reincarnated in the flesh like a karma chameleon forever changing colour, shape, form, etc., and I don't want to lose myself in the infinite completeness of the Whole thank you very much. 
 
If that means never being free from desire, pain, anxiety, and delusion - never obtaining supreme wisdom or eternal peace - well, again, that's fine with me. 
 
When holy fools tell me I must learn not to identify with the objects of the world I immediately wish to bring one of these objects crashing down on their heads; when they tell me not to become attached to my body I want to give them a kick up the arse. 

To conclude, if I may, with another quotation from Lawrence: 
 
"For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh." [4] 


Notes 
 
[1] The Bhagavad Gita ('Song of God') is a 700-verse Hindu scripture, which forms chapters 23-40 of Book 6 of the epic Mahabharata called the Bhishma Parva. The work is dated to the second half of the first millennium BC.
 
[2] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', published together with Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 330.
 
[3] Ibid., p. 331.
 
[4] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 149. 
 
 
This post is for all those who were born (like me and Kim Novak) or who died (like my mother and Richard Wagner) on this day. 


7 Feb 2024

Notes on 'The Crisis of Narration' by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1)

(Polity Press, 2024)
 
 
I. 
 
Byung-Chul Han has had a new book published in English translation: The Crisis of Narration [a]
 
It's another slim little work which, like Jason Alexander's Acting Without Acting (2009), is not so much a book as a pamphlet [b]. Nevertheless, I coughed up the £12.99 asking price on Amazon for the paperback and thought I would offer a running commentary on it here as I read it over dinner ...
 
 
II.   
 
Han provides a short preface that opens: "Everyone is talking about 'narratives'." [vii] 
 
And I had to smile at this assertion as I can't imagine anyone outside of academia ever using the word narrative and although the word crisis is very popular with politicians and political commentators - the cost of living crisis, the NHS crisis, Middle East crisis, etc. - I don't think they care too much about the crisis of narration
 
But maybe they should: because maybe Han is right to argue that narratives provide our anchor in being and furnish life with "meaning, support and orientation" [vii]. So perhaps we need the return of narration and to give back to narratives their power and gravitational force

But that won't be easy in an age in which narratives have lost their mystery. We all know now that they are constructed and don't possess any essential inner truth, having been revealed to be "contingent, exchangeable and modifiable" [viii].

Han is acutely aware of this. He knows that we are living in a post-narrative time - which is really just another way of saying a secular age in which God is dead. For the kind of narratives that Han values are basically religious narratives that reach into "every nook and cranny of life" [viii]

The problem is, I'm not sure I want to live in a new age of narrative if that means living once more in a theocratic society. Having to lose ritual and festivity is probably a price worth paying for not being ruled over by a priestly caste. And besides, I'm not convinced that being anchored in being necessitates being mired in faith and religious dogma. 

I prefer what Han terms micro-narratives over grand narratives that transform our being-in-the-world into a being-at-home; I don't want to be domesticated in the name of  truth, thank you very much. Nor do I want to belong to a concluding form that creates a closed order founded upon meaning and identity 
 
I guess this makes me a recalcitrant postmodernist in Han's eyes; still kicking against the idea of belonging to any community or returning to some past ideal. Ultimately, I'm with D. H. Lawrence who famously declared: 
 
"I don't want to live again the tribal mysteries [...] I don't want to know as I have known [...] My way is my own [...] I can't cluster at the drum any more." [c]  
 
Of course, Han also knows there is no going back: 
 
"No amount of storytelling could recreate the fire around which humans gather to tell each other stories. That fire has long since burnt out. It has been replaced by the digital screen, which separates people as individual consumers. Consumers are lonely. They do not form a community. Nor can the 'stories' shared on social media fill the narrative vacuum. They are merely forms of pornographic self-presentation or self-promotion. Posting, liking and sharing content are consumerist practices that intensify the narrative crisis." [ix]

Does that include blogging, I wonder ... 
 
I rather suspect Han would say it does; that he would dismiss the fragments of fiction-theory assembled here on Torpedo the Ark as being forgetful of being and lacking empathy; that posts such as this one simply inform and pass the word along without ever providing a meaningful narrative or creating a genuine community. 
 
The fact that the posts are typed on a laptop is, Han would argue, "already a barrier to the telling of stories" [xi]. Well, I'm sorry but the days when I would handwrite poems and leave them in public places or hidden in tree hollows for people to find by chance are long behind me.
 
Perhaps Han initially writes his books in blood and narrates them in person to a select few followers who know how to listen closely and pay deep attention: I don't know. But I do know he has also agreed to the commercial publication of over twenty works, translated into many languages, and sold all over the world, so I'm not going to take too much shit from him on this matter. 
 
Having said that, let's follow him as he traces out the long pre-history of the present narrative crisis ...   


III.
 
The first chapter of Han's new book opens with an attack on those who prefer local news rather than hearing news from afar. For Han being interested about what is happening close to home shows a form of attention deficit:
 
"The newspaper reader's attention extends only to what is near. It shrinks to mere curiosity. The modern newspaper reader jumps from one news item to the next, instead of letting her gaze drift into the distance and linger. The modern reader has lost the long, slow, lingering gaze." [1]    
 
This surprises me. And, as a Lawrentian, I obviously cannot let it pass ... 
 
One recalls, for example, that Richard Somers loved nothing more than to read bits in the Sydney Bulletin - "the only periodical in the world that really amused him" [d] - even if it didn't provide an earnest editorial narrative. The assembled bits had real vitality: "There was no consecutive thread. Only the laconic courage of experience." [e] 
 
And one thinks also of the essay 'Insouciance' in which Lawrence condemns his neighbours at a Swiss hotel - "two little white-haired English ladies" [f] - for sweeping him off his balcony with all the latest news from abroad: "away from the glassy lake, the veiled mountains, the two men mowing, and the cherry-trees, away into the troubled ether of international politics" [g]
 
Lawrence is curious and concerned about the immediate world that is physically present before him - that is actually there - but he doesn't care about gazing into the distance and feigning interest in what happens in every corner of the earth or in numerous abstract issues.   
 
Does this make Somers a modern reader? Does it make Lawrence less of a thinker; a lover only of information and triviality? Han seems to want the earnestness that Lawrence hates; to privilege news stories that possess a temporal breadth and the power of destiny. But we might ask if there has ever been a newspaper that never explains or informs, but only narrates in a manner that is both wondrous and mysterious
 
It's hard to imagine Herodotus working on Fleet Street, as much as Han may wish it. 
 
One might at this point wonder why, if Han longs for stories that are more like seeds of grain - full of germinal force - rather than specks of dust, he doesn't simply read works of literature and give the tabloids a miss. Well, it's because, like Walter Benjamin, he thinks modern novels also mark the decline of narrative; the latter is an expression of a community, whereas the novel is all about bourgeois individualism.
 
Still, as bad as modern works of fiction are, "the ultimate decline of narration comes not with the novel but with the rise of information under capitalism" [5].    
 
Information technology doesn't allow us to rest, to relax, to be bored; it "drives the dream bird away" [5] and stops us listening carefully (for Han the narrative community is one which immerses itself in what it hears). 
 
In a crucial passage, Han writes:
 
"On the internet [...] the dream bird cannot build a nest. The information seekers drive him away. In today's state of hyperactivity, where boredom is not allowed to emerge, we never reach the state of deep mental relaxation. The information society is an age of heightened mental tension, because the essence of information is surprise and the stimulus it provides. The tsunami of information means that our perceptual apparatus is permanently stimulated. It can no longer enter into contemplation. The tsunami of information fragments our attention. It prevents the contempative lingering that is essential to narrating and careful listening." [6]
 
It's a nice passage: classic Han. And I find it hard to disagree with anything he says here. His fundamental argument that in a digital era reality itself is turned into information and human beings are no more than living data sets, is quite clearly the case. 
 
And whilst some would simply shrug and ask so what, I can't help feeling, like Han, that this is not a good thing and will result in a new form of algorithmic domination which "hides behind the illusion of freedom and communication" [7]
   
 
Notes
 
[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narration, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2024). The work was originally published as Die Krise der Narration (Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2023). Page numbers given here refer to the English edition.    

[b] See the season 7 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'Seinfeld', written by Larry David and dir. Jeff Schaffer (November 2009). To watch the scene I'm referring to on Youtube, click here
 
[c] D. H. Lawrence, 'Indians and an Englishman', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 120.  

[d] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 269. 

[e] Ibid., p. 272

[f] D. H. Lawrence, 'Insouciance', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 95. 

 
Part 2 of this post can be read by clicking here
 
Part 3 of this post can be read by clicking here


2 Feb 2024

On the Ball with D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence: Spring (c. January 1929)
watercolour (30 x 22.5 cm)
 
 
I. 
 
John Worthen's short piece in the latest Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies [1] concerning Lawrence's time as a pupil-teacher in Eastwood, is interesting for the revelation that the latter liked nothing better than to arrange an informal kickabout in the school playground during the lunch break, using bricks - and perhaps even jumpers - for goal posts. 
 
Although it seems Lawrence did not himself participate as a player, he was happy to act as a referee and so clearly understood the rules of the beautiful game - just like any other working-class lad at the time - even if there is no evidence (so far) to suggest he supported a local team [2].
 
Knowing this allows us to look at the above painting - Spring (1929) - with fresh eyes; perhaps Lawrence was not merely painting some local youths in the lovely French seaside resort of Bandol celebrating the scoring of a goal during a soccer match, but also fondly recalling the passion with which his own pupils at the Albert Street School would play the game ...
 
 
II.  
 
Funny enough, this picture by Lawrence is one that Keith Sagar seems to particularly loathe:
 
"Spring is supposed to be a painting of some boys in Bandol playing football, but by removing the blue shirts they wore in the first version of the painting, leaving them wearing nothing but boots, and by having all but one of them engage in activities which, whether homoerotic or not, have certainly nothing to do with the ball, he produces a ludicrous painting." [3]
 
The problem, however, is that whilst Sagar was a great Lawrence scholar, he was not, alas, a very good art critic and he misses the opportunity to recognise Lawrence's importance as a painter [4]. There is, I would suggest, a very special violence - and, indeed, a very special beauty - that emerges from his canvases as part of an art of sensation.
 
Lawrence does not wish to reduce his figures to the level of optical cliché; he is not trying to capture a likeness! Nor is he simply revealing and celebrating the flesh, he is rather pushing it in the direction of deformation and disfiguration (anatomical fidelity is no more an issue for Lawrence than it was for Cézanne).  

And so, returning to Spring ... 
 
Expecting and wanting to see an actual game of football, Sagar is irritated by the fact that Lawrence provides sensation rather than spectacle and that he is as uninterested in the score-line, the colour of the kits, or the intricacies of the offside rule, as the boys who play for the joy felt by healthy young bodies exerting themselves, the love of team mates, the ecstasy of celebration, etc. 
 
Spring demonstrates Lawrence's appreciation of the fact that football - and, indeed, sport in general - expresses and liberates certain vital forces and flows.   
 
 
Notes
 
[1] See John Worthen, 'D. H. Lawrence as Games Organiser and Football Referee', Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies, Volume 6, Number 3, ed. Susan Reid  (D. H. Lawrence Society, 2023), pp. 11-16.    

[2] Lawrence might have supported Notts County; the oldest professional football club in the world, formed in 1862; or Nottingham Forest, formed three years later; or Derby County, formed in 1884, and one of the twelve founding members of the Football League in 1888.
 
[3] Keith Sagar, Introduction to D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, (Chaucer Press, 2003), p. 68.

[4] What I mean by this is that Sagar thinks it sufficient to carefully establish the connections between Lawrence's life, writing, and painting, thereby framing the pictures in a bio-literary context. But in simply substituting snippets of biographical detail, personal anecdote, and literary criticism for a genuine analysis of Lawrence's paintings - i.e., one that is written in the terms appropriate to a discussion of a practice primarily concerned with colour and line - Sagar produces a somewhat pointless commentary which not only betrays his own ignorance of the plastic arts, but also his ultimate lack of confidence in Lawrence’s ability to draw.


1 Feb 2024

Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024: Pubic Hair and Porcelain Faces

Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024 [1]
 
 
I was pleased to see that John Galliano decided to experiment with an older ideal of female beauty in his latest collection for Maison Margiela; one with tiny waists, wide hips, and (at least the illusion of) hairy genitalia.
 
For I've long been interested in the question of female body hair and its removal; particularly from the pubic area due to a porno-aesthetic convention shaping our idea of what constitutes desirability. As I wrote in a post published back in January 2013:  

"I am slightly troubled by this trend. For whilst I understand the appeal of the hairless pussy on grounds that range from the practical to the perverse, still I can't help regretting the universal Brazilianization of women as I recall the words of Henry Miller: 'It doesn't look like a cunt anymore; it's like a dead clam or something. It's the hair that makes it mysterious.' [2]  
 
So, well done to Galliano for his use of couture merkins, fashioned from real human hair and visible beneath the sheer dresses worn by models. Perhaps this will start a new trend and maybe even encourage some women to go easy with the wax or refrain from relentlessly shaving every single hair [3].
 
 
II.
 
Of course, Galliano isn't really interested in reviving a more natural model of femininity. As he once admitted long ago, he hates female breasts for ruining the line of his designs.
 
And as the hyper-shiny complexion of his models indicates [4], his queer and slightly uncanny fantasy is to make a real woman resemble a porcelain doll; or perhaps bring the latter to life, fitting her out with all the secondary sexual characteristics of genuine womanhood, and then having her walk down the catwalk looking like a lurid Edwardian prostitute.  

To quote D. H. Lawrence: "It's just weird. And for its very weirdness women like living up to it." [5] But they might do well to remember, however, that the moment they take on that artificial china doll face, the fashion will change and the demand will be for something else.  
 
Having said that, Galliano does have a certain decadent genius and I can't help admiring his latest collection - just as my own perverse interest in the (related) topics of pygmalionism, agalmatophilia, and dollification make it hard for me not to adore the perfect porcelain features of the model pictured above. 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] The Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024 by John Galliano was shown underneath the arches of what for many is most beautiful - certainly the most ornate - bridge in all Paris, the Pont Alexandre III. Click here to watch the show - inspired in part by Brassï’s dimly lit, over exposed nighttime photos taken in Montmarte in the 1920s and '30s - on YouTube.  
 
[2] See the post entitled 'Epilation' (8 Jan 2013) from where I quote this passage.
 
[3] Perhaps. But probably not. I suspect that all the body positive and natural beauty stuff will make little difference within a pornified culture. Some readers might recall that the visual merchandising team at American Apparel tried something similar to Galliano at their East Houston Street store in NYC ten years ago to little effect. See the post 'On Mannequins With Merkins' (21 Jan 2014).
 
[4] The astonishing glass skin make-up worn by the models was created by Pat McGrath; a long time collaborator of Galliano's - from his days at Dior until now at Maison Margiela, where he was appointed creative director in 2014. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Give Her a Pattern', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 163. 


27 Jan 2024

Forest Bathing

A Walk in the Woods by Frosted Moonlight 
 (SA/2024)
 
 
Having taken an early morning stroll in the woods by the light of a frosted moon, I'm sympathetic to the claim made by many dendrophiles that being in the company of trees is beneficial to one's physical and mental wellbeing. 
 
That even a short walk in the woods - depressing  as this can be when one sees all the litter and fly-tipped items including paint pots, pushchairs and printers - can help lower blood pressure, keep sugar levels balanced, boost immune systems and even improve cognitive function.     
 
Of course, the Japanese living in a land that is still two-thirds covered with a vast number and diversity of trees, have known this for many years and have even coined a (relatively recent) term [1] for finding oneself by losing oneself amongst them: shinrin-yoku - known in English as forest bathing
 
But the Japanese are not unique in recognising the health benefits of this practice; the Roman author Pliny the Elder, for example, argued that the scent of a pine forest was extremely beneficial to those suffering with respiratory problems or recuperating from a long illness. 
 
And I've written on several occasions about D. H. Lawrence's great fascination with trees: click here, for example. 
 
Like Lawrence, I'm conscious of the fact that you can never really know a tree - something which is so much bigger and stronger in life than we are - but only "sit among the roots and nestle against its strong trunk" [2], in silent contemplation [3]. But that's good enough for me. 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] The term shinrin-yoku was coined in 1982 by Tomohide Akiyama - Director of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries - who, worried by increasing urbanisation, hoped to inspire the Japanese public to reconnect with nature and protect their forests by reminding them of the free health benefits that the latter afforded them.   
 
[2] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 86. 

[3] Having said that, Rupert Birkin does rather more than sit in silence with his favourite young sapling; see chapter VIII of Lawrence's novel Women in Love (1920). I discuss dendrophilia in its erotic (and daimonic) aspect in a post published here on 3 October 2020: click here 


25 Jan 2024

Petrophilia: A Brief Note on the Geochemical Origin of Life and the Religious Worship of Rocks

Der Nietzsche-Stein [1]
 
 
I. 
 
According to Deleuze and Guattari, not only do plants and animals sing and express themselves, so too do rocks [2]. I don't quite know what they mean by this, but as a petrophile, it's always been an idea that resonated with me. 
 
Of course, I know that rocks are not alive. But I also know that biochemistry rests upon geochemistry and that researchers have shown how rocks and minerals play a crucial role in almost every phase of life's emergence; catalysing, for example, the synthesis of biomolecules, and kick-starting metabolism [3]
 
In fact, according to the British organic chemist and molecular biologist Graham Cairns-Smith, the very earliest form of life was possibly a type of clay mineral able to carry genetic information and evolve. This is a provocative and controversial claim, but one that has been taken seriously by philosophers interested in the question of what does and does not constitute life [4].
 
We usually think of the latter as being carbon-based and involving cells containing DNA. But Cairns-Smith obliges us to ask if that was always the case - and must it always be the same on distant alien planets? 
 
 
II. 
 
When feeling in a slightly less scientific and more religious frame of mind, I'm also tempted to agree with D. H. Lawrence that from the smallest stone to the greatest rock we find God made manifest [5]
 
It seems that those ancient pagans who practiced their pantheism in material (non-abstract) terms were profoundly right to do so; for "everything that has being has being in the flesh" [6].
 
Interestingly, we might note in closing how even some modern Christians celebrate Jesus as the Rock of Ages, i.e., an unfailing and seemingly everlasting presence in their lives [7].  
 
 
Notes
 
[1] According to Nietzsche, the central idea of Thus Spoke Zarathustra - i.e., the idea of eternal recurrence - came to him when he encountered this large rock on the shores of Lake Silvaplana (Switzerland).
 
[2] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 44.
 
[3] See Robert M. Hazen (ed.), 'Genesis: Rocks, Minerals, and the Geochemical Origin of Life', Elements Vol. 1 (June 2005), pp. 135-137.
 
[4] See Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith, Seven Clues to the Origin of Life, (Cambridge University Press, 1985).
      This book popularized the clay hypothesis, which promoted the idea that self-replication of clay crystals in solution might provide a simple intermediate step between biologically inert matter and organic life.
 
[5] See D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 95.
 
[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Bodiless God', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 605. See also the poem 'The Body of God' on the same page of the above.
 
[7] This well-known Christian hymn written by Reformed Anglican minister Augustus Toplady was first published (in full and with a revised first verse) in The Gospel Magazine in March 1776.