Ventiak
an island somewhere in the brain
Rupert in pursuit of Janice is a curious thing to observe, once you realise what is going on. Rupert's notion of a social relationship is to convince you that he is right or, at the very least, to demonstrate his knowledge of some scientific or philosophical subject. Janice, of course, is quite happy to be the admiring listener but she is not about to give up her independence of mind.
'Electricity,' she says. 'That's such a weird thing, you know? I just can't get my head around it.' Is this a baited hook or an innocent remark? Either way, Rupert falls for it. He starts to explain.
All goes well for several minutes, until he gets to to the bit about the current going one way and the electrons that make it up going the other.
Janice interrupts him. 'Electrons. Atoms and so on. That doesn't make any sense either, does it? I mean, they can't be real, can they?'
'Of course they're real!' Rupert sounds truly surprised that anyone could think otherwise.
'Tables and chairs are real. Trees and flowers. Things you can see.'
'What about the wind?' Rupert asks. 'Is that real?'
'Of course.'
'You can't see it.'
'You can feel it, though.'
'What is it, then?'
'The air moving,' she says.
'What's the air?'
'I don't know.' She shrugs. 'It is what it is. Dirt is dirt and air is air. I don't see it really helps to say it's made of... what are they?'
'Molecules.'
'Right. And then to say that those are made up of protons and neutrons or pylons or polons.'
'Or nylons or colons,' Trevor says. He's been listening to the conversation with a widening grin on his face.
'Whatever,' Janice says. 'I mean, I don't know anything but it all just seems a bit silly.'
'You're happy enough to enjoy the fruits of it,' Rupert tells her. He's affronted now. And confused. This is not going the way he planned. He can only make it worse.
'Like what?'
'Transistor radios. Modern medicine. Cell phones.'
'I hate cell phones,' she says.
'But the existence of those things are all evidence that science is true, aren't they?'
'Maybe.' She is reluctant to concede. Trevor comes to her aid.
'Evidence isn't proof,' he says.
Rupert hesitates. He knows Trevor is right. He might have made the same remark himself on another occasion.
Trevor continues. 'A dead bird in the flowerbed might be evidence there's a cat around but it isn't proof.'
'No,' Rupert agrees. 'Scientific theories are underdetermined, you're right.'
'But doesn't that mean you could have a completely different theory to quantum mechanics, say, and it could produce the same or even better results?'
'In theory, yes. In practice...' Rupert leaves the sentence hanging.
'In practice that's just the way things happen to be.'
'Poor bird,' Janice says.
I will live to regret this new arrangement. Felix has reminded me that I agreed that everyone could have a turn - their 15 kilobytes of fame, as it were. He insists on using his moment to broadcast his latest poetic work. It is, I am reliably informed, a Miltonic sonnet.
ON HIS BLANDNESS
When I consider how my life is spent,
Cast forth upon the spirit’s tidal surge,
My being subject to that universal urge
That drives my soul to wonder and invent,
Though knowing not the way the twig is bent
I take the modern world’s aesthetic purge
And through my pain I hear the doleful dirge
That marks the path the Shade of Beauty went.I hear her footfall mid the starlit trees
And sense her presence in my future way
Though I'm unworthy as a hapless duck
Or dandelion seed upon a sneeze
Pursued by Hounds of Paradise at bay,
Convincing me that I'm fresh out of luck.
The rest, I fear, is silence.
Felix has a point to make. He introduces it by singing The Lost Chord to us, all seven verses, in a booming baritone. At the end of the sixth verse, though, his voice cracks with emotion.
'There!' he says when it's done. 'That's what it's about. Just that.'
'I don't get it,' Janice says.
So he quotes us,
'I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the organ,
And entered into mine.'
And again, at the last two lines, he gives a half-sob and his eyes moisten.
'Just that,' he says. 'The ceaseless searching of the spirit and that harmony, that harmony between the inanimate physical thing and the inner being. The wonder of the sunset, the terrifying beauty of the rose, the way in which one is called out of oneself. This is art, truly.'
'Yes,' I have to admit. 'You might be right.'
'So what has this got to do with absurdity?'
'Everything,' I say. 'A rose is a rose is a rose, according to Gertrude Stein, but in the next moment it also has the terrifying beauty you describe. And have you ever consider that the singer of the Lost Chord may have subsequently found the chord on many occasions and just not recognised it?'
'Impossible!' he shouts. 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.'
'If you were hungry enough, that rose might look pretty tasty,' Trevor tells him.
'Harmony between matter and the spirit. This, my friends, is the only way to enlightenment.' He pauses. His eyes grow round for a moment and then he rushes into the house.
'I think that's a poem coming on,' I say.
Amanda sighs. 'Pray God we don't have to listen to it.'
'He's right, though. Don't you think?' I have another idea. 'And the fact that it's a Victorian parlour song just goes to reinforce the point. I mean we think The Lost Chord's a bit of a joke these days but it was no doubt a deeply moving experience a hundred and forty years ago.'
'Not a dry eye in the house,' Amanda says, dryly
In Rupert's view, of course, only a scientific justification can give anything the semblance of truth so when Amanda mentioned my latest theory to him, I had my answer ready.
'My view is soundly based in human evolution,' I told him. (Evolution is about the only basis for anything human that Rupert will accept.)
'How so?' he asked.
'I explained that several weeks ago. Absurdity is an inevitable outcome of the ability to change perspective and changing perspective is a necessary result of empathy and empathy comes down from our little old Pleistocene ancestors, right?' The logic here is somewhat tenuous and I knew that Rupert wouldn't miss the opportunity to point this out. It seemed best therefore to go straight onto the attack.
'In any case,' I said, 'perhaps you can explain to me the evolutionary advantage of logical positivism.'
'What's that got to do with anything?' he asked.
'Although, I do recall that A J Ayer was a great man for the ladies, wasn't he? And if Geoffrey Miller's right, any piece of human theorising might play its part in the dance of the sexes. Logic and love songs. I mean, there are people who find philosophers very sexy.'
'Who?' He sounded almost belligerent but was there also a hint of desperation in his tone?
'Janice, maybe?' And lo and behold rupert blushed to the roots of his hair. Oh, dear.
I have been thinking further about the dark side of absurdity – the tragic face, if you like. This is a sense that life has lost its meaning. It may be forced on you by events but it may just happen, all of a sudden. You just wake up one morning and you realise that the career or the relationship or the political cause you have devoted your life to means nothing to you anymore. It is as if you have been walking on solid ground and it suddenly gives way beneath your feet so that you are in danger of being sucked into a void. These can be deeply disruptive moments, moments that seem to threaten your identity, even your existence.
Sixty or so years ago, Albert Camus wrote about this sort of thing in The Myth of Sisyphus - an essay of about a hundred pages written in occupied France, when Fascism and Nazism had conquered most of Europe. It asks if life has any meaning and if it doesn’t, whether or not a rational person should therefore commit suicide. Camus answers this question not by appealing to God or to some set of abstract values but by an existential argument, which is in one sense a piece of intellectual trickery but in another, perhaps, an intriguing insight into what it is to be a human being. Life, he says, is absurd and, because of this, its absurdity is the only truth we know. The only way to preserve the truth is to preserve the consciousness that apprehends it. Suicide is not a logical outcome of this situation. On the contrary, it is an irrational act.
The idea that by embracing the absurdity you are embracing life, really appeals to meal. Apart from anything else, it seems to justify a generally humanist position on many issues and it has, too, a pragmatic feel to it. In previous posts, I suppose I have been trying to suggest an absurd aesthetic. Maybe, though, there could be other developments – an absurd psychology or an absurd ethics. Who knows where it might end?
‘So,’ Amanda said. ‘Explain yourself.’
‘You sound like Rupert.’ I told her.
‘Well, you’re always on about the ridiculous being serious and vice versa. What I want to know is can you give me a sensible statement of that or is it just all piffle?’
‘You want a theory?’
‘Is that such a terrible thing to ask?’
‘No. I suppose not. I mean, I like theories. They’re a lot of fun and they can sometimes give you the illusion that you understand something.’
‘I’m trying,’ she said, with only hint of sarcasm.
‘A philosophical position, then? Well, okay. Why not? I think I’ll have to start with Nagel again. Let’s suppose that to be conscious, to be fully alive in the human sense, means having a point of view. The essence of a point of view, however, is that it can change. So, to be a human being is to be capable of seeing things in different ways from one moment to the next. To my mind, the best exemplar of that is appreciating how absurd things are.’
‘So thinking things are ridiculous means you’re fully human?’
‘The capacity to see and appreciate the contradictions and the general madness in our lives.’ It sounded very portentous, if not pretentious.
‘Seeing the funny side?’ These little questions are often the precursor of Amanda passing judgement. I could sense it coming, although I wasn’t sure what it was going to be.
‘Not necessarily,’ I told. ‘Absurd things aren’t always funny. The situation in Iraq is absurd but it certainly isn’t funny.’
‘It’s tragic,’ she said.
‘Exactly. Absurdity has two faces – the funny side and the deadly serious side. One way to understand it is as a change in point of view accompanied by a dislocation of value. The sense that something you were taking very seriously and that you thought was going really well is actually turning to custard and you can do nothing about it. Isn’t that how the Americans must feel about Iraq?’
‘Hmmm,’ she said. Was she actually going to agree with me? I felt a sudden sense of achievement. Convincing Amanda of something is no mean feat.
‘But it doesn’t have to be big things,’ I went on. ‘It’s really at the heart of everyday experience. You are playing golf or making love or painting the ceiling and you suddenly realise how ridiculous you look. You feel a surge of surprise. You want to laugh. Perhaps you’re overcome by a fit of giggles.’
‘I don’t play golf and I don’t giggle. That’s Janice, you’re talking about now.’
‘Does Janice play golf?’ I asked.
‘I’ve no idea. But I certainly don’t. What did Bernard Shaw say? A waste of a good walk.’
‘I think it was Mark Twain.’
‘Was it? Oh, well.’ She looked at me. ‘I suppose you want to know what I think of this little theory of yours.’
‘Not much,’ I suggested.
‘No, not much. I suppose you’re right in a way, though. Being able to see the madness in it all is one of the hallmarks of being a human being. But so what? We just have to get on with it, don’t we?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ I said.