A Theory of Nostalgia

The sort of nostalgia to which I am most inclined is a nostalgia for particular moments. They might be forty years ago or they might be four months ago. (It usually takes a few months for them to settle into my memory.)

The strange thing is that these moments of nostalgia often have no obvious explanation. I may have been doing something completely mundane when they occur. They might even come at a very stressful time or in the midst of dejection.

Here is my theory: at every moment, we are experiencing and assessing the world according to a multitude of criteria, most of which are dark to our own vision-- that is, we don't even realize we are applying them.

For instance, if we walk into a room, and the colour combination is pleasing to us, we might not even register this consciously. Or perhaps the sound of traffic outside the building is calming at that moment.

Those are only the intrinsic factors, the ones you could list off from examining the particular setting you're in. But there are any number of others. There are psychological factors-- something triggers a memory, an association, a comparison that is somehow pleasing. Or perhaps you were anxious about something which has recently been settled. Or perhaps something in the news that day has pleased you somehow-- it might not even be a good news story, but perhaps a bad news story that you find somehow bracing.

In any case, my theory is that all these factors come together in a given moment, or at least enough of them to cause a flood of wellbeing or excitement or delight. Like a fruit machine with a hundred windows all showing the same fruit at once. (I've never actually used a fruit machine.)

I've noticed that such moments of nostalgia often take years for me to "decipher", and even then they only seem partially deciphered. So perhaps other people are like me in this regard.

Feast of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although it's an obscure feast it dates back to at least 1684.

Interestingly, it was removed from the liturgical calendar after Vatican II, but re-introduced by my guy, St. John Paul II-- along with the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus.

I find the "name" feasts very interesting, along with the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus (which occurs on Shrove Tuesday). I like how anti-rationalistic they are, although that's a negative way to put it. Maybe I could better say they are particularistic.

I do believe that the name of Jesus has a special power. I don't know how to elaborate on that theologically, but it seems an observable fact that just invoking the name of Jesus changes the atmosphere in a room. Of course, that could be explained non-supernaturally. Supernatural or non-supernatural, I'm all for it.

I personally prefer to use the name "Jesus" than "Our Lord", for this very reason. And don't get me started on "BVM", a usage I can't stand, even if it's been used by saints and bishops (as it might well have been, for all I know). I also dislike the abbreviation of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick to "Mary I." (Every year I fight back against "Paddy's Day", despite being a defender of "paddywhackery" more generally.)

I struggle with Marian devotion. It's never come naturally to me. But I keep praying to be cured of this.

Back when I was an agnostic, I wrote a poem about the name of Jesus, though I took it from a rather negative perspective. I wrote this in 2005:

Jesus

Even the name is difficult to say,
Except as a curse.
Now even the dying hardly think to pray
And even prayers get by without the name
Since we found all gods to be more or less the same.
But the echo of that sound won’t go away–
The roll of the tombstone filled the universe.
And the words that the Bible-printers put in red
Live on in daily breath, carelessly spoken.
Some try, like a girl whose heart's been broken
To speak that name in an even voice.
But all our sleepless nights down centuries,
The weight of Tartarus and Paradise,
Won’t vanish. Something sturdier than faith
Lurks under all our jokes, our ironies.
And the atheist and the old man on his knees
Still share a world watched over by a wraith.

This Office Life

I've just finished watching This Office LIfe, a TV comedy that aired on the BBC in 1984. Someone has uploaded it onto YouTube.

It was written by Keith Waterhouse, who also wrote the novel from which it was based. I read the novel many years ago. I think I was in my early twenties when I read it. It was one of Waterhouse's better novels, though not a patch on his masterpiece Billy Liar.

Both the novel and TV adaptation feature something of an everyman character (or perhaps someone slightly dimmer than an everyman) who goes to work in a company called British Albion, a labyrinthine and bureaucratic company typical of the time. (Or perhaps somewhat more typical of the seventies, when the novel was published.) But the odd thing about British Albion is that nobody seems to know what they actually do.

My memory of the book is that it was a rather light satire on corporate bureaucracy for about half of its length, after which it became an equally light Kafkaesque mystery. I preferred the mystery to the satire. Satirizing office life is shooting fish in a barrel. Besides, how many people are now nostalgic for that "stultifying" corporate environment of the past?

Whether or not my memory of the novel is accurate, the TV version leans much more towards the Kafkaesque mystery. The mild surrealism kicks in very early. One effective visual has a man in a gorilla suit banging on the glass doors of the company's reception area, as a sort of incidental background event. He turns out to be a novelty act for an office birthday party. In a later scene, "Administration Services" is directly across the corridor from "Services Administration", and is staffed by the same guy.

A central plot point involves The Albion Players, the company's own amateur dramatic troupe. I'm guessing that, when the show was broadcast, this was something that might actually exist. I love the idea and I'm sad that this kind of thing became obsolete.

The story itself is absorbing and suspenseful enough to keep you watching, with a few reasonable twists, and an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

The only review of any length that I can find is on the Curious British Telly Substack. Not a single person has reviewed it on IMDB.

I never know whether anyone takes up my suggestions when it comes to these "recommended viewing" posts. So if you do watch it, let me know.

The Liturgical Calendar and Mystical Experiences

Here is an interesting passage from a Catholic Exchange article about Therese Neumann, a supposed stigmatist and visionary from Germany who died in 1962. (I use the word "supposed" not to convey scepticism, but only because she has not yet had any official recognition from Church auhorities.)

Therese’s sufferings and visions conformed exactly to the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.  Just as she received the wounds of the Crucifixion on Good Friday, so also were her visions and ecstasies aligned to the liturgical calendar.  For example, when she initially received the sacred stigmata, it was during the liturgical season of Lent.  Although Therese had the wounds of the Passion for the rest of her life, she only experienced the ecstasies of the Passion on Fridays, and only on Fridays during Lent and Advent, and on some of the sorrowful octaves.  Thus, her experience of the Passion was connected only to the relevant liturgical days, and never during joyful seasons, such as Christmas or Easter.  On the Fridays when she did not endure the Passion ecstasy, she would have a vision of the death or martyrdom of the saint whose feast day it happened to be, in recognition of the liturgical calendar.  On All Saints Day, November 1st, she would have a 24-hour ecstasy and see souls of saints from Heaven, and similarly on All Soul’s Day, November 2nd, she saw saints from Purgatory.  Based on the timing of the mystical experiences of Therese Neumann, it seems heaven honors with great respect the liturgical calendar; perhaps we should pay close attention to this as well.

This alignment of mystical experience with the liturgical calendar isn't unique to her case, either.

Full article here.

When Can The British Be Patriotic Again?

 I'm not talking about patriotism based on "shared values" or any of that lark.

I've just started watching the miniseries This Office Life, taken from a Keith Waterhouse novel written in 1978. (I read it a long time ago. It was pretty good.)

The company it's about is called "British Albion Limited."

This seemed pretty common at this time. For instance, there's the Britannia Hospital in the roughly contemporary film of the same name. Both fictional, but realistic.

Why can't British companies call themselves after Albion or Britannia or the Lion and the Unicorn or any of those regal, splendid names?

When is this sort of naive patriotism going to come back?

My Latest Cartoon

I especially like "guy in bed" cartoons and I'm going to do more of them. 

("Guy" because I'm not good at drawing women. Or, if you prefer, I'm even worse at drawing women than at drawing men!)

Poems I Like: Father O'Flynn

This one isn't really a poem, but rather the words to a song. But it can be read as a poem.

I'm not claiming this is great poetry, but I've found myself thinking of it lately. Lines from it have come into my mind unbidden.

I've always liked it. It's gentle, sentimental, and good-natured. It's well-written, too-- there's nothing awkward or crude about it. And it's a reminder of a time when priests in Ireland were admired for being priests-- not for being social crusaders who happened to wear dog collars. I very much like the fact that Father O'Flynn is lauded in the poem for being something of a disciplinarian.

As for the Irishisms:: "Sláinte" is the Irish version of "Cheers" or "To your health!" (you probably knew that), "Father avick" means (rather nonsensically) "Father, my son", and there are two renderings of Irish dialect that might throw you: "onaisy" just means "uneasy", and "Is it lave gaiety all to the laity?" means "Should we leave gaiety all to the laity?".

"Dad and the devil and all" seems to mean "everybody". I've never heard "Dad" used in that way but that's what the context suggests. It's probably a contraction of "Bedad", which is a dated Irish exclamation.

My favourite verse is the one that begins: "Oh, Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way with you..."

This poem was written by Alfred Perceval Graves. I never knew, until I looked him up just now, that he was Robert Graves's father. Robert Graves is a poet I've never admired at all, although I can see he had talent. I've never read I, Claudius and I'm never going to. Historical novels are not to my taste.

Father O'Flynn by Alfred Perceval Graves

Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety,
Far renowned for larnin' and piety;
Still, I'd advance ye, widout impropriety,
Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.

Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,
Slainté, and slainté, and slainté agin;
Powerfulest preacher, and
Tenderest teacher, and
Kindliest creature in ould Donegal.

Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,
Famous for ever at Greek and Latinity,
Dad and the divels and all at Divinity,
Father O'Flynn'd make hares of them all!
Come, I venture to give you my word,
Never the likes of his logic was heard,
Down from Mythology
Into Thayology,
Troth! and Conchology if he'd the call.

Och! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you,
All the ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you,
All the young childer are wild for to play wid you,
You've such a way wid you, Father avick!
Still for all you've so gentle a soul,
Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control;
Checking the crazy ones,
Coaxin' onaisy ones,
Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick.

And though quite avoidin' all foolish frivolity,
Still at all seasons of innocent jollity,
Where was the playboy could claim an equality
At comicality, Father, wid you?
Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest,
Till this remark set him off wid the rest:
"Is it lave gaiety
All to the laity?
Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?"