Happy All Saints Day!

A list of my favourite saints and possible future saints, that I jotted down recently, to remind myself to pray for their intercession.  Some are old favourites, some I've only discovered recently.

Are there any of your own favourites that I've left out here?

John Paul II

The children of Fatima.

Maximilian Kolbe.

Solanus Casey.

Gemma Galgani.

Edel Quinn.

John Bradburne.

G.K. Chesterton.

Bernadette Soubirous.

Leonard La Rue.

Padre Pio.

John Henry Newman.

Cardinal Manning.

Mother Teresa.

Matt Talbot.

Mary Aikenhead.

Edmund Campion.

Robert Southwell.

Miguel Pro.

Elizabeth of the Trinity.

John Fisher.

Oliver Plunkett.

Dorothy Day.

Fr. John Sullivan.

Fulton Sheen.

Fr. Chuck Gallagher.

Fr. James Cullen.

Rock Shandy in Blackrock

Rock shandy is an Irish fizzy drink. It came about when fizzy orange was mixed with fizzy lemon, in a pub in Blackrock in south county Dublin. It's a personal favourite of mine.

You can read its interesting origin story here.

Yesterday I had dinner in Zambrero in Blackrock. When the girl asked me what drink I'd like, I saw a rocky shandy in the fridge and opted for that. When I asked her if she knew rock shandy was invented in Blackrock, she didn't. (To be fair, she obviously grew up a long, long way from Blackrock.)

It pleases me to an absurd degree to drink a fizzy drink which is not only distinctive to Ireland, but to a particular part of Ireland...and to drink it in the very place it was invented, where it's simply sold as a drink like any other!

(Also, I love the word "fizzy".)

I Hate Bank Holidays

Tomorrow is a bank holiday in Ireland. All my life I've hated bank holidays-- well, at least since leaving school.

I hate the whole bank holiday atmosphere. Instead of reducing stress it just seems to increase it. Everything around you seems to be overloaded, crowded, groaning under the weight of the holiday-makers. Even if this doesn't directly affect you, even if you stay at home, the atmosphere still seeps in.

Public holidays are different. I like St. Patrick's Day and the new St. Bridget's Day because they're about something. Bank holidays have no soul, no personality.

Because I'm a social conservative, I've spent about fifteen years (if not more) complaining about the 24-hour society.

I'm beginning to realize this was me fooling myself all along. I actually like the 24-hour society. I like the idea of the "city that never sleeps". One of my favourite things about hotels is that there's always someone on reception, at any time of the day or night.

I hated Sundays, growing up in eighties Ireland. I hated the whole atmosphere. They were not joyous. They were desolate and depressing.

I do not fantasize about little Tuscan villages where everybody stops to have lunch together and life follows the rhythms of nature. I like cities.

I liked my experience of America where everything is open much longer than in Ireland and where shutting up shop isn't the solemn ritual it is here, requiring twenty announcements and increasingly dirty looks from the staff.

My least favourite part of Christmas is when everything closes and everybody retreats to their private worlds. I like the public aspect of Christmas.

Yes, I love difference and I hate sameness, that's true. But, even in a 24-hour society, there are still big differences between early morning, late night, and so on. Everything isn't open all the time.

G.K. Chesterton was not a Sabbatarian and was quite critical of Sabbatarianism, considering it puritanical. He also thought Sunday trading laws unfairly favoured big businesses. When I discovered this, it bothered me a bit and I thought it was one of the things I disagreed with Chesterton about. I've changed my mind.

This blog post is a confession, not an argument.

I won't have much internet access over the stupid bank holiday, so apologies if I don't respond to any comments right away.

Favourite Poems: The Owl by Tennyson

Tennyson's early work "The Owl" is a delightful vignette, the poetic equivalent to a miniature in art. Even though some of the lines puzzle me (why is the stream dumb? why is the sail whirring?), its rustic simplicity never fails to please. It's both matter-of-fact and idyllic at once.

I read once, in a biography of Tennyson, that he was remarkable for his observation of nature, and invariably accurate when he described it in his poetry. Not that this little poem would have required much from those observational powers, I'm sure.

My favourite passage from this poem is undoubtedly: "When merry milkmaids click the latch and rarely smells the new-mown hay". It's a glimpse of rural life, not only as idyllic, but as Arcadian and blissful. And the sound of "merry milkmaids clink the latch" is very pleasing.

Funnily enough, I always remembered the refrain of this poem as: "The wise owl in the belfry sits", not "the white owl". Honestly, I think I prefer "wise"!

The poem is obviously heavily dependent on repetition, and is all the better for it.

When cats run home and light is come,

And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

When merry milkmaids click the latch,

And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
Twice or thrice his roundelay,
Twice or thrice his roundelay;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

Clondalkin Memories

(A note before I get going: I've always liked titles in the form of "X Memories" or "Y Memories", so just writing a blog post under the title "Clondalkin Memories" gives me great pleasure.)

As I've said in previous blog posts, my sense of geography is catastrophic. I've been a Dubliner all my life but I've managed to be in Dublin while not being of Dublin. After five decades in the capital city, I have less knowledge of Dublin than many recent immigrants. It's ridiculous.

So many Dublin places have been nothing but names to me, all my life. I never really knew anything about Clondalkin and I still don't, aside from what I'm going to write here. I know it's name in Irish is Cluain Dolcáin but I don't know what that means. Nevertheless I lived in Clondalkin for two periods of my life, both of them fairly brief.

I had a colleague and friend who lived there. I would socialize with him. Through this socializing, I met a friend of his who lived in the area and had a room to rent, so I took it. Later on, I actually lived in his own house while he was living abroad.

The first thing that struck me about Clondalkin was how far away it seemed. It's only ten miles from UCD, where I've always worked, but the bus journey always seemed epic. In fact, I was often late for work during my first spell in Clondalkin, even when I took the first bus.

The bus journey towards Clondalkin also seemed long, but it had another property which is, in fact, the thing I most associate with Clondalkin. It seemed serious. The further you moved from Dublin city centre to Clondalkin, the more serious and business-like the buildings became. They were bigger, squarer, dustier and more worn-looking (even when they seemed only a few decades old). Many were made of brick. They seemed more masculine. They weren't promising a good time, like the pubs and shops in the city centre, or making any cultural claims, like the various historic buildings also in the city centre. There were there to work, and everything about them seemed solid and hefty. It was pleasing in one way, but somewhat austere. To think of it now, it's a bit of a Yorkshire vibe.

There was an actual quarry near the house where I was staying for my second period in Clondalkin, and also a large building (with a huge yard) that had a plaster model of a tap (or faucet) extruding from its front wall. Obviously a plumbing firm or something like that. The whole building, and the plaster tap, were pleasantly grubby and run-down.

Now I think about it, I have to distinguish between different sorts of building the bus would pass on its way to and through Clondalkin. There were certainly warehouses and offices, but there were also more inviting buildings: chippers, restaurants, and pubs. I was especially interested in the pubs, since I thought they had a distinctive "coach-house" look; long, inn-like pubs with hanging signs outside and gilt lettering above the door. I remember noticing this and wondering whether anyone would agree with me, whether this was something in objective reality or just something I was imagining.

One restaurant in Clondalkin is called Boss Hogg's. (I've just discovered it's still in business). As you may know, Boss Hogg was the rather cartoonish antagonist of the Dukes of Hazzard show from the eighties, which I never saw in my childhood but discovered much later. Funnily enough, Boss Hogg did have a tavern in the TV show, but it was called The Boar's Nest. So it seemed rather perverse to call a restaurant Boss Hogg's.

The shopfront of Boss Hogg's looked quite faded and timeworn, and that brings me to a strange thing about Dublin suburbs, and my reaction to them. Each one is linked, in my mind, to a particular period in pop culture. (I mean International pop culture, since Ireland doesn't really have a pop culture of its own.) I've been vaguely aware of this for decades, but only realized it fully when writing this blog post. Somehow, the aura of a particular period's pop culture seems to hang over each Dublin suburb, perhaps linked to whenever it had the most young people in recent times. The Dukes of Hazzard was an eighties show so, in a strange way, Clondalkin seems like an eighties suburb to me. 

But let me get back to the distinction between different sorts of building on the journey to Clondalkin. On the one hand, there were the pubs that looked like coach-houses and the vaguely Victorian-looking office buildings. On the other, there were modern, sleek, glass-fronted corporate buildings that were lit up at night. Some of these were pretty big and formidable-looking. One of them (a showroom for Suzuki or Honda or something) announced its name on a huge red glowing sign. The sight of it always made me feel like I was coming into Mordor.

Everything in Clondalkin seemed bigger and further away and potentially hostile, at least at night. There was a strong sense of foreignness, of being at odds in one's environment.

During my first residence in Clondalkin, I went to an all-night party in the house where I was staying, one that left a fairly big impression on me. There were only about ten of us there (including my landlady and my colleague), but it was animated. There was a lot of drinking.

One of the guests at the party was a born-again Christian. The very first thing he started talking to me about (even before any-getting to know you pleasantries) was a coffee table for which, in his view, our hostess had paid a scandalous price. He could get it much cheaper elsewhere, he said. I was later told that this was his passion-- finding bargains. That and predicting the Last Days, which (as he told me) were imminent. I think he said they would come within ten years, certainly more than twenty.

As the evening wore on, the conversation turned to religion. I can remember one woman, who had attained the further reaches of intoxiation, saying slowly and repeatedly: "I think it's all a load of b*****."

My friend and colleague was challenged as to his own beliefs. I'll always remember his response. (He, too, was comprehensively drunk.) He raised his arms in the air and said, with a huge grin on his face: "I believe Jesus Christ is my saviour."

I was surprised as I'd known this guy for many years and I didn't expect he had the faintest tinge of religious belief. The way he made his proclamation was strangely impressive. As drunk as he was, as ironically as he spoke, there seemed to be a core of conviction in his words-- or, at least, a lingering loyalty to Christianity.

The name of Jesus Christ is extraordinarily powerful. Even invoked in jest, or something close to jest, it seems to change the whole atmosphere of a place or situation.

I stayed in the house that nght. As I was leaving very early the next morning, I heard my name being called and looked up. The born-again Christian was waving goodbye to me from an upstairs window.

I took a bus from Clondalkin to Dublin city centre. I can remember looking at a playing field along the way, and specifically at the goal-posts. (As with most goal-posts in Ireland, they were of the GAA variey, which resemble rugby goal-posts.) For some reason, staring at those goal-posts, I realized that belief in God had become a possibility for me. It had been much on my mind recently, but I couldn't see my way out of agnosticism. Suddenly, I could. It would be hard, or impossible, to explain why. It was as though innumerable reasoning processes had been going on under the surface of my mind, and suddenly belief got the upper hand. (This was just one moment on my long journey from agnosticism to faith.)

Perhaps I should have left that story for the end of the post. Here are some less dramatic stories from my time in Clondalkin.

Once I got lost on the Red Cow roundabout (or junction, or interchange). It's named after a nearby hotel/tavern. I've actually just realized now that the current Red Cow is named after the original Red Cow, which was a pub. Apparently Brendan Behan used to say that everybody who lived beyond the Red Cow was a culchie (i.e., a hick). Of course Dublin has greatly expanded since then.

One day, for whatever reason, I got off my bus at an earlier stop than usual and found myself ensnared in the Red Cow roundabout, and the area around it. (It wasn't all concrete roads and bridges I was navigating-- at one point I found myself trapped in a series of connected back gardens, and had to climb over a wall.) It took me at least an hour and felt ridiculous, like I was a suburban Robinson Crusoe. It all added to the sense I constantly harboured, that Clondalkin was an environment always ready to turn hostile at one wrong turn. (The time I got lost in Corkagh Park desk night also added to this.)

The first time I lived in Clondalkin, I was sharing a house with my landlady. The second time, I was (initially) alone in the house. I honestly think the first night I spent alone in that house was the first night I spend alone in any house, hard as that might be to believe.

It was a very spooky experience. I had heard of a house "settling" before-- the process by which woods and other materials contract as the temperature falls, causing all kinds of noises. But I had no idea how dramatic this could be. It really did sound like somebody was in the house with me, moving about. My imagination was going wild as I went to sleep that night.

By the time of my second stay in Clondalkin, I was a practicing Catholic. While I was there, I went to a little church called Knockmitten, which looked more like a school building than a church (and perhaps it had been). I have become fascinated by the name, over the years, as the place-name Knockmitten only seems to apply to the church itself, not to anything else in the area.

At this time, I was building myself up in my mind as a Knight Crusader for the One True Faith, and Knockmitten church seemed disconcertingly genteel to me. Didn't these people know there was a culture war on? Apparently not. It had a very "tea and biscuits" atmosphere, like a rural church where the whole community goes to Mass on a Sunday, and nobody pays very much attention to the homily. (There are a few churches like this in Dublin. The Margaret Ball Chapel in Santry is another.)

The priest in Knockmitten during my time there was a short, bald, elderly guy who smiled a lot. The homily that stands out in my memory is one where he named John XXIII as his favourite Pope. I can't remember the reasons he advanced, but I really got the impression this priest was nostalgic for the glory days of Vatican II. I was fascinated by this preference. It was hard to believe anyone could prefer John XXIII to John-Paul II, for instance. Even at the height of my militancy, I felt a certain envy (even admiration) towards anyone who could cling to a sunny nineteen-sixties spirituality in the twenty-first century.

Clondalkin also had a Mormon temple, on which I frequently gazed with great interest as I passed. On another occasion, as I was leaving the house, I heard a lot of African voices in an upstairs room of a neighbouring house, singing something about being washed in the blood of Jesus.

Clondalkin's most famous feature in the roundtower. I only ever saw it from a distance. For some reason I always assumed it was a modern replica of a roundtower. But no, it's a genuine historical roundtower.

This blog post has described my Clondalkin. Please forgive its length. How well does it fit the real Clondalkin? That's a form of question I'm increasingly asking myself these days-- not only of places, but of every sort of experience.

Favourite Poems: Forget Not Yet The Tried Intent

I've decided to start a new series on this blog, a series in which I feature some of my favourite poems, and comment on them as appropriately.

The first is "Forget Not Yet" by Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503-1542). Wyatt is the earliest English language poet whose work I enjoy. (This doesn't include various ballads and anonymous pieces).

There isn't really a whole lot to say about this poem. The pathos and vulnerability of the simple refrain "Forget not yet" gives it much of its power. I like the way every stanza ends with a dying fall. I especially like the rhythm and cumulative force of the stanza that begins: "Forget not yet the great essays..." I also like the way the poem 

The poem has a simplicity and directness which is all-too-rare for the Elizabethan era. Those Elizabethans really liked to gussy things up.

I've always assumed this is a poem addressed to a beloved lady, an example of courtly love. Might it be some kind of religious or political allegory instead? Who knows? I've never read any commentary on this poem. But it seems most likely to be a simple love poem.

Forget not yet the tried intent
Of such a truth as I have meant;
My great travail so gladly spent,
Forget not yet.

Forget not yet when first began
The weary life ye know, since whan
The suit, the service, none tell can;
Forget not yet.

Forget not yet the great assays,
The cruel wrong, the scornful ways;
The painful patience in denays,
Forget not yet.

Forget not yet, forget not this,
How long ago hath been and is
The mind that never meant amiss;
Forget not yet.

Forget not then thine own approved,
The which so long hath thee so loved,
Whose steadfast faith yet never moved;
Forget not this.

The Innocence of Traditions

Readers may recall that I revived my Traditions Traditions Traditions! blog recently. It hasn't exactly taken off. There have been a total of seven comments on the whole blog, and they were all on a single post about garden gnomes, seven years ago.

I've often written about tradition on this blog, too. For instance, in this blog post from 2015. I'm quite pleased with this pasage from back then:

But what do I mean by tradition? I mean it in a broad sense; but in a narrow sense, too. I mean it especially in the most vulgar and obvious sense, the sense that makes many people roll their eyes. I mean it in the "Ye Olde Shoppe" sense. I mean it in the 'warm fuzzies' sense.

I mean Halloween, confetti at weddings, the Angelus bells being broadcast on RTE in Ireland, blowing out birthday candles, the FA Cup final, the Budweiser Clydesdales, white smoke at Papal elections (a relatively recent innovation, by the way), using the feminine pronoun for ships, bishops in the House of Lords, Corpus Christi processions, Valentine's Day cards, men proposing to women, poetry that rhymes, terrace chants, James Bond, cloth caps, the Two Ronnies Christmas special, the Oberammergau passion play, singing on the last night of the Proms, Guy Fawkes night, popcorn at the cinema, Toby jugs, the Late Late Toy Show, and so on.

Yes, my love of tradition absolutely comes down to "the warm fuzzies". It's nostalgic; it's sentimental; it's corny.

I've been thinking a lot about traditions recently and why they appeal to me so much. As the title of the blog post suggests, I think a lot of it comes down to innocence.

There is something very child-like about traditions. They appeal to the child in us all, and the participation of children always brings them to life in a special way.

Traditions are received, and for children almost everything is received. Nearly everything is a hand-me-down for a child; language, social cues, politeness, everything. This is the case for adults, too, but it's more obviously true in the case of children. Kids are learning and copying literally all the time. They're like the wet cement that a cat's paws are imprinted in for decades to come.

And perhaps that's also part of the appeal of tradition; tradition is humble. Traditions aren't original or creative or individual. They're not supposed to be. You put up a Christmas tree or light a bonfire at Halloween or eat popcorn at the movies because other people have done the same thing before. That's the whole point.

I remember watching a documentary a good few years ago-- there was a vogue for this particular sort of documentary at the time, "the hundred best TV moments", that sort of thing. At one point, some talking head was marvelling over David Bowie's love of Christmas. I obviously can't remember his exact words, but he said something like this: "It's so strange and wonderful that this super-cool, decadent artiste would love something as goofy and lame as Christmas." I'm not sure that Bowie did love Christmas. I can't find any evidence of this beyond the duet with Bing Crosbie, which he apparently did to please his mother. But the point is still well-made. Tradition is anti-cool, anti-cynicism, anti-iconoclast.

As well as innocence, there's something inherently social about traditions. It's very possible to have a completely personal tradition-- in fact, that's an interesting subject in its own right-- but most traditions require other people. People put Halloween decorations and Easter decorations and St. Patrick's Day decorations in their windows and gardens so that everybody can see them. People give stuff away on holidays-- chocolates, little gifts, that sort of thing. We need other people to play along.

Ultimately, much of my own fascination with tradition is irreducibly personal and based on my own experiences. For whatever reason, my memories of various traditions have a sort of luminosity about them-- a glow, a magic, a sense of wonder. There's often a bittersweet element to this, since traditions are so often disappointing or underwhelming. And yet the very underwhelmingness also gives the memory a certain poignancy, in the manner of every feeble but gallant effort-- like a newborn baby's hand clasping an adult's finger, or the very fragile flame of a candle sputtering in the air. (I associate Easter, especially, with poignantly feeble traditions.)

Holiday Mode

As I've mentioned before, I'm addicted to the website TV Tropes. Recently, I discovered this page: "Holiday Mode". It mostly describes how various video games incorporate changes to reflect a holiday or occasion in the real world.

I read about this maybe a week ago and, for some reason, it's never been too far from my mind since then.

I don't play video games, but the phenomenon described is something that interests me very much. That is, an occasion or event that pervades many different spheres of life, or even "levels of reality"-- because a computer game is really a different level of reality.

A holiday, tradition or festival has really taken off when it's not confined to the actual celebration-- when it's just there, in the background, in the air.

Similarly, a holiday, tradition or festival seems more real, more authentic, when it's developed its own aesthetic that can, in a way, float free of the actual celebration.

And what's true of holidays seems true of everything; people, groups, nationalities, sports, genres...

The more of these "aesthetics" there are in the world, the better. Conversely, for anything to lack such an aesthetic is to be regretted.

I'm always especially interested in something that be present, and perhaps even especially present, when it's not the focus-- when something else is happening. For instance, holiday atmospheres or settings in a video game, where the player is presumably mostly interested in playing the game.

It seems, when I think about such things, that I'm on the verge of something very important, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Certainly the notion of something being on the edge of consciousness has always been hugely important to me. I've had a lifelong fascination with background music played in public places, the music that nobody is focused on but is just there.

Similarly, I've had a lifelong (or almost lifelong) fascination with every aesthetic that can be summoned with a single image. For instance; the way the whole "reggae" atmosphere can be evoked by the silhoutte of palm trees; or the way the whole "cinema" atmosphere can be evoked by the image of a roll of celluloid; or the way the way Christmas can be evoked by a single string of tinself. Here, somehow, I feel we approach something very profound, something deeply signficant to human happiness, though I'm unable to explain exactly why.

A Good Point by Laura Perrins

In this discussion with Tim Stanley, Laura Perrins makes an excellent point: "I remember when these woke guys and girls (very much girls) were in university and they were doing their gender studies and their women's studies, and I very clearly remember right-wing people going "Oh, don't worry about that, they'll never find a job with their gender studies, they'll all be unemployed. How wrong were they? These Gender Studies people, the Women's Studies people, they they all run HR for a start..."

It's a point which I've never seen made before, but which needs to be made.

Even now, after so many reasons not to do so, people take political correctness as some kind of joke or eccentricity, something removed from the "real world". It's absolutely not.

Similiarly to the misguided confidence Laura Perrins reports, one often hears people make statements such as this one: "All these woke students with their safe spaces and their trigger warnings, they'll never be able to survive in the real world..."

Oh yes, they will.

Why? Because they know what they're doing is a game, a tactic. They know the university is an artificial space and they know its boundaries. They are very shrewd and when they leave university they will know how to play the game in the jobs market-- until they have the power to influence things themselves.

They're not really looking for protection from traumatic triggers. They're looking to silence their opponents by weaponizing victimhood, and they are getting very good at it.

It's long past time to stop being naive about political correctness. The lunatic fringe of one decade is the state-imposed orthodoxy of the next. We've seen this pattern so often, how can we keep falling for it?

Division and Unity

One of the things about contemporary discourse that I find quite tiresome is the assumption that unity is always better than division. For instance, in statements like this: "I prefer to concentrate on the things that unite us rather than the things that divide us".

Surely unity and division are both desirable aspects of society, in different contexts? One might be desirable in one situation, the other in another situation. I realize this seems a very obvious point. But then, why is the "unity" card always held to trump the "division" card, when it comes to rhetoric and speechifying?

In a sermon some time ago, Bishop Barron made the point that a society needs both bridges and walls. Surely this is obvious?

In fact, walls seem more fundamental than bridges. Let's imagine all the bridges in a country disappeared overnight. (We'll mercifully assume nobody was crossing them at the time.) That would present challenges, to be sure.

But imagine if all the walls disappeared. Calamity! (Let's even suppose that nobody is flattened by falling roofs, somehow. Even then, it would be calamitous.)

Think about how monotonous and depressing a society without divisions would really be. Communal living quarters...unisex bathrooms...it sounds a bit like the remade Battlestar Galactica without the fun parts.

But, even if you don't take it to the point of absurdity, the idea of a society without divisions is pretty dreary. Why is the word "diversity" waved like it's magical and prestigious, while "division" is stigmatised? They mean pretty much the same thing.

I do value unity. For instance, on this blog, I've written about my appreciation for big public events like the World Cup or a general election. (I've especially written about my memories of the 1990 World Cup, a unique example of national unity.)

But these special occasions are only special because they're exceptional. If we had nothing but unity all the time, they'd be completely unremarkable. As Shakespeare famously said: "If all the year were playing holidays to sport would be as tedious as to work." I'd actually like significantly more big public occasions. But they'd still be exceptional.

Unity seems much more meaningful when it's built across divisions, rather than obliterating them. Whenever I've been to a pro-life march, I'm always very pleased by the various county and local banners that are carried.

One of the most famous parts of Homer's Iliad is the "catalogue of ships", which lists all the different contingents which travelled to Troy to recapture Helen. It's mind-numbingly dull to read (just like the genealogies in the Bible), but it does make the point that the war is a very big deal-- that it united all the different Greek city-states.

And, of course, division is often valuable in itself. Is a monolithic society really a good thing?

Being a nationalist, I do think it's better for a nation to have a large degree of homogeneity when it comes to basics such as ethnicity and language. Even here, though, I don't think a nation should be a monolith. (And it rarely is, as we're always being reminded.)

As a sort of postcript, I've always disliked that rather dull ballad, "On the One Road", 

We're on the one road
Sharing the one load
We're on the road to God knows where
We're on the one road
It may be the wrong road
But we're together now who cares
North men, South men, comrades all
Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Donegal
We're on the one road swinging along
Singing a soldier's song.

Doesn't really make the heart leap, does it? National unity should only really apply to times of national emergency. Once the emergency is past, let a thousand flowers bloom and the fireworks recommence. That's how I feel, anyway.

A Time to Mourn

A good friend of mine who reads this blog has had a major bereavement.

In sympathy, I'm turning the blog's colours to black, and I'm going to pause blogging for a while as a mark of respect.

May perpetual light shine upon my friend's loved one.

A Bit of Fry and Laurie

Today I found myself thinking about this sketch from "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" , a series which ran from 1989 to 1995. I can't easily find when this sketch dated from.

Basically, it's about a guy who goes to a psychiatrist and loudly announces he's mad and wants to be cured. The psychiatrist is sceptical until the client mentions, in passing, that he writes letters to the newspapers. The psychiatrist picks up some newspapers in his office and asks him if he wrote two (very banal) letters which appeared in them, to which the client cheerfully admits. The psychiatrist then asks him his chest size for a straitjacket (much to the client's satisfaction).

I find this funny because I've had a longstanding fascination with letters to the editor. For a good few years I was an assiduous writer of them. I'm rather proud of my letter-writing days because it's proof (in cold print) that I was pushing against political correctness and other progressive manias when I was relatively young and when such pushback was less common than it is now. (They were mostly written in my thirties. I am now exiting my forties.)

Someone who worked on a letters page once told me that she was, indeed, convinced that many letter-writers were mad.  I don't think mine were missives of madness. But then, I wouldn't, would I?

By the end of my letter-writing days, I had a very good publication rate. I'd guess three-quarters of my letters (or even more) got published, in national newspapers. Of course, I don't know how many letters they get, so maybe there's nothing special about this.

My days of writing letters to the editor were, possibly, a good training in concision of expression. People would often mention them to me and sometimes I'd get correspondence from strangers (always positive).

I'd imagine it's much more difficult to have a letter published in a British national newspaper, given the population is so much larger. I did send a couple of letters to a British film magazine, but those ones didn't get published.

I also enjoy reading the letters pages in archived newspapers.

Once, when talking to a colleague, I expressed disappointment that my letters had never provoked replies along the lines of: "Your correspondent Maolsheachlann Ó Ceallaigh is a complete idiot". He very wittily replied: "Well, it's like phoning for the fire brigade. Everyone presumes somebody else has done it already."

Friday the Thirteenth on my Traditions! Traditions! Traditions! blog.

Longtime readers might remember the Traditions! Traditions! Traditions! blog I set up a few years ago (in 2018, actually), and then promptly abandoned after a few posts.

My idea was for a blog about every sort of tradition, just for the fun of it. No pontificating, moralizing, flights of (attempted) lyricism, kvetching, or anything like that. Just a chatty, magazine-style blog, like Snopes.com (the urban legends blog) before it went all liberal and propagandistic.

I've decided to revive it, and I've begun with a post on Friday the thirteenth (considered as a tradition).

Yes, I know it's not Friday the thirteenth, or anywhere near it. The next occurrence of that date isn't until February. What the heck.

Read it here, if you like.

Belfield

I work in the library in University College Dublin, on the Belfield campus. (Its main campus is Belfield, though it also has a campus in Blackrock and various satellites in other places, even far abroad.)

Belfield is a large greenfield site. The architecture is sixties brutalist, there are lots of trees, several lakes, and a lot of statues. UCD moved here from the city centre in 1964. I've read that one of the biggest champions of the move was John Charles McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin, who has become a symbol of everything that is bad and reactionary in Catholic Ireland, but who won praise from many surprising quarters on individual issues.

Belfield is in Dublin 4, the most famous postcode in Dublin, which has been synonymous with the liberal intelligentsia for decades. (RTE, the national broadcaster, is also located there.)

There were various landed estates around Dublin 4 in the past. Belfield was one. Montrose (the plot of land on which RTE stands) was another.

Here's something I find very interesting. I have spent almost twenty-five years working in Belfield, and I've noticed that hardly anybody ever uses the name in Belfield itself.

You might not think that statement deserves italics, but I do.

Nobody ever talks about Belfield, only about UCD. Belfield is only ever really used in a historic context (the move to Belfield), or to distinguish between the Belfield campus and other parts of UCD.

Interstingly, people do use Montrose as a metonym (or stand-in) for RTE, nearly always in a snarky tone. But they don't use Belfield as a metonym for UCD.

How people use place-names is very interesting to me. For instance, it's fairly well-known that, after independence, various Irish placenames were changed for patriotic reason. Queen's County became Laois, and the harbour settlement of Kingstown became Dún Laoghaire (often pronounced Dunleary).

However, although Bagenalstown in Carlow had its name changed to Muine Bheag, the change never stuck. Nobody calls it Muine Bheag. Everybody calls it Bagenalstown. I've just read that there was a plebsicite to change it back in 1975. The "Yes" vote won comfortably, but there wasn't enough of a turnout to reach the threshold.

So why did all those other placenames change, but not Bagenalstown?

In a similar way, I've often wondered why, long after the West had been Christianized, the names of the days of week continued to honour pagan gods. Why was there no attempt to Christianize them, or indeed, to Christianize the months of the year?

I'm rather glad there wasn't. I like throwbacks. But it makes me curious.

March for Jesus

I was on a bus passing through Dublin city centre today when I saw a march leaving the Garden of Remembrance. As there were a lot of red banners, and I'd seen posters for an "anti-racism" march this week, I assumed that was what it was all about. But when I looked closer, I saw the name "Jesus" on the banners. I hadn't heard about this.

I got off the bus and joined it. It went from the Garden of Remembrance to Stephen's Green. There were several big screens, a lot of Christian rock music, prayers, speeches, and so on. RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster-- which rarely inflates figures when it comes to any religious event-- put the crowd at ten thousand. That seems right. There were people of every kind there. The event certainly had an evangelical flavour but there were also plenty of Catholic symbols on display.

It was great to see, and great to join in. To echo a phrase that was on many peoples' lips: praise Jesus!

The Sixth Work

Last night I dreamed I was transferring a small boy, a toddler, from its pushchair to a couch. It wasn't my child. I was taking care of him for somebody else.

The child could speak almost as well as an adult, for some reason.

As I put the child on the couch, he said: "I want the sixth work".

"What's the sixth work?", I asked.

"The Lord of the Rings", he replied.

I handed him the book, which was conveniently nearby. At that moment his mother came in and I woke up.

I've been mulling over this dream, and dreams in general. Why did the child call The Lord of the Rings "the sixth work?". What was my subconscious getting at...if anything? It's not the kind of thing toddlers do in real life.

Why didn't the child just ask for the book by its name? Why did my dreaming mind introduce a complication here, an apparently pointless mystery? Does the subconcious mind seek to reproduce to texture of real life, in which so much of what we experience is mysterious or at least unexplained?

I checked Tolkien's bibliography (once I was back in the waking world). The sixth book that Tolkien published (including both fiction and non-fiction) is The Two Towers, so it doesn't really fit.

Is The Lord of the Rings sixth in some other order of works, by authors other than Tolkien?

Or was it just gobbledygook? Probably.

Dreams are fascinating. Sometimes dreams have a lasting influence on me. I don't believe there's anything supernatural or paranormal going on, but I do believe that some dreams give a profound insight into one's own soul. I don't think this was one of them, but it's still curious.

Postcript: It occurred to me after writing this that it shares a similarity with my recurring dream of the fifth mall. In this dream I am back in the old Ballymun shopping centre, which had a cruciform shape with four covered rows of shops radiating from a central square. They were labelled the North Mall, the West Mall, etc. I found this usage fascinating as a child because I had never encountered the word "mall" before, and I don't think I encountered it till well into adulthood. (Of course, we say "shopping centre" rather than "shopping mall" in Ireland.)

As I mention in the post, in my dream the fifth mall is a much less busy mall, almost unvisited, and with far fewer outlets. It has a strange atmosphere; somewhat forgotten, even somewhat unreal. Its spatial relation to the other "malls" is never very clear, but it's not part of the cruciform.

And that reminds me of another recurring dream I've had, although I get the impression this is a more recent recurring dream. It's the early hours of the morning and I discover a small cinema which is still open (it's open all night) and which is a long way from anything else. I'm surprised to find it open, but I'm somehow aware that there might be another cinema-- even smaller and even more remote-- some distance away. I never go there in my dream, though I want to, and I'm never entirely sure it exists.

Bonkers, right?

Five Thousand Comments!

I never look at my blog statistics any more. Mostly because they're discouraging, but also because I suspect they're fairly meaningless with all the bots crawling through cyberspace. (Which makes them even more discouraging, in my case!)

However, I happened to look at them today, and saw that, as of now, I've had exactly five thousand comments! (On 2083 posts.) It seems like something that should be marked.

Many, many thanks to anyone who has ever commented (most of whom won't read this post, I'm sure).

I do attach considerable importance to comments. A post with no comments always seems a bit of a damp squib-- whether that's justified or not. (For instance, I was surprised and disappointed that there were no reactions to my recent post on why I'm increasingly drawn towards American conservatism. Doubtless it was healthy for my self-importance and pomposity to be deflated!)

Interestingly, I rarely get comments on old posts. I'm somewhat intrigued by that. They're still out there, how come nobody comes on them via random searches? 

The biggest exception to this is my post on why Groundhog Day is my favourite movie.

And also my memories of the Allen Library, since it seems like the only substantial record of the Allen Library online. (Although, funnily enough, I currently have a colleague who also passed through the Allen Library.)

Letter in The Irish Times Today

Sir, – After her failed attempt to secure a nomination in the forthcoming presidential election, Maria Steen remarked “rarely has the political consensus seemed more oppressive or detached from the wishes and desires of the public”. Really?

For most of the 20th century the political consensus in this jurisdiction was an everpresent oppressive reality and Catholic orthodoxy shaped the Constitution and the legal framework to the detriment of many.

Think of the large numbers trapped in loveless marriages because of the ban on divorce. Or the many gay people whose actions were criminalised until the law was changed in 1993. Or the lack of effective family planning. Or women forced to go abroad for an abortion. Or the women whose lives were ruined by the procedure of symphysiotomy. The list could go on.

Whatever its faults, and there are many, Ireland has, over the past 40 years, become a better and more tolerant place, and, contrary to Ms Steen’s contention, the current political consensus reflects the views and desires of the majority. – Yours, etc,

JOE KEHOE,

Celbridge,
Co Kildare

I'm sure there are many counter-arguments that spring to mind for any reader of this blog. However, it must be acknowledged that Mr. Kehoe's view of Irish history is the dominant one today. (I'll admit I had to look up "symphysiotomy".)

I think he's also right that the "current political consensus reflects the views and desires of the majority", at least as far as social conservatism goes. If we witness a radical challenge to the political consensus any time soon, it will probably come about on the issue of immigration and the wilder excesses of political correctness (especially in relation to gender). Whether full-blown social conservatism will piggy-back on such a reaction is another matter. In all honesty I'm doubtful this will happen. The Reform Party in the UK uses some socially conservative rhetoric. But so did the Tories. We'll see how it translates to reality, should they come to power.

I do think Catholicism is making a slow revival in Ireland-- for instance, seminarian numbers are very slightly rising after having flatlined for a few years-- but it really is going to be slow. 

Mr. Kehoe dates the advent of a "better and more tolerant" Ireland to the last forty years. I'm guessing he's thinking of everything that came after the 1983 referendum that introduced a Constitutional ban on abortion, by a majority similar to that which removed it in 2018. So the period of "Catholic orthodoxy" he describes lasted from independence in 1921 to 1983. 

Few people alive today actually experienced most of that period. The political consensus was then as strong in favour of social conservatism and Catholic ethics as it is against it today. Women had votes all that time. Gay people had votes. People in difficult marriages had votes. Yet many of them must have repeatedly voted for the political consensus that Mr. Kehoe considers a self-evidently bad thing. Why?

Popular Music Lyrics That I Like

Anyone who's read more than a handful of posts on this blog knows that I'm always complaining about the decline of poetry. Well today--

Hey wait! Wait! Come back! This post isn't going to be about the decline of poetry! I promise!

Actually this post is going to be about popular music lyrics that I like. By "popular music" I mean all genres of popular music-- pop itself, rock, heavy metal, etc. etc. I'm going to refer to it as "pop music", on that understanding.

I only mention the decline of poetry because, as I said in a previous post, I don't think pop music lyricists are the heirs of the classical poets-- despite frequent claims to the contrary. I don't think there's even any comparison. 

Good pop music lyricsts (and even mediocre pop music lyricists) often produce moments of lyrical brilliance. But they're only moments. A line here, a line there. It takes a lot more than that to make a poem. A good poem has to flow from beginning to end, to have a satisfying structure, and (most of them) to have depth of thought and subject matter. Pop music lyrics don't have this.

Having said that, there are many pop music lyrics that do I love, that do spark my imagination. Here are some of them.

I had the idea for this post when I was listening to a Rory Gallagher, "Bowed Not Broken", which is a bonus track on his latest album, Fresh Evidence. Like many Rory Gallagher lyrics, it takes inspiration from the seedier side of American life. (Gallagher was a fan of hardboiled detective fiction. Rather curiously, he never seems to have written a song with an Irish theme.)

Anyway, this is it:

"When will you tire of those crap-game casinos?

You've played every dice-game from Vegas to Reno..."

Simple, but I like its evocation of a whole way of life, a particularly atmospheric way of life, that has its own sort of bleary poetry.

It reminds me of another of my favourite lyrics, from "Pinball Wizard" by The Who:

"Ever since I was a young boy, I've played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton, I must have played them all..."

In my experience, there's a tremendous poetry in the past imperfect. I don't mean the grammatical past imperfect, necessarily. I mean the sort of thing it describes, a recurring event in the past. It summons up a vista.

Rory Gallagher has some other great lyrics, for instance, in his Prohibition-themed Barley and Grape Rag (which I must have listened to hundreds of times in my teens):

"Be my friend, and tell me where that place is

Where the whiskey flows and the dices roll till dawn."

That's pure poetry (the echoing "o" sounds are a nice touch), but the whole song has pretty solid lyrics, like this verse:

"I don't care if I get investigated

And the City Fathers they all black my name.

I'm pretty sure that you can smell the traces

But tomorrow morning, I take all the blame."

(I love the concept of "City Fathers", local worthies, etc.)

Another of Gallagher's songs, "Kickback City", would have made a brilliant song to play over the opening credits of some gritty crime film (as the camera slowly pans across the rough, foggy streets of some rundown metropolis). The opening lines fit this atmosphere perfectly, even if the fourth is a bit clumsy:

"They say this town will kill you, they say this town ain't got no soul

This town could take a child's smile, and turn it into stone.

But don't you think I know that? This place has cut me to the bone.

Trouble crawling up your back, fear just eats your soul..."

The last two lines are good, too:

"But I won't let it beat me, 'cause trouble's knocking on my door.

Somehow it's just your smile keeps me coming back for more."

Moving on from Rory Gallagher, here's another song with a similar theme and atmosphere: "Avenues and Alleyways" by Tony Christie, which was indeed the theme song to a TV show. (I even love the title; there's a hint of excitement about the words "avenue" and alleyway", and this song brings out that excitement.)

All of the lyrics are impressive in this one, but I especially like this verse:

In the avenues and alleyways, where a man's got to work out which side he's on

Any way he chooses, chances are he loses, no-one gets to live too long.

The avenues and alleyways where the soul of a man is easy to buy

Everybody's wheeling, everybody's stealing, all the low are living high.

Every city's got 'em, can we ever stop 'em? Some of us are gonna try..."

A bit cartoonish, but very evocative.

I hadn't intended to quote whole verses when I started writing this. I'd planned to concentrate on individual lines.

Here's one of my very favourite individual lines, from the Saw Doctor's smash Irish hit of 1991, "I Useta Lover". It's the first line of this couplet:

"Do you remember her collecting for Concern on Christmas Eve?

She was on a forty-eight fast, just water and black tea..."

(Concern is an organized charity based in Ireland.)

I wrote a whole blog post about this one, back in 2013! As I wrote then: "But what always strikes me, when I listen to it, is how perfect that line I've quoted in the title is, lyrically speaking. It flows so effortlessly, with such joyous euphony-- and it fits perfectly into the rhythm of the song, too."

Another line that I think has perfect euphony (in my opinion) is from "Life of Riley" by the Lightning Seeds, which Ian Broudie wrote as an optimistic ode to his young son: "All this world is a crazy ride so take your seats and hold on tight." Again, it just flows beautifully, and its sound mirrors its meaning. It sounds like a breathless carnival ride. A lyric like this actually fills me with light and optimism, for a moment.

I think I'm going to have to leave it there, since this post could go on indefinitely. Please let me know any evocative lyrics that you love, in the comment section. (But not more than a verse, please, since that's what I'm writing about here. I've included links to the songs I've mentioned in case people were interested, but in all honesty, I rarely-to-never watch videos people post in comments.)

No Conservative Candidate for Irish President

Maria Steen, the prolife and social conservative activist, has just missed out on getting nominated as a candidate for the Presidential election in Ireland.

The Irish President is pretty much a ceremonial role. 

"Rarely has the political consensus seemed more oppressive or detached from the wishes and desires of the public", Steen said. That seems fair.

I actually don't care who gets elected now and I'm not even sure I'm going to vote. Not voting might be the best way to send a message. The three candidates are backed by the main parties in the Dáil, all of whom have a liberal-secular-globalist outlook.

The President is supposed to be above politics, anyway, so what could a conservative President actually do for conservatism? Very little, surely. And what's the point of all the political debate at every Presidential election?

I'd much rather we had a monarch as head of state. (A purely ceremonial monarch.) I wish we had, not only a ceremonial High King (or High Queen), but also a scatter of ceremonial petty kings. Wouldn't you rather have your local supermarket opened by a king than a county councillor? Think of the fun we could have reviving all the old kingdoms!

1989 And All That

I've just finished watching Goodbye Lenin!, the 2003 film about a woman who falls into a coma just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and wakes up after the fall of socialism in East Germany. But her loving son, having been told that any excitement will kill her, goes to great lengths to covince her that nothing has changed.

It's a good film and I enjoyed it very much. It made me laugh out loud on several occasions. I didn't like it as much as I liked The Lives of Others, another film about the the last years of East Germany, which was made three years later. But it was still pretty good.

I had a few things to say about it, and once again I'm going to resort to the dubious expedient of a numbered list:

1) It was especially interesting to me because, last year, I read Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer, which is one of the best books I've read in recent years.

2) Marxism is fundamentally evil because it's based on materialism and the denial of the Divine. The fall of communism was a gift from God.

Having said that...

I'm rather drawn to the aesthetic side of Eastern Bloc history-- the classical art, the big banners, the anthems, even the austere prefabricated apartment blocks. Conversely, the tacky Western consumerism that flooded in after the Wall fell hardly seems like something to be celebrated. (And Hoyer's book, sadly, makes it very plain that blue jeans and pop music probably had as much to do with the fall of the GDR as any more spiritual or humanistic ideas of freedom.)

3) Given Ireland's own experience of the 1990 soccer World Cup, it was interesting to see it feature so heavily in this film. West Germany winning the Cup seems (going by the film) to have been almost as important as liberation from communism and national reunification-- or, rather, it blended into the same euphoric mix. That this would have been the case never really occurred to me before, strangely enough.

4) The fall of the Soviet Union seems like a moment of historical clarity, a vindication of everything that is organic and enduring in society-- family, organized religion, nation. There was some discussion on whether East Germany should remain a separate country even after the fall of socialism. But, overwhelmingly, Germans wanted reunification, just as republic after republic of the old USSR demanded independence. And why wouldn't they? The nation is simply a natural institution of mankind. Communism tried to diminish it, and failed. Globalism is trying to destroy it, and encountering a massive resistance that seems to be gaining momentum all the time.

5) One of the reasons I'm so fascinated with this period is because it's always interesting to see how private life is intertwined with public life. Really, I think that's how it should be. Not every period can (or should) be as tumultuous as the fall of communism, but surely human beings are not meant to live in private bubbles of individual experience. Personally I love reading about moments that bring people together-- not in some glurgey "we are all one" way, but in a way that awakens meaningful unity-- or even division! Even, say, a hotly contested election or referendum. Sometimes we can come together by beating each other up. (Presumably anyone with a brain will realize that's a joke, and not to be understood literally.)

Is Anything Too Big or Too Small to be the Theme of a Creative Work?

Many years ago, I was watching a documentary (or a "featurette") about the Lord of the Rings movies. In one interview, Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) said something like: "Ultimately, the story is about friendship."

I remember thinking this was a bit banal. Lord of the Rings has many deep and profound themes. "Friendship" seems a bit too basic to count as one of them.

Similarly, Jack Finney, the author of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, once had this reaction to people finding a theme of conformity (or non-conformity) in his novel: "The idea of writing a whole book in order to say that it's not really a good thing for us all to be alike, and that individuality is a good thing, makes me laugh."

Another example. I remember in school, when we were studying The Merchant of Venice, the teacher told us that one of its themes was appearance vs. reality. I can remember thinking: "Well, surely that is a theme of half the plays and books ever written."

I'm not saying any of these reactions are correct. But it's an intriguing question. Can a theme be too basic for an artistic work? Or is it the very greatness of great art that it addresses fundamental themes?

On the other side of the ledger...

One of the things that's often exasperated me about superhero movies-- aside from the fact that there's far too many of them-- is when a critic (or somebody) says something like follows: "This film reinterprets the whole Batman myth."

But what do I care about the Batman myth? If a Batman film aspires to be more than just entertainment, surely it should tackle some theme or themes beyond Batman stories?

Simlarly, when people are praising Dubliners by James Joyce (or some such book), they often said: "It brilliantly captures the Dublin of the Edwardian era."

Again, why should anybody care? This seems more a task for history books than for literature, which surely should have a more enduring relevance.

Or am I wrong? Maybe no theme is too big or small for an artistic work?

A Hobby For Someone

Going to public lectures, book launches, etc. and asking the most stupid questions you can think of.

It would be funny but I don't have enough audacity do it.

I went to a talk on horror fiction many years ago. The first question was: "Where does The Secret Garden fit into this?" Maybe this guy had already instituted this hobby.

(I've always loved horror, and The Secret Garden has been a special story for me since I read it as a kid. But no, I wasn't the guy. And yes, it was a stupid question.)

Free Speech for Everybody

Laura Perrins doesn't agree with right-wingers who lament Jimmy Kimmel's cancellation.

Was Kimmel cancelled? It's not entirely clear. It seems to have been a commerical decision made by the network, based on how many viewers he offended.

At the same time, I don't think conservatives should be celebrating anybody being punished for having an opinion. We certainly shouldn't be engaging in the same "free speech has consequences" argument that progressives have made so long.

("Free speech has consequences" could be used to justify any restriction of free speech.)

Laura's article seems to come close to a philosophy of "to the victor goes the spoils", which doesn't seem very civilized. I agree with most of her articles, but not this one.

I'm not a free speech absolutist (is there even such a thing?). But I'm definitely a free speech maximalist.

Edward Feser is, in my view, more sensible.

Knausgaard and Communion

A little of the way through the second volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-volume novel series, I was on the point of giving up. Not because it was boring me. It wasn't boring me.

No, I was on the point of giving up because I thought: "Am I mad to allocate so much reading time to an epic work by some modern writer when I could be chipping away at my ignorance by reading something more substantial, like history, or Augustine's City of God, or something like that?"

In the end, I decided to keep going because I'm sick of starting things and giving them up.

And it must be said, it's very interesting. Knausgaard is writing about his own life. In the book, one of his friends comments on his ability to write about completely mundane events and make them interesting. He really can.

He's especially good at writing about all the little misadventures and diversions that occur in everyday life. At one point he drops his mobile phone on a train and he thinks it's fallen into the open handbag of a woman standing beside him, who then gets off the train. He doesn't follow her because the doors are about to close--and besides, how can you ask to look in someone's handbag? (You could ask her to have a look, but that doesn't seem to occur to him or anybody else.) Eventually he gets a friend to message the phone, but that leads to further complications...

There are deeper themes in the book, of course. The main theme is the conflict between Knausgaard's consuming urge to write, on one hand, and the demands of ordinary life on the other. Another theme is the disenchantment of human life since the Enlightenment, and there are even jabs at political correctness. (In the second volume, Knausgaard is living in Sweden, and as a Norwegian he thinks it's a crazy society-- but he also mentions that Norwegians in Norway actually look up to the Swedes).

Religion hasn't featured very much in the foreground, but it's always there in the background. The first volume opens when Knausgaard is a small boy and considers himself a Christian (which seems rather counter-cultural, although later his first girlfriend is a Christian). By the time he's in his teens he calls himself ani-Christian, though there's never much evidence of this.

When his father dies, Knausgaard and his brother (both of whom seem thoroughly secular, as was their father) agree they want a religious funeral, and not some "awful humanist ceremony"--I forget the exact words used, but they were something like that.

In the office where he writes, Knausgaard surrounds himself with bric-a-brac from the pre-modern past, including religious imagery. He reads the Bible.

Then, when his daugher is christened in volume two, he surprises himself and everyone else by taking communion at the ceremony:

The priest was a young woman, we stood around her by the font. Linda held Vanja as her head was moistened with water. Ingrid left when the ceremony was over, the rest of us stayed seated. It was a communion. Joe Olav and his family stood up and knelt before the altar. For some reason I got up and followed suit. Knelt before the altar, had a wafer placed on my tongue, drank the communion wine, was given the blessing, and went back, with mum's, Kjartan's, Yngve's, and Geir's eyes on me, disbelieving to varying degrees. 

Why had I done it?

Had I become a Christian?

I, a fervent anti-Christian from my early teenage years and a materialist in my heart of hearts, had in one second, without any reflection, got my feet, walked up the aisle and knelt in front of the altar. It had been pure impulse. And, meeting those glares, I had no defence. I couldn't say I was a Christian. I looked down, slightly ashamed.

There's more but I'm not going to type it all out.

Scandinavia has long been presented as the model secular society by secularists. It's interesting (and encouraging) to encounter evidence that it remains haunted by God and by Jesus-- which is what a Christian would expect.

As for materialism, it's always seemed to me like a dead-end for all art and literature. What is there left to say?

Is The Establishment Really All-Powerful and All-Seeing?

Probably everybody who reads this blog would agree that there's a recognizable ideological establishment in the Western world. It has a near-stranglehold on many of the institutions of our society and its propaganda is unremitting.

Lots of people seem to agree with this analysis. There's all sorts of different theories on the nature of this elite. Some people even think it's the Illuminati or the Knights Templar  or something like that.

My guess is that it's no single identifiable group, that it's simply a transnational elite who have common sympathies.

Alarmingly, many people seem to think that this elite is almost omniscient and omnipotent; that any apparent reverses it endures (Brexit, for instance) is simply a part of the Grand Plan; and that any apparent opposition to it (Jordan Peterson, for instance) is actually Controlled Opposition.

This theory seems unfalsifiable to me. The concept of the all-powerful, all-seeing elite is so flexible that it could wrap itself around any facts.

It also seems to fly in the face of experience. I've said that the propaganda of this elite is constant. What amazed me is how crude it is, as well.

Time and again we have seen that propaganda backfire. To take the example of Brexit again, "Project Fear" was so crude and alarmist that it couldn't be taken seriously.

Similarly, the sort of ideological propaganda that we're all subject to every day reaches such levels of overkill that it seems impossible that it wouldn't backfire.

I've heard some people argue that this is all a part of the plan. The reaction against it is also part of the plan. That just seems unlikely to me.

Another reason I think the elites can't be infallible is because human beings are too unpredictable. It regularly happens that somebody who's just too rich, too powerful, or too successful for the elites to silence breaks ranks and utters some heresy. Again, I'm sure you can think of many examples.

I don't think fatalism is a healthy attitude, and I don't think it's justified when it comes to this subject.

Ebert's Most Hated

Every few years, I get a good laugh by re-reading this selection of zingers from Roger Ebert's most devastasting movie reviews.

My favourite is definitely this one: "This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels." (It's for a comedy with an obscene name so, if you're curious, you'll have to read the article. Or at least skim it.)

But don't get me wrong, I also appreciate this one: "Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you’re not sure they have a bus line". (This unfortunate film also won this unenviable accolade from him: "the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time".)

And then there's his verdict on the Spice Girls, the stars of Spice World: "What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names?"

Mind you, I don't agree with all his evaluations. The Dukes of Hazzard is one of my favourite films, although I seem to be alone in my enthusiasm for it. (Even the cast disparaged it.) Halloween III isn't one of my favourite horror films, but it's definitely in the second division (to a great extent on the strength of that incredibly creepy jingle that plays in a sinister advertisement, "Three more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween..")

I watched all the Resident Evil films that had been made up to 2018 over the Christmas of that year, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. They're goofy, but fun. I saw Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo in the cinema and found it endearingly stupid. I laughed several times.

I thought The Village (and its twist) deserved much better than to be featured on this list, and The Usual Suspect is good by any standards.

Still, his put-downs are a hoot.

To find out what happened when Ebert ran into someone who'd been on the receiving end of one of these reviews-- probably the worst of them, in fact-- read here. It's both funny and heartwarming.