The Growth of Love (I)

I know my title sounds like it might belong to a marriage guidance manual from the seventies, but that's not what this blog post is about. It's not about romantic love or even interpersonal love. It's about "love" in the sense of enthusiasms, interests, pursuits, and so on. And it's unabashedly personal. I hope it's of interest to someone out there, but even if it's not, I want to write it for myself.

I was watching a horror film earlier today (the one I mentioned in a previous post), and it occurred to me: horror is probably my oldest love in this sense.

I can't remember when I started to love the horror genre. More than anything, it's horror films that I love. I was allowed to any number of horror films as a child, perhaps because my father also liked horror. At least, he liked ghost stories. He often mentioned staying up late as a boy, after everyone else had gone to bed, and reading a collection of ghost stories.

I once asked him why he was so tolerant of ghost stories, when he only had mockery for science fiction and fantasy, which he generally regarded as childish trash. "Because ghosts are real", he said.

How many horror films did I watch in my childhood? I have no idea, and I find it hard to even remember particular horror films. They all blend together in my mind, but they were mostly English: Hammer, Amicus, and other films of that kind.

Horror has always felt like home to me. I feel about horror-- the horror atmosphere, which has to be somehow cosy or appealing as well as scary-- the same way English people feel about the white cliffs of Dover, or Americans feel about Mom's apple pie. 

But speaking of the white cliffs of Dover...my anglophilia, my love of Englishness, was also a very early acquisition, though not as old as my love of horror. Somehow, when I think of it, I think of the image of Big Ben in the cartoon Dangermouse, even though Dangermouse was not a big part of my childhood. I think it was mostly to do with English comics (such as The Eagle) and English TV programmes, though none of the latter suggest themselves to me right now. I do remember that the first "grown-up" book I ever read-- that is, the first book that was mostly text-- was Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

What about my love of poetry? This was a rather late arrival. It wasn't until my early teens that I discovered poetry, and the discovery was sudden. It's hard to write this without sounding obnoxious, but I was astonished-- even then-- at the realization that I had a mature taste for great poetry. As soon as I read W.B. Yeats, I loved him, in the same way that I love him today. I expected poetry to be over my head, but it wasn't. I have no idea how this happened, other than my father reciting poetry to me. (I can still remember the first time I heard the "Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow" speech from Mabbeth-- when my father recited it to me-- and the frisson I felt at the words "a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing").

My love of the cinema was even later. I'd gone to the cinema exactly seven times in my childhood, each of them memorable occasions. But it hadn't sparked a particular love of the cinema per se.

My passion for cinema-going actually began in 2001, when I was already in my early twenties. It sounds ridiculous (and it is ridiculous) but for many years I was reluctant to go to the cinema on my own, being unsure what exactly you did when you walked up to a box-office. I thought there was some kind of mystique to it, like ordering from the menu in a French restaurant.

Perhaps this nervousness was Providential, because when I finally overcame my cinema hesitation, I became an avid cinema-goer, and I experience a profound sense of revelation. I went every week, several times a week, for several years. I read the movie magazines. When people saw me, they asked me what films I'd seen recently-- which irritated me.

The cinema I attended was the Santry Omniplex, which was part of the Omni shopping centre in Santry, not far from Dublin Airport. Importantly, though it was part of the shopping centre, it was semi-detached, as it were-- which meant that, when I left a screening (and I always preferred morning screenings), I would walk from the darkness back out into the cold light of day.

The Santry Omniplex was the sort of suburban cineplex which is called "soulless", but it was exactly what I needed-- although it would take too long to explain this.

The more this great era of my cinema-going recedes into my past, the more important it seems to me. It was like an imaginative rebirth, even a spiritual rebirth. It reminds me of this great line from John Denver: "He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year, coming home to a place he'd never been before..."

But that's all I can write for now...

Favourite Album Covers: Technical Ecstasy by Black Sabbath

 

This has been my absolute favourite album cover for decades now. I've never even listened to the album.

It's hard to explain why. I just really like the atmosphere, and the colours-- the colours and textures create the atmosphere. 

I suppose you could say it evokes a kind of technological dystopia, from a human point of view, but that's not what I think of when I look at it. It actually has something of a retro-futurist feel, and the title colours my view of the picture. It's a moment of ecstasy, not of horror. Maybe my reaction, deep down, is: "Perhaps the future won't be too different from the past, in some way." Also, I've always loved escalators.

It was painted (?) by the same guy who designed the cover for Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. I've only discovered that right now. You could hardly get a more recognizable album cover than that one.

A Positive Cultural Development?

Last night I started watching a 2022 anthology horror film called Tales from the Other Side. It was, to be frank, pretty ropey: cheap, corny, and often ridiculous. But I fell asleep watching it and I'll finish watching it today. I love horror anthologiy films so much that I will (fairly) happily watch even the worst ones. I would rather watch a fifth-rate anthology horror anthology film than a second-rate gangster film, war film, or melodrama. Beside, it had some nice moments.

I came across it on Amazon Prime. This service seems to have a bottomless cauldron of cheap horror films-- most of them made within the last few years. The sort of films that don't have a Wikipedia page or any other kind of online footprint, aside from an occasional capsule review, and that will certainly never become widelly known.

I say "cheap" rather than "bad", because not all of them are bad. For instance, The Curse of Crom: The Legend of Halloween was pretty good, and there have been others.

Presumably this avalanche of horror films-- and, I assume, other genres (Christmas movies, for instance)- only exists because of streaming. Is that really such a bad thing? The people who make all these flms are getting paid, and they are also getting to do creative work. That seems like an admirable thing to me. They only exist because they meet a demand, so somebody is getting something out of watching them. (Me, for one.)

Even if you subscribe to an elitist outlook that only creative works of permanent value matter-- well, you need a mountain of mediocrity to achieve a pinaccle of excellence. The bigger the mountain...

Meanwhile, cinemas still exist, and still exhibit all their usual fare: big budget movies, not-so-big budget movies, and obscure little movies that still get a theatrical release.

I'm not often enthusiastic about cultural developments, but this seems like a good one.

There's UFO's over New York...

 ...and I ain't too surprised.

I happened to be listening to John Lennon's song "Nobody Told Me" just now, and I couldn't help being struck by the topicality of this line, given recent headlines.

(I'm surprised to be writing a second Beatles-related post in a row.)

I've long harboured a dislike of John Lennon, based on a few different factors: the lyrics of "Imagine", the way he treated his first son, and his general cynicism. I think of Paul McCartney as the good Beatle and the John as the bad one.

But of course, that's completely daft. John Lennon was a young guy with a troubled background who experienced unprecedented, unimaginable success. It's impossible to guess how that would affect any one of us.

In more recent years, I've come to really like some of his solo tracks that I didn't know about before. Most especially, "Watching the Wheels", but also "Gimme Some Truth" and "Working-Class Hero."

And "Nobody Told Me", which is a wonderfully bouncy and upbeat anthem to life's quirkiness.

More than that, though: it evokes a mood or aesthetic that I particularly relish, one best captured by Louis MacNeice in his immortal phrase "the drunkenness of things being various".

Other things that awaken this mood, or aesthetic:

The Trivial Pursuit board.

Books of quotations.

Reading old diaries, bound periodicals, or even the newspaper.

Compilation TV shows such as the Irish "Reeling in the Years" series.

I also like the "collage" style of the lyrics. It reminds me of other songs such as "Cool for Cats" by Squeeze or "The Mero" by the Dubliners.

There's something miraculous about music (and every other form of art) that awakens in us a particular mood or view of the world. It's almost the opposite of the Matthew Arnold line I posted a view days ago: "Who saw life steadily and saw it whole." That's a wonderful line, and a wonderful gift. But not to see life steadily, or see it whole, also seems important: the ability to see the world as now comic, now tragic, now mysterious, now exciting, now sentimental, etc. etc. And the fact that life can correctly be described in all these different ways!

Life is a shimmering thing.

Favourite Album Covers: Back to the Egg

This is a new regular feature which I will probably forget about immediately.

Anyway, I've long been of this album cover, Back to the Egg by Wings (1979) which is an example of what I call "everyday surrealism". And so seventies!

Favourite Poems: "To a Friend" by Matthew Arnold.

This sonnet is about Sophocles, of whom I know little. Well, it's about Homer, Epictetus, and Sophocles. The opening is a bit shaky and awkward, although that also gives it a sort of halting dignity. But the sestet, the last six lines, are the kicker. "Who saw life steadily and saw it whole" is, in my view, one of the greatest lines in English poetry. "Business could not make dull, nor passion wild" is another wonderful line; the sort of classical antithesis native to the age of Samuel Johnson, here lit by the afterglow of Romanticism. "Mellow glory" is also a wonderful paradox, or at least, a surprising combination of ideas.

It's the sort of poem that makes me regret being so little of a classicist!

To a Friend by Matthew Arnold

Who prop, thou ask'st in these bad days, my mind?—
He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,
And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.

Much he, whose friendship I not long since won,
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son
Cleared Rome of what most shamed him. But be his

My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;

Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.

Poetry and Music is "All or Nothing" For Me

Just a quick observation on my own artistic sensibilities, which may or may not chime with anybody else's.

I've noticed a big cleavage between my own attitude towards poetry and music on the one hand, and pretty much all the other arts on the other.

I'm much more tolerant towards all the other arts. I could watch a film and think: "Yeah, that was OK. It was unoriginal and corny and a bit dull, but it was enjoyable enough to watch-- though I wouldn't watch it again, most likely."

The same applies to books, the visual arts, architecture, and so on. These arts are graded on a continuum.

When it comes to music and poetry, though, I'm looking for something very specific. In those two art-forms, a miss is as good as a mile. It either happens or it doesn't happen.

Now, I don't think this necessarily has anything to do with good taste. In my own mind, I have excellent taste in poetry, but pretty awful taste in music-- for the most part.

The response that I'm looking for, when it comes music and poetry, is something like genuine laughter-- it's an involuntary response. Or it might be compared to a physical shudder, or physical attraction, or (perhaps more than else) the awakening of the sense of wonder.

This is a minimum requirement, of course. It's not to say that every poem, or piece of music, that provokes this response does so to an equal degree-- in the same way that not every laugh is equally intense.

Reading new poetry, and listening to new music, always feels like prospecting to me. Will it happen, or won't it? If it doesn't, all the critical plaudits and hype in the world, all the evident virtuosity at work, mean nothing at all to me.