The Virtual Rambler

Number forty eight 20^th May 2014

They Rose Without Trace

After a restless night of shallow sleep , you begin to hear the murmur of traffic around dawn as commerce and commuting get underway. A louder , distant roar announces the first flight of the morning. And ghostly through the drizzling rain the noise of life begins again. It does so for people in whom the desire to be first burns brightly , the focussed and the ambitious , the not easily-daunted... those who have got to the front of the queue and reached centre stage. They also serve who are born to follow , standing in attendance on the periphery , those at the back of the queue. Of each in turn it might be said on this dull morning , "they rose without trace". Rather like the souls of the faithful after death. Or indeed , hard-core mountaineers disappearing into the swirling clouds at 28,000 feet.

"The way up was by another overhanging crack , with icicles hanging in it. The rock was covered in snow and rime. the perlon rope was like a wire , my rucksack like a tin canister , and the hood of my anorak was frozen so firmly to my head covering that I could not push it back. My trouser-legs were each like a battered drainpipe, but I tried to shake off my misery and despair"

Thus spoke Hermann Buhl , an Austrian chap who seemed to specialise in this sort of thing. He is the representative climbing extremist , for whom any engagement with the wider world beyond the mountains becomes subordinate to an overriding compulsion to ascend steep walls of rock and ice. After following a dozen such escapades in his autobiography , the reader starts to feel his last remnants of interest draining away , every turn of the page requiring an increased effort of will. Reading through a roll-call of bold ascents needs some of the endurance required to make them. I wonder what Mrs. Buhl thought about it all.

An artificial search for difficulty wasn't restricted to mountain arenas. Certain twentieth century authors also ascended to the task. For the fictional characters of Kafka and Beckett ⁽¹⁾, just getting up of a morning seemed akin to greeting a new dawn from a perilous bivouac half way up the Eiger's north face. A solo ascent of some vertical ice field was no more daunting a task than sustained engagement with their dense pages. As the hours chimed , blizzards of doubt swept in with page three pending. Weren't there easier , more pleasurable ways of absorbing your leisure hours than this ? Nor was the single-mindedness of the fanatic confined to literature and mountaineering. As the twentieth century got into its stride , the wider world beyond theatre , studio or concert hall was left behind for prolonged prostration before the idol of subjectivity. Modernism became a by-word for difficulty , its works seemingly designed to upset , disturb , challenge or subvert the hapless audience's naïve expectations of entertainment.

Time now to consider those who compete for prominent positions in Twitter world. Every poltroon who tweeted without trace , occupying their brief hour on the podium with an unshakeable conviction of their own importance. The multitudes whose standard of achievement in this world never progressed beyond 'being on the telly'. The garrulous talk-show celebrities , bonus-bloated financial consultants , millionaire footballers and their ever-rotating allegiances , 'talent'-show hosts and all their contestants , strangers to pride if not to prejudice. The politicians whose parties occupied the seat of governance ostensibly on behalf of the people but who were in fact there to do the bidding of business and finance. The economics of life for most of their constituents ground on , irrespective of which political party was in charge. All of that Westminster moving and shaking was mere posture , as transient as last year's sets on the Glastonbury world music stage , evanescent as yesterday's morning dew. They(and the) dew rose without trace.


Wig

⁽¹⁾ Two twentieth century writers whose undeserved reputations for unrelieved gloom (they were not 'blue-sky thinkers') consigned their works to the higher cultural shelves. They would both have made suitable managers of lowly football clubs were they alive today.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan and Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25^th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20^th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20^th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21^st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20^th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19^th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21^st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20^th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting Stoics, 20^th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time, 20^th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't Allow, 20^th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary Nexus, 20^th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking Liberties, 16^th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or Less, 20^th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under Control, 20^th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting, 20^th April 2014
Virtual rambler #48 – They Rose Without Trace, 20^th May 2014
Virtual rambler #49 – Bigger Impression , Smaller Footprint, 20^th June 2014
Virtual rambler #50 – Terpsichorean Instrumentations, 18^th July 2014
Virtual rambler #51 – Socially Mediated, 19^th August 2014
Virtual rambler #52 – Rambling Into The Sunset, 20^th September 2014