The Virtual Rambler

Number fifty : 18^th July 2014

Terpsichorean Instrumentations

A long George Orwell essay on Henry Miller⁽¹⁾ offered the prescient opinion that Miller would prove to be a man of one good book (his Parisian debut , Tropic of Cancer). “Sooner or later I would expect him to descend into unintelligibility or into charlatanism,” observes George. Henry developed a lifelong obsession with the 'unre-enterable' world of the past - his own past in particular. Having preserved many of the qualities of childhood and youth , the older Miller never quite accepted the impossibility of a return to that world. Hence his abiding use of "bad language" and a schoolboy prurience about casual sex. He once characterised his written divagations by the title of this ramble - you suspect the dictionary lay as close to his elderly hand as his trusty pecker did in his earlier days. Miller also wrote of his ambition “to be read by fewer and fewer people” and this was duly fulfilled as his reputation plummeted after his death in 1980 , when he came under the scrutiny of hard-line feminists and a peleton of back- pedalling literary critics.

There was a time when Science established its cultural dominance over Religion but when Rationalist high priests stridently dismiss all they deem to be irrational , a reaction sets in. After an hour in their company (as authors or TV documentarists) , one is tempted to take out a subscription to Druids' Monthly or start consulting the I Ching. Insecurity , credulity and desire form a potent combination in the human psyche. We are persuaded to believe any nonsense at all if it purports to yield a rosy glimpse of our future success in love or fortune. Hence the crystal ball gazers , palmists and Tarot readers , spiritual healers and every other hermetic occultist jostling for a place on the Mystery Train. Of course , prophecies can sound more plausible when their futures are in our past , which is always generous in the interpretations it admits. If the prophecies themselves are couched in obscure terms (“At forty five degrees the sky will burn”) , they can be made to fit any number of historical events. An appropriate rummage through the quatrains of Nostradamus might unravel that mystagogue's prediction of this very essay.

The Ancients in general are wide open to speculation. The “Wisdom of Old” school proposes not only their one-ness with Nature and superior knowledge of the Cosmos but a familiarity with products associated with modern science – aeroplanes , televisions , etcetera - which they deemed unworthy of further attention and so were forgotten until our own times. The “Brutish and Short” school (referring to supposed conditions of earlier human lives) conjecture extra-terrestrial influences as 'explaining' any early architectural expertise or enigmatic complexities such as the Nazca geoglyphs in the Peruvian desert. Devotees of this extravagant theory scour antique rock-carvings for signs of spacemens' helmets and inter-galactic craft ; many such carvings only verging on the figurative , they too are equally generous in the interpretations they admit.

Like class A drug-users (in popular conservative mythology) who began their downward slide with a joint at a party , devotees of 'alternative' doctrines kick off with some fringe theory of diet or posture before going on to harder core flapdoodle : Kabbalism , lunar cycles , the Golden Dawn , Gematria or Eternal Recurrence. In a time like ours , when the “real world” news goes from bad to worse , a fashion of uncritical glorification of all things mystical and mysterious becomes widespread. Once again occultists huddle together inside the mental fortifications they share with their fellow initiates. Like political party members of all persuasions , their mutual opinions are all that is discussed , for they spare themselves the trouble of ever examining arguments that refute their 'incontestable' beliefs. If their particular guru/party leader insists that two and two make five , then five it must remain. Isn’t that what Pythagoras said - or was it the Dead Sea Scrolls ?

Wig

⁽¹⁾ Inside the Whale (1940). In it Orwell refers to another essay , by Aldous Huxley , about El Greco. Huxley remarks that the people in El Greco’s pictures look as though they were in the bellies of whales. “All of Miller’s best and most characteristic passages are written from the angle of Jonah ,” Orwell writes. “Give yourself over to the world-process , simply accept it , endure it.”

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