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