It is a curious fact that the artist who produced the most compelling and accessible vision of Christian humanism in the twentieth century was a multiply-married, luxury-loving, alcoholic atheist by the name of Robert Bolt. It is worth noting that he came to this choice of lifestyle after a strict Methodist upbringing. And I might add that not long after throwing off his Methodist faith, he became a card-carrying member of the Communist party. I am not sure what conclusion to draw from these facts.
But on a more serious note, I can say with a straight face that Bolt not only remained obsessed by Christianity his whole life, but also continued to think Christianly to the end of his days. He was what might be called a “flying buttress”—someone who remains resolutely outside the church, but who does a great deal to prop it up. In the divine economy, I suspect that there is a mansion in heaven for tortured Augustinian souls like that of Mr. Bolt, and perhaps in God’s mercy it has room service.
I’ve been leafing through Wolfe’s book again, as well as one by Daniel Ritchie. Recently, I revisited many of G.K. Chesterton’s essays, and I even held on to a collection of C.S. Lewis’s books rather than sell them as I originally intended. I enjoy the irony of me, an Epicurean, seeking out Christian writers as a refreshing, interesting alternative to the tiresome fundamentalist preachers of Diversity and Inclusion™️, but it’s a funny old world we live in. As Wolfe says earlier in the book, we can learn well from artists and thinkers who ask the right questions even if we disagree with their answers. That’s how it is for me — nine-tenths agreement is good enough. If Communism, a Christian heresy, can have fellow travelers, why not Christianity itself? Anyway, I appreciate the thought that there might be celestial lodgings reserved for us buttresses, but if I couldn’t be an ornamental hermit in heaven as well, I’d respectfully hand back my ticket.
We live in a Babel of antagonistic tribes — tribes that speak only the languages of race, class, rights, and ideology. That is why the intuitive language of the imagination is so vital. Reaching deep into our collective thoughts and memories, great art sneaks past our shallow prejudices and brittle opinions to remind us of the complexity and mystery of human existence.
I’ve been working twelve-hour days for what seems like a month, at least. I’m not complaining, mind you. In fact, staying busy serves as something like an emetic. The mind is purged of the toxins of current events. I gaze upon the Boschian hellscape of the web with fresh eyes and think, Surely, there’s got to be more edifying stuff than this. And so I make a promise to myself that I will redouble my efforts to seek out the cracks which Matthew Crawford spoke of, the overlooked spaces where beauty and imagination can flourish. It’s been too long since I stumbled across any new and interesting blogs to read. I think I’ll start pointedly searching for some. Any suggestions?
A transition from an author’s book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but, when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.
As the old saying goes, never follow your heroes on social media, unless you’re one of those weirdos with a clay-foot fetish. In his book Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher, Tom Bethell wrote:
After 1965, Hoffer became a public figure. Before 1934, he is a mystery figure. Will more information about Hoffer’s background turn up? That’s doubtful. There are signs that he was more than merely forgetful about his early years. In fact, I believe he was deliberately secretive. When pressed for more detail by journalists he would say he was confused or couldn’t remember much of anything. About later events in his life he had an excellent memory. Were there things he didn’t want us to know? One possibility that comes to mind is that he was an illegal immigrant to this country. But, again, I have no positive evidence. Did he really teach himself botany, chemistry, and Hebrew on skid row in Los Angeles? One can’t help wondering.
I don’t wonder. Honestly, I don’t care. His thoughts are interesting enough, floating free in the noosphere. I don’t need them to be anchored in biography to make them insightful or relevant. In fact, I wish more authors and thinkers today would learn to cultivate an aura of mysterious reticence. Or, at the very least, to seek treatment for their cerebral bulimia.
Now, among the heresies that are spoken in this matter is the habit of calling a grey day a “colourless” day. Grey is a colour, and can be a very powerful and pleasing colour. There is also an insulting style of speech about “one grey day just like another.” You might as well talk about one green tree just like another. A grey clouded sky is indeed a canopy between us and the sun; so is a green tree, if it comes to that. But the grey umbrellas differ as much as the green in their style and shape, in their tint and tilt. One day may be grey like steel, and another grey like dove’s plumage. One may seem grey like the deathly frost, and another grey like the smoke of substantial kitchens.
…Lastly, there is this value about the colour that men call colourless; that it suggests in some way the mixed and troubled average of existence, especially in its quality of strife and expectation and promise. Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some other colour; of brightening into blue or blanching into white or bursting into green and gold. So we may be perpetually reminded of the indefinite hope that is in doubt itself; and when there is grey weather in our hills or grey hairs in our heads, perhaps they may still remind us of the morning.
Purple was my first love, as colors go. “I heard that a lot of babies like purple,” my grandmother said when I told her. Within a few years, I had shifted my allegiance to green. My pediatrician gave me a lime-flavored lollipop after I said so. As an adolescent, I was concerned with trying to appear edgy and profound, so I started telling people that red, being the color of blood, was my favorite, even as I increasingly began wearing black clothes. At some point, purple and I got together again. Basically, I’ve slutted my way around the color wheel, but in middle age, I’ve come to truly appreciate the humble, autumnal greys (and browns, to a lesser extent). Still waters run deep; so do restrained colors.
When I go through a shelf of books on a subject I begin with the thin volumes. Now and then I find a thin and a thick book by an author on the same subject. Usually, the thin book is of an earlier date; and it often turns out that in the thin book the author reveals what he knows and in the thick book he tries to conceal what he does not know.
“Tell me your thoughts, not the thinking of your thoughts.” Is that an actual quotation? If not, it should be. I have to say, I find it generally disappointing to hear writers or musicians talk about their “creative process.” As Isaac Brock sang, “I guess all us snakes find our tails pretty damn tasty.” I’m fully aware that a finished artwork can, and often does, grow from banal origins. Analyzing those origins in detail, though, often produces a deflation as undignified as a whoopee cushion. Give us the transcendent result of your imagination, but leave the rest shrouded in mysterious silence, please.
I cannot keep a record of my life by my actions; fortune places them too low. I keep it by my thoughts. Thus I knew a gentleman who gave knowledge of his life only by the workings of his belly; you would see on display at his home a row of chamber pots, seven or eight days’ worth. That was his study, his conversation; all other talk stank in his nostrils. Here you have, a little more decently, some excrements of an aged mind, now hard, now loose, and always undigested.
— Montaigne, “Of Vanity”
Two things: one, this reminds me of how I first encountered the word “costive” in one of Joseph Epstein’s essays. In context, he used it as a synonym for “reticent” or “taciturn,” and I’m always happy to find new versions on that theme. Upon looking it up, I learned that the primary use was in describing literal, not metaphorical, constipation, and decided I probably wouldn’t use it. I may well be full of it, but I’d rather not suggest it so vividly to my readers. And two, to paraphrase Dave Barry, “Some Excrements of an Aged Mind” would make an excellent name for a blog. Looks like the domain is still available if you’re interested!
It is allowed that vocations and employments of least dignity are of the most apparent use; that the meanest artizan or manufacturer contributes more to the accommodation of life, than the profound scholar and argumentative theorist; and that the publick would suffer less present inconvenience from the banishment of philosophers than from the extinction of any common trade.
“How’s it been for you guys?” we asked our frequently-seen grocery-store buddy. “It’s so strange!” he said. “People are thanking us! Is this how the troops feel? I mean, I just put beans on the shelf!” I remember once hearing a lawyer from one of the sub-branches of copyright law joke about how if he and his colleagues went on strike, no one would even notice, but if the garbage collectors went on strike, we’d all be dead of cholera within two weeks. Thank goodness for the non-glamourous keystones of society. As the saying goes, they also serve who only sit and work the register.
Consolation of the imperilled. The Greeks, in a way of life in which great perils and upheavals were always present, sought in knowledge and reflection a kind of security and ultimate refugium. We, in an incomparably more secure condition, have transferred this perilousness into knowledge and reflection, and we recover from it, and calm ourselves down, with our way of life.
In an age of widespread affluence and leisure, it’s strange to see people attracted to “revolutionary” ideas and lifestyles. As soon as life is no longer dangerous or unpredictable, people get bored and start inventing mischief. Even the modern magic of technology loses its spellbinding power over an increasingly-jaded audience. Only time will tell if our current pandemic is a mere anomaly or a true world-changing event, but I’ve already seen an increasing number of people retreating to the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius for comfort.
A frequent and attentive prospect of that moment, which must put a period to all our schemes, and deprive us of all our acquisitions, is indeed of the utmost efficacy to the just and rational regulation of our lives; nor would ever any thing wicked, or often any thing absurd, be undertaken or prosecuted by him who should begin every day with a serious reflection that he is born to die.
Just over ten years ago, I reported that I had indeed been waking up each morning with a strong awareness of my own mortality. Those kinds of reflections tend to appear at more random intervals these days, though still regularly. (Thoughts of his own death/Like the distant roll/Of thunder at a picnic — Auden.) But I’m afraid I must stand as the living (for now) disproof of Johnson’s conjecture, for while I may have avoided outright wickedness, I have undertaken and prosecuted much absurdity since then. Like rock smashing scissors, folly easily beats memento mori.
Learning solitude. O you poor devils in the great cities of world politics, you gifted young men tormented by ambition who consider it your duty to pass some comment on everything that happens — and there is always something happening! Who when they raise the dust in this way think they are the chariot of history! Who, because they are always on the alert, always on the lookout for the moment when they can put their word in, lose all genuine productivity! However much they may desire to do great work, the profound speechlessness of pregnancy never comes to them! The event of the day drives them before it like chaff, while they think they are driving the event, poor devils! If one wants to represent a hero on the stage one must not think of making one of the chorus, indeed one must not even know how to make one of the chorus.
I think the high priests of commerce, culture, media and athletics have converged for their annual extravaganza as I write this, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it. Likewise, I think there’s some drama happening up in our nation’s capital which I haven’t paid any attention to. Also, I hear the new bubonic plague is coming to kill us all soon? Oh, and are we still fighting World War Three? Or was that finished last month? Well, anyway, in important news, I spent my day organizing my work space and enjoying this brief burst of springlike weather while looking forward to reading before bed. As Calvin said, the days are just packed.
Intellectuals and philosophers may think they make the weather, but they are more often driven by it. People who read and write books, like you and me, have a persistent tendency to overestimate the power of ideas. Some of us may occasionally change our beliefs and our lives as a result of a chain of conscious reasoning, but not very often or very honestly. Our own age has forcibly reminded us that intellectual elites often struggle to bring their societies with them. Their default role is to tag along, explaining with perfect hindsight why things inevitably turned out as they did.
It’s been said many times that humanity has suffered a series of shocks to its self-image thanks to Copernicus, Darwin and Freud, who demoted us from our position at the center of the universe, the pinnacle of the animal kingdom, and the command center of our own consciousness, respectively. Those of us who still read books for pleasure are constantly reminded that we’re like Amish who insist on riding our horses and buggies down the information superhighway as all the kids zip by us in their text messages at the speed of 5G, laughing at our quaint old habits. One could take this particular excerpt as another diminishment of the bibliophile self-image, but I prefer to think of the ideas and concepts I encounter in my reading as akin to melodies, not blueprints. Music doesn’t make me a “better” person; reading doesn’t make me smarter. Neither one is leading to anything in a progressive, cumulative sense; they’re just here to make the present moment a little bit brighter or tastier. Humming a sweet snippet of Tchaikovsky at Christmastime; reading an elegant expression of a feeling or an idea — these need no external justification.
It is true enough that in Russia writers with serious grievances are arrested, while in America they are merely featured on television talk shows where all that is arrested is their development. This is an important difference, but it does nothing to change the fact that grievance is the source of all interesting prose. Without grievance, a writer tends to become a celebrant, which is an agreeable but repetitious state. After you have sung two choruses of “God Bless America,” what else is there to say?
If this is so, and I think it often is, why should it be? Are we naturally belligerent and inclined to argument? Or does our lust for novelty prod us to differentiate ourselves from others, thus leading to contrast and conflict? Why is it so difficult to be interesting without being provocative?
A major division in the bearded kingdom exists between those who revel in no longer having to bother with maintenance, letting Nature have its luxuriant bushy way, and those who continue to keep a razor nearby—prudently pruning or shaving the cheeks every few days. A well-clipped beard on a kindly man looks as proper as a well-kept lawn on Sunday.
A couple times, I’ve tried to let mine grow wild for a month or more, hoping that after its wiry rumspringa phase, it will settle down and behave like the wise old elder of my facial community. So far, its rebelliousness has outlasted my patience. It doesn’t help that my beard nation has balkanized into the Brown, Blond and Grey tribes each claiming their own territory, resisting unification. I have yet to achieve the philosopher-king style — more like “clinically depressed fur trapper.”A dedicated topiary practice is still necessary to keep anarchy at bay.
One might as well “blame” the decline of the conversational style of writing. Familiar essays were fundamentally, even self-consciously, conversational; it is no surprise that Swift wrote one of his best short pieces on “Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation”; that Montaigne tackled “Of the Art of Discussion”; that Addison and Steele extensively analyzed true and false wit; that Hazlitt titled his books Table Talk, Plain Speaker, and The Round Table; or that Oliver Wendell Holmes actually cast his familiar essays in the form of meal time dialogues. Why would a book like Holmes’s The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, a celebration of good talk that was so popular in its time, be so unlikely today? I cannot go along with those who say “The art of conversation has died, television killed it,” since conversation grows and changes as inevitably as language. No, what has departed is not conversation but conversation-flavored writing, which implies a speaking relationship between writer and reader. How many readers today would sit still for a direct address by the author? To be called “gentle reader” or “hypocrite lecteur,” to have one’s arm pinched while dozing off, to be called to attention, flattered, kidded like a real person instead of a privileged fly on the wall—wouldn’t most readers today find such devices archaic, intrusive, even impudent? Oh, you wouldn’t? Good, we can go back to the old style, which I much prefer.
As I’ve said, one of my favorite things about blogs is the way they facilitate that same conversational familiarity. Perhaps I should phrase that in the past tense — there once was a time when the blogosphere was more like a neighborhood with community spirit. Comment sections could be left unlocked, and other bloggers and their followers could and frequently did drop in while making the rounds like daily wassailers. People made more of an effort to include other bloggers in their written conversations. Google used to have a blogsearch function which I would visit daily and use to search by topic, hoping to find some new site with an interesting voice (I even know of people who met their spouses that way). Does anyone bother keeping an updated blogroll anymore? Do people still occasionally check their site stats for the surprise of seeing who directed a burst of traffic their way? On Twitter, as I understand it, “quote-tweeting,” i.e. using someone else’s tweet as a springboard for your own, i.e. the standard conversational practice in the old blogosphere, is considered bad form, at least a nanoaggression if not an outright assault. Everyone now wants to speak and be heard, but no one wants to communicate.
Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
I have a younger friend who has already had more adventure in his three decades than most of us have in a lifetime. Walt Whitman’s multitudes are homogenous compared to his. He has a very inquisitive mind despite a Hillbilly Elegy-type upbringing. He’s traveled widely and had enough unique experiences to already make for an interesting biography. He has a very dangerous job in the justice system in which he has been hospitalized at least a couple times with gunshot wounds and other “lesser” injuries, one of which required him to fatally shoot a man in self-defense. He’s great to have a conversation with, but it also sure makes me appreciate life in my hobbit-hole, never having adventures or doing anything unexpected. No one would want to read about my life, but I wouldn’t want to live any other.
I would like to think of my mind as a tidy bookshelf which just needs an occasional dusting. But when I consider how much of my learning mainly involves unlearning things I mistakenly thought were true or forgetting things which are no longer useful, I think what I really need is a gardener to trim the shrubbery, pull the weeds, and most of all, take a leaf blower to all the debris cluttering up my synapses.