Secrets and of course rats

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, you have lent me your ears.

And so now I think it'd be cool if you told me a secret. As a comment? Or by bottle in the sea.

Regardless: secrets are fun and humanising and it's damn swell to share them.

I'll start: I'm a time traveler from three days in the future and I've come to tell you that something awful is going to happen soon.


Your turn.

Ahab and of course rats

Remind me to, at some point, tell you about my lovely lovely Ahab and why it's so totally awful. I can't now because I'm seeing them tomorrow and it's apparently late (in relation to when I have to peel myself out of my bed tomorrow, at least).

But for the mean time, so you know what I'm feeling, trying giving this stuff a listen:

Piazzola's Kicho (especially the slow movement. The fast sections portray the angst though I suppose)

Mahler's 4th symphony, movement 4 (this is just a general feeling towards everything. But especially Ahab.)

Rapunzel and the like and of course Rats

Johanna (Sweeney Todd) and Rapunzel. Both two beautiful, delicate blonde girls (not women) that scream chastity and virginity and submissiveness, with their clean uncut hair (is that literally a hymen reference?!) and pale skin, symbolising that they are untouched by the cruelty of the real world.

And why are they seen as symbols of beauty and perfection? Perhaps it is the "possessive alpha male" that wants a woman untouched by any other man (raised only by the Witch, or in Johanna's case: the judge, who intends to keep her for himself) and wholly innocent to the cruelty of the real world. Wanting to love something "perfect", totally separate from the horrors of the world that the other has experienced - the girls offer an escape and alternate reality. Or perhaps (back to the big scary [read:vulnerable] alpha male) it is the girl's total reliance on one other to take care of them (protection, and providing food and shelter) that satisfies the possessive, insecure part of the man/woman. These girls are the naive virgin archetypes. 

And yet, they can be feminist figures too! Past their appearances and "femininity", these girls actually also show how when women are kept as children, kept naive and sheltered, they resort to deep longing and (ultimately) escape and rebellion! These girls are so inspired by their cages that they rip their way out, beaks and feathers plaited into an escape rope. Johanna tries to run away with that blond guy, and obviously Rapunzel has her prince. (Oh hey a pinch of salt to the feminists: it is the men that steal them away, rather than their own individual efforts. But none the less: girls, breaking free of their oppression.)

I was trying to think what these girls would actually look like, if they lived their whole life locked up in a room. 

No sunlight: sickly palor [read: pale as fuck and blotchy skin]. Rickets. Weak bones and teeth. Sensitive, mole-like eyes. Also, depressed as fuck. 

No exercise: (obviously) fat. Inability to sleep. Very low muscle development and a bad circulatory system. Look older. 

All in all, a crazy ugly ill person. I'd love to see a representation of Rapunzel like this, rather than the perfect blonde that they show. It'd be way more interesting to see a rabid girl ensnaring a prince and then hijacking his horse and riding into the distance. I think a lot more people would relate to her that way too.

I bet afterwards she'd become a bandit. 

Wishes, Longing, the Princes’ “Agony” and of course rats

Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile the emotional depth and significance of music (esp. see Mahler. Always see Mahler.) and stories and poetry with the mundane life, full of faults and boredom.

                It’s so easy to be over-romantic about it all – that imperfections are what make things so brilliant and all that jazz – but really, as much as that’s true, it doesn’t make anything more fulfilling (although yes, perfection would presumably be unfulfilling too).

Lydia gave me a wish bracelet, with sea-glass on it and it’s given me a lot of thoughts. When the bracelet falls off, your wish comes true. And so I’ve been thinking about wishes. Again, trying to reconcile the romantic, huge efforts (“an end to war!” which in itself I find difficult. Is an end to war actually a good thing?) to the mundane (“good results in exams!” which I’ve deeply been trying to purge from my head because ew). Into the Woods has great wishes – “go to the festival”, “want a child”, “she would go with you” etc. These are all specific and mundane and yet grand and romantic.

I can go for the big dreams “hope that I’ll end up in a forest with a good dude”, but the bracelet will fall off before I’m 40! I think that’s what’s great about the bracelet: it forces you to think about what you want in the next few months. Makes you think about immediate dreams. I don’t really have many immediate dreams (that are achievable anyway… Ahab….)

I love the sea glass so much. Keep on thinking about how it was once something mundane (and repulsive) and yet that wonderful physical feeling of a glass bottle! That it’s spent years in the depths of a cold, anonymous sea – connected to all the places I want to be in the world. Just letting things (violence) happen to it, at the mercy of nature. Sounds totally unreal. Like that Catullus,

 “And there you are – on heat and tossed

                                                so differently, just like

   a baby boat in a big sea

                                                                caught by a roaring storm-wind.”

So here, for now. Wishes huh? It can’t be vague, otherwise I’ll never have truly fulfilled it.

I caught sight of that book, “Twenty Guiding Principle of Karate” and it made me think of that brilliant quote that my dad told me from his karate magazine: “youth is wasted on the young, wisdom is wasted on the old”. And, I think, my wish will be that I find the strength (actively) to use my youth to become what I want to become. I’m thinking, motivation to be kinder and more generous, and better with people. More tolerant and enthusiastic. I want to appreciate people without it being an active effort. More carefree and openly loving. More like Lyds I suppose. Less secretive. Less ashamed. Exercise more. I think that if I can find that, it’ll be the most sustainable gift around. I suppose it’s hard to measure… But I guess it’ll become obvious eventually.

Action points: less computer. More writing. More going out. More night time going out. Running. More dog walks. More double bass. Nicer and more interested in people at school. 

Morals, Travel, Technology and of course rats

                What has become increasingly apparent and disturbing recently, to me, is that our society has no guidance. We are a part of such a complex system that we destroy without real conscience of our actions, and without any kind of moral guidance.

                Looking at travel: I’ve been extremely fortunate and gifted with having parents who love to travel. Really fortunate. I’ve been through Brazil, America, Vietnam, Southern Africa, Norway, Denmark, and so forth. I’ve seen countries which seem relatively untouched by tourism, and ones where it has become the sole provider of resources. And of course, tourism is extremely important for these countries, and it is in no way my place to say “we must hinder these countries development from poverty so that they maintain their status as genuine specimens of a working culture!” because that’s totally unfair, and if anything only consolidates the idea that the rest of the world is a freak show for the wealthy westerners, with their silly fanny packs and bottled water.

                What I’ve noticed in the last few years in which “moderate adventure travel” has become more popular is that the countries really change. When I went to Jordan only eight years ago, we drove out in a shitty jeep, frequently having to dig ourselves out of the sand, and lying on a rug in the middle of a Wadi for a few days. Now, in the last few years, the price for holidays there have skyrocketed, and you sleep in hotels that have been dug out into the ancient rocks which have been their many many millennia before ourselves.

                And the same is felt elsewhere. For example, Angkor Wat in Cambodia: what was one a genuine cultural fountain with kings and kingdoms is now a place for selfies and sun cream – at the expense of the landmark itself, which is beginning to chip away with each tourist. It’s so pathetically Post-Modern: that places that once had meaning now have less than a postcard for $1 at the giftshop.

                Everywhere you go, people are becoming the same: same phones, same shirt brands, same music taste. And maybe that’s good. Maybe we need similarity to survive in such a huge society. Or maybe this is the beginning of the end of culture, and the start of the rise of mass corporations feeding us ideologies with that order of chips.

                And where this is ultimately leading: if you ask anyone in travel if this loss of culture is what they intended, they will likely misinterpret the question and disagree with you, they’ll agree, or they’re stupid and misinformed. This loss in culture cannot be anything worthwhile.

                And where is our use in technology going? To make life more sedate and easy? Sure, in some ways that’s good. But anyone that’s had a summer holiday before knows that sitting down aimlessly is only fun for about a day. Hard work keeps the body and mind healthy. Stops you from becoming a Mississippi racist homophobic Baptist housewife. People should have livelihoods, and not just jobs for money for computers for… For what, exactly?

                I deeply worry that technology is taking us somewhere, at an exponentially fast rate, and that we have no moral guidance taking us there – instead only a scientist’s curiosity and a tired, unfulfilled worker’s boredom. We should be striving towards an ideal, or at least have some kind of moral compass in mind before we start driving towards a horizon in self-controlled cars (does it count as driving if it’s only a computer doing it? Where does the sense of accomplishment come from?)

                I heard an interesting thought today in an old broadcast of the “Radiolab” podcast, from the episode “Limits”, in which they met the man who designed a very intelligent computer which could derive physical laws from data which we humans are unable to comprehend due to the size of the numbers involved and complexity of the system. This computer could create equations describing how a system inside a cell worked (when humans had drawn a blank pretty early on), but gave no reason why it worked. The episode ended with the sombre thought that perhaps machines like “Eureka” are taking us to the great secrets of the universe that we, as monkeys, are simply unable to comprehend. And I ask, what will happen when we try to utilise equations describing laws we don’t understand. Who knows what the aftermath will be. And furthermore, how much value is there in knowledge that we don’t actually understand?

                Some thoughts to end with: should, or can, morals be taught? Have morals changed? And where is the modern world, governed by seemingly inevitable advances in technology, seeking to find fulfillment?