more ch ch ch changes
by uzwi
In the comments on the original Changes post, I forgot to make my argument-from-experience. I forgot the infamous Dylan concerts, 1965, 66 ?
I went to one of them–Leicester de Montfort Hall, I think–as a raw, betrayed, left wing folkie, ready to heckle as soon as that sell-out reneged on his roots, denied his past & picked up an electric guitar. My girlfriend of the time, too. Two funny, smooth, unmarked, optimistic little faces turned up at the stage ready to defend our values, ready to defend our hero against his own bad decisions. By the end of the accoustic half of the show, I couldn’t bear my own anxiety & had dissociated as a defence.
Then a minute into the first electric song, I was electrified too, & so was she. Everyone around us got up & boo’d; but we got up and cheered & danced & kissed each other’s amazed faces. It was Love Minus Zero No Limit & it went through me like a crack in a mirror, & if I play it now–what ? 40-odd years later ?–& they have been odd years–I will just cry & cry & cry.
So, actually: fuck “Play some old!” Play some old is just very bad advice, which comes from chipmunks & children already afraid of time. Go on! Go where your work takes you, & don’t be forced into yesterday’s postures–already looking strained & meaningless–by an audience scared to move along with you.
the m john harrison blog 
Mike,
I just wonder what new marvels you are preparing yourself to lay on us out here – it certainly sounds as though you are mentally visualizing some clash of cultures with your next work. Yes, I would probably be saying “More ‘Course of the Heart’, please”, or at least “Let there be more ‘Light'”! But on the other hand, I think what any audience is after is a renewal of the sensibilities they discerned at the beginning of their exposure to the author, playwright, artist, not just the first forms, or a repeat of the first context. But mostly we’d just like the chance to hear the voice once more, after any silence.
Hi MikeM
I was really only rehearsing a conflict which has cropped up every so often not just in my career, but in the careers of most authors I know, & most bands & performers I admire. For me the very process of learning has tended to take place in the leaps & bounds (literally, with one bound he was free!) stimulated by a sudden sense of limitation of the type Graham Sleight so ably described.
It’s also true that my character is such that I perceive change (especially in myself) as convulsive; & that I actively pursue change, often from simple boredom, & very much resent being told I have a duty to stay the same.
Having said that, I am a three-project man at present. Unless Loz drops me off some pretty bit of over-vertical limestone in Laos, or I have a coronary over the bankers (who are slipping further & further out of the gunsight as the UK political muddle provides us with nice, easy, affordable scapegoats), you can expect, in order–
(a) a third Light novel, which will collide AE van Vogt with all sorts of other unlikely people; (b) a collection of short stories, some of which will be voiced in a familiar way, some of which won’t; and (c) something I would describe as a literary seaside concept-horror novel if four-word descriptions weren’t a betrayal of everything I stand for…
(b) & (c) are more aggressively shifted in tone & content, & I don’t want to say anything more about them because of that. But in a couple of months I’ll probably be able to say more about (a) & maybe even post a fragment of it as a taster. Like Light & Nova Swing, it’s for fun & I’m already having plenty.
Thanx for the query, MikeM: I thought no one would ever ask!
Bravo.
I always refer back to Steve Albini’s wisdom on this: “Hey, breaking up is an idea that has occurred to far too few groups. Sometimes to the wrong ones.”
I was the only person at that Dylan gig shorter than he was.
“I think what any audience is after is a renewal of the sensibilities they discerned at the beginning…”
I’ve noticed I have a tendency to do that, too, with books (expecting similar stuff from the same writers, ignoring some of their work because it’s not what defines them for me). With music, it’s been somewhat different for me. The reason for that may be that when I was in my late teens I wanted to work through the Western pantheon of composers and see what all the fuss was about. (Instead of a writer, I was interested in becoming a musician.) It took me pains to begin to make sense of them. As a result, and years later, I began to expect all new music to challenge my capacity to perceive it (something to do with Bloom’s “difficult pleasures”). Otherwise, I often vacillate between enjoying new challenges and being an impulsive couch potato. Not sure whether that has anything to do with anything.
“For me the very process of learning has tended to take place in the leaps & bounds (literally, with one bound he was free!) stimulated by a sudden sense of limitation of the type Graham Sleight so ably described.”
In this context I’m curious if there are anything left to be learned from other writers, if there are Mansfields left to be ploughed, or if the “old” writer has to resort to being a pioneer (perilous work). Or through another funky metaphor: it’s been conceded, not without some delight, that Katherine used to stimulate you, but now you stimulate yourself?
I think we’ll draw a veil over the self-stimulation aspect, Matrixless…
Lots of agents of change, aren’t there ? Interior, exterior. Reading led, experience led. Meet someone you’ve never met, see a movie you never saw. Get laid, get dumped, get bored, move house, go to a foreign country or return from one. Hate your editor, love your editor, live with your editor five years. Big, baggy zones in which change can happen. Strange, mad, urgent instants in which it just curls towards you at a million miles an hour & you’re someone else the other side of it (but also still, unfortunately, you). What’s an agent of change one moment is a condition for change the next, ie stimuli switch one another on & off in groups like genes, leading to weird asymmetric fits of difference. Or the doctor looks at you in a specific way & you know it’s a big, big change. The market collapses. Or your sense of yourself collapses. Or you suddenly decide you’ve done it four times & if you do it five you will throw up from boredom. Too much change in your life & you can’t change because you can’t find room. Too little & you can’t change because you’re too busy counting the floorboards. Change you just don’t know where it came from & you look at the piece & think: Why the fuck did I do that ?
I don’t know, really. I’ve had them all, all kinds of change (except the doctor, but I know people who’ve received that look, & that’s caused change in me as well as them).
In short, I don’t think it’s down to whether I read KM when I was 30 or not. What I rarely admit is: There’s a million KMs. That’s so promiscuous isn’t it ? Do you want the whole list ? It’s a book in itself. It’s a diary in red morocco leather, very knocked about at the corners & with a big brass lock. My secret loves. But it doesn’t say anything about how you’re in the bathroom one morning & you look at your own feet & your life isn’t the same after that. That’s a thing I relish.
The real philosophical test of Play Some Old isn’t your Dylan story, it’s my Dylan story.
First I heard of the man (or anything else) was in the Empire Burlesque days–early ’80s. Anyone shouting “Play some old” at him then would’ve been dead on correct. Play Some Anything But Empire Burlesque And Stop Making Music Videos You Are Bad At It.
However, then you’d have to go:
Well maybe in some sense he needed Empire Burlesque in order to get to Time Out Of Mind.
Or maybe he didn’t and he just needed twenty-five-ish more years to get back on the goddamned horse.
And so therein lies a conundrum.
p.s. You’ve Got Mail.
Hi Zak. A conundrum indeed. I got the mail & am trying to have interesting thoughts.
More Light? I am wishing I hadn’t read this as now I shall have to suffer in unbearable anticipation.
This whole issue is about nostalgia really, isn’t it? (Something about that whole retro vibe in ‘Nova Swing’, as I recall…) I guess humans like their illusory golden ages.
With music, books and other art, I think it’s as much about the context in which the work is first experienced as about the work itself. That’s what audiences reconnect with when they revel in the oldies.
To make ‘new oldies’ is an exercise in pastiche. It’s a form being imposed for no good reason, rather than a set of forces evolving a form. (A personal prejudice, maybe, but I always reckon bottom-up is better than top-down).
Another book in the ‘Light’ framework is an appetising prospect to say the least…
Pastiche – indeed, but if you are in it for an arts council grant I’m sure you could work “memory” and “loss” in there somewhere..
Zak Smith made the point I was about to: sometimes what a creative mind thinks it needs to go on to turns out to be worthwhile, sometimes it doesn’t. That assumes an objective view of “worthwhileness” that I don’t buy; but I feel as close to objective as I’ll ever be in saying that, eg, Metal Machine Music or late Tolstoy like Resurrection marks a diminution of the extent to which the artist usefully addresses the world. (There’s then a separate debate about my utilitarian criterion for worthwhileness, “usefully addressing the world”, but that may be taking us too far off-topic.)
Oh, I forgot one to add to the list: you can’t make change without making mistakes. It’s a risky old life. Hi, Graham.
MJH, that’s a veil all right, adorned like the protective shell of a rare mollusk etc… Not to take peeks, but the KM thing reminded me of Mozart’s rumored remark upon stumbling on volumes of J.S. Bach, then a little known composer, at the house of a sympathetic patron, and taking a peek: finally something one can learn from. One imagines that the encounter resulted in an unexpected vision of new technical possibilities. I feel certain that there are as yet undiscovered such (non-trivial) possibilities in fiction writing, but since humans are captives of their own memories, I don’t know what it would take to discover them, except maybe augmenting one’s experience-memory stock, to maximize the off chance of half-accidentally straying further off the beaten path than before.
“stimuli switch one another on & off in groups like genes, leading to weird asymmetric fits of difference”
I’ve noticed that happening too. It’s almost like shifting through frameworks of perception, different areas of memory become activated and partake in the processes of perception and thought. I’ve noticed if I look at a vague picture long enough, it begins to change, literally. Doesn’t even have to be vague, but it’s easier and more obvious with vague or ambiguous pictures (the rare “multistable perception”, except that it’s potentially not so rare as is usually thought). Nietzsche wrote, “sense perception happens without our awareness; whatever we become conscious of is a perception that has already been processed.” It’s our memories that process the sense information; the sense information stimulates memory groups into activity. The end product is a combination of reality and dream.
Hi Matrixless
>>that’s a veil all right
I’ve got 7 of them, also the lights always go out at the last minute, like you are in some hot airless back room of a bar in Malta with a sticky linoleum floor & the fan broken, 1942 etc
Do you have an existential reason to go rifling through JS Bach, something going on elsewhere in your life which is already driving change, sharpening your curiosity ? If you don’t, I’m beginning to have my doubts about you: are you, after all, just an obsessive maker of clockwork devices, looking to go one up on his competitors or his previous world record ? I’d rather your life be collapsing & some cage inside breaking open to let out the fat wide-eyed Cyprus sailor-boy if only for a second. Not that I’m not grateful for technique-led change, as everyone already kno.
Hi MJH,
I think this Salome will have to bow out of the dance. Your moves are too difficult for me.
P.S. Here’s a clockwork composed of cypresses, collapses, and wide-eyed sailors:
Matrixless, I love it. Thank you very much.
My favourite story from the current tour was from someone who was just waiting for Dylan to pick up an acoustic, so he could yell: “Judas!”
You were at the de Montfort about ten years before it became my local venue, Mike: the “new old” got kicked out, and The Clash played. I still have the ticket, not out of sentiment, but because if I didn’t I wouldn’t believe the wording on the back – that the town council “will not be responsible for any loss, injury, or death that may take place during this performance.” You have to laugh.
And, yes, those 1966 performances should still be a touchstone for anyone trying anything: fuck the rest and do it. “Seaside concept-horror novel”? We can’t wait.
I wonder if this could be an argument in favour of drastic change… It comes from an interview with IMHO one of the most interesting horror writers alive Thomas Ligotti:
“A recent writer who has argued that the human race would be better off if it didn’t exist is the South African philosopher of ethics David Benatar, whose book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence cogently lays out why nonexistence is preferable to existence. His argument is that there is an asymmetry between non-painful experience and painful experience which tips the scales in favor of nonexistence. For this reason, Benatar argues, it is immoral to produce children who would never know this imbalance, which often is a very severe imbalance, between non-painful experience and painful experience—not just necessarily extremely painful experience but any painful experience at all, which is sometimes called the Pinprick Argument”.
I read Benatar’s work, and I think it’s one of the most “hardcore” philosophy books ever written…
MJH, I suspected you might like it.
Josep, to paraphrase Nietzsche (the ultimate philosopher), a sick animal will come up with sick ideas.
Ligotti, drawing his inspiration from Schopenauer, Lovecraft, Zappfe & other sick animals published an essay along Benatar’s lines, “The Conspiracy against the Human Race”. It must be an addenda to The Necronimicon, because I’m unable to find it. Just out of curiosity: Do you like Thomas Ligotti?
(Sorry about wasting your time. I’m also dying to read from A to C this ABC you have in progress)
I’m not sure if there is a misunderstanding here, but just in case: I’m just an ordinary regular visitor to Mr. Harrison’s blog. I’ve noticed that occasionally, visitors here comment on the comments of other visitors, so I did, too.
To add to my previous comment, it may come as a surprise to you, but pretty much all the philosophers were sad losers who rationalized their failures and blamed them on the universe.
Matrixless:
sorry, but I didn’t notice the comment to my comment was yours. (My screen doesen’t work properly and my eyesight is declining). Yes, I’m aware that many of the philosopers were sad losers (Nietzche at the top). But Benatar’s book is more shocking than Sade’s opus (for example) because rationalizes very coldly and convincingly “the harm of being born” (his words) and suggests that we should stop having children to prevent any future suffering. He may be a loser, but such a ultra-post-Swiftian proposal by a philosopher of ethics these days takes a lot of courage (In my opinion).
The problem with thinkers like Benatar is that they never seem to understand the implications of their own ideas. (This supports the diagnosis that their ideas are actually symptoms.) Consistently substituting non-existence for existence in real life, as opposed to Freudian fantasy, sounds like an awful lot of work. Shouldn’t we wait until we have, hopefully, become technologically advanced enough to travel from one galaxy to another fairly fast and fairly comfortably, extinguishing life where we may find it? Or would that be taking ourselves and our self-imposed role as the universe’s own doctors of death too seriously? I’m just worried, because sentient life has a tendency to grow back on its own. So what should we do? If you propose to limit our physician’s work to the human race, I will have to wonder, how do you know other species enjoy their existence any more than most humans do? In addition to that, I have this politically incorrect personal bias that rather than getting rid of the intelligent peak of life, everyone would be better off if we did some version of opposite of that. Based on observation and personal experience, I’ve come to believe that it’s intelligence that provides us with what is the most valuable thing in the universe: the capacity to transcend, to not be at the mercy of external conditions, to devise medicines for pains of all varieties, to change ourselves and our environments. Not that I can’t sympathize. Modern society is drastically different for many people than the type of environment where humans evolved to flourish in, its challenges are different or artificial or simply lacking. Still, Benatars fail to transcend, so while I may sympathize, I have no respect for them.
There is something additionally funny about suggesting that “we” shouldn’t have children. It’s not something you need to suggest. If I felt the same way about life, I wouldn’t have children, period. I wouldn’t need anyone to suggest that to me. If the West becomes too sick to procreate, other, healthier, more vigorous peoples will displace the peoples of the West. It really is that simple: words and suggestions, not to mention philosophies, are superfluous here.
“The problem with thinkers like Benatar is that they never seem to understand the implications of their own ideas. (This supports the diagnosis that their ideas are actually symptoms.)”
Everything will be a symptom in the end, don’t you think so? The ideas of yesterday are the symptoms of tomorrow. The philosophers of the past are the sick of today. What are the implications of Benatar’s ideas? What’s so bad about population zero? No more armies, no more wars, no more cars, no more competitiveness, no more brands, no more slaughtered animals and people. Just silence and birds and flowers. No more family trees: only trees.
“There is something additionally funny about suggesting that “we” shouldn’t have children. It’s not something you need to suggest. If I felt the same way about life, I wouldn’t have children, period. I wouldn’t need anyone to suggest that to me”.
The credo, 2000 years old, is “be fruitful and multiply”. It’s really hard (and sinful) to swim against that seminal millenarian tide.
“If the West becomes too sick to procreate, other, healthier, more vigorous peoples will displace the peoples of the West. It really is that simple: words and suggestions, not to mention philosophies, are superfluous here”
To tell you the truth: I really hope somebody healthier and more vigorous will displace me, because I’m fed up of the West. Perhaps those “barbarians” will create a healthier and vigorous New West. Meanwhile, I shall lie back and wait for the miracle to come.
Being, and non-Being, not Being and not non-Being, etc. etc. You can play all this at home, without the need to invite in philosophers that sound as though they have been reading too much Spengler of late. It’s bad enough that the BNP is getting elected, let alone folk attempting to ignite some kind of latter-day Conservative Revolution. I think you’ll find your mantra is a self-eliding process, not one based on any credo, but one driven by biological encodings that are millions of years old; looks like you are towelling down after getting out of the gene pool but really, the germ plasm gloop is lovely :-)!
Mike M:
I’ll have to swallow that gloop… Cheers!
“What are the implications of Benatar’s ideas?”
I talked about that in my previous post. Perhaps you should reread it (remember to read between the lines as well, lots of stuff there). I’ll add that there are so many unwarranted assumptions hiding behind his argument it’s truly amazing, like a Dark Age freak show: (a) the assumption that he can speak for anyone except himself; (b) the assumption that man is unchanging — this leads him to (c) assume that there is a distinctly “human existence” in the first place — this makes it possible for him to generalize about his own wretched existence (a), not only as he imagines it relates to others of his time, but to people of past eras and of conceivable future ones as well; the assumption (d) that he, or anyone else, can quantify emotions and ascribe value to them other than the biological purpose they serve, or if he can, the assumption that, e.g., one moment of pure joy or sense of achievement doesn’t weigh more than a long episode of discouragement; (e) the assumption that judgements about life-in-general can be anything more than subjective symptoms of the person who makes them (skipping Nietzsche can be dangerous and lead to embarrassing results); the strange corollary assumption (f) that his ideas require communication, that everyone so inclined wouldn’t come up with the same ideas himself; (g) the assumption that “animal-existence” is preferable to “human existence” (he wouldn’t know); the (h) related assumption that higher awareness, higher intelligence, stronger sense of self (ability to resist peer pressure, independence from the group) don’t equal the best gift anyone could have, the higher and stronger the better (I think they do, so he must be wrong; if you don’t like my logic, consider this: there are no highly intelligent people who are, shall we say, otherwise healthy who would like to be less intelligent than they are; they don’t always admit it, but all people of average intelligence would like to be more intelligent than they are, i.e., would like to achieve certain things which higher intelligence would make easier or possible for them to achieve, would be their best friend)…
“Meanwhile, I shall lie back and wait for the miracle to come.”
Good plan.
P.S. I planned to go through the alphabet, just to amuse and challenge myself, but it’s getting late here and I’m not performing up to my standards, and maybe I’m starting to show some symptoms, too.
Matrixless:
I suppose Benatar would say that your highly intelligent and convincing refutation of his ideas is a brilliant sympton of pollyannaism. I assume you know his book, but have you ever met the man? Why are you sure he’s so wretched? He might be one of those rare examples of hyperlucidity, who’s got the guts to formulate unpopular, taboo ideas, risking intellectual lapidation. Don’t you think prophets of doom are useful from time to time, as an antidote against man’s self-importance?
Still alive, Josep? I don’t think you’re serious enough in your pessimism for me to take you seriously yet.
I’d rather kill this topic than kill myself. Let’s put Benatar back in the self help section, and return to M.J.H…
I pitched a little blog-tantrum about this a while back; I think what made me so upset about it was that if I’d stumbled across such a book at an earlier, more suggestable time, it might have persuaded me to end my miserable life. I was pretty close to such a decision. Now I’m awful glad I didn’t.
No promises about the merits of the post. “Stab” is rendered as “s–b” because I got tired of aficionados of a peculiar fetish (navel stabbing…) Googling across my blog.
http://butdonttrytotouchme.blogspot.com/2007/04/youre-always-sorry-youre-always.html
I want to make it explicit: it’s never the universe or life-in-general that’s to blame, it’s either yourself or your environment or some combination of the two. When you imagine your bad mood to have a cosmic origin, you’re never going to get out of your self-made prison, because you’re trying to pick the wrong lock. Similarly, troubles are never cosmic for the rest of the animal kingdom either, it’s just that animals can usually do very little to change their environment or themselves. Think of whales, who often swim to the shore to die when they’ve had an excessively bad week.
Aaron:
I’m the Spanish pessimist who started this crazy anti life thread… Now I don’t know how to stop it… Please, forget it and forgive me… I only wanted to know your opinion about horror writer Thomas Ligotti, who’s very fond of Benatar’s book…
I’ve never read Ligotti but I’ll check him out. And I’m just another reader of MJH’s blog who sometimes contributes to comment drift. As various writers and such have pointed out, for an artist it’s fine for an idea to be usefully wrong…
Matrixless:
We’re spinning around crazily on board of a fireball in the emptiness of a senseless universe, exposed to every disater & disease known and unknown to man, and you beleive that we can control ou lives?
I’d like to believe it, but I can’t.
Sorry. I meant “believe”, “disaster” and “our”.
Hi Josep, matrixless, Aaron.
Sorry not to take part in this excellent spat, but I’m deep in some paying work. I enjoy Ligotti’s fiction. I think I might have had more in common with Benatar in the 70s. But by the late 80s I’d taken up the kind of phenomenological position which goes, “Can you perceive anything (or appear to) from a state of being non-existent ? If not, excuse me, how can you have sex or eat ice cream ?” But I admit I’m no-one’s philosopher.
You guys seem to have exhausted the subject now.
M.J.H.
I think your Woody Allen-esque intervention exhausts the subject once for all.
I think I’m with MJH. Some years back a friend tried to convince me the world would be ‘better off’ without human beings. My response was that ‘better off’ and ‘worse off’ were human value judgments; without humans in existence the very concepts would be fundamentally meaningless.
Homo Sapiens as a species practices solipsism.