Of People And Things

I was talking to someone interesting the other day. And out of nowhere loomed the memory of The Morrisby Test. No, it's not the title of some shit spy thriller; it's what polysyllablophones (zing!) call a psychometric test.

And I took one, when I was about 14.

I seem to recall it recommended that I pursue a career as a fucking systems analyst — from which we may deduce (if nothing else) that Morrisby, whoever (s)he is, is some kind of bleak sadist. But that's not the point. The point is that, at some point, the test results presented a three-slice piechart intended to illustrate one's inclination/interest. It was divided between 'people', 'things' and one other category of which I'm not entirely sure (possibly 'ideas'?).

My biggest slice was people, yeah?

Then ideas, or whatever it was.

Finally? Yup. Things.

Because — right — can we just pause here? Things? Would it not be the most monumentally depressing revelation ever, to open your Morrisby Test results only to be told that you prefer things to people?

I mean — things? The clue, surely, is in the fact that they're called things.

No, I don't know who wrote the song. And I don't want to know.

I just turned on the radio.

'You and I go shopping

And find exactly what we're looking for'

I'm sorry. Is this some kind of joke? Have we come to this?

Romance just got crucified. Upside-fucking-down.

Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy.

'Gilead' by Marilynne Robinson — beautiful, modest, reflective

… now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face … Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and the loneliness of it.

This is a beautiful novel. Like all my favourite literature (and, I guess, art in general) it wields its immense power with restraint, subtlety, modesty.

It is not a pacey novel. It has relatively little in the way of plot. But it is all about characters. And, hey, here's a thing — have you noticed? — so is life. Or my life is, in any case. It is a wonderful study of a truly good man, a truly humble man and a truly brilliant man. The novel takes the form of a long, digressive journal-cum-letter from an old father, left to the son he does not expect to see grow up.

But what's it about? I guess in a large part it's about religion. Which might put a bunch of you right off. But that would be a gaping great pity, because it's about the sweet human face of religion:

When you love someone … you see her as God sees her, and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and of Being itself.

That's amongst the most beautiful ideas I've read for a while. And however staunch an atheist you may be, if that sentence doesn't give you pause and move you just a little, I'm pretty sorry for you.

(For the record, I'd call myself agnostic — not that this really matters much.)

This book made me think a fair bit about TS Eliot's Ash Wednesday (in fact, at times, Robinson approaches poetry — of the most modest and admirable kind — in her prose: 'Ashy biscuit, summer rain, her hair falling wet around her face'). If you know me, you'll be aware that I powerfully admire that poem (and that poet). Gilead has in common with Ash Wednesday a preoccupation with transience and the frustrating, tantalising beauty of this imperfect world. The difficulty of imagining anything sweeter (heaven) than the fleeting, intoxicating experiences of life on earth:

Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!

… and …

I wish I could give you the memory I have of your mother that day. I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness.

Listen, is your face aching with suppressed tears, yet? Because this is beautiful, powerful stuff. Don't you think?

What Gilead also ends up being about is this: true worth, true wisdom. And I applaud any work of art that celebrates the modest, the unassuming, the loving. Like most of the 'points' this novel makes, it makes this one implicitly, subtly and ambiguously — but in its way it's as much a celebration of the Everyman as was 'Ulysses'. It's a wonderful demonstration of the unshowy brilliance of reflection and self-awareness and humility.

Like I said: a beautiful novel.

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London

It's exhausting. Anything you think to do — anywhere you think to hide — dozens of others have had the same thought. There is no oasis. People have no patience. If you slow down, expect nobody to drop the pace. Nobody cares whether you keep up.

But here's the thing.

I fucking love London.

That's all, really.

How to buy coffee beans — the Intellectual Hooligan guide

Image courtesy of visualpanic

I've noticed something. I've noticed that whenever I decide I'm going to embark upon a new project, the internet turns me into a quivering, failure-averse coward.

See, I have this stupid fixation with getting things right and experiencing them at their best.

So I turn to Google. And Google — as is Google's wont — delivers me like a helpless newborn into the jackal-like jaws of a pack of MASSIVE GEEKS. Plonks me down at the skinny end of the long tail amongst the obsessives and the zealots.

So when I googled 'how to make good coffee', you can perhaps imagine the evangelical fervour and fanatical devotion to detail I encountered. The slathering insistence upon specific techniques, the crosshatched debates conducted in jargon with which I was utterly unfamiliar.

'No, Google,' I cried. 'You don't seem to understand. This is not what I want. This is like giving a PhD thesis on AA Milne to a child who asks what Whinnie the Pooh is about.'

(This is the internet's big problem, really, isn't it? The unnatural weight it gives to extremes.)

Anyhow. Google was no real help. So I was forced to consider an absolute last resort: talking to a human being. In real life. Face to face.

So I went into a shop that sells coffee beans.

'What would you recommend,' I asked, 'to a person who's new to coffee and struggles a bit with bitter flavours?'

'Let me think,' replied the pleasant woman to whom I had directed my question. 'Does this person like strong flavours in general?'

Here, o readers, we see the peril of referring to oneself in the hypothetical third person. I had two options at this stage. I could very well (it struck me) prolong the conceit that we were discussing the coffee-induction of this imaginary individual (a little as one might request agony aunt advice, 'for a friend').

'Hmmm…' I might have replied. 'That's a good question. As it happens, I was at the pub the other night with the individual we are discussing and I do recall him mentioning that, yes, despite an aversion to bitterness he otherwise possessed what he considers to be an adventurous palate.'

On balance, though, I decided that I'd do best to quit while I was only slightly behind.

'Um, sorry — I was actually talking about me. Er, I'm not really sure why I put it like that.'

To the woman's great credit, she laughed in a way that contained (as far as I could discern) no scorn whatsoever. If I'd been her, I'd've been thinking, 'Who the hell is this guy? Some kind of diffident, well-educated Gollum? Is he about to start into a disturbing schizophrenic dialogue with his alter ego, then whip a raw fish out of his bag and start munching on it like a carrot? Can I legitimately press the panic button yet?'

But no. The saintly woman just laughed. And then let me sniff a bunch of beans.

Fortunately, handcore wino that I am, I'm used to sticking my nose into things in high pressure social situations. So I coped with this bit, I like to think, with something approaching aplomb.

So much so, indeed, that I elected to reward myself by snatching one of the 'Try one!' chocolate balls that sat innocuously on the counter beside us, and tossing it jauntily into my gob.

About five seconds later, the chilli hit me.

Now, to be honest, it wasn't really that hot. But the thing is, in these situations, expectation counts for a massive great deal. I mean, haven't you ever taken a swig of what you expected to be (say) water, yet accidentally picked up your wineglass instead? The resulting mouthful is deplorably horrible, is it not? Because your tastebuds were primed for water.

I think I just about concealed my sensory horror from the poor woman. Perhaps she merely thought I'd had a minor stroke. She wrapped up my beans; I wrapped up the conversation, with what shreds of dignity and self-possession remained at my disposal.

And left — with a newfound affection for Google's world of geeks and obsessives. And one 125g bag of coffee beans.

Believe in language. Believe in communication.

In my last post, I wrote about Craig Raine, one of my tutors at New College, and one of the people who's influenced me profoundly.

Craig has a belief in language. I don't have the essay to hand in which he articulates this, but, essentially, he takes issue with the notion that anything is beyond the power of words to express. Of course, many things are torturously, maddeningly difficult to force into verbal form. But it is for the writer, the poet, the speaker to strain against that difficulty.

I've been thinking a lot, these past few months, about defeatism. And, yes, this is for personal, non-literary reasons. And never have I been more powerfully convinced that Craig's belief is the right one. Nothing is impossible to communicate. Never should we despair of our power to express, to describe, to reach out. And I don't care if it's futile, if it's foolish. It is all we have.

Think of the person who gives up because something is too hard. She is paralysed, like a character out of Joyce's Dubliners. She opts out of the struggle.

She is like the writer who believes that love can never fully be described — and so decides never to write about love. And never to write about pain. And never to write about joy.

Never, finally, to write about anything beyond her own paralysis.

The writer who spins inward, who cocoons herself in the brittle shell of her own introspection, surrounding herself ever more airlessly. Waiting. For what? For the bright shock of blood? For the earthquake, for the flood?

The whole of literature — and the whole of life (which is, really, the same thing) — is a journey through vast, dark caverns, with only a box of matches to light the way. And no doubt it seems futile to keep striking the matches. But perhaps, if we do, we add our own tiny light to the billions of other twinklings. In that light, perhaps, fleetingly, we catch a reflection off a dark pool, or the minute impossible world of a patch of moss. And in these tiny incursions upon the dark, we show ourselves to be strong, to be hopeful, to be human.

Leaving — reluctantly, sadly — those who clutch their matches in hot palms, despairing to strike. Shrouded, alone.

Oxford's emptying

Oxford's emptying.

I'm not even sure why, a day or two ago, I wrote these two words as a Facebook status update. Obviously I'm leaving Oxford. But — egotistical though I may be — that wasn't what I meant.

My happy cohabitation with Oxford began in 2001, in staircase 7 of New College. Now, almost exactly a decade later, I'm finally leaving this strange old city — at once so abstract and sleepy, so glib and savage. A place — and here I'm referring to the university — that (if you're not careful) can teach you to be better at tearing things down than at building things up. A place of criticism.

But I was lucky. And here, in this slow city, I have met more wonderful, creative people — more builders — than I could have hoped or imagined.

Craig Raine and (the sadly deceased) Tony Nuttall. I don't know what I did to deserve to fall (without any foreknowledge or research) into being taught by two so wise, compassionate, acute human beings. What was the most important thing I learnt from Craig? I learnt that a man who's spent decades teaching literature to cocky adolescents can still get choked up with tears when he reads a beautiful passage aloud.

And from Tony? Once I walked into New College's Front Quad some distance behind Tony. And watched him — a man months from retirement in the middle of a walk he'd paced every day of his time at New College — pause and simply gaze around him, delighted.

And my university friends. Most of them left the place long before I — the rats.

But — not quite knowing what else to do — I stayed.

And indecision can be the most powerful decision of all.

As a result of that first indecision, I came to be close to two people without whom my life would have been utterly, utterly different. Two people who have changed me.

Bronagh. Oxford emptied of you long, long ago.

And Rebecca. I'll always remember dipping with a half-embarrassed wave as we approached one another from opposite ends of Rectory Road — the first tentative tiptoes towards a collaboration that showed me: two people can create (can understand) without framework or contrivance. That showed me: some conversations are never going to end, but keep growing and branching and blooming, their myriad tangents and complexities interwoven.

Rebecca.

Rebecca and I sat, today, watching the dusklight work its way through the gold and the pink as it fell on Oxford stone, Oxford metal. And we talked about emptying. About how a place is, after all, just a place — and it is us, and those close to us, who animate it.

For me, Oxford's animation has changed.

I thought for a moment of a map, stuck through with pins. My Oxford has been the triangulation of those pins. Perhaps some of those pins aren't even in the place itself. Move a pin or two — or take them away — and the triangulation shifts, wrenchingly. The lines' intersections change.

Good bye, slow, capricious Oxford — with your light and your heaviness. Good bye, Oxford.