Pioden

‘When I Was Young’ – Voices from Lost Communities in Scotland. Vol. 3 – The Islands.

About fifteen years ago, my friend Jonathan and I stumbled upon an abandoned and overgrown cemetery on a low tump of land at the head of Loch Nevis. There was no settlement, village, church or even road for miles in any direction. How did it get there? Who were these people? It fascinated me, and I wrote a (bad, unpublished) poem about it – finally, in this book, I have read the story of the people who were buried there. This fascinating – if odd – book tells the story, through reminiscences, of many lost communities on the islands of Scotland, all by people who were born and raised therein.

One thing that strikes you is the good humour with which they describe the brutally hard lives they led. Over and again, two things come out: everyone sharing, because everyone knew everyone else, and “we didn’t know any different.” Yet this is contradicted in almost every story. We had all we wanted, milk, meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, the land was so fertile; of course there was no staying, the young women all went to Glasgow to nurse or teach. The men went to Canada, Australia, they joined the Navy. They sound cosmopolitan at times; well-travelled and read. Yet they come back, and stay on the land through bitter winter storms and famines.

Another thing that strikes you is the numbers of people eking out their livings there. I’ve seen Eilean nan Roan - it’s a little scrap of rock, no more than a mile long. Yet in the 1881 census it had 78 inhabitants; the last twelve abandoned the island in the winter of 1938.

Why did I call the book odd? Well, maybe uncanny would be a better word. Many of the stories seem just too odd to be true, but they are simply presented in this beautifully-illustrated book. It’s a vivid portrait of an almost alien world, and yet one strikingly close to hand.

My novel: ends here?

I think it was Faulkner who said that every novelist is a failed short-story-writer, and every short-story-writer a failed poet. I have spent my evenings for the last two weeks working on a novel that I started some time ago; the characters had been rattling around my brain recently and I had written a lot of additional material for the story, mostly in disconnected snippets and paragraphs on the backs of envelopes as I went about my day. Set in the 1880s, it is about a Victorian poet who never gets time to write because she has too many children to look after. When I sat down to collate all these new bits with what I had written before, and discovered that some parts didn’t match and had to be re-written or shuffled around, I found I had a coherent story, of about 40,000 words. Now, this is only half the length of a standard mainstream novel, which gives me a headache: should I bulk it out with extra plot elements, characters? That would seem to be the sensible commercial move, since a 40,000 word novella is virtually unpublishable. But if this is the book, then what can I do? Faulkner’s point is valid here, since we owe our readers the courtesy of being as brief as we reasonably can. My job as the writer, is surely just to write the book as well as I can, letting the content shape the form – but my job is also to get the thing published, if I can, unless I’m just doing it for myself, or to show to friends.

There is another question too: is novel-writing a good thing to do at all, when you have small children around? I’d seriously question this. I’ve managed to combine poetry with child-care for some time, but an extended narrative like this becomes all-engrossing; I am already waking up in the night with new ideas for it, that I must scribble down in the dark. How far away am I from plonking the kids down in front of a telly all day whilst I disappear into another room to write a book about a woman struggling to combine writing with childcare?

What I wrote of the novel before was all set in one year, 1884. My new idea has been to bring an extra dimension to the book by making that just part one of a two-part novel, in which we meet the same characters again seven years later, somewhat changed – and so, what I have been working on this past fortnight is part two: 1891. And now, quite worryingly, I find that after a couple of evenings working on my wife’s business instead of the novel, I woke up this morning with a roughly-sketched idea in my head for a part three, involving the original characters’ children, set in 1912. Is this thing just going to keep on expanding until it either takes over my entire life, or my children rebel, burn my notebooks, and bring me back to reality? Who can tell?

Homophobia in early 90s dancehall reggae

Back in 1991 a hardcore DJ called Cobra (also ‘Mad Cobra’) released a track titled ‘Crucifixion,’ that advocated crucifying lesbians – on the basis, as far as I can remember, that ‘me no like lesbians.’ I only heard the song once, and I’m not prepared to track it down and listen to it again, even for research. ‘Homophobia’ is probably the wrong word to use for this, since it suggests fear rather than murderous hatred, but I can’t think of a better one now, so I’ll stick with it. Cobra went on to have big crossover hits with tracks like ‘Flex’ in a much smoother, radio-friendly style, but I’m not aware that he ever apologised or distanced himself in any way from his earlier material. Other tracks of his, like the classic ‘Tek him’ were played by John Peel, where I first heard them, and it was a little while before I stumbled on this other material. Cobra’s own website includes the delightful phrase “Cobra has definitely not been an artist who uses controversy to stay in the limelight,” although I did notice that he’s now recording under a new name, Helta Skelta.
There was some media coverage back in the 90s of the homophobia issue, but it seemed to me at the time to be curiously partial. Buju Banton was the one who hogged the headlines after singing ‘Boom bye-bye in a batty boy’s head’ – he went on to have a much-publicised conversion to Rastafarianism, and re-emerged with a more ‘conscious’ style. Because, while it’s a staple that ‘all Jamaican DJs were like this’, that is not how I remember it. Sure, gun-toting and rape threats were run-of-the-mill in some people’s lyrics; but even in the early days there were quite a few more ‘conscious’ (ie, politically aware, usually left-leaning) DJs, like Cutty Ranks, Tony Rebel or the Ragga Twins around; they were pretty gritty at times, but they never seemed to feel the need to stray into that kind of territory.
Another track from about the same time was ‘Fire Yuh Man’ by Red Dragon. The rhythmic charge of this track is terrific, and its driving, percussive vocal in strong Jamaican patois mean that you can hear it several times (if you’re a terminally un-cool British honky like me, that is) before you realise that it’s all about shooting people you don’t agree with. The radio stations never seemed to notice. They did ban Simpleton’s ‘Eye Nuh See’ due to its insistent chorus “Eye spy, what do I spy, P-U-S-S-Y wit a tight needle eye.’ Sexism was the charge, but was it really? Or just horny?  Next to ‘Crucifixion’ it sounds pretty innocuous to me.  

Binge drinker

Now, is it just me, or is there something terribly wrong with the messages being given out here? I could tell you where I saw this for sale, but i have decided not to...

Morgenmuffel – Diary of a Miscreant

I’m sure in the early series of Star Trek there always used to be these pretty blonde aliens who would say things like, “What is this Earth custom you call kissing, Captain? Mmmm… let us try it again…”
I feel a similar sense of familiarity-stroke-bemusement reading this autobiographical comic, because it is largely set in a world with which I am familiar, of squatted co-ops and protest demos, and from which I also feel very distanced, as I now live such a staid existence as a suburban housewife (well, sort of). Isy Morgenmuffel, however, doesn’t have children and spends a lot of her time travelling around to various demos and protest camps with the Anarchist Teapot, a co-operative kitchen. I remember this comic starting, actually, which sort of shows my age, as this volume is a best-of the first ten years’ comics, and the long time-frame means that its tone changes across the course of the book, from slightly adolescent ‘Yay, let’s start a riot’ beginnings, through to more mature, but fortunately not too mature, later comics, such as the ones dealing with her mother’s illness. I loved the book; it has a lot of humour, a great D-I-Y ethic and feel, and in places, is genuinely inspiring.

Next door's icicles

That  guttering looks in trouble, if you ask me...

Terry Eagleton – Reason, Faith & Revolution (2)

This is a passionately engaged book, written as a response to the work of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (an entity the author refers to collectively as ‘Ditchkins’) who, Eagleton argues, have set out to demolish any possibility of belief in God but have completely missed their mark. This is because they have not the slightest idea of what belief in God is or may be, only the most caricatured idea of Theology, and a blinkered and untenable (‘dewy-eyed’) view of History as a Grand March to Progress, from the Enlightenment via Hegel and Darwin to… well, to Ditchkins, really. Eagleton, an atheist Marxist himself, has set himself to wind the argument back a way, and to say, OK, so the establishment of Christianity has betrayed the radicalism of Jesus and the early church (he is aware of the parallel with Stalinism) – even so, what can the secular left learn from Religion? And his answer is, a lot. “What other symbolic form,” he asks, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”

The major problem I have with this book is that, whilst this in itself sounds a worthwhile aim, we don’t actually get all that much of it. What we do get is a sustained attack on Ditchkins. I read substantial portions of “The God Delusion” in order to check whether Eagleton was representing his arguments, and he seems to have done so fairly to me, though I confess I’ve not looked at Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great.” He points out that Ditchkins does not register that faith is not an intellectual belief, but an active commitment, and goes on to show that Ditchkins’ rationalism is just as much a matter of faith. There is no such thing as objectivity; Ditchkins cannot ground his belief in the value of individual freedom scientifically – and there is no reason why he should. It is a matter of faith, based upon values to which he is committed. Science has not disproved the existence of God, because God is not an entity ‘existing’ in the world, to be found and examined – and what is more, no theologian has ever claimed that he is. God’s rationally-proved existence is what Ditchkins seems to think all Religion is based upon; but it is not. It is a matter of faith, based upon values to which the believer is committed.

Twenty pages or so of this stuff would have been fine, but after that I found myself starting to wish that the ‘D’ word would just disappear, and we could hear more about Eagleton’s ideas. There are still many questions going begging. How much is any form of reason or rationalism underpinned by faith? What room is there for aesthetics in reason? And there are notes here that could turn into a fascinating Marxist reading of Aquinas. It’s certainly valuable to gather all the misinformation and mistakes of Ditchkins’ books (there are some real howlers), but it threatens to become an obsession. Because actually, a key factor here is that Eagleton’s issue with Ditchkins is clearly a political one; he sees them as class overlords, arching disdainful eyebrows at the less-evolved religious barbarians around them from the comfort of their North Oxford dinner tables. He may well be right. Let’s be honest here: it’s not really all that difficult to demolish the poor thinking of mindless fundamentalists, as Ditchkins certainly does. But it is either laziness or dishonesty to claim from that that one has said anything important at all about Christianity, or Islam, or Religion in general. Eagleton has shown that it is possible to turn the telescope back upon a liberal rationalist who ignores the dark heart of his own philosophy; that Auschwitz and the Gulags are not just minor wobbles on humanity’s march toward freedom; they are quite as much products of Enlightenment rationalism as the wonders of modern science and medicine.

“Reason, Faith & Revolution” was clearly written quickly, which gives it verve and dynamism. In some few places it seems to be in a hurry, which means that there are repetitions and slight contradictions (Capitalism is described as “inherently atheistic” on page 39, and “inherently agnostic” on page 143, for example). None of these seriously undermine its points, but a little more revision might have helped the book to carry. Similarly, his discussion in the closing pages of Culture and Civilisation is far too broad-brushed to be really convincing. For a brief moment, Eagleton almost resembles a Ditchkins himself, firing out generalisations left and right. But even at this point, he is stimulating and perceptive in the questions he is asking, and, unlike “The God Delusion,” he is prepared to countenance the idea that he might be mistaken. And in places, there is genuine vintage Eagleton here. For instance, Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, is “not the opium of the people, but its crack cocaine.” Its criticisms of godless, hedonistic and shallow consumerism are often correct, he argues, “but its cure is worse than the disease… The only cure for terrorism,” he concludes, “is justice.”

There is a summary of the books’ contents by Stanley Fish here, for those who are interested – but it is not a long book (about a third the length of Dawkins’), and I’d heartily recommend it.

Dispela buggy bagarap

That’s Polynesian Pidgin for “This man’s push-chair isn’t working properly.” Little O, with the best will in the world, simply can’t walk as far even as his 2 year-old sister can, and needs more buggy time than the average 4-and-a-half year-old child. I push a Phil & Ted’s double buggy – it was pretty swanky a few years ago, perhaps, but is looking distinctly the worse for wear right now. I mended three separate punctures on Friday, and my left-side back tyre is still going down, the front wheel lock comes on of its own accord (very inconvenient), the bottom has been taped up with gaffer tape half a dozen times, but is still falling apart and the cover looks like someone’s been firing grapeshot at it. Perhaps T and one of his friends borrowed a blunderbuss from the museum?

I wondered if this was perhaps the moment for me to experiment with walking the little ones everywhere. Our longest regular journey is from home to the Quaker meeting every Sunday, and so today I set off with them into the cold sans buggy. I allowed an hour – it usually takes us 35 minutes – and we made it, with 5 minutes to spare. Not bad. On the way home again, fuelled up with a handful of chocolate biscuits each, they again exceeded expectation, only needing one short carry each. And now they’re knackered, and slumped in front of the telly. I’m knackered too, but I have proved a point! For the moment I will continue to patch that old buggy up, but its days are numbered…

Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion

So, I borrowed a copy of this off my father-in-law, and set to reading a few chapters. My first impression was that it was nowhere near as hectoring and didactic as I had been led to expect, and that he makes some interesting points. So there’s one myth down the drain.
I still found myself quite quickly on the defensive, however. Dawkins’ relentless materialism is something I find ever so slightly depressing; he spends a long time discussing what Religion might be ‘for’ in evolutionary terms, and the answers he comes up with (social cohesion and so on) are both blindingly obvious and obviously inadequate.
Also, I have to state that I don’t think God is a hypothesis; or to follow Dawkins’ terminology, there is no ‘God hypothesis’ that we should test and verify or discard. It’s just the wrong word. According to Christian thinking, God is the condition of our existence; Free Will is what gives us the freedom to doubt or to believe. Rational arguments ‘for’ God are thin on the ground, I agree, but so what? No one believes because they were given a fool-proof argument to convince them to do so. Some people may look to such arguments to prop up their belief once it exists; some atheists may follow a similar course. I think it’s a bit of a sterile debate, really.

Dawkins does however make an interesting point about the lack of social cohesion among atheists – that, not being organised, they will underestimate how many other atheists there are around them, thus fostering the feeling of being an embattled minority. There should be an Atheist Pride, on the model of Gay Pride, he argues. I agree! Personally, I have never had any doubt about the numbers game, and it strikes me as intriguing that this is therefore a debate in which every participant feels themself to be the marginalised underdog. Dawks manages this on his side by lumping all believers (“faith-heads”) together, not realising or perhaps ignoring that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and so on may see themselves as being as far apart from their co-religionists as humanists of capitalist or marxist persuasions will. In fact, they may even feel stronger affinities across the faith/no faith border on political grounds, than within it. I certainly feel a lot more in common with some atheist lefties of my acquaintance than I probably would with a ‘good Catholic’ like Pinochet, and these cross-fertilizations are phenomena I find both fascinating and liberating, even if they rather undermine the stark dualism of Dawkins’ world-view.

What a lot I am writing about a book I didn’t even finish! Love, Solidarity and Mutual Aid are all categories that I would argue are religious, although I accept that many people are convinced they have no such dimension. They are, however, things that orthodox interpretations of Natural Selection, such as Dawkins favours, struggle to explain. I stopped at this point, because I wanted to get back to the Eagleton book, but I’m glad I read this much!

Terry Eagleton - Reason, Faith and Revolution

I only read about ten pages of this, a Christmas present from my wife, before realising that I would also have to read at least part of “The God Delusion,” as it opens with a scathing attack on Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens – an entity Eagleton refers to collectively as Ditchkins, and whom he accuses of bad faith and lazy argument, of not even engaging with the central ideas of what Christianity (for instance) actually is.

This is a problem I find with reading almost any book: as soon as I start it, I find myself thinking oh, but surely I should read X and Y first. As soon as I start Dawkins, I expect I shall find myself wanting to read Thomas Aquinas…

Right then: I'm going to look at Dawkins first, and then come back to this. Eventually. I hope. Wish me luck.