[Interlude]

[What follows is the outcome of a singular event; a mischievous Cat jumped up on the Jukebox, and wandered as cats do all over the buttons. It might have been expected that the Jukebox would spring in to random life, but what actually happened was at first apparently nothing at all. The Jukebox was processing the input however, and some time later a neatly typed summary of conclusions came sliding smoothly out of the bottom. This is that list . . .]



1. . . . . Charles I, Louis XVI and Nicholas II; all weak well-meaning men; born into their positions, they didn't have to fight to get them and therefore only had a tenuous grip on the realities and limits of power; all with harridan wives; and crucially all completely incapable of dealing with the situation in which they found themselves. Whether anyone else would have been is quite a different question . . . .



2. . . . . the Bronze Age, so called because they used a great deal of bronze . . . . imagine the processions during the sacred festivals at Eleusis ! I'm sure the same thing happened in Britain - the tribes gathering and then processing up the sacred roads to Avebury - it must have been quite a sight - our sense of the numinous has become so attenuated that it has almost ceased to exist . . . .



3. . . . . he had an unusally highly developed ability to see himself objectively. He was like an actor - but then we are all actors. The fact that it is a truism doesn't make it any less true . . . .



4. . . . . it's important to bear in mind about the period immediately before the Reformation that the people then were the heirs of a very long continuous tradition, about a thousand years or so, so it's no wonder things had got very intricate and complicated, precedents on precedents on precedents. The sheer shock of the fundamental hermeneutical shift, the radical shift in interpretation, is impossible for us to fully appreciate - because we are the heirs of that shift . . . .



5. . . . . take any possible set of potential variables on a given religious, philosophical or aesthetic position; and you will find that any position that CAN be held, IS held - even if only by a crazed minority. [I can provide illustrative examples by the wheelbarrow load, and if you apply to me privately I will do so, but leave it here to you to think of some, thereby exploring the validity or otherwise of my point.] Why ? Because everyone needs to locate themselves somewhere. Sometimes this is done by joining, and sometimes by rejecting, by contrast . . . .



6 . . . . . the urge to adornment, whether it be of one's person or dwelling, or the dwelling of the chief or deity, is fundamental in humans; it is inescapable; the rejection of adornment, as in Puritanism, is simply that impulse finding expression by negation; similarly for hermits and the fundamental human drive to be sociable . . . .



7. . . . . fascinating organisms, lichens . . . .




8. . . . . if events are a book, this is a running commentary in the margins . . . .



9. . . . . although it is true that the totalitarian systems in the 1930's in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were extraordinarily similar, and both headed by would-be god-men, it is important to bear in mind the very great differences between Hitler and Stalin in their routes to power: Hitler was a demagogue, perhaps the most successful ever, and hated administration and office work; Stalin by contrast was a committee man through and through, and liked nothing better - he was famous for his perfectly genuine attention to these tasks, it was one of his techniques of power, knowing what was going on in great detail . . . .



10. . . . .[Warning ! The following comes without a warning !] . . . . anyone who aspires to the Cool MUST have a jazz side . . . .



11. . . . . as to whether one can legitimately aspire to the Cool in the sense of actively seek to embody it, which seems like a contradiction, I refer you to Captain Hook's dilemma over good form/bad form in ch. 14 of 'Peter and Wendy'; not to solve the problem, just to illustrate it . . . ."Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about good form ?" ( - 'Peter and Wendy', OWC 9780199537846, p.189) . . . .



12. . . . . one of the greatest album titles ever is surely Miles Davis' 'Birth of the Cool'; a major claim if you're going to make it and one that you would have to live up to having done so . . . . like calling your band after your own name then adding 'Experience' . . . .




13. . . . .don't carry around stuff that you don't need . . . . illusions perdus . . .
.


14. . . . . Matt-a-pillarius Didacticus ! with right hand out and forefinger extended for emphasis - the preaching finger ! just as his grandfather Tom Meadley used to do . . . . you've all seen it . . . .



15. . . . . Caravaggio . . . .



16. . . . . I want you all to take a moment and think about a list of musicians active in the U.S.A. in the late 1940's: Lightnin' Hopkins [go and put some on now ! ], John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Charlie Parker. KAPOW ! A very powerful time for music . . . . a lot of foundations being laid . . .




17. . . . . Room 101 is straight out of a folk or fairy tale: the place you are inevitably heading for one way or another where your deepest wish will be granted/you will encounter your true deepest fear . . . .



18. . . . . the fatal consequences of eating the Fruit ! the disasters that that act precipitates ! is a motif that comes up over and over and over again - like the Orphan Hero, but let's concentrate - for instance Adam and Eve and the apple in the Garden, Persephone eating the pomegranate . . . . the old merchant plucking the rose from the Beast's garden is a near relation of these . . . .



19. . . . . the Orphan Hero ! How long have you got ? Moses, Vito Corleone, David Copperfield, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker . . . . it's so attractive because the Hero, lacking the restriction of responsibility towards his parents, has such a wider scope of activity . . . . and is also thrust out into an indifferent if not actively hostile world, and forced to find his own way . . . .



20. . . . . Marxism is oedipal; it wants to kill its father, Christianity, and replace him . . . .


21. . . . . meanwhile Christianity is precisely that form of Paganism which was energetic and ruthless enough to co-opt, absorb or destroy all its rivals in Antiquity . . . .



22. . . . . one often comes across or takes part in that controversy 'Which was the greatest record label ever ?' Stax, Motown, Island, Chess etc. etc. . . . . I must confess to being rather puzzled by the continuing discussion, since the conclusive answer is so evident - the greatest record label ever is SUN ! . . . .



23. . . . . Zlta Ponorka . . . .



24. . . . . if you don't want people to look, don't put 'em on display, baby ! . . . .




25. . . . . language: usage is king . . . .



26. . . . . the common factor between a young revolutionary and the same person become an old reactionary - I'm thinking of Wordsworth here - is that young and old, they both think that they know better, and believe in the use of force to impose their opinions on others . . . . revolution and secret police forces go hand in hand . . . . very soon the revolution so-called becomes a means of the secret police maintaining their grip on power, as with KGB in Soviet Russia . . . . in vicious tenacity, your average security bureaucracy is almost as bad as the English governing class ! although ofcourse they can give lessons to everyone, because they've been at it so long, and have successfully undergone so many transformations . . . . their eclipse, so often heralded, doesn't seem to me to be coming anytime soon . . . .



27. . . . . as they would tell you in a candid moment, assuming they ever have such a thing or have sufficient self-knowledge or powers of reflection to be able to, Power is the ultimate drug . . . .



28. . . . . the impatient man's functional lunch . . . .



29. . . . . you can't trip up on what isn't there . . . . obviously true on the level of the material world; it's a good motto for remembering to keep the gangways clear; and exemplifies the larger truth that it is constant small appropriate interventions which produce large successful outcomes, almost seemingly mysteriously but really quite straightforwardly . . . . but it is also true psychologically; the fact that you're tripping up on it is evidence that the block or problem is there - you can see the effects of the block and thereby track it down, but not the actual block itself, for that exists nowhere but in the sufferer's own mind - unless perhaps also in mankind's collective mind, a thing whose existence I neither assert nor deny . . . . I wonder though if it's because of a block, a blindness, in our collective mind that we keep going to war . . . .



30. . . . . Black Sabbath and the Stooges are like the Marx Brothers and Bunuel; they arrived at very similar places from different starting points . . . .



31. . . . . the point with Sabbath and the Stooges is to strip it down, get to the nub, the rawness . . . . it is deliberately basic, and therein lies its power . . . .



32. . . . . first served, first come . . . .



33. . . . . don't forget your trunks . . . .



34. . . . . looked at in one way, we're just a puff of cigarette smoke in the night air; in another, we're as infinite and enduring as the Universe . . . .



35. . . . . 'Friends and Romans', 'Crystal Gazers', 'The Peninsula', 'Top C', 'Sabbatical' . . . .



37. . . . . it's no secret and anyway extremely evident that La Rochefoucauld is a particular favourite of mine and one of the main progenitors of this Interlude . . . . he combined wide experience, remarkable insight and singular powers of expression . . . . he can put his finger on things in a way very few other writers can, though many try . . . . the precision . . . . he cuts right through to the essence . . . .



38. . . . . television,art, publishing, advertising, music of all genres, politics; they're all incredibly imitative. Originality is rare and powerful, and most practitioners spend their time knocking out ever more feeble copies of the last Big Thing, until they flog it to death . . . . think 'Dangerous Book for Boys', Tony Blair . . . .



39. . . . . bear in mind that Goebbels and Mussolini had very significant careers as newspaper editors . . . . like W. R. Hearst (no wonder he admired them so much !), the power to mould and direct public opinion, to conjure wars into existence, to make the victory of their organisations seem inevitable . . . .



40. . . . . Mozart ! . . . . the start of the first movement of his Sonata for two pianos in F major, K497, the Adagio - 'I think I'll just invent 19th century music ! Why not ?' . . . . and the second movement, the Andante - Chopin took good heed of that, no question. You would think it was Chopin ! . . . .



41. . . . . ROME ! . . . . the great crossing-point in European history . . . . the ginnel which Clio walked through to get from the Ancient to the Medieval . . . .



42. . . . . Mozart and ROME ! . . . . it's appropriate that they're next to each other . . . . because as Mozart is to european music, so Rome is to european history . . . . the crucial filter, the indispensable, unavoidable mechanism of transition and transformation . . . . the sine qua non . . . .



43. . . . . there is no observation 43 ! . . . .



44. . . . . there is an observation 44, but I'm not going to tell you what it is . . . . which is a shame, because 44 is the key to the entire work . . . . not to mention the solution to the riddle of existence . . . . and it has a very useful bottle-opener built in, which also doubles as a sub-etheric psychic communicator and mind-reading device . . . . observation 44, were it revealed to you, also foretells the future, both individual and collective, with uncanny accuracy . . . . you wouldn't believe it . . . . it's really quite unnerving ! . . . .



45. . . . . you'll no doubt be relieved to know there is also an observation 45 . . . . phew ! . . . . all's in order ! . . . .



46. . . . . [gravelly Hollywood movie-trailer voice] : For Savinien de Cyrano, it was just an ordinary day . . . .



47. . . . . never understimate the power of retro, the lost Golden Age, the lost Arcadia . . . . the tantalising image of freedom and ease just below the threshold of the realisable, at the very edge of actual memory, so close . . . . the Forest of Arden, Atlantis, Lyonesse, Hazard County, the Greenwood, the Garden of Eden, the Shire, the Pleasure Palace, the Hesperides, Avalon, Paradise, the Happy Hunting Ground, Heaven, Valhalla, Camelot . . . . the sheer profusion of examples, their frequency and wide distribution of occurrence, testifies to the haunting power of this image . . . . exemplified so often in pre-raphaelitism . . . .



48. . . . . with great reluctance and some embarrassment, we must inform you that observation 47, having delivered itself of its wisdom, has run off with the milkman . . . . well I never . . . .



49. . . . .




50. . . . . [cue truism of the week !] drama is about obstacles . . . . in 'Hamlet', Hamlet has all sorts of external obstacles, but the fundamental ones are within himself - the paralysis induced by his grief, compounded by being too insightful, seeing things from too many sides, which is a good quality in some ways but can be fatal to decision-making, as he describes so eloquently . . . . in 'Cyrano de Bergerac' the basic obstacle is that Roxanne's affections lie elsewhere . . . . but, think about it, isn't that really how Cyrano wants it ? . . . . he can have a secure object for his affections, it has the complexity of limitted reciprocation but not the complexity of full reciprocation ! . . . . Shakespeare and Rostand have put their fingers squarely on fundamental recurring problems of the individual . . . . hence the enduring fascination of these plays, and the central characters . . . .



51. . . . . the fundamental obstacle is oneself . . . .



52. . . . . it's perfectly simple . . . . it don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing . . . .



53. . . . . having power doesn't make you right; it just gives you greater scope to enforce your opinion . . . . e.g. the Roman Catholic Church in the Counter-Reformation . . . . or the Bolsheviks in Russia 1923-89 . . . .



54. . . . . everything is a contest of power, power is all there is . . . . this may seem nihilistic, Machiavellian . . . . but before dismissing it I would ask you to reflect on the true nature of power, the gross and subtle aspects of that concept . . . .



55. . . . . [over to you ! insert your own observation here . . . . right here . . . .]



56. . . . . chien mechant, cave canem . . . . hmmm, do you think their might be a reason there is that standard phrase 'beware of the dog' in so many languages ? . . . .I mean, because dogs in the whole are stupid and annoying, barking indiscriminately at whoever is passing them by . . . . the indulgence accorded to dogs by their owners and expected by them of everyone else is truly astounding . . . . if I rushed up to you barking completely unprovoked and out of the blue in the middle of the street you would quite rightly think I was mad . . . . nor would you I suspect be strongly in favour of me shitting under your kitchen window . . . . both of which is frequently done to me by other people's dogs . . . . I'm very well aware of the hackles this will raise, and that it may well be the most controversial of all these observations . . . . English people in the main don't give a monkeys about philosophical disputes or the nature of being or meaning . . . . but express contempt for dogs in general ! . . . . or their dog in particular ! . . . . almost as bad as the ultimate crime, [whisper it !], not liking football ! . . . .



57. . . . . 'he doesn't like dogs ! . . . . [mounting indignation] he doesn't like football ! . . . . and he openly proclaims these delinquencies ? . . . . and has the temerity to flaunt his supposed intellectuality ? . . . . what kind of Englishman is this ? . . . . a decidedly rum one . . . .'



58. . . . . one often finds creative people in the early stages of their career imitating great masters from the previous generation very, very closely indeed. Examples that spring to mind, I'm sure you can provide more to re-inforce the point, are [the one being imitated second]: Velazquez and Caravaggio; Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie; George Jones and Hank Williams; Keith Richards and Chuck Berry . . . .I'll put more on if I think of them, or let me know yours and I'll put them on . . . . if I think they're valid, natch . . . .



59. . . . . the essence of drama is the conflict of imperatives within the protagonist . . . .there follow two illustrative examples of this . . . .



60. . . . . a) in 'Gawain and the Green Knight', when Gawain is at Sir Bertilak's castle and his host's wife is making advances to him, under the rules of courtesy it is discourteous to refuse her . . . . but it is also discourteous to cuckold his host . . . . plus, she's beautiful . . . . so what should he do ? . . .



61. . . . . b) in 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid', Pat and Billy are old friends . . . . but Pat has also taken on the responsibility from his (profoundly corrupt !) employers to make him leave the territory . . . . and if Billy won't, he's going to have to hunt him down and kill him . . . .



62. . . . . the essence of comedy is incongruity . . . .



63. . . . . incongruity can also be sinister and threatening; hence aspects of the comedy of Harold Pinter and Peter Cook . . . .



64. . . . . you know that light in her eyes, that sparkle; roguish, but also deeply honest . . . .



65. . . . . Shakespeare's plays for instance, and musicals . . . . they can be condemned as unrealistic . . . . but in a way they're more realistic . . . . that is, closer to the emotion in question . . . .



66. . . . . the truth is often unpalatable, sometimes extremely so . . . .