The Philosopher at 90

Themes: Philosophy

PAUL RICOEUR: “You know, the different ages of life meet with different kinds of happiness and unhappiness, as well as with, how should I say, different traps. The two traps of old age are sadness and boredom. Sadness? “It is so sad that one must leave all this, that one must prepare to go . . .” So here, I say, one must not succumb to sadness . . . To assent to sadness is what the old monks would call acedia. There is no modern word for acedia: it is a kind of melancholia, which is not Freud’s melancholia, but perhaps it is Dürer’s, when he paints Melencolia I, where one can see a women, with her head lowered, a fist under her chin, looking at geometrical figures which no longer signify anything to her; and there is the clock which marks the hours. That is acedia: Dürer’s melencolia. And the remedy is the
pleasure of an encounter, the pleasure of always seeing something new, of  rejoicing. And in the same gesture, I answer the second great temptation of old age—boredom. Not the boredom of children who, when bored, say: “Mummy, I don’t know what to do.” For me, it is the opposite. I do know what to do. But it is to say, “I have already seen all this, and I have already seen all that . . .” Well, the remedy is similar to that for sadness: to continue to be astonished. What Descartes at the beginning of his Treatise on Passions, called admiration.”

(From, Memory, History, Forgiveness: A Dialogue Between Paul Ricoeur and Sorin Antohi, p. 20-21)

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The Bells

Themes: Beauty, creation, Knowledge

We used to live in a little cubical building,
nave’s length from a bell tower.
An aisle’s length, not quite, but every friday night
it was a measured space, although not by paces;
in concussions.

From 6pm to 8pm the Ringers would gather – I imagine from curious little offices in narrow stone buildings, places where they can still sell you insurance over a desk and keep your details in a drawer (with a curly metal key). Then the bells would begin to sound, individual drops at first, like rain on tin, dong, dong, ding, dong. Ringing them up. Hauling on them harder and harder, swinging them out of their slumber (they sleep like flying foxes, clinging to the unders of beams in the belfry). Hauling on them until they stand on their heads. Slipping into the stop position. Awake and ready, above the beam. Just poised there. Um, how to describe: upside down? Not moving, waiting. The largest weighs two tonnes. And some maniac 80 year old is right underneath hauling on its tail.

The sound in our flat was deafening. Most friday nights at 6pm found us weebling away down York St toward China-town, which is also deafening but more intimate. Everyone at home in a foreign land. And it come with bonus spring roll!

But not every Friday night:
Once I climbed the twisty stair to the bells and rang with the ringers.
Stepping into the ringing chamber was a little like  finally discovering that cicada in the grass – the one whose chirping you’ve heard every night of your summer life. You hunt him with your ears, and finally your fingers. You part the grasses. And he goes silent. You look each other, embarrassed, a weight of unexpressed intimacy, each having inhabited t’other’s imaginationing. Ringers and Rung for.

“You rung?”
“Well… [glance aside] … yes… I suppose we did? I didn’t realise we were ringing for anyone.”
“I came though, so I think you must have been. Isn’t that what ringing is about?”

The art of change ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. To the musical Belgian, for example, it appears that the proper thing to do with a carefully tuned ring of bells is to play a tune upon it. By the English campanologist, the playing of tunes is considered a childish game, only fit for foreigners; the proper use of bells is to work out mathematical permutations and combinations. When he speaks of the music of his bells, he does not mean musician’s music – still less what the ordinary man calls music. To the ordinary man, in fact, the pealing of bells is a monotonous jangle and a nuisance, tolerable only when mitigated by remote distance and sentimental association. The change-ringer does, indeed, distinguish musical differences between one method of producing his permutations and another; he avers, for instance, that where the hinder bells run 7,5,6, or 5,6,7, or , 5,7,6, the music is always prettier, and can detect and approve, where they occur, the consecutive fifths of Tittums and the cascading thirds of the Queen’s change. But what he really means is, that by the English method of ringing with rope and wheel, each several bell gives forth her fullest and noblest note. His passion – and it gives a passion – find its satisfaction in mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection, and as his bell weaves her way rhythmically up from lead to hinder place and down again, he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed.

(Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors, 25).

The Ringers showed me something they were working on: a special peal to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. [The bridge lives just up the road; its on-ramps, like arms, embrace the Bell tower.] Weeks later I was at home while they rung it. It went for hours, maybe 5? There was nothing even remotely resembling a melody. But I knew its genius: the written notation for the changes. The bell ‘music’, as manifested on the page, was shaped like a coat-hanger, or a Harbour Bridge…
Are you marvelling?
And maybe 9 people in the world knew this?
Everyone else just had to put up with the insane racket.

The bells were worshipping the Bridge.
It’s just that the language of bells is inscrutable.
As is the language of cicadas.
Except to lady cicadas
(I assume).

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they communicate knowledge. There is no speech; there are no words; their voice is not heard. Their message has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.

(Psalms 19:1–4 HCSB)

Plays the strange music of the world:
in the plenitude of its intelligibility, found inscrutable.
Heard and not heard. Seen and unseen.
Or rather, heard and not understood, seen and unrecognised.
Hence, the slow-shaking incomprehension of the Universe
when addressed with that fundamental human question:

Why?

Image by DeusXFlorida

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Elegy to a Beard

Themes: Art and Imagination, Beauty, Selections

The Highwayman lies severed,
cut down in the way,
shorn from his mount.

And the hand that did it rises trembling.
And the eyes rise trembling to behold it
To meet their accuser’s eyes wide. And trembling.

It was a rough deed, done with razorrrs
Watched with glass, that razor-sharpt eye
Done in a cold light, boding unforgiveness

We reach, each for the others face,
To sand the rough lines.
But stand, unfeeling him, and naked.

And ashamed, pupils pinpricks like conscience
Wide, whites-wide, shock of eyes
Track the reach for grace.

But there is none.
For them that slayed the Highwayman.

 

I. The Highwayman was the name for my beard. It was a good beard, about 3 months old, but bushy and red: the kind of beard that makes a man feel like he’s in the middle of something. The Highwayman was intended to be a grand project; a once-in-a-life-time snatch at hirsute glory. I was waiting ’til I could square cut him across my neckline, like a Victorian Bushranger. I’m grieving. I cut him off in front of the mirror on the weekend.

 

II. An Anglican Divine of Moore Theological College once called the Highwayman, “One of the World’s Great Beards”. I kid you not. Verbatim. He whispered it to me last week in the middle of a lecture on Emotions. I was moved. Although, on reflection I think it is deeply unfair to the present Archbishop of Canterbury. But, seriously, what did you expect at Moore College?

 

III. There is a lot of masculine identity bundled up with facial hair. I hadn’t realised this so intensely until the past few days. The Highwayman was a matter of comment for most of his life, his absence also was not without its pontificators. Blokes give other blokes a hard time about their lack of beard-growing prowess; and the beardless die a little inside. I once watched a piece of performance art in a gallery in Queensland where a bloke videoed himself drawing all over his face in texta. Again, I’m not kidding. It was strangely enthralling. Making a point about hair and manliness.

 

 

V. It was painful to look at myself in the mirror after the Highwayman went down. Hair shapes the face. I needed to get to know myself again. I should have expected this, I’ve been wearing glasses since I was a little kid. Glasses become a part of your identity. I don’t think I could stop wearing them now, even if my eyes were suddenly 20/20. It would be too much like a unilateral re-legislation of my identity. These things require negotiation. The swipe of a razor blade is too sudden.
But sometimes things just end suddenly; with a jerk. Such is life.

 

VI. It’s hard work growing a beard:
Firstly, it’s just basically uncomfortable.
Secondly, one must cultivate the moral fortitude to bear up under the comments and glances of the full gamut of society: from mates to random blokes. And women always have opinions, which they are willing to share…
But ultimately, one must persuade the Mrs.
It was the Mrs what done for the Highwayman.
My Delilah.

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