Exceptionally Exciting

As I've mentioned before, I browse the website TV Tropes a lot. A lotta lot. It might be my favourite way of relaxing, decompressing, kicking back, and so forth. And it has been for at least a decade.

Today, I came across this sentence on TV Tropes: "A San Francisco youth made national news when saw the movie Rocky eighty-one times (and possibly more) during its first-run release in 1976 and 1977. After the twenty-seventh viewing, the theatre started letting him in for free."

I don't know why, but this sort of thing makes the Christmas tree of my imagination light up, flash, and play holiday tunes.

What sort of thing do I mean? Well, anything to do with an exception, an irregular situation, a freebie, an informal arrangement, or an anomaly.

For instance: I once read that the Abbey National Building Society, having a branch very close to the (only ever fictional) address of 221B Baker Street, employed a full-time secretary to answer Sherlock Holmes's mail. And this is true!

For instance: one year in secondary school, when I was about sixteen, a quirk of the timetable meant that we had an English class sandwiched between two physical education classes. So the teacher let us stay in our gym clothes for that class.

For instance: I once went to a takeaway and bought some garlic sauce. Just that. The guy behind the counter threw in a good amount of chips, free of charge and unasked.

For instance: on Liechtenstein's national day, all the citizens are invited to a party in the Prince's castle.

For instance: once, when I was a kid, my school organised a treasure hunt. I remember me and my brothers going into the vegetable shop in the shopping centre to ask about a particular clue. The shopkeeper gave us a mysterious, knowing look, reached under the counter, and handed us an envelope. This completely floored me.

For instance: in the film Wayne's World 2, the protagonist says: "Everybody in the world has Frampton Comes Alive. If you lived in the suburbs, you were issued with it. It came in the mail with samples of Tide."

Please note, the appeal I'm talking about doesn't just apply to freebies or special privileges. It can go the opposite way, too. It pleases me when someone has a special power or obligation.

I've just discovered, from a quick internet search, that barmen don't really have the right to confiscate someone's car keys. But apparently, businesses did once have the right to cut up your declined credit card. Both ideas appeal to me.

When I was a kid, and I went a long time between haircuts (as I always did), I'd regularly get this taunt from other kids: "The barber has a warrant for your arrest." The idea always charmed me.

In 2003, Coke was banned from being sold in UCD Student's Union shops because of controversies about their operations in Colombia. That was lifted more recently, but now it's banned because the sugar content is too high. It's a bummer that you can't get a Coke in UCD when you want one, but I enjoy the anomaly.

Speaking of Coke, for many years it was forbidden to use the name Pepsi in their corporate headquarters in Atlanta. You had to say "the imitator" instead. (For real. Look it up, if you don't believe me.)

In New Jersey, you can't operate petrol pump yourself-- you have to get a petrol station attendant to do it.

And then there are the anomalies of convention. If children were to knock on your door and demand sweets on 364 days of the year, you'd send them packing. But on Halloween night, it's almost mandatory to indulge them. (Or, as the carol puts it about another season, "Once in a year it is not thought amiss to visit our neighbours and sing out like this...")

Then there are some interesting rules and arrangements in the history of cinema, often done as publicity stunts. For instance, Alfred Hitchcock's rule that nobody would be admitted into Psycho after the film had begun. (Back then, films played on a loop.)

Then there are William Castle's various gimmicks, such as "fright insurance" for the audience.

In the 1967 film Wait Until Dark, the gimmick was that cinemas turned off all their lights (except the EXIT signs) in the final scene, which is set in complete darkness.

Anyway, you either get what I mean now, or you don't. Does anyone share this fascination, or this pleasure? I'd be interested to know that.

Obviously, this goes a long way towards explaining this blog post!

Do you think this is a stupid blog post? It might be, but I bet there's none other like it out there...

A Few Miscellaneous Thoughts on Palm Sunday Mass

And so we come to Holy Week again. The liturgical cycle which is older than almost anything else in our world, and which stretches back way beyond the creation of any of our political or social structures, reaches its annual climax.

I attended Palm Sunday Mass in University Church in Stephen's Green. I attended there out of circumstances. I'm actually not terribly fond of this church. It's beautiful, but that's the problem. I don't like beautiful churches. They have too much snob value. You can call this perverse or wrong-headed, and it probably is, but I'm pretty sure it's not an affectation. I've felt this way too long for it to be an affectation, even a subconscious one. I like plain churches.

Here are some thoughts that struck me during the Mass:

1) I'm never in the mood for Palm Sunday Mass. Well, I can't remember ever being in the mood for it. Undoubtedly this comes from inadequately living Lent, but it always steals up on me and I think: "Oh God, here we go again, all the standing and palaver". I don't want to think like this, but I do. But then, I'm inevitably moved by the experience.

2) I've long reached the stage where I'm bored by pretty much every homily I hear. Now and again, I will hear a homily that sheds a new light on a familiar reading, but...very rarely. I feel bad about this. I like the idea of homilies, but the reality (nearly always) just makes me fidgety. I especially get impatient at homilies that seem to be no more than a paraphrasing of the Gospel.

I'm also bored by almost all devotional articles and videos. And yet, the Scriptural texts themselves never bore me.

3) Being a member of a congregation always pleases me. I enjoy feeling united with everybody present, feeling like we have become a collective that unites (not negates) age, sex, and temperament. I realize enjoyment is not the point of the liturgy, though. There is something very lovely in everybody standing, kneeling and sitting as one. And little variations in people's individual devotions only accentuates this.

4) Although I do prefer plain churches, today I realized something distinctive about very ornamental churches such as University Church. There is something dream-like about the Masses held in them, at least in my experience. It's as though they occur in a different plane to the life outside them, especially if they are in a city centre. Acoustics play a part in this, too. In some ways, I think the atmosphere of such a church is rather like that of a swimming pool.

Well, there you go. I'm sorry I don't have anything more edifying to say!

A Prayer Request

Yesterday I got the sad news that a long-time reader of this blog had lost his father, suddenly. Please pray for both of them.

Qualities of Propaganda

These are just some observations of my own. I'm not going to get into specifics (see number four). I'm not talking about all propaganda here. I'm talking about the propaganda put out by those whose agenda is dominant in a given society.

1) The Message is pushed unrelentingly, all the time, through every medium.

2) The trivial is catastrophized (when it suits The Message), while serious issues (that don't suit The Message) are trivialized, or even ignored.

3) Anyone who questions The Message is not simply dismissed as being wrong. They are condemned as malicious, ridiculous, or so far off the mark it's perverse.

4) Freedom to disagree is allowed in theory, but restricted or discouraged in practice ("free speech has consequences").

5) Fictional depictions of people who disagree with The Message (usually in a very mild way) inevitably depict them as unlikeable, stupid, backward, embarrassing, and so on-- though perhaps they have some endearing qualities. (If they are really nice, they'll have agreed with The Message by the end credits.)

6) In the case of admired figures who lived before the Message, and whose popularity is too deeply-rooted to be undermined, anything they said contrary to The Message is explained away; "He was a man of his time", etc.

7) Even wishing to debate The Message is portrayed as suspicious, and probably motivated by baleful beliefs.

8) To react angrily against The Message makes you an angry person. Anger which is in agreement with The Message doesn't make you an angry person. Hatred towards The Message makes you hateful. Hatred in agreement with The Message doesn't. Fear about The Message makes you a fear-monger; fear inspired by the Message doesn't.

9) Any reactions against The Message just prove the necessity (and intensification) of The Message.

10) The extent of popular disagreement with The Message can never be acknowledged, except in the face of undeniable evidence (such as a mass demonstration, or a referendum going the wrong way. In the latter case, the concept of "misinformation" can be easily is used to explain it ). All right-thinking people agree with The Message.

A Strange Sadness

I've just finished writing an article about a celebrated Irish priest-- or rather, a priest of Irish descent. I won't say who, as I like to keep it a secret until it's published. But I came away from it feeling rather sad-- or, more accurately, sorry for myself.

This priest had fingers in a lot of different pies, and buckets of energy. Consequently, he had several "bases" where he could stay on his travels. He always seemed to be meeting people for dinner and staying with them.

This is the sort of thing I've always daydreamed about, but never had. Coming close to my fiftieth year, it seems like a failure.

I've long been fascinated by "soft bonds". I'm particularly, for some reason, fascinated by Eamon De Valera's lifelong connection to Blackrock College-- a connection that continued when there was no formal relationship between them, when he was no longer a student or a teacher there. There's a whole book on the subject. John Henry Newman and his Oxford snapdragons are another example. Yeats and Coole Park is another.

I don't have anything like that. I have no mentor, no fire-forged comrades, no alma mater (in any meaningful sense), no old stomping ground, no war stories. No place where everybody knows my name, and they're always glad I came. There are no doors of institutions open to me when I have no particular business there.

I'm not really talking about friends here. I do have friends, and I'm deeply grateful for them. I'm talking about something different.

Although I've worked in University College Dublin for almost twenty-five years, and value being part of such a permanent institution, I can't really fool myself that I belong there in some deeper sense. Not even the Catholic community on campus-- though I've been going to lunch-time Mass in the church for about fifteen years. I gave a talk to the Newman Society, but it seems to have made zero impression. I suggested a spiritual retreat for staff to one of the chaplains, but after an initial show of enthusiasm, the idea was forgotten about.

Sometimes I like to think of this blog as an institution, but perhaps I am kidding myself.

Doubtless I am overlooking some things (although right now it doesn't seem like it.) I've realized before that my wide-eyed attentiveness to other peoples' stories has often given me unrealistic expectations. It's taken me decades to realize how much people talk themselves up, romanticize, and embellish. Maybe I just have to learn how to do that? And yet...that can't be all of it, can it?

I wonder if other people feel like this? Is it a feature of modern alienation? Is this something other people have, or even feel they lack?

I suppose I have an unfulfilled craving for gemeinschaft rather than gesellschaft.

Self-Questioning, Again

This blog has become the beneficiary of my absence from Facebook. I made a New Year's resolution to stop using that popular social networking site. Unlike most of my New Year's Resolutions, this one has stuck. I have no plans to reactivate my account.

But this means I don't have any outlet for my miscellaneous thoughts, other than my diary, and (sometimes) the real people I encounter every day-- who usually aren't that interested!

Recently I have been filled with self-doubt about my own beliefs, convictions and passions. It's not so much self-doubt about them, in fact, as about my own holding of them.

I've been reading a book called George Orwell and Religion by Michael G. Brennan. It's interesting, because Orwell himself is interesting.

Orwell (although an atheist) had a complex attitude towards religion. His attitude towards Catholicism, on the other hand, was much more straightforward. He hated it. This hatred sometimes led him to say the most ridiculous and prejudiced things imaginable, which is especially surprising coming from someone as (generally) fair-minded and cool-headed as Orwell.

I've noticed that I don't have the slightest resentment towards Orwell for his anti-Catholicism. It seems like something he could hardly help. Don't we all have such pet hates?

The book, however, made me think not just about pet hates, but about irrational attitudes in general. Perhaps, rather than "irrational", I should say "non-rational".

We can very clearly see other people's lack of rationality. For instance, when it comes to Catholicism in Ireland today, it really seems to be the case that, for a huge amount of people, Catholicism just isn't a live option. Many of my contemporaries have spiritual yearnings, but those yearnings will never carry them over the threshold of a Catholic church. There's something standing in their way: a shudder, a blockage, a visceral reaction. They'll explore pretty much any spiritual tradition except the one they grew up with.

I'm not saying this obstacle is impossible to get past, but I suspect that-- for some considerable time-- it's going to stand in the way of a large-scale return to Catholicism in Ireland.

That's by-the-by, though. In this blog post, I wanted to ponder my own irrational impulses. Perhaps it would be entertaining to list some of them, in no particular order.

1) A yearning for special places and times; for the existence of special places and times. To the extent that I would wish for all times and places to be special, pretty much. (I don't think that's a paradox; things can be special in different ways, and there are degrees of specialness.) The intensity with which I feel this is almost impossible to exaggerate and it seems to go back to my earliest days. It's not so much that I want to experience them, as that I want them to be there. (Here, there, and everywhere.)

2) A deep hatred of rationalisation and standardisation, and a corresponding love of irregularity and idiosyncrasy. Allied to this, an intense love of the particular and a hatred of anything that replaces the particular with the abstract or general.

3) A love of the ordinary, and a corresponding coldness to the exclusive, elite, and prestigious. Unlike many conservatives, I don't take any delight in reading about aristocrats and royalty. I don't like stories about millionaires or billionaires. I have no desire to see palaces, or even cathedrals. I don't want to move to some island untouched by modern life (though I'm glad it exists). I'm interested in Tuesday evening in the suburbs; that's my gold standard.

4) Somewhat in contradiction to number three, a strong distaste for ordinary life when it descends to the lowest common denominator, and is unsalted by the sublime. I mean people "just living their lives"; dedicated to the business of getting and spending, home improvements,  clothes, food, private enjoyment, career, holidays, minding their own business. Even though this sort of life would seem to have Scriptural warrant: "Make it your ambition to live a quiet life and attend to your own business", (1 Thessalonians 11).

I'm well aware of everything to be said against this feeling. Isn't there something sublime about human life even in its essentials, like Robinson Crusoe on his island? (Yes.) Should I get to decide whether someone's life is banal? (No.) Given the weight of mortality, sickness, bereavement, and other misfortune hanging over all of us, shouldn't we just be grateful for every person who is reasonably healthy, free in the simplest sense, well-fed, and so on? (Yes, of course.)

And yet...this feeling lingers. I can't even walk through IKEA without feeling depressed. Isn't this part of the reason people complain about consumerism? A sort of closed-in, private existence that reaches towards nothing larger than itself? And yet, how do I know this is true of the crowds in IKEA? Or why shouldn't clothes and food be an avenue to the sublime? Cuisine and dress are fascinating subjects in themselves; one could devote one's entire life to either. I have no satisfying answers for these questions, but my feeling remains.

5) A hunger for what Louis MacNeice famously called "the drunkenness of things being various". It's such a perfect phrase that I don't know how to expand on it.

This gives me something of a schizophrenic attitude to modern, suburban, consumerist life. Sometimes I think advent of television was a disaster, in terms of its effect on society. And yet...I am tremendously interested in television, particularly now that it has its own (bottomless) history. And I feel the same way about most of the phenomena of modern life, such as computer games or the internet.

In all honesty, people today probably have more opportunities than ever to explore specialist interests, form specialist communities, or even make their living in an unusual way. So I can't really wish to go "back to the land", back to a simple agrarian community-- as much as I can see the attraction of that. What we would gain in community and tradition, we would lose in the diversity of life. Would that be a worthwhile trade? I don't think so myself.

There is, however, a sort of diversity which undermines diversity. For instance, shouldn't someone who delights in "the drunkenness of things being various" embrace multiculturalism? Well, maybe, to a certain extent-- to the extent of having a Chinatown, for instance . But it seems clear that, at a certain point (and pretty quickly), multiculturalism actually erodes diversity between countries and regions, and brings more sameness than variety into the world. (Many people have made this point, each apparently arriving at it independently; we really need a snappy formulation to popularise the idea.)

The same principle applies to sex-- even more so, in my view. There is something both primordial and ultimate about the masculine-feminine dichotomy. Attempts to add to it, or to go "beyond" it, only ever diminish and dilute it. That's as much as I'll say about that.

(The last two points I've made, on multiculturalism and sex, are-- I think-- true in themselves, and not examples of irrationalism.)

I could add many more examples of my irrational impulses-- many, many more. But I'll stop there.

My point is-- what validity is there to these impulses, for anyone other than myself? Should I keep them to myself? (I'm not going to, but should I?)

I can think of a couple of reasons they might have merit:

1) Sometimes people feel something in an inchoate way, and lack words to articulate it. I've found this very often myself, particularly when it comes to writers such as G.K. Chesterton. So perhaps I could perform this same service for others.

2) Perhaps it's legitimate to see society as a great battleground of ideas, beliefs, and ideals; everybody brings their own banners and slogans to the battle, and society is all the richer for it-- except for those banners that represent something downright evil. Personally, I like the idea of a great clash and collision of ideas and visions. The idea of a society where everybody agrees on everything is pretty loathsome to me, as it is to most people-- though I rather suspect Catholic integralists and the apostles of political correctness relish it, each in their own way. (But I might be wrong even there. After all, there always seems to be ample scope for debate and disagreement even when there's a large area of consensus.)

If this "ideological battleground" model is legitimate, then I don't have to apologise for advancing my own vision, my own ideals. I can do this in the hope of convincing others, in the hope of discovering allies, or even in the hope that just articulating them adds something to life.

The best format for expressing very personal ideals, "irrational" ideals, is probably poetry. But I can't get anyone to read my poetry, besides one or two friends.

But am I, perhaps, correct to doubt my own ideals (or beliefs, or visions, or dreams) when they are based on such irrational grounds? Should one's beliefs flow from careful reasoning, making every effort to rise above one's own prejudices and passions?

Perhaps. And I think my core beliefs can pass this test. Catholicism seems objectively true to me. As does my belief in democracy, and other things.

But outside those core beliefs, I do have many other attitudes which are frankly irrational-- like the ones I've listed above. I think everybody does. And I think it's important to accept this, and take it into account. What you do with them after that is another question.

Unique Songs

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, I'm not the biggest music fan in the world. I never had a collection of hundreds of CDs, back when CDs were a thing. I think I had a few dozen at most, and I probably only listened to a few songs from most of them.

I do like music. I get very enthusiastic about particular songs. My taste tends to be pretty middle-of-the-road, for the most part, with now and then a lurch into more niche territory.

As well as the straightforward pleasure of listening to music, I'm quite fascinated by its social and cultural aspects. I mean popular music especially. I like reading about the history of the music charts (especially on this blog), and the place particular songs achieve in the wider culture.

But, in this blog post, I want to write about a particular type of song. I've used the title "unique songs", but that doesn't quite get at it. (After all, every song is unique.) I'm talking about songs with a unique subject matter.

Relative to the totality of songs ever written, I think this is a fairly small subset. Most songs fit into a particular genre, lyrically speaking. (Then there are instrumental songs, which don't apply here at all.) 

Love songs are undoubtedly the biggest category, by a huge margin. And within that category, there are innumerable sub-genres, such as break-up songs.

But even rather quirky themes can give rise to quite a lot of songs. For instance, there are quite a lot of songs that celebrate larger ladies.

There's an interesting list of common song subjects on the ever-entertaining website TV Tropes. Click here, and expand the "Subject Tropes" heading.

To qualify for inclusion in this blog post, songs have to fulfil these three criteria:

1) They have to actually be about something, and not downright cryptic. So songs like "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procul Harum don't qualify.

2) The song has to actually be about its ostensible subject matter. That is, it can't simply take an unusual subject, image, or metaphor as a point of departure. So, for instance, "Please Mr. Postman" wouldn't qualify, even though there aren't many songs about postmen. Because it's not really about a postman. It has a much more conventional subject: the narrator pining for his beloved. Which is fine, but not what I'm writing about now. 

The same principle would disqualify a song such as "YMCA" by the Village People. It's not really about all the things you can do at the Young Men Christian's Association. (Although, according to Wikipedia, its co-writer vehemently insists, to this day, that it really is just about that. Well, never mind; you get the point.)

3) Novelty songs don't qualify. "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon has a unique subject, but the whole point is that it's zany.

I've only included songs with which I'm fairly familiar, though I don't make that an actual criterion.

So what does qualify? Well, here goes...

1) "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas.

I can't think of very many pop or rock songs about martial arts. ("Ninja" by Europe is the only other one that comes to mind.) But this song isn't just about martial arts; it's about a contemporary Kung Fu craze, although it seems from the lyrics to be looking backwards nostalgically. I don't think it counts as a novelty song because it's not ostentatiously silly. True, the Guardian describes it as "the quintessential novelty single", but since when was the Guardian right about anything?

2) "Nothing Ever Happens" by Del Amitri.

I mentioned this song in a recent blog post. Perhaps it gave me the idea for this list.

There must be thousands of songs about being bored, and about particularly boring places (such as "Every Day is Like Sunday" by Morrissey). But are there any other songs which portray our whole way of life as boring and stagnant?

3) "Country House" by Oasis.

The winner of the "Battle of Britpop" between Oasis and Blur in August 1995. I remember it well! It doesn't seem to be especially fondly remembered, but I like it. I think it has clever lyrics.

4) "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles.

This one occurred to me because, rather famously, Paul McCartney actually wrote it in answer to a challenge to write something other than a love song. A challenge from his aunt, as it happens.

5) "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong

This might seem a surprising inclusion, but I'm thinking of how often it's chosen by TV producers to express the sentiment of its title. Are there many other songs simply celebrating the wonderfulness of the world in general? There must be, but I can't think of them.

6) "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie

There are a lot of songs about particular times and places, and probably a lot of songs about Flower Power and hippies. But this seems distinctive because it was written at the moment it was happening. As you can guess, I'm not at all nostalgic for that counterculture, but I do like the song. (It was a favourite of my mother's, incidentally.)

7) "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans.

A huge hit about the dehumanising effects of technology, and the dystopian future that may be awaiting us in the distant future. Not many of those about.

8) "Going Back" by Dusty Springfield

There are lots of songs about nostalgia and childhood, but are there any other songs about rediscovering, as an adult, the wisdom of childhood play and games? To Irish people of a particular generation (mine), this song will always be associated with a certain ad for the Electricity Supply Board.

9) "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls.

The chorus was already familiar, but I'd never really listened to this song until my wife played it for me a few years ago. She used to be a big fan of the Indigo Girls. I'd never heard of them. I suppose, if I'm to be heavy about it, this song is a hymn to moral and epistemological relativism. But surely we can get off our high horses long enough to enjoy a playful anthem whose moral is summed up in the refrain: "The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine." 

10) "Escape" by Rupert Holmes (the Pina Colada song).

The old, old story. A guy gets tired of his lady, decides to cheat on her, finds a personal ad in the newspaper, makes a date, and then finds out it's his own lady who placed the ad! And they just laugh about it! It probably happens every day, somewhere.

(I really love the line "Though I'm nobody's poet...". Has the phrase "I'm nobody's X or Y" fallen out of use?)

11) "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty

One of my favourite songs of all time. Funnily enough, given the whole idea of this list, this one shares a theme with the very next entry: songs about somebody becoming disillusioned with a city they once romanticised. But it's a pretty small sub-genre, right?

12) "The Last Morning" by Dr. Hook

See above. Also one of my favourite songs of all time.

13) "Living Next Door to Alice" by Smokie

OK, this is a love song, but the situation described in it seems pretty distinctive.

14) "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits

I include this one a little bit tentatively. Perhaps there is a whole genre of songs about small-time bands, written by big-time bands. I can think of at least one another example: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", by a popular Liverpudlian quartet. But I'll throw it in, just in case I'm wrong.

15) "Get a Job" by the Silhouettes.

I'm sure many people have been pestered by their loved ones to go get a job, but I'm not sure there are any other songs about it. Dib-dib-dib-dib-dib-dib! It reminds me that Trading Places (it plays over its closing credits) seemed to be constantly on the TV back in my childhood, along with the rather similarly-themed Brewster's Millions.

16) "The Village Green Preservation Society" by The Kinks

"We are the Village Green Preservation Society, God save Donald Duck, vaudeville and variety, we are the Desperate Dan Appreciation Society, God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties."

This one might, arguably, run foul of my first criterion, since it's somewhat cryptic. What organisation is this, with so many different titles and remits? But it's clearly a hymn to traditional England, not conceived in a high Elgarian way, more the England of the common man. And I can't think of any other song like this.

There are actually a few songs on the album this was taken from, The Kinks are the Village Green Appreciation Society, which could make this list. Especially "People Take Pictures of Each Other", a wistful and melancholy meditation on the fact that...people take pictures of each other. "People take pictures of the summer, just in case someone thought they had missed it..."

17) "Stories for Boys" by U2.

Literally a song about stories (and other entertainments) for boys. One would expect such a subject to receive a nostalgic, mellow treatment. Instead, it's a straightforward hard rock song, which is intriguing.

Well, those are my nominations. Do you have any to add, dear reader? I would love to hear them. Longtime (or short-time) lurkers, here is your invitation to join in!