For Richard

Richard spends a lot of time wondering about the meaning of life, God, and that kind of stuff. Turns out there is a God, he's American, and heaven looks like this (click here to see it bigger):




I'll be seeing you there, buddy (through the DAMNED VIEWER).

Juxta

I wonder if comedy is really anything other than a variant on the art form of juxtaposition.

Juxta is latin. It means: closely connected, side by side, yoked. Which shows you how words shift around in meaning when they change languages. Side by side position is close to what we mean in English, but juxtaposition does not mean closely connected, in fact that seems like an antonym.

Recently some of my students found this picture on the internet. For them it was hilarious. Actually, it is a pretty funny photo. My hairstyle is absurd, and my jeans are far too tight at the bottom.

What was funny about this photo was that they got to look at it on the computer screen and then turn around and look at this:

Without having lived the twenty years inbetween the contrast between these two versions of the same person is striking. For them, the students, it will be another ten to fifteen years before they begin to notice the glaring difference between what they thought they would be and who they are.

For once, I am not trying to be depressing. It is usually a good thing that by the time you are in your mid-thirties your desires and dreams have diverged wildly from those you had when you were a teenager. I'm still in a band, but most days I feel happy that I play music for my own enjoyment, and I don't have to think I am a failure if I am not trying to get a gig at a bar and have people think I am cool.

Still, I can see why my students were laughing.

Tiger

In the children's books from the 1970s the Dads are absent because they're at work. Quite often you just have to assume this because the Dad isn't even mentioned. In this book Dad is at work, but we get to see him at the end of the day when he comes home and suggests dinner out at a cafe.

This is one of the few children's books from my childhood I can actually remember. It still delights me. I love how everyone is polite while something absurd and impolite occurs, and I love the ending; the little girl lugging home a big can of tiger food in case the tiger comes again... but he never does.

It strikes me that the substitute fathers in both these books are wild animals. I suspect this isn't a compliment. Still, girls seem to like us anyway. Even the big ones who should know better.

Ape

I've been reading children's picture books. This is a good one. It's about a girl that loves gorillas and wants to go to the zoo but Dad is always too busy to take her. He gives her a toy gorilla instead. It is the toy gorilla that transforms; that takes her through the trees at night to the zoo; that acts like a Dad.

There are a lot of children's books that are a little bit sad. This must be because they're written by adults. There are also a lot of children's books with no Dads in them; or Dads at work; or indifferent, distant Dads. This is a little bit sad too.

Men are uncomfortable with love. Not all men, but most. Children don't really want to read you for love, they want a simple return of the open displays of affection that they give to you. I am surprised that I am good at being a Dad (so far). I love our exchange of kisses before bed, and our holding hands for a walk. I'd rather not trade these things for the other equally special future moments we will have, but I suppose I have no choice.

I must always try to be the gorilla swinging through the trees at night.

Final notes on Mr. Aguirre

When the expedition to find El Dorado had had enough, when they realised that it was never going to happen, and that they were somewhere in the middle of an endless nowhere on the seemingly endless Amazon, they turned on their leader and killed him. Afterwards, trying to cover their arses, they wrote up a document making excuses for their actions and handed it to Aguirre to sign. He signed it: "Aguirre, traitor".

Revolutionary leaders are often the terrorists that won their campaigns. Terrorists are the ones who lost. Aguirre seems to have had this pretty clear in his head. Either we are murderers who killed a guy, he thought, or we are defying the whole of the system and breaking away by killing that system's representative.

Never let yourself become a symbol of something; they're so much easier to kill than real people.

I suppose he decided that this was to be his last throw of the dice. He was fifty something with an ambition that outran his opportunities and (probably) his talents. He went on a rampage. More than 400 years later you can feel the rage coming out of him. His run lasted about a year until he was hunted down in Venezuela.

"If it is my fate to die ruined in this land of Venezuela, then I believe neither in the word of God, nor in the sect of Mahomet, nor in Luther, nor in the pagan world: I believe that there is nothing for man except birth and death."

Before he died he killed the only person he loved: "My daughter, my love. I thought I should see you married and a great lady. But my sins and great pride have willed it otherwise.... Commend yourself to God, my daughter, and make your peace with Him."

Here comes the Renaissance. Here comes Shakespeare's dark laugh, here comes the beauty of man and the modern age.

Why Aguirre went bad

I'm pretty sure Aguirre went bad because when they were halfway down the Amazon looking for El Dorado some smart bastard said: "You know, it's not about the destination... it's about the journey."

While I was being professionally developed the other day I turned over the leaflet someone had given me about leadership and it said something about journeys versus destinations and I thought: for once I'd just like someone to tell me what the f**king end point is. All three presenters I watched did the same thing; they all said "I hope you weren't expecting answers", and "you have all the answers". In that case can I go and do something else?

There is a flaw in the you-have-all-the-answers presentation. You don't learn anything. You don't add to your knowledge. This kind of presentation works for awhile, but in the end you need some fresh ideas and information.

So, perhaps we can imagine the following scene:

A watery spot on the banks of the Amazon, 1560

Leader of expedition: You know, it's just occured to me, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

Aguirre: Pardon me?

Leader: It's not about the destination.

Aguirre: Actually I'm pretty sure it is. If you're looking for El Dorado then I'm pretty f**king sure it is about the destination.

Leader: Let's not play the blame game.

Aguirre: (drawing sword) Let's.

Leader: I don't have the answers. You have the answers.

Aguirre: Damn right (sticks sword through presenter, sorry, leader).

Pandora's Box

There is a book called Malinche's Conquest, by Anna Lanyon. It is concerned with Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs and, more specifically, with a native woman called Malinche. She acted as a translator for Cortes. In these stories of first encounters between cultures there are often these curious inbetween figures. In Captain Cook's story it is Tupia, in Hernan Cortes' story it is Malinche.

The book is good, but I want to talk about the ending. It is the fashion for (male) politicians to use Malinche's name in Mexico as a metaphor for betrayal. Anna Lanyon finds this interesting. More interesting than it seems at first glance (men blaming woman is nothing new... "dammit Eve, why didn't you tell me a f**king snake gave you the apple?").

Lanyon finds that Malinche's demonisation coincides with the rise of Mexican nationalism. In 1821, as Mexico became an independent country, Lanyon notices a curious double act taking place. The nationalists, who were often of Spanish descent, identified themselves with the Aztecs (who they were not related to, and who their ancestors destroyed), and called Malinche a traitor for helping the conquistadors. In fact, they seem very upset with Malinche. Why?

As the book ends Anna Lanyon notes that Mexico, unlike many other ex-colonial places, is a nation made up of a race that is neither Spanish nor Aztec but a blend of the two. It is a nation that symbolically starts with the child that Malinche bore Cortes. Lanyon quotes a book by Richard Rodriguez, an American of Mexican descent:

He described his first visit to Mexico City. How he stood on the busy street corner and everywhere he looked he saw his own countenance. That was when he recognised for the first time the absurdity of Europe's boast that in 1521 Spain has conquered Mexico. "Where, then," he asked, "is the famous conquistador?" Vanished, he concluded, as he stared into the mestizo faces around him, vanished, absorbed and diffused by the endurance of Ameriindian women. Richard Rodriguez understands... that Mexico's problem with Malinche is, fundamentally, a question of how to honour a rape.

It is hard not to think about New Zealand when reading things like this. The ex-colonies of Spain are about 200 years further down the track then the ex-colonies of Britain, and of course not all these ex-colonies are the same. Anna Lanyon is an Australian. The New Zealand and the Australian experience of race relations has been quite different. New Zealand seems a little closer to the Mexican version of events. Perhaps not if you are living in Khandallah; more so if you are teaching in Wainuiomata. New Zealand has recently gone through a growth spurt of identity forming. There have been some uncomfortable moments, and some good ones.

In Kororareka in the 1820s Maori women swam out to the whaling boats to trade their bodies for weapons and tools. Neither the whaler nor the woman have a name, but perhaps New Zealand history starts there: as the hand of the whaler reaches down to pull her up onboard.

I don't have much to say

that's worth listening to.

I think people can be very inspiring and moving. I would like to show beauty, wisdom and kindess to my students but I am either incapable or it is too hard. I must do better.

We went to Florence. It's one of the most incredible places on earth. You can see Michelangelo's slaves writhing within their marble, almost physically trying to struggle out of the rock in front of your eyes.

I think this might be Michelangelo's greatest work because it is about struggle, not about perfection. Of course the artist didn't intend it this way, but that's what he left us so we may do with it as we may.








Then again there's this. Who am I to argue with this vision of man: confident, beautiful and assured. Wasn't it also the Renaissance that gave us Machiavelli.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

Crazy for love. Machiavelli catches you off guard sometimes with this kind of thing. Crazy for love. What a funny thing to say.

I want this:

How exciting this is. How wild and full of life it is. I can feel the bass riding up; the drums going out to the cymbals; the voice soaring up above the guitar.

It's nothing really. A finger on a string, a stick on the skin of a drum, a chisel on the flesh of the marble, but it is everything we can be. Crazy for love. Struggling out of the stone.

Unassured, unbeautiful, unfinished and flawed.

Late one night in Lima

At the moment I'm reading a book called Aguirre by Stephen Minta. It's one of those books where the author retraces the steps of someone famous; a sort of travel/history book. I came across this passage in the book, where the author is in a bar late one night in Lima:

Someone from the next table stood up and began to recite a drunken poem. A romantic, brooding piece, as far as I ould tell above the noise of the traffic. As it reached what might have been its climax, Gustavo waved in Jane's direction. "You don't like it?" he asked, as she raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders. "It's too sentimental? But look, what is there for us except suffering and death? Without public emotion there is only private misery. It's like the English," he said, running his fingers absentmindedly through Jane's hair. "I know the English. They brought me up. They're like those giant fish. When they're wounded they go down very deep and die in the ocean where no one can see them."

I know the English too. Man hands on misery to man. And the capacity for other things.

This is the 200th post on this blog.

Last Days (of the Incas)

This is a good book. It's about the Pizarros and the end of the Incan rulers. A real page-turner without any academic vices (footnotes, obscurity, point-scoring off other academics in your field). You can get it at the Wellington Public Library.

In order to make history real I think you have to fictionalise it. As living, breathing humans we are aware that existence is very much to do with the little things, and the basic sensations of being alive. Whenever I have been at an important event I have always noticed how banal it is.

I went to the burial of the unknown soldier at the cenotaph a few (?) years ago. It was a big deal. Important people were there and it was covered live by TV ONE. What do I remember? I remember Rodney Hide stopping photgraphers without the proper passes from entering certain enclosures, I remember worrying about getting sunburned... that kind of stuff. Probably the same for people who were 123 rows back at the "I have a dream" speech. This is why the "Sermon on the Mount" sketch is so f**king funny in Life of Brian. When you're in row 123 at gig a lot of the moment is lost.

There's a bit of making stuff up in this book about the Incans, but it's a better book for it.

As the sky began tuning red from the setting sun, several Spaniards fastened around Atahualpa’s neck a garrotte – a loop of rope attached to a stick that could be turned like a wheel, thus tightening the loop until the blood supply though the carotid arteries was cut off to the brain. As the friar began intoning the last rites – Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death – one of the Spaniards began to twist the stick, the rope slowly tightening around Atahualpa’s neck – I will fear no evil, for thou art with me – until the emperor’s eyes began to bulge and the solitary vein on his forehead rose distended and illumed by the final rays of sun – and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Saturday 26 July, 1533

I suppose some of the Spaniards watching the death of the Incan emperor were moved, and I suppose others were batting away mosquitos, or were wishing they had been kinder to their lover, or had thoughts about dinner.

What is for dinner?

Last Days

I have been reading books about the conquistadors in Central and South America. I started reading about the conquistadors because in Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel he has a chapter about the conquest of the Incan empire by Pizarro in 1531-2. It is a staggering story, and one that perfectly illustrates the problem that the book starts with. Framed as a question by a man called Yali to Diamond on a beach in New Guinea in 1972 the problem is: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea but we black people had little cargo of our own?" Why is it that the world is so unequal? How can it be that Pizarro and 168 Spaniards can conquer an empire of 10 million? Why was it not the case that the Incans conquered Europe?

Whether you accept Diamond's arguments or not seems to come down to which side of the fate versus free will debate you go for. The more I read about history, and the more of my life I have to compare against it, the less I am inclined to believe in free will. If it exists it seems to me that we freely choose to make the same (often quite bad) decisions from generation to generation.

There's nothing we can do about it: permed mullets, boring National Prime Ministers and the same five news stories will keep coming back, over and over again.

Stiff Upper Lip

Tuesday was a bad day. It was hard being a teacher on Tuesday. At the end of that day I remembered a poster a friend had on the wall of her living room. It is a print of a poster that was put up around London during the time of the blitz. I printed out a copy and put it on my classroom wall.

I am a repressed Anglo-Saxon. I don't much like displays of affection. I think emotional repression is undervalued in the current age. I blame America. You didn't see British soldiers blubbing to each other in World War II films. Stiffen that upper lip chaps.

I played one of Winston Churchill's speeches to my Year 13 history class today. They found it hard to get past his voice; that sort of slurred, jowly, "is he drunk?" sound he had, but they listened when I told them to, and at the end I told them how important those speeches had been. I told them about people throughout the British Empire listening to that rising, resonant voice that lifted out of its slumber sometimes and gave people hope. There is no forgetting that the world confronted a terrible evil and that the British Empire seemed all but finished in 1940 when Winston stood in the House and delievered his maiden speech as Prime Minister.

"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, "come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."

Very little in life is inspiring, and when "heroes" are investigated they are found to flawed and human, but let's take something from a few moving words in a time of dread.

Do we stand for something? Will we resist?