FINISHED READING - Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

Doppelganger begins by chronologically retracing the steps of how Naomi Wolf turned from inhabiting a leftist feminist perspective to becoming a regular pundit on Steve Bannon's alt right programme. Espousing and inflaming every conspiracy theory she could get offensive traction with. 

At the same time an even stranger phenomenon happened. Naomi Klein started to be regularly confused online with Naomi Wolf. So much so that the algorithm picked up on it and began to fuel the confusion still further. At which point Naomi Klein, unable to effectively counter any of this, felt control over her own identity was pretty much lost.

This personal experience made her start to take a more active, inquisitorial role into the whole issue of conspiracies. Investigating why the alt right has gained so much traction with the 'left out' working class. Picking up on issues that traditional parties had either abandoned or were afraid to engage with.  So what might traditionally have been a concern of the left, gets co opted and adapted into a populist right wing one. But as Klein herself admits, it's not that conspiracies don't exist, just not the ones Bannon and Co espouse. But for the left to start talking about them risked getting lost in the murky morass of those with less contact with factual truth, or integrity.

There were times when reading this book that you cheer for how well she puts the finger on what is so wrong. But at the same time the book is a really hard read. The situation we are in is so depressing, and so difficult to see how we, as a civilisation, can extricate ourselves from. Its not completely without hope, but goodness it is hard to keep a clear hold on that.

One very cogent idea she lays out here, is that we are all in danger of being 'othered' by people on the Internet and in society. We all do it so easily ourselves.  We stop seeing the person, and create this doppelganger version of them, onto which we can project all sorts of reprehensible qualities. If you happen to be Jewish, a woman, black, gay, trans, socialist or belong to any sort of religion, then you can end up being seen as this archetypal nefarious representative figure. 

She takes the example of the Nazi's and the Holocaust. Since the end of the war the techniques and methods employed to commit genocide by the Nazi's have been presented as an evil act particular to them. This ignores the fact that Hitler openly stated he got a lot of his ideas about concentration camps from the British in South Africa. The idea for mass extermination, from how the Indigonenous American Indians were rounded up, robbed of their lands, and then of their lives, in the US. Genocide was all part of the European colonial ethos, and the Nazi's were the inheritors of that, not the sole progenitors of it.

From the perspective of history, we are all implicated in this, and we'd rather not know. And this not wanting to know, fuels the distractions of frankly barmy conspiracy theories, climate change denial, the vehement obsession with vaguely indefinable concepts like culture war or wokeness. Anything to not look our complicity in the face, of modern slavery, poverty wages in far off places and a looming apocalypse.

And what about hope? Well she thinks there is one way things could change. If we were to rediscover a way to rebuild connections and work together as a community. To find meaning and purpose in real relationships again. To see our self absorption with social media as the escapism it is, getting lost in the pursuit of gratifying our unique brand of individualism. Fiddling whilst the world literally burns, floods, and collapses all around us.

CARROT REVIEW  - 5/8

FINISHED READING - Courting The Wild Twin by Martin Shaw

This book is enigmatic, unwilling to unveil its riches too easily or quickly. You could not unlock it, I would suggest, in one fell swoop. It resembles a bell being rung without fully understanding what exactly is being summoned. You have to stand, listen and wait.

FIRST READ THROUGH

Martin Shaw is a mythologist and storyteller. And his power with words and the telling of tales is well worn, rich, gnarly and twisting. He embellishes tales with evocative deeply etched details and rubbed through hues, that are all part and parcel of what appears to be camouflaging it's meaning. The writing style is alluring, yet distracting. It's speaking to your heart, which is not always paying attention.

The book is split into roughly three sections - an exploration of these two tales - a central chapter where he expresses opinions about the state of the world - a  final chapter where the two tales are told in their fullness. I'm not quite clicking what the purpose in drawing these two tales together is, which obviously share similar themes and symbolisms. I am missing something in my reading, a link to purpose or meaning. I'm left feeling dissatisfied, whilst still remaining curious to understand.

SECOND READ THROUGH

Finding myself alone I felt able to speak the introductory chapter The Conditions of Wondering out loud. And, as if this were a miraculous act, it has all come more vivdly alive for me. It's as though by giving voice to it, I lit a candle into its long and darkened corridors. There is a different level of engagement required to reading out loud. You have to look for meaning in order to be able to give it expression. 

This is a story revivified by the public recounting of it. Reading it aloud connects you with that tradition, with the writer, the speaker of myths and truths, the one who intones this material live. Perhaps this should not be a surprise. To be put in tune with Shaw and his antecedents, and suddenly I am right there.

A central theme of the two stories is the perfectly good royal couple who for some reason cannot conceive.  A suggested  earthing and fertilising ritual is given by a an old woman from the woods. But the queen does not follow her instructions to the letter. Supposed to only eat the white flower, she insatiably gobbles the red first. The outcome is the birth of an abberant offspring, the wilder twin, that is initially rejected. In the end this has to be brought fully into their lives for a new revitalised direction to be taken.

Shaw's opinion is we all succum to a type of intellectual, if not imaginatively, dry lifestyle. Suppressing the wilder passionate irrational side of our psyche in order to be considered a good person or in pursuit of some ideal of individual perfection. At some point there's a need to integrate these neglected rawer instincts if we are to live a more rounded and meaningful existence. Whilst bedevilled by this lack on an individual level, it is also embedded in the ethos of contemporary society. Encouraging us to all live, work and play distractedly, at one emotional remove from a full blooded passionate response to life.  Modern life has become sterile from the inside out. Too enamoured with surface presentation and facile truths.

As in the stories, there is a need to assiduously court our wilder twin. Always running the risk of being eaten by it, before this can be integrated. Shaw gives the example of the archetypal rock n roll lifestyle, as one in search for and indulging in the wild twin, that can easily consume you to the point of an early tragic death. 

An opposite is the religiously solitary life,  seeking some sort of idealised perfection through contemplation and ethical rectitude. This can become so arid and lifeless that the eruption of a more anarchic rebellion or self harm, is almost inevitable. If the wild twin is not courted, it acts as a disruptive force that will always threaten to upend any hard earned yet brittle equilibrium.

There is a lot of food for further thought here.

CARROT REVIEW  - 6/8

QUOTATION MARKS - John Vervaeke

"We have convinced ourselves 

that because we can now make digital watches 

that we must be cleverer than Plato" 

John Vervaeke 

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 118 - The Blame Frame

On a recent The Sacred podcast Jonathan Pageau was reflecting on what sacred meant for him. Auto generated subtitles came up with this interpretation of what he said:-

'The sacred is where the Transcendent meets the Monday'

Yeah, Mondays they are the worst.

Recently bought a small machine for checking blood pressure. This is proving a mixed blessing. Fine though it is to keep tabs on how my body is functioning post the HA! It does perpetuate an over preoccupation with my body as this malfunctioning machine. That you can somehow fine tune back into full health, via close observation of your blood pressure twice daily.

You cease feeling a relaxed and quiet contentment with how things seem to be gently improving, just feeling generally better, and go into an heightened state of alarm the moment you see your blood pressure tipping over 140. This in itself stimulates an unhealthy level of stress. Blood pressure varies and it's not always possible to identify exactly why. There's a difference between the habitual and endemic and the hyper tension of a brief moment.

Many common factors, health professionals suggest, affect blood pressure - not enough sleep, too much fat and salt, not enough exercise, too much stress, coffee or alcohol. These are just a few villains that are in the blame frame. But its also acknowledged that health specialists don't fully understand the vagaries of any one individuals issues with high blood pressure. The conditioning factors being perhaps too wide ranging and varied. There is no magic wand that settles the matter.

However, Numero Uno villain is pretty much salt. Once you start looking closely at food contents, which I have become prone to do to the point of atavistic obsession, the bloody stuff is absolutely everywhere. Ultra processed foods are the prime source. They are rightly seen as the primary target for any preventative initiative on health care. It being in the nature of manufacturing cheap baby food for grown adults that you don't need to exert much mastication over, to be high in all the triumvirate of usual suspects for high blood pressure - salt, fat and sugar

Checking your blood pressure daily also provokes these thoughts of self recrimination for that half a cheese and onion pasty you knew at the time of consumption was far too salty. (Yes, that was me ) You also see spikes in higher blood pressure, as a result of not sleeping well for one night, or a whole series of nights (Also me )  And these both take a few days to settle back down to an acceptable register. 

I find it a bit of a conundrum that I can monitor and control the food I eat, but how much sleep I get is pretty much impossible to steer or take conscious control over. You can only set the conditions for it and stand way back. I've tried different approaches over the years and little has had a permanent transformative effect on whether my sleep is long or short. And heightening the anxiety over lack of sleep by throwing statistics at me of decreased life expectancy, really does not help me one bit. It's just another stress point in a room already full of them.

So I have, I'll admit, stopped listening or giving much credence to sleep remedies or strategies. I tend to cultivate a more resigned approach to my sleep being whatever it will be. The factors that waken me have just become too numerous as I get older, that devising one single strategy that effectively deals with them all, is for the birds. It's a bit like keeping plates spinning, just accept some will fall off, that even with the best of intentions my slumber will break - and there is always a very good podcast on You Tube to recommend itself.

Measuring my blood pressure, has I think the potential to become as unhealthy an addiction as regularly checking your smart phone . Too much information perhaps being a more dangerous thing than any brief hiccup of hyper tension. After all it's just one factor in what provokes a HA!

In another podcast episode of The Sacred Elizabeth Oldfield said to her guest  

( according to the auto generated subtitles )

 

'You've had your morning coffee so I don't feel so guilty about panting on you.' 

Mmm this could be an interesting new term -  'to pant on you' - to lean over lasciviously

QUOTATION MARKS - T S Elliot

'They constantly try to escape

from the darkness outside and within

by dreaming of systems so perfect 

that no one will need to be good.

But the man that is 

will shadow the man

that pretends to be.

TS Elliot - Poem - The Rock - 1934

ARTICLE - Verses and a Chorus on Life

As I concluded writing the previous post, the article - One Singular Creation - I felt the urge to write a conclusion/epilogue that was of a less philosophical and more practical bent. What follows is what emerged. This started as just a few sentences, quickly growing to a point where I thought this might stand better on its own. Though the underlying gestalt of it was undoubtedly stimulated by the 'instantaneous situation' that preceded it. These invocations I believe were meant to be addressed to me. May you find some use for some of it.

Life has no sense of a purpose, no sense of a burning destiny for you or anything else. 

Life is like taking part in an adventure without any sense of where you will end up. 

Life may present you with gifts that will sometimes come in the most disgusting of wrapping papers. So you may not welcome them, nor see them as a gift at all. 

Life is a bastard when you cling too tightly to  any intrinsic or substantive meaning you've attributed to it. Its our desires that strangle the life out of life. Hold no expectations of anything, or they could well bite you back. 

It's all too easy to become disillusioned with life, because essentially what we believe life to be about is largely an illusion. Our wishful thinking will at some point be revealed to us.

When things do go awry in life. This is not an opportunity for self flagellation, it's an object lesson. The opening of a door, an invitation to step into a place of insight, to become wiser. Note to self, that I do not say happier.

Love your life as an experience of a whole series of unexpected surprises. 

There is never anything missing from your life that you have to expend your entire life searching for. 

Love your life, not for what you think it should be, nor imagine you want it to be. 

Love your life for what lies directly before you, what it is presenting to you right now. 

Love your life for exactly what it is. 

Embrace the uncertainty,

and the apparent incoherent mess of life.

Sometimes the trashiest most inconsequential of things 

can be instructive, don't be too quick in dismissing them.

Make the most of whatever arrives unbidden in the post. 

Try to enjoy your daily correspondence with the world. 

The day will come when it will be death that drops heavily upon your doormat. 

To which the best response maybe to open its introductory letter, 

shrug your shoulders, loosen your grip, and say - Here I go!

ARTICLE- One Singular Creation

As human beings we make judgements based on our perceptions. In most cases these are self referential, about what is me and what is not me, these are my people and these are not my people. Such distinctions are inherently prejudicial. We prefer and desire pleasure, happiness and joy, and don't want anything that might usher in their opposites. All our primary likes and dislikes, are built upon dualities - Me & You, Self & Other, Good & Evil, Love & Hate, War & Peace, Pleasure & Pain, Beauty & Ugliness.

These are themselves surrogates for the primary human experience of Life & Death. All things appear and disappear, are born and then die. Our capacity to love is predicated upon it, we hate it when things disappoint, disappear or die. We become easily attached to particular circumstances that when they change we feel emotionally robbed, we are bereft, we grieve, we mourn their loss, we get angry, we are in denial, we become depressed etc.

Our human tendency to take everything that happens to us in relation to the external world extremely personally, is the primary source of our mental suffering. Modelling our experience around a range of dualities, causes us to mis-perceive what reality is actually like.  Reality - that world that exists outside of us -  holds no opinions about us, is indifferent to what we approve or disapprove of. We are not the centre of its world.

Humanity is bound by a fixed period of life, the length of which no one knows. What existed of us before life ( if anything) and what will exist of us after life ( if anything ) are both beyond our knowing. In The Genjo Koan, by 13th Century Zen monk Dogen, he contemplates the relationship of life with death through the metaphor of 'firewood and ash'. Although there is obviously a causal link between firewood and ash, they are in very different states of existence. They are in this sense cut off from each other experientially, as are life and death.

Dogen concludes his exploration of the 'firewood and ash' metaphor with the statement:-

"Life is an instantaneous situation,

and Death is an instantaneous situation.

It is the same, for example, with Winter and Spring.

We do not think that Winter becomes Spring, 

and we do not say that Spring becomes Summer."+

We have a general sense for what the four seasons are like as experiences. Though we have our official starting dates, there isn't really a clear point where one season finishes and another begins. Even four distinct identifiable seasons has become more unpredictable with climate change. What Dogen is suggesting is that our lives and deaths are similarly inexact seasons of being.

From the experience of those that I will leave behind - one moment I am alive, and the next I am dead. All set into a landscape of sadness and grief. However, from my experience it will be different - one moment I'm alive and then I drift off into the woozy wa wa of who knows what? Will my experience post death, be a complete cessation of consciousness or something else entirely? This is beyond everyone's current experience to know or predict.

There are stages through which firewood passes before it becomes ashes. Similarly being alive passes through stages, changes in the body, mind and spirit that incrementally shift your experience over the years from youth to decrepitude. To the moment when organs falter and fail, and mental faculties falter and fail, and the body falters and fails, and then the body dies, and self consciousness  dissolves and fades away.

We know what happens to the body post its moment of demise, it decays into its constituent elements. What we do not know is what, if anything, happens to consciousness.  It is often presumed that self consciousness vanishes with the death of its bodily host. Consciousness appears not to be a personal individual possession. Buddhist doctrine implies that something survives, but it would be a mistake to believe that it's a recognisible being linked to us, surviving in the form of a distinct consciousness. And Dogen suggests as much in the ' firewood and ash' metaphor:-

"The firewood, after becoming ash, 

does not again become firewood. 

Similarly, human beings,

after death, do not live again. 

At the same time, 

it is an established custom (within Buddhism) 

not to say that life turns into death."+

In other words Life and Death as a misconceived duality, causes us to end up perceiving our existential situation solely in linear causal terms, that one thing will lead into another. Buddhism uses the term rebirth (as opposed to reincarnation) in order to counter this, to double underline that though something is reborn, this is in no way to be seen as continuation of a previous existence.  The past has its influence upon the future, but the future cannot return to being what has past. Ashes cannot become firewood again.

Consciousness is the experience of one 'instantaneous situation' as Dogen names it. Because we are self conscious, we compile these instances into a series that form a distinct life story, our personal history. But in reality we continue to have just one singular experience of one instance. A whole stream of these conscious moments is what we decide to call a life.

 

Because we live and then die, we interpret reality as things coming into creation and then being destroyed. If we take on the idea that there are only 'instantaneous situations', then a dualism of creation and destruction no longer makes sense. Destruction is a heavy duty emotionally loaded word, and represents a very human centric perception of loss and willful violence.

If you remove the human desire to see a dualism, there is only ever one singular moment of creation, one following another. Each momentary flux of creation is a re-configuring of reality. Things change, adjust, transform, to each freshly arisen circumstance. Things appear and things disappear, they arrive and they leave. It is all a flux of creation. To be alive is to be part of the flux of creation. To be dead is likewise.

Circumstances create this creation, and these are in a state of perpetual evolution. There is a person that experiences being alive and then is dead, and whatever persists after that death is not different to or separated from this perpetual state of creation. Human kind's urge and need to create is a reflection of this too. It is all a constantly changing, and you could say evolving state, that Zen Buddhism calls - Thusness.

Now you might want to call that constant state of creation God if you wish. However we chose to imagine it, there appears to be an imperative spiritually to surrender the self to it. Taoists surrender to an enigmatic state that cannot be intellectually grasped called The Way. In Buddhism, it is referred to by a number of phrases, Buddha Nature being but one. The Self tends always to be perceived as an obscuration. It's the thing preventing us from aligning our being with, or some might prefer 'communing' with, the state of Enlightenment, of God, of seeing the way things really are.

+ Taken from The Shobogenzo, The Genjo Koan, 

Translated by Nishijma & Cross, Published by Windbell

QUOTATION MARKS - Krishnamurti

" One is never afraid of the unknown, 

one is afraid of the known coming to an end."

Krishnamurti

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 117 - The Book Haul

I was watching a video early one morning. My headphones were not charged up, so I viewed it with the volume low, automated subtitles on. These subtitles are always a bit approximate, shall we say. In this particular video the guy announced he was about to play on the organ the hymn Now Thank We All Our God. The automated subtitles translated it as - Now Frank We All Are God.

I've had my second monthly check up at Norfolk & Norwich Hospital.  I'm consistently impressed with the staff, for their kindness, genuine helpfulness and good nature. I appear to be doing rather well, and definitely on the upward mend. I've been given a cautious go ahead to re-start swimming. Though I'll be on go slow initially. I need to find for myself how best to pitch the pace. I just hope I don't end up swimming perpetually halfway up the arse of the genteel person in front of me.

After the Hospital we dived into Norwich, had lunch at Wagamama, and shopped. Hubby for yarn for two projects he was planning. I went to a favourite bookshop, The Book Hive which is quite special. Its the sort of bookshop that excites you the moment you enter. And even if you had no idea what you wanted to buy, you'll instantly find interesting books, none of which you knew much about previous to crossing its threshold. My haul this time was four books, but boy it could have been more - A book by storyteller and mythologist Martin Shaw entitled Courting The Wild Twin, a collection of essays by Ursula K Le Guin called Space Crones, a compilation of short stories by Banana Yosimoto with the intriguing title of Deep End Memories, and a novel by Yoko Okawa - The Memory Police.

North Norfolk is, as you can imagine, not overly endowed with bookshops. Sheringham has WHSmith, The Works and a remainder shop that stocks mostly military history, stuff about The Nazi's and for light relief jigsaws. The only decent bookshop is the bookshop in Holt, run by the inestimable Pam and Keith. They are happy to order any book I want, and often do, their stock is generally mainstream. A lot of that doesn't float my boat. It's a good bookshop, the only one that could make such a claim on the entire North Norfolk coast, so I support it when I can. But The Book Hive, well, that's on another level entirely.

We have been watching a few Hitchcock movies recently. This began with Rear Window, a tightly conceived movie with James Stewart playing an invalided photographer who develops an interest in what's going on in his apartment complex, only to suspect one of them has commited a murder. Stewart, probably the most underrated actor of his generation, shows off his brilliance in this and all his Hitchcock movies.

Psycho, though more renowned , particularly for its shower scene and Hermman soundtrack, has worn less well. It's script gets increasingly clunky and melodramatic as the movie progresses. Concluding with a psychologist giving you a blow by blow explanation of Norman Bates's psychology that is pretty crass. This is the very opposite of 'show not tell'. Not my favourite Hitchcock, though hugely influential if you think about all the subsequent slasher movies that owe a debt to Psycho. Though that's perhaps not a legacy to brag about.

Interestingly Micheal Powell's film Peeping Tom, came out the same year as Psycho. But unlike the Hitchcock film, caused huge controversy. Despite sharing similar themes. I would say Peeping Tom is the better film of the two. Its a movie about sexualised voyeurism and how a film making is complicit in that. Its something, as cinema goers, we can vicariously get a kick out of viewing. Similar to Psycho the central murderer is messed up by the twisted relationship he had with a parent. But the background psychology is handled far better. 

So Peeping Tom provoked a massive backlash. The film was removed from distribution, and Powell's career came to an abrupt end. Until the 70's when Martin Scorcese's enthusiasm for it kick started a reappraisal. There is something in the way Powell has constructed the film that is disquieting and raw.  Hitchcock seems to merely indulge in the fetishism of murdering the feminine, and the psychology at the end is there to make it all appear understandable and hence safe to view. Powell doesn't shy away from making you feel complicit through watching how the murderer murders, which is why it's uncomfortable to watch, and people at the time felt somewhat repulsed.

On the way back from Norwich in the car, we passed a small row of local shops. One of the units was now empty, though it had once been a yarn and sewing shop. One can't help but think the shop doomed itself from the moment it chose its name... Hab - A - Go.

FAVE RAVE - Nina Conti - Therapy Sessions

There has always been a subversive edge to Nina Conti's ventriloquism. The sweary Monkey in particularly regularly punctures any notion he is independent and not being voiced by Conti. On the videos she takes this further and puts herself in a therapy situation, and her relationship with Monkey is the central concern. Its not afraid to play this straight. Its improvised so this can go anywhere, sometimes delving into philosophical depths, explaining how a 'knob joke' is a way for her to avoid self analysis. The therapy sessions quite cleverly go uncomfortably deep whilst at the same time can be incredibly purile. This is brilliant stuff.

RECORD REVIEW - Wild God by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Increasingly, Nick Cave albums, are not music you can just let drift around half listened to in the background. From Skeletal Tree onwards you've had to give them the whole of your attention, or you really would not grasp their quality or mood properly.

So it is with Wild God. On a half attentive run through of the songs they felt to be quite frail things, hung tentatively on a grumbled vocal line and choral verses. But then I thought on reflection, that Ghosteen was rarely about the well written song. The odd melodic line sprang out at you, lyrics caught you as they emotionally hit home. It was an album that had resonance. Similarly Wild God's melodic fragility can be deceptive, these are not insubstantial songs, far from it. There is gravitas, there is a spiritual purpose here.

The themes of grief and loss though no longer placed front and centre, linger in the back of the horizon in the odd lyric reference to a darling son. It's no longer just the deaths of his sons, but also of his friends and peers Shane McGowan and Anita Lane, that he's had to say goodbye to in recent years. Whilst Cave may have found a renewed enthusiasm for life, this has emerged phoenix like out of the embers of grief.

A number of songs begin with Cave intoning expressively over meandering piano phrases that erupt into an uplifting lilting choral refrain over which he vocalises in impassioned and exalted style, reminiscent of evangelical pastors. There is an air of the charismatic preacher bequeathed to Cave, exuberantly uplifting his flock as the climax to a song is reached. Music's power to transcend boundaries clinches a new deal

On the track Conversion he bellows encouragingly over a cacophony of background vocals and rousing music - you're beautiful, you're beautiful, beautiful again stop, stop, stop, stop, your'e beautiful, you're beautiful, you're beautiful - I could imagine this track introducing a fever of healing into an audience. It could be a showstopper. Undoubtedly the finest track of many present here. 

The album opens and closes with tracks that utilise watery imagery - Song of the Lake - As the Waters Cover the Sea. The latter finally letting rip with the full-blooded gospel choir of cliche. As if this album could not reach any higher without them. And The Bad Seeds? Well undoubtedly they contribute, but this appears to be becoming more muted with every successive album. Or was the name all along referring to the ones once inhabiting Cave's imagination.

Nick Cave has never been shy of religious forms, references and imagery. On Wild God it is at its most explicit and undisguised as being faith driven, rather than the fond stylistic affectation of yore. In the past he's been adept at flirting with Bible Belt intonations and expressions and making them serve the narrative he's telling or seeming to be expressions of his love for the divinity of a girlfriend. I think here we are getting closer to what he actually feels and genuinely believes, unfiltered through artifice.

The cloak of the arche storyteller dropped away quite a while ago, and here the practiced poet of darkened souls and murderous shadows, has seemingly, through loss and grief, actually found a kind of transcendent joy. When you look back to that feral singer that was Nick Cave in the drug induced extremity of The Birthday Party, as a transformation, this is quite a startling one.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

MY OWN WALKING - Journal September 2024

At the time of writing, its seven weeks since my heart attack. After the initial shock, there has followed a period of recuperation and readjustment, which has meant it is only recently that a deeper emotional response has found space to be apparent.

Obviously this experience is hardwired to a heightened sense of one's own mortality. Initially at least, emerging strongly as a sense of grief for the loss of a type of naive optimism around dying. A purely operational viewpoint, that it is all quite a way ahead and over the horizon, so nothing to be too concerned about in the here and now. Now  it's not as easy to countenance being so blithely casual about life.

As my parents grew older my Mum would talk a lot about her concerns over which of them would die first. Who would cope better post bereavement? As it turned out it was my Dad who outlived her. He coped with her loss, by remaining emotionally as resolutely genial and unreadable as he had all his life. If anything, her death appeared to be a moment of release from being the carer for an increasingly dependent ( and ever so slightly unappreciative ) spouse. He lived his last years doing whatever the hell he liked. Embracing his newfound independence until even that was no longer tenable.

The age gap between Hubby and I, means our relationship has its own particular dynamic around death built into it. Barring illness, accident, plague or war, the more likely scenario is it will be him that will outlive me. That some day I will die and pass on to who knows what, feels a huge wrench, however I try to spiritually reframe it. The end of earthly existence is filled up to the brim with an immense sadness. This world is after all any of us has ever known. And the "unknown' beyond it, is just that 'unknown', which is hard to feel anything concrete about, apart from a subconscious fear of what it's secretiveness conceals from us.

These thoughts about precedence, feel dwarfed by the idea of leaving Hubby behind to cope with my death and its aftermath, all on his own. There is a good deal of pit of the stomach anguish surrounding that. I've been gently approaching the idea lately. I can sit with it only for a short while, but strangely it appears to help me relax when I do. To not hold it too tightly contained anymore. My head and heart certainly require some sort of realignment to what is going to be the actuality.

After writing this, I unaccountably feel the desire to apologise. This may be very English of me I know. That my going on and on about my heart attack is seen as an unforgivable self indulgence. Though I'm not sure, as a focus, it is entirely a good thing. Its something I'm giving time and space to, for now. But at some point I will move on. There is a desire to allow this change in perspective to percolate and bring a different mojo into my post heart attack life.

In the last month or so, this one incident, has redefined the boundaries of what my world view can encompass. It confines it within a restricted diet, where what I chose to eat or not eat could be a threat to my continued existence. Not to mention the exercise regimes, daily walking distances, and not lifting things that are too heavy lest I casually bust a vital artery. 

Within the most pessimistic of mental parameters of this body of mine being unwell, I've assumed being careful all the time. The minds capacity and my lifestyle have been frozen inside this bubble of illness. Every choice, gesture and action having developed a propensity to be ultimately a life threatening concern. That I have to become this perfect representative and active proponent of a new faith, in order to be saved, to be set free. And that salvation will only be realised by my becoming the most ardent true believer, resulting in being well again. The definition of what 'well' is left entirely in someone else's ministering hands.

Once your state of existence has been analysed, medicalised and diagnosed, you have to work really hard not to feel you have been compelled to join a cult of asceticism. Centering around prescribed renunciations and prohibitions. What is and is not considered good, beneficial healthy behaviour. The whole direction of your life taken over by this supremely scientific religion that has no joy left within it.

I'm aware that the body feeling unwell whilst your mind is not can become a well meaning prison. I feel empathy for those whose lives are ring fenced by their bodily frailty or disability. In a constant fight to prove what you are still capable of. But then the mind too can become unreliable, beginning with not being able to instantly recollect things, places or people, and ending with a gradual slide into self forgetfulness. And what I presume will be the really painful bit in-between, when self awareness of one's decline is still present, but resolutely unable to prevent any of it from actually happening. Despite all my whimpering protestations, whether short or long term the future prognosis is clear. The prospect of death has shown me its calling card, with the date ever so carefully obscured.

Today, is just one day where I'm railing against the sense of restriction, and it has to be said, I'm both self pitying and a tad bored with the self pitying. This small moment of rebellious angst against a small but significant loss of control, is ring fenced by the fortune telling barbs of impermanence. 

FEATURE -Bob Fosse Sweet Charity Dance Routines

The inimitable choreography of Bob Fosse, both stylish, silly and satirical.  So of its period and yet timeless. Every modern choreographer for musicals can rarely get themselves free of  being dwindled by his shadow.  

ALBUM REVIEW - What Happened to the Heart?

This recording perfectly captures the eccentric acoustic and uniquely loveable character of Aurora in music. Here on this album all her many facets and qualities are fully evident. The propensity for beauty and thoughtful rumination on the status of the heart in our culture. At the same time it is coquetish, playful, mischievous, isn't afraid to go into darker, weirder, those more edgy sensuous areas of the psyche. She appears to be off beat by nature, kooky and ever so slightly mad in a distinct Scandinavian manner. So much so that the poignant beauty and unpredictability of her music constantly takes you ravishingly by surprise.

 

The opening six tracks of What Happened to the Heart as a sequence of perfectly crafted pop songs - is a tour de force. Each one delighting in enchanting the ear and heart. Then there is a distinct pause for quieter more sparely orchestrated songs, before she adopts a more abrasive, disquieting tone for much of the remainder of the album. 

If I have a criticism of the album, it's that sixteen tracks and just over an hours running time cannot fail to lose momentum, and so on occasion it does. It's what the term Less is More was invented to deter. A sleeker and perhaps more judiciously pruned version of this record would have been an absolute stonker, start to finish. As it is this is really really close, but falls short of a full eight carrot commendation.

On previous albums there have been momentary glimpses of What Happened to the Heart delivers fully resolved. Here the quality and consistent invention of her songwriting and production is what remains impressive. Why she's not better known and appreciated is harder to understand. This album is great and grand in its ambitions. It ought to be the mainstream breakthrough moment, for her brand of folk tinged pop. And if it isn't, then I'd really have to wonder what it is people want these days.

CARROT REVIEW  - 7/8