Tainted, in on the joke

Francis Bacon: Self portrait 1973

Being 38 a lot of people who were young when I was a kid have now become old, with the implication clearly being that for the kids I see today I'll be old before too long, when they're finally getting the hang of things. Always a lot of high school / university students in the summer classes, and the idea that I'll be almost 60 when they hit my age freaks me out a little, although I intend to make it in good physical shape. And when I meet them on the street 20 or so years later they'll also be tainted, in on the joke.

I started losing my hair when I was 18, so I've done the mid-life crisis thing enough times to have burned through it, and I shave my head with relief twice a week. I have a good skull, a stroke of luck.

I like living in an aging society, it means that I won't look out of place, but I also like folk young. It's such a seemingly arbitrary property, but no more so than being attracted to something because it's on sale, the same as before but just cheaper. When something is a bargain you can afford to take a risk, as the chances of regret are greatly diminished, and at a certain cost/wealth things become disposable. Much the same is true of youth, plus it's usually an attractive package. So little permanent physcial damage has been done to anyone under 21, little that a good rest and a month or two of diet and exercise couldn't put right.

The other reason why I like some young people is that they haven't f***ed things up yet, but then others are wasting away. I have nothing against people being young and confused - I spent years wandering around - but it frustrates me to see people tearing themselves apart within such narrow boundaries, "should I do A or B?", with neither appeals to them, without testing either to see if it really works, let alone considering C or extending their options even further. If you're going to f*** up at least do it in a spectacular fashion that leaves you twisted and broken from pursuing something you actually wanted.

Are you real?

Bragg: "I believe you play roulette, don't you? Why is that?"

Bacon: "Well, they say it's the silliest game you can play."

Reasonably long article on people's memories of Francis Bacon 16 yrs after his death in the Observer. A mention of a South Bank Show interview / profile, part one of six below, with parts occasionally being removed and then replaced, but worth the time if you have an interest. A vivid defense of figurative art with the work to back it up. The interviewer, Melvyn Bragg, tries to pull him into depths, but Bacon kicks ass and holds onto nothing but the moment, while getting drunk and saying it all. Really straight, no pretense, no complications. Amusing moment when Bragg expresses surprise shock that Bacon feels that humans are - shock - animals. Lately I've begun to think this is the only thing worth learning, so simple and yet it overturns everything we're supposed to accept about our special place in things. What a joke.


At one point he asks Bragg, "Are you real?"

But it must be said that I hate drunks, and nearly all that drink has made me do. But I keep drinking because I like to be in some control of my chemistry, and it cuts the caffeine and adrenalin at the end of the day.

When hurting someone is OK

Interesting Carnegie Foundation talk / Q&A with Darius Rejali on the history of torture in democracies. He has a pleasant voice, and uses no graphic language. At the end someone, thinking they're being very smart, brings up the ticking time bomb scenario, and Rejali makes a calm and clear reply: we have jury nullification, and courts would always consider mitigating circumstances, so legalizing and regulating torture is not only unnecessary, but would also have unfortunate consequences (the elaboration of which was the bulk of his talk).

If your life is in danger you're allowed to act in self defense, and we don't need to legislate all the permutations of how that might happen. In open democracies the legal system can / should be trusted to understand when hurting someone is OK.

Memories of Bukowski & Burroughs

Bukowski, smoking

In the interests of authenticity I got drunk before this post.

Bacon and Burroughs - what a vicious afternoon.

Like a lot men I fell for Bukowski when I was young and I fell hard. As much as the words it was the idea that one could create something in a small space, keep on a long adolescence, and, of course, be richly rewarded in women and $ at the end. The suffering and poverty were always only a prelude, not the main theme, but for 99.99999% or more that's all that happens. A one in ten million shot - to have talent, to write, to be discovered, to succeed. Failure is what happens in this field.

I was faithful to this dream until my early 30s, when I started to suffer, mentally and physically, from the kind of overdrafts that one can never really pay off. It'd be nice to say that I had a lot of fun, and while I'm sure I did - I did about everything I wanted to that could be achieved with minimal funds - the fun burned off fast and what was left was just the thing itself, mechanical, hitting the pleasure sites again and again, like a retard bashing ants. I let myself change, I learned to drink and romanticize less. Now I'm a sober looking type, more like William Burroughs, albeit without a suit and tie. Suits I can understand, but ties seem like fancy dress.

Somewhere in on Bukowski he writes about doing a reading at a college and seeing Burroughs alone in a room, doing nothing. I've always felt closer to Burroughs than Bukowski, and what I liked was his essential half-assedness. Much like Beckett he makes no attempt to be user-friendly, and is thus a far, far worse writer than those who are truly great (e.g. Dostoevsky) or very good (e.g. post-American Tabloid James Ellroy), or even competent (e.g. ... insert whoever). To be honest he is bad - try reading the cut-ups rather than appreciating them from afar - but with a sincerity and a force of character that win the day, even as you don't pick up the volumes much for kicks. Although the last trilogy, heavily edited by his assistant / lover, is a good fun western / sci-fi pulp summation of his lifetime concerns with outlaws, guns and young men.

The idea of Burroughs is far better than the reality, and it's ideas that I've generally taken from books, far more than the actual strings of words, the ideas that helped me or got me in trouble. Still, whatever their role in how I got to be here now, the ideas of men like Bukowski and Burroughs don't mean that much to me anymore. At some point I want to revisit all my teenage / 20-something books and movies and work out what was there then and what remains now. But that's a task that would take a long time, and I get bored fast when I look back. Too many things are happening now.