Peaceable Land 7 - Lonelier roads
Ah-ah, ahh-ahh
I make this dispatch from France, having invaded on Napoleon’s birthday via Ryanair. My aspect is resonant: the sun descends a valley then subsides to the sea. From it I wish to launch a profundity.
The school reverend said heaven and hell were banquets with stiff-elbowed guests. At both, the feast was sumptuous – at the time that meant piles of Walker’s Prawn Cocktail. At both, the guests cannot bend their elbows. In hell the guests try to feed themselves, and can only hold the treats at arm’s length. Tear and saliva ducts weep. In heaven the guests hold the crisps to the mouth of the person across from them. All are fed and happy.
At Green Day at Wembley, during the shared “ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ahh-ahh”s of Boulevard of Broken Dreams, I held my phone torch aloft. My friend remarked that we could not see and enjoy our own torch lights: we could only see those held up by people on the stadium’s opposite wing, and they could only see ours.
Quite nice? If you didn’t think so, did you notice that being unable to feed oneself but able to feed the person across the table is similar to not being able to see your own light but seeing the person across the stadium’s?
It does, though, all come to a troubling Q. How inward or outward should we be?
Bertrand Russell says that we can only be happy facing outwards:
A man should be able to achieve happiness, provided that his passions and interests are directed outward, not inward. It should be our endeavour therefore, both in education and in attempts to adjust ourselves to the world, to aim at avoiding self-centred passions and at acquiring those affections and those interests which will prevent our thoughts from dwelling perpetually upon ourselves.
While Marcus Aurelius tells us to keep an inner sanctuary:
It is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility.
It’s hard to know. Lately I lean to Russell, but once you’ve had the Aurelius thoughts, turning outwards can feel like a retreat. It seems unloving to your soul, to treat it like a tube nutter with whom you must avoid eye contact. ‘My soul’s no tube nutter!’ you want to cry.
Recently there are books against therapy, but the perils of inwardness are manifest in London. Your friend must rush home to do nothing because his watch said he was only 87% recovered and — foul introversion of the essential constructive urge! — he has a marathon he’s training for.
The perils of outwardness, however, are manifest right now. I confess I misrepresented the cool of my French station. The truth is that I’m forced six times daily to compete in ‘pool olympics’ by rabid school friends. Between crazed noodles and reckless floats I send looks of yearnful apology to sweet David Copperfield, who lies neglected on a table. Rather than murmur ‘bonjour tristesse’ I plead ‘no more Dua Lipa on the poolside boombox!’. Why is there a fucking poolside boombox?
A great critic said we read because we can’t ever know enough people. I know enough people – they’re why I can’t bloody read!
GM