Journal 17/3/2004

Last night went to the Arts Centre for the Scout "Gang Show". I
didn't know what this was but guessed it was kinda like a Boys Brigade
inspection but more sketches and acts than square-bashing and horse
vaulting! In the event it was a show put on by Scouts all over Aberdeen
with a few comedy skits. The musical sketches were on themes, like "In
The Navy" to start with, or "Rock N Roll" or "School" or "Cats and
Dogs", with them singing medleys of songs on these. E.g. "Who Let The
Dogs Out?" "Top Cats", "We Are Siamese" etc. It was all so jolly and
good-natured and public-spirited and well done that it was funny but
oddly enjoyable. Seeing Pink Floyd and Gilbert &; Sullivan
juxtaposed for the school one was novel. (There were numerous G&;S
tunes which really set the tone for the music - light, comic but quite
skilful). Which made me think how the power and social revolt signified
by "Another Brick In The Wall" (though undercut by the double negative
'We don't need no') and "School's Out" and "Hound Dog" have been
assimilated into the mainstream. Is it democratising or levelling down?
Doe sit have to be either/or?

The whole evening left me feeling that after my phase of
self-destructive drug-taking (although I'm smoking bifta still) and
antipathy to the mainstream, that I've worked through these feelings
and am now feeling well-adjusted and no longer hostile or cynical but
appreciative these kind of events. Although the Gang Show would be the
last thing I'd seek to do or see culturally, socially these things are
important in a community way, literally bringing people together,
furthering their skills and enriching their own experiences and vision
of life. Culture also leads to culture - maybe one of them will seek
out Elvis or Pink Floyd. But after years of culturally seeking the
anti-social anti-mainstream, or simply 'alternative', this kind of
thing is appealingly different.

But maybe it's like Maurice teaching boxing during his loneliness. The
fact that I seem to be appreciating spiritual values more and more
perhaps shows my spiritual loneliness produced by the lack of a partner
- by which I mean not just a sexual thing but a compadre, someone who
really understands my viewpoints and feelings and thoughts. I simply
haven't met anyone like this in Aberdeen.

But at least I am out of the stagnant rut I have been feeling. It's
better to do something, almost anything, than sit and stagnate because
at least then you engender some kind of personal development. Stasis
leads to solipsism (or extreme self-consciousness and self-referential
behaviour), which leads to madness or at least severe unhappiness. This
I think was the downfall of Philip Larkin and indeed Kenneth Williams
and Andy Warhol - their failure to accept personal change and the
developments caused by Others. Hence Larkin's extreme reactionary
posture (despite the tenderness of some of his poetry) and KW's extreme
sterility as a person. As Buddhists know, you must embrace
change!

I think recent developments, over perhaps the last year or so, have
been my trying to recapture that glorious sense of life as opportunity
I had when I was sixteen, after I'd started having sex but before I
went to university. Then I pretty much had the choice of anywhere and
anything I could do at uni, being confident of my Highers. I was having
sex and during this time was also awarded the Dux of the school and was
away to go on the Explorer Belt. Absolutely everything felt like it was
coming together successfully - my friends were who I wanted, I had a
sexlife of sorts, so pleasantly secret and rendering a covert glow to
the days, I was successful at school and outside of that was finding my
intellectual bearings with literature (I hadn't yet encountered Marx or
Buddhism, my philosophical and spiritual bearings). Visiting
universities also increased my knowledge of the world. All this gave me
a feeling of what now seems like grace - spiritual grace, that feeling
in the Velvet Underground's "I'm Set Free", "Jesus" and "What Goes On".
But as well as that I had the constraint of living at home and my
burgeoning sexuality, so there welled up in me the feelings and ideas
which requiring expression became my writing. Unexpressed feeling felt
like a presence within me, something which through writing I could pour
out into (an attempt at) art.

I think it was May 2002 I discovered "Maurice" in a bookshop (for 50p
or something like!) and was transported back to these feelings. I wrote
an essay on it then, in fact: how everything seemed open, fresh,
optimistic, malleable, youthful and joyous; whereas from the whole
nightlife culture I'd been living for years had felt dark, cynical,
jaded and closed-minded. Since then (or increasingly) these are the
emotions and feelings I've been working towards. This occurs in a
variety of mediums - from my adoration of the vigour and 'spunk' of the
early Beatles, to my enjoyment of Scouts, to my reading new books
rather than the same-old same-old, to the whole vista of reflections
and mind-rendered glow that suffuse my everyday thoughts to my embrace
of Buddhism and its welcoming of change.

Of course during its course I enjoyed the nightlife culture. But what
you might say is that the intellectual life is a series of engagements.
It's when you become married to an idea that you become fixed and
unresponsive - your duty is thus to read widely and openly and embrace
new feelings that this results in, to find these new developments. Each
phase of my life has had its emotions and ups and downs but there's
been a general vibe to each. All this I find fascinating, the
alterations of personality and viewpoints each phase brings. It's a bit
like John Lennon with his phases or William Burroughs with his
psychological searching, through Reich etc. Each phase your mind
engages and interacts with, producing the art and writing as you seek
to express these mental engagements: hence the view of poetry as
'internal discourse', of course. Poetry your interior discourse, prose
your discourse with others - whether in writing or in person.