Spellbound by Siouxsie and the Banshees(look it up on YouTube) is one of those genuinely unsettling songs, a piece of art that makes me shiver, only very slightly, but enough to prmopt me to think of the recesses of the imagination. I also think it captures neatly an imaginative or rhetorical violence in music that had been going for some years but which had lacked a register to become anything more than loud and aggressive. Here, the implied violence is given the cloaking of Grimm's Fairy Tales or of a hundred traditional stories about fairy circles and spirits. Its negative spirituality and bursting irrationality is invasive and caught me when I first heard it as a somewhat isolated teenager in 1989 (I still have my tape recording of it made off the tv from the BBC programme "Boxpops" which used to do tracks and news from previous years on a any given subject). I don't know whether you can read it as Freudian or not, I guess you probably could. I read it as a cultural symbol: out of the depths of recession and near-economic despair, of real street violence and alienation, comes this primal elaboration of fear and uncontrol. It's a metaphor, in word, rhythm and structure: this song is reaching into human experience for a very specific cultural problem.
But anything which goes in that direction can have unexpected and haunting effects. Even this vocabulary makes my point harder to communicate: "haunting", "primal", "fear" - you could add "ghostly" and "piercing" to that list. What it's all saying is that humanity fears determinism as contradicting its most basic day-to-day assumptions; and that it fears annihilation, being made unphysical or unplaced. You could make this mean death only, or you could, a la Paul Tillich and existentialism, say that it means any radical form of challenging (of the kind that was certainly underway in 1981) which dislocates and threatens to undermine you.
Whether we exist in any meaningful sense or not, we have fears of the shadowy and the ungrasped or ungraspable: I think it's straightforward to see that it all refers to the fear of otherness, which, by its very definition, means we will not be as we are. That is hard to imagine, and it means we, as we are, will be negated. We always strive against negation, create order and physicality, but we know we are going to be negated and that in steps along the way things will happen to negate what we are and what we understand on many occasions. Those things might produce something better and finer, more worthwhile, but the process is terrifying. Hence we write songs that try to show something of the nothingness that surrounds us and we shiver for a bit, or it won't leave our heads for a while: we watch horror films and are unsettled: we tell ghost stories and are thoughtful: we emphasise our bodiedness by fucking everything in sight and inventing ethics to justify our desperation.
Showing posts with label paranormal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paranormal. Show all posts
Friday, 18 April 2008
Thursday, 10 April 2008
Making Yourself Invisible
*warning* This is a post about weird stuff, not science, as such, and I thought, essentially, that I'd plagiarise Dizzy's post on ayahuasca type drugs. Incidentally I wonder if he has read Graham Hancock?
This idea came up in a conversation at the weekend (I was sober, so were my interlocutors). My friend said that someone they knew had actually made themselves invisible: through power of thought, or through some other process, and had avoided her friends looking for her. As if she had been watching the scene unfold on a television, or so it seemed to me. I wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but the implication was that it had just happened, there and then, like a thought coming to you out of nowhere. Crime & Punishment aside, the question is, not how (we'll leave that for a moment) but why? In the context of the story it was not as though the person had ceased to exist: they were thinking, and standing, and watching. They just had no corporeal existence. They couldn't influence or change anything ("it's all too late," etc etc - see TD posts passim) but were somehow there and not there. So it's not really being Godlike - more like being Christlike I suppose - but a momentary fact, one you accept and enter into. I don't remember in the story the person being scared or wishing to return to sight although they did, eventually. I can see it or read it (hmmm, visual metaphors for an auditory experience) as a kind of death-wish: as one of those ghastly Joy Division loving teenagers I would stare into a mirror for minutes at a time and imagine that I was flipping or zipping out of existence for a moment; sometimes it seemed real enough until I moved, or coughed, or something. but it was something to be desired - not to not be noticed, or anything so shallow, but to be literally unphysical: soul, maybe. So perhaps it's not a death-wish after all but a desire to return to religious or spiritual roots - a satire on materialism, even (what would happen if I divested myself of all belongings, including my body, but continued to exist? aha, but you can't...).
Unfortunately at the time of the conversation I was able only to nod and hmmm a bit. It has been too long since I've actually had real conversations with real human beings about things other than work, mathematics and New Labour.
None of this post is to be taken as "uh ho, TD has gone off the deep end", if you don't mind, dear reader. I haven't gone off the deep end, though anyone who has regularly read this blog should know that I stand on it by my own volition, unable to believe that the limited perceptions of a flawed and inconsistent being can be in any way true to what I hope is the infinite majesty of creation.
This idea came up in a conversation at the weekend (I was sober, so were my interlocutors). My friend said that someone they knew had actually made themselves invisible: through power of thought, or through some other process, and had avoided her friends looking for her. As if she had been watching the scene unfold on a television, or so it seemed to me. I wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but the implication was that it had just happened, there and then, like a thought coming to you out of nowhere. Crime & Punishment aside, the question is, not how (we'll leave that for a moment) but why? In the context of the story it was not as though the person had ceased to exist: they were thinking, and standing, and watching. They just had no corporeal existence. They couldn't influence or change anything ("it's all too late," etc etc - see TD posts passim) but were somehow there and not there. So it's not really being Godlike - more like being Christlike I suppose - but a momentary fact, one you accept and enter into. I don't remember in the story the person being scared or wishing to return to sight although they did, eventually. I can see it or read it (hmmm, visual metaphors for an auditory experience) as a kind of death-wish: as one of those ghastly Joy Division loving teenagers I would stare into a mirror for minutes at a time and imagine that I was flipping or zipping out of existence for a moment; sometimes it seemed real enough until I moved, or coughed, or something. but it was something to be desired - not to not be noticed, or anything so shallow, but to be literally unphysical: soul, maybe. So perhaps it's not a death-wish after all but a desire to return to religious or spiritual roots - a satire on materialism, even (what would happen if I divested myself of all belongings, including my body, but continued to exist? aha, but you can't...).
Unfortunately at the time of the conversation I was able only to nod and hmmm a bit. It has been too long since I've actually had real conversations with real human beings about things other than work, mathematics and New Labour.
None of this post is to be taken as "uh ho, TD has gone off the deep end", if you don't mind, dear reader. I haven't gone off the deep end, though anyone who has regularly read this blog should know that I stand on it by my own volition, unable to believe that the limited perceptions of a flawed and inconsistent being can be in any way true to what I hope is the infinite majesty of creation.
Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Continuing a Conversation
I thought it was a bit odd to have a discussion about UFOs in the comments of a post called "Lawmaking", as I have been with commenter "Crushed by Ingsoc" so I'm going to broaden the discussion in a new post.
Some of CBI's points addressed something I failed to in my earlier posts about my old interest in flying saucers: the fact that if you haven't seen something which to you can be explained in no other way, you need to bend logic and reasoning in order to accept as I did the ETH (extra terrestrial hypothesis). Seemingly obvious concepts like few astronomers sighting ufos need to be explained away or ignored. In my case I ignored them completely - they didn't pass under my radar. I assume that sceptical friends would have raised them but I don't recall. I have mentioned before my need or desire to believe in something that would prove I was mistaken in my assumptions and my understanding of the world around me; but there is more to it - the need to be accepted into a group, to will oneself into being an outsider within a group of likeminded persons. For me that was the only way I could try and avoid the point that it was my social inadequacies causing my outsider-sense, and that becoming a UFO buff was only likely to make it worse.
But then that itself is self-reinforcing. It was self-evident to me that people who laughed at me were deluded, lulled into a life of ignorance and alcohol by the manipulative Government (always spelled with a capital G). So the more excluded I felt, the more I got into it, and the more excluded I -was_, and the more excluded I felt, and so on. It meant, as a by product of this, that I became an acolyte of truth, a kind of deskbound crusader for something that everyone should know: another way it diverted my religious impulses.
It is also worth bearing in mind that this was the mid 1990s (say 1993-1996), that long bleak period of post black Wednesday political ennui and cynicism that haunted John Major's government like the ghost of a snarling dog. The incompetence of that shambling wreck of an administration was plastered over all media night and day and David Mellor even hosted 606 for goodness' sake. I wanted to think that governments might actually be competent, devastatingly so, because all I could see was wastage everywhere. I wanted to think that there were levels of government in which Major was involved (don't laugh) which actively and ruthlessly pursued an agenda and, by and large, achieved it. Looking back on that period now we kind of forget how many people felt about that government, how its sexual indiscretions only seemed to point to a wider and indeed a fundamental disappearance of ethics or responsibility, how its utter lack of charm or charisma detached it from the people like the bits on lego blocks. Yes there was Blair waiting in the wings but until early 97 he was often seen as thin, idealess, vague (even if he was miles ahead in the polls). The government, the country, was tired, really dog tired, probably from the trauma of the 80s - whatever. This was how I saw it and this was the background to my mid 90s keeness on ufos.
As I've said before, the wish for there to be something hasn't changed. Only my credulity has taken a massive battering so that now although my old interest stirs when I read a sighting story or see a ufo photo, the scepticism kicks in - twelve years ago I'd have called it denial.
Some of CBI's points addressed something I failed to in my earlier posts about my old interest in flying saucers: the fact that if you haven't seen something which to you can be explained in no other way, you need to bend logic and reasoning in order to accept as I did the ETH (extra terrestrial hypothesis). Seemingly obvious concepts like few astronomers sighting ufos need to be explained away or ignored. In my case I ignored them completely - they didn't pass under my radar. I assume that sceptical friends would have raised them but I don't recall. I have mentioned before my need or desire to believe in something that would prove I was mistaken in my assumptions and my understanding of the world around me; but there is more to it - the need to be accepted into a group, to will oneself into being an outsider within a group of likeminded persons. For me that was the only way I could try and avoid the point that it was my social inadequacies causing my outsider-sense, and that becoming a UFO buff was only likely to make it worse.
But then that itself is self-reinforcing. It was self-evident to me that people who laughed at me were deluded, lulled into a life of ignorance and alcohol by the manipulative Government (always spelled with a capital G). So the more excluded I felt, the more I got into it, and the more excluded I -was_, and the more excluded I felt, and so on. It meant, as a by product of this, that I became an acolyte of truth, a kind of deskbound crusader for something that everyone should know: another way it diverted my religious impulses.
It is also worth bearing in mind that this was the mid 1990s (say 1993-1996), that long bleak period of post black Wednesday political ennui and cynicism that haunted John Major's government like the ghost of a snarling dog. The incompetence of that shambling wreck of an administration was plastered over all media night and day and David Mellor even hosted 606 for goodness' sake. I wanted to think that governments might actually be competent, devastatingly so, because all I could see was wastage everywhere. I wanted to think that there were levels of government in which Major was involved (don't laugh) which actively and ruthlessly pursued an agenda and, by and large, achieved it. Looking back on that period now we kind of forget how many people felt about that government, how its sexual indiscretions only seemed to point to a wider and indeed a fundamental disappearance of ethics or responsibility, how its utter lack of charm or charisma detached it from the people like the bits on lego blocks. Yes there was Blair waiting in the wings but until early 97 he was often seen as thin, idealess, vague (even if he was miles ahead in the polls). The government, the country, was tired, really dog tired, probably from the trauma of the 80s - whatever. This was how I saw it and this was the background to my mid 90s keeness on ufos.
As I've said before, the wish for there to be something hasn't changed. Only my credulity has taken a massive battering so that now although my old interest stirs when I read a sighting story or see a ufo photo, the scepticism kicks in - twelve years ago I'd have called it denial.
Monday, 5 February 2007
Scepticism, Enquiry and Reason
As regular readers of my blog will know, but perhaps not care greatly about, I am a sceptic who wishes he wasn't. I look for patterns and sense in the world, as well as for things to counter my limited view of reality - the strange, the unaccounted for, and so on. You might also remember that I've mentioned in the past my disappointment that these things have failed to turn up in my life. Technically I suppose it is unreasonable or irrational to want there to be other things than I can see, but there are three main elements (rather than reasons) behind my belief:
1. I cannot believe that the perception of such a limited creature as myself should bear any resemblance to the great truths of reality or existence;
2. I do not want our cultural arrogance to turn out in fact to be the case;
3. I would like there to be purpose to life, irrespective of whether we can or choose to give meaning to it.
These have not been arrived at through logical thought; rather through experience, disappointment and irrationally choosing one position over another on the sole basis that I find it more morally-aesthetically appealing. I am a sceptic but a reluctant one - a position which for me refutes the idea commonly advanced in favour of hating certain groups of people and being able to express it loudly in law, that they "choose" their worldview. I don't. I have it. If I do become an atheist at any point (I'd rather not) it would be because I felt I had no choice in view of how I saw the world. I could not simply change the way I understand life, it would change me. I would like to be shocked (as I often pretended to be as a teenager) into a radically different view of the world, but as it happens I have never been.
I mention all this because of a recent post over at James's place in which he used a photo I was sure I'd seen before. Right enough it was a photo of the 1950 Trent Farm UFO sighting, one which though it has been put through lots of analysis has yet to be proved definitively fake. This means nothing of course, except that it is evidence in favour of a kind of faith (at the moment), and is a minuscule reason to hold to the idea of other things. I am often asked whether ufology is compatible with religious belief - I've never seen the contradiction myself (a la God, in the great Radio 4 series Old Harry's Game: "Do you really think you're the best I could manage?"). The Trent Farm photo proves nothing, suggest very little. To me it just means that there might, still, be something else. All too often evidence for the existence of ufos has been thoroughly and incontrovertibly smashed into fragments. Perhaps this will be (I've seen it happen often enough to "good" pictures). But it's still out there.
Alas I'm struggling to publish it here but you can see the photo here
It doesn't look much, but I'm told it's been terribly good in tests.
1. I cannot believe that the perception of such a limited creature as myself should bear any resemblance to the great truths of reality or existence;
2. I do not want our cultural arrogance to turn out in fact to be the case;
3. I would like there to be purpose to life, irrespective of whether we can or choose to give meaning to it.
These have not been arrived at through logical thought; rather through experience, disappointment and irrationally choosing one position over another on the sole basis that I find it more morally-aesthetically appealing. I am a sceptic but a reluctant one - a position which for me refutes the idea commonly advanced in favour of hating certain groups of people and being able to express it loudly in law, that they "choose" their worldview. I don't. I have it. If I do become an atheist at any point (I'd rather not) it would be because I felt I had no choice in view of how I saw the world. I could not simply change the way I understand life, it would change me. I would like to be shocked (as I often pretended to be as a teenager) into a radically different view of the world, but as it happens I have never been.
I mention all this because of a recent post over at James's place in which he used a photo I was sure I'd seen before. Right enough it was a photo of the 1950 Trent Farm UFO sighting, one which though it has been put through lots of analysis has yet to be proved definitively fake. This means nothing of course, except that it is evidence in favour of a kind of faith (at the moment), and is a minuscule reason to hold to the idea of other things. I am often asked whether ufology is compatible with religious belief - I've never seen the contradiction myself (a la God, in the great Radio 4 series Old Harry's Game: "Do you really think you're the best I could manage?"). The Trent Farm photo proves nothing, suggest very little. To me it just means that there might, still, be something else. All too often evidence for the existence of ufos has been thoroughly and incontrovertibly smashed into fragments. Perhaps this will be (I've seen it happen often enough to "good" pictures). But it's still out there.
Alas I'm struggling to publish it here but you can see the photo here
It doesn't look much, but I'm told it's been terribly good in tests.
Monday, 8 January 2007
Ghostwatch
I've been watching this classic 1992 mockumentary starring Michael Parkinson and the surprisingly good Sarah Greene again lately and I've been trying to put my finger on exactly why it leaves me feeling uneasy, despite being a 30 year old who has never experienced the supernatural in any direct way. It may well be that this is in fact the reason, but that aside, there are a number of threads in it I'd like to draw out. If you're unfamiliar with the programme, look it up on wikipedia. The following ramble does contain spoilers.
Firstly the setting is Northolt. Ever since I was very small I have always found the concept of a supernatural event in a totally banal setting quite terrifying. To the extent that for some years in my teens (caused by what I'm not sure) I found something deeply spooky about rows of terraces and semis themselves. In my twenties of course, this transmuted into a similar fear, via Threads,this time of the same streets being blown apart. For me as a child and in some lingering sense as an adult, to look at a switched off television, empty arm chair or dark landing - is itself disquieting.
Secondly there is something more than ghostly about it. As is suggested on the commentary on the DVD, poltergeist cases generally carry with them the hint of psychosexual drama: they ask us questions about what teenage girls (who are often at the centre of these dramas) are: are they children to be protected, or are they "people who can be reacted to sexually" (a slight paraphrase of the show's producer on the commentary). Our culture has a deepening conflict here, and I just wonder, watching the sensitive way Ghostwatch develops the elder girl as very much being on a cusp between vulnerable childhood and powerful, independent adolescence, how well we're dealing with it. Sexuality is later revealed to be relevant, albeit as paedophilia; and there are passing references throughout to girls going missing, and brutal (possibly sexual) murders.
Thirdly the conceit - of how a 90s style daytime tv show would handle a genuine supernatural event - is very well handled. It plays effectively on the unthreatening and cheerful screen personalities of its presenters, in the process exposing the reassuring distance and "control" we subconsciously expect from our tv shows. Yes, we can and have, many times, deconstructed television. But we all turn to it, still, as a source of information and comfort.
Fourthly, the poltergeist is thoroughly nasty. It is some kind of composite, or aggregate of historical evil: evil is here shown to have a real existence. We don't like this concept, generally speaking but for me at least it retains its power. Unlike real world poltergeist activity this one does actually harm people and has a plan, which it executes. Like with The Ring, I have a lot of trouble, intellectually and morally, with supernatural beings who just happen to be unadulteratedly nasty. I don't really know why. Incidentally, I find the US version of the The Ring more frightening than the Japanese original.
there had been discussion, before it was transmitted on 31.10.92, as to whether Ghostwatch was a real documentary or not. Quite apart from the credits, and the Screen One drama stand logo, and the Radio Times listing, the cue for disbelief is in the tree foliage you see within one minute, and the too-good home video footage. But it undeniably feels real, especially to someone whose childhood was largely spent watching Sarah Greene and Mike Smith on children's or childish programmes as well as Craig Charles on Red Dwarf.
If you have seen it, I'd appreciate your thoughts (on the show and on my neuroses). If you haven't - get it on dvd asap.
Firstly the setting is Northolt. Ever since I was very small I have always found the concept of a supernatural event in a totally banal setting quite terrifying. To the extent that for some years in my teens (caused by what I'm not sure) I found something deeply spooky about rows of terraces and semis themselves. In my twenties of course, this transmuted into a similar fear, via Threads,this time of the same streets being blown apart. For me as a child and in some lingering sense as an adult, to look at a switched off television, empty arm chair or dark landing - is itself disquieting.
Secondly there is something more than ghostly about it. As is suggested on the commentary on the DVD, poltergeist cases generally carry with them the hint of psychosexual drama: they ask us questions about what teenage girls (who are often at the centre of these dramas) are: are they children to be protected, or are they "people who can be reacted to sexually" (a slight paraphrase of the show's producer on the commentary). Our culture has a deepening conflict here, and I just wonder, watching the sensitive way Ghostwatch develops the elder girl as very much being on a cusp between vulnerable childhood and powerful, independent adolescence, how well we're dealing with it. Sexuality is later revealed to be relevant, albeit as paedophilia; and there are passing references throughout to girls going missing, and brutal (possibly sexual) murders.
Thirdly the conceit - of how a 90s style daytime tv show would handle a genuine supernatural event - is very well handled. It plays effectively on the unthreatening and cheerful screen personalities of its presenters, in the process exposing the reassuring distance and "control" we subconsciously expect from our tv shows. Yes, we can and have, many times, deconstructed television. But we all turn to it, still, as a source of information and comfort.
Fourthly, the poltergeist is thoroughly nasty. It is some kind of composite, or aggregate of historical evil: evil is here shown to have a real existence. We don't like this concept, generally speaking but for me at least it retains its power. Unlike real world poltergeist activity this one does actually harm people and has a plan, which it executes. Like with The Ring, I have a lot of trouble, intellectually and morally, with supernatural beings who just happen to be unadulteratedly nasty. I don't really know why. Incidentally, I find the US version of the The Ring more frightening than the Japanese original.
there had been discussion, before it was transmitted on 31.10.92, as to whether Ghostwatch was a real documentary or not. Quite apart from the credits, and the Screen One drama stand logo, and the Radio Times listing, the cue for disbelief is in the tree foliage you see within one minute, and the too-good home video footage. But it undeniably feels real, especially to someone whose childhood was largely spent watching Sarah Greene and Mike Smith on children's or childish programmes as well as Craig Charles on Red Dwarf.
If you have seen it, I'd appreciate your thoughts (on the show and on my neuroses). If you haven't - get it on dvd asap.
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