Nick Carraway, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s erstwhile narrative conscience in ‘The Great Gatsby’, remarks that he is “the most honest man”. In the context of that novel, that remarkable study of intimate personal feelings and unfathomably large, continental ideologies, he might well be right. J. D. Salinger, however, can surely lay claim to the most truthful remark in modern literature. Again uttered through the author’s choric voice, Holden Caulfield, in ‘The Catcher In The Rye’, tells us to “never tell anybody anything. If you do you only start missing everyone.”
This is significant, I feel, as we fast approach another new year. The world is smaller than it has ever been, split into manageable pieces by modern technology and communications, allowing us near-constant links to every corner of the globe from any far-flung destination. We live in exciting times, a social media revolution that means we are never more than one click, one touch-screen, away from a multitude of communication forms. Of-course, to say that we communicate does not mean the same as saying we connect.
It is interesting how relevant Salinger’s viewpoint is in the final moments of 2010 and the embryonic stages of 2011. We can now “tell anybody anything” across a number of platforms, from Facebook to Twitter, Skype to Foursquare, Blackberry Messenger to Whatsapp. As information disseminates at an increasingly rapid pace, we find ourselves opining, narrating, articulating and displaying our lives to all and sundry, even if that is not the sole intention of our various publications. Go back through your Facebook posts from the past twelve months. You have, whether you wanted to or not, kept a diary. Despite this, it may be that you are able to enter into a dialogue with our modernity without becoming embroiled in the psychosomatic elements of it. I have never been quite so stoic. No. For me, Salinger is correct. The more I tell people, the more I miss them. Yet still I tell and still I miss.
This poses a problem. Does one shut up shop in 2011 and retreat to an earlier, perhaps a more innocent and simpler time? Do we compartmentalise our conscious and subconscious communiqués into the general and random on the one hand, and the specific on the other – Facebook status updates and 147-character Tweets that say very little to many or so much to someone? I’m minded to adopt the stance of Alfieri from Miller’s ‘A View From The Bridge’ and settle for half. Will I like that better?
Would I do it differently if offered the chance? Ultimately that is the wrong question. Could I do it differently? That would be more appropriate. And no, I could not. I like that this year I have taken chances, run risks, stared fate in the face. My decisions and, indeed, indecisions may not have all worked out perfectly. There is, however, in the midst of the paranoia of another year passed and potentially wasted, comfort in our certain uncertains: that everything changes and nothing changes. Nick Hornby had it right in ‘Fever Pitch’: “If you lose the FA Cup Final in May, there’s always the third round to look forward to in January. And what’s wrong with that? It’s sort of comforting when you think about it.”
So how was 2010 for you? Was it everything you wished for? Did the feeling you had this time last year turn in to an impressive premonition of what was to come, or were your hopes and fears misguided and unfounded, arising as they did out of the inevitable emotional firestorm of alcohol and an acute awareness of the rapid passing of time? I’ll look back on 2010 as a year of utter chaos, of dizzying highs and sadly predictable lows. In the space of twelve bizarre months, I’ve started a job of at times oppressing intensity, travelled to the southern United States on what can only be described as a whim and a prayer, watched my sister get married, observed a political revolution in the UK and searched in earnest for an apartment to call my own. The above list, of-course, is hardly indicative of the entirety of a twelve months. You get the general idea. I could delve further here, could provide you with unique personal insights. Without wanting to sound either esoteric or deliberately annoying, what I can tell you is that while the world around us has changed immeasurably in the past twelve months, I remain as I ever was and doubtless ever will be. There is something both monumentally frightening and consoling about that in equal measure.
If Salinger is right, if it is true that opening up to people you care about only results in missing them terribly, is it best to remain closed off and private, despite the near impossibility of this in our world of omnipresent communications? ‘The Catcher In The Rye’ has often reared its head this year, both in terms of its last-line conundrum, but also in its overriding motif: that there are some of us who are lost in the world, not entirely certain of which way we are going or which way we have come, and at times merely wanting, for want of a better thing to do, to stand in a field and catch people coming out of the rye and heading for a fall.
John Lennon, in probably his finest lyric, remarked that “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. So, in all honesty, I have not been able to be the catcher in the rye for all that long. Moreover, and perhaps here is the only way that the idea of Holden Caulfield being a catcher in the rye matches up with his epitaph of missing everyone, it seems that to catch people in the way Salinger describes it, the people in question have to want to be caught.
Perhaps that is the greatest lesson of 2010. You can tell people everything in the hope of absolution, of common ground, of love, life and the pursuit of happiness. Such displays of affection, honesty and attempts at the substance of what is hoped for will not always result in mutual understanding, warmth or candour. Neither will they stop you missing those who you communicate such messages to. And they certainly do not turn us into catchers in the rye.
Yet the alternative is not in my philosophy, and so I beat on, boat against an at times bewildering current, continually laying myself open to the dual onslaughts of sentiment and posterity, honesty and nostalgia. After all, you have to try. If you haven’t tried you haven’t lived.
You only live once. Doesn’t it go by in a blink?
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Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees;
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of the year.
What does he think of that?
I mean, what do I?
And if I do, perhaps I am myself again.
Frank O’Hara, ‘Meditations In An Emergency’.
Showing posts with label F Scott Fitzgerald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label F Scott Fitzgerald. Show all posts
Friday, 31 December 2010
Monday, 17 August 2009
Edinburgh, Football and Perfect Weather
I spent last week in the wonderful city of Edinburgh, in bonny Scotland. I am lucky enough to have lived in Edinburgh for four of the best summers of my life, performing at the Edinburgh Festival in some really rather awesome shows. Yes, I am biased, but what the hell.
Edinburgh is truly spectacular, from its changing architecture (Gothic to Georgian to ultra-modern - i.e. the Scottish parliament), to its cobbled streets climbing up hills and inclines, valleys and dips, where history, art, culture, and extremely expensive lattes combine to impressive effect. The Festival, in particular the Pleasance Courtyard, is one of my favourite events, and favourite places, in the whole wide world. I could live permanently in this city if they could but pick the whole thing up and placed it a bit further South, so that I could remain in some semblance of easy distance to my family and friends.
I saw a number of my friends performing in shows, all of which were great, although the pride in seeing them perform, I'll admit, was tinged by a slight pang of jealousy that I was not performing alongside them, as I have done many times before. Nevertheless, if you are heading up to Edinburgh before the end of the month, check out Monsieur Montpelier and Tomorrow's Leaders at the Pleasance, Art at C Central, and Graceless at the Assembly Rooms - all good friends of mine, all worth a gander.
I made a promise to myself on the train journey back to London that I will return to Edinburgh again, not simply as a punter, but as somebody with something riding on the events of the festival, on the reviews, the gossip, the chit-chat. Still, it is always good to be in a city, even if just as a tourist, and know exactly where you are going. A bit of George Street here, a stroll down the Royal Mile there, a nip into Bristo Square later, and a tipple down York Place to round off the evening. You name it, I know the way. It feels as much as my city as parts of London do. It was with a mixture of satisfaction, nostalgia and burning ambitions that I returned home.
Yesterday, Sunday, was one of those rare days when things go right. For starters, I awoke at a fairly ungodly hour for a weekend morning to go and play football for my Sunday league side in a pre-season friendly. I had to race around the M25 (anticlockwise in the direction of Heathrow Airport) to Brunel University, where our home pitch will be for the forthcoming season, in order to aid my team's 6-0 annihilation of our admittedly feebler opponents.
This, of-course, was what I like to call a good thing. Especially pleasing were the two goals I contributed to the scoreline. It's always nice to find the net in any game, but two goals in one pre-season game help lay down a marker for the competitive action to come.
Afterwards, it was home for a quick shower, before emerging, sweat-free and positive, in my SAMUELSON 1O adorned Spurs shirt, ready for the journey east across North London to postcode N17 - world famous home of Tottenham Hotspur.
What followed was a genuinely well deserved victory over a Liverpool side lacking any sense of creative purpose and direction, not that this criticism is designed to take anything away from a committed, fast-paced and impressive Spurs display.
There are few better feelings than driving back through the boroughs of Bounds Green, Southgate, Whetstone and beyond, knowing that Match Of The Day 2 will be pleasurable viewing later on in the evening, smugly replaying the snapshots of glory from the ninety minutes before. The only thing that would have improved the afternoon would have been the BBC Radio Five Live music for Sports Report, a staccato riff of mind-numbingly romantic proportions that should really be the national anthem, booming out of the car radio, but, alas, this was a Sunday afternoon fixture, and this staple of nostalgic, traditional British sports broadcasting is solely the reserve of a Saturday afternoon.
Spurs fans do this. We accentuate the positive when there are such positives to be accentuated, but mark my words, when we inevitably fail to live up to expectations during a tricky away match practically anywhere in the north of England, most likely starting this Wednesday in Hull (a game I have decided, in my infinite idiocy, to travel up for), the knives will be out, the recriminations will begin, and all of a sudden predictions of a top four finish will be replaced by the altogether more realistic expectation of 'top 6'.
Meanwhile, the weather today is close to perfection; not too hot that it is unbearable, but warm enough to feel like August in London. Certainly warm enough to take a break from the work assignment I have currently been given (more on that tomorrow - it deserves a blog in its own right because it is, if I say so myself, really cool) to go and post a letter to my future law firm which, sadly, contains various forms relating to tax and pay as you earn claim-backs. Tax doesn't have to be taxing, folks, but it generally tends to be anyway.
I was recently involved in a conversation with my lawyer cousin about which season is the best. I automatically plumped for 2006/2007 - a campaign that means a lot to me for lots of reasons beyond football. He meant the seasons of the year, of-course. When the weather is as it is today, it is hard to go for any answer other than summer, but actually, and as with many areas requiring me to make a decision, it is not so clear-cut, and deserves further consideration. I love summer for its long days, its magic hour shadows, its opportunities for pushing my generally dark complexion towards (and a free pint from me if you can guess who I am paraphrasing) the hope of a better tan. Yet autumn is my birthday season, and comes free with that feeling of excitement, of newness, that F. Scott Fitzgerald stated can only be synonymous with the 'two changes of the year'. Orange leaves, the first frost, The X Factor battling it out against Strictly...
Still, let's not neglect winter, for those crisp blue-sky days following a bitter night; of condensation-filled breath and long coats buttoned up, cosy warmth juxtaposing against the harsh exterior conditions that only such a time as winter can provide...in England anyway. I have experienced a little bit of winter in Chicago (and will do again soon actually), and that's a whole other ball game. It's not called the Windy City for nothing.
(Actually, it's got nothing to do with the wind, and everything to do with corrupt Chicago municipal politicians spouting hot air every time they discussed and debated the city's bid to host the world's Great Exhibition in the early twentieth century. Yes, that's right, I studied History at University.)
Finally there's Spring time. 'That pretty little ring time when girls do sing', so sayeth some olde worlde English ditty. When I think of spring, I think of my school, and the smell of a cut grass - an odour that could only mean that the beautiful grounds that my school was set in were open to students to use as an enlarged playground, where Boys' School and Girls' School pupils at Habs would meet by the notorious black gates, throw frisbees, exchange glances, and discover feelings...That's why I both hated and loved the spring term in equal measure.
The sun went in behind a cloud as I wrote that last paragraph, and that means I should get back to my actual work.
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