Last Flight There (/Back?)

It's remarkable what they've done to Terminal 3 of Singapore's Changi Airport. If not for the screen announcing departures and arrivals, if not for the somewhat greater-than-average proliferation of travellers' shops, if not for the presence of the armed and uniformed (a sight common enough in Singapore), one might be hard-pressed not to buy into the strange illusion that Changi is just another one of Singapore's ententacling (to neologise), undeniably pullulating shopping centres -- which seem to have firmly embraced my island nation, holding it perhaps all too fondly, in a hug approaching a capitalist death-grip. After all, themed malls exist, so a airport-themed shopping centre, with all the trappings of travel -- such as immaculately clean lavatories; mandatory x-raying of belongings; all too many passport checks; duty-free alcohol and perfume; announcements urging vigilance against existential threats to civilisation; ever-ascending heights of service and friendliness, each more climactic than the last (this might be too much to replicate) -- could easily exist. No doubt such a shopping centre would be a paradox, and would a failure, for the constant message, working insidiously against the need to profit, will be FLIGHT: flight from the vulgar now-ness of looking around for a new kettle, flight from the purchase of unnecessities, flight from the cycle of it all. But alas, Changi Airport is a real airport (I certainly hope so, anyway), though I am undecided as to whether travel itself is the supremely real or unreal. Baudrillard has probably reflected on this already. If he hasn't, someone else will have. But a closing thought: airports make the experience of travel as unreal as possible, substituting travel with another set of sensations and experiences only remotely linked to travel, in fact often trying to minimise the fuss of travel, even as these are replaced by the anxieties of security and terrorism. Yet the illusion is one of hyperreality, announcing travel writ large, as if we have to compensate our non-contribution to the actual journey with grander claims about our ability to travel anywhere and everywhere, announcing the things we can do towards (or against it?) travel -- like buying neck pillows and fiercely countering changes in air pressure through the frantic sucking of sweets, and seeking newer and more ecstatic experiences. 

Systems and Teachers

Immobilised by illness, I am driven to reflection -- as even reading proves to be beyond me, and everything invokes nothing but terrible ennui -- in desperation. My mind goes back to a few weeks back, when I was having a wonderfully wide-ranging conversation with a former teacher. After delighting in the evaluation of various novelists, and with honours duly distributed (to give a sampling: Amis fils, good, but only really came together in Money but recent stuff awful; Fitzgerald overrated, often hammered and therefore lacking control, came together in Gatsby and little else; Steinbeck, profound respect; Arundhati Roy, holds up surprisingly well still, outdoes Rushdie because she has a heart), we tackled the common and pernicious problem present in all systems of governance and management -- that of losing sight of what happens on the ground. Therefore, because those in charge are often unaware of the realities, their good intentions produce bad results. When told that their good intentions have produced bad (and sometimes horrible) results, the defence of those in charge is that they meant well; or worse, that those below bungled the implementation of these plans. Sometimes, blindness is not simply a problem at the top, but is endemic throughout the whole body of the corporation, and each person's particular blindness adds up to a tremendous detachment from reality. This teacher of mine gave me an example related to teaching in schools, the details of which I will not reproduce here. But one can imagine the sort of thing: smart chap in the Ministry has a plan with good intentions; fails to fully grapple with the conditions that surround implementation -- like the realities of teaching in a rowdy classroom; tries to implement it; many people tell him the problems; he ignores them; results are unhappy, and they mock him and his ideals. No doubt the annals of management and governance are full of such examples; I faced such an example in my time at Oxford, dealing with a particularly absurd compulsory module. 

How does one avoid such problems inherent in systems, if one is in charge? The teacher had one good piece of advice, which will seem obvious once mentioned: and that is to bypass those in the middle, and speak to the people at the very bottom of the organisation. Only they can tell you what's really happening, and what the problems of implementation might be. But as always, easier said than done. Those in the middle might hinder you, and not necessarily with bad intentions. (Sir Humphrey: 'Minister! I have warned you before about the dangers of speaking to people in the department.') One might cause stress, worry and offence. Those at the bottom might censor themselves. But it's the best we can do, and those in charge must continuously do it.

After all this talk (and not just on this somewhat abstract topic), we departed. As I made my way to another place, I thought about how things had changed between us. In school, we would never have had this conversation -- it would have seemed strangely provocative, even risky. We were limited to looks, to allusions and to the subject he was teaching. He was somehow, after all, in with them, those in charge of the school, even though he clearly wasn't. Truth be told, I wasn't grown-up enough then either; now perhaps we shall speak to each other face to face (but even then -- not quite). I hope my other friendships with my former teachers evolve in a similar manner, though just today part of this hope was shattered. Dum spiro spero.

This and That City

In my room -- where the books seem to have been busy taking over large swathes of territory, claustrophobically embracing me in their literary heat -- I seem to be in unceasing dialogue with the city that raised me. Every whirr, cackle, hum and hiss is comprehensible to me; these metropolitan pulsations are adding up to something; in the wee hours of my jetlagged morning the city and I are briefly but completely one, as I find myself unexpectedly gifted, and able to decipher these signals. I'll tell you something odder -- as I walked along the streets of Singapore once more in the burning sun, the much-decried heat and humidity incited not discomfort but joy. I am gloriously alive, attuned to the city, and it seems to me bursting at its seams with opportunity, novelty and excitement. The buzz and the hit of Singapore is now, to me (I didn't think I'd ever say this) comparable to the stimulant-rich melange that is London. Perhaps it's all distorted by the sheer relief of returning back home -- the enveloping sense of security, the lack of anxiety and worry while I sleep -- but I suspect something else is going on here. In my feverish diagnoses I've been unable to pin down why -- but Singapore now excites me once more. (This is not some pathetic attempt at neo-jingoism. Though, as if on cue, as I made my way home from the airport, the Chinese radio host spoke about the sense of security (安全感) he felt landing in Singapore's Changi Airport. And then, and one couldn't make this up, Kit Chan's '家' (Home) was played.)

That other city that's figured so largely in my life -- Oxford -- has a wholly different feel, though I felt a similar sympathy. My room in the first year -- now, terrifyingly, a ghostly memory -- had a view of Oxford's famed spires and the River Cherwell. (On the best of days, the view, along with a cup of Earl Grey and the companionship of the corridor team, made work almost painless.) Throughout the year though, it was no dialogue. Instead, Oxford declaimed itself to me through my window in stentorian tones. Fascinated, I listened. It had a lot to say, too. It was not furious dynamism that one feels in Oxford, of course. Instead, it's the sheer accumulation of tradition, almost but not quite approaching wisdom (for one never gets there), that first humbles, then instructs and delights. It claims immutability, imperishability and changeless authority. For some, this is stultifying and suffocating. For me, it was a revelation that led to a belief I've now come to hold very deeply -- that tradition is of immense value, even if it is often confected. Furthermore, it is our responsibility to participate in, and even lead, this fabrication if all else fails. 

I don't think I could have chosen two more dissimilar cities. In concert, they have taught me much. In Oxford, the preponderant weight of history will seem, in Joyce's formulation, to be a nightmare from which one is trying to awake. (Coincidentally, Marx: 'The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living'.) In Singapore, the future seems too full of terrifying possibility and nauseous freedom. When I think about these two cities (in) which've forged my life thus far, I am ever more aware of the irresolvable dilemma, the impossible situation that every person that fancies him/herself to be an historical actor has to face up to: the fact, as Hannah Arendt so ably perceived, that one is inextricably caught in the unhelpful position of being in the present, of being the product of the clashing of the (seemingly) infinite past and the infinite future.

Notes on Reading: How Not to Build a Town

This is the prolegomena: I've been busy -- very busy, in fact. I find myself at the University of Reading, now more than halfway through a intensive Latin summer school. My mind is filled to the brim with cases, conjugations and declensions. The programme is entirely commendable, though demanding:  four hours of classes a day, backed up by four (recommended) hours of preparation and study. The campus is tolerable. Its architecture is, like so many universities of its kind, execrable and barely acceptable for the purposes of human habitation, let alone intellectual activity. But it is much improved by the natural surroundings -- an adorable lake, cheerful trees and birdsong in the mornings -- and the incoming summer. (Sunlight, as I've so often found, is a powerful disinfectant, cleansing even the most poisonous of places.) Others will have more to say: my investment in this university is not substantial enough. But my three weeks in Reading have given me some time and boozy evenings to crystallise my thoughts on towns, cities and the ways in which they are made -- and unmade. I share them with you here.

But first, a declaration of prejudice and partisanship. My aesthetics are conservative. I wouldn't go as far as Roger Scruton,* but I would go along pretty far. The central contention I endorse is simply this: beauty is an essential part of what art is; give that up and we can speak of clever ideas, startling 'originality', smart 'messages' and weak jokes (as most of modern art seems to me to be), but let us not say that what's on offer is 'art'. That's the way it is: prejudice helps one get out of bed, out of the door and on with the rest of what life demands. I've kept this prejudice under fairly severe review for a while, and have found it useful and (perhaps more importantly) pleasurable to sustain. I don't think anyone will be able to persuade me otherwise for the rest of this life.

Enough. Hwæt!, as the Anglo-Saxons would have said.   

*

Step out of Reading station, and one is greeted by an unholy cavalcade of buses and taxis. That is one clue to Reading and its problems. We're told, even by members of the borough council, that Reading is a transitional place. In other words everyone who comes to Reading, and you'll forgive my language here, is actively trying to flee. Visitors do not walk anywhere, except to the shopping centre, and then they flee. So the roads are not designed for walking: they are vast, monstrous creations, alienating pedestrians from the city, tunnelling into the city and draining it of life. This lack of permanence saps at civic life, it guts Reading's centre and leaves a horrible hollow in the middle of it. Reading, in the eyes of those who make excuses for its this embarrassing emptiness, is not so much a town as a sort of machine (goodness knows what -- a coin-sorter perhaps?), sucking people in and then very quickly spewing them out again. The idea of a resident of Reading has become a strange and contradictory one.

Once we accept this central axiom of Reading's existence -- as the town planners and councillors seem to have done -- then the rest of it follows. Of course we don't need a true civic centre. Instead, what we have is a huge, faceless and functional shopping centre, named (one can only imagine sarcastically) the Oracle. The true citizen (empowered by the possession of  πολιτεία or civitas) should react with the fury of Jesus confronted with the merchants in the house of his Father, because the temple of the state has been contaminated with commercialism. Despite what they tell us, not everything is on sale. But because everything is, and once you accept this principle, why should you deny other shops and commercial ventures space in the centre? So Reading's centre has all manner of unholy and profane commerce, but there is nothing civic.

Other things confirm this observation: that Reading is hollow, because those in power believe it ought to be anything more than functional. Herein lies the paradox of so-called 'functional' buildings: they are in fact the least functional, because they're so often hideous. And because they're hideous, no one wishes to be in them or around them. This is easily confirmed by a quick walk around the centre: huge office-blocks, shops and other 'functional' things are completely empty, for reasons that I suspect cannot be entirely blamed on a weak economy. It is because these buildings are ugly; it is more precisely because these buildings, taken together, do not make any sense at all. They clash and offend, they aspire to reflect no unified or complementary aesthetic, they mean nothing to those who inhabit and leave around them. Hence they will face rejection, decay and eventually, the wrecking ball. Then another similarly stranded building will take its place, and the wasteful cycle of destruction and production will continue, incessantly coupled with crises -- as Marx so penetratingly predicted.**

All of this would be unfair on the town of Reading, its denizens and its leaders. But Reading should be judged harshly: it has squandered its promise. For yet another indication of a place gone wrong is its failure to harmonise the advantages and beauty granted by Nature into its built environment. Take a walk around the back of Reading station, across and around Reading bridge, where the Thames flows. It could be truly stunning -- there is much promise in the waters and wildlife. Like so many other places in Berkshire -- Henley comes to mind -- Reading could have made good use of the Thames and its other river, the Kennet (a tributary of the Thames). Instead, the Thames is condemned to the back of the station, whilst the Kennet struggles to show itself at all, submerged by those huge roads that no one would ever wish to walk on. The true civic centre of Reading ought to be this natural heritage, complemented by the medieval heritage -- the ruined Abbey, along with the Forbury gardens. Nowadays, one is not even allowed into the ruins, presumably because the authorities cannot imagine visitors being possibly interested in a few bits of ruined stone. (If pressed, they'll probably cite 'health and safety'.) The ruins and the last remnants of this Abbey struggle to assert themselves against the sleek, soulless office blocks and commercial buildings. I'm frankly surprised they haven't pulled it all down. Because why bother? The fight for Reading's soul has been well and truly lost, and its fate was sealed a long time ago. We can only hope the rest of England, and indeed the rest of the world, does not go along with it.***

*

*I recommend all of Scruton, but particularly his history of modern philosophy, his exposition of Kant and his book on wine. There is a very amusing appendix in the latter on what wines to have with which philosopher. 
** For the conservative, Marx is invaluable. For Marx provides powerful tools to understand our modern predicament. Take the Olympics. The key question I pose to my readers is this: where is surplus value being generated in the Olympics, by whom, who is it doing the extraction, and how? That is another post.
*** 'What of your own home, Singapore?' you might ask, and you're entitled and right to do so. On the surface, Singapore seems hopelessly lost to the forces of commercialism and bad architecture. But this is not true. Visit our neighbourhoods and you'll find that the centres of life are not the glitzy playgrounds of the wealthy nor the innumerable shopping centres. You'll find people congregating in the coffeeshops and the hawker centres. There is hope yet, and one doesn't want to end up sounding like a Daily Mail columnist.

Iliad

I've just finished reading the Iliad, in Richmond Lattimore's sinewy and sparse verse. It's a surprising read, as I've been telling some people. When one finally approaches a cultural artefact that's been so widely and pervasively disseminated in numerous forms -- the 2004 film Troy comes to mind -- I suspect there are always bound to be surprises. But even compared to the Odyssey, which is a much more straightforward narrative, the Iliad does come across as difficult, even mysterious. The name is the easiest of the mysteries: Ilion is another name for Troy, and so the Iliad is a song about Troy. There is no Trojan horse (and hence the city of Troy does not fall in the actual text, though its impending fall is always referred to) and Achilles is not shot in the heel (he does not die in the Iliad, though his impending death is constantly referenced -- like the fall of Troy). The story of Paris and Helen is referred to, and is the very cause of the Trojan war, but is never set out in detail. The tale begins in media res,  after nine years of failed fighting by the Greeks against the Trojans. Nearly all of the twenty-four books of the Iliad take place in the battlefield between the Greek ships and Troy itself.  It's claustrophobic: we're all hemmed in, along with the Greeks and Trojans. The action itself has none of the grand scope and vision that we've come to expect from epics, though references to a much larger story are made throughout.

The characters too are unexpected -- take the example of Achilles. His character gives shape to the story. He is the supreme hero of the Greeks. Yet weighed down by his inevitable doom and his own irrational resentment against his king, Agamemmnon, he is unable to control his own spiralling, almost demonic, fury. Anachronistically, we can even view Achilles as an anti-hero, because he is, by the end of the Iliad, an incomprehensible, menacing and inhumane force. His withdrawal from battle is matched by an outburst of scepticism, pointedly directed towards the very foundations of the Iliad itself:

 'Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard.
We are all held in a single honour, the brave with the weaklings.
A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
Nothing is won for me, now that my heart has gone through its afflictions
in forever setting my life on the hazard of battle.' (9.318-322, Lattimore translation) 

When he later does return to battle, he does so in a manner unforgiving and hateful, defiling bodies, sacrificing men ritually and in a manner that one can, anachronistically again, call fey.

That's probably enough from me. I don't want to give away too much, but I wish to encourage all my readers to tackle the Iliad. But a final thought. Like that other masterpiece seen as the beginning of an entire tradition -- Cervantes' Don Quixote -- the Iliad is, in fact, the end of a tradition, radically questioning, and even satirising, the values of a society.*

*I am obviously not a scholar of the classics, so don't take my word for anything at all. Entirely a personal reflection which is, as I've already noted, littered with anachronisms. But perhaps that is the only way when we engage with a work so far removed from our own time and culture. 

Tennis: Some Ill-Formed Thoughts

Tennis is by far the English sport I enjoy watching the most. It celebrates much that is great about England: civilised spectatorship, Pimm's, the English summer (if and when it does make its appearance) and the individual efforts of great men and women. One is, as a rule, not drawn into pointless, entirely meaningless rivalries (as in football): Wimbledon audiences recognise the potency and beauty of each moment, and are willing to celebrate spectacular achievement and heroic effort, regardless of nationality. There is, on the part of the spectator, more of an attempt at objectivity. Of course, it is not free from the ugliness and defects of sports in general. One can still deplore the commercialisation of sport -- as the Olympics show, to a level truly sickening. (But that is another rant.) And they (tennis players), like many other sportspersons, certainly earn far too much. But in a fallen world, tennis isn't too bad at all, and I for one prefer watching it -- in the gym, you understand -- to watching that pointless display of savagery, racism and jingoistic chest-thumping (held in a country that has imprisoned its former prime minister)  that we call Euro 2012.  

But I might be viewing this through glasses irretrievably tinted. My first English summer, back in 2009, was suffused with memories of sun, Wimbledon, barbecues, Pimm's and finally, a wonderful holiday in rural France. It was part of a unitary experience, one so subjective that it is worthless to say much more.  It should feel like part of another life, since I've now (kind of) left Oxford. But things aren't quite settled at the moment: results aren't out, graduation hasn't yet happened, and I am still in Oxford, haunting its streets, libraries and cafes. 

I apologise -- I started off with tennis, and now I am ruminating, like those magnificent cows in Christ Church meadow, upon my particular existence. A sign to stop. My promised continuation of the food post to follow, soon. 

Finis

Nostalgia, Mark Twain cautioned, is mental and moral masturbation. Harsh but warranted; as Oxford comes to an end, I find it painfully difficult to say anything meaningful. (This post, short as it is, was the product of many deletions and emendations.) Many of my reflections seem to come in shades of the unbearably sentimental and sappy -- those are perhaps best kept unsaid. Saying anything at all seems to violate the sense of ineffable mystery -- one approaching a certain mysticism -- that comes with departing and leaving. It's very much like finally leaving the company (and in particular, ecstatic conversation) of a good friend in the small hours: one wishes for a bond of eternal companionship, an everlasting sympathy that transcends the merciless march of the hours. But one settles for a mutual understanding: the understanding that one's departure of another is a negotiated surrender, a temporary retreat, a stopgap measure and with luck, simply a promise of further meetings.

So I am tempted to think of our scattering to the ends of the earth in this light. This thought cheers me up, as silence in college infects every nook and cranny. It will soon be all-pervasive, leaving me enveloped in a quietude quite unique. I've put the kettle on the boil, and soon I will be sipping Earl Grey from an Oscar Wilde mug, thinking fondly* of you all.

* LEAR: Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.