Birch did not eat his breakfast this morning. Given his general rapacity, that makes you worry a bit. In fact, you think, he’s coming up on seven. He’s had some bad health spells.
Is this it?
No, no, stop that. Maybe he ate a chipmunk head last night and isn’t feeling at the top of his form. But you do get to a point in life where the phrase occurs more and more. Is this it? And the it is the Big It. Or the smaller Significant Its that presage the Big It.
Bacon, that’s the cure. I had one piece left. I broke it off into four pieces and buried them in his kibble. He rooted around and found all four and left the rest.
Later he inhaled it all. Wife suggested later that he was feeling shady about the weather - the barometer was dropping, or rising, I never know what that’s supposed to mean, I’m not a bloody sea captain in a yellow Mac with pipe clenched between his teeth, gripping the wheel in the teeth of a gale - and he might have thought “may have to run, best travel light.” Who knows.
I drove to work in the eventual storm, gripping the wheel in the teeth of a gale, parked on the edge of downtown and made my way to the place where I used to be happy and proud to be, where the light still twitches.
I hope you're invested in this matter as I am.
Worked until it was time for lunch. I had brought two pieces of chicken tenders from Lundsenbyerly’s. They had a BOGO (and again I insist, no, BOGOF) on the tenders, and we’ve been eating this stuff for a week. This was the last portion and after microwaving it was still chicken but not exactly tender. The coating was flavorless, so I had to apply some hot sauce I bought in Mexico at Cinco Soles. This made the chicken a mere vehicle for the sauce. A stage for the sauce's brash performance. There was an avocado on the label to indicate a guac note. If there was a guac note, it was played on a triangle stuck behind the brass section in a Berlioz symphony.
Then the licorice allotment. Hey, have I told you about my lunchtime licorice thing? WELL YOU SEE I LIKE A PARTICULAR TYPE OF LICORICE AND kidding. I mention this only because the “outdoor walk” stats on my watch tell me I burn 30 calories from car to the tomb of hope and ambition - sorry, the office. The licorice is 30 calories. I will never understand how half an hour on the treadmill burns 100 calories and a walk to the car burns 30.
Went to the gym with no enthusiasm, but as the debauchees will tell you, the lack of enthusiasm can be met with the application of habit. Finished everything and went home and slept. Spent the evening on a massive project that will be rolled out a week from upcoming Monday - the largest of its kind! Ever! In the history of the Bleat! And now to write another column, which is like painting a room after you’ve been handed divorce papers and asked to leave the house.
Note: today's Here to There was written last year, before I went to England to have dinner with Michael Palin. Did I say that I would be providing this backstory? Doesn't matter. Here it is.
Our weekly recap of a Wikipedia peregrination. Expect no conclusion or revelations, but if you've been with us since this started last year, you know . . . sometimes we learn interesting things.
A while back I woke to see the "here" picture, the painting, in an open file on my computer, and was reminded what I'd watched the previous night. A documentary about the Danish painter Hammershoi, and a particular fellow’s search to learn more. Michael Palin.
I thought what a wonderful life, really - you’re struck by an enigmatic work of art, and the next thing you know the BBC is paying for you to wander around Denmark looking for clues about his life.
There’s this moment I knew I had to ask Palin about:
It’s not a relative, at least not a close one. But it does, you think, require another documentary. Said one bio:
He was one of a number of artists advised by Anthony Ludovici in for April 10, 1913 to stop painting. He exhibited widely, especially with the Royal Society of British Artists. There is no indication that he took Ludovici’s advice.
Good for him, I suppose, but did people wait around every year for the Ludovici List of People Who Simple Must Stop Painting? Who was this guy?
This guy.
Bio:
Anthony Mario Ludovici MBE (8 January 1882 – 3 April 1971) was a British philosopher, sociologist, social critic and polyglot. He is known as a proponent of aristocracy and anti-egalitarianism, and in the early 20th century was a leading British conservative author. He wrote on subjects including art, metaphysics, politics, economics, religion, the differences between the sexes and races, health, and eugenics.
Ludovici began his career as an artist, painting and illustrating books. He was private secretary to sculptor Auguste Rodin for several months in 1906. He later wrote over 30 books, and translated many others.
The wiki bio is interesting, but the subject becomes increasingly tiresome. I mean, I understand this:
"I have long been an opponent and critic of Christianity, democracy, and anarchy in art and literature. I am particularly opposed to 'Abstract Art,' which I trace to Whistler's heretical doctrines of art and chiefly to his denial that the subject matters, his assimilation of the graphic arts and music, and his insistence on the superior importance of the composition and colour-harmony of a picture, over its representational content.”
I think he’s wrong, but I see the point. Perhaps he's being a bit dogmatic for the sake of having a Big Public Pose. Maybe. Also:
For Ludovici, egalitarianism was a denial of the innate biological differences between individuals, the sexes and races. He criticized what he saw as the sentimental coddling of the mediocre and botched.
Gib-cut wise, like you may: one of those stern intellectuals who brooked no sentimentality! And then: “Ludovici repeatedly warned of the dangers of miscegenation and defended incest as an appropriate response to racial mixing, arguing that society should act 'to break down the barriers now preventing the mating of close relatives' as it was the only way to cause 'a purification of our stock.’.”
Okay dude.
I did some searching in British newspapers, and found the Ludester giving a talk, in which he called for the revival of the Artist-Legislator, which I suppose could refer to the influence of the Academies on the various forms of art, casting out the bad angels and exalting the proper ones with awards and exhibitions.
Of course, that would prove impossible, because the rebels have the cachet of the New and Important, and eventually form their own Academies to impose the new orthodoxies.
Shot:
After the Second World War, Ludovici fell into obscurity. In 1936, he had written enthusiastically about Adolf Hitler, whom he had met personally that year, along with many other high-ranking Nazi leaders. He was critical of the effect of Jews on the history of England, writing a work under the pseudonym Cobbett, The Jews, and the Jews in England (1938)
Annnnd chaser:
From 1955 until 1969 Ludovici wrote a series of articles in the monthly journal The South African Observer.
A life of spiralling crankery, perhaps.
I looked for an obit of Ludo, and this turned up in the Grimsby paper.
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That's how we got from Hamemrshoi to the Who.
The Who made more in three weeks than Ludo in a lifetime, I'll bet.
The autobiography was not published. Don't know why, or what happened to the money. It was finally put in print in 2013. |
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Here's my exit question: was he the inspiration for the process that took away Alex's free will in A Clockwork Orange? The Ludovico technique? Burgess knew of him, I'd bet.
PS: I learned from studying that painting in the Palin documentary that it was this guy, as I noted above . . .
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This was news to Michael, who was delighted to learn that this other Palin not only didn't heed Ludovici's advice, "He painted at Walberswick in Suffolk over a ten-year period from 1931, every year except one."
Since Michael had spent much time in Walbers, and adjoining towns, it's possible he visited a house or pub or restaurant that had a Palin on the wall, and he didn't know it. |
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It's possible I've seen one, and never known it.
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Our second visit to the town with the statues who are turning their backs on the Google Street View car, shunning it, making a statement of silent banishment.
