The Rhapsody of Time Passing

Today I thought about time measured objectively by a watch or clock, and the uncertainty behind the act of observing the device. , I always marvelled at that strange experience of looking at a wrist watch, and how the second hand briefly appears to go into reverse when we check  for the time. A common experience I think, but with much to educate us on how our physiology is not always giving us the right - or rather, any consistent - conduits to reality.

An approach to the problem is to consider this: if the arrow of time moves from past to future in units of days, hours, seconds, nanoseconds and so on, is there any smallest unit beyond which time can be divided no further? And if there is such a smallest unit, does the essence of time consist in the flicking by of such units like the beads on some vast cosmic abacus? (This image, and this idea is entirely lifted from the remarks of a good friend with whom I discussed the subject).

And if time proceeds thus – as my friend pointed out - then two big questions arise: What happens within the units? and what happens between the units?   That moment between the decision to observe the time, and to consciously identify its measure, is a place where it is possible to believe in a dimension which is outside of both time itself, and is indecipherable by the time-bound mind of the individual.

Some of these thoughts have been prompted through a recent reading of a new critique of T.S. Eliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night”. This poem is the one which describes an arc of time in which a flâneur is wandering the streets with an ostensible purpose: to get to his numbered apartment at the end of his wandering. 

On the way, we are given time checks.  But we are also given a stream of unconscious memories filtering and surfacing in his mind. The poem sets up a juxtaposition on the one hand between objective moments - " 12 o'clock ", "half-past one", etc: and on the other hand a subjective flow of memories which by definition are elastic, qualitative, time-indeterminate, coming from, as it were, "nowhere". And so also a juxtaposition of "habit" and "dreams" where time has two (at least) separate qualities. 

I learnt from reading Jewel Spears Brooker's 2018 critique on Eliot, that Eliot wrote the poem after becoming disillusioned with the teachings of Bergson, whom he briefly championed, and whose lectures he attended in 1910/11 in Paris. The tension between pure consciousness and the challenges of a time-bound, time-dictated existence is palpable in these lines at the end of the poem.

      The bed is open; the toothbrush hangs on the wall,
      Put your shoes by the door, sleep, prepare for life.

      The last twist of the knife.

Bergson’s lectures in Paris in 1910–11 featured a concept of ‘pure duration’, contrasting it with the rigid demarcations of the clock. In ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’, written in 1911, the clock time is announced at regular intervals and again, there is a tension and a discrepancy between those objective markers of time and the speaker’s experience of pure duration in these lines:

     Twelve o’clock.
     Along the reaches of the street
     Held in a lunar synthesis,
     Whispering lunar incantations
     Dissolve the floors of memory
     And all its clear relations
     Its divisions and precisions,
     Every streetlamp that I pass
     Beats like a fatalistic drum  

The progress of time through the deep of night drives Eliot’s speaker forward like a ‘fatalistic drum’, through ‘Half-past one’, ‘Half-past two’, ‘Half-past three’ and finally ‘Four o’clock’.

By contrast, the speaker’s consciousness points backwards, as every new thing he encounters takes him back though linked associations, to painful, difficult or banal memories. 


For Eliot, in this poem, the ‘divisions and precisions’ of the clock, its ‘clear relations’, conflict with a human consciousness which can only exist from retrospective constructs, insulated against fresh experiences by a time-bound crust of memory. No “pure duration” here. 

Bergson’s optimism that this artificial construct of clock-time, or time as an arrow, could be cauterised and dissolved in the experience of pure duration, is refuted in Eliot’s rhapsody. There is a much more pessimistic reality here, with the speaker’s thoughts ushering him robotically and despairingly forward, with no sense of a dimension where a creative peace might exist.

Raphael: Massacre of the Innocents

 Coincidentally, the day before the 100th anniversary of Paschedale, we visited the exhibition of drawings by Raphael at the Ashmolean Museum. These cartoons were well-described by experts who now know in great depth, how they emerged from various iterations on the paper by use of electronic screening and scanning processes.

Raphael: Massacre of the Innocents

Most affecting for me in terms of subject matter was No 70: a line drawing of "Massacre of the Innocents", the subject being the attempt by Herod to destroy all the male children in Bethlehem in an attempt to destroy the infant Jesus. The image had sharply defined short lines building up to the shapes of limbs, hands, arms and a composition of dramatic action which defied easy analysis. Simply speaking, a stark build-up of an emotional drama, made more vivid by the sense of an event encapsulated in a scratched-out moment of incompleteness, snatched out from a moment in time.

From the exhibition description: A woman is running towards us, mouth open in a scream, a baby cradled in her arms. The violence around her seems to part and give passage through the slaughter. What the open pathway through the heart of the horror really gives however, is a heartbreaking visual connection between our eyes and her pain. To look into that terrified face is to feel the full pity of her plight. It is impossible not to be gripped by an overwhelming compassion.

Paschendale Remembered: July 29th 2017

New every morning is the Love.
Paschendale remembered in the News:
It has been a hundred years since, but
There is the danger of the flaccid mind
As if those horrors were left behind.
Tell this to the people of Mosul,
Tell this to the people of Yemen.
Let us not be fed with too-comfortable methodologies
To tickle the sentimental core.
                                                                  - DB July 2017

Woollen Shrouds: A Grave Case of Closed Shop Practices



Start of the Easter Story Sequence:  South Newington

Occasionally it happens that an oddity emerges during a visit to any number of the churches I come across in my increasingly unstructured attempts to understand more about these buildings. The church of St. Peter ad. Vincula in South Newington near Banbury was and is no exception. I expected to see its marvellously-preserved wall paintings and was not disappointed. They are sometimes breath-taking in their detail, and have clearly been the subject of a great deal of care and skill to keep them as they are today.

Madonna & Child
South Newington

Martyrdom of Thomas Becket

South Newington





But what caught my eye among all this medieval ecclesiastical finery, were a set of small, framed black-and-white documents on the wall of the north aisle. These turned out to be 17th and 18thcentury certificates of "burial in shrouds made of wool". These rather macabre documents recall a period when it was a legal requirement to bury the dead in woollen shrouds, and of no other material.

Burial in Wool Affidavit: South Newington

The certificates are decorated with symbols of death and mortality, including hourglasses, skeletons, coffins, a scythe, arrow, and bodies wrapped in shrouds.

The Burial in Woollen Acts 1666-80 were Acts of the Parliament of England which required the dead, except plague victims, to be buried in pure English woollen shrouds and never any foreign textiles. The driver for this restrictive practice was the perceived and real decline of the woollen industry throughout England. For centuries the woollen trade had been important to the wealth and prosperity of the country, but with the introduction of new materials and foreign imports, the wool business was under threat.

So, the idea was to create and to protect a new market for woollen cloth. It was a requirement that an affidavit be sworn in front of a Justice of the Peace (usually by a relative of the deceased or some other credible person) confirming burial in wool, with the punishment of a £5 fee for noncompliance.  Parish registers were marked with the word affidavit or with a note 'A' or 'Aff' against the burial entries to confirm that affidavit had been sworn, or marked 'naked' for those too poor to afford the woollen shroud. 


The declarations included the words:  "No corpse of any person (except those who shall die of the plague) shall be buried in any shift, sheet, or shroud, or anything whatsoever made or mingled with flax, hemp, silk, hair, gold, or silver, or in any stuff, or thing, other than what is made of sheep’s wool only."

Failure to comply meant a fairly hefty £5 fine. Half of this money was paid to the informer. The other half was handed over to the Poor Fund of the parish where the body was buried. Within 8 days of the burial, an affidavit had to be provided declaring that the burial complied with the Act. The affidavit had to be sworn in front of a Justice of the Peace or Mayor by two worthy persons. If the parish did not have a JP or Mayor, the parson, vicar or curate could administer the oath.


This Act was obviously unpopular with many people as they wanted to buried in their finery as opposed to a cheaper garment or shroud in an off-white colour and of very thin material. And so here's a trick... Many were prepared to pay the £5, and a member of a family would become an informer so that in effect only half of the fine would be paid.


This concern at being buried in wool can be found ridiculed occasionally in literature.


"Harkee, Hussy, if you should, as I hope you won't, outlive me, take care
 I ain't buried in flannel; 'twould never become me, I'm sure.

Richard Steele: The Funeral, a play 1700.

"‘Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke!’
(Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke).
 'No! let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
 Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face"
 Pope: Moral Essays, Ep. I.


Narcissa was a Mrs. Oldfield, an actress, who died 1731. Pope wrote this after reading that she was buried in "a Brussells lace head dress; a Holland shift with tucker and double ruffles of the same lace, and a pair of new kid gloves."


The Act was repealed in 1814, but was generally ignored after 1770.

Island Records - Portrait of an Iconic Label

Artists such as U2, Roxy Music, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Bob Marley and - initially and exceptionally: Millie Small - all have one major, creative platform in common - a unique record label founded in 1959. This record label, in spite of being swallowed up 20 years ago by Polydor and subsequently enveloped into the Universal brand, remains a byword for independent creativity. This was Island Records, founded in Kingston, Jamaica by Chris Blackwell and despite a modest beginning pressing discs on borrowed equipment at a nearby radio station and scratching together some office space on a tiny budget, the business grew following a move to London in 1962, bringing with it a consolidation of the new wave of ska and American R&B which lit a fuse in drab late-fifties / early 60's Britain.

Historians will say of course, that it was with the Beatles and the Mersey Sound, that popular music suddenly woke up to itself after the initial flush of Mid-50's Rock & Roll had long since waned into a balladeering wasteland and a renewed mish-mash of tame hybrid styles geared to "family entertainment" - and of course there is no doubt that that the early Mersey sound crashed through all this big-time. But this was also a period of a massive cross-fertilisation of styles, and for Island Records, the first big event was to achieve a crossover for ska music into the mainstream via a crackling, populist yet unquestionably "different" sound - Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" - a smash hit in 1964 and a harbinger of things to come in terms of breaking new acts with styles which were uniquely ahead of the curve of what was acceptably mainstream.

Thus 3 years after this, Island was focussing on Blues-based rock music / psychedelic folk crossovers from a crop of white musicians including the extraordinary John Martyn as well as Free (a major act of the festival circuit), Spooky Tooth and Stevie Winwood's Traffic. Later came progressive bands such as King Crimson and Jethro Tull featuring a demonic Ian Anderson fronting up with that archetypal rock music instrument - the flute!

By the late 60's the label was signing a wave of eclectic folk acts including Dr Strangely Strange, Nick Drake and Fairport Convention - each hugely individual and influential - and shortly afterwards adding a strand of art-pop to the mix, via Bryan Ferry's Roxy Music.

But of course, it does not stop there. Moving back to its Jamaican roots, the label signed a band locally feted in hometown Jamaica called Bob Marley and the Wailers. Convinced that they had found a "black rock star as big as Hendrix", according to Chris Blackwell, Island Records invested heavily on his instincts and produced Marley's first album "Catch a Fire". History was made. Soon, Bob Marley was to become Island Records' biggest selling act.

Following this reassertion of reggae as a musical force, many reggae acts followed, including Burning Spear, Toots and the Maytals and Steel Pulse. But alongside these were also Robert Palmer, Grace Jones and Tom Waits - and more tellingly, from the Dublin connections which started with Dr Strangely Strange and which influenced the development of acts such as Thin Lizzy, Island signed a new and raw act called U2 , who were, of course, to become the stellar rock act of the 1980's and some would say beyond.

The influence of Island Records is thus there for all to see. When looking at the major waves of creative forces against the explosive backdrop of changing popular music tastes in the decades after the 1960's, attention is grabbed by labels such as Island Records. Such labels took the commercial chances which ensured a raft of creative flowerings, and regular, risk-embracing forays into uncharted waters of creativity.

See iconic Rock Music Photography, including several Island Records acts at Rockarchive.com

Postcard to Ethel Emily

1919 Postcard

This postcard was found in a lever arch file which also contained copies of legal papers in a wardrobe in my mother’s  spare room at Pulling Close, Faringdon in 2010. The papers all related to disposal of assets from the estate of her mother, Ethel Emily Smith. The card was sent to my grandmother (aged 17 in 1919) from her sister Elizabeth.

Such material in my mother’s archive is rare. Her photo albums are a jumble, with little clue as to dates and places. This card is a reminder of a life of expectations which seem remote from the austere family life in Marcham or Stanford-in-the-Vale in the 1930's and 1940's, to which my mother often referred.

Nice to see Elizabeth had 10 shillings for her birthday. Looking at  Measuring Worth

this was worth £20.50 based on historic RPI. Relative to the earnings of an average worker of the time, it was worth just over £76. As Elizabeth says ....  "Not so bad"...  

The gift was from "Mrs" - referring without doubt to the lady of the household where Elizabeth was in service at the age of 23.

1919 Postcard Message

Ethel Emily with Children, Berkshire 1930's

Images from a Shed

Here are a few pictures/sketches which emerged from my shed at Benjamins Cottage in Kelling in 2013. I confess to a certain nostalgia for the shed, the location, the quietude.

The song is “Shady Lane” by Snowgoose. I found it on the July 2012 “Now Hear This” compilation of new releases which came with the now sadly defunct “Word” music magazine. This was a fine publication: music old and new, with in-depth interviews and  deep knowledge delivered with panache.

 .

Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go

“I found I was standing before acres of ploughed earth. There was a fence keeping me from stepping into the field, with two lines of barbed wire, and I could see how this fence and the cluster of three or four trees above me were the only things steadying the wind for miles. All along the fence, especially along the lower line of wire, all sorts of rubbish had caught and tangled. It was like the debris you get on the sea shore: the wind must have carried some of it for miles and miles, before finally coming up against these trees and their two lines of wire. Up in the branches of the trees, too, I could see, flapping about, torn plastic sheeting and bits of old carrier bags. That was the only time, as I stood there looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming accross those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all.. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyesand imagined that this was the spot where everything I’d lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it..”

These are the words of Kathy H., the narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go. She reflects on her solitude after the demise of her lover Tommy, and her progression towards the gruesome destiny defined by society for her and her closest friends. When I lived on that same Norfolk coast, at the time believing that this place indeed was where I also had washed up,  I knew they had to belong, at least geographically, to this Miscellany.

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Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go

This novel by Kazuo Ishiguro has details of boarding-school existence which captures some truths for those who have gone through the experience. The formation of cliques, the petty rivalries, the attachment to benevolent teachers, the management of feelings in a parent-free environment are all in the mix, and it is this mix that key individuals discover and explore their core humanity, in spite of the controlling regimentation of daily life. But the novel is not, of course, only or even at all about boarding school existence.

Kathy is a thirty-one year old carer. Those for whom she cares, as we soon discover, are a special set of people, of whom she is one. She is good at her job – she has been doing it for eleven years. But now she is about to give it up for what is, it turns out, to be the beginning of the last phase of her life.  We find her now, reflecting back over that life, and its unique experiences. She calls to mind her days at Hailsham, the idyllic boarding school she went to and which had a major influence on her later years.

But we soon find out, through arcane references and the odd vocabulary that peppers Kathy’s narrative, that Hailsham was no ordinary school, in fact not quite a school at all. It is recogniseable as a boarding school, but differs from the norm in fundamental ways.  A key difference, we soon learn, is that the children here have no parents to go home to, and so that important rhythm of mixing different worlds, is lost to them.

Some of the teachers are distant, uncomfortable with the children. The unspoken secret between controllers and controlled weighs heavy. The punishment for Miss Lucy, who one day reveals all to the class, is immediate dismissal. The class, however, is strangely muted at the revelation. It is a secret which remains unwelcome and quiety shelved as life, of a kind, continues.

But in this mix, Kathy’s friends Tommy and Ruth want to discover more about their destiny. As they grow older, they find themselves working through their emotional bonds which grow from the seeds planted in their time at Hailsham, and it is this love story of possessiveness and then self-sacrifice that provides the background to our exploration of the parallel political, social and emotional world of the novel.