Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Me and Dr Mark on the train coming home from the university, across the aisle from us is a kid of about 20 with his younger brother and sister, and he's being a cunt to his little brother. Where's the line between harmless, albeit malevolent fun, and actual abuse? Dr Mark is a parent, and a very, very wise and good man. Both of us are hideously uncomfortable. Without going into detail, the 20-year-old is saying and doing stuff to his little brother, who's maybe 9, that is going to get burried deep down in his subconscious and, by the time he's 20, probably turn him into the same thoughtless, bullying wanker that is the brother he doubtlessly so despises now. We grow, we develop, we learn via imitation. What chance have you got if all you've got to imitate is shit? So anyway... The conversation between Mark and me turned to our own families and parents and backgrounds, relativism, class, expectations. We're both working class, comprehensive-school kids, and we both work in one of the most affluent universities in the country where almost all of the students (and a lot of the staff) come from serious silver-spoon stock, and we both feel hideously uncomfortable with this too a lot of the time. Talk turns to how uncomfortable Mark feels when labelled as "an intellectual" by his wife or family when, compared to others within his department, he doesn't feel like one. I mention how uncomfortable I feel when my parents look at me as if I'm an alien because I'd rather spend the evening listening to music than watching television, about how they think I'm highbrow, about the massive discomfort I felt when, whilst joking with my dad about the Simpsons episode when Homer starts panicking that he knows nothing about Bart's interests, my dad says he thinks one of my hobbies is "listening to weird noise". In the midst of this noisy, swelteringly hot train, talking about discomfort and expectation and the bonds of having great big working-class chips on our shoulders, I try and distill my philosophy regarding art, life, class, relativism, highbrow, lowbrow, etcetera, into one simpe, pure thing.
"All I want to do," I say to Mark over the hum of the engine and the audible convection of heat from railroad metal, "is expand my mind to the point that I can perceive enough things to properly understand what's going to help me live my life better, and be happy." Mark nods. "And I'm not going to do that by buying fucking ornaments."
"Now that's the soundbite that sums it all up," says Mark, "'ornaments'."
Ornaments. What's the fucking point.
8/12/2003 11:16:00 pm
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