Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 June 2010 13:59:29
Someone got under my skin. That's often used in a negative way, and I don't know if I mean it here negatively or not, but I mean that they managed to plant something deep inside me. I'm a cynical old beast who listens to many things in the firm expectation of hearing nothing that I accept or, at least, nothing that I don't already know. But the more I look at my school career, and the brief talks given in assemblies at school, the more I find that time after time something said has stayed with me and formed a significant part of my worldview on the subject. Damn them, but they've moulded me. They were nearly all wasters and scoundrels, thick and determined to keep everybody else down at their level, the sort of teachers who know they don't know anything and are psychotically vicious towards anybody that they fear might see through them. But when they spoke I listened and, curse them, their ideas are still there deep inside me. When I think of Fauré's requiem, I think it is the most profound musical depiction of grief, because I was told this at an impressionable age, even though the speaker was someone who demonstrably had no heart and whose only experience of grief was at someone else succeeding. When I think of the Beatles, I think they were one of the greats, because I was told so by someone whose stupidity was only matched by his propensity to bully. When I think about Camus, I think of him as an immense writer and philosopher because I was told so by, uh, well, actually by the most beautiful French teacher this side of the channel, so probably it's true. I suppose the cynicism is a natural response to this. Having established that I have no critical faculties, and will give a lunatic as fair a hearing as a genius, and will as readily take my cues from fools as from philosophers, so my best defence is to refuse to listen to anyone. Anyone care to make any comments on this post?