Icarus in ellipses # 4
The weather is a bit of a British obsession. I guess that is because its always changing. We had snow heralding in the year and now we have it cheering it out, auld lang syne and hoots to all that. But I am fine here, today I pushed 3 cars out of the snow for neighbours and feel righteous in a neighbourly, Christmasy way. Much better than sending Christmas cards which I haven't done this year on account of the fact that I lost all my addresses and besides I only send emails now, and double besides the post is ridiculously slow. I did a wee job for Hampshire County Council who sent me a cheque on the 8th December. Where is it I ask though do I really care - nope, had intended signing it over to Crisis at Christmas anyway and they will get it in time. And in the meantime I am trying to decide what this blog will really be for - what will it say and reveal and will it be worth writing? Because writing has to be worthwhile, does it not? I was thinking about 
this and re-reading Bertold Brecht (pictured here looking a little like Marx - Groucho that is) on György Lukács and thinking about him saying, "Even the realistic mode of writing, of which literature provides many very different examples, bears the stamp of the way it was employed, when and by which class, down to its smallest details. With the people struggling and changing reality before our eyes, we must not cling to 'tried' rules of narrative, venerable literary models, eternal aesthetic laws... Our concept of realism must be wide and political, sovereign over all conventions... Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new." And of course it was good old Jacques Derrida who said the future is not some distant horizon but the a trace of the past being reformed in the present (well paraphrasing a huge idea). Although Walter Benjamin wrote a Brechtian Maxim, which was, "Don't start from the good old things but the bad new ones." Which I rather like. So here is my starter: we need to rescue liberalism from the SDP, they are the bad new ones in government and they represent the need for change! Here endeth the first lesson - the blog may be getting political - yay! Maybe its a "midlife life thing" - time for some chocolate cake in that case and singing liberation songs...
The weather is a bit of a British obsession. I guess that is because its always changing. We had snow heralding in the year and now we have it cheering it out, auld lang syne and hoots to all that. But I am fine here, today I pushed 3 cars out of the snow for neighbours and feel righteous in a neighbourly, Christmasy way. Much better than sending Christmas cards which I haven't done this year on account of the fact that I lost all my addresses and besides I only send emails now, and double besides the post is ridiculously slow. I did a wee job for Hampshire County Council who sent me a cheque on the 8th December. Where is it I ask though do I really care - nope, had intended signing it over to Crisis at Christmas anyway and they will get it in time. And in the meantime I am trying to decide what this blog will really be for - what will it say and reveal and will it be worth writing? Because writing has to be worthwhile, does it not? I was thinking about 
this and re-reading Bertold Brecht (pictured here looking a little like Marx - Groucho that is) on György Lukács and thinking about him saying, "Even the realistic mode of writing, of which literature provides many very different examples, bears the stamp of the way it was employed, when and by which class, down to its smallest details. With the people struggling and changing reality before our eyes, we must not cling to 'tried' rules of narrative, venerable literary models, eternal aesthetic laws... Our concept of realism must be wide and political, sovereign over all conventions... Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new." And of course it was good old Jacques Derrida who said the future is not some distant horizon but the a trace of the past being reformed in the present (well paraphrasing a huge idea). Although Walter Benjamin wrote a Brechtian Maxim, which was, "Don't start from the good old things but the bad new ones." Which I rather like. So here is my starter: we need to rescue liberalism from the SDP, they are the bad new ones in government and they represent the need for change! Here endeth the first lesson - the blog may be getting political - yay! Maybe its a "midlife life thing" - time for some chocolate cake in that case and singing liberation songs...
