It takes me an hour, of sort of rummaging around, to think of writing anything these days.  And that might not seem terribly productive.  An hour, at least, of wasted time, it seems, making tea, feeding the cat, breaking down and eating something, sorting out some laundry, all the while wondering, why write anyway? what is there to write about it, and to what purpose, we all need a purpose.  I think of my father's generation of scientist, mentored by rich 19th Century minds, schooled on G.I. Bill benefit after WWII, maintaining standards of classical thought and educational philosophy, big minded, before the specialist, botany departments giving way to microbiology and the technical narrowness required by expertise, undergraduate education becoming a less an awakening to broad and deep encompassing thought than a focus on particular technological training.  A generation savvy to a treason of the cleric.

It's as if I was raised by fireside tales of Ancient Irish culture, something I will always deeply want, on all levels of consciousness, to preserve, uphold and defend, even as I fell out of the academy and somehow was never able to get back in, much to my chagrin.  Science has always been the calling.  No idea how I ended up as I have.  Laziness, bad influences, misplaced faith, stupidity, confusion, a touch of being manic and high strung enough to need constant self-regulation.  An inability to get it together, as they say.  (Or was there something I took exception to down in the marrow of bones?)

No wonder I would find the music of Shane MacGowan and the Pogues so friendly to my own way of thinking.  But, like MacGowan, I suppose you have to pay for wanting to preserve an old culture against the pervasive involvement in the self-expedient fascination with technological development.

I still want to go back to school, to listen to scientists, to ponder big ideas with them like things Higgs Boson.  I'm probably not alone.

And yet, what does a day bring but simple things, like the wisdom to be free from the troubles over material possessions and unhealthy entanglements.  You must take good care of yourself first before helping others.

It is the artist's science to study the potential of human fruition, to study the spiritual capacity inherent within.  What would this look like?  Of course the general reaction could be dismissive, skeptical, cautionary in the wake of 'the master race' and 'the kool aid.'  Would the work of the spiritual itself be regarded as childish, out of place, immature, ineffectual, misguided, attentions better spent on matters practical and retirement accounts?  Would the advancements and insights associated with such speculative experiments be noticed, welcomed, shunned, take life only the glass case of a Brothers Karamazov or an Anna Karenina, in an Eliot poem, studied but not taken as a vital part of truly being alive?

Meanwhile, the artist tinkers, finds related work (say, in the deeply spiritual and informed element of Shane MacGowan's understanding of the larger issues that then make their ways into songs like Old Main Drag or Sunny Side of the Street) to provide a bit of a tailwind to his sketches.  He sees it exists in paintings, in nature, even in his earthly work as a barman (heretically enough, or simply laughable from certain perspectives.)  We aren't allowed anything dramatic and resounding like forty days out in the desert or a father's palace to leave in this mundane life under the rubric of modern science and as an economic entity who must learn the ins and outs of marketing.  Our feet are earth-bound.  Nor are we political rebels or revolutionaries, but neither then was anyone else.

Study...  it's an odd and interesting term, with rich potential.  About such things, I am skeptical myself, but those matters seem inherently worth speculating about somehow, as if though we no longer write Constitutions of new and better forms of government we could still understand our own nature a good deal better, finding not a threatened and aggressive animal intent on taking what he can, but a humble generous kind patient enlightened being, an inherent teacher of better ways with an energy within, as beautiful as any act of nature.  And so, back to our work as Da Vinci types, diagraming the reach of our arms and the spread of our legs along with painting enigmatic Mona Lisa and a whole range of things bearing upon nature.




It makes sense that to redeem and bring back into play a spiritual life that goes beyond rote belief in the way that he did, applying it to the grit of London life, Shane MacGowan would pay a price.  His was a unique focus somehow, bold and contrary and meaningful, not for sissies, a gift he possesses.   Criticize him for a lot of things, but not for his empathy and his heart.  Listening allows for a certain awakening to things deeper than normally talked about in conversations or even covered well by mass popular culture's artistic efforts, basic raw stuff considering the human condition.   MacGowan's work is a tribute to the fact that first one must ask questions, that curiously asking them allows him to find a satisfying answer.  There is a lot of living in MacGowan, maybe not enough self-protection.  As he himself has said, they thought they could beat the system (referring to the music business) when you can't beat the system.  His retreat, portrayed as his own personal hell in the new book by Pogues accordionist James Fearnley, somehow makes sense, to me anyway.   In order to write at all, one needs less the time eaten up by an attempted social life, more time doing healthy and self-rewarding things as time spent exercising and getting the work done.

William Blake was correct in his estimation of the necessity of a real spiritual life to vibrate at the necessary frequency to open up to the making of observations that will be art.  That is a brave thing.  And MacGowan is brave on many counts for his embrace of spiritual life and sensibility, as one risks fucking himself up, physically and professionally, risks being thought ill of (being a musician one way to not look like a complete asshole), risks thinking badly of himself for the life he has created for himself, must ask himself if it was worth the cost.  Well, that's life for you.