At last, this old, misbegotten year is finally at an end. For those who struggled, lost loved ones, or found themselves sadder or more lonely than usual, I wish you especially a Happy New Year!

My final shift of 2021 at 2RPH is done and dusted. Today I presented the full 90 minute version of the Newcastle Herald, a welcome return after the truncated Covid edition. Live to air is a delicate balance of minimising mistakes, fitting as much in, maintaining a friendly, business-like tone whilst paying close attention to the clock. Blunders are all too frequent and only human, after all, though we all strive for a certain level of professionalism. Dead air is a big no-no.

On the long journey home my train carriage was mostly empty. Even so, I was very surprised and annoyed that the half dozen or so commuters aboard were not wearing masks, never mind the mandate. I have no idea what goes on inside these people's heads - oblivious to the risk, careless of themselves and others, they blithely flout a very reasonable public health stipulation. 

Nor is wearing said mask under the chin the least bit effective.

How did we get out of the stone age?

I well remember the thrill of clutching a bag with the logo of a Palings, or a Zounds, an HMV or even a local record shop, knowing that a brand new LP was inside. The journey home by train, bus or car was one of a tense countdown to the moment when the slick new cover hove properly into view, and the vinyl was gently squeezed through the sleeve and lovingly laid upon the turntable. Then the entire album - both sides, without elision, was played and usually played again straight after. The immersion in a new musical work had begun.

I am glad that I came through the joyful limitations of analogue into the digital world of anything, anytime. I am thrilled at the opportunity to play anything, anytime, because I have the inadvertent training that the old system gave me. Listen to the whole, it said. Then listen again, allowing the aggregation of songs to create an impression. At some later time, preferences will emerge and choices can be made. But the whole remains greater than the parts.

From what I gather of the digital zeitgeist, the opposite is probably true. Folks assuredly still listen to whole albums through, but the temptation is there to surf, jump tracks or choose a new artist. There is just so much content, why plod through an album chronologically? The technology of analogue forced us to stay with the project - digital offers a kind of pyrrhic liberation, at best.

Christmas Lights

The same time every year
I climb the ladder

Peer into the gloom 

And in the space

Just enough room

For my blind reach -

An attic tomb!

A bag!

And so, every year

A great untangling begins,

Bandoliers of crystal, chord,

And trim,

Tumble like clumped hair.

We work the long unwinding,

Hunt spare bulbs to repair,

Stretch and space and hang

And stretch again,

Then wait for darkness when,

The batteries might kick in.

Call it sentimental -

A merely annual form,

Frivolous, perfunctory.

And yet, this mild 

Awakening,

Slight beacons for

An only child,

Are pale markers

(Though faintly gleaned)

For another story.

When Nietzsche said that God was dead, he didn't mean that someone had killed him. Rather, he was pointing out that both philosophy and science, which had grown out of the Enlightenment, had made God redundant, since we could now explain the natural world without the need for a divinity. He didn't necessarily think that was a good thing; moreover he suspected that many would be plunged into a meaningless existence without God.

Much of this has played out in the 20th Century, with two world wars, genocides, the threat of nuclear destruction and so forth, all being a bi-product of existential angst. But God and Christianity have not died for many, despite the best efforts of Marxism to eradicate them, and capitalism to co-opt and subvert them for profit. I find it remarkable that so many Christians support an economic system that so openly derides and exploits them, all in the name of a supposed liberty. Better to be oppressed and thrive than this sad demise by a thousand cuts.

With another Christmas shortly upon us, surely it behoves us to think beyond the frippery and well-meant cliches in order to search for meaning within. The Christmas story never ceases to amaze - in its simplicity of message and its humble actuality. You don't have to have faith, but it helps to suspend your cynicism.

Reading the newspapers over the air recently exposes me to a lot of news that I would not normally be attracted to. When it comes to coronavirus stories, for example, in my private reading, I tend to glance over an opening paragraph and any bullet points and move on - I am just so sick of the topic. In the live broadcast at 2RPH I have no such luxury and have to read everything in the article as a service to our listeners. I have no business editorialising.

What have a learnt from the last few days on this dismal subject? Well, the new omicron variant is multiplying very fast - NSW us now back near 2000 per day with projections of a potential 25,000 a day - and yet, the knuckleheads in Canberra and in the state capitals are easing restrictions and soon, face masks will no longer be mandatory. I know, it's all politics, but the stupidity of removing this one, easy-to-comply with measure, demonstrates how feeble the political class has become.

Is there a spine amongst them? Probably yes, but they are not wielding the levers of power.

 

Poetry is not much rated as a writing or reading activity these days. It's significance has been on the wane since a high-water mark in the 19th Century when poets were still considered influential or important. Of course, a lot of more serious literature, the type that requires some effort on the reader' s behalf, has also suffered a fall in grace.

Some of this apparent decline can be sheeted home to the rise of modernism, where texts became increasingly difficult to read, as authors explored new ways of creating a narrative. But there have always been just enough accessible novels and the like to make reading a public-wide activity. There are also plenty of good poets who strive to be be understood too.

But the final nail, at least for the meantime, was the information revolution, which saw bookshops close en masse and real-life books disappear from the hands of commuters, folks in hammocks and readers in general. People still read on their tablets, phones and kindles, but probably much less than before.

Anyway. Poetry. It's not everyone's cup of tea I know, but it has been mine since high school. I found my old senior English notes recently and read through my responses to a variety of authors and texts. I was taken by just how much I had fallen in love with poetry through the works of the Romantics - initially Coleridge and Keats, then Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron. That's the big five, though there are others too. And it's no wonder, for they were passionate young men who sought change, elevated the imagination and celebrated the natural world.

Which makes them still relevant today.

 In "Man's Search for Meaning", Viktor Frankl wrote, 'When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.' Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who became a psychiatrist, a person worth paying attention to. The book itself is an extraordinary read.

I can't help but find myself agreeing with him - I do think that a failure to find meaning will lead to distraction - but not necessarily with only pleasure in mind. Sure, seeking out pleasure to fill a void is only too commonly found today. In fact, it is almost de rigueur. Every aspect of modern consumer society elevates goals that are fundamentally associated with pleasure - status, wealth, power, acquisitiveness etc - with this sense of distraction. It doesn't need to be gone over again here, it is too apparent everywhere, all the time.

But I think that distraction can take different forms - all intended as an escape strategy of one kind or another. An underlying anxiety, or angst, something without form but nevertheless present, one perhaps borne out of a failure to connect with a deeper purpose, can lead to all manner of distractions. Something to fill the pain or the fear or the boredom.

As for what meaning actually is, well that is for another post. Or many, many posts.

It is easy to lose the initial sense of wonder at just how much information there is on the internet. We grow into such things so quickly that soon enough, a rather ho-hum attitude can take its place.

I would have been leaping with joy when I was in Year 7 if I could have clicked a mouse and been presented with, say, dozens of articles about and images of HMS Dreadnought. I would have been stilled with amazement if my fuzzy black and white pictures of galaxies, nebula and other cosmic objects could be seen in colour, with clarity, replete with oodles of erudite commentary.

Getting information back then meant a trip to the local library, then a fingers-crossed search through card catalogues to see if there might be a book. Finally if a single resource on the subject in question existed, was it on the shelves or running the gambit of other borrowers? Walking out of the library with such a treasure was happiness itself, I can tell you.

Of course, there is a flip side to all this too. The relative scarcity of resources for a young boy back then created its own dynamic circle of  frustration, followed by an energetic creativity. The difficulty of getting things made them all the more precious - the effort to find something, anything, more urgent.

I wonder if the abundance of everything, all right there in your hand, doesn't promote a feeling of ennui. It is, after all, quite possible to be bored by too much, all the time, attained with little or no effort. I don't hanker for the old, but I do fear that the new may be a double-edged sword.

There was a post in one of my FB group feeds today which asked, "How do I know if I'm having a breakdown?" Lest you think that this is way too graphic a question for the usually sunny pages of a bland social media site, then it might help if I add the note that this is a mental health group. Members are encouraged to be open and honest about their thoughts and feelings. Sometimes I reply and sometimes I don't because I want to have something of value to say. Otherwise I shut up.

This got me thinking about the more general question of what causes humans to break. What would cause me to crumble so much that I could no longer perform fairly perfunctory daily chores and activities? I have had some challenges in my past - nervous illness in my twenties, a hyper-stressful job, a trial by jury, relationship breakdowns and one divorce, the deaths of people close to me. I haven't broken yet, though I have been sorely tried and perhaps close once or twice. When that deep pit beckons, and it can hove into view all of a sudden, then a voice deep inside stands its ground and heaves me towards safety. I don't know where that voice, or impulse, comes from, but it will not let me lie down, thankfully.

This is not to say that I am more resilient mentally that other people. I completely understand why the trials of life can lay a person low, such that repeated experiences chisel away at resistance. There may be a tipping point, I don't know, but the endurance of so much can lead to a unintended crumpling, both bewildering and devastating in equal measure. Friends and family rarely understand and are only too happy to proffer advice, almost always useless, if well-intended.

What would cause you to break, do you think?

In considering why mental illness is seemingly far more widespread than in pre-modern times, less might be said for improvements in diagnosis and rather more about the relationship between the individual and society. 

While our understanding of the mind is far greater than at any other time in human history and the capacity to treat is vastly enhanced, merely being better at these things does not explain the increased prevalence of a range of apparent psychological disorders. Why are so any people “sick” or incapacitated and what does this say about modernity. 

My own thoughts follow a long line of talented and erudite theorists such as Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, all of whom commented on an aspect of the modern that could present a crisis for the individual. The decline of religious belief, the rise of science and the ascent of the rational, the alienating effects of work in cities, the dislocation of humankind from the natural world, the rise and triumph of consumer capitalism, and so forth, have exerted pressures that are unique in the evolution of the species.

Essentially, it boils down to the finding of meaning in one’s life, meaning that was supplied in abundance for our ancestors. We might find such meaning primitive or foolish today but the lack of meaning, the confusion and dissatisfaction and moral paralysis that has ensued, are a seeding ground for mental illness and disintegration.