A Longish Summer

I was the summer of 2006; muggy, hot, under the baking English sun in an unusual English summer.

I was not in love, I hadn’t been out of love; generally naïve of the shoddy rigmarole of romance – and there was Norwegian Wood, Virgin Suicides and Charlie Brooker ranting on the pages of the Guardian; till he turned lyrical one Sunday. “Supposing we could smother romance to sleep” Charlie fancifully wished; supposing we could wish away the delirious exhilarations of capricious affairs; well – generally on those lines, even if they weren’t his exact words.

It’s been three more summers since – and they’ve been hotter, muggier and far bitterer. Memories of sweat-drenched noons, pink bubbles, claustrophobic nights and watching grey dawns.

They grew better – more prosaic and staid, less anxious but peaceful. So much so, it’s hard to remember much beyond the occasional haunting of a shard of pain.

Staider, plainer, and more grown-up we are – Brooker supposes to get married; we learn to fuck without loving; and one day I found Neruda – his words slinging back all that had died but never did; I found them in the pages of a lost copy rescued from a memory.

They are too poignant to be my own; I wish they were, but again, I really don’t….

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Drug Abuse: Subculture to mainstream

The 60s and the 70s are inextricably linked with the pop-idiomatic clichés of Woodstock, flower-power, the Vietnam War, yoga and LSD; not necessarily in that order. Every second Manhattan brat would end up looking for world peace in his marijuana peace pipe, a chillum more likely, somewhere off Benares or in and around Kathmandu’s Pig Alley. The Hippie counterculture encompassed these nouveau libertarian and to a large extent eccentric, axioms of retelling of standard societal norms. Demands of racial equality, peace, sexual liberation, women’s rights challenged the pantheon of social mores of the previous generations. An increased awareness of the environment along with a questioning of the materialistic trends of their day and age, were other aspects of the Hippie movement. Societal standards and norms have evolved over the past three decades to accommodate what were once termed excesses as mere happenstances. This is a reflection of the acceptance of liberal doctrines of the 60s into mainstream democratic society. The question of drug abuse and its transcendence from a sub-cultural trait to a dominant cultural phenomenon is an ineluctable consequence of this social transmogrification.

The complex chain of legitimization of anti-optimistic (as opposed to pessimistic) ideas and sensibilities governing public behaviour and thought was strikingly apparent in the field of arts and especially rock music. Psychedelic rock embodied the spirit of the dystopian experience of the Hippie youth. The main proponents including the likes of Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, band members of The Rolling Stones, The Beatles amongst others; would indulge in the gratuitous use of an entire spectrum of drugs (non-prescriptive, organic and otherwise). Jim Morrison drew inspiration from the mescaline induced cubist landscape of Aldous Huxley’s seminal ‘The Doors of Perception’ – “Istigkeit - wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The Being of Platonic philosophy - except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were - a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.” Huxley denigrated the classical spiritual experience as a pale monochromatic imitation of the mescaline-induced psychedelic one. Morrison and his tribe would thrive on the unchartered and unpredictable terrain of the psychedelic euphoria with some positive and some tragic consequences. The strange originality and the questioning of aesthetic boundaries was almost a necessary product of the substance abuse in conflation with the various social issues of the time. The lexicon of the 60s would learn to incorporate ‘square’ – a derogatory term for the conventional individual. Bill Clinton, while running for President of U.S.A. in 1992, would recall his brush with marijuana as a Rhodes Scholar in England as curious and mildly unpleasant, a sign of the ubiquity of substance abuse. Morrison’s liberal quoting of Huxley appropriated the English academic, as would his own death to drug-overdose familiarize the concept.

The general permeation of subversive traits through every section of societal behaviour has now given way to a more domesticated sense of hedonism. The subculture of drug abuse is no exception. It’s no longer profound or dissonant enough as it would have been in the 60s when Peter Fonda inspired Lennon to pen a song in ode to his LSD rants.

Obituary: Paul Newman

Oct 17, 2008

Manish Golder

Paul Leonard Newman, actor, born January 26 1925; died September 26 2008

Paul Newman, who succumbed to lung cancer on 26^th September, 2008, was more than a sum of his parts. In this case the parts being that of a certain pair of forget-me-not blue eyes, swooning handsomeness, an honest man, a Hollywood original, a loving father and husband, an avid racer – well that list does stretch a bit. As Dragline would say “he was a natural born world-shaker”. Only, he shook us and others in ways that no celluloid anti-hero could ever imagine. But as all obituaries seem to begin, so shall I with memories of blue lightening mingling with his eyes while he lay on his prison bunk. "Yes, his eyes were that blue and beautiful” – Eva Marie Saint recalls; guess he just couldn’t help looking that good.

Paul Newman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio to Jewish-Christian parents; his father owned a profitable sporting goods store, he was late entrant into what would, over the subsequent years, become a legendary career in film. As all pretty boys are destined to be - mere props in costume epics, strutting around looking good, and drawing general critical derision; Paul Newman missed a similar fate by a hair’s breadth. He would go on to advertise in a leading magazine begging people to not watch his first movie ‘The Silver Chalice’- featuring an uncomfortable Newman in a toga; a cringe-inducing experience he would forever be apologetic of. Critical acclaim came his way after his role as Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me” (first-choice James Dean’s since-romanticised car crash providing the big break). He made a seemingly natural transition from the 1950s to the subsequently socially tumultuous 60s and 70s, becoming in the process one of the only few actors to successfully do so. As the eponymous ‘Hud’ and ‘Cool Hand Luke’, he transferred his animal grace into a popular expression of rebellion – against authority and all set norms – as he would twist and morph his own avatar into the most unlikely of them all: "But what really made everyone out there like him was that he became the rebel with a cause. As Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy, Newman gave his audiences a vicarious thrill by thumbing his nose at an unjust society. ... It wasn't the blue eyes. It was the red blood and the gray matter."¹

Barring the misadventure on debut, Newman would forever continue to play down his good looks with almost an obsessive zeal, playing instead some of the most iconic anti-heroes in cinema. As one critic would once say - "Could it be that Newman was always uncomfortable with his natural assets — such handsomeness — and never convinced by them? That would account for the uneasy mixture of porous cockiness and mumbling naturalism, just as it fits with his urge to prove himself as a serious citizen." ²

Despite his matinee idol billing, Paul checked out early on the flashy life of Hollywood. He chose, instead, to spend time with his family away from tinsel town and public glare. A perfect union of 50 years with his wife Joanne Woodword (they celebrated their last anniversary in February) stood testimony to his uniqueness. As did his salad dressing company, Newman’s Own; all of whose post-tax profits were donated to charity. As of date the total amount donated stands at around $250 million – making Paul Newman the single largest contributor to charity in proportion to his wealth. His the Hole in The Wall Gang Camp for seriously ill children now provides care for over 13,000 children free of cost. It was as he termed “Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good” – a phrase that runs across the banner of Newman’s Own homepage.

Well, Butch Cassidy did ‘good’, we’re proud of you Luke. Send us a postcard from wherever you are. Hope you’ve got your plastic Jesus with you for the longest of them rides ‘you, wild, beautiful thing’; may your soul rest in peace.

1. The 100 Greatest Stars of All Time," Entertainment Weekly

2. David Thomson, "A Biographical Dictionary of Film," 1994.