I know virtually nobody reads this, and that's cool. I am a nobody, so why should anybody read it? Today I had to put up with these spotty teenagers ripping the piss out of me the whole time, and one particular catalyst. He is a fat, lazy man, the worst kind of employee. He never has a good word to say about anybody, and certainly nothing kind or insightful. He, like his colleagues, is not even half my age. I was working in this industry before any of them were even born. Naturally, I took it on the chin, and made light of it, because vast experience has taught me not to get up tight about such things but instead just to roll with it. In my heart of hearts, I wanted to say to him, futue te ipsum puerem but I refrained from doing so.
I am still soldiering on with my (not so) secret project. Much like another work I am translating (again, secret) it will be the only copy of it available anywhere, so if anyone wants to read it, they have to come to me (via Jeff Bezos - God bless America). I dream of what I might do to get out of this slavery. I understand well that having vast experience, a strict and firm personal morality and being extremely well educated means nothing in Dark Age Britain. I accept this. Were I in any other country in the world, this would not be the case, but I am not. I subsist here, in Dark Age Britain. This is not the Italian Renaissance, evidently.
Let's talk about the value of education. Warren Buffett once said that it is best to invest in knowledge. He may well be right. Yet Warren Buffett also said that, "The more you learn, the more you earn." Now, this may be true in the USA (God bless America) but it is certainly not true in Dark Age Britain. In fact, the opposite is true. What do you get for your £15,000 worth of debt here? The answer, is f- all. Not one single book, not a single tutorial, nothing. That's okay too, this is Dark Age Britain, not Renaissance Italy, evidently. I buy and read books, a lot of them. I can see a time where I can apply what I have learnt to more useful purposes.
My penchant is for the mystical, the pious, the profoundly religious, the spiritual, the kind, the humane, what is noble, what is true, what is best. These kinds of things are old fashioned nowadays in this crazy world in which we live. That's okay too. There will come a time when my Ivory Tower is fully built (in a symbolic and allegorical way), and I will be in a much better position to not only help myself, but, more importantly, help those in need, that are less fortunate than I am. None of my 'learned' colleagues could give a damn about any of these people. They think only of themselves.
I am reading Gerald of Wales' Topography of Wales at the moment (Lewis Thorpe's translation) and I find it a magnificent work. The Welsh had (and still have) a very subtle and also Jovial culture. I find it fascinating. Imagine, for a moment, a master of Classical Latin, being at the behest of these spotty teenagers that merely put people down and joke around the whole time, and instead, there is one that reads. I am immersed in a world from a thousand years ago, when musicians, poets, bards and even landlords and law-makers had an extremely profound culture in Wales, far beyond anything we experience in this day and age. On my brief five minute break I read this, in the rain, with a plastic tray covering the book so it does not sustain water damage:
"The Welsh are very sharp and intelligent. When they apply their minds to anything, they are quick to make progress, for they have great natural ability. They are quicker-witted and more shrewd than any other Western people. When they play their instruments they charm and delight the ear with the sweetness of their music. They play quickly and in subtle harmony. Their fingering is so rapid that they produce this harmony out of discord... They grace notes with great abandon, above the heavier bourdon of the bass strings, and so produce a joyful and lilting melody. The essence of all art is to conceal art:
When hidden, art delights; when obvious, it offends." (Ovid, The Art of Love 2.313).
Gerald of Wales, Topography of Wales 1.12 (trans. Lewis Thorpe).
Then, the bard (and I myself am not unaccomplished in music...) returns to be at the behest of these feral, untutored, acrid adolescents: my superiors. This, is what it is like to be an intellectual in Dark Age Britain. No amount of hard work, honesty or striving to better one's lot through the application of erudite study is of any service in Dark Age Britain. Would that I lived in Afghanistan or Iraq! At least then I would have much better prospects than I ever could have here, in the darkest age Britain has ever seen since the mid sixth century, the time of Gildas!
Max.
No comments:
Post a Comment