Listening to Another Day On Earth by Brian Eno
Procedural thing first.
Daughter got StarWars Ep. IV from the library and I noticed that the commander who informs Grand Moff Tarkin that there is a chance that the rebels will be able to damage the Death Star is the Foul-Mouthed Security guard – Len – From the smoking room. This reminded me that Siobhan Redmond was in Bulman with Don Henderson who played General Taggi in SW. I have been trying for a third link between the two shows but I have failed. Any info would be appreciated though not of course in any material way.
I finished The Midwich Cuckoos in a few days; it is one of those books that despite being about adversity and rather horrific things, has a dreamlike hook which makes you race through to the end AND still dread finishing it. I have felt the same sense of having missed the depths of the narrative in my first reading which I got when I re-read The Girl In A Swing. The hero (though not the narrator) – Zellaby – is an intellectual heavyweight though with a fine ability to distract himself from the matter in hand - except of course when it really counts. This you will find at the end. There is also the continuing sense of a rural idyll threatened by the existence of the children as well as by the children themselves. You will also see why I have separated these two ideas if you make it to the end. Zellaby’s monologues are deep and sometimes seem irrelevant until their completion. I struggled to link this book with The Day Of The Triffids which has a strong sense of narrative and things happening which is missing from the Midwich cuckoos. You may feel I am warning you off but you will never feel cheated even in the sudden end which leaves so much unanswered as to the future of the whole world. Incidentally, I think Zellaby would have made a great Blogger.
The idea of the children being the way they are, links in with my sometimes-held view that Autism may well be a next-step in the evolution of humans. Our world is becoming increasingly complex and involved in the emotionless machinery of technology. We may be on the way to fine-tuning the interfaces between the human world and the computer world. Will this ever allow the tacit stuff of emotional communications to be part of the transmissions between people? Already I see a great removal of the sense of conversations through instant messaging. The reduction of this side of communication removes the ability to understand it when it is present, very much like the inability of the poor inhabitants of the world of nineteen-eighty-four to think ‘bad’ thoughts because of Big Brother’s re-invention of language to remove anything that might be used to form negative thoughts. I know that sounds tortuous but if you want to know what I mean, read the essay on newspeak, which forms an appendix to nineteen-eighty-four. Autism, which I am sure has a genetic component, may well prove to be an advantage in the future world and will therefore survive. I know the kids in The Midwich Cuckoos are not truly autistic and there is a supernatural component to their personalities (one which Zellaby does a great job of rationalizing though), but the hint that they may well be a next-step in evolution is there.
Not sure how happy I am. There is nothing bad on the horizon for me personally but the world-going-mad component is there all the time now. I know the risks here are low and this in whichever side of my brain looks after the day-to-day and the mathematical is keeping me from following. It looks like my Son is going to be left-handed though my daughter is dexterous like both her parents. In my Adrian Mole mode, I would like to keep an eye on this but I probably won’t until the boy suddenly announces he is going to art college instead of plumbing academy like his dad. No! It wasn’t plumbing academy was it. Art College? I mean!
Much travel over the weekend. Trip to Zoo, trip on train to newly refurbished Liverpool Museum, and various walks out and about. There are many photos though none with me at the moment. The museum trip also allowed a diversion to see the Little Artists though we were surprised to discover that the entire lego thing was just one exhibit in a case depicting one art gallery with all the modern art and artists present. Our enthusiasm for searching out the various listed pieces seemed to inspire the real gallery attendants to look for them as well. There are some photos, which when auto-contrasted look quite good. I would like to know if all the tiny accoutrements exist as real bits of lego. As they had a miniature version of Dali’s lobster telephone, which made me, wonder where they got the lobster.
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