10.12.25 - 346 - Crazy

Carrickfergus yesterday

I don't know. Have we managed to become completely desensitised to crazy weather? Yesterday the winds picked up at midday and it kept going. It was bad wind. Complete mad mad wind. Trees made me nervous. Their power comes to the fore when the winds pick up. 

The most worrying are the trees with the leaves... they act like sails and they give this suspiration to their distress. I have been thinking about the belief which people have in magic. It's a madness really. And quite important to stay out of it. This asking of creatures to do your bidding. This has always been part of the South East Asian culture, but it is disturbing that we discover this as well in the places where you think that the rational should exist. I love shamanism and understand the power of the intuition and insight, but I cannot bring myself to do things like 'ask' beings to do things for you.

Part of me is because I don't really believe it, but part of it is because I don't want to owe anything anything. 

It was fun talking to Oisin on the way home. We talk about so much. Yesterday to was about what companies spend money on. I said to him I would get very annoyed with the civil service because I'd see people spending money on frivolous things and I'd say, this is wrong. It's taxpayers' money and you can't do that. I still think like that. But then billionarse did not exist and clearly the lure of being so ungodly wealthy was something which was not to be admired. 

Why would anyone need to be that rich? Happiness cannot be found in an unending pit of money nor power. Look at the Diddys and Epsteins and Andrews of this world. The Faustian pacts they make. It is like watching Dr Faustus in real time. 

There are 2 great works of Elizabethan theatre: Dr Faustus and The Tempest. Both are works by playwrights in their prime. The Tempest was Shakespeare's last play. In both, power and scholarship are dissected and portrayed. In both, the protagonists use their magic to serve themselves. Faust asks for power for 24 years and goes around enriching himself. In the Tempest, Prospero ends up enslaving the population of the island and wreaking revenge.

In both, they come to regret it. Faust is dragged to hell screaming, I'll burn my books, a hair raising line if ever there was one... the regret is just awful. And in the Tempest, Prospero's response to Miranda's O brave new world speech is 'Tis new to thee'... he ends off with saying, I'll drown my books... again regret.  Prospero was deposed because he was an incompetent Duke and let the kingdom fall to ruin. Instead of enjoying the peace and solitude of the island and his books, he instead decided to plot his way back to a power which he was incapable of wielding. 

Throughout both plays, you are watching the protagonists fritter away the things which they have been given and in the end, the play comes to an end and they realise they have wasted the time they have been given.

There is literally nothing new on this planet. People who aspire to power and wealth and almost never the people who make use of it wisely. Over and over and over again we see this played out in literature and in real life. Cautionary tales about its futility.

Watching the downfalls of Weinstein, Epstein, Andrew and Diddy are like watching modern day Dr Fausti in real time. Trading their souls for power and money and doing idiotic and dangerous and frivolous things until the road runs out... and then they fall fall fall... you can almost hear them cry 'I'll burn my books'! In fact, the breakdown Diddy is having on camera in that unaired footage is the equivalent. You can see him trying to reconcile his behaviour in his head - all the demons which he has dealt with and all his victims are just walking around him. He is high on drugs to keep them away... I cannot understand WHY he allowed the filming to continue. It is as if he wanted to catalogue the final fall.

Possibly the worst part of all this is the power was used in such selfish and cruel ways. They were given or wrested all this privilege and then when given all this, they just squandered it on the most mediocre and mundane of things. They never spoke up for the weak or oppressed. In fact, they were part of the machine. It is the same with Marlowe's Faust. The worst thing about him is that when he got all that power he did absolutely moronic things with it, even though he was a well respected scholar. Intelligence is strangled to death by greed and hubris. This is why literature is so powerful. When you read and read copiously, you understand that other people have gone there before you and grasped the inanity of excess.

The madness which enters and drives us insane is writ in the lives of these men - the cautionary tale come to life. You can only look on and feel utter revulsion.