Smoke Signals; or, Love Thy Neighbour

No, really: do you even know who lives next door?

 Image: Neighbourhood Life

I once lived next door to an elderly widow who would probably have loved some company, but most of the time one wouldn’t have known she was there. Her appearance one day at the window during my attempt at a back-yard barbeque was telling: ‘Are you trying to smoke me out?’ she yelled from the top floor of the house. She closed the window and then appeared at the back door. ‘Since my husband died I like to keep the bedroom window open’, she said. I wondered if he was still in there. In any case, it wasn’t an auspicious beginning, and I can’t say a relationship blossomed thereafter.

When I left England and moved to Montreal, my first neighbour there was a pot-smoking loner called Hubert. He really smoked a lot of pot; so much, in fact, that I spent much of the first six months in Canada feeling light-headed while teaching an assemblage of McGill ‘90 Averagers’. I blame Hubert for the smashing of this teapot, as my attempt to remain civilised failed in the drifting haze. I think the breaking of a teapot is a highly significant act, for the teapot is the pivot around which friends and neighbours are meant to gather. To imbibe tea is the modern equivalent of breaking bread. This was altogether a failure in the company stakes.

The German neighbours have been altogether a different kettle. I must say, I’ve become rather fond of our upstairs neighbour here, with his repeated insistence that we should come over and consume alcohol. He’s in his 50s, something of a lone wolf, and a tad deaf. But the act of talking to a neighbour is unlike other conversations. It’s not like talking to a friend, or a family member, or a colleague. After all, what do you have in common, other than your proximity? And to that end, talking to a neighbour reinvigorates the art of conversation, for you escape into chatter about interesting things, sometimes weighty, sometimes trivial, sometimes anecdotal, and find that you have pleasantly escaped your own stressful preoccupations for a while. Our neighbour here helps this along by his conspicuous display of maps and globes, old photographs and books, and a random assortment of antique talking points. It’s a stimulating experience, being inside the character-filled home of another. Think of that the next time you’re tempted to shop at Ikea.

Of course, it’s not all roses. We were invited to this man’s annual party once, along with an assemblage of life-long friends of his who collectively fit well with the randomness of his furniture. The only thing they had in common was a tendency to chain smoke. Being German, they all smoked inside. Since we’re now utterly unaccustomed to such an atmosphere, it was hard to swallow.

Good Neighbors: my first crush is on the right.

One way or another, it’s better to have neighbours whom you know than otherwise. It’s never a good thing to start a relationship with an argument, but unless you introduce yourself, this is likely going to be the case. So, why not send your people next door a smoke signal? What’s the worst that can happen?

Straight Talking

According to Stephen Evans, my peer of some renown in Berlin, the Germans don’t do small talk. There’s not even a word for it. How much of your day is spent congenially warming the air with idle nothings? For many people, at work, at school, or with friends, that’s all there is. Imagine taking it away from them for a day. How would it feel for them to be left with the emptiness of their heads?

It takes some time to realise that there’s a good reason why your German interlocutor is knitting his brow over your insistence that it’s fairer weather today than yesterday, and looks to be changeable tomorrow. He wonders why you think he can comment on meteorological matters, or why you are particularly preoccupied by them. The conversation doesn’t go anywhere because he doesn’t understand ‘ice breakers’. There is no ice in Germany, so why not sail straight to the point? The Anglophone’s tendency to prevaricate comes from his own self-consciousness, rather than any interpersonal hurdles in reality. The trouble is, a  German’s tendency towards plain sailing only thickens the ice for the Anglo. And the thicker the ice, the more our German friend will think us strange and disingenuous. Of course, all this disappears once you’ve managed to get to know one another, but the route to friendship in this case bears a resemblance to a Victorian wedding night. With no prior knowledge about how things work, it takes a deal of fumbling and apologising before a beautiful union can be made.

In truth, both these cultures represent a thing lost. Conversation used to be an art. Small talk was a failure in artistry. The true conversationalist would engage seriously, but without emotional investment, with sensitivity to political and social taboos. A conversation would flow naturally from topic to topic, without passion, but with subtle betrayals of character that would allow for the slow appreciation of personality. The essential ingredient in this engagement of the courtois was French, and that is the missing link in Anglo-German relations at present. The lingua franca is now English, but no two peoples speak English in the same way, or are united by a common purpose. We are lost in incommensurate idioms. The monarchies and the courts of the eighteenth century were, if not directly related, then at least of a political piece. French was the order of the day from St. Petersburg to London, and it bound the courts in common.

 Click to enlarge

Last time I looked, France still lay between England and Germany. There aren’t any courts any more, but we’re constantly told that we, the common people, are all of a piece these days. Maybe we should meet in the middle?

Remember My Name

The only thing less polite than forgetting a person’s name is calling a person by the wrong name. I confess I struggle to remember the names of people introduced to me in passing. Generally speaking, once I’ve met a person twice I will retain their name, but otherwise I’m a bit of an idiot on the appellation front. Still, if an interlocutor’s name cannot be teased out of them in some cunning and round-about way, I think it better meekly to ask them to remind you than to take a stab in the dark and get it wrong.

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Hardest of all for yours truly is remembering the names of people I have never met, but whom I nevertheless have cause to refer to professionally. This morning, for example, I was trying to cite an authority on Victorian Britain. I could remember the title of the book in question; I could tell you who published it and when; I could even describe the cover to you. But I could not for the life of me remember the author’s name. Utterly frustrating! I’ve only used the book a million times. Still, I’ve never met the man, so the name eludes me. Worse than this, of course, is when students fail to look up the names of their authoritative authors and recall them wrongly in writing. I’ve always maintained that it is a matter of basic manners to get people’s names right, especially if you’re going to refer to them in a text. Needless to say, whatever profound and stunning argument is being attempted fails entirely when couched in such sloppy terms.

As a matter of habit, I try to say a person’s name to myself twice (silently) upon first being introduced, and to use the name soon after meeting. If I lapse in this habit, chances are I don’t know whether you're Adam or Ant. If anyone else has a good method, please share it.

The Art of Manliness

I was the beneficiary this week of the kindness and manly spirit of Brett McKay, who presides, with his wife, over the writing and goings on at the Art of Manliness. Being Manly was featured in the Art of Manliness Trunk: a treasure-trove of ethereal delights from out there in internet land. The effect would have caused nose bleeds in lesser men: 2,200 page views in three days is new territory for these humble pages, and long may things continue in such a vein. I am most grateful for the exposure, and I’m especially happy to welcome newcomers, especially when they are sent from such reputable sources.

The Art of Manliness community is an amorphous place, filled with every kind of man one might imagine. Yet it is driven by a spirit of masculine depth that keeps it from being a mere locus of grunting and scratching. To be sure, look deeply into any community and you will find elements that you do not like. But such a discovery has an air of reality about it, and one better appreciates the prevailing decency of the majority for remaining hospitable to the rest. In this community, in which I’ve been active for a long time by now, are men driven by giving, by intellect, by enthusiasm, by sartorialism, by literature, by politics, by art, by sport, and by a willingness and a wish simply to understand what it is to be, and what it takes to improve, a man. It is neither self-help, nor men helping themselves (i.e. taking). It is a shared journey, the passage of which involves disagreement, requests for advice, the giving of advice, and the expression of opinion. The community regulates itself. Members call out each other for transgression. Moderation – two meanings, one a virtue, the other a duty – abounds here by nature.

If you’ve never been to the Art of Manliness, do go. If you like it here – and I do hope that you find my hearth equal in warmth to my hospitality – you will assuredly like it there. And do come back again and tell me what you found on your travels.

To the Art of Manliness: in being there, may we find out what it is.

Repositories of Masculinity; Or, Keep Libraries Open

Your average macho man would, if he conformed to the stereotype, not have much to say in favour of milksop bookworms who spend their time dreamily composing poetry. The two images could not be farther apart, and yet they are in each other’s debt. For without poets we should have no Achilles, and no Aeneas; we should have a more sober notion of Henry V; and the Charge of Light Brigade would be merely a military disaster. How else are we to know the measure of a man, without some great insight from other men who understand greatness?

The juxtaposition has been made many times I am sure. Yet there is a missing element here, for poets need readers. If poets are not read, then no magnitude of eloquence will serve posterity. Original manuscripts of ancient texts were preserved by religious orders. Those texts were consulted by scholars who transcribed, translated, and published them, to be forever preserved in libraries. Of all the great strides of the nineteenth century, the opening of libraries – the democratisation of knowledge – is surely among the most important. Public bodies assumed the duty to maintain and preserve the store of human knowledge and to make it freely available to anybody who wished to pursue, or simply to peruse it. We, the readers, owe a great deal to those people who opened the doors to self-education.

Not so long ago, in a town or city like yours, a university administrative committee congratulated itself that it could finally get rid of hundreds of tonnes of volumes from the university library, thanks to newly available digital resources. The old tomes, which were formerly available for consultation by any member of the public, had been thrown into skips. Since the local library was also scheduled to close, the reading public was left with no recourse. The new digital version of the library was made available only to those fortunate people who could boast a university log-in name. Cost of said log-in is shortly to rise to £9,000 per year, since the only way to get one, other than by being employed by the university, is to be a student. Meanwhile the administrators basked in the empty space of the library. It was so much easier to breathe without all the books. And it was so much easier now to find a seat.

The self-appointed guardians of the internet have taken on no notion of liberal access to knowledge, and in this they are ably supported by governments looking to save pennies. By day, the internet is being made a pay-per-view medium, just as libraries are slated to shut down. The digitisation of the world’s libraries is a fantastic idea, but only if we can get at it. Giant scanning projects are not undertaken with a mind to making libraries more available; they are undertaken to make money. There’s nothing wrong with that ambition per se, but if the result is the closure of real libraries that inhabit real space, because they no longer fit digital-age models of value, then we have taken a drastically wrong turn. Knowledge is being returned to the realm of those who can afford it, and the richness of existence that lines the shelves of countless public libraries is set to disappear (see the map below of UK library closures).

View Public Library Closures in the UK in a larger map

The books will not be burned, but for no better reason than that we are now environmentally friendly. The books will be pulped.

Large World, Small Odyssey

Being Manly is now coming to you from Montreal, after much trouble. After years of harping about the smallness of the world, I am now convinced of its largeness, and promise to hold my peace in future. To say that I am lucky to be here today would be an understatement. Our arrival depended, ultimately, on our ability to transfer from a domestic to an international flight at Frankfurt in only nine minutes. I wonder if I can submit that to the people at Guinness as some kind of world record?

Something else I have been given to harp about is the ubiquity of gadgetry that does its utmost to make us less human. Yesterday’s tormented journey was actually caused by such gadgetry, and not by snow, as the news would have you believe. After days of struggling, Mrs. VB and I were actually sitting on a plane in Berlin, two minutes from taking off. At that moment, somebody with the internet in his hands discovered that his connecting flight in Frankfurt was  cancelled, and decamped himself and his cohort from the aircraft. Despite the remonstrations of the crew, they insisted on getting off, which meant that their luggage also had to be removed. This caused us to miss our 8:45 a.m. departure slot, and we were then allocated the new slot of 3 p.m. These people knew that their selfish act was about to jeopardize the Christmas plans of roughly 200, but they did it anyway. I checked this morning, and discovered further cancellations from Berlin to Frankfurt. Despite my general disposition of good will, I can’t help hoping that those people remain stranded for a very long time.

Once we’d been told that we would now have to sit for six hours in the cabin without moving, most people decided to give up and get off. About thirty of us decided to stick it out, reasoning that it was better to get to a hub and take our chances than to remain in the Berlin backwater. We dug in. The spirit of the Blitz was alive on a Lufthansa craft in Berlin. A man next to us had spent nine hours in a queue the day before, and figured it was better to wait in a comfy seat with free drinks on offer, than to sit in the terminal. Turns out he was shrewd. Along the way there were rumours of earlier slots, only to be dashed, followed by a sudden flurry of movement that allowed us to leave at short notice at about 12.05 p.m. Those who had fled at the first bad news must have kicked themselves. There were no further flights to Frankfurt that day.

When the plane reached the stand at Frankfurt it was 1.15. Our onward flight was at 1.45. We knew already that if we made it the luggage wouldn’t, but thought this a fair sacrifice and ran. Amazingly, there was no second security check for connections (Heathrow take note), and we covered the distance between gates at a good click. Naturally, once the gate was closed and we were safely on board there were further delays because there aren’t enough de-icing machines in Frankfurt. And furthermore, the Jetstream headwinds that are causing all the wintery awfulness made the Frankfurt-Toronto flight time a gruelling eight-and-a-half hours.

Gillray, Britannia between Scylla & Charybdis

We naturally missed our connection to Montreal, but got lucky with standby seats on the next flight (which was naturally delayed because the pilots were absent – stuck in the US). How strange it was to emerge into the Montreal winter air and reflect that it was colder and snowier in Europe. The world is on its head: no wonder travelling around it is tricky. Between the Scylla and Charybdis of the weather and the blackberry, our Odyssey is over. For now.

Gallows Humour

Rumours of my departure have been greatly exaggerated. In true Planes, Trains and Automobiles style, it keeps on snowing everywhere and we keep on going nowhere. Yesterday we saw that our flight – Berlin, London, Montreal – was cancelled when we got up, but we had to go to the airport anyway, for there was a queue there not to be missed. Three hours in that line got us an upgrade and a new itinerary – Berlin, Düsseldorf, Newark, Montreal – for the next day. Today we left well before dawn in heavy snow, to find Düsseldorf cancelled. Queued for an hour and got bumped to a delayed earlier flight, which was about to land in Berlin. Unfortunately, at that moment Berlin went blizzard, and the airport closed. Our route out was diverted to Leipzig, I presume never to be seen again. Back to the queue for another two-and-a-half hours (and this was the first-class queue, mind), and we eventually received our new itinerary – Berlin, Frankfurt, Toronto, Montreal – for tomorrow, replete with downgrade back to economy. It’s a story full of Christmas joy.

The funny thing about all this is that it is actually funny. Or at least, one tries to make it so. Mrs. VB and I have made some firm friends in the queuing process these last two days. One nouveau riche couple – English and Latvian – were supposed to go Riga, London, Buenos Aries, Santiago, Easter Island, for some romantic Christmas getaway. Just outside of London their plane was turned back to Riga, and the Latvians, imaginative bunch that they are, thought sending them to Berlin might be a good way to get them to London. Heathrow closed in the meantime, and the Germans lost their luggage, in which they’d packed their medicine. Oh how we laughed! She chortled so much her mink coat nearly fell off.

Take my word for it, their smiles were infectious

Today we spent chatting to a motley crew of international travellers, upgraded to business yesterday like us, downgraded to chattels today. The prominent member of this group was a lovely and elegant Parisian lady, with whom we partook in devious queue strategies. She was trying to get to London, and when that failed yesterday she had been booked on the same Düsseldorf flight as us. Then, a London flight opened, but they wouldn’t bump her to that one because she was clearly booked on a flight to Düsseldorf. Why should she want to change it? We laughed so much it hurt! Another lady, from Singapore, was told to board a plane to Cologne (why not? She was going to Düsseldorf and then Munich, after all) that hadn’t even left Cologne yet. They were good enough to lose her luggage, and she re-joined us in the queue after an hour or so of staring at the space where her plane was supposed to be. We could barely contain ourselves! The third member of this group was a jolly Austrian with bad teeth, attempting to get to Vienna. Since it all seemed so hopeless, he had the idea that Lufthansa would book him into the Kempinski Presidential Suite, and we’d all be invited for Christmas on the airline’s dime. He was so thrilled by this idea that he practically begged the Lufthansa agent for more bad weather. We all looked like the prancing orphans from Oliver! singing Food, Glorious Food, and pretending that there wouldn’t be gruel. Meanwhile, the local news had sent a camera man, pushed on a luggage trolley by his director, who secured a terrific dolly shot of all our smiling faces. The viewers of tonight’s local TV are in for a treat.

We waved goodbye to everyone as we left for home (again), wishing merry Christmases and happy travels, and hoping never to see each other again, with the best will in the world. We left our little patch of muddied red carpet – seriously, the business and first-class line had red carpets covered in snow and grit – and walked back past the economy queue, which stretched from gate 10 back way past gate 7. I reckon it was at least a six-hour queue. Everyone looked so happy!

I hope not to write to you tomorrow, because I shall be travelling all day. It seems a shame in a way – cancellations are too much fun.

Shutting Up, Shutting Down

You’re all well aware of my penchant for conversation. I appreciate the art of it: the playful exchanges of delightful folk are, at one and the same time, of no consequence whatever and yet supply the tenuous threads by which civility hangs. Moreover, anyone who habitually sends his soliloquies out into the ether in the hope of finding interlocutors can hardly be thought reticent to engage. I am a thinker-talker – an embodiment of logos, if I may be so bold – and rather like it that way.

There are times, however, when one must shut down (or up) one or both of the features of logos. It has struck me before that one doesn’t need fully to understand a language to know that a particular speaker of it is an idiot. Any thinker-talker of the slightest capacity ought to know when to look before leaping and when to hold his peace. The broadcasting of opinions is not for every forum and every occasion, and the loose tongue is oft the symptom of an empty mind. We could perhaps all use a reminder that some of our most pointed and devastating sentences were better never said. To the sartorially inclined, think of it as buttoning one’s lip.

Devastating WWII public warning

That said, there are times when thinking ought to be suspended too. Rushing heroically into the clichéd house on fire would be one of those occasions, but there are many moments when a thorough unplugging of brain is just the order of the day. A man never yet hit a golf ball sweetly who was thinking how it might be done while making the attempt; a sportsman never yet brought down his moving quarry while wondering about how it would later taste; a driver never yet swerved to avoid an errant child while contemplating the value of the child’s life. We are instinctive beings. That which was not provided at birth we acquire through learning as skills, the execution of which has nothing to do with thinking. Where we think, in these circumstances, we surely fail.

Do or do not; there is no try.

The best of us, as talkers and thinkers, sometimes should shut up and shut down.

Braving the Public

My dear and faithful Readers,

I have seen fit to make myself available to you, as it were, personally. Yes, in addition to the ample opportunities you have to engage with yours truly, here, on Twitter, and on Facebook, you can now send me a private message if the moment takes you (link over on the right). I can make no promises to respond directly to everyone, but in some cases I see there is a need for conversations to proceed further than the blog forum permits; in other cases, I may pursue questions or ideas that you might have for me on the blog itself. After all, we live in an age where the audience may directly inspire the author – why not take advantage of it? Credit will be duly apportioned. If you don’t hear from me, you may nevertheless be assured that I am reading, and taking you as seriously as you seem to take me.

My glass is charged with a fine twelve-year old single malt, given to me by an all-too-generous friend. Here’s to looking forward to making your further acquaintance!

Until then, I remain your humble servant,

VB.