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American VI: Ain’t No Grave

Film and music reviews

American VI: Ain’t No Grave by Johnny Cash (American Recordings)

Ringing Roger, April 2010

For many years Johnny Cash was dismissed as a middle-of-the-road country singer. People forgot how dangerous he had seemed when he first started recording at Sam Phillip’s Sun studio in Memphis, along with the likes of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. After all, this was the man who sang, in ‘Folsom Prison Blues’: ‘I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.’ That song, which is written from the point of view of a convicted murderer, hardly fits in with the kind of sentimental material which we associate with easy-listening country music, as represented by Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold, for example. That line, which is probably one of the most striking in the history of American popular song, strikes me as country music’s equivalent of the moment in Coleridge’s famous poem, ‘The Ancient Mariner’, when the sailor shoots the beautiful and beneficent albatross for no good reason, thereby bringing catastrophe to his ship and his fellow-sailors. It forces us to ask ourselves: why do human beings gratuitously commit the most evil acts? and does the gift of free will demand too high a price?

Even if you think I’m going too far here, it has to be said that Cash’s main preoccupations as a performer have been with the darker side of life. He has always been able to make a light-hearted love song sound like a meditation on death, desolation and despair. Listen, for example, to ‘I Walk The Line’ or ‘Ring of Fire’. This tendency to despondency was, of course, always held in check (and perhaps thereby intensified ?) by his very public and defiant commitment to Christianity. Thus in his song of self-justification, ‘The Man in Black’, he explains that he dresses in dark colours ‘for the poor and the beaten down’, and can’t help but add that he does so also for ‘those who never read / Or listened to the words that Jesus said’.

At least, then, let us agree that Cash is not a talent to be dismissed lightly. It’s fascinating to chart the ups and downs of his reputation, and to ponder the miraculous  ascent of his career in the years leading up to his death. I’m referring of course to the series of recordings which he made with the producer Rick Rubin from 1993 to 2003, when he died. On these albums Cash re-recorded some of his old songs; and he also offered new material, such as ‘The Man Comes Around’, which is his version of the Book of Revelation. Moreover he offered unadorned acoustic versions of not only  traditional American ‘roots music’ but also ‘pop’ material. His version of John Lennon’s ‘In My Life’ makes it sound like the statement of a man nearing his end – thereby revealing that a strong sense of mortality was always present in that composition by a young, successful and apparently carefree Beatle. Nor did Cash exclude the more extreme forms of ‘alternative rock’. Who can forget the deeply affecting sound of Cash intoning the sombre lyrics of Trent Reznor’s lament, ‘Hurt’?

The last of the series, which consists of material recorded in the few months of 2003 between the death of his wife June and his own demise, stands up to comparison with earlier volumes. Like the host of the wedding feast at Cana, Rick Rubin might have been expected to leave the second-rate material until last, but this is far from the case. Cash renders the title track, a Negro spiritual which I seem to recall hearing the majestic Sister Rosetta Tharpe perform, so that one is simultaneously aware both of his approaching death and the strength of his faith: ‘There ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down / When you hear that trumpet sound / Gonna get up out of the ground / There ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down.’ Typically, he juxtaposes this with a contemporary song by a performer more often associated with secular entertainment, namely Sheryl Crow. In his version of ‘Redemption Day’, Cash brings out the sense of frustration at the evils and injustices of the world, while giving full force to the notion of divine judgement (of the wicked) and deliverance (of the good). Other gems include his serene rendition of the Tom Paxton classic, ‘Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound’: the image of life as a journey is given a new resonance; we come away from this performance with a sense of how strange, difficult and lonely the sheer act of survival can be; but also we realise how necessary it is to embrace rather than evade suffering.

The necessity for acceptance, and for resolution in the face of mortality, is brought out in Cash’s own song, ‘1 Corinthians 15:55’. This is an elaboration on the words of St Paul – ‘O death, where is thy sting? / O grave, where is thy victory?’ – set to a charming, old-fashioned waltz tune which seems initially incongruous but then sublimely appropriate. Cash certainly brings that particular passage to newly triumphant life.

It’s not appropriate for me to go through, track by track, ticking them off or giving marks out of five. You really have to immerse yourself in the whole experience. From Bob Nolan’s song of physical and spiritual thirst, ‘Cool Water’, to Queen Lili’uokalani’s Hawaian song of farewell, ‘Aloha Oe’, you can’t help but feel privileged to be in the company of a talent so wide and deep. And you can’t help but marvel at how he managed to affirm the power of music, and the preciousness of life, in face of his imminent death. You don’t have to share Cash’s religious faith to feel inspired and uplifted by this album; you just need to listen.

Laurence Coupe

Creation

Film and music reviews

Creation, dir. Jon Amiel (Icon Films)

Ringing Roger, March 2010

The controversy surrounding Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection doesn’t seem to be dying down, even 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species. Creationists adhere to a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis – though some of the more enlightened ones concede that the six days of creation might have actually been six epochs. They are matched against neo-Darwinians, who not only want to maintain Darwin’s theory in every particular, but who insist that it necessarily involves adopting the stance of atheism. Religious fundamentalism and secular fundamentalism are engaged in their own evolutionary struggle for survival, it seems.

Now we have on DVD Jon Amiel’s sensitive cinematic treatment of the critical moment in which Darwin finally got down to writing and publishing his book after years of hesitation as to the veracity of his theory, and an accompanying concern about what its consequences might be. Married to a devout Christian, and friendly with the local vicar, Darwin feared that the doubts he raised about the literal truth of Genesis would be controversial. More importantly, the death of his young daughter Annie cast him into a long period of despair. If he believed in natural selection, and the survival of those creatures which were best fitted to their environment, then he had to accept Annie’s death as a demonstration of his theory. If he believed in a benign God, he had to accept it as an event which was currently inexplicable but which might be understood in whatever afterlife awaited him and his wife. The film doesn’t resolve any of these issues, but it powerfully dramatises them.

Interestingly, we are not allowed to witness the demise of his daughter, but we are allowed to witness that of another character in the film. I refer to Jennie, an orang-utan who has been captured while young and transported from her jungle to reside in an English zoo. Jennie’s story is one of those which Darwin is repeatedly asked by Annie to recount; she likes it because it is sad, and she always insists on hearing it to the end, when Jennie dies in the arms of her keeper. By granting such dignity to this death, the film forces us to ask ourselves why it is that we assume that the fate of other species should be of far less concern than that of our own. Considering the damage wreaked by homo sapiens on this planet, and the innumerable extinctions that it is currently bringing about because of its arrogant disregard for biodiversity, the film offers a useful challenge to our presuppositions about which creatures are entitled to respect and which are not.

Inevitably in a feature film, many aspects of Darwin’s situation have to be simplified. The hostility of the church of the day to his ideas is exaggerated, I would suggest. For one thing, the idea that the Bible offered poetic rather than factual truth had become well-established among the more liberal clergy by then. For another, evolution had been in the air for decades by the time Darwin came to publish his findings; all he did (though that was more than enough!) was to focus on natural selection as the key to how it worked. That said, we must acknowledge that Darwin’s local cleric, who is represented in the film, was hostile to his conclusions, if not his field of enquiry.

Another concern I have is that the film perhaps gives too much gloomy attention to what the poet Tennyson called ‘nature red in tooth and claw’: this distorts Darwin’s theory, which could be said to be as much about cooperation as it is about competition.

Which brings us back to that supposed battle of beliefs which I sketched at the beginning of this review… It’s worth noting that many modern and contemporary theologians have demonstrated that evolution can be made fully compatible with Christianity. One important outcome has been the radical reinterpretation of the verse in the King James translation of Genesis which declares that humankind is in a position of ‘dominion’ over the rest of creation. We have to become aware of ourselves as part of a great web of being, rather than as having a God-given right to do what we want to the earth and its other creatures. Darwin would certainly have approved of this particular evolutionary advance in thinking. But then, it isn’t only Christianity that has to adapt. I understand that the more dogmatic kind of Darwinism is currently  being challenged by some biologists, on the grounds that it exaggerates the function of natural selection in evolution; there is now much more sense of there being multiple factors at work, internal as well as external.

Whatever your own stance, rest assured that, if you are fascinated by the natural world and how we should best understand it, and if you find science and religion as compelling as each other, this is the film for you. And of course, if you just like to imagine how great ideas come to be born, you mustn’t miss seeing Creation.

Laurence Coupe

Christmas In The Heart

Film and music reviews

Christmas In The Heart by Bob Dylan (Columbia)

Ringing Roger, December 2009

For me, one of the main curses of contemporary civilisation is piped music: everywhere you go, you have to listen to someone else’s – or some corporation’s – choice of noise. I say ‘noise’ because in my experience it’s rarely anything one actually likes. But then again, even if they were playing Vaughan Williams or Elgar, Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan, one surely has the right to choose when and where to listen to them? And how would one feel about one’s favourite music being reduced to ‘muzac’, anyway? I’m grateful for the fact that one doesn’t usually hear any of the above when out and about. It would be disconcerting to have Dylan intoning the famous line from ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ – ‘He not busy being born is busy dying’ – while groping for a bag of frozen organic peas.

At about this time of year the noise just gets worse. I wonder if anyone has monitored the increase in violence in supermarkets occasioned by the remorseless repetition of Slade singing ‘So here it is, merry Christmas / Everybody’s having fun’? (It’s the check-out staff I feel sorry for; customers can beat a hasty exit.) Still, at least we don’t get Dylan’s greatest hits reduced to the same level and mixed in with the same cacophony… But when I purchased his new album, Christmas In The Heart, and noted that it included such popular gems as ‘Winter Wonderland’ and ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, along with such traditional hymns as ‘Oh Come All You Faithful’ and ‘The First Noel’, I had the worrying suspicion that his intention was to sell the rights to some purveyor of piped music, and we’d be hearing him in Morrisons before the year was out. The jolly, upbeat children’s song ‘Must Be Santa’ would become the soundtrack from Hell.

Dylan, of course, has a large and loyal body of admirers. They have either enjoyed or endured his frequent changes of persona: the Woody Guthrie imitator, the ‘hip’ icon of the sixties counterculture, the ultra-conventional country music artist, the religious zealot denouncing ‘rock’n’roll addicts’, and so forth. But would ‘Bob the Christmas muzac man’ be the last straw?

Having heard all the tracks on the album, I can say that I doubt that this will happen. True, the backing singers make a sound that the cynical might describe as saccharine. True, before Bob joins in, one might think one was listening to The Perry Como Show. But of course, it’s precisely when Bob does join in that one realises that it is (thank God) business as usual. That weary, rasping voice is inimitable — paradoxically, both disconcerting and reassuring. We rely on him to disturb us. Dylan is to my mind the greatest religious songwriter of the present era: right back to his early ‘protest’ phase (‘I can’t think for you, you’ll have to decide / Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side’), right through his ‘born-again’ period (‘I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man / Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand’), up to his sombre meditations on mortality of recent years (‘I don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer / It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there’). By reinterpreting standard Christmas songs, without being either subversive or, worse still, ‘ironic’ (the usual excuse for bad taste these days), he makes us ask what we really think the Christian feast is all about. Listen to this in good faith … but please don’t forget to subscribe to ‘Pipedown’, the campaign against muzac: www.pipedown.co.uk !!!

 

Laurence Coupe

‘O Thou Transcendent’: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams

Film and music reviews

‘O Thou Transcendent’: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams, dir. Tony Palmer (Palmer DVD)

Ringing Roger, November 2009

The piece of music which is repeatedly voted England’s favourite is The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams – or VW, as he is often referred to. It is right  that the English people have taken his music to their hearts as he, more than any other composer, stands for what the poet William Blake meant when he preached ‘mental fight’ on behalf of ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. It is no coincidence that VW set Blake to music, for they both belong to a tradition that is deeply patriotic without being narrowly nationalistic. I suspect that the affection that so many feel for The Lark Ascending arises from its evocation of the English countryside, for what’s left of it becomes all the more precious as we pollute, degrade and ‘develop’ the rest. Nor should we overlook the fact that it was written just at the start of the First World War – in which the pacifist composer participated as a stretcher bearer – and came to acquire deeper and wider significance as a lament for a vanished Eden, a lost innocence.

The occasion of these comments is the release on DVD of Tony Palmer’s long, leisurely film about VW. Not only does it document the life with a wealth of archive film and photography, but it includes interviews with people who either knew him (eg, his second wife, Ursula) or were influenced by him (eg, the composers John Rutter and John Adams), along with extracts from filmed performances of the major works.

VW’s love of the English musical tradition was initially prompted by his concern about the dominance of European influences, notably German and Austrian: he took exception to the excessive deference of his countrymen to Brahms, Mahler and others. This love took two main forms. Firstly, VW wanted to rescue from generations of condescension the rural culture which expressed itself in folk music: he was the man most responsible for the recovery of hundreds of songs that might otherwise have been lost once the singers who knew them by heart had died. It is fitting that one of the interviewees in the film is Richard Thompson, a pioneer of English ‘folk-rock’: he recalls working in Germany prior to his musical career, and having to defend VW’s music against the accusation made by his colleagues that the music was typically English in being ‘sentimental’.

Secondly, VW wanted to revive English sacred music. He was particularly keen on the Tudor period, and greatly admired the religious songs of Thomas Tallis – composing his haunting Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis in 1910. Prior to that, he accepted the role of musical editor for The English Hymnal (1906), which contains some of England’s favourite hymns, with original melodies by VW himself in many cases. One thinks, for instance, of ‘Come Down, Oh Love Divine’ and ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’.

Palmer’s film celebrates all this. In doing so, it radically revises VW’s reputation. It is often said that his love of England renders his music safe and predictable. Far from it. His great-uncle was Charles Darwin, whose work fascinated him; so he knew all about the long, withdrawing roar of what Matthew Arnold called ‘the sea of faith’. Indeed, he comes across in this film as a complex figure: simultaneously a nature mystic, a cultural Christian and an anxious agnostic. It is no coincidence that the chorus from his first symphony which gives the film its title, ‘O Thou Transcendent’, is based upon a work by the American poet Walt Whitman, whose spirituality was unorthodox, to put it mildly.

Moreover, the man who saw unspeakable horrors in the trenches went on to write some very dark music indeed – for example, the sixth symphony – which conveyed his sense that civilisation was on the verge of collapse and that the earth was heading for catastrophe. It certainly does not make comfortable listening. He deserves our respect and gratitude, and this fascinating film suggests that we are finally able to do him justice.

Laurence Coupe

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Film and music reviews

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, dir. Yves Simoneau (Warner)

Ringing Roger, October 2009

When Barach Obama was elected president last year, the historian Simon Schama suggested that his victory represented the ‘redemption’ of the United States. Why? Because the constitution had been founded on an ‘original sin’, namely slavery. (Thomas Jefferson himself owned over 600 African slaves.) But we must not forget that there was another offence, equally grievous, which was committed in the course of the settlement of that continent. I refer of course to the murder of millions of Native American people. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a dramatisation of this act of genocide, this second ‘original sin’ of the USA. The film, based on the book of the same title by Dee Brown, was made by the HBO network and first broadcast on US television in 2007; it is now available on DVD. It focuses on the Lakota tribe of the Sioux nation of Great Plains Indians, led by Chief Sitting Bull, the man credited with the Indian victory against General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876). That is where the film starts; but the story it tells is one of defeat and subjugation. We see Sitting Bull and his people having to give up more and more of their land as the US army becomes both stronger and more devious. Eventually, they are forced onto a reservation at Standing Rock, South Dakota, where Sitting Bill is murdered. This act provokes an uprising, which is suppressed in the notorious massacre at Wounded Knee Creek (1890).

While it conveys a shocking message, alerting us to a legacy of violence, exploitation and betrayal, this beautifully shot and sensitively acted film cannot be dismissed as propaganda. It is judicious in its depiction of the US authorities. In particular, Senator Henry Dawes is shown to have genuine sympathy with the Indians in their plight, trying his best to get them the best deal he can, given the pressures on him from the government and the military alike. But his flaw is his assumption of the innate superiority of the white man, which he shares with both his president and the army generals with whom he has to liaise. It is this flaw which introduces a fascinating subplot, involving Charles Eastman, an Indian who has been converted to Christianity and white culture. Mentored by Dawes and trained as a doctor, he goes to work at Standing Rock, and participates in the project of ‘civilising’ the Indians. It slowly dawns on him that the disease and alcoholism which is rife on the reservation is the result of the very policy he is supporting – no matter how well-intentioned his mentor might be.

Dee Brown’s book, first published in the early 1970s, is credited with waking up the descendants of those responsible for the virtual destruction of Indian culture to a hitherto unstated truth about American history. Yves Simoneau’s film, coming thirty years later, is a salutary reminder for those who have chosen to forget. It should also be of interest to the many non-Americans who are trying to decide whether Barack Obama’s presidency signifies a genuinely new start. Simoneau leaves us in no doubt of the extent of the damage done in the very formation of the America we know all too well today. Importantly, it demonstrates how the destruction of the Indian culture went hand in hand with that of the land which they held to be sacred – land which the settlers regarded as wilderness that had to be tamed. So the film hints at a third ‘original sin’ for which absolution needs to be sought, that against nature itself. With so much of the global population currently engaged in destroying the planet in pursuit of American-style affluence, ‘redemption’ still seems a long way off.

Laurence Coupe

Winstanley

Film and music reviews

Winstanley, dir. Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo (BFI)

Ringing Roger, September 2009

In April 1649, not long after the execution of Charles I by the Parliamentarians, Gerrard* Winstanley led a band of about forty people, impoverished and dispossessed, onto common land on St George’s Hill in Surrey. There they cultivated crops and established a community of ‘Diggers’. An admirer of Oliver Cromwell and an enthusiastic supporter of the English Revolution, Winstanley had expected to witness the restitution of the land to the English people. Seeing no evidence for that yet, he trusted that his own community of ‘Diggers’ would show the way.

His inspiration was the Christ who preached universal love, and whom he believed to dwell in the hearts and minds of humankind rather than in some celestial realm; his conviction was that, with Satan’s monarchy having been overthrown, ‘King Jesus’ would make the earth ‘a common treasury’.

Proclaiming a ‘Law of Freedom’ which would ‘turn the world upside down’, Winstanley found himself opposed by both the local landowner and the local parson. Indeed, it was they, supported by Cromwell’s own army, who forcibly suppressed the Diggers’ venture after it had survived less than two years. Yet even in defeat, Winstanley retained his religious faith and his apocalyptic vision. A leading figure of the ‘inner light’ tradition in English Christianity, he reportedly died a Quaker.

Brownlow & Mollo’s austere black-and-white film, first released in 1975, has now been carefully restored by the British Film Institute and issued as a DVD. It’s not a film for relaxing with on a Saturday evening: it’s more a film for sitting up straight and concentrating on, preferably on a Sunday. It’s a powerful history lesson; it’s also a breath of spiritual fresh air. If you’re a Christian, it asks you: what kind of world would it be if we actually lived according to Christ’s teaching? If you’re not, it makes you think again about religion being nothing more than a distraction from ‘the real world’. Either way, this film reminds us that Winstanley is one of the most challenging of English visionaries and (as it includes generous quotations from his pamphlets) one of the finest of English writers.

[*Yes, this is the correct spelling!]

Laurence Coupe

Happier People, Healthier Planet

Times Higher Education Reviews

Teresa Belton, Happier People, Healthier Planet: How Putting Wellbeing First Would Help Sustain Life on Earth (Silverwood, 2014)

Times Higher Education

6 November 2014

As someone who has always considered that famous phrase, “the pursuit of happiness”, to be dangerous nonsense, I came to this book with low expectations. Surely human beings’ insistence on seeking pleasure has been a disastrous enterprise, running counter to the needs of the planet? Not that simple, says Teresa Belton: translate “happiness” as “well-being”, and we begin to see how a concern for the condition of humanity can complement a concern for the condition of non-human nature.

Overall, she offers four basic requirements for sustaining life on Earth: countering “the culture of consumption”, with its attendant waste; making it our business to understand climate change, and recognising what we need to do to prevent further damage; systematically addressing the challenge of “ ill-being”, which she sees as built into our current way of life; and a restructuring of economics in the light of ecology, so that it attends to the real requirements of our earthly “household”.

It is hard to fault the thoroughness of her analysis – evident, for example, in her outline of what being a “Happily Modest Consumer” would actually involve. Moreover, this is not just a matter of speculation: Belton bases much of her exposition on the actual experience of several individuals from differing classes and backgrounds whom she interviewed for this book. Thus we are encouraged to seriously engage with the implications of changing one’s way of life. These interviewees, identified only by their first names, all have interesting and instructive stories to tell. The common wisdom they have acquired might be summarised by Wordsworth’s famous phrase, “plain living and high thinking”.

At the same time, as one reads one becomes aware that Happier People Healthier Planet is informed by a wealth of theory, and does not just rely on reportage. Indeed, Belton reminds us early on how important to her has been the example set by John Ruskin, by E. F. Schumacher and by Hermann Daly. I liked in particular the way she spelt out the importance of Daly’s “steady-state economics”, dedicated to the goal of achieving “a more modest ecological impact in a happier society under the full control of its citizens”.

However, Belton’s stress on modest expectations does not blind her to the importance of fostering creativity, play and a capacity for wonder in children and adults alike. How else would we be able to empathise with the green world that sustains us? Action in itself is not the full answer. Belton discourses at some length upon the spiritual dimension of ecology, which might inform our activism, reminding us of the necessity of guiding our “doing” by a sense of “being”.

My only reservation about this excellent handbook of ecologically responsible living is that Belton does not dwell long enough on the problem of overpopulation. According to a recent authoritative report, half of the world’s wildlife has been lost in the last forty years. It is surely no coincidence that in the same period the number of human beings on the Earth has doubled. If we “do the math”, we might conclude that the greenest thing anyone can do is not to have children. But putting that argument aside, I would strongly recommend this book to all those who want to ensure that they benefit the world which they are privileged to inhabit.

Laurence Coupe

BOOK OF THE WEEK: A Philosophy of Walking

Times Higher Education Reviews

Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking (Verso, 2014)

Times Higher Education

10 April 2014

This short, simple and profound book was originally published in France in 2008, under the title Marcher, Une Philosophie. While reading John Howe’s fine translation, I kept pausing to consider how such a work would have fared had it first appeared in English and been subject to the scrutiny of the ‘Research Excellence Framework’. The initial feedback from the internal assessor might run as follows.

Not sure that this book is quite the thing. Remember, we’re looking for issues around innovation and impact.

Re innovation: most of your time is spent summarising the ideas of writers whom we all know already (eg, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Nietzsche) rather than coming up with a brand new, game-changing angle on your topic, going forward.

Re impact: while it is no doubt true that we should all walk to the university / railway station / shops whenever we can, and while it is undoubtedly good for us to get out into the countryside for a hike, it must be said that to simply celebrate the act of walking doesn’t suggest much in the way of relevance. Other contributors are offering work on drug addiction, racism, pornography, Islamophobia, etc.

Perhaps the problem is the topic itself. You are obviously seeking to remind your readers how important it is to experience the natural world first-hand. This is always worth saying, but if nature is your topic then you ought to be thinking in more cutting-edge terms. I hear that, in this area, the smart money is on “post- ecology”.

The problem, of course, lies with the REF and not with the book. Just as Tony Blair’s adviser Alistair Campbell once said “We don’t do God”, so the REF does not “do” wisdom. That’s an old-fashioned word, perhaps; and, in the best sense, this is an old-fashioned book. It sets out its case slowly; it draws on a wealth of ideas; it reminds you of things you had forgotten and it makes you see the world anew. It does not use jargon; it does not make a fuss about what it is saying; it does not address fashionable “issues”.

I’d like here to indicate just ten of the many insights that I gained from A Philosophy of Walking, roughly in the order in which I came across them in the book. Of course, I anticipate the objection that some of these, particularly the general observations, are so obvious as not to need saying. Be that as it may, my point is that they are so important that they can’t be restated too often.

1. Walking is “child’s play”: you just have to put one foot in front of another. Unlike sport, it should not involve technique, training or competition. People who make a palaver out of going for a walk are missing the point.

2. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his best work after abandoning university teaching and dedicating himself, not just to an itinerant life, but specifically to a non-sedentary life. He realised that the kind of thinking that happens when we walk is superior to that which occurs when we shut ourselves off in our studies.

3. Normally, we treat “outside” as simply an in-between state, as we move busily from A to B, from one inside to another. As such, it is merely “some space that takes some time”. The true walker, however, inhabits the landscape, and dwells within it for the duration of his or her journey.

4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau would not have formulated his model of “the natural man”, untainted by useless education and stiflingly polite society, had he not experienced what it was to be the solitary, walking man for himself.

5. Henry David Thoreau still has much to say about how walking helps us understand “reality” and to engage in “resistance”. What is real is that which is eternally new, and that which holds good: it is what keeps the walker putting one foot in front of another. As such, it makes him understand the need to resist the false claims of the given society (in Thoreau’s case, this meant opposing the poll tax, slavery and all other unnecessary restrictions on freedom).

6. Walking is an engagement with gravity: a perpetual rising and sinking down of the foot, testing itself against the earth. It offers a model of deep balance, by contrast with the shallow sense of “connection” available to the person hunched over his or her computer.

7. The monotony of a walk is quite distinct from the boredom of sedentary existence. With the latter, we frantically seek distraction; with the former, we come to relish each moment. Here Thoreau is again relevant: “As if one could kill time without injuring eternity…”

8. Walking can be a revolutionary act. When Mahatma Gandhi led marches against imperial oppression in India, he aligned the act of walking with slowness, simplicity, poverty and humility: an alignment which allowed the “truth-force” (satyagraha) of the march to emerge, thus making possible the emancipation of millions of people.

9. Poetry may be all the better for being pedestrian. As Gros reminds us, Wordsworth composed his lines while walking. His poetry is “infused with a walking rhythm, steady, monotonous, unshowy. It soothes without wearying, like the murmur or waves on a beach.”

10. The basis of walking is repetition, which has sacred force. It underlies prayer and meditation, which serve to harmonise breath, body and earth. “The echoing chants, [like] the ebb and flow of waves, recall the alternating movement of walking legs: not to shatter but to make the world’s presence palpable and to keep time with it.” After all, psalms are “the scanned realization of faith in the body’s movement”.

Gros’s book obviously harks back to Thoreau’s classic essay “Walking” (1862), but for me it also has affinities with Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2012), in which the act of walking is informed by the act of reading, and vice-versa. One particular pleasure for me was to see the Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder being given their due, as exemplars of the “rucksack revolution” advocated in the former’s fine novel The Dharma Bums. There, Kerouac has his Snyder-based character Japhy Ryder enthuse about reviving the wisdom of “the Zen lunacy bard of old desert paths” – there being a whole worldview implicit in that phrase.

There’s that word again: “wisdom”. Far be it from me to discount scholarly sophistication, but sometimes we have to acknowledge the gift to be simple. Despite his prolixity, John Ruskin had it: “There is no wealth but life.” Come to think of it, that great saying is not a bad way of distilling the wisdom of The Philosophy of Walking, a work that will be read and re-read long after the REF has been forgotten.

Laurence Coupe

Invisible Nature

Times Higher Education Reviews

Kenneth Worthy, Invisible Nature: Healing the Destructive Divide between People and the Environment (Prometheus, 2013)

Times Higher Education

14 November 2013

I’m typing this review on a computer. Though I’ll make a point of not printing a copy in order not to waste paper, the very book I’m reviewing prevents me congratulating myself. For even as I undertake this exercise, I may well be contributing to the horrific contamination of whole areas of Asia, where so much of the recycling of electronics is carried out. In other words, even for those of us who regard ourselves as ecologically responsible, nature is increasingly “invisible” to us. We simply don’t see the consequences of our actions. Indeed, we are suffering from a radical “dissociation” from the earth.

In answer to the question I’m begging here: yes, I do consider the publication of Worthy’s book is more than justified, despite the inevitable environmental impact of its composition, production and distribution. It looks to me as though it’s going to be indispensable.

It may go without saying that we need to develop a more informed respect for the natural world but I’ve read very few books that give such a thoroughgoing case for ecological awakening. Invisible Nature not only draws attention to what we have overlooked but also spells out the terms of our dissociation. In other words, Worthy is substantiating and extending Gregory Bateson’s indictment of “the Western epistemological error”: the delusion that “mind” is the unique possession of humankind, and that nature consists of so much alien matter, to be manipulated as we see fit.

About three-quarters of the book consists of a useful, thorough and persuasive account of the history of disconnection via dualism, from Plato through Descartes to the present. In a sense it’s an all-too-familiar tale, but I for one have seldom come across the whole story of how we came to be so hopelessly severed from the sources of life – the very life without which our finest intellectual achievements would never have been possible – told with such detail and such eloquence.

In particular, I’m delighted to see the work of the late (and sadly missed) ecological philosopher Val Plumwood being invoked. She it was who spelt out the pernicious effect of dualism: how it has informed an oppressively hierarchical worldview, with culture being privileged over nature, male over female, reason over nature, rationality over animality, spirit over matter.

Mention of the word “spirit” does remind me, however, that if I have one quibble about Invisible Nature, it is that I would have liked to see a little more attention paid to the religious dimension of our current crisis. After all, as Patrick Curry has reminded us, “dissociation” is also “disenchantment”. Worthy might perhaps have pondered further the implications of Plumwood’s case for a “materialist spirituality”, which avoids the damagingly transcendental model of orthodox religion, bringing the sacred very much down to earth. There again, even the most comprehensive book cannot include everything a reviewer might want!

Worthy clinches his argument in the closing chapters with some specific and sensible guidance as to how to order a human community while causing the least possible harm to nature. That is, he provides the blueprint for an “associating ethics” which might counter our dissociation. This section offers an impressive culmination to the book, ensuring that all the theory covered is given practical force.

As I say, this seems to me a necessary book. I keep going back to it, and whenever I do I recall the advice, offered in another context by T. S. Eliot: “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire / Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”

 Laurence Coupe

Fluid New York

Times Higher Education Reviews

May Joseph, Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination (Duke University Press, 2013)

Times Higher Education

1 August 2013

As I was reading May Joseph’s book, I kept stopping to check the latest news from the city of Istanbul, hoping that the violent suppression of the peaceful protest there had ceased. I was struck by the fact that the protesters had been initially prompted by the proposed “development” of Gezi Park: that is, its destruction and consequent replacement with a shopping mall. Turning back from the news reports about Turkey, I relished reading Joseph’s vivid accounts of the various communal campaigns conducted by New Yorkers against the wanton destruction of those green spaces which had been a source of pleasure, solace and inspiration to citizens for many decades. She demonstrates that environmental challenges bring people together, no matter how disparate and apparently divided the population of a large city may seem to be.

Beyond specific campaigns, though, there is the larger question which is central to this book: how can one be responsibly metropolitan while maintaining cosmopolitan awareness? New York is, of course, the classic case, since it is the most densely populated metropolis in the United States, while being the urban area that is most open-ended culturally – having grown in stature precisely as a consequence of encouraging large-scale immigration in order to make possible its financial and cultural success. She explores the vital tension which defines the New Yorker, namely that between the local and the global.

Joseph’s subject being ecology, she makes a good case for a way of living that is simultaneously metropolitan and cosmopolitan in a rather different manner than has been habitual. She wants the city to be a focus of sustainable living which is respectful of the world’s dwindling resources, in a spirit of cooperation and restraint. People have to learn to live side by side with others in a spirit of ecological humility, seeking ever-new ways of making connection with one another and with their environment. Obviously, Joseph cannot leave out of her argument the major terrorist assault of 2001, now known simply as “9/11”, to which the initial, understandable reaction of New Yorkers was the antithesis of green cosmopolitanism. Her persuasive case is that the traumatic event might lead – and in some instances, is leading – to a rethinking of urban space, of the imperative of reconstruction, and of the ecological dimension of hospitality.

That is one meaning of what a “fluid” urbanism would involve, and it applies to each and every city. The other meaning relates to New York’s distinctive geography: it is a coastal city; it is a city of islands; it is a city of which over a third consists of water. Joseph refers continually to its “archipelago ecology”. This context is, of course, especially important in the light of Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York in October 2012, which she sees as having a parallel impact to that of 9/11 – global warming offering the challenge this time. Citizens have to take forward the lesson of their experience of the storm, which saw a remarkable flowering of communal responsibility and neighbourly concern. Let them “green” the waterside areas, not only by making them resilient to flood but also by making them places where it seems appropriate to live, to gather, to relax and to appreciate the natural world.

I like this book most when its author extrapolates from her own experience as a New Yorker; I like it least when it lapses into abstraction (there’s too much “palimpsestic mapping of global cultural vernaculars” for me). All told, though, it speaks powerfully to a critical moment in urban ecology.

 Laurence Coupe