Welcome to my blog which this week will begin with an admittance of hypocrisy. A couple of days ago I was happily writing a piece on compassion when my concentration was interrupted by the sound of my neighbour’s drum which, she tells me, is a djembe. I must admit that it isn’t a loud noise but it is base and somehow the beating enters your head like a headache and there begins to pound unceasingly. When it starts, the only way to overcome it is to make more noise yourself which is doable until the evening but impossible at bedtime unless you’re the kind of person who likes to sleep next to airports or motorways. The other day she played for 90 excruciating minutes and then stopped at about 6.30pm, only to start again at 9.00pm. At 10.30pm I lost my temper, jumped out of bed and went out the front door to remonstrate. Only as I started banging on her window, bruising my knuckle in the process, and shouting ‘For god’s sake Jaya, shut-up,’ did I realize a) how cross I was and b) that I was naked. In fact the noise she was making as she wailed along to her drum made it impossible for her to hear me, so I returned to my house and wrote her a letter saying how horrible it was living next door to this noise and begging her to stop.
In the morning I had a reply from the banshee full of anger an accusations, including the allegation that my partner and I don’t go out to work so that we can stay at home and stop her drumming – this despite the fact that a whole year has gone by without our ever saying a word. The next day my partner, who disapproved both of the noise and my rageful response, saw our neighbour in the garden and approached her to make peace. Immediately the banshee flipped and for the next twenty minutes moaned, accused and abused while all the time my partner was just saying, ‘Look at me, Jaya, I’m trying to make peace.’ I was listening from the house and every now and then tossing in unhelpful comments as I struggled to keep my temper. In the end the banshee said she was too busy to talk and slammed her door.
Now as an annoyed neighbour, I feel very disinclined to compromise – though I’m not sure where compromise could be made anyway. But, as my partner has reminded me, this woman is paranoid and disturbed and for her this need to play the drum is crucial to her ability to live with herself. Do I want her killing herself, or me, because I’m hostile to her playing the drum? Clearly not. Does compassion mean I’m going to have to bite my lip when the drum starts? Maybe it does. Can I? I suppose so. Will I? I doubt it.
***
I have been waiting for some while for a response to my article about spirituality and Christianity being antithetical which I submitted in place of a previous piece saying they were the same thing. When I enquired as to its progress the editor asked me to resubmit because he’d lost it. The same thing had happened with the novel (and yes, again Mr Wafe has gone quiet but this time I’m not going to remind him). How many masterpieces have gone unpublished, I wonder, because they were lost and the author was too timid to hassle, preferring to settle into the familiar despair rather than risk the wrath of the god-like publishers? The advantage in this instance, however, is that I’ve been able to tidy up one or two points that were bothering me, particularly the lines trying to explain exactly why the Christian narrative is so intrinsically different to spirituality. It was Charley, who put me in the way of Peter Lash’s book in the first place, who nailed it when he talked of ‘the ecstasy of pure cognition’ and of ‘experiencing as god experiences’.
I admit I’m really curious to see what reception, if any, the article gets. The magazine is a ‘Journal of Holistic Medicine’ which by definition should be sympathetic to spirituality and yet the argument that spirituality was Christianity in another form and that ‘spiritual’ needs were indefinable to the point of non-existence didn’t seem to annoy them.
***
Ironically, perhaps, since writing the above paragraph I have been to Mass; a liberal catholic mass held in a small chapel in the local cemetery. I went to show some solidarity with my potential colleague on the Day of the Dead venture. Beforehand I did feel some anticipation because it is 45 years since I was a catholic boy and I was curious to see what memories floated-up. In fact not many did, partly perhaps because the chapel is almost denuded of imagery and partly because the liturgy was in English. For all the stripping of dogma however, the service remains bizarre and the described relationship between man and god, quite incomprehensible.
I have to admit that throughout the service I was having a battle with my internal dialogue which was qualifying its mocking of the myth behind the performance with a more tolerant view that admitted Id quite happily participate in equally obscure ceremonies if they were in Sanskrit and worshipped Shiva or Krishna. On the other hand I’d never think of these stories having any literal truth whereas this concoction of a father/son divine dictatorship seems to require a belief to make it valid.
I was reminded also of Barry Long’s contempt of priests and their need to dress-up. My liberal self thinks well, why not if it makes you feel better, whereas another part things for fuck’s sake if the clothes make the difference then we’re truly lost.
I did however gain something from the proceedings. I began this piece on hypocrisy and the epistle, the gospel and the sermon, were all about the tongue, an ‘unruly evil’ ‘full of deadly poison’ which no man can control. Thinking of my behaviour this week I couldn’t help but feel somewhat reprimanded.
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