David Bowie's Quicksand

Recorded in 1971, Bowie’s song Quicksand represents a desperate striving for knowledge and from it derives a resonant, sophisticated and accurate conception of our place in the world. The song demonstrates Bowie’s eclectic learning at the time. He references Nazi history, Mysticism, Buddhism and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Quicksand brilliantly expresses how humans can drown in their thoughts and lose sight of reality. To me, this is the most significant and common human phenomenon, that can grip people in delusion throughout life, until "death's release". This is what makes the song so emotive and affecting. Using quicksand as a metaphor for this is perfect, because the more you struggle in thought, the deeper you sink. Thus the song also addresses the necessary resignation that one must achieve in light of this, “And I ain’t got the power anymore”. To achieve clarity, the desperate striving must at a certain point cease.

Bowie realises that he is limited by his animal mind “I’m tethered to the logic of homo sapien”, an insight particularly prominent in Nietzsche’s thought. There is a limit to which we can consciously grasp the world, which is why Bowie feels true, full knowledge will come with death, the ultimate transformation, "knowledge comes with death's release". Aldous Huxley explains such human limitation very clearly in The Doors of Perception. As biological entities surviving in the world, we must filter our experience of the universe, we must set limits.

I can see why one would interpret the lines “don’t believe in yourself, don’t deceive with belief, knowledge comes with death’s release” as nihilistic. But, I think, this would be a superficial and simplistic interpretation. These lines are saying that only when we abandon naïve belief will we start to live genuinely, fully and in accordance with reality. They are saying we must humble ourselves to the mystery of the world and realise our own limitations, and only by doing this can we live truthfully. 

The fact that Bowie could perfectly express these deep and mystical insights at the age of 24, with such a beautiful song, is impressive. I knew there was a reason I intuitively loved this song from an early age.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand

"One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalise;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise."

"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew."" (Edmund Spenser)

Spenser's sonnet is a meditation on the ephemerality of existence and, at the same time, on the eternal endurance of love. He writes "her" name on the strand, hoping to make last his love, but his attempt is washed away. He makes another attempt, the word "again" emphasising the repetitious act, but is thwarted, again. 

One feels that Spenser is trying to come to terms with the passage of time and the eventual erasure of his most cherished feelings and moments. In a resonant way, his attempts at eternalising his love seem vain and represent the struggles we all, most likely, go through during periods in our lives. There is a certain desperation and pain in his repetitious attempts, with the illimitable sea of time his seeming enemy.

But from the sonnet emerges the realisation that, though death can subdue the world, and on one level everything fades, love will fundamentally continue, and will be the force that eternally renews life and it's transformations. In the sonnet there is thus a profound marriage between the transformational nature of existence and the eternal force, that we all embody and experience, that renews such transformation.

"Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew"

I also admire the way that love isn't clearly defined in this sonnet. It points strongly to romantic love, but also indicates a deeper kind of love, as a universal force, thus suggesting an inclusive conception of the word.

Post 77

Different people have different inclinations, predispositions and temperaments. This means our notions of reality, and how we communicate such notions, can vary enormously, even if we share a common tongue and upbringing. To me, this seems a fairly obvious point. But the reason I feel compelled to make it is that, in my experience, few people demonstrate awareness of it. If we are able to bear this insight mind, to understand the manifold ways in which different people express themselves, I believe we will be a lot more patient, humble, tolerant and sensitive. However, true, deep understanding and the genuine embodiment of insight is, I feel, a difficult and rare thing.

Post 76

What is the motivation behind analytical thought? In humans, it seems there is frequently an intense need to understand the world, which presumably means looking at it accurately. Every human feels this need on different levels and in different arenas. But this point begs the question, what is “the world”? And what exactly do we mean by “looking at it accurately”?

Surely, definitions and descriptions of “the world” change with each person. One description might be that the world constitutes all the phenomena of our experience, including ourselves, which includes all internal and external events. We thus can't conceive of a world separate from us, as experiencing entities.

Accuracy is an interesting concept. Perhaps accuracy alludes to objectivity, stripping away as many preconceptions, ideologies and assumptions as possible and comprehending “the thing in itself”, whether it be a psychological state or physical phenomena, as purely as possible. I think of quantum mechanics here, which suggests that, from our conscious human perspective, we’ll never fully grasp “the thing in itself”, for it will hide from us when looked at directly (look up the double slit experiment for more on this).

When people debate, I think they often neglect that individuals have vastly different temperaments and personalities, with vastly different conceptions of how the world works and vastly different ways of communicating such conceptions, none of which are necessarily more “right” or “true”. This is where Carl Jung’s work becomes enlightening, whose book Psychological Types was a systematic attempt to analyse the various personalities that exist in the world, in an "objective" way. Jung introduced the widely used concepts introvert and extravert into modern usage and laid the basis for much personality understanding that has taken place in the 20^th century.

People are often so quick to attack each other in a debate, which is the result of clinging to an ideological position and not genuinely engaging with what the other person has to say, among other things. I think it is so much easier, but ultimately harmful, to hold fast to a position, than it is to be sensitive and humble and to realise our lack of knowledge in the face of complexity and mystery. “I alone don’t know”, says Lao Tzu; this is the hardest position to attain, but also the most beneficial and, for me, admirable and heroic.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, an Opening Passage

The following is the opening passage from The Wreck of the Deutschland, by Hopkins:

“Thou mastering me

God! giver of breath and bread;

World's strand, sway of the sea;

Lord of living and dead;

Thou hast bound bones & veins in me, fastened me flesh,

And after it almost unmade, what with dread,

Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?

Over again I feel thy finger and find thee”

Hopkins was an artist of unique skill, humour and insight. There is much meaning and talent, for example, contained in this short passage.

By using phrases like “giver of breath and bread”, Hopkins playfully encourages the reader to reflect on the language being used, by using similar sounding but differently meaning words together. Hopkins did this frequently, as did James Joyce and Dylan Thomas later on.

Hopkins evokes a strong sense of dynamism, where there is a brilliant use of verbs such as “sway”, “bound” and “fastened”. Significantly, these verbs are also used alliteratively, again showing awareness of the poem's syntax. In Hopkins there is as much awareness of syntax as there is content.

His insight, in recognising the dual nature of reality, is contained in the line “lord of living and dead”, understanding that to be lord of life, one has to be lord of death. Hopkins, as far as I'm concerned, intuited the world accurately.

Presciently, there is a strong expression of physical embodiment in this passage, “thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh”. In a similar way that God constructs Hopkins the poet, Hopkins constructs his poetry. Hopkins understands that all insight and life, and consequently his poetry, begins with the embodied person, not with some abstract notion of transcendence. Around the same time Friedrich Nietzsche also understood this

Hopkins talks about almost being “unmade”, maybe referring to a period of life where he lost sight of the divine, a period of darkness and stagnation. Hopkins is then “touched afresh” by his maker, his insight returning. “Over again” is another frequent example of dynamism in Hopkins, implying a cyclical motion of reaching an end and returning to a beginning. Hopkins reached the end of his dark period and returned to clarity, again aligned with the universe. So begins his poem.

The Realisation of Aeneas During the Fall of Troy

..."Parting words. She vanished into the dense night.

And now they all come looming up before me,

terrible shapes, the deadly foes of Troy,

the gods gigantic in power..."

What struck me when reading the Aeneid, after reading the Iliad, was the view taken on the gods. The Aeneid represents the next and more subtle development of the Greek epic poems. In the Iliad the Trojan war was not between Greeks and Trojans, but between the feuding gods. This doesn't, however, diminish the power and resonance of the human characters, and it must be admitted that they do have agency. For example, the Greek warrior Diomedes, through sheer will, or one could say obstinacy, wounds the goddess Aphrodite, implying that the gods are not infallible. But not once in the Iliad, or the Odyssey, do we see a clear reflection on the fact that the gods are manipulating the show.

Beautifully rendered, the fall of troy is an incredibly powerful, dynamic and intense scene of the Aeneid; we see the highest degree of ruthlessnes that can be inflicted on another group of people; we see a great city, brimming with history and emotion, blaze and crumble; we see a king and his son mercilessly slaughtered in front of their family. In terms of dynamism and power, the description of the action is reminiscent of Achilles' careering, rampaging onslaught against the Trojans in the Iliad.

To me, the climax of the action in the fall of Troy, and the ultimate realisation that emerges from the scene, and perhaps the whole book, is found in this passage:

“Parting words. She vanished into the dense night.

And now they all come looming up before me,

terrible shapes, the deadly foes of Troy,

the gods gigantic in power"

I think Goethe also recognises the power of this passage, who executes his own version of it in Faust part 2: 

"Fleeing, I saw through the smoke and heat

And the blaze of the writhing flames

Gods approaching in hideous rage:

Figures of wonder striding

Giant-tall through the darksome

Reek that swirled in the fire's glow" (Goethe, 130, David Luke translation)

From his mother, Aeneas realises with great force and clarity that it is the gods who are behind the carnage of Troy's fall; thus the responsibility of the carnage falls squarely on them, the shadowy figures emerging from the smoke. Questions worth reflecting on, what do these shadowy figures represent? And how does their description indicate this?

"Whirling words—I was swept away by fury now

when all of a sudden there my loving mother stood

before my eyes, but I had never seen her so clearly,

her pure radiance shining down upon me through the night,

the goddess in all her glory, just as the gods behold

her build, her awesome beauty. Grasping my hand

she held me back, adding this from her rose-red lips:

‘My son, what grief could incite such blazing anger?

Why such fury? And the love you bore me once,

where has it all gone? Why don’t you look first

where you left your father, Anchises, spent with age?

Do your wife, Creusa, and son Ascanius still survive?

The Greek battalions are swarming round them all,

and if my love had never rushed to the rescue,

flames would have swept them off by now or

enemy sword-blades would have drained their blood.

 "Think: it’s not that beauty, Helen, you should hate,

not even Paris, the man that you should blame, no,

it’s the gods, the ruthless gods who are tearing down

the wealth of Troy, her toppling crown of towers.

Look around. I’ll sweep it all away, the mist

so murky, dark, and swirling around you now,

it clouds your vision, dulls your mortal sight.

You are my son. Never fear my orders.

Never refuse to bow to my commands.

“‘There,

yes, where you see the massive ramparts shattered,

blocks wrenched from blocks, the billowing smoke and ash—

it’s Neptune himself, prising loose with his giant trident

the foundation-stones of Troy, he’s making the walls quake,

ripping up the entire city by her roots.

“‘There’s Juno,

cruelest in fury, first to commandeer the Scaean Gates,

sword at her hip and mustering comrades, shock troops

streaming out of the ships.

“‘Already up on the heights—

turn around and look—there’s Pallas holding the fortress,

flaming out of the clouds, her savage Gorgon glaring.

Even Father himself, he’s filling the Greek hearts

with courage, stamina—Jove in person spurring the gods

to fight the Trojan armies!

“‘Run for your life, my son.

Put an end to your labors. I will never leave you,

I will set you safe at your father’s door.’

“Parting words. She vanished into the dense night.

And now they all come looming up before me,

terrible shapes, the deadly foes of Troy,

the gods gigantic in power" (Virgil, 93-94, Fagles translation)

All the Stars Shine Down Through Human Eyes

"Blake, on the world alighting, holds the skies,
And all the stars shine down through human eyes" (Vernon Watkins)