A famous psychiatrist and theoretician recently said that the older he gets, the less he understands his own theories. To put it existentially, theory is completely outside the reach of those who are busy catching up with their own lives. To put it cynically, it’s like the intelligibility of theory comes from the unintelligibility of death.

If getting old implies a series of false and genuine changes in approaching world matters, then admitting the closing of all theoretic horizons must be one of the truest. Old people operate a simple and dramatic selection between that which is existentially certain (a sunny morning, a beautiful tune, the lack of pain) and that which can be theoretically proven possible. At last, living well is proving nothing.

PS: One of the best Air songs: “Photograph”. It provides a meaning to electro-pop. Eventually.

How many chances do you have to lose and deplore before understanding that those chances weren’t yours at all??

No one has that much flair, self-awareness and self-distance to play the God with himself. You can easily be your own executor, but never your own personal Jesus, as poor Dave (thank God he recovered!) sang in the 90′s.

There’s no such thing like “intensification” of luck by embracing every occurrence that looks like a chance to you. If you’re a pathological chance-seeker, one day you’ll find yourself in the embarrassing position of losing to a “loser”; that is, to one of those people that never considered a taken chance to be a solution for life; to one of those people who think of nothing of the kind, still, they manage to live well with the chances that happened to be imposed on them.

If you’re waiting for your chance to come across, make sure you can make a distinction between different possible symptoms and outcomes of your long-waited opportunity. They must be nowhere near your expectations. Far below or far beyond.

PS: I don’t know about you, but I for one love Mick Karn. “Saday, Maday” from Bestial Cluster (1993) is (and it has always been) a favourite. I couldn’t find an YouTube link, but this preview is relevant enough. Try it with Earl Grey mixed with Bacardi rum. Just perfect for a cold, rainy day of June when cosy December  thoughts (instead of Midsummer thoughts) start to pop up in your mind…

Very quickly, as I child, I understood that prudence is the stepsister of vigilance, the cheaper sister of discretion, the bigger sister of timidity, and the twin sister of hostile suspicion.

I knew, for what concerned myself, that my friends from kindergarten would never tolerate “a prudent behavior” and would call it instead “chicken” and “girl” and “wussy” and “baby”. Later on, in school, they’d called it “pussy” and “bitter” and  “mouse” and “aloof”.

However, these days they call it “thoughtful”. The difference is vast.  And the meaning of this difference, immeasurable. The hiatus between “chicken” and “thoughtful” never gives rise to questions in an adult mind. Who would ever suspect a prudent man of lacking wisdom? Who’d call a suspicious man a bloody coward?  Who’d be, after all, circumspect about circumspection? If one, only one of these questions would pop up in someone’s mind, the whole world could collapse in chaos and confusion.  For practical reasons, we just can’t afford to seek proof for a prudence claim. We just can’t afford to acknowledge that a prudent person is often nothing more than a labyrinth of interrupted reactions, distrust, vanity, obscure retreats, secret ambitions,  intimidation, and self-unconfidence.

Exercising good judgment is an engaging and uncomfortable act of courage. If prudence is a part of it, that’s only because any proper adjustment to reality implies a reflexive distance taken from daily harassing circumstances. Good judgment is sometimes nowhere near prudence. It is instead all about “fighting cheerfully” (as Shakespeare put it), here and now, with outrageous incidents and  mindblowing temptations. If you’re incurably prudent, you’re not well. You’re in a secret battle with reality. And you’ll never win.

PS: I bought some old music scores from eBay. All for the great design of the covers. Forgotten  silly hits like “I Love The Sunshine Of Your Smile” from 1951, and, above all, April Stevens‘ “Teach Me Tiger” from 1959!!! One has to hang it on one’s wall in spite of everything! Do you remember the song?

Slowly, as we grow old, we fall into a state of self-indulgence that, ironically, allows us to become…someone else. That is, we become our parents. Their bodies wrapped in our clothes, their faces mirrored in our mirrors in the middle of the night when, suddenly unable to get back to sleep, we catch a glimpse of ourselves in a silent, faintly lighted bathroom.

When younger, we revolted against the parent in us. We wanted him, or her, out. We worked laboriously against every single sign of filiation, we were obsessed with the mistakes they’ve made, and we nullified every trace they left in our lifestyle. It was us or them. Cynically put, as young people, we had nothing in particular to do, than trying to be ourselves. Which is (to stay cynical), a really devouring job, something to be, rather sooner than later, given up.

As we grow old, we start hearing our parents’ thoughts making a point in our heads; and our parents’ laughter laughing with our mouths when someone makes a sweet old joke on TV. The obscure calling of the blood. First we ignore it, then we admit it, and finally, we take comfort in it.

We fall back into our parents’  roles with the fervid  voluptuousness of an  old primadonna  still remembering the librettos that made her famous. We become no more than what we’ve been before we got used with being us. I wish this was no more than a pathetic play on words.

PS: I know I linked to this song before, but I can’t help it. It’s the recent Antony and the Johnsons at their best: “One Dove” from The Crying Light.

PS2: Curious and weak as you know me, I surrendered to Twitter. I am still reluctant in recommending it to non-nerds, but I have to say it looks a lot better from the inside than from the outside. Theoretically, it’s an efficient tool for spreading the word (140 words to be more precise); practically, if you’re not twittering wisely, you get a lot less.