In Scotland, there is a not insignificant sheep population. 7,131,000 sheep, according to some random internet source, which would make one sheep per person. This is admittedly somewhat less than Australia's equally dubiously estimated five sheep per capita. The difference, though, is that in Scotland, I seem to see the sheep all the time. They line the roads to Stirling, and roam the hills of Skye. I literally can't walk to the supermarket without passing a small flock (well okay, literally I could if I changed my route).
"But," I hear you say, "sheep are awesome. What's the problem?"
Well, I was getting to that. The problem is that whenever I see a bunch of sheep I instantly get the Robert Wyatt song Heaps Of Sheeps stuck in my head. I barely even noticed this song hiding in my library a month ago, but now rarely a day goes by that I don't think of it.
Now, of course, it must be said that it is a pretty great song! Dreamy and atmospheric... Lyrically amusing... Catchy, but in a Robert Wyatt kind of way. Which seems to be a good thing. So yeah, sure, it's fine. My only worry would be... If this continues. If six months from now I'm still humming Heaps Of Sheeps, secluding myself in some abandoned Folly, hiding from civilised society and the prying eyes of the ubiquitous sheep, clad only in a blanket ironically constructed from the very wool of the very sheeps that haunt me still. I would find myself clutching to my one remaining hope, that someday I may be free from the harrowing influence of the demon sheep, as Global Warming will have shrunk them down to nothing.
Of course, all that is pretty unlikely to happen. So I don't really know why I brought it up.
So I went to the Isle of Skye with the St. Andrews Philosophy Reading Party last weekend, and it was excellent. Unfortunately, I don't feel I have much to say about it, basically because a certain James has already said it all, with greater vividity and thoroughness than I suspect I could muster (and that may be the first time in my life I have spelt "thoroughness" correctly without assistance).
Still, I suppose I could just point out the two major points of departure between our experiences!
1) I went there and back via the minibus, rather than in Simon's car. This was probably a less exciting affair, as my inability to go for extended periods of time without filling my ears with music, and my tendency to get carsick if I tried to turn around to converse with the Americans behind me, combined to incline me towards listening to my iPod much of the way up. Of course, that was kinda awesome, because the music was great. Just felt a taaad anti-social.
2) Sadly I did not join Konrad's acclaimed car trip to Talisker Rock, as I was heartily losing a game of Munchkin when it began (fun fact for Munchkin aficionados!: during this game I reached level 7, but then lost to the Wright Brothers. Back to level 1! Awesome). I did, however, later join a six-person stroll to said rock, and encountered the returning Konrad-Car en route, plus one rambling Skorupski. It was bracing, but involved significantly fewer seaweed-swords. Took about 4 hours there and back.
All in all, an excellent time! Rocks, waters, foods, conversations, sheeps... All one could possibly want from life. Or five things one could possibly want from life, anyway.
So, I went to Glasgow to see Jonathan Richman. It was pretty good, the whole thing!
I took a train up from St. Andrews, which was cheaper than I expected (about £16 pound return), took about as long as I expected (around 3 hours each way, with a quick change at Edinburgh), and about as pleasant as I might've hoped (listened to musics the whole way, looked out the windows).
Glasgow was... Glaswegian. You know, city, pretty, nice. I visited Forbidden Planet and bought myself some more Scott Pilgrim for whatever reason. I had an excellent Goats Cheese Salad. I checked out some galleries and museums. Continued to be uninterested by classic art, continued to be excited by modern art, continued to... Be in transport museums for some reason.
Speaking of classic art... I saw Jonathan Richman! This is a valid segue, as he sang a song about Vermeer, and another about Pablo Picasso.
I suspect no one I know who is reading this blog listens to Jonathan Richman, possibly despite my occasional prompting, so here's an intro: He's an American musician from Boston, who made an excellent, classic Punk-inspiring album in the early 70s, then decided he didn't want to do that any more, and started making naively innocent, childlike music, then deeply affected sentimental singer/songwriter type stuff. For lack of a better description. That wasn't a great introduction. Anyway, the point is that he has this certain nerdy, sensitive, innocent persona, and a few metric tons of sincerity to back it up. He also has a certain history, with a catalogue of hits that are stylistically very disjoint from his current way of writing and performing music. Luckily, I think most in the room (which was nicely packed) were very familiar with all his work, and there to see the modern Richman, not the early 70s one. Incidentally, the average age would've been... Early 40s probably. I have such old-man tastes.
Anyway, the performance was great. Purely joyful. Never have I seen a performer smile so damn much while on stage. Never have I heard so much handclapping and singing from an audience. The band consisted of him on guitar, plus one Tommy Larkins on drums. Occasionally he would put down the guitar to pick up a cowbell, or just dance awkwardly. Or to strike this pose:
Yes, that is a terrible pose, but he did it, like, 4 times, and it always got a bit of a cheer. By which I mean Audience Going Wild. He was very capable of creating such a reaction. It's something to do with Absurdly Endearing Sincerity, I think. Also, he had a few techniques like... Well, the mid-song banter was always enjoyable (like in the middle of Egyptian Reggae, "Who would've thought this would be a hit record?"). And he has a way of encoring individual songs, which I've never really seen before. As in, when a song gets a particularly good reaction, he picks up his guitar again and runs through the chorus a few more times. Which tends to just create an even bigger reaction. He did it twice with No One Was Like Vermeer, and gave the delightful impression that he would never finish with his last song of the night, My Baby Love Love Loves Me, which had most of the audience singing along (fairly incompetently, which really didn't matter).
Anyway, in case anyone cares, or at least for my own memoryification, here's what he played!: 1) I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar (An insanely good choice of opening, as it immediately encourages both singing and dancing) 2) Pablo Picasso (With a great spanish guitar kind of sound, which made it extremely dissimilar to the punky original) 3) Springtime In New York 4) Keith Richards (New. Excellent.) 5) Egyptian Reggae 6) When I Dance 7) Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild 8) Girlfriend 9) Time Has Gone By So Fast 10) Let Her Go Into The Darkness (My least favourite of the night, for whatever reason) 11) Mr. Sorrow (?) (New? Pretty good!) 12) Old World (This is pretty interesting, because it's on both his first, and his latest albums. Back then he says he "stills loves the Old World," these days he wants to "say goodbye to the Old World." Time seems to have made him less nostalgic.) 13) Stultified (?) (New. Rather good!) 14) No One Was Like Vemeer (Best song of the night, for my money) 15) Le Printemps Des Amoureux Est Venu (So French.) 16) Es Como El Pan (An excellent song, even if it's twelve times too Spanish for me to understand.) 17) My Affected Accent (New? Look, no online video is going to capture how great this concert or this song was, but I'm going to embed one below anyway) 18) This Romance Will Be Different For Me 19) My Baby Love Love Loves Me
So yes, this was one of the greatest concerts I've been to, and well worth excellent-anyway trip to Glasgow. It's made me somewhat more optimistic about the idea of travelling to another city in order to see a gig now and then, even though it was quite a bit more expensive than, you know, just living in the same city. Maybe it'll be easier going to Edinburgh, but they don't seem to get quite so many good shows there, alas. Here is some kind of video!:
As may be clear to people who know me well, or long time readers of this blog, I'm rather fond of the philosopher Derek Parfit. His book, Reasons & Persons, is one of the greatest I have read. Despite this, I have for a long time put off reading the draft manuscript of his (maybe) soon-to-be-released book that has been floating around the internet for so long, originally titled Climbing The Mountain, now apparently called On What Matters. I usually figure I might wait until it comes out in book form, thinking that I'd prefer not to read something of such length online, and that it is, after all, still a draft. But after reading a paper in which this draft manuscript is actually cited, I thought I might check it out again. I downloaded the latest draft (approximately 600 pages long), and read the introduction.
This is how it begins:
While describing how he came to write his great, drab book The Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick remarks that he had ‘two masters’: Kant and Mill. My two masters are Sidgwick and Kant.
I have already fallen in love with this book. Though it is early days yet (Parfit explains that he came to Kant in the 90s, well after having written Reasons & Persons), I am inclined to say that my two masters, at this point, are Sidgwick and Parfit. He goes on to discuss his two masters for the rest of the introduction. His quote-heavy musings on Sidgwick echo my own; the man is a brilliantly clear, careful writer, always precise, rarely wrong, frequently dry. And, of course, to the right kind of temperament, very inspiring.
His thoughts on Kant, of course, struck me somewhat harder. As you may also know, I am not a man who is fond of Kant. I can't say I've read much of his work, I probably haven't even got through The Groundwork Of The Metaphysics Of Morals (I actually can't remember). Parfit claims "It is Kant who made really bad writing philosophically acceptable." (I have recently heard it claimed, by a German, that he is actually easier to read in the English translations). Parfit portrays Kant as a really angry man, who is at his best when he calms the hell down. He shows Kant to be a self-contradictory, frequently incorrect extremist, redeemed by the occasional profound truth.
To be honest, I am not overwhelmingly convinced to make the leap into Kant's oeuvre just yet. In coming to St. Andrews, I had the option of taking a course on Kant, but quickly opted for Philosophers Of The Scottish Enlightenment instead. However, I have again heard the familiar claim that there is something a bit odd in reaching this point in a Philosophical career without having taken a course about Kant. Perhaps I shall take solice in the thought that Parfit himself came to Kant only rather late in his Philosophical career, and after producing at least one masterwork. He writes: "...unlike some [of] Kant’s other readers, I never hated Kant, and I have now made my peace with him." I am not sure this could ever be true of me: I think I may just already hate Kant.
