Musings of an eighteen year old Gentleman

I thought I might post online one of the first things I ever wrote, of a self-consciously 'creative' nature at least. Something that also a) wasn't intended for a teacher or any other authority and b) had a certain value in my eyes and was felt by me to have expressed myself well.

It was written to my good friend Adam Lidster sometime in late 1989, shortly after I turned 18. I believe he had earlier voiced sentiments in the direction of the imperatives of carpe diem - to seize the day that is, and not let life slide by.

Actually one line of his I still recall...

"We must clutch onto the things we want to keep before the years swallow them." Simple yet appealing, like his music, which he regrettably has now forsaken.

Anyway, this is what I wrote.


"Dear Adam,

You refer to our standing at the brink of life, with the key unused in our inhibited palm – too true. And who will thank us, who listen, who care, who understand when aged sixty or whatever we consider the lost opportunities, when we contemplate the immense harm our passivity has wrought.

"The strength of a nation lies in its youth."

As I see things it's a question of spirit. Unfettered by the hassles of life : illness, conventions, duty, family, age, personal inhibitions, systemised employment, selfishness and lack of honesty and frankness the human spirit would climb to unbelievable heights, creating actualisations of our most potent visions of utopia. For would you agree, can you imagine the impossible?

Given what we've got and within our asset's scope we can create the perfect world for a perfect living. A human's desires are simple: Food, shelter, drink, love and fraternity, stimulation of personal interests (reading, sport, whatever).

Everyone would do the job they were best at and this would be what they wanted to do. All would ensure that other people found the perfect post. None would be alone.

Mysteriousness, darkness, morbidity, selfishness, anxiety would vanish since discussion would be radically open.

Nobody will harbour secrets, yet privacy will be retained and purified. All will recognise that life is "shared". Nothing will stand to cause dread in the hearts of men.

There would be no hunger since people would appreciate the gorgeous nourishment and authentic satisfaction derived from sustaining others.

People will realise that when your neighbour suffers, you suffer, since existence is a shared phenomenon.

Individuality would flourish since nobody would have to be anything other than what they are. The diversity that will grow would be authentic and therefore spectacular.

Such a world, the real object of our hearts desire, would reflect and embody our innate potentialities. This is the world that haunts me.

We consider ourselves "individuals", not part of the whole. We don't care about those many whose love has not invaded our hearts (in fact, for convenience sake, we'd quite like to abolish love and replace it with "mutual respect"). We hate those we don't understand (they disturb the placidity of our ego's). We claim as much of the world for our own as we possibly can. We scoff at profundity and debase life. We are small minded and hopelessly self-conscious.

You think you're sick. I know I'm mad but in ways one has to be.

Why do we remain cluttered old wrecks begging the eternal footman to strike us down a little sooner and spare us this pain?

Jonny"


I am sure I must have included in the original letter some other kind of everyday references to our life at the time..to his working as a shelf stacker at Tesco's, for example, and to my ongoing efforts to orientate my head around the facts that my Family had moved from Cambridge to deepest darkest Suffolk, and that I had to find things to do before I left for my South American trip.

As you may note I was a bit of a utopian in my youth. I remain one today, though I ally this now to a calm, cautious scepticism towards any kind of distemperate, unbalanced, naievely optimistic (or else despair-addled) activism that might conceivably repeat the dreadful errors played out by the utopianisms of Lenin, Hitler and Mao (for example). This, in effect, makes me a conservative revolutionary, I suppose. That oxymoronic paradox consoles me that whilst I may have my head in the clouds, my feet remain in touch with the earth, mingling with the ants.