Insight and Irony

Picked up a great fauxtation the other day from Jamie McDonald, eminent coach and all-round lovely guy:

'Ironic, isn't it, that we can say we're afraid of our emotions?

Jamie is, I think it's fair to say, very sharp.

Withnail and... what?

I've just listened to The Reunion on Radio 4, bringing together some of the principal creators of the great, great film Withnail and I. Two things jumped out at me and really made me think, especially about the 60s. How British was the 60s? How English?

Richard E Grant spoke of Englishness and "the nobility of failure and permission to fail". Well, I loved that of course. Failure is very rich fertiliser for learning and the birth of new ideas. The British do culturally embrace failure, and I realised it's not about the vain, empty pompous gesture and the stiff upper lip, but about

Richard Griffiths (Uncle Monty in the film) pointed to Danny the dealer's great line at the end of the film - "We are 91 days from the end of the greatest decade in history, and there's going to be a lot of refugees." I'd never considered the great significance of the line before, but it's there in spades. There's been a decade of socio-cultural revolution; people have, up to this point, been able to know that they're actually IN the Sixties, the fabulous Swinging Sixties. By the same token, very soon they're going to be not in it any more. Where next for the revolutionaries, and for those who were displaced by the revolution? It's interesting that the very character who utters the line resurfaces in Wayne's World 2 to answer his own implicit question. (He by now is the world's greatest rock n roll tour manager.)

Lego Death Star animation...

If you've seen this already, you'll know it bears watching over and over; if not, you have to watch it. Eddie Izzard's sparklingly spontaneous and surreal monologuing meet Star Wars Lego on U-Tube. Not much more to say really...

Hurrah for ignorance!

I've had to admit to myself that I really don't know much - and actually, that's OK. In fact, it's better than that: there's something very liberating about being able to say 'I don't know,' and being happy and accepting and at peace about it. It's empowering - it paves the way for listening and learning. To quote Frank Herbert, 'If you understand, then you cannot learn. By saying you understand, you construct barriers.'

We're often called upon to have an opinion. 'How do you feel about...?' 'What's your view of...?' Politics, religion, the news, women, men, sport - the list is endless. Well, we know what we think, don't we? Nothing wrong with a healthy exchange of views. Actually what I notice myself doing sometimes is saying what I thought about it last time I thought about it. That could have been six years ago, but at least it gives me something coherent to say. After all, formulating opinions out loud would just look stupid, wouldn't it? Heaven forfend we might have an opinion that's wrong, or looks ill-considered.

So the danger is that the need to know stuff and to have an opinion actually prevents you thinking about things. Now that's REALLY silly. Ignorance is plainly a much higher state of being.