A Volcanic Memory

I took this picture at the Natural History Museum, because it illustrates this post's topic. It is, of course, lava, as it says on the label. I am a few days late to commemorate the anniversary, but Facebook reminded me that six years ago (on the 15th of April), I was stranded in Montreal because of the volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajökull. It is an Icelandic volcano, hence the mouthful. This is what I said on Facebook that day: "I am stranded in Montreal because of a volcanic eruption in Iceland, The existentialists were right: life is absurd." Now, looking back, I find the event just as absurd. And what I said then deserves to be a great unknown line.

Bedtime Procrastination (a new Tale of Mere Existence)

I don't watch these little animated gems as often as I used to, but I just saw this recent episode of Tales of Mere Existence. This is very exaggerated and I am not nearly that bad, partially because even I understand that I need to get as much sleep as I can, but I have to admit: I do spend far too much time on YouTube, especially before bedtime. Even tonight, looking for some music to upload here. Instead, I watched this video. So here it is. You know you have been there before. Tell me I am not alone.

The wisdom of Lester Freamon

I did not blog about The Wire for a long while, not since August 2013. Rewatching it recently, I thought this was long overdue. This time, I have decided to quote veteran cop, natural police and investigator extraordinaire Lester Freamon, masterfully interpreted by Clarke Peters. Not only is he probably the smartest character of the show, at least the smartest on the side of the law, he is also the wisest. He says things that are pure existentialist wisdom. This one, for instance, which you can read on the picture. You can watch the scene on YouTube here (I cannot embed it unfortunately). Something worth following.

A new great unknown line

From my youngest brother. A warning: it may be considered offensive. But what a great Memento Mori:

"Life is a bitch, and then you die. But I'm alive. So life is my bitch."

Insomnia (Tales of Mere Existence)

Here is another Tale of Mere Existence by Lev Yilmaz. I blogged about them recently, thought I would wait a bit until I re-upload a video of one on my blog, then recently I have been struggling to sleep and this illustrates perfectly the suffering and state of mind of an insomniac. So I thought about sharing it with my readership.

Working Life (Tales of Mere Existence)

I have discovered a few months ago the Tales of Mere Existence by Levni Yilmaz. They are short (in)animated films, basically static cartoons, which talk of, well, life and existence. They are really fun to watch, if you love caustic humour. I was thinking about uploading one here, but was not sure which one, then chose "Various Jobs I could Get". Because it looks like my own working life, past and present. I applied to many similar jobs, I even had a few very similar to those he describes. I also got offered a job as a video-game tester, which I turned down because there were better opportunities around the corner, including the job I have now. And the state of mind of the narrator is often akin to mine, and I suspect many, many, many workers. So here it is.

A memory about Simone de Beauvoir

I was reminded by today's Google Doodle that this was the birthday of Simone de Beauvoir. I love existentialist writers, I am pretty much an existentialist philosophically and de Beauvoir's Deuxième Sexe was one of my mother's favourite non-fiction books for a time (it may still be now). But I have a different memory of the work of Simone de Beauvoir: for me, she was and will remain mainly the author of Le Sang des autres. I gave a course on this novel when I was teaching literature in Liverpool. It was maybe my most popular class, it was probably my best. I miss teaching literature, and today reminded me of this. So joyeux anniversaire Simone. You gave me some of my best working days.

Pink Floyd and Sisyphus

I am feeling quite tired these days, trying to deal with a jet lag that never really seems to dwindle and at work I feel a bit like Sisyphus (never a good sign).And well, for some obvious reason I had this Pink Floyd Song in the head when I got home. I had noticed it before: it does have allusion to the myth of Sisyphus, what with the rabbit catching the sun and digging holes repeatedly. With the other existentialist themes oftene xpressed in Pink Floyd's music and this piece in particular, I wonder if they read Camus or if it is just a coincidence. Anyway, this is my second post this week about a Memento Mori. A more profound, poetic one this time. A more beautiful too. Unlike me, Pink Floyd is ageless and immortal.

Sur le plancher des vaches...

Alors que l'on s'apprêtait à quitter Montréal avec regret, des circonstances de force majeure nous forcent à rester un peu plus longtemps ici. Nous prolongeons donc nos vacances, même si nous ne sommes plus dans un esprit vacancier. C'est ce qui me frustre le plus dans toute cette aventure (enfin, "aventure", elle se caractérise par une certaine inaction): lorsqu'on a l'esprit à retourner au quotidien, lorsqu'on se résigne à la fin de nos vacances, le congé prolongé n'a rien de plaisant.

Tout de même, se faire annuler un vol à cause d'un volcan, ça donne le vertige. Toute frustration mise à part, il faut admettre qu'on se sent bien impuissant face à pareille manifestation de l'absurdité des forces naturelles. Quand j'aurai digéré le contretemps, j'essaierai de pondre un billet existentialiste là dessus.

Petite anecdote en guise de conclusion: mon petit frère a déjà eu une fascination toute geekesque pour les volcans.

Existence and meaning

A foreword: do feel free to comment on this one, I have the anxious feeling that I am blogging alone and that I am turning schizophrenic. And feel free to disagree with me, I love a good, heated debate when it is not trolling.

Since the controversy over the atheist bus (I am modestly taking part in it over the Internet), I have been thinking a lot about faith and my current (and most likely permanent) state of Godlessness (does that word exist?). I am trying to remember when I exactly lost my faith. It was a gradual process, that started with teenage and maybe ended before it. I stopped going to confession at 11 or 12, then in the anachronistic Catholic school system Québec had at the time, I just couldn't stand the nauseating preaching that the religion teachers and the animateurs de pastorale were giving us, telling us that God was love, not to go away from the Light of Jesus, that a bunch of people in Croatia or wherever saw the Virgin Mary (did she look like Olivia Hussey?), and so on and so forth. That was marshmallow version of brainwash, but it didn't work too well. I still believed in God, except that I was starting to think he also loved idiots and didn't mind them as his messengers. The only class I was thrown out from was a religion class, and I still don't regret it. I did have a few good religion teachers, one of them in my last year of high school, he was a nice guy and intelligent enough, so I sort of kept my faith for a little while. Then well, I slowly discovered that I had stopped praying, stopped talking to God, and that all I could hear was the echo of my own consciousness.

I don't like that expression "loosing faith", it sounds as if I lost something precious. I think now that faith is something I could have easily done without way before I "lost" it. I remember that I started saying "I don't believe in God" regularly in 1999, when I started living in England. First to two Jehovah's Witnesses that were really winding me up, then to a group of students, among which I was going to make many friends. A Muslim in the group said "you must be a very sad person". The year after, a Greek housemate told me the very same thing. So the faithful do think that life is incomplete without God. It is a false assumption. Hoping for an afterlife, since there is no proof of its existence, is for me a false hope. I do think, like the French existentialists, that life is meaningless unless one gives it meaning through actions. At heart, I am an existentialist. And I find it more rewarding than worship and religious obedience. There is also the question of moral: believers think that heathens like myself don't have any, or have a lesser one. Something that made perfect sense when I was a good little Catholic boy, but that I find ridiculous now, and actually slightly offensive. It implies that a human being lacks the judgment to see what is right or wrong and needs the guidance of a supreme being. But faith is often used by the faithful in lieu of moral, it makes moral subservient to it. One can measure what is good or bad on the effect it has on this world and on fellow human beings, the rest is unverifiable and ultimately pointless.

Quoting Stanley Kubrick

For no specific reason, here's a quote from Stanley Kubrick (Playboy interview by Erick Nordern, September 1968):

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

I always loved that statement, which is very existentialist (I always thought that many of Kubrick movies had existentialist themes). I will try to apply this in my own life, as it is at the moment pretty uneventful. I have no difficulty to understand and agree with Kubrick on this one: the universe is epically indifferent.