Saturday, 5 November 2011

Consequences and a Bit of Shostakovich.

Once a thing is done it becomes a memory, and memories are dead things. It often strikes me, therefore, that although we send ripples out sideways in the form of various sorts of consequence, all we leave behind us as we go through life is a trail of dead things. Our past has no substance, so it might be argued that it doesn’t exist. And it isn’t difficult to move a stage further and suspect that life is simply a matter of a bit of fragmented consciousness moving through a pre-planned set of experiences. It amounts to a hell of a planning job, doesn’t it? So who does the planning?

If the Bible is to be believed, it obviously can’t be God as most people perceive the definition. So who? I could offer my own answer to this question, but the problem with answers at this level is that they only lead to more questions. Why bother? Might as well just keep moving and see what else we planned all those years ago. And maybe ‘planned’ is the wrong word anyway. Maybe – and this seems more likely to me – it was more a matter of choosing a start point that would link into a known pattern of cause and effect. I said I wasn’t going to bother, didn’t I? OK. Shutting up.

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I’ve had a bit of Shostakovich going through my head all day today. I’ve been whistling it over and over. If it’s driving me up the wall, imagine what effect it would be having on my partner if I lived with somebody. Could be worse, I suppose: Helen’s dad is a vicar who whistles hymns.

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