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This is a piece that toyed with writing about a month ago but initially decided against. This subject has been tasking me more than it should do and has been doing so for nine months.
Forty-nine years ago this month, I made a new friend. He joined our school at the beginning of the second form, and within days we were firm friends. Within weeks we were thick as thieves, having similar interests, largely shared musical tastes and an almost identical sense of humour. We both toyed with playing guitar. He stuck with it, I didn’t (I had no aptitude whatsoever, and although I could tell a string was out of tune, to this day I couldn’t tell you if it was flat, or too sharp).
For the purpose of this piece, I shall refer to my erstwhile friend as Alceste. One should not necessarily identify the guilty, and it is an appropriate name.
( Long ramble for context here )
This then, is Alceste:
The over-imagining underachiever, a man of little ambition, dim understanding, ordinary intellect and irrefutable opinion; a monumental ego built on the shifting sands of his own self-loathing, a reflection of his own misanthropy. A negligent and casual racist who sees remonstration as only arrogance and condescension.
Alceste is a man who avoids responsibility and discord by closing his eyes and ears and pulling back his horizons to the inside of his own four walls and the society of a decreasing number of unchallenging acolytes. He is slowly becoming dehumanised through isolation and resentment; a Kantian combination of dislike and ill-will. A born-again Christian, whose god merely rubberstamps Alceste’s own judgements.
His one true love is in playing guitar and here he has persevered, and to my ears he has attained a competent adequacy, which in fairness I believe he recognises as he has retreated in the main to a comfortable twelve bars and three chords.
He is both dichotomy and paradox: the man who rages against the dying of the light even as he snuffs out the candles.
I mourn the friend I lost some forty-odd years ago and resent the pitiable reflection that had me fooled for so much longer.
Forty-nine years ago this month, I made a new friend. He joined our school at the beginning of the second form, and within days we were firm friends. Within weeks we were thick as thieves, having similar interests, largely shared musical tastes and an almost identical sense of humour. We both toyed with playing guitar. He stuck with it, I didn’t (I had no aptitude whatsoever, and although I could tell a string was out of tune, to this day I couldn’t tell you if it was flat, or too sharp).
For the purpose of this piece, I shall refer to my erstwhile friend as Alceste. One should not necessarily identify the guilty, and it is an appropriate name.
( Long ramble for context here )
This then, is Alceste:
The over-imagining underachiever, a man of little ambition, dim understanding, ordinary intellect and irrefutable opinion; a monumental ego built on the shifting sands of his own self-loathing, a reflection of his own misanthropy. A negligent and casual racist who sees remonstration as only arrogance and condescension.
Alceste is a man who avoids responsibility and discord by closing his eyes and ears and pulling back his horizons to the inside of his own four walls and the society of a decreasing number of unchallenging acolytes. He is slowly becoming dehumanised through isolation and resentment; a Kantian combination of dislike and ill-will. A born-again Christian, whose god merely rubberstamps Alceste’s own judgements.
His one true love is in playing guitar and here he has persevered, and to my ears he has attained a competent adequacy, which in fairness I believe he recognises as he has retreated in the main to a comfortable twelve bars and three chords.
He is both dichotomy and paradox: the man who rages against the dying of the light even as he snuffs out the candles.
I mourn the friend I lost some forty-odd years ago and resent the pitiable reflection that had me fooled for so much longer.
