I find myself sitting alone in my living room on a Friday night having just drank 2 cans of lager in about 10 minutes, not cool you may say...but I’ve gotten to thinking a bit and anyone who has ever read these blogs (or spoken to me, ever) probably knows what that means. I thought I might put that fact to good use and get finger tips to keys in an outburst of meandering ‘think bits’ just to try and make life a little more coherent, for myself if nobody else.
Anyway. While eating my din dins and necking those beers I sit in silence with a book by A.C Grayling about the history of the Enlightenment. I’m not pretentious, trying to be clever (I’m not) or a pompous twurp, I just found it in a charity shop in Notting Hill. I inevitably relate this evenings readings to myself, I am human after all and humans do this an awful lot.
(Please bear with me, this will eventually relate to C90’s, sort of)
I’ve not finished the book but so far Grayling has mostly been giving an historical account of the oppression of ideas, science, creativity and human flourishing exercised by absolute monarchy and its relationship with organised religion, mostly Christianity: “For religious orthodoxy attempts, in the interests of holy truth, to constrain not just enquiry and expression but thought itself”. As he approaches the time of the enlightenment however, he begins to speak about an exciting time of the movement towards the freedom that many of us in ‘the west’ currently enjoy (or take for granted). My mind is humming with the excitement that must have been felt by the intellectuals engaged in this project and I try to realise just how fortunate I am to be in the position I am. I will be in no way dubbed a heretic, burned at the stake or both for disagreeing with the values of a monarch or poxy government, in fact I can barely remember who the pissing monarch is. My degree of freedom is unprecedented, more than I could possibly hope to understand so be thankful for that friends, not for the ready meal with the 20p yellow sticker on it or a free pint.
The book features a quote from Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay ‘What is Enlightenment?’:
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Saper Aude! [dare to know] - “Have courage to use your own understanding!” - that is the motto of enlightenment.”
Powerful stuff I think, and it begins to smack of C90 dreams (to me anyway). To understand the simple possibility of an act or event is understanding none the less. So here’s to the knowledge that any distance across land is possible to travel, regardless of the means. Here’s to the knowledge that you can drop what you are doing and it will either be ‘ok’ or it wont. Here’s to the knowledge that only you can do stuff, others can’t do it for you. Most of all: ‘HERE’S TO CREATIVE AND INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM!!!!!!!’
I raise what has now turned into a mug of tea to you my friends (getting drunk alone usually turns sour), because regardless of my 10 hour crappy day at work (it was crappy) I am now free to be creative, enjoy or make music and art, discover new science, make movies about C90’s or piss about in any way I like. Without the enlightenment, I would probably have no C90, and definitely no dreams.
Friday 31 July 2009
Monday 27 July 2009
C90 Dreams lives on! New blogs coming up....
So,
I have decided to begin writing again. Let the creativity flow and the stupidity engulf my soul! These blogs may occur every now and again from now on in an attempt to continue the marvelous thing that was/is C90 Dreams. It is almost a year now since the three of us handed in our notice at work and committed to something that I personally am still unable to define. The inspiration to start writing again was a conversation with Jamie over some med style dinner and a few glasses of vino. We discussed what it is to be a man. Big stuff I know, massive massive philosophy involved and in the most structured and coherent way possible. Well, perhaps not. Jamie did explicitly state however: “C90 Dreams is the best thing I have ever done”. Why was a pointless and so finite an exercise such a seminal moment in his life? So my first blog of 2009 will be what I think he might be on about.
First of all I must say that I don’t mean to over-egg C90 Dreams. It wasn’t profound and it didn’t change the world. There are still totalitarian regimes and there is still plenty of suffering whether human, animal or Earth itself. It did however, do something for those involved, it did make us feel different. The world is now smaller, more malleable and we are even less afraid to be silly. In fact I now question whether its being silly that allows one to cast aside one’s existential concerns or questions. Maybe it really is just that all we can do in this life is be a bit stupid and in well measured doses hoping not to cause anyone pain or suffering. Being silly doesn’t necessarily have to mean immature either. You can be silly and have as many adventures as you like in this life, its just that as we grow up we cease to call them adventures and begin calling them ‘challenges’. Why is having your first child a challenge or burden? Why isn’t it an adventure? Being silly with a child is exactly what you have to do in order to communicate with them after all. Of course this comes from a man who has no children on the horizon in any way, but the theory is there!!
It seems on this trip we really struck a healthy balance of those sort of higher pleasures difficult to obtain such as riding unfit bikes 2000 miles (and 2000 miles back if you’re me or Bon) and baser, more convenient and instant pleasures such as French patisserie treats and coffee for breakfast. I wont forget the somewhere in-between pleasures of pure observation: the great fields of gold, the alps, the ocean and the road.
Riding C90’s every day proved to be arse aching and absolutely shattering, but never unrewarding. It was something which I don’t think any of us necessarily thought we would actually do, a mere pipe dream thought up because we were all a bit bored. We did it though, and the funny thing was it wasn’t even that difficult. It was just a case of shifting our consciousness into a different realm.
George Orwell said that poverty annihilates the future...well C90’s annihilate almost everything outside of one’s current sphere of consciousness. Most days they focused our minds to simpler things: the road, beauty, hunger, thirst or simply the disbelief that we were actually in France or Switzerland or Italy or Greece on C90’s. There was I suppose a good few nights of putting the world to rights with some tins as well though, can’t forget those.
So maybe what Jamie was drunkenly trying to say the other night was just that it was an experience like no other, simple as that. As long as we don’t let the finiteness of life depreciate such an experience, then I am sure it is something we will always hold very, very dearly to us.
Liam
I have decided to begin writing again. Let the creativity flow and the stupidity engulf my soul! These blogs may occur every now and again from now on in an attempt to continue the marvelous thing that was/is C90 Dreams. It is almost a year now since the three of us handed in our notice at work and committed to something that I personally am still unable to define. The inspiration to start writing again was a conversation with Jamie over some med style dinner and a few glasses of vino. We discussed what it is to be a man. Big stuff I know, massive massive philosophy involved and in the most structured and coherent way possible. Well, perhaps not. Jamie did explicitly state however: “C90 Dreams is the best thing I have ever done”. Why was a pointless and so finite an exercise such a seminal moment in his life? So my first blog of 2009 will be what I think he might be on about.
First of all I must say that I don’t mean to over-egg C90 Dreams. It wasn’t profound and it didn’t change the world. There are still totalitarian regimes and there is still plenty of suffering whether human, animal or Earth itself. It did however, do something for those involved, it did make us feel different. The world is now smaller, more malleable and we are even less afraid to be silly. In fact I now question whether its being silly that allows one to cast aside one’s existential concerns or questions. Maybe it really is just that all we can do in this life is be a bit stupid and in well measured doses hoping not to cause anyone pain or suffering. Being silly doesn’t necessarily have to mean immature either. You can be silly and have as many adventures as you like in this life, its just that as we grow up we cease to call them adventures and begin calling them ‘challenges’. Why is having your first child a challenge or burden? Why isn’t it an adventure? Being silly with a child is exactly what you have to do in order to communicate with them after all. Of course this comes from a man who has no children on the horizon in any way, but the theory is there!!
It seems on this trip we really struck a healthy balance of those sort of higher pleasures difficult to obtain such as riding unfit bikes 2000 miles (and 2000 miles back if you’re me or Bon) and baser, more convenient and instant pleasures such as French patisserie treats and coffee for breakfast. I wont forget the somewhere in-between pleasures of pure observation: the great fields of gold, the alps, the ocean and the road.
Riding C90’s every day proved to be arse aching and absolutely shattering, but never unrewarding. It was something which I don’t think any of us necessarily thought we would actually do, a mere pipe dream thought up because we were all a bit bored. We did it though, and the funny thing was it wasn’t even that difficult. It was just a case of shifting our consciousness into a different realm.
George Orwell said that poverty annihilates the future...well C90’s annihilate almost everything outside of one’s current sphere of consciousness. Most days they focused our minds to simpler things: the road, beauty, hunger, thirst or simply the disbelief that we were actually in France or Switzerland or Italy or Greece on C90’s. There was I suppose a good few nights of putting the world to rights with some tins as well though, can’t forget those.
So maybe what Jamie was drunkenly trying to say the other night was just that it was an experience like no other, simple as that. As long as we don’t let the finiteness of life depreciate such an experience, then I am sure it is something we will always hold very, very dearly to us.
Liam
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