The girl on the train

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2 June

England & Wales is a separate legal jurisdiction from Scotland, with its own laws, courts, Acts of Parliament.

It used to be said, in the early 1990s, that it was a principle of the law of England & Wales that, if one saw a child drowning in a puddle of water (i.e. one could intervene and save him or her without hurting oneself), one was under no obligation to prevent it happening.

I have no idea whether that is still so, and, of course, the law assumed the legal fiction of a stranger, whereas a parent would owe different duties. Curious that Lord Denning was at pains to point out the Biblical origins of the law, but this inhumane example showed otherwise, a callous version of the travellers who went by on the other side of the road in the parable of the so-called good Samaritan (the whole point of the parable was to answer the question Who is my neighbour ?, duties to whom some were seeking to avoid).

At any rate, a child standing and playing on the lap of a woman (who turned out to be her grandmother) was taking too much interest in the nearby open window, one of those narrow ones that flaps down at the top of a larger pane. I kept conceiving of her fingers being in the way if the violent wake of an intercity train passing caused the window to snap shut, or, as she seemed to be doing at one point, of pushing it shut it on her own hand with the help of turbulence.

After we stopped at one station and some hesitation, I felt that I couldn't stand back in the face of what might happen, and, if it did happen, would be deeply damaging to a young child and her fingers, so I approached the woman and, prefacing my remark with the wish that I hoped I wasn't interfering, shared my fears. She then shared them with the girl, and urged the reluctant girl to wave to the man (she never did, but she smiled).

If I'd been asked why, or thanked too much, I'd have said that I would hope that anyone would do the same, even in the keep-myself-to-myself days of train travel when we look at each other and pretend that we haven't, etc.

But I do hope that, that anyone else, seeing the risk, might have dared say something, and have thought nothing special of wanting to avoid a harm to the livelihood of a young life.

Later, after a tiring walk in which I was pulling a case on its wheels, I was kindly offered a lift to the village where the driver also lived. I do not see that, as some would, as karma, but the two were clearly related as acts of care for another.


If such kindnesses happened all the time, would we need to think of talking of karma ?


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Running down Eraserhead

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12 March

Another special screening tonight - in a series (whose existence didn't quite pass me by, but nearly) about the depiction of monstrosity on screen - of David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) this time.

We had a bit of an introduction (which threatened to be a bit more of an introduction than I was happy with, but thankfully - as I infer - someone must have waved frantically from the back to cut short what was, as was admitted to us, a speech with the potential to go on all night), and then the film.

Philip Kiszely, who teaches at the University of Leeds (and also runs a publication about punk and post-punk) was our culprit, but he was to be forgiven for the even-handed way in which he conducted the discussion afterwards. His closing words of advice to those who had not seen Eraserhead before was to consider stopping eating the popcorn now, and that he would have wanted to take the seat nearest the door!

It was Screen 3, so the most intimate of the Arts Picturehouse's dark rooms at around 120 seats, but there was still a good attendance, at which Philip was - perhaps for effect - a little surprised, that people who had (he did a straw poll) not seen it before were still turning out to see Eraserhead after 35 years: did they know what they were letting themselves in for?

As a host, Philp was enthusiastic, giving us pointers in references to film noir and in how Lynch had put the film together piecemeal as funds permitted. He also said that Lynch had said very little about what his intentions in making <i>Eraserhead</i> had been, what meaning or message it had had for him, but that he had tantalizingly revealed that he had been reading The Bible at the time, and that one verse - which, of course, he did not specify - had been at the root of it all.

As I have said, he was also indulgent to the pure Freudian interpretation that, with contributions from some, was going later, where everything was a phallus, and Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) in fear of castration. So be it, but strange, as I remarked to Philip at the end, that Freud has so much less credit outside the worlds of film and literary theory, and certainly not in practice...

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Bob Dylan is 70 (1)

This is a Festival review of Dont Look Back [sic] (1967)

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20 September

This is a Festival review of Dont Look Back [sic] (1967)

So, as my interlocutor suggested earlier, he was 27 at the time of the film, and I have been reminded that he is really a Zimmerman (or room-man).

One thing that he was asked was whether he was religious - he took issue with the word, and, on another occasion, didn't seem abundantly audible when he was asked if he read the Bible.

However, when the same questioner asked if those who bought his records knew what his songs were about, he stated that he knew that they did (and wanted no truck with the suggestion that he could not know, because he hadn't asked them), so no communication problems there, with words meaning different things to different people.

Remarkably also, when we are given these bogus statistics about how little (as a precise percentage) is communicated by the words that we use, shout 'Fire!' (admittedly in the right tone of voice), and then try substituting 'Conflagration!' (or vice versa)! (Equally, at the bar, no other formulation quite has the same effect as 'My round!')