{Total Politics}[12th April 1973]

[Redbook1:296][19730512:1049b]{Total Politics}[12th April 1973]

(Sat) 19730512.1049

[continued]

(L)       If politics is the science of anything, it is the science of everything.

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{Archaeology and Probability}[12th April 1973]

[Redbook1:296][19730512:1049a]{Archaeology and Probability}[12th April 1973]

(Sat) 19730512.1049

[continued]

(19730505)

(L)              Likelihood of survival of relics => calculate population at time?

{Freedom and Control}[12th April 1973]

[Redbook1:296][19730512:1049]{Freedom and Control}[12th April 1973]

(Sat) 19730512.1049

            (From scrap notes, marginal notes etc.:)

(L)       Logical but not natural progression to freer society but more controlled economy.

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{Specialisation}[2nd April 1973]

[Redbook1:296][19730402:1952b]{Specialisation}[2^nd April 1973]

(Mon) 19730402 1952

[continued]

(L)       As soon as you specialise you limit your outlook.

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{U.K Choice}[2nd April 1973]

[Redbook1:296][19730402:1952a]{U.K Choice}[2^nd April 1973]

(Mon) 19730402 1952

[continued]

(L)       As (one comes to [the] UK situation now) …, so one’s freedom of choice decreases.

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{Scraps}[2nd April 1973]

[Redbook1:296][19730402:1952]{Scraps}[2^nd April 1973]

(Mon) 19730402 1952

            (From scrap notes.)

(L)       4          Art and technology.

(L)       Com.   Non-stick food.

(L)       B         Intolerance based on fear.

(L)       G         P & J on life today?

            (I don’t know what it means either.)

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{Politics and Administration}[27th March 1973]

[Redbook1:295][19730327:1258]{Politics and Administration}[27th March 1973]

(Mon) 197303271258

            Possibly our big mistake has been to stop ‘institutionalizing’ politics (in the narrow sense) and to ‘institutionalize’ administration instead.

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{Democracy and Empire}[26th March 1973]

[Redbook1:295][19730326:1850]{Democracy and Empire}[26th March 1973]

(Mon) 197303261850

            I think that what we had discovered by 1950, and what the Americans may now be discovering, is that Empire is not compatible with democracy.  I am sure we made the right choice.

            This rule may no longer hold in the future; but at that time (as probably still at this time) it was valid.

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{In-spiration}[26th March 1973]

[Redbook1:295][19730326:1356]{In-spiration}[26th March 1973]

(Mon) 197303261356

            Nothing that I am is my own:

            All that is within me comes from Outside.

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{Small Observers}[17th March 1973]

[Redbook1:295][19730317:0029]{Small Observers}[17th March 1973]

(Sat) 197303170029

            I am surrounded by small observers.

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{Little ghost story [continued]}[7th March 1973]

[Redbook1:291-294][19730307:2359d]{Little ghost story [continued]}[7th March 1973]

Tuesday 197303072359

[continued]

            I believe the possibility of a ‘supernatural’ explanation crossed my mind while I was searching for the disturbance.  I quelled it, not wanting an even more uncomfortable night.  And yet the next morning I don’t think that the thought even occurred to me.  I mentioned hordes of passers-by to [the Housemaster], half in fun – he took it three-quarters seriously, and I felt an idiot.  I was inclined to put the door down to wind; but I never found that door, and I never felt or heard any wind at all, (as far as I can remember).

            The possibility of an unusual explanation only occurred to me [again] this evening – when I remembered also [the Housemaster’s] story, told to me on that occasion, I think (or later???) – about [HO] seeing a figure on the Hall-Library steps, looking at him, late at night when he was with others in  the Pantry.  H walked towards it, and it vanished.

            Later, looking through house photographs, he identified it.  It was an ex-housemaster […].  Sitting in the same photograph was HO’s grandfather, who at that age had apparently looked exactly like H.

            But that night in the basement remains extra-ordinarily vivid.  I can even remember clearly (I think!) the combination of amusement and annoyance, with just  a hint of puzzlement and even fear, that was my reaction to that (whatever it was) which [GV] at [the school] might well have described as ‘nocturnal visitations’.

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{Little ghost story [continued]}[7th March 1973]

[Redbook1:291-294][19730307:2359c]{Little ghost story [continued]}[7th March 1973]

Tuesday 197303072359

[continued]

            Of course, I had thought of the possibility of nocturnal adventures and assignations by boys and girls in the basement.  But no sooner had I got into bed than that door started being shut again, and feet flapped past my own door, and didn’t I hear whispering again?  It was the feet that really did it.  Not if the whole house had padded past me in bare feet could they have kept it up for so long.  And anyway, anyone wanting to keep quiet (e.g. if using secret hideaways or entrances after hours) would not have allowed that door to be shut so noisily, over and over again.  I went on listening for hours (or so it seemed), and I may have got up at least once more; eventually, when the temperature dropped a little, with the sound of doors and bare feet still ringing in my ears, I dropped off to sleep.

[continues]

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{Little ghost story [continued]}[7th March 1973]

[Redbook1:291-294][19730307:2359b]{Little ghost story [continued]}[7th March 1973]

Tuesday 197303072359

[continued]

            And yet at least once, and I think more than once (I became fairly desperate, because the noise and heat were keeping me awake) I got up and went into the passage [….]. I was not aware of any noises while out of that little room.  The pound room door was shut, and I could not find any other doors responsible.  There was apparently no one moving about – certainly not the great coming and going I thought I had heard only a few seconds before.  I could not hear people whispering in the dormitories up the stairwell (a slight possibility, though they do not connect directly onto the stairwell).  The whole house seemed completely quiet; there was no one (apparently) around except me.  I was so convinced that I had heard people that I thought of listening outside the new studies down there until I remembered that they were studies – there was no one in them.  That gave me quite a surprise*.  So I shut my room’s door – not too noisily – and went back to bed.

*Assuming there was no one sleeping in the new common room, or in the studies, or making hay anywhere else – and I don’t think there was – then there was no one in the basement except me.

[continues]

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{Little ghost story}[7th March 1973]

[Redbook1:291-294][19730307:2359a]{Little ghost story}[7th March 1973]

Tuesday 197303072359

[continued]

            A rather feeble programme this evening reminded me of a night I spent in [my school] House after leaving.  It must have been the second time I visited it – it was the time I took KS (?) back to London, I think, because he was in the spare room and I had to sleep in BQ’s room – while he was away at home (-- possibly a source of later confusion).  That room, which B slept in and another boy (since my time) had a study in, is in the basement, next to the old staff room, facing south onto an earth bank.  It was very hot and I had to keep opening the window.  There was no draught.

            Soon after I had gone to bed I became aware of many noises outside – in the cold stone-floored passage leading to the kitchens, the basement door and the central service lift and back stair well.  I seemed to hear continually, but not regularly, the flip-flap of bare feet (I think) on a stone floor along the passage; and a door kept being shut: not slammed, as if by the wind, but firmly shut.  I think there were other noises, possibly creakings and an impression of whispering – I am not sure about that.  But the feet and the door I remember very clearly.  I was absolutely certain that the feet were in the passage outside – the only stone-floored one nearby – and that the door was the old poundroom(?) just across the passage (next to the new common room).

[continues]

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{Retrospective}[7th March 1973]

[Redbook1:291][19730307:2359]{Retrospective}[7th March 1973]

Tuesday 197303072359

Looking back through this book from Michaelmas 1969 (to check whether I had previously written what I am about to set down (below)), I was surprised by the difference between the writer then and the writer now.  His qualities then were in some ways superior.

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{History and Science Fiction}[2nd March 1973]

[Redbook1:291][19730302:0000]{History and Science Fiction}[2^nd March 1973]

Friday 19730302

            Most historians, if they see human History at all, must see it I suppose in common with most people as a pyramid, with here and now at the top.

            Perhaps Science Fiction, if it has taught me anything, has taught me to see human history as an inverted pyramid, with here and now near to the lowest point.

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{....}[24th February 1973]

[Redbook1:290][19730224:1735g]{....}[24th February 1973]

(Saturday) 197302241735

[continued]

            [….]

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{Film Review II [continued(7)]}[24th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283-290][19730224:1735f]{Film Review II [continued(7)]}[24th February 1973]

(Saturday) 197302241735

[continued]

            (You see, despite myself I am anxious, though not confused.)  Dr. X said in his lectures that it was recognised that children in adolescence were ‘sex objects’ – were sexually attractive.  I am not sure that this is not an over-simplification.

            It measures up to my own experience in some ways.  I have never felt sexually attracted by children under the age of puberty.  On the whole I like them, and I enjoy demonstrations of physical affection with those that I know and like.  But I have never felt sexually attracted to any man.  The idea of classic buggery – anal penetration etc. – rather disgusts me; the idea of indecency with men seems pointless (and embarrassing).

            But I have felt sexually attracted to young girls in early adolescence, with a strange combination of physical desire and protective tenderness.  Occasionally this has died as they became older, fatter and harder; but I have usually continued to feel affection for them. 

            The very odd thing is that not only have I felt this protective tenderness towards boys I have known of this same age, i.e. early adolescence: but for some of them I have felt a quite definite physical* desire or attraction.  I think this is really a desire to give (and receive) physical (as well as emotional) comfort and affection from (and for) those in trouble (Adolescents almost by definition are in trouble, and need and reject love more than anyone else).  However I know damn well that if, for example, I ever were to go to bed with some adolescent, sexual responses would be stimulated more surely than by a shower or by a blanket.  I never have gone to bed with an adolescent; I hope I would not, not because I think it is wrong in itself, but because in the present circumstances of society it could do more harm than good to the adolescent’s life and to  mine; but if I did , I hope such sexual responses would not embarrass me.

            I don’t think that adolescents are primarily sex objects, to their own sex at least.  They are not primarily sexy; but they are sexual: they are often sexually aware, aware of their own sexuality.  Early adolescence is often subjectively the most sexual period in one’s life: the adolescent is trying to come to terms with his own new-found sexuality and awareness, and radiates – to those who can perceive, on whatever level – a confused complex of emotions from need for affection through sheer physical frustration.  That was what struck me first about IB’s step-daughter, for all her smooth skin: she was sexually aware, and bored: frustrated, perhaps, though not in the denigratory sense.  [….]

[*i.e. distinguished from sexual desire or attraction. This series of journal entries risks being seriously misunderstood; but because I think it is helpful, the product of youthful angst and rational thought over a long period, and, above all, utterly honest in a way which is needed now, I have (with some misgivings) not materially redacted it before this point.  It may be worth pointing out that the writer was 22 years old, and therefore according to some recent psychological guidelines still an "adolescent" himself <201301142145>]

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{Film Review II [continued(6)]}[24th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283-290][19730224:1735e]{Film Review II [continued(6)]}[24th February 1973]

(Saturday) 197302241735

[continued]

            It is tempting to continue my ‘spiel’ of frustration with a discourse on the evils of exploitation of children in films.  But I have done this before, I think; and in a way it is rather pointless.  After all, Mark Lester’s parents presumably know what they are doing; I’m not thinking so much of academic education as of general growing up, too fast or too slow, or in pieces.  I’m sure that if I had been photographed in the bath with no clothes on and in bed with Britt Ekland at the age of fourteen(?), in the context of that film and its hypocrisy, it would have marked or twisted me.  But there it is: his parents may have seen to it that he has been to bed with more girls in two years than I have in the whole of my life.  If they have, then I think that must be ‘exploitation’.  If they have not, he must have been puzzled, at the least.

            In that case I hope he never sees the film (unrealistic, I suppose).

            But I can’t help wondering what’s coming next.

            The film makers really have one by the short hairs (I’ve always wondered where the short hairs were….). One goes expecting to feel lust for the girl and love for the child.  But the message of the film is clear.  I reckon if I sat through it more than a few times I’d feel love for the girl and lust for the child.

            But the film is psychologically sordid (It may be sexually sordid too, but I won’t comment on that directly).  What kind of an ending is that for that film?*

*(I have a vague idea that Ekland ends up in bed with the boy after they have got rid of the feller – is this correct? <8709>)

[continues]

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{Film Review II [continued(5)]}[24th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283-290][19730224:1735d]{Film Review II [continued(5)]}[24th February 1973]

(Saturday) 197302241735

[continued]

            I suppose it’s the difference really between permissiveness and openness.  Permissiveness involves exploitation, inhibition, frustration, uncertainty, corruption, decadence.  It is summed up by the commercial ‘don’t touch’ striptease, and the [original] Playboy Club.

            Openness involves love, understanding, compassion, and not being afraid to show affection physically, in the way that seems appropriate in the light of these (and other) concepts.  It might be represented for me in a society whose laws allowed naked swimming and sunbathing, except perhaps on certain beaches at certain times for the sake of the shockable; where gross indecency and other sexual offences were recognised as being mitigated by emotional realities in* adults, and meaningless in* children; and where pornography was available, but banned from display.

            (For the rest of it, see my own political ideas!)

            Ultimately, one would hope that sex as a ‘principal activity’ would come to mean only the physical act of intercourse between male and female. The peripheral activities now condemned under our bloated definition of sexual activities would be taken at face value only, i.e. seen only in relation to themselves (if you see what I mean).  I have often woken up in the morning with an erect penis; I hope I would not be accused of being a blanket fetishist, or a sheet-sexual.  I can remember that occasionally boys at school used to lose control inadvertently in the communal showers: no one seriously accused anyone of being queer because his penis became semi-erect or even fully erect under streams of warm water; i.e. even the primary sexual organs do not only react sexually.  Ah well – I suppose we shall muddle through as before, with inhibitions, exploitation, frustration. 

(But I note that sexual offences are down this year.)

*[i.e. when committed by]

[continues]

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{Film Review II [continued(4)]}[24th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283-290][19730224:1735c]{Film Review II [continued(4)]}[24th February 1973]

(Saturday) 197302241735

[continued]

            I don’t want to start off again about inter-connecting drives and motivations as applied to fringe sex and social relationships (although I may find I have before I finish this).  But I gave [LG] and [WK] port at half past one on Wednesday morning after dinner with [IB]. His step-daughter had been there too, serving out and eating with us.  Afterwards L suddenly said something like ‘My God, but that girl’s sexy!’ (but it wasn’t quite that).  I teased him, saying she was only thirteen, but he kept it up.  Apparently the thing which really attracted him was the smoothness of her skin, although he did mention other features.

            Suddenly WK said he agreed – quite seriously.

           

            Of course, they’re right (I had to keep looking the other way too).  As I may have mentioned before, I think they’ve got sex a little confused with other, related feelings, e.g. paternal love and protection, and need for physical reassurance.  But they are right.  For the sake of … -- what? – security, convenience, religion, incest taboos? – we have drawn clear divisions where none existed.  The cinema now attempts to exploit the suppressed overlap in human drives, without examining the divisions themselves and the reasons for them.  I am sure this is dangerous.  Best of all we should learn to live without the artificial demarcations and understand ourselves and each other.  But if we cannot do that we should return to the old rigidity, rather than accelerating as we are down this absolute dead end.

[continues]

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{Film Review II [continued(3)]}[24th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283-290][19730224:1735b]{Film Review II [continued(3)]}[24th February 1973]

(Saturday) 197302241735

[continued]

            Before I continue on that theme, the other annoying thing was that a film setting out to explore the depths of personality, as the film seemed partly to do, should show a higher standard of perception, a greater responsibility, and (I feel) a greater artistry.  Taking it on its own level, it fell short of the required standard.  Not only was its ‘exploration’ of human trouble superficial (not Ekland’s fault) and corrupt; but its exploitation of audience drives and inhibitions was (as I have said) irresponsible and hypocritical.

           

[continues]

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{Film Review II [continued]}[24th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283-290][19730224:1735a]{Film Review II [continued]}[24th February 1973]

(Saturday) 197302241735

[continued]

            The combination of Britt Ekland and Mark Lester in Night Hair Child was physically devastating.  The exploitation of that factor in the unfinished strip-tease so characteristic of censored commercial cinema – viz., Britt Ekland’s full frontal concealed behind Mark Lester’s head, and Mark Lester’s hidden by a sponge in the bath – may be not only frustrating or irritating but downright dangerous.  It’s not so much that I am now going to creep around in the night and rape blonde girls (or blond boys); the infuriating thing is that the cinema, under the guise of ‘liberalism’, is frantically putting back the layers of frustration, inhibition and fear as fast as more enlightened and far-seeing minds attempt to strip them off.  The resulting combination – titillation of inhibition – can be disastrous.

[continues]

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{Film Review II}[24th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283-290][19730224:1735]{Film Review II}[24th February 1973]

(Saturday) 197302241735

            People nowadays seem to make films (and write books) about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

            I’d much rather write books or make films about extraordinary people doing ordinary things – in the sense at least that all people are extraordinary (but not just in that sense), and admitting that market demand prefers un-ordinary things.

            I’ve just seen Death Line and Night Hair Child.  Death Line was fun because of the historical and railway background and exciting because of the way it was; but some of the throat slitting was a little overdone.  Otherwise it deserves little comment: you have to take things at their own level.

[continues]

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{Levels}[20th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283][19730220:1041]{Levels}[20th February 1973]

(Tuesday) 197302201041

            The man who has not learned to take things at the level on which they are given is crippled.

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{Success}[16th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283][19730216:0023a]{Success}[16th February 1973]

(Friday) 197302160023

[continued]

            I’ve just seen three T.V. playwrights on T.V..  Dennis Potter was certainly the most impressive – because of the name?  Generally their performance could be described as one of ‘fascinating incoherence’.

            I suppose if I am really successful I may look like that.

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{All in the Mind}[16th February 1973]

[Redbook1:282][19730216:0023]{All in the Mind}[16th February 1973]

(Friday) 197302160023

(From just after last entry)

(L)       Politics is a frame of mind – it is not an activity.

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{Pathetic}[15th February 1973]

[Redbook1:282][19730215:0024]{Pathetic}[15th February 1973]

(Thursday) 197302150024

The events of this evening at the Sidgwick Site leave a sour aftertaste.

The right-wing ‘counter demo’ was pathetic.

The reaction of the left was neurotic.

The annoyance of those, like myself, excluded from the meeting by the interplay of these two juvenilities, was intense.

(Mine was, anyway – particularly since friends inside, seeing me outside, dismissed me as right wing – which was hard, since they had excluded me.  I suppose I deserved it, playing my old game of watching on both sides – or trying to.)

The right were more obviously childish, to some extent deliberately.

The left give the appearance of activity and depth but it is largely a pretence: a child’s play for young adults – although very few of them realise it.

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{Mother}[12th February 1973]

[Redbook1:281][19730212:2346b]{Mother}[12th February 1973]

Monday 197302122346

[continued]

            My mother could not come today[*], which was perhaps fortunate as I was tired and depressed.

[*]She used to drive up fairly frequently and discuss her marital problems: especially, if I remember rightly, during my first year at Cambridge <921002>

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