The college course is into the ninth week of its Difficult Second Album phase. Tonight at Gordon Square we discussed Goethe’s Sorrows Of Young Werther, and the nature of solipsism in literature. This reminded me of a philosophy joke:
Q: How many solipsists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One. He holds it still and the whole world revolves around him.
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An email asks me to elaborate on why I called London “the most complicated metropolis on earth’ in an entry about the Mayoral election.
I suppose I was thinking about its organic patchwork of buildings, where the streets – in defiance of Mr Bono – are a clutter of historical names, compared to the tidily numbered grids of New York and LA. How it has medieval streets (streets older than whole countries) as the addresses of very modern tower blocks, like the Gherkin on St Mary Axe. And how it’s constantly struggling to stay a modern metropolis on top of all this history – coping with old streets not built for new traffic, trying to bring its ancient Tube and rail networks up to date with the rest of the world, all of that. There’s also the complicated social structure, with its extremes of wealth and poverty often squeezed together on the same block; the problems which gave rise to the riots in August 2011, while elsewhere in the city luxury flats are continued to be built, purely to make money rather than actually house people. These are difficult problems to solve, because it means stepping in and forcing those who have wealth, property and power to give some of it away. And there’s a big palace with a Royal Queen in it. Who is in charge, and yet isn’t in charge. It’s hard to explain why. Everything just about manages to co-exist. Just.
So I think that’s what I mean by complicated.
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A new take on old history. During a lecture on Chaucer, the tutor points out that the Peasant’s Revolt isn’t called that any more. It turns out that it wasn’t all about peasants (there were rival factions of noblemen involved too), and they didn’t technically revolt. Instead, it’s now called the 1381 Rising.
That’s the trouble with learning facts: you have to check they don’t change behind your back.
Tags: birkbeck, London
