"It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety."



The above quotation from Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London' has stuck with me ever since I first read the book. At the time of that initial reading I was working at a branch of that roadside restaurant made popular by the rotund yet diminutive chef; the uniform came in L, XL and XXL and I was (and still am) none of those things. It was a sorry state of affairs, one I used to romanticise by imagining myself to be a Parisian Plongeur rather than a coffee monkey in a ridiculously over-sized nylon shirt. In the memoir Orwell elevates the mundane and often depressing life of those at the fringes of society into something noble and even at times beautiful. The reality (in a Little Chef on the A34 between Oxford and Northampton)was a little different.

Despite learning this lesson many years ago this quotation fluttered into my head this week as I stood in the queue at the Co-op clutching some Jamaican Ginger Cake and a couple of onions (read from this what you will) after a particularly grueling day at work. The 'Sneintonite' before me, god bless his greasy cap and artistically stained black jeans, had clearly gone to the dogs a while ago. As he counted out change to purchase a generous bottle of cider I found myself beginning to wonder which of us were the happier.

Orwell's observation always suggested freedom to me, a freedom from rules and expectations and the responsibilities of day to day life. Indeed it's no surprise that that existence, on the cusp of destitution barely keeping ones head afloat, is viewed so romantically. Before deciding whether to chuck in the proverbial towel and join my cider drinking friend at the dogs I decided to spend a good seventeen minutes rifling through my book case to fully investigate the matter.

Case Study One



One of the problems with 'Down and Out in Paris in London' is that it blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction. Many of the events are undoubtedly Orwell's own however in an annotated copy to friend and critic Brenda Salkeld he confessed that certain elements 'are not actually autobiography but drawn from what I have seen'. Okay Georgie boy, so how much of the camaraderie and beauty of the Paris and London streets is made up then? Can I really trust your account? Also could you really have been completely destitute in Paris when Aunt Nellie was living around the corner? I don't think I'm ready to pack in the job just yet...

Case Study Two



'And so off I went,fists thrust in torn pockets
Of a coat held together by no more than it's name.
O muse how I served you beneath the blue;
And oh what dreams of dazzling love I dreamed.'

Course you did Rimbaud, course you did. In 'Ma Boheme' Rimbaud appears to be laying down the blue print for every poetry drunk angel headed hipster that will follow him for the next century and a half. This idea of devotion to craft, to art, ahead of everything else is a romantic one. This lineage is particularly strong amongst the beat writers but I don't really trust those guys. They weren't destitute and suffering for their art. They were scoring chicks and having a blast. Unfortunately it was the same for Rimbaud, the poem was subtitled (fantaisie) after all and though he was famous for arriving in Paris on foot I don't think he bummed around too much whilst there. Still not quitting job...

The Final Case Study



John Fante was certainly down and out during much of his life. He is also the archetypal young male American writer drifting drunkenly through life hammering angrily at his type writer. It's all: rejection, booze, woman, booze, anonymous L.A hotel room, booze, rejection and although it makes for some great books (Ask The Dust is far superior to anything Bukowski ever wrote) it never sounds romantic or sentimental. Fante's stand in Bandini rarely sounds happy (cool sometimes for sure but not happy). My idealised life with my cider'd up Sneinton neighbour is further compromised by the fact that Fante had to dictate his final novel as his body, ravaged by alcohol, succumbed to diabetes which cost him first his eyesight then his life.

In conclusion- not quitting my job. Destitution is either a myth, a screen to score chicks and party or leads to death. It might make some great books but then I'm not planning on writing any. Also it's the holidays at the moment so bothered?

'At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where the past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor
towards...'




T. S. Eliot's poetry is undeniably slippery, especially for those foolish enough to hope to glimpse an image of the man himself beneath the layers of classical literary references and philosophical musings. In his essay 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' Eliot argues that as well as working within the literary tradition rather than seeking to escape it, good poets must not only separate themselves from their poetry, but even from that within them that experiences the things that they seek to transform into poetry. For Eliot there must be a clear distinction between 'the man who suffers and the mind which creates'. When we look at poems like The Wasteland with it's profound sense of loss, confusion and disillusionment we imagine this 'man who suffers' yet within Volume One of The Letters of T. S. Eliot (1898-1922) I'm yet to locate him. I am beginning to wonder if perhaps, like J. Alfred Prufrock, he is not there. Perhaps he is rather a spectre conjured by Eliot on which he projected and burdened his artistic impulses and less refined emotions. Nonetheless the game of cat and mouse is rather good fun.

Recently I've been wrestling with Four Quarters and in particular the opening section Burnt Norton. Unlike the Wasteland here Eliot's fragments are hopeful and even coherent in tone, as rather than mourning the loss of meaning he seems to question how much it was ever really there and offers hope in the shape of transcendence through art and, most pleasingly to me, the possibility of joy, beauty and even transcendence in the moment, the thrill of temporal existence at the 'still point'.

This got me thinking in a surprisingly macho way about sport and I have begun to formulate a clumsy thesis- that the moments Mr Eliot was referring to not only come must regularly through physical activity but that the moment where 'the dance is' can be specifically located in sporting photographs.

What I enjoy most about cycling is the oblivion of it. The focus on spinning the pedal efficiently and powerfully, on repeating the process over and over, thinking about only that endlessly and completely. Now look at the always suave two times Tour De France winner Alberto Contador in the image above, seemingly frozen on his pedals in that almost balletic angular sweep. The focus is etched on his face; for him there is only the moment, 'there is only the dance', or rather an endless repetition of fleeting moments, of muscle and metal.

Look at sporting photographs and you can see it. Search the faces, the tensed bodies, the dedication to the moment. It's practically zen like -





Perhaps it is even this that makes sport so fantastic and compelling, that it forces you whether watching or playing to exist solely in the moment. Perhaps all Eliot had to do to escape all the fragmentation he sensed around him was take up a hobby. To pull on some lycra and hop on a bike, to chuck a bit of plastic around, to chuck down some unedited manuscripts for goal posts and indulge in a game of headers and volleys with Ezra Pound.

It certainly worked for Gianluigi Buffon, the philosophically minded and fiery goal keeper pictured above-

'In football, my thoughts, my opinions, are not immediately visible; they are made evident through gestures, reactions, and reflexes. They depend as well on a very specific situation that I need to relate to at that particular moment; there is no time for hesitation.'
(Chance, intelligence, and humor: An interview with Gianluigi Buffon- Cabinet Issue 19).

I'm yet to find a letter in the aforementioned volume in which Eliot describes (Hornby-esque) the experience of watching or even taking part in a penalty shoot out but I'm hopeful. Very hopeful indeed.

Come on Eliot, on me 'ead!