There was an entertaining article in the New York Times on Monday about a recent Russian submarine disaster. 17 sailors lost their lives but no one, except of course the crew and the Russian chain of command, really knows why or how. The submarine was designed to dive much deeper than any other manned navy submersible ever built, and had skids designed to allow it to creep along the muddy bottoms of the world’s seafloors where it would… do the kinds of nefarious stuff one might do on the bottom of the world’s seafloors. Experts believe it most likely was designed to search for, and in times of war or tension, cut the cables on the seabed which link continents and countries to one another, or which link the deep sea listening devices across the North Atlantic with NATO designed to listen for other kinds of submarines, or, even in peacetime, simply test the West and its willingness to develop countermeasures.
These Strange Days
Dear Fellows of the ‘Essence of Water’,
I hope that you are all well, staying safe and making the Herculean effort — as I am — not to touch your face. In this time of social distancing, as governments everywhere are taking extraordinary measures to ‘flatten the curve’, I know that we are all affected by this new virus. Maybe your daily routine has changed. Maybe your level of general anxiety has peaked. I know, mine has. Yet, I cannot help but be glad that we — humanity — are suddenly forced to realize the depth of our interdependencies.
Madeleines in the oven
Of course Proust has a more refined set of memories, and indeed a more refined sensory palette, than I have. He tasted and the world came into being. I can only breathe. But still, scents matter.
My Philosophy: On other possibilities
One of my favourite pieces of orchestral music is Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. In my early teens, back in the days of vinyl long-playing records, which rotated on the turntable 33 times per minute, I was given a recording which I played regularly. The music is accessible and exciting, an ideal introduction to the classical tradition. The work had been written for piano in the 1870s, but fifty years later Maurice Ravel had produced an orchestral adaptation of the score, which was the music I knew. In 1986, I watched on television as Barry Douglas played the original version in Moscow, on his way to winning the Tchaikovsky Piano Prize. I still listen to his recording, released the following year.
My Philosophy: On how we live
My initiation into political work occurred when I was twelve. I spent several hours delivering leaflets for the local Liberal Party candidate who contested the parliamentary seat where I grew up, which in those days was reliably Conservative. On election day itself I helped collect voter numbers, cycling between several polling stations where other volunteers were keeping tally of those who had promised to vote for ‘our man’, taking this information back to the local committee room, where the agent’s assistant aggregated the data and identified those among our known supporters who had yet to vote. Other volunteers were dispatched to knock on their doors and remind them to hurry to the polling stations before they closed. The process was rather amateurish compared with the technology-enabled campaigning of the modern day, but it was also courteous and civic-minded. ‘Our man’ knew he wouldn’t win, but he sought to secure as many votes as he could, not least because the higher his tally the greater the pressure on the incumbent Member of Parliament to serve his constituents well.