Rage, rage against the dying of the light...
...on the shortest day, humans have always, it
seems, raged against the dying of the light. I don't know your
feelings on those winter solstices that you honoured with us over the
years, Ben, but Dylan's
poem seems to ring discordant harmonies on this day, now...
(I will find a photo of Ben appropriate for this space: perhaps someone could suggest one...)
...those discordant harmonies chime with a book I
mentioned to Ben, it may have been 12 months ago - Ugly Feelings
by Sianne Ngai - which is now on my bedside table, and is keeping me awake
at night, rather than helping me go to sleep. In the introduction
(which I have now managed to get through with a semblance of understanding
- Ngai writes with the same denseness of conceptualisation as Ben, and
apparently - according to the LRB - has 'a formidable reputation as a
considerer of unconsidered trifles that turn out not to be so trifling
after all.') in her introduction to Ugly Feelings she
talks about the 'very specific state of affective
indeterminacy...the negative feeling of "disconcertedness"':
Dylan's poem about the dying of the light (a concern on this, the shortest
day of the year) is a son's appeal to his father to not go gentle
into that good night, whilst on this shortest day I now call as a
father to my son ... who did not go gentle into that good night ... and
those contradictions certainly evoke in me 'disconcertedness' ...
¡Que haya luz! Kerenza ha yeghes da! Dad/Andrew x