I feel almost as if I had been born in a vacuum of innocence, and then had to come to terms with the fact that actually, I was born into the middle of history - the rather grimy normality of the 70s, which did, indeed, retain some traces of human innocence, but were also girded about by the demons of experience.

Quentin S. Crisp

Categorized in : Facts Vacuums Innocence

I don't know if Britain ever really achieved that much glamour. We had post-war austerity rather than post-war prosperity, and our cultural products of the time include some pretty dour kitchen-sink dramas of the A Kind of Loving variety. (This kind of film seems disillusioned with the sixties before they've even really begun.)

Quentin S. Crisp

kitchen drama war

I never seem to find what I'm looking for, though. I suppose I feel, these days, too aware of schedules and things, to let myself get lost in the rain. Anyway, I came back home, and it was still raining, and as I was approaching the driveway of the house, and the front garden with its bushy flower bed, I caught a cooking smell from somewhere on the air. I don't know why, exactly, but it appealed to me as a Nagai Kafu moment.

Quentin S. Crisp

flower rain home

I like the concept of an anti-muse, though I'm not quite sure what that is. If there is such a thing in my life, I suppose it is just this weariness, this sense that it is more fulfilling not to exist, to efface all traces, than to limit oneself to the determined expression of manifestation.

Quentin S. Crisp

determined limits expression

In terms of what is expressed, antinatalism is a strong presence, not always explicit, in what I write.

Quentin S. Crisp

term strong writing

I think [imagination] very austere element of Buddhism is also linked with a strong antinatalist strain in the philosophy. The Buddha was enlightened when he destroyed the house of body and soul into which he would otherwise have been forever reborn. This is clearly antinatalism.

Quentin S. Crisp

buddhism strong philosophy

What I find difficult about Buddhism, though it is also one of its significant fascinations, is the focus on what is immediately and physically present. To me, this seems a denial of the imagination, and the imagination is very important to me.

Quentin S. Crisp

buddhism focus imagination

There's a possible qualification I can make here about a non-pantheist god that is in some way tenable, and that is the idea of a god that has in some way discharged the universe from its own substance (I associate this with the word 'tzimtzum'), possibly even by a form of suicide - a suicide that might have been the Big Bang.

Quentin S. Crisp

suicide might ideas

Non-pantheist models for god seem almost completely untenable to me, though not without interest.

Quentin S. Crisp

models interest seems

Some people have described Daoism as pantheist, and although there's something in me that resists this designation, I can see that Daoism is consistent with pantheism. If there is any way in which pantheism makes sense and is not redundant, then it is the way (or 'the Way') presented in Daoism.

Quentin S. Crisp

pantheism people way

I went for a walk in the rain. Recently, whenever it rains, I feel like I want to go for a walk.

Quentin S. Crisp

walks want rain

The urban, on the other hand, is often seen as more real and mundane, even though it is obviously far more recent in terms of planetary development. I think this might be because nature corresponds to the unconscious and the artificial world of the city and human culture to the conscious mind.

Quentin S. Crisp

real hands thinking

I think the natural is, for many people, the gateway to something supernatural or otherworldly.

Quentin S. Crisp

natural people thinking

It's interesting, the sense of pastoral utopia that exists in so much fantasy - in [Edward ] Dunsany, [John R.R.] Tolkien and so on.

Quentin S. Crisp

utopia fantasy interesting

I associate my childhood with two things, mainly: the North Devon countryside and a sense of connection to another world.

Quentin S. Crisp

childhood connections two

I also remember a line from a song by Smog [Bill Callahan], which seems to describe the experience of a town-dweller moving to the country: "I was raised in a pit of snakes/Blink your eyes - I was raised on cake."

Quentin S. Crisp

song country moving

We all know about the car breaking down on a deserted road scenario. That's cliché. I'm thinking more of Cider with Rosie, as in, the dark side.

Quentin S. Crisp

car dark thinking

Perhaps I can also add something about the rural setting of Remember You're a One-Ball! The countryside is a place - in mythological and perhaps in very real terms - of mixed innocence and sin. It is seen by townsfolk as idyllic, lazy, free of urban crime and social problems. But those who grow up in the country can tell stories that often surprise those who grow up in the towns.

Quentin S. Crisp

growing-up real country

Lots of things were there [in the seventies], in the social experience, but not quite named, lurking like a stranger on the edge of the playground.

Quentin S. Crisp

playgrounds stranger social

As children in the seventies we were told about nebulous 'strangers'. By definition, we didn't know who these strangers were, and we didn't know what they wanted to do, but only that they were sinister. I think that was the stage the seventies were at.

Quentin S. Crisp

definitions children thinking

I feel that Nagai Kafu was a writer who cold stitch together apparently meaningless moments like these into a lyrical whole, and has enhanced my ability to do the same with my own life.

Quentin S. Crisp

stitches cold together