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 More Quotes by Quentin S. Crisp More Quotes From Quentin S. Crisp On the other hand, the seventies were drab. That is, I am utterly fascinated by the fifties and sixties. Quentin S. Crisp seventiesfascinatedhands We're all more or less interested in the 'swinging sixties', of course, but that's not what I mean. I'm interested in the particular naive glamour that clings to the post-war and pre-Hendrix era. Quentin S. Crisp eraswarmean Anyway, yes, telephones but not mobile phones, fish and chips still wrapped in actual newspaper and still with some kind of flavour, people visiting each other without having to consult their appointment diaries, not being able to record anything from the television; if you missed it you missed it - these were all the kinds of thing that made up the normality of the seventies. Quentin S. Crisp phonesdiariespeople This is the strange thing about existing in time. As [Philip] Larkin puts it, "truly, though our element is time, we are not used to the strange perspectives open at each moment of our lives" - something like that. Quentin S. Crisp elementsperspectivestrange Speaking of [Philip] Larkin, in his poem about the First World War he wrote something like, "Never such innocence, before or since, that turned itself to past without a word". Quentin S. Crisp warpastworld I can't imagine anyone ever again being able to make a film like, say, Summer Holiday, for instance, to give a British example, actually. And there will never be another Annette Funicello. I suppose it's the slight starchiness of the innocence that makes it unrepeatable. Quentin S. Crisp holidaysummergiving When I think back on it, I have a sense of relaxation, as if in the seventies no one had to try to be anyone other than who they were. I'm sure that's not really true, but that's how I remember it, and I suppose it might be relatively true. Quentin S. Crisp relaxationtryingthinking If there is innocence on Earth again, I tend to imagine it in more [Henry David]Thoreau sort of terms. Quentin S. Crisp innocenceimagineearth I think the seventies caught the last red rays of the dying sun of this innocence, but were already a little cold and drab. Quentin S. Crisp raysdyingthinking I don't want to give too much away, but something horrible happens in 1977. That was also the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. I remember this jubilee. I remember receiving a commemorative coin from the school. I think it was a fifty pence piece. That was its monetary value, but it was not a normal fifty pence piece, and it would have been strange to try and use it in a shop. Quentin S. Crisp queensschoolthinking I think I still have [commemorative coin ] somewhere. Why was this given to me? I think every child in the country must have received one [ from Queen's Silver Jubilee]. That's the last time that I recall something of an innocent, more-or-less unquestioning monarchist patriotism in Britain. Quentin S. Crisp queenscountrychildren 1977 was also, of course, the year that Derek Jarman made his iconoclastic film Jubilee, which was so much part of the punk movement. Quentin S. Crisp jubileemovementyears I suppose I could say that to be interested in innocence already suggests a remove from innocence, perhaps a longing for something that is lost. Quentin S. Crisp longinginnocencelost I'm not sure if there is a cultural loss of innocence specifically associated with the seventies. The oil crisis? The Watergate scandal? I really don't know. There's nothing there on the scale of Hiroshima. Quentin S. Crisp scandaloilloss You focus on the here and now in order to escape existence forever and vanish into Nirvana. There is another religious impulse that is the opposite of this. It uses a world elsewhere in order to affirm life and give a reason to "go forth and multiply". Quentin S. Crisp religiousoppositesorder I began researching and writing what I intended as a book-length essay entitled Fascination and Liberation, exploring the question of whether there is a conflict between creativity and the Eastern form of enlightenment. I don't know if I'll ever finish that essay, because I had an experience, after I'd written two or three chapters, in which it seemed to me that my psychic antibodies decisively rejected Buddhism. Interestingly, the rejection felt as if it happened in Zen terms. Quentin S. Crisp creativitywritingbook The peculiar thing is that, in focusing only on the here and now, Buddhism seems to despise the world. Quentin S. Crisp buddhismpeculiarworld Zen is influenced by Daoism, which is not so much a nature-religion in the animistic sense as a nature-philosophy in a cosmic sense. Quentin S. Crisp cosmicphilosophy I have a bit of a struggle with some aspects of or forms of Buddhism, but Zen I find to be mainly congenial. Quentin S. Crisp buddhismformstruggle I seemed to recall some words from an old Zen master, something like, "My Zen cuts down mountains." My rejection of Buddhism was a cutting down of mountains; that is precisely how it felt to me. Quentin S. Crisp buddhismrejectioncutting
