If we do want to do that [ colonise space to survive, ], then vacuous materialism is not going to be enough for us. Quentin S. Crisp More Quotes by Quentin S. Crisp More Quotes From Quentin S. Crisp The cultural products of America from this period [ fifties and sixties] are like a vision of paradise or something. I find it utterly intoxicating. Quentin S. Crisp paradise vision america On the other hand, the seventies were drab. That is, I am utterly fascinated by the fifties and sixties. Quentin S. Crisp seventies fascinated hands 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 eras war mean 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 phones diaries people 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 elements perspective strange 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 war past world 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 holiday summer giving 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 relaxation trying thinking If there is innocence on Earth again, I tend to imagine it in more [Henry David]Thoreau sort of terms. Quentin S. Crisp innocence imagine earth 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 rays dying thinking 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 queens school thinking 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 queens country children 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 jubilee movement years 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 longing innocence lost 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 scandal oil loss 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 religious opposites order 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 creativity writing book The peculiar thing is that, in focusing only on the here and now, Buddhism seems to despise the world. Quentin S. Crisp buddhism peculiar world 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 cosmic philosophy 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 buddhism form struggle
