Under the banner of heaven

Another patch of sky

Patriarchs rule OK

This week let’s start with TV, as Rosy and I have recently finished watching the miniseries based on Jon Krakauer’s creative non-fiction book, where he entwines a history of the origins and development of Mormonism with the story of the horrific murder of a mother and child in 1984. Two of the woman’s brothers-in-law, fundamentalist Mormons Ron and Dan Lafferty, were convicted of the killings and Ron was sentenced to death. He elected to be executed by firing squad but died in prison in 2019, aged 78, before the sentence could be carried out.

Part of the background to the crime is the brutality of the Lafferty patriarch, a man with the same nightmarish power and threat as Brendan Kinsella, the murderous family patriarch, gut-wrenchingly portrayed by Francis Magee in Kin.

Under the Banner is harrowing, utterly engaging and well directed with an edge of menace and strangeness, reflecting the mental anguish of the lead detective Jeb Pyre, himself a member of the church of Latter Day Saints (portrayed by Andrew Garfield). For me, the stand out character was Pyre’s investigating partner, Detective Bill Taba, a hard-bitten, non LDS realist of the Southern Paiute tribe played by Gill Birmingham.

What a difference Unai makes…

Talking of Birmingham, I’m delighted to see Aston Villa’s progress under Unai Emery, who’s gone for the treble (or at least the double ll) after Sevilla and Villarreal.

Lasting powers

Is there some mysterious energy pervading important legal documents? Approaching dotage, Rosy and I have been busy preparing our Lasting Powers of Attorney for both Property & Financial Affairs and Health & Welfare. These require signing both by ourselves as the donors and by all the attorneys, and by witnesses to each.

We think we are now in a position to send the documents to be registered but along the way I seem to have been a complete idiot when it comes to reading and following the instructions or helping others do the same.

So far:

I forgot to ask people to write in block capitals, using black ink.

I forgot to get all the signatures I needed.

A witness misspelt her own name (!)

Another wrote the wrong post code for his current address.

Half the corrections made were incorrectly initialled.

I’ve made three visits to a friend’s house to achieve the correct final version.

Fortunately, his wife is an expert baker so cake was plentiful! (Many thanks Nick and Trish!)

Galen, I’m ready to believe in panpsychism. The papers are now sitting on the corner of the desk glowering at me, waiting for a final sheet from another signatory.

‘In my beginning is my end’

writes T. S. Eliot in East Coker. Mention of Galen Strawson swings me back to last week’s patch of sky and there’s a definite recursive, biting the tail feel to my researches at present. Checking out examples of mise en abyme in Lucien Dällenbach’s The Mirror in the Text, I find he refers to Michel Butor’s Passing Time, a book I first read when I discovered it on my brother’s bookshelf when I was about 15. I was delighted to find it has been republished recently and I bought myself a new copy. There’s definitely something ouroborotic (is that an adjective?) about mise en abyme, my current obsession favourite literary device.

Then while I’m looking up ouroboros on Wikipedia, I come across Robin Parmar’s name in the article about ouroboronic (any better?) cybernetics. Robin is based in Limerick and we used to see each other regularly at poetry festivals there and in Brighton. Hello to all my friends in the city - it was great pleasure to be at Ciaran O’Driscoll’s 80th birthday party last year, where I delivered a memorable festschrift for the great maestro – ‘You’re eighty, matey!’ (‘Impressive occasional verse’ said Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. I think she was being nice.)

A raid on the inarticulate

Here’s some more East Coker for Eliot fans. That slightly creepy choirmaster voice provided the soundtrack of my adolescence, alongside Auden’s far more magisterial tones. (Snakebite - I had two actor friends who both took a variation on the spelling of Eliot for their professional names.)

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Quick thoughts

Irreverent it may be but The Book of Mormon is a very funny show. I have never seen so many shoulders moving in synchronised guffawing.

I inadvertently awarded Ronald Hutton a knighthood in my last post. Well, I think he deserves one, don’t you? Come on KC, doff the sword.

A very enjoyable poetry evening and dinner at The Athenaeum for Poetry Series No. 73 (!) with poet Ann Pilling courtesy of Martin Leadbetter. I was delighted to see on the wall by the loo that selfies obviously have a long tradition.

Ouroborosly (adverb, anyone?), I sat next to Professor John Godfrey, which gave me great pleasure, mainly because he was full of fascinating stories about his life as a virologist, but also because my full name (remember to put that on your LPA) is John Godfrey Davies.

May the sun shine from the blue, on you, till next time.