Commonplace Book

'"I always think dear S. Peter's - or was it S. Paul's - remark (I invariably confuse the two) about a woman's not plaiting her hair or putting on gold and apparel, but having a meek and quiet spirit instead, is so very beautiful and appropriate. But it is only those women who have a maid to see to the plaiting of their hair and the putting on of their apparel that get the time to attend to the development of meek and quiet spirits...."'

from Fuel of Fire by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter XXI)

Commonplace Book

'"...happy is he whose good intentions have borne fruit in deeds, and whose evil thoughts have perished in the blossom."'

from Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott (Chapter XIII)

Pop Music - The Human League

If a record company asked me to edit a 'best of' The Human League and give my raison d'etre, I think the first thing I'd want to do is emphasise that my choices would be made on the basis of the best songs, rather than those which have been most popular, or are most celebrated for whatever reason. Thus I would leave out 'Don't You Want Me', even though it's THE Human League track for most people, because it just doesn't cut the highest level mustard for me.

Equally, 'Empire State Human' would have to go, because although I quite like its verses, its chorus gives me the willies - of all their prismatic faces, Pogo-League was one of the few failures.

The thing is, The Human League have been consistently fascinating on a pop level for a lot longer than most people think. It didn't all die in 1984. It revived intriguingly around 1990. The fascination does not reside exclusively in The Wire, David Toop, electronica-baby territory. It resides in the crackle on the radio busting out over the washing up - that over and over chorus that hits you between the eyes and sums up a mood, a time, a generation.

In the case of The Human League, of course, it has had phenomenal ups and downs - all the drama of a pop career is there. The stuff which augments legends. The downs in popularity have been very productive seasons for them on the whole, with the exception of the awful time in the mid 80s with Jam and Lewis and the whole 'Crash' debacle.

Since then, though, things have looked up decidedly in the quality stakes. Yes, its a different League, but the pop-WALLOP! is well and truly present at their best. The last album, 'Secrets', hides an example, probably the best. A haunting, misty green song with shades of blushing melancholy called 'Shameless'. As a fellow League enthusiast put it - 'it could have been massive'. The album contained many impressive things but this is the best. As is typical, the album was shrouded in a label-collapse, a stiffed fine single ('All I Ever Wanted') as a result, a desperate attempt at a second single elsewhere, and an awful silence further abroad in our culture which was not deserved. Another dramatic twist in an extraordinary story.

Now they have a new recording contract with Wall of Sound Records and we wait with our breaths well-baited.......

Of course, the centre of it all is THAT voice. Phil Oakey - the voice of a generation, but more importantly perhaps a voice which carries through you, makes a song pound in your head, and gives utterance to something indescribable but wonderful. Our generation should have had more of him - he should always have been on the radio - we'd have had a richer pop culture for it. I can think of many virtually unknown League songs which sound like the hits of a parallel universe, so many examples of things our hearts should be melting over with nostalgia.

So, that said, here it is:

ULTRALEAGUE

1. All I Ever Wanted
2. Being Boiled
3. The Black Hit of Space
4. Filling Up With Heaven
5. Liar
6. Love Action
7. Love Me Madly?
8. Mirror Man
9. Only After Dark
10. Rock'n'Roll / Nightclubbing
11. Shameless
12. The Sound of the Crowd (Full Version)
13. Stay With Me Tonight
14. Tell Me When
15. Things That Dreams are Made Of

There are many contenders for space in this select group; I can already imagine a second volume in turbo-green to match this one's turbo-blue, and fifteen more slices of magic to set the airwaves ringing high and low..........

Commonplace Book

'"...they tell you truths that you'd rather not hear. I don't like people who always tell me the truth. Who wants to hear the truth? I'm sure I don't, it is always so humbling; and humility is the most depressing of virtues; though all virtues are more or less lowering unless taken in very small quantities."'

from Fuel of Fire by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter XVIII)

Commonplace Book

'"...Roughly speaking I should say that those men and women who doubt their own immortality have never experienced deep and passionate devotion. They may refuse to accept the Christian doctrine of immortality - that is a different thing; but a human being, who has once absorbingly loved another human being, can never doubt that his love - and therefore himself - is immortal; he is conscious that it is too strong and too godlike an emotion ever to see death."'

from Fuel of Fire by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter XVII)

Commonplace Book

'Love, like genius, is not an integral part of character; it is a gift, an inspiration, direct from heaven. Sometimes it is in harmony with the natural man or woman to whom it is sent; sometimes it is in direct opposition to each one of his or her inborn characteristics. Yet none the less is it of God, and so must in the end prevail.'

from Fuel of Fire by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter XVII)

Commonplace Book

'There are some people so constituted that, when engaged in the fascinating occupation of gossiping away another's character, they are not so much unwilling as unable to pay heed to the clearest evidence.'

from Fuel of Fire by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter XV)

Commonplace Book

'.....the first pangs of that world-old agony which comes to all of us when we first understand that there are limitations to our gift of consolation towards those whom we love best - that our power to love and our power to console are by no means synonymous. It is when our best-beloved are writhing from the effects of a wound which no touch of ours can heal or even soothe, that we are brought face to face with the incapacities of human affection. We would gladly give our very lives if this pain could be in any way diminished - but it cannot; our powerlessness is as complete as is our sympathy. As we go through the world, we love and are loved by many; we cheer and are cheered by many; we help and are helped by many; but if, in the whole course of a lifetime, we find one human heart which we are able perfectly to heal and to comfort - one human hand which is able perfectly to heal and to comfort us - we may of a truth consider ourselves blessed; for this is the greatest and the rarest gift vouchsafed to the sons and daughters of men.'

from Fuel of Fire by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter XIII)

Commonplace Book

'...There was nothing in him save an aching void, and a need of emptiness. Gone was his joy in life, gone the splendid bird of joy that once used to soar blithely, ecstatically upwards, pouring out song. There were days when, sitting in his room, he had no more feeling of life than the halting tic-tac of the clock in the next room, that seemed to be beating in his own brain. And yet, the wild bird of joy was still in him, it would suddenly take flight, and flutter against the bars of its cage: and in the depths of his soul there was a frightful tumult of sorrow - "the bitter cry of one living in the wilderness..."

The world's misery lies in this, that a man hardly ever has a companion. Women, perhaps, and chance friendships. We are reckless in our use of the lovely word, friend. In reality we hardly have a single friend all through our lives. Rare, very rare, are those men who have real friends. But the happiness of it is so great that it is impossible to live when they are gone. The friend filled the life of his friend, unbeknown to him, unmarked. The friend goes: and life is empty. Not only the beloved is lost, but every reason for loving, every reason for having loved. Why had he lived? Why had either lived?'

from The Burning Bush by Romain Rolland, part nine of his Jean Christophe sequence, translated by Gilbert Cannan

Commonplace Book

'....of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful, and pitiable.'

from Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott (Chapter III)

Commonplace Book

'If one has ever seen the best of anything, in love or life or art as well as in religion (for I believe the heavenly vision comes to us in innumerable ways), it is sin for us not to obey it. We need not be always thinking about it; but we must never be disobedient to it. Therefore, it seems to me that the few amongst us to whom it is granted to see the best in any walk of life have duties entailed upon us from which ordinary men and women are exempt.'

from Fuel of Fire by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter VIII)

Commonplace Book

'....as they went they talked by the way of all the trifling matters which are of no moment in themselves, but are of such absorbing importance in the mouth of the one person whose prerogative it is to turn life's smallest coins into gold, and earth's commonest corners into paradise.'

from Fuel of Fire by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter IV)