the elegantly dressed middle brow

Not an easy subject to find a suitable illustration for, even if a girl knows what she means.*

It's something to do with a discussion about Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Brutus, the end of civilisation, Kierkegaard's "unconscious despair," and of course Hamlet (his was conscious); plus having been reading Geoffrey Hill in the bath last night. I could get very serious indeed, and talk about all that. I will, I will... But my origins in the middlebrow middle class make it hard for me to do anything other than undercut myself with bathos, jokes, wilful bringings of the argument back to quotidian concerns (e.g., I have to leave for work, coffee, weird hair day, etc).

One wishes one had more time for serious thought, for seriousness generally, but then when there's time there are meals and bottles of wine to be seen to... Then one wishes one had the depth of reflection. I argued a case the other day only to be shot down completely in flames, and then realised I had argued agains tmy real beliefs, and agreed with the person who shot me down! I mean, he was arguing my real position. And the position I had argued was the middle brow one of "eh, everything's fine, try this."

However, the rest of us does keep going on behind that pernicious, easily-satisfied middle brow, and our job I suppose is to give it enough space so that our despair (or joy, or indeed our understanding) is not completely unconscious... This is where poetry comes in. I was writing to a friend yesterday about the closeness of our dreams - as in, what we dream at night - to poems, at least in me that is often the case. She burbles inconprehensively. But no time to make it right, she really does have to go.

Here's your quote for the day, and I don't want you to read it as about politics!

When history sleeps, it speaks in dreams: on the
forehead of the sleeping people, the poem is a constellation of blood.
When history wakes, image becomes act, the poem happens:
poetry gets into action.

Octavio Paz

There was a picture of Salvadore Dali with something on his forehead but that only reminded me of a middle-brow anecdote, which I'll save for another time.

(Edited in: it strikes me that this is about the opposite of elegance, or the need to rise above elegance, or the limitations of mere elegance, or something like that. Ms B is back at work and has no time for these considerations, except to say that although her shoes have very thin heels they are very comfortable to walk in.)

* (click on the picture: v interesting blog.)