Words… words… words

One of many indications that ours is a culture sliding out of civilisation is the proliferation of jargon – and jargon of a particularly silly kind.

Jargon matters, jargon is a real and significant evil, because it is a substitute for thought. It makes its contribution, like other instances of sub-literacy, to the decline of some of those key things that have always been considered essential elements of a civilised culture – and of a civilised person. It also matters because it seeks either to deceive listeners or simply to exclude them. It is not an aid, but a barrier, to real communication.

Jargon is a substitute for thought just as a takeaway is a substitute for cooking: the first is as injurious to mental health as the second is to physical wellbeing: mens stulta in corpore stultum. Assure someone you will re-visit the issues and deliver effective targets… and you say nothing, having thought nothing: you simply hide a piece of prevarication behind words that sound weighty but in fact are empty, deceiving yourself into feeling like a smart communicator just because you have uttered a few plastic words that slid all too easily into the mind from off the language rubbish-tip that is management speak. It is just like filling one’s stomach with plastic ‘food’ from the drive-in burger bar – feeling superficially satisfied, while in reality just poking into the body one more prod towards ill-health.

Jargon is an attempt to deceive one’s listeners, because it seeks to silence opposition without true argument. Add a trendy postlude to your claim – such as ‘I think that’s the way forward’ – just after you have said precisely what your listener has already argued against, and you lay claim to a finality and authority that you do not deserve: you have not earned it by the slightest process of reasoning or communication.

And jargon is socially destructive. It seeks to set up a pseudo-smart coterie of those who are ‘where it’s at’. It is exclusive – in a purely negative sense. Not the intellectual elitism to which all may aspire and which it is the purpose of education to give access: that, positive and culturally enhancing though it is, has of course become unfashionable in these easy-going, tick the box, drop the standards days. This is an elitism to which nobody need aspire, for it achieves nothing – and which is not merely irrelevant to education, but works against its true aims.

How ironic, then, that some of the worst jargon-mongers in the Britain we have inherited from Tony Thatcher and Margaret Blair are ‘educationalists’ – and those teachers who have, to the shame of the profession, followed them.

A Nation of Philistines?

Needless to say, there were not enough people at Saturday’s organ recital to fill the choir stalls – and by some way. Why is it that out of the population of a city, only a pitiful couple of dozen people think it worth turning out for an hour or so early on a Saturday evening? Such things could be very pleasant, as well as ‘culturally useful’ occasions – with plenty of time afterwards for a leisurely meal with friends, to talk over the music and everything else. The recitalist was a very competent professional; the organ is a fine instrument (hardly a year old, and the product of much dedication and effort by many people); the venue is almost undeniably beautiful. Where was the problem?

All right, gentle reader: I can almost hear you telling me how naive I am being. We know what the problem is: people don’t like organ recitals in post Thatcher-Blair Britain – they like Eastenders. Funny that they did in, for example, eighteenth-century Germany; equally funny that the population of London appeared to like Shakespeare in 1600, but now we patronise people by assuming they deserve nothing better than soaps. But leaving that debate aside, for the moment (like punctuation and the poor, it will be with us for another day), there remains the fact that the population of Worcester is close to one hundred thousand people. It is quite impossible to believe that there aren’t more than twenty or thirty out of that number who like music – and even organ music.

Partly to blame are the apathy and – yes – the philistinism of modern Britain: not that people are philistines, but popular culture, slush media, and plasticised education have taught us philistinism. Computer games are cool; organ recitals are uncool. Well, actually, they’re Pygmalion cool: you just try thundering out a bit of Liszt on a machine that’s got more power at its command than most others short of tanks and jet-fighters. And it’s got much more variety at its disposal than a tank. And it makes a better noise than a jet.

Partly to blame – it must be admitted – are performers who do not plan their programmes with the same skill that they press the keys. (Shostakovitch for a provincial audience, most likely to consist largely of non-specialists?)

Partly to blame are organisers who just don’t put the necessary effort into publicising their own events, or even doing much to encourage other people and organisations to help them. (I failed to find any details of what was due to be played at this recital – even on the cathedral’s own website.)

But enough of blame: we know what Hamlet said about using the players better than their deserts. Instead, let this little blog do all it humbly can to proclaim the future recitals in the same series:-

27th June: John Gearhart (Houston, Texas)

1st August: George Castle (Worcester Cathedral)

5th September Barry Jordan (Magdeburger Dom)

3rd October: David Briggs (Boston, Massachesetts)

See you there, gentle reader?

The Food of Love?

If anyone doubts that punctuation is a civilising influence, I would only ask for patience, gentle reader (for the only doubtful question is whether there are any readers of this blog: any who do read will most certainly be gentle): there will be plenty of attempts to persuade you of that fact as these pages continue. But today (Saturday, May 2nd) brings a more urgent question. The link between civilisation and music, though almost self evident, is another that is under threat. There may be plenty of music – controlled by that now dubious institution the BBC, and a handful of dominant CD companies. But what of live music, music as it has been made through the centuries? This evening, for example, there is a recital by Christopher Allsop in Worcester Cathedral. It will undoubtedly be an event well worth hearing by anyone interested in music. But how many people will attend? How many people know of its existence?

Commas Save Lives – and life itself

What a shame that the art of punctuation is dying! I have just opened this ‘blog’, and the first thing I find is an automated entry reading ‘Hello world’. It should, of course, read ‘Hello, world’.

Hello world!

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