With enough good reasons, you can get through almost anything - even terrible things. People do a lot of moaning, but we're pretty resilient.
That’s just as well, really, seeing how enthusiastic people are about putting each other through terrible things.
A population that hasn’t had to fight for anything is not used to finding good reasons. Britain's post-war church and state have been ... unconvincing about what you might be called upon to defend: generations of peace; there’s stuff in the shops: what else do you want?
That might not be a problem until things change. But when you need to find out what are you are prepared to defend, where do you go? When rule of law and liberal institutions are as good as the people running them: if they're busted, where do you go for whatever-it-is that sustains you?
People find meaning in what they spend time with, and invest in the things that interest them. For example: popular music. Be it ever so fatuous, it’s been a deep source of pleasure forever, and identity and meaning go along with that. Think of how important it was for all sides in World War II, for example. The young musicians of the 1960's and 70s all grew up in the shadow of WWII – and some of their work looked seriously at living through war. To think about what Britain has to lose, a couple of these albums are as good a starting point as any. It hardly needs to be said that a short description is no substitute for listening to the records themselves.
The Kinks album 'Arthur' is some of Ray Davies' best work. You can miss the expertise that went into it because it's easy to listen to. Aside from some generic riffing in weaker moments, there are singable tunes, interesting song structures, full harmonies, and arrangements full of ideas. Ray Davies' compelling vocals, at once angsty and cheery, are unmistakably him. His emotionally direct lyrics - often close to theatre - are vivid storytelling in ordinary language. Like the best popular music, The Kinks' music has a rich inner life, and there is something sympathetic and life affirming about it.
Arthur, (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) was released in 1969. It is about the Home Front in wartime Britain and life afterwards. Ray Davies "told a fictional story of his brother-in-law's real life experiences - the disillusion with Britain, the flight to Australia, and the whole weight of tradition that both protected and suffocated everyone who had grown up with faith in the British Empire". "I wanted to centre the whole story around an ordinary man like myself, who had been a small cog in the Empire and had watched it pass him by."1
The lead track 'Victoria' is a wry take on the protagonist's faith in the glorious Empire. Other songs deal with conscription - that is, being ordered about, and the risk of death; and with the tiring reality of the home front.
"Mr. Churchill says We've got to fight the bloody battle to the very end
Mr. Beaverbrook says We've got to save our tin
And all the garden gates and empty cans are going to make us win...
But all the sacrifices we must make before the end..
Did you hear that plane flying overhead?
There's a house on fire, and there's someone lying dead...
Well, Mr. Churchill says
We've got to hold up our chins, we've got to show some courage and some discipline
We've got to black up the windows and nail up the doors
And keep right on till the end of the war"
The Kinks, Mr. Churchill says
After the war, his available life chances - office work, a mortgage, entertainment, conformity - end in isolation and emptiness:
Put on your slippers and sit by the fire
You've reached your top and you just can't get any higher...
And all the houses in the street have got a name
'Cos all the houses in the street they look the same
Same chimney pots, same little cars, same window panes
The neighbors call to tell you things that you should know
They say their lines, they drink their tea, and then they go
They tell your business in another Shangri-la
The gas bills and the water rates, and payments on the car
Too scared to think about how insecure you are
The Kinks, Shangri-la
'Arthur' is critical of post-war Britain, and one can guess at Ray Davies' attitudes. But it is art, not polemic, and it doesn't come down to a single argument or political position. A song may be critical of attitudes expressed by characters within it. It is not the explicit moral stories in 'Arthur' that say something about what is worth fighting for. It is more the social world - partly real and partly possible - that it illustrates. That is, the social relations and freedoms that democratic institutions are supposed to protect. These are sketched by some overlapping themes, mostly social but also emotional, both particular to 'Arthur' and in Kinks' songs generally.
The theme most particular to this album is the real place of money in life chances. After the War, Arthur makes the best he can of his actually existing opportunities. But without a supportive social world to belong to, it ends in isolation and loneliness. Life chances do not happen in the the abstract world of political theories. Life chances happen in the material world, but there is more to life than what you can buy.
Another theme is about being resilient. When your only option is refusing to be beaten, you need something to keep you going. A lot of Kinks' music has largely life-affirming emotions like pride, hope, energy and cheeriness. But the emotion of the lyrics is often darker than the music. For example, here, when the music in a particular song might feel like poignant grief, the words describe bitterness and loss. In wartime, being resilient is normal, not the exception. This gap between the music and the words softens the edge of hardship without denying it - it can be acknowledged and lived with.
Common to much of Ray' Davies work is an acceptance of, and sympathy for, the ordinary: like keeping up appearances when there's no food in the house; or a drive in the country to forget the war for an afternoon.
Sociability is a strong theme in Ray Davies' work. He often describes, implicitly, the critical role of sociability in making the best of life. That means individuals in a social world, rather than a collective identity. It has its costs, like the stifling conformity Arthur lives in, but there are no life chances apart from other people.
This social and emotional world will be very familiar to anyone who grew up in Britain in the 20th century. It is recognisably similar to public and social life nowadays but also significantly different. Not everyone would have signed up to it. But many would, including many who feel something valuable is missing from things as they are.
Another view is given by Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, a musical journey that millions of people have taken again and again. The album is an intense, immersive dramatic world, and was a phenomenal hit on its release in 1973. It has sustained waves of emotional tension and release, ranging from anger, fear and threat to gentleness and repose. However, anxiety is the dominant feeling: from wistful malaise and unsettled longing to lostness, futility and despair. The album feels like it has something serious to say lyrically. The songs touch on many subjects, including war, and are about the struggle to make something of life in a hostile modern world: lyricist Roger Waters said it was about "the human condition" and "empathy." It dramatises lostness and the longing for safety in an atomising society; one structured for technology, corporations and money. One song (Time) refers directly to Thoreau's Walden: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country... A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind...”
It says, in a generalised way, that individuals with little support for making sense of modern life can feel hopeless, vulnerable and alone.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today..
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time...
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way...
Pink Floyd, Time
Subject to oppressive forces beyond their control, modern urban people are at once cast adrift and weighed down by distress. Worn out by doubt, they can fall into fragility and mental illness.
Part of Dark Side's strength is not being too specific: we're all dissatisfied about something - everyone can find something. However, overall it is a triumph. It has an intense, assured singleness of tone, as vivid and disquieting as a dream.
While there was no world war in 1973, there was the Cold War. Perhaps, in retrospect, "Cold War" wasn't a very helpful label. There was no active combat in Western Europe, but hostilities with the USSR hadn’t stopped. They only shifted, partly towards cultural and psychological measures. ‘Slow War’ would've been more accurate and more useful. War and fighting were far away, but the threat was here, like the dread of nuclear weapons. Dark Side described the malaise of living with an invisible, untouchable threat that could not be escaped.
Dark Side also suggests a social world with something missing. It’s like there is almost nothing there to be part of, or to tell you who you are. Why bother striving, if quiet desperation is all that's on offer? Affluence is not enough, or too much. At worst, you are mocked by your luxuries, a trap of rootlessness and boredom. With no stake in anything, what is there to get behind, or believe in? Why defend it, if the West cares about nothing?
There's stuff in the shops: what have you got to moan about?
Would you fight for that?
Britain is a lonely place nowadays, and consumerist individualism isn't much of a hill to die on. If we want Britain to stay a proud place with its own character, we need a better expression of what we are supposed to be defending. That's shouldn't be a surprise: in the last few decades, a lot of effort has been put into undermining just that.
Once you start dusting off what we already have, there is plenty that shows us who we are and what we might want to belong to. A starting point is to move away - somehow - from the abstract, rootless, Dark-Side-of-the-Moon quality of the modern world, and towards the sociability and real-world pragmatism of 'Arthur'.
Don't expect politicians to articulate a more convincing long term vision. The best professional politicians have been able to come up with in the last twenty-five years is "British Values" and waving the flag. Although Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Johnson have all attempted "progressive patriotism" at some time or other, it is a surprise to no-one that it went nowhere. Politicians have their own short term interests, and day-to-day political scrapping rarely has the time to reflect on the beliefs and feelings underneath the conflict. If politics is downstream of culture, then it is writers, musicians, and so on who will have to express what makes our tribe something you want to belong to.
The wartime vision of Britain is both wartime spin and historically accurate. That is beside the point: it's still an energising source of pride, like much of our history. In WWII there was a real and present enemy, and actual violence. There was a clear purpose and collective action, which made comradeship necessary and encouraged belonging.
People need a convincing reason why their lives are on hold, and why they should sacrifice their life chances, in active service and on the Home Front. The wartime vision was rooted in Britain's particular character, and in human groupishness and need for meaning. It is not a co-incidence that there are thousands of stories that celebrate that time, however nostalgic they are.
That said, recovering a more intuitive way of being is not enough, however comforting it is. There is little point in preparing the population for the war seventy years ago. We live in a world much more technologically sophisticated than our biological selves are evolved to respond to. On-line technology mediates everything, often weaponised by hostile national interests. A modern psychological war requires a more sophisticated approach appropriate to the times we are in. That is a huge subject but not impossible. It can be done, and we can do it.
---------------------------------------
Lyrics
Mr Churchill Says and Shangri-La from Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, The Kinks (1969)
Time, from Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd(1973)
Fair use for quotation, critique or review
The Society of Authors advises that limited citations of a work are allowed if used solely for the purpose of critique or review under the following conditions:
* Providing the work is publicly available
* The source of the work is acknowledged
* The quoted material is supplemented by topical discussion or assessment
* The extent of material quoted is considered an acceptable amount for the purpose of review
Arthur by the Kinks, 2004 Sanctuary Records re-issue.