The Wind That Shakes The Barley

Hidey-ho.
Following some inquiries about spirituality and the deeply significant quests of the soul upon which some friends have embarked, I've decided to try and delineate some of my thoughts about the relationship between (from internal to external) spirituality, theology, epistemology, philosophy and psychology. But first, an important codicil: as an existential thinker, I tend to shy away from the concept of any sort of formulaic or structured institution which can provide enlightenment or authentic existence for any number of adherent acolytes. The individual is all, as far as I'm concerned. I'll save the potentially upsetting statements for last, thus keeping such readers as I've garnered for as long as possible, and getting the truly open-minded worked up with tension and anticipation.
First, the list of authors that you may want to read, should any of the thoughts expressed herein merit further inquiry. Chronologically, we'll start with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Diogenes and Polybios to get a schmattering of the Greeks; Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca to represent the Roman contingent; St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas for the early Christians; Hume, Locke, Rousseau and Hobbes for the Enlightenment Era or thereabouts; Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Camus for the Moderns; and Bloom, Fukuyama, and Derrida for the Post-Moderns.
With that auspicious list of thinkers behind me, I have no choice but to move forward in order to make room.
In short, I think that the search for a spiritual existence is cyclical, which is to say that the journey ends where it first began. With the self. People may say that statement leads to a certain egocentricity which some use to characterize Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy. To them I say, "So what?" The intellectual circles which dismiss Rand as being some form of pseudo-Nazi, and hence not worth academic consideration are not making the best use of the resources available to examine their lives and beliefs.
So let's think about the self and the soul. Like the Christian theological concept - the identity of an individual is a trinity. This definition stretches back to the Ancient Greeks, and carried forward toward psychological expression by Freud. The first part is the desiring part - the bit that deals with wants and needs. Freud labelled this element the id, and associated it with base animal behaviour. The second component of the soul is the seat of reason. Once a person understands what he or she wants or needs, the next step is figuring out how to achieve the objective. The corresponding Freudian concept is the ego, which Freud felt to be the central functioning element of a human being within society. Finally, there is the thymos. This has become somewhat of a fashionable term recently, as everyone from holistic yoga gurus to Republican political pundits wield adverbs like "thymotically" to advance their crackpot theories. The thymos is the part of each of us that deals with recognition and esteem. It's the bit that responds to approval, praise, appeals to posterity, etc. as well as criticism, denigration, and ostracism.
So, your id tells you that you're hungry, your reason tells you how to build a ladder to reach the apples on a nearby tree, and your thymos considers how to establish a system for future generations to continue harvesting apples and seeks someone to compliment you on being so clever.
When considering government (read: manipulating people), Hobbes thought that the id was the most important motivator, basically asserting that the fear of death was the big lever that could shift people into line. Locke also thought that the id was the critical point, but he went with the carrot rather than the stick, believing that people's acquisitive nature, greed, and over-reaching desires could be used to create a social contract which would modulate behaviour. But we are concerned with matters of the spirit, and that means we have to shift our attention elsewhere.
The thymos or superego is the kicker. For most, religious belief is a way of keeping that part of the soul happy and sedate. Of particular note are people who seem to express a co-dependence with their deity and seem to require the belief that their god is a loving caring parental figure who intercedes constantly in the minutiae of their lives. In these instances, the thymos is questing for external validation, and has previously been rebuffed (or interpreted a situation as such) by other people. The alternative is psychological projection of that need-gratification, and religion is a fantastic outlet, since it cannot be rationally resolved into a refutable concept.
Alan Moore's graphic novel "The Watchmen" has a fantastic little anecdote wherein a character is examining a Rorschach inkblot. At first, he thinks of it as a lovely sprig of flowers. Then he realizes that he's hiding from the awful truth that what he really associates the blot with is a dead cat he saw once as a child. Then he realizes that even that association is avoiding the true horror - that there is no pattern. There is no meaning, save what people impose upon the random and chaotic image. All of our illusions and delusions serve to shield us from the awful and ugly realization that we are absolutely alone, and there is no guiding principle or foundation for evaluation.
This is where Kierkegaard comes in. He thought that God is silent, and that true faith is expressed through a belief in the absurd. God will never prove he exists, because faith is more valuable when it is rationally unjustifiable. He said that faith is a leap which a believer must make without any reassurances or evidence. The courage to make that leap and believe in the unverifiable is what Kierkegaard thought made the authenticity of the spiritual believer. There might be a God out there or there might be the interminable void of non-existence. We can't know, God won't help us out in making a decision, and we have to make the choice based on the strength of our convictions. Kierkegaard used the example of the Persian prince who disguides himself as a beggar in order to find a wife who would love him for himself, and not his money or position. Kierkegaard said that Christ is the same way - you've gotta take what he offers, though it looks like emptiness and sackcloth in the absurd belief that it represents eternal life.
One step beyond that is Nietzsche. Like Kierkegaard, he saw the abyss not as a source of despair and despondency, but as a testing ground for the soul. Kierkegaard reckoned that the abyss was the source of fear and trembling which tested the mettle of an individual's character in the face of a crisis of faith. Nietzsche saw the void as a tremendous opportunity for the individual to triumph over the universe.
If there is no greater meaning or value to things, events, actions, then there can be no external sources of morality or ethics. Without tablets of stone to dictate what is right and wrong, Nietzsche thought that the truly great person could assume the responsibility of being the creator of his or her own values and codes of conduct. A single person could assume the robes of the Alpha and the Omega and use willpower and intellect to forge an entire belief system, custom-tailored to the needs and aptitudes of that individual. Such an übermensch would rise above the simple categories of good and evil and become an authentic being, complete unto him or herself.
If this is the case, what would motivate such an individual to act magnanimously or in any manner not self-aggrandizing or self-serving? As far as I'm concerned, that's your decision to make, but Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Mill, Adam Smith et al. put forward many compelling reasons why it's to one's advantage to cooperate and behave considerately, using appeals to the id and the faculty of reason.
So, do I believe in God? Answer: I don't think I should have to. Nietzsche's Zarathustra declares, "God is dead and we have killed him," basically saying that moral and ethical maturity express themselves in the independence from external impositions of morality, and the development of the ability to do what is perceived as right both for its own sake and in the interests of the individual. In short, is it not better to be a good person of one's own nature than to be a good person because one is told/coaxed/forced/bribed to be that way?
OK, those of you still with me after my iconoclastic ramblings, sit really close. Particularly you. You know who you are. This is the good bit.
You are special. You are unique. There has never been anyone like you before in the history of humanity, and there will never be another you. Every cell in your body sings a song singularly perfect and true, and the countless casual miracles that make you laugh and cry and learn and dream are irreplaceable and inimitable. Gods change aspects and religions and mean a myriad many things to the multitudes, but you are one. Indivisible. Individual. Incredible. You are more valuable and significant than God could ever be. Every resolution you make and every promise you keep serves to make you more precious. Believing in yourself is far, far more important than believing in a God. Do I believe in God? I prefer to believe in you.
Now that I've finished saying that, I'm going to sign off and think some superficial thoughts about how much I despise Chelsea FC, and then go back to my theory of the unification of science and aesthetics. Or the application of topology to describe an accretion torus around the Chandrasekhar limit and the rotational energy used to emit Hawking radiation around black holes. Cheerio.

Any Savage Beasts Need Soothing?

Greetings, gentle readers.
In keeping with the varied and eclectic offerings on display on this page, I thought I'd throw out a song I've been working on in the hopes that someone has some cool ideas of what to do with it. I've primarily just done the guitar accompaniment for it, and it sounds pretty dolorous the way I've laid it down. And I don't have a bridge or a middle eight for it. Any contributions are welcome.

a losing game of solitaire

the sun slid slowly setting
- Bm - - - - - G - F#m -
while I watched you walking there
- Bm - - - - - - - - - - G - - - F#m
every second stacked in detail
- Bm - - - - - - G7 - - - Em
the king of spades lay torn in two
- - C - - -- - Am - - - - Em
a losing game of solitaire
- G - - - - D - - - Em

closing my venetian blinds
dark evening draws my stare
my fingers slipping randomly
through poorly shuffled portraits
a losing game of solitaire

in cabinets dark harbours
secret memories still care
tender words sting poignantly
postcards and your letters play
a losing game of solitaire

and so I don my inky cloaks
solemn suits the ones I wear
until you return my queen of hearts
and allow someone to win
this losing game of solitaire

- mARKUS

I was thinking that switching the F#m and Bm for F and Am might rock it up a bit, but then, I'm not sure just how bopping a song this fundamentally depressing could be. The puns are a little ham-handed at times, but I think that's part of the charm of a country-esque sounding song. It has to make truck drivers cry and the intelligentsia giggle. To be honest, I started writing this in hopes that one of my sister's contacts at her recording studio in Nashville would pick it up, flesh it out, turn it into a multi-platinum number, and I could live off my share of the royalties for the rest of my natural life. Another get-rich-quick scheme foiled. I'm starting to feel like the mice from "Pinky and the Brain" - my plans for world domination never seem to come to fruition.
in any event, two points for anyone who picked up the Shakespeare references, and one point if you can nail all of the "card" references. Several million points if you record this song, sell a million copies, and give me my share of the royalties. Any takers? Damn...
Oh, and for anyone wishing to catch me on ICQ, my number is 27286061. Those who spam shall feel the cold touch of my icy and wicked retribution crawl up their spines before my chill black wrath embraces them with brutal and unyielding walls of inhuman anguish. So there. That should be enough of a deterrent to dissuade even the strongest-bladdered specimen of that revolting sub-genus of primate that spams people. And I won't even start to comment on the irony that a telephone repair agent and tier 1 helpdesk ADSL analyst not only is without a mobile phone from his company, but without a telephone in his residence. A bit like Stevie Wonder giving driving lessons, really.
And soon, there will be celebrations as I not only get a break from work, but I get paid at the outset of such a wee furlough. O happy day. Cheers, mouseketeers.

-mARKUS

Links:

Not to be confused with those cute furry bobcats, here are some entertaining sites that you may want to check out:
The Official Liverpool FC Website:
http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/
The Footy-Mad Liverpool FC Page:
http://www.liverpool-mad.co.uk/
The Fun Activity Page With The Beatles:
www.beatles.com/top.html/
Instamatic Language Translation Service:
http://world.altavista.com/
My Local Pub Page:
http://dukeofkendal.tripod.com/
Bob the Angry Flower's Official Homepage:
http://angryflower.com/
Ryan Estrada's Bizarre Comics:
http://www.ryanestrada.com/Planet1.html
Tips for Young Hackers:
http://www.hackersprogrammers.com/articles/Dos.htm
Computer On-Line Diagnostics
http://www.pcpitstop.com/
Plus, if I'm at a computer without my favourites, I can use these things. Yippee!

The Origin of the Specious

Salut.
Many people have asked about the whole JdSilentio name thing, and usually I'm patient enough to go through the whole long and painful story before my listener erupts with a sudden "That's it?" Thus, in order to diminish expectations, increase clarity, and preclude redundant inquiries, I'll lay the story down as quickly and as simply as possible.
Our story opens with Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and existential thinker. Søren had a bit of a nasty habit of pointing out various hypocrises and theological inconsistencies in the teachings and structure of the Danish State Church of the day. This incurred a not-inconsiderable amount of enmity from his fellow Danes, and he began publishing his work (after ditching his fiancée, more on that later) using noms de plume so that those who were convinced he was a dangerous kook might accidentally read some of his thoughts, and to Kierkegaard's hopeful mind, see some sense. One of his books in particular, "Fear and Trembling" was published under the pseudonym of Johannes de Silentio.
"Fear and Trembling" is a very searching book which tries to come to terms with the spiritual aspects of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Kierkegaard eventually corners the situation morally and concludes that if one is to use a Hegelian moral and ethical method of evaluation, Abraham's actions cannot be justified, and he provides no spiritual guidance or insight. Basically, God ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. The situation is a logical paradox. If Abraham defies God, he violates an ethical principle, but if he commits murder in a particularly socially injurious way, he becomes morally damned. How then, can this great leader of multiple religions be upheld as a moral, religious paragon? The tricksy bit about Kierkegaard is that he considers the capacity for sin to be held in the intent. Did he intend to kill Isaac and hope that God comes down to save the child? Did he intend to go through the motions until the very last second, waiting for the proverbial telephone call from the governor? Either way, he's failing to create an adequate moral and ethical situation. Does he trust God absolutely? If so, does that make him want to kill Isaac, and thus a murderer at heart, if not deed?
Kierkegaard's solution was that Abraham made a movement of infinite faith. Kierkegaard looks at spirituality in three stages: the material or empirical - where the person is prepared to demonstrate faith (through sacrifice) but only conditionally. The next stage is what he called the knight of resignation, who can make enormous sacrifices with no promise of reward or compensation. Beyond that stage, says Kierkegaard, lies Abraham - the knight of infinite faith. At that stage, reason and rationality themselves are sacrificed, and decisions can be made on the basis of the absurd. Abraham's attitude, then is that he honestly he believes simultaneously that God can be obeyed, morality followed, and sacrifice offered all at once. He can hold in his mind the concept of sacrificing Isaac to God's command and God somehow changing the situation so that the whole moral context shifts.
Now, Kierkegaard, speaking as Johannes de Silentio, writes that he can appreciate the enormity of the faith required to make those "movements", but that he himself can only aspire to be a knight of infinite resignation. Next.
Why does he use that pen name? Answer: it's the Latin translation of the name of the title character in an old Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale called (depending on the translation)"Silent John", "Faithful Hans" (short for Johannes), or simply "The Faithful Servant". In that tale, a faithful servant swears to a dying king that he will not forsake the prince and heir nor allow any harm to come to the new king, even at the cost of his own life. Later, after an adventure involving kidnapping a beautiful princess from a land across the sea, John is above decks as the young couple are getting acquainted below. John overhears three ravens talking about the obstacles that will come between the king and a happy marriage. There are three obstacles, only one way to deal with each, and if anyone were to reveal the nature of the obstacles, they would be turned to stone.
The first is a beautiful horse. If someone doesn't hop upon it and kill it as soon as the ship touches the pier, the king will mount it, and it will carry him off, never to return. The second is a wedding garment which will appear to be cloth-of-gold and silver, but it in fact sulphur and pitch, and it will burn and kill the king unless someone grabs it with asbestos gloves and throws it straight into the fire. The third is that at the wedding reception dance, the new queen will faint and die, unless someone draws three drops of blood from her breast and spits them out onto the floor.
So of course, John does all of the protective things to serve his king. At each obstacle, the king becomes more and more exasperated, and finally flips out when he sees John at his new wife's breast. He orders John to be hanged. As John stands at the gallows, for his final speech, he tells the king of the perils that he had navigated for the royal highness. The king, relieved that something finally makes sense, orders John to be brought back down, but John has become merely a stone statue.
Over time, the king and queen have twin sons who are the joy of the castle. As the king passes the statue of Silent John, he finally cracks and weeps at the feet of the statue that he would to anything to right the injustice he has caused. The statue whispers that John can come back to life if the king will cut off the heads of the two princes and wipe the blood on the statue. (Ha - ha! Now you can start to see where I'm going with this...) The king does, and John comes back to life, and magically puts the heads back on the children. The king hides John and the boys in a closet, waits for his wife to come home, and asks her if she would sacrifice her children to bring back the faithful servant. She blanches a bit, but finally stammmers out a yes. The king yanks the boys and John out of the closet, and everybody celebrates and goes to Boston Pizza afterwards. And extra jalapeños on the sombrero pizza.
So there we go again. Themes of sacrifice without hope of reward that are requited because they are done by a noble heart.
Now, as I aspire to knight of infinite resignation-dom, and frequently experience situations where to speak would be to diminish others and elevate myself, I thought it appropriate that I try and reflect constantly on the nature of sacrifice and hope. Hence the name: JdSilentio. And I've had it for so long, that now it's in all of my systems. It's my username on a bazillion sites, webmails, e-mails, admin logons, passwords, work ID, even some of the work I printed off in Africa. I can't even drop jdsilentio any more because it's become intrinsic to my whole computerized identity, even though I suspect that someone else in North America has been using it. Some weirdo named Bryan in Washington State. Oh well. Maybe he'll become despondent over the loss of a pickle fork and take his own life with a deck of playing cards.
Right. I think that's quite enough rambling for now. Excelsior.

2004 Mid-Season Recap

So here we are again. It’s mid-season of the 2003-2004 season and once again, Liverpool have been written off by the critics, the voting public and the punters. Five league losses, an unconvincing home record and whispers of dissention in the ranks seem to be the order of the day, and the naysayers are rather happy about proclaiming it to the world. Can the season be salvaged? Can Liverpool win? Can they triumph over the Manchester Uniteds and the Arsenals and reclaim the enormous deficit in points to rise to first place? Or should Liverpudlians just resign themselves to another season with a UEFA Cup or somesuch small recompense for devoted service and fanaticism? Answer: Maybe. What can fans do? Be that twelfth man on the pitch. Fight for Fortress Anfield. Cheer for your mates on the pitch. Support the gaffer. Send in your letters, e-mails, and telephone calls crying your belief out for all to hear. All that we have to give must be given. This is not to say that we are in crisis. Where are we? At a crossroads.
Contrary to popular and folk wisdom, the journey of a thousand miles does not begin with a single step. It begins with the adoption of the mindset of stepping. In other words, all that ordinary and cliché tommyrot about “giving 100%” or “focusing on the next game” is pure and unadulterated tar. Success is about being correct at the smallest level before you even begin to worry about the result of the game. Do Liverpool need to win more games? Yes. We basically need to win almost every single game from here until the end of the season. Certainly every home game. We will win them through the application of timing, perspective, precision and accuracy.
Critics have said that Liverpool are a one-horse team, and that without Michael Owen, the offense flounders and all is lost. We all know that to be incorrect now with Milan Baros, Emile Heskey and Harry Kewell supplying a number of critical goals thus far in the campaign. The lack of success is in no part due to a lack of talent. The Reds are packed with talent. What we lack is will. And Gérard Houllier is not to blame. Each player must take responsibility for each play. Make sure that that pass lands on that blade of grass. Ensure that that through ball gets past the marker and to your team-mate. Make sure that that clearance gets more than 30 yards away from your keeper and to a man in the same colour jersey as yourself. The victories are there. The hearts and minds of every man in a red shirt just need to adopt the philosophy that will permit them to seize those victories. And where the skill fails, the teammates must compensate. For too long, we’ve had too much compensation and not enough true quality. As the great Shankly said, “Form is temporary, excellence is permanent.” We need more players to take a personal stake in the welfare of the club, and in every minute play of every game.
I used to love watching Ian Rush. Not necessarily watching him score, though that was more than mildly enjoyable. But when he played with Robbie Fowler, he was always shouting at the younger man to follow him back so that he could tackle back on opposing defenders. When I played midfield as a child, I had a bugger of a time convincing my strikers to tackle back. Strikers always seemed to me to be somewhat of a breed of poncers, looking for a glory-grabbing opportunity so that they could get credit for everyone else’s hard work. Rushie taught me otherwise. There is a breed of striker that cares about defence, and who will sprint like the devil for his own 18-yard box when he senses the danger. To see a striker who cared so passionately about his own team’s welfare that he took over the responsibility of coaching his own colleagues to follow his example was awe-inspiring. That was leadership. That was what won all those trophies in the Anfield Museum.
So what’s the recipe? What’s the magical elixir that will solve all of Liverpool FC’s problems? I could throw out the old chestnut of teamwork, and convince you all that the panacea of 11 men working their bollocks off for one another will solve the ills of the world, let alone my beloved team. No. Work is part of the solution, but so is intelligence. Keeping your head up when you’ve got the ball, spotting that open man, watching for the lapse in marking, finding the right moment to go over the top of the last defender. Blind, tireless and mindless running won’t win games.
Specifics? Danny “Spud” Murphy has got to penetrate more. He has to trust that Didi Hamann can cover the space behind him and free him up to tee up some shots. His shot is devastating, and he has to learn to trust that more. Emile Heskey has got to gain the confidence to shoot from within the 18-yard box. He’s suffering from a bizarre strain of Andy Cole virus which allows him to score wunderkind goals, but prevents him from scoring run-of-the-mill ones. Stevie G has to trust his team-mates more. They will get into viable positions if he can just buy them that extra second. Michael Owen has to trust his instincts more. His goal-poaching instincts are redoubtable. If any player on the team is over-thinking, it’s St. Michael. Jamie Carragher has to believe that he is the player that every manager in England wants. His challenges are strong, and his general positional play is great, but his man-to-man defending lacks confidence. I have to say that I miss Vedgy, but John-Arne Riise does a great job of rampaging up the wing. If he practised his deep crosses a little more, I would not complain. As for Hÿypia and the Henchoz? I wouldn’t dare criticize them. They’re the only reason Liverpool aren’t fending off Wolverhampton’s challenge for the relegation sweepstakes. Focus and intensity at the back are the only extra ingredients that have fallen by the wayside during this new era of Liverpool attacking-philosophy football. I love it, by the way. I’ve just been waiting for a bit too long to see it truly in practice, despite claims to the contrary.
Will Liverpool heft the Championship? Unlikely, unless someone in Merseyside is psychic and relays this column. I still find it difficult to understand why, with a coaching staff including Gérard Houllier, Ian Rush, and Steve Heighway, the players are not doing what they’ve been schooled, trained, and paid to do: execute their precise tasks. I don’t mean to say that people ought to concentrate on their duties to the exclusion of all else, but that when St. Michael is in the 18-yard box, that should be a goal. End of sentence. When Danny Murphy gets a through-ball at the top of the 18-yard box, that should also be a goal. If Hippie and the Honcho are both back defending, no striker should be able to split them. Simple execution of tasks.
The game is not that complex. It’s about space and time. Einstein could have described it in exactly the same terms. If given enough of either of those quantities, you will score a goal. In defence, if you deny a player either or both of those quantities, you will have reduced his or her effectiveness, and all but negated the probability of that player scoring a goal. Dribbling and shooting both require time and space, and if those characteristics are not available, generally speaking, possession is lost and any opportunity to distribute or shoot the ball is also lost.
There is hope. Not some form of misinformed or ignorant defiance of the evidence, but real hope that the capacity for success lies within this team. As fans, all we can do is offer our support and be that twelfth man on the pitch, week in, week out. We can exhort that each man must do his duty, but in the end, the true difference can only be measured on the pitch. The players must take the responsibility and perform as only they know they can. As individuals. As a team. As a clockwork unit that co-ordinates every motion with a corresponding and complementary motion. That team will win the Championship. And that team will conquer Europe.

Departure of God, 2003

What can one say about gods? Followers will assert that their particular deity is right and just and honest and fair - more so than the next god or spirit. But as for the God of Anfield? What to say about him, now that he’s gone?
The supporters of the Liverpool Reds have been treated to some of the greatest displays of football in history. Now everyone knows that Pélé is the greatest player of all time. In terms of goals, technique, international experience, World Cups, class, and honour, there is no-one to match the Man. Even on Anfield, there are superlative legends - King Kenny, who led the team to their first ever league and FA Cup double as a player-manager - and Special K, who led the team to their first European Cup before leaving for Hamburg to win two European player of the year awards, and then returning to England to transform Newcastle into a top-flight side.
Liverpool created the standard of English excellence by winning four European Cups in seven years. By always challenging and being competitive. After such a tradition, who could possibly assume the role of God? If Liverpool’s most dominant midfielder, most devastating player-manager, and even the highest goal scorer in English football competition, in the person of one Ian Rush, could not assume deital status, who could?
The answer lies in a little lad from Toxteth, one of the less affluent areas of Merseyside. A local boy who was recruited to play for Liverpool Schoolboys, he soon surpassed all scoring records in his league. He soon replicated that form at the highest level, scoring a hat-trick on his league debut with the Reds. He went on to score 151 goals for the club in 377 games, by far the greatest goals per game average by any LFC player. Along the way, he gained cult status among the fans by, amongst other antics, revealing an undershirt after scoring a goal against Arsenal which spoofed the “Calvin Klein” logo, by saying “Support the 500 Sacked DoCKers”, who were on strike at the time.
Robbie was, and is, a working class hero. He truly represents what John Lennon found noble, true and honourable about Merseysiders when he wrote the song. It is a sad day when we consider his career away from Anfield.
On a personal note, Robbie was always my favourite because he was a contrast to the other stellar talent on display in the 90’s - Steve McManaman. I loved watching Steve play. I felt tears well up in my eyes when I heard Sir Stanley Matthews say “That boy can dribble”. I relished every one of his goals. But Robbie was always my man. I could see Rushie telling him to track back and help the midfielders, even hear the Welsh Kop legend shouting at him to help the backs clear corners. And he always had a nose for the net. Not the most attractive nose, particularly when you consider the plaster that he used to wear upon it to help dilate his nostrils and allow him to breathe easier, but a nose with a killer instinct. Keener than Gary Lineker, sharper than Jimmy Greaves - that’s Robbie. Not the fastest. Not the hardest. But when you need the job done, there’s no other man more capable of doing it.
Good-bye Robbie. Good-bye God. The pantheon of Liverpool will be poorer for your absence tonight.

Review from 2002

Odd. Deuced odd it is, that on my computer’s desktop I should have two icons with the little monikers “Go Back” and “Remember” appellated to them. Considering that the shortcuts to which they apply deal with a computer game that hasn’t been present on my hard drive for more than a year now, the fact that the two little symbols and their names still appear near my recycle bin should be cause for amusement at my forgetfulness and absent-mindedness. I should chuckle lightly and cluck my tongue at how I’ve grown too old and forgetful to use a machine which is now overpowered handily by the cheapest entry-level HP Jornada handheld PDA. Ha. Not even thirty years old, and already being outstripped by the next generation in the use of technology. Too disorganized to maintain a simple desktop on a computer that’s been out-of-date for the better part of a decade, and using an operating system that is so archaic it eludes scorn and criticism like Jurgen Prochnow’s U-Boat dodges depth-charges in “Das Boot”. In fact, no-one bothers to criticize Windows 95 anymore. Not enough people remember how such a piece of old-school software functioned, let alone how it functions differently from today’s upscale and hyper-marketed new Windows products.
But instead, I neither feel the urge for self-chastisement, nor the joviality which comes from a self-consciously anachronistic personality. Perhaps on another day, I might recognize the humour in not tidying up the old shortcuts on my desktop, but today, they just seem like poignant noises. In much the same way that seasoned professional doctors and lawyers still twitch when they hear the sound of a school period bell or buzzer, I am particularly susceptible to statements of meaning on this day. Now, looking at the little icons, I recognize that clicking on them will do nothing at all, since the program to which they were attached has long been deleted. However, it’s April 15th. That changes everything.
Thirteen years ago, everything changed on a bright and sunny April 15th. We didn’t know it then, but it was the apex, the zenith of an era - the last great display of the great Liverpool sides of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Those of us who followed the team were spoiled. We had seen a team conquer Europe four times in seven years, crush domestic opposition as though they were noisome insects, and collect trophies at a rate never equalled, before or after. Manchester United gave it a good run back in the ‘90s, but there really is no comparison. Liverpool Football Club in those days was a titan striding amongst gnats. They played hard in every competition, two or three matches a week, in the days before teams had thirty men to a squad and were allowed to make three substitutions a game. FA Cup, League Cup, League, Champions’ Cup - week in, week out, Liverpool were in it, and more often than not, celebrating afterwards.
The League Cup, brought in as a new competition to allow the old third and fourth division teams another shot at a Cup, became almost the exclusive property of Merseyside, with Liverpool winning it about every other year, and Everton managing to fill in the cracks whenever the titans lapsed. The Champions’ Cup (for that is what it was back then) was not only a private reserve for those who had conquered their domestic league, but had to endure a gruelling set of home-and-away knockout rounds to progress in the competition. Now, an English team only needs to finish in the top four in the Premiership, and then scrape their way through two group stages where they can theoretically still go despite losing twice to the same team. Not to name names here, but in the past year, Arsenal and Manchester United both lost all of their group-stage matches to Deportivo La Coruna. La Coruna then fielded an understrength team in their last group match (against Germans Bayer Leverkusen) to deliberately dump Arsenal from the competition, only for their lackadaisical tactics to backfire and their players to stagger and lose their place to the team they had previously embarrassed twice already - Manchester United.
Not to sound overly nostalgic or too full of the mythology of the past to appreciate the quality of the present, but winning the big prize in Europe was a bigger deal back then. And Liverpool did it often. In between doubles and trebles every year, they still managed to win accolades for fair play and good sportsmanship. Then came Heysel.
Heysel was the first sign that the empire was in decay. Bill Shankly was the coach, the manager, the gaffer that had taken the team in 1958 and crafted a well-oiled machine dedicated to winning things. He had taken a team in decline and foundering in a lower division, brought it up to the top-flight, and then began to swell the confines of the trophy room. First came the titles, then the Cups began to follow. By 1973, Liverpool had won their first UEFA Cup (doing a double by also winning the championship that year), and Shankly had already set up his own systems for training, scouting, and developing players as well as future managers. Like a mediaeval monarch, he set up the conditions for his successor -and what he used was his own creation and consequent Anfield tradition: The Bootroom.
Players generally feared the bootroom. Shankly and his team of coaches and trainers would stand about amidst the racks of uncleaned boots with a couple of bottles of Bell’s Scotch Whiskey and would discuss the game. Occasionally, a player was called to the bootroom. Generally, this meant that the player was being called to account for some form of poor performance or underachievement on the pitch. And specifically, this meant that five or six men who knew football more intimately than any of the players knew their own wives would incisively interrogate them until they realized the error of their ways. Aside from the potential discomforts of any player, the bootroom also provided the perfect grooming-ground for any future manager. Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Roy Evans - all future managers - sprang from the bootroom staff.
When Shankly retired, Bob Paisley took over the management of the club. He quickly became England’s most successful club manager of all time, winning 13 major trophies in 8 seasons. Not only did Liverpool become the most dominant team of their time, they became the flagship for English clubs setting off for Europe. While Liverpool spread their wings of dominance, fledgling teams such as Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest grew to maturity, challenged and won the most prestigious cup in Europe. The Champions’ Cup became an English hallmark, and every year, teams anxiously examined the fixture lists to see when the Mersey giants would thunder through their vicinity. Brian Clough and his exceptional Nottingham Forest team fooled no-one. They were good. They were great. But only when compared with the Red Machine from Liverpool.
After Paisley’s short and benign reign, Joe Fagan relutantly took the throne which now seemed doubly vacant since Shankly’s death in 1981. The Bootroom management seemed older, more world-weary than in the days when Shankly still stalked the training ground. Fagan was particularly susceptible to this malaise. Like Tolkien’s Elves, he seemed to want to join his illustrious predecessors on The Undying Shores rather than suffer further upon the battle-grounds of Middle Earth. In his last year as manager, perhaps the last year that things could be perceived as “being the same”, tired, old and kind, Joe ran face first into Heysel.
He had already announced his retirement. He was on the way out, and his successor was the only player who could hold his own in the bootroom - a cold and sardonic Glaswegian named Kenny Dalglish. Previously, both Paisley and Fagan had tried to summon the short-spoken captain to the bootroom for some form of disciplinary measure, and been astonished to find that the Scotsman could do more than defend himself. He could discuss in detail every movement, every motivation, and every mistake made on the pitch in the previous 90 minutes without batting an eyelid. He knew the game, and Fagan had never seen such a devoted force of will or dedicated spirit, save perhaps in the departed Shankly.
In that year, spanning the autumn and winter of 1984 and reaching into the spring of 1985, things went far, far worse than dear old Joe Fagan could have imagined.
To dispense with the trivialities quickly, Liverpool lost. Quite a bit. Despite winning the League Cup four years in a row, they dropped out in a forgettable match. Having won the three previous league championships, they dropped that trophy to their Merseyside neighbours. They lost the chance to compete in the FA Cup Final by losing in the semi-finals. And despite being both defending champions of the European Champions’ Cup and being champions of England three times previously, they not only lost that Cup, but lost the ability to compete in Europe for six years. After twenty-one years of being an ever-present European power, they had simply dropped off the international map.
What happened? Where human frailties cause flaws in ideals, there is always a loss for words. Heysel happened. For years, hooliganism had been the bane of the English game. Through the previous twenty years, it was always seen as a peculiar feature of urban Englishmen that their young and unemployed men would seek to vent their dissatisfaction and feelings of disenfranchisement at football matches with violence. Whether it was the romance of the gangsterism of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the influx of immigration so colourfully declared by Enoch Powell, the rise of a feeling of tribalism in an increasingly segmented and compartmentalized world, or the growing feeling that populism was dead and that violence was the only way to make a statement in a world without individuals, people in England began to misbehave at football matches. Anthony Burgess banned the movie based on his own book “A Clockwork Orange” in England because he thought that it had too much of an English quality to it. And so it proved. Ordinary, tea-drinking, crumpet-munching Englishmen could turn into rabid monsters given a couple of factors: mobs and incentive. Basically, that is to say that coal is quite sedate and manageable unless turned into aerial dust and exposed to an open flame.
In the early eighties, watching football had given a lot of people both cause and opportunity to perpetrate mischief, and the fact that Liverpool perennially had fixtures on the continent made them wonderful vehicles to perpetrate such mischief abroad. At Chelsea, people had begun to arrive at matches armed with fistfuls of 25 gram darts to throw at stands of opposing supporters or police stewards. Leeds had become a haven for race violence best encapsulated by the graffito “Hitler was a Leeds Fan”. Long-running battles along the canal became stories of legend rivalling Bannockburn or Marathon as Liverpool fans escaped the wrath of Mancunians. In Scotland, the Glaswegian derby was beginning to claim lives for no better reason than one lad was Catholic rather than Protestant. Into this cauldron of hate and dissatisfaction came the European Champions’ Cup match between Liverpool and Juventus of Turin.
Scenes of horror, disgust, and disbelief would do very little to reassure people that the authorities in control have any idea of how to deal with surgung masses of humanity. What can be said of Heysel is best said in quick verbal flashes.
The players become concerned during the pre-match warm-up as they ran around the pitch. One player asks what the fans are eating in order to throw such hard stuff at them. The response: “They’re throwing the bloody stadium at us.” The concrete is so old and decayed that it has begun to disintegrate.
Darts are thrown from a section designated for “neutrals”. Fans react with anger.
Police are unable to control movement of fans, take to clubbing and tear-gassing them.
A group of Juventus fans are cowering in the lee of a wall when the cement wall collapses on them. The screams freeze people within hearing distance like an icy gust of wind.
The hooligans pretending to be Liverpool fans immediately begin fleeing from their side of the collapsed wall. They’d wanted blood, but they hadn’t realized what the devil had given them in their bargain. Several are later caught and incarcerated by the Belgian Police with the help of closed-circuit cameras.
The Belgian Police, meanwhile, while hearing of the “disturbances”, decide that what they really need to do at the moment is to practice their drills, and promptly move out to the middle of the field, declaring the game to be postponed, and march about in formation for 20 minutes.
A little 8 year-old boy begins to cry. His father, laid face-up on the hood of a car in front of him, has just vomited up his intestines and died. The boy can’t think of anything to tell his mother. A Liverpool fan and his son help the young lad, despite the difficulties of language.
The tales of tragedy and sorrow continue, but what purpose would they serve? Thirty-nine people died at Heysel. Ever since, Liverpool have held a soft reverence for the northern Italian club. On the other hand, there have always been crowds in England and elsewhere all too eager to sing “Ice on the Runway” in a morbid celebration of the Munich Air Disaster of 1958 which claimed most of a Manchester United team who may have risen to become heroes. Such crowds are to be despised with more venom than is reserved for Windows 95. The cruelty of some crowds are never to be underestimated. Some opposing fans visiting the Stadio Della Alpi in Torino were known for chanting the numbers one through thirty-nine, a grisly chant perhaps vaguely reminiscent of the taunting given to the Philadelphia Flyers’ Ron Hextall by the New York Rangers fans in the 1980s. He was told to “Buy a Porsche” in an obscene reference to the Flyers’ previous goalie who had died in a car crash whilst driving his Porsche.
Joe Fagan retires in tears. Kenny Dalglish reluctantly takes the reins of the world’s most successful club, and tries to steer it past the catastrophe of Heysel. The club begins to recover, despite being banned from European competition for six years, with Dalglish becoming the first player-manager to claim an FA Cup and a League Championship in the same year. The board begin to find ways of curbing crowd violence, like closed-circuit television cameras and increased police and stadium steward presences. People begin to think that life will continue, that things would get better, and that the wounds and hurts of Heysel would be respectfully allowed closure and resolution. Then came 15th April, 1989.
The Heysel disaster was tragic, but the fact remains that the 39 victims were all Italian supporters of Juve. The people of Liverpool felt the shame, sadness and anger about their involvement - almost complicity - in the terrible events of the day. But Heysel is in Belgium, and the victims of the disaster were Italian. There was distance and space which fans and club could use to insulate themselves from the horrible nature of the tragedy. There was no such insulation from Hillsborough.
It had all the makings of a classic match. Nottingham Forest, having already won the European Cup twice, faced Liverpool, the four-time champs in an FA Cup Semi-Final showdown that looked to determine the relative fates of both clubs. It did, but not in any way the players or managers could have foreseen. The Football Association had chosen , as was the tradition, to have the match played at a neutral venue. They chose Sheffield, South Yorkshire as the city, and Hillsborough as the stadium. Fears that the police crews there were inexperienced, and that the stadium had actually been denied licensing for such events by the city council were pooh-poohed. In retrospect, they were just some of the small details that added to a catalogue of critical blunders that led conclusively to the worst possible result, like snowflakes before an avalanche.
The day was beautiful. Bright, sunny, and with a faint, tingling breeze, it seemed to echo the promise of the most sparkling and exhilarating game of the season. Liverpool fans, though, began to become concerned at a few things. Although they were allocated almost half of the seats in the stadium, they were all forced to enter through the narrow Leppings Lane entrance, while Forest fans and neutrals enjoyed the luxury of all the other entrances. The police had not begun organizing queues or cordons for the line-ups at the turnstiles. Worry and hesitation had already begun to creep into people’s minds as they were forced to wait outside the stadium, seemingly interminably while the turnstiles slowly let one fan after the next to trickle in, before searching and taking the ticket from the fan. The clock ticked by. After what seemed like an eternity, the match began to start. The announcer’s voice began to boom over the tannoy to list the starting line-ups and the commercial sponsors for the event. The teeming crowds outside began to shout in annoyance and frustration.
Meanwhile, in the police control-room, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield supervised an array of television monitors and communications equipment. The decision to filter thousands of Liverpool fans through such a tiny entrance to the stadium concourse had not yet begun to dawn on him as being somewhat unrealistic. He was a man given to following procedure and what he was doing was, according to what his experience and his training had taught him, correct. Shouts of alarm over the police radio that the crowds were beginning to press against the turnstiles, and that there was not enough police staff in the area to cope with the crush of humanity. Of the two thousand cops on duty, there weren’t enough present at the most crucial point of entry into the stadium.
Duckenfield panicked. Over the crackly walkie-talkie static, he heard the word that terrified him: death. He wanted to serve out his term with the police as quietly and as innocuously as possible before retiring to a quiet life with a full pension. There was no desire for drama, conflict, or heroism. On the contrary, he did exactly as he was told so that there would be no opportunity for anyone to identify him as the point of origin for any mistake or controversy. As soon as he heard that the situation outside Leppings Lane turnstiles was becoming dangerous, he began to tremble with fear, but when a police officer mentioned the possibility of death, he saw his quiet existence threatened. A death in the crowd might involve him in an inquiry, or worse, an investigation. His control of procedure left his grasp, and he panicked, ordering one of the large metal exit gates to be opened to let in the influx of Liverpool spectators, and ease the pressure on the turnstiles.
The procedure that Duckenfeld failed to follow was, in the words of the later Taylor Report “a blunder of the first magnitude”. Although he opened the gate, he forgot to block off the tunnel directly in front of the gate which led down to the terraces. All ticketing for that area of the terraces were misleadingly printed, leading everyone to believe that their area was directly ahead, through the open tunnel. There were, in fact, terraces off to the side, but they could only be reached by rather circuitously navigating that area of the concourse. The police who were ordered to open the gate could only look at a few tickets, but they saw what was printed, shrugged, and gestured for everyone to go down the tunnel.
The tunnel led to two penned-in areas. These areas were designed to control crowd violence and prevent potential hooligans from leaping onto the pitch. With those purposes in mind, they were constructed much like corrals for wild animals: chain-link mesh, barbed wire, and bars that overtopped the fence that tilted inward, to prevent anyone climbing over. There were also large metal rails set up horizontally across the pens to prevent any sudden crushes down toward the pitch. By the time that Duckenfield ordered the exit gate to be opened, both pens were completely packed, with people already feeling the discomfort of overcrowding. Then the thousands that flowed in were pointed down the tunnel, and rushed joyfully to see the match from which they’d been previously barred by the limitations of the turnstiles, sighed with relief at getting out of the confines of the surge to get in, and eagerly chased at the chance to see the game already in progress.
Take a full bucket of water. It’s heavy, clumsy to move about, and tends to slosh about a bit. It takes a lot of effort to throw that whole bucket at another person, get them with the full impact, and after that, make a significant effect. Most people can quite easily suffer a splash like that while standing on one foot and not fall over. Now consider a bathtub. If you sit in a bathtub, and slide your torso backwards and forwards, you can soon get a wave running the length of the tub. As you keep adding energy to that wave, it can get larger and stronger. With a very small movement, you can soon get a force that will not only shoot water by the bucketload out of your tub, but can knock many people ass over teakettle. And you don’t have to lift, carry, or throw anything. In the same way, one person slamming his or her shoulder into your chest is no great cause for concern, but several dozen people gently leaning into your chest is suddenly a crisis.
In the same way, the already packed confines of those two pens groaned with compression when another couple of thousand people tried to push their way in. There was a sudden feeling that the air was heavy and hot, like there was a blanket of steam over everyone. Some of the younger girls began to scream, and some of the younger lads tried to climb onto the shoulders of anyone bigger or taller in an effort to rise above the suffocating haze. Those near the pitch began to scream at police to do something: open the doors at the front, or cut down some of the fence walls. Outside the pens, those who stood in the empty side pens began to scream at police to take some form of action. One police response is notable: “Shut your fucking prattle.”
The later inquest said that those who were killed suffered from crush asphyxia, and that their brains, starved of oxygen, had basically shut down, leaving their bodies to slowly die for minutes afterwards. The deaths were supposed to be quick, painless, and without any significant trauma. The reality was more like the sequence from the animated film “Watership Down”. Lungs aching for air, muscles cramping with lactic acid, eyes unnaturally wide, the victims fought for their lives every last second, but as their skin grew blue and their eyes grew red, their panic exploded in a shower of pain and a cataclysm of broken blood vessels, surging stomachs, and spasms in every part of their bodies.

Some escaped. Some of those even lived. The brave Forest and Liverpool fans who flooded onto the pitch, grabbed the advertising boards and began to use them as stretchers were heroes. Duckenfield was now positively paralyzed with indecision. He couldn’t find an option which would allow him to deny responsibility for anything. His mind raced as he thought of ways of cancelling the match, cutting down fences, making appropriate announcements over the tannoy… what was the best way for him to avoid being noticed? The decision was taken from him. Some police officers began to act independently, carrying fans, trying to administer first aid, attempting to bring down the fences of the pens. One ambulance even managed to get onto the pitch. In the absence of Duckenfield’s decisions, everything was still being treated as he had last commanded. And his last commands indicated that there was crowd violence, and therefore no medical personnel were to be allowed near the pitch until police had calmed the situation.
One lad, volunteering for St. John’s Ambulance for the first time, ran about madly, trying to be helpful, but his first aid bag was empty - being only a demonstrator for his first experience. Without any paramedics, doctors, ambulances, or medical equipment, people began to die in the most tortuously slow way possible - feeling their muscles twitch and their esophagus dilate, but having no air enter their lungs. For minutes upon minutes. One man desperately sucked vomit from his daughter’s windpipe to clear her airways. Nearby, his other daughter turned an awful purplish-blue and expired.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Whenever there is a space, something will fill it, or try damnably hard to do so. When a human diaphragm and the other pulmonary muscles are engaged in trying to draw air into the lungs, and there is none to be drawn, all of that muscle tension creates a vacuum. When the levels of panic and desperation in the human body reach a peak, those muscles are working far too hard to draw air from the nose and mouth, and the force of that suction finally causes something else to give it release. The contents of the stomach are vacuumed out and sucked up the windpipe in an effort to relieve the pressure the lungs and diaphragm are exerting. Her mind exploding with fireworks, and her throat muscles stinging with the effort of trying to swallow and breathe at the same time, Vicki Hicks probably felt her father’s attempts to pull the partially-digested food from her esophagus, but that would only have brought her scant relief as she died. Her sister Sarah died nearby, trapped in a mind that was self-destructing from lack of oxygen, and left alone in a state of panic and fear from which she would never escape.
The remaining events of the day, evening and night are too horrid and exhausting to list. Duckenfield, having recovered from his mental paralysis, and beginning to get a grasp on the enormity of the catastrophe, immediately began to cover his tracks. In his mind, he was already rehearsing excuses. In reality, he was trying to suborn the justice system under the guise of protecting the good name of the police service. The closed circuit videotapes of the pens diappeared from police lock-up. Any recordings or writings made by police officers on the day were to be submitted for inspection and revision. In the meantime, his police began asking weeping parents and siblings to identify their loved one from a wall of 95 photographs.
Most of them were young. A few were middle-aged, and less than a handful were elderly. They ranged from 14 to 62 years old and were both male and female. Trying to pick a loved one out of such a morbid catalogue of death was an exercise in plunging the depths of human misery. Meanwhile, Duckenfield’s police had found a new tack - they would blame the whole disaster on the fans. Finding the nearest available stereotype, and trying his damndest to avoid blame, Duckenfield fixed upon the idea that drunk, ticketless fans arriving late had forced him to open the gate. Therefore, they had made the decision and not he, and therefore the responsibility could not be said to lie with him. A wonderful alibi for a cowardly bureaucrat. Fans were to blame. It was their fault.
Bereaved families were asked if their loved ones had bought a ticket, or had had a drink prior to the match. Bodies of the dead weren’t allowed to be taken to mortuaries or hospitals until after blood-alcohol tests were run on them. The results came back resoundingly. 14 to 17 year old boys and girls didn’t drink, and even the older casualties who fancied a pint hadn’t had much opportunity by 2 PM. The results of the tests were hushed up until further review could be conducted. In other words, Duckenfield was grasping at straws. It was around this time, when people were just beginning to realize that almost a hundred people were dead as a result of attending an ill-organized football match, that Duckenfield’s police began to leak stories to the media.
In the records of Greek history, a man who was said to have defiled one of the sacred shrines of the Gods was mentioned by a historian. But, noted the historian, although I know his name, I shall not mention it here. And so his punishment was set: his identity would be forgotten by future generations. And so it has been. In the tradition of such august history, I set the newspaper which printed every lie it could find about the tragedy at Hillsborough. I know its name, but I will not print it here. May future generations learn the lesson of hideously irresponsible journalism without knowing the name of the tabloid rag that caused so much pain.
Liverpool fans were alleged to have urinated on the dead and dying, to have picked the pockets of the dead, and to chant sexually lurid taunts at the dead bodies of the girls who were being carried away. How such accounts could possibly be treated with seriousness is incredible. The fans supposedly urinating on their fallen fellows were frantically carrying away the wounded on stretchers or trying to apply CPR. The two thousand police on duty didn’t arrest or even detain a single person on suspicion of any crime, let alone pickpocketing. And as for chanting explicit or demeaning sexual slogans… I challenge anyone to make any such remarks around any group of Liverpool fans - drunk, sober, young, old, male, female. As has been mentioned, Liverpool fans are not the sort of yobbos who chant the numbers from one to thirty-nine, or sing “Ice on the Runway”, and never shall be. Heysel had put paid to that sort of nonsense four years earlier.
The families of the dead were offered funeral expenses for their losses. No official apologies or acceptance of blame or responsibility has ever been taken. David Duckenfield retired for medical reasons and was accorded his full pension, in addition to immunity against any prosecution against him or his position whilst he was Chief Superintendant.
Liverpool has only now begun to recover from the blow of Hillsborough. The city is invigorated with a host of new EU projects, the restoration of the Albert Docks, and a number of other civil projects designed to beautify and enlighten the city. The club has finally turned a corner. After Hillsborough, the players and managers were directed to be available and on hand to those who suffered the results of the disaster. Player after player burst into tears, and finally player-manager Kenny Dalglish couldn’t take it any more. His son had been at the other end of the stadium, and was one ticket away from death. Shattered, he left the club to Graeme Souness, a former Liverpool player of hard midfield tendencies and fluffy permed-hair tendencies. And a ridiculous 1970s porn-star-style moustache.
And now? After Souness’ horrid reign, in which he drove the club to a second exile from Europe, another bootroom boy took the helm. Roy Evans, everyone’s favourite counsellor and the generally most likable and genial bloke around the staff was made manager. He created a wonderful array of young talent to replace the deadwood that Souness had used to pack the squad. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the wherewithal to control the young lions he’d unleashed. Steve McManaman, one of the most exciting dribblers and skillful wingers in the world, eventually left for Real Madrid. Robbie Fowler, known affectionately as “God” for the numerous times his divine intervention saved the club, eventually had to leave for Leeds United. Jamie Redknapp, the inspirational midfield general whose career was plagued by injuries, eventually left for Tottenham Hotspurs.
And yet, after all these years, it was a Frenchman who taught secondary school in Liverpool when he was younger who had arisen to become the new Shankly. Gerard Houllier, technical advisor to the World Cup-winning French squad in 1998, quietly and firmly established himself as the gaffer. In the 2001-2002 season, his team accumulated five trophies - the League Cup, the FA Cup, the UEFA Cup, the Charity Shield, and the European Super Cup. His young prodigies and shrewd foreign purchases have allowed him the luxury of being able to survive a life-threatening illness, and being able to spend six months recovering while his capable assistants ran the club for him. The sight of the man walking again was inspirational.
And what now? The team is doing well, though not spectacularly. The city is alive, though strangely conserved. And the last match played at Anfield showed that no one has forgotten the 96 that died, nor forgotten that the issue is neither resolved nor concluded. Of course, that last match involved the national team against Paraguay, and it is hoped that the minute’s silence that was observed stands for the entire nation.
And my desktop? It’s always been untidy. I’m a very untidy person. I can’t always dismiss things that aren’t of immediate use as being irrelevant. But whenever I see “Go Back” and “Remember”, I don’t think of the stupid science-fiction game to whch they ought to relate, but rather those memories that should always be kept with me in order to remind myself of who I am and what I do. Clicking on the little icons may not do anything computer-wise, but the fact that they are still around stimulates me to understand that I am a part of a greater whole. I know that while I keep the history alive in my head, I shall never walk alone. I have 96 friends. 15th April is one of the things that brings us together, and I would be a fool to forsake such comrades for trivial interests. Like tidying my desktop.

This is myself and my old chum Douglas in my local pub in London in 2001. I really miss that place. 

Poetry, La Quatriéme Partie

Basically, the two poems below are trying to say the same thing, trying to bridge the gap betwixt the genders and create a unity. Unfortunately, since the entire linguistic sets of the two seem to preclude compatibility, the two parts cannot be fused, and hence the term "cracked earth". Sure, it's depressing stuff, since it seems to say that men and women can never truly achieve any sort of true synthesis, but I find that it does make for a lively debate and interchange of ideas. And I'm all for anything that stimulates critical thought and discussion. We may not reach a definitive conclusion, but at least we can exercise our intellects through the examination of the issue. Or perhaps I'm just spouting twaddle again, trying to impart some aesthetic value to my talentless verse. In any event, I won't post my thesis which deconstructs both poems in the context of a binary dynamic, since it's very long, most likely dry and boring, and would take an exorbitant amount of time to redidact, since I only have a hard copy with me. So it's available on demand for any aspiring pedants out there. I may post a thesis on the inherent diametric nature of aesthetic and scientific disciplines, in which I try and unify art and science by using Newton's second law of thermodynamics to define the underlying dynamism powering all human endeavour and understanding. But only after I finish it. I'm only on the fourth chapter, having gone through the posit, the literature section, and the philosophy/theology section. Given the right inspiration and impetus, I could have it done in a few days. Or I could be a lazy sod and just procrastinate for another year or so. It's not as though anyone really needs to know about it. It's just more intellectual noodling for me. Cheerio for now. Back again tomorrow.

-mARKUS

Poetry, Part the Third

song for a cracked earth

somewhere:
in the icy nebulousness of altitude
& that tremulous treble
of drifting clouds
weightless in the aether
aloft in a fugue of fleeting
images---forgetfulness is all.

in sleep, near the darkness
distant mists of dreaming,
the substitute for substance
singing songs to empty evenings
crying endlessly for eternity.

in dreams, ideas flying
amidst hazes of high-pitched
humming filling spaces
quiet spaces between
the waking memories.

in remembrances cold & vague
motionless by moonlight
angles austere in the chill
isolation of that solitude.

in that nowhere that is everywhere
there might be some of
you might find a piece of you
in me.

where we
can be
together.

-mARKUS

Poetry, Part II

song from a cracked earth

alive and so
deep within me
in the darkened warmth
of our union
a joining of our
selves in the centre of our passion
we create the milky smooth
currents that melt
rough caresses into
the love of touching
breathing
wanting
to lie bare
naked below the earth
beneath the song for our
selves within a trembling embrace
holding hands
brushing thighs
you
kiss my eyelashes
and i
feel you through the shadows
smell the scent of you
in the heavy richness
of our stormy love
through the beatings of our hearts
of our heart
in the all too sweet
tender instant
of touch
when we can be together

-mARKUS

Poetry, Part 1

I need to put some more substance into this page, so I thought I'd drop in a couple of poems. They were written taking into account a theory of mine which postulates that males and females communicate using entirely different lexica. Thus, while the feminine language is essentially chthonic and uses words generally derived from anglo-saxon etymological sources, the masculine language is more impersonal and scientific, and derives much of its vocabulary from Greek and Latin sources. Let's see if you can tell which is which...

Blazing Smeg!

Shalom, y'all.
Just trying to figure out the whole Blog thing, but once I get it all sorted, I should be posting tons and tons of useless ramblings, and monotonously-themed revisitations of the Hillsborough Disaster, Liverpool FC in general, and The Beatles. Eventually, everyone that visits this site will be nauseated by any mention of the North-West of England. Occasionally, I'll digress on some tangents dealing with Shakespeare, aesthetics, poetry, but the bottom line is that I'd probably rather discuss catenaccio than chiaroscuro or Coriolanus, and Paolo Maldini rather than the Ponte Vecchio. If you've ever sung "One Robbie Fowler" to the tune of "Guantanamera", you're welcome in my kitchen any time. And once I get a den, you'll be welcome there as well. Hopefully, someone will get some sort of entertainment or education from my oft-intoxicated maunderings, and maybe, just maybe I'll be discovered by someone who will recognize my potential and boost my thymos somewhat.