This afternoon's meditation was on the Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark album, "History of Modern". I found it rather patchy myself, lacking in the Kraftwerk-inspired sparseness of Dazzle Ships, for example. Eileen on the other hand rather liked a few of the tracks - "New Babies, New Toys", for example, she thought had just the right edge of menace, and the fade-out of "The Right Side?" she quite liked. We have always split on OMD. I prefer things like "The Romance of the Periscope", or "Stanlow" - what could be more evocative than a song about an oil refinery in the early morning? Eileen has always been fonder of the "Joan of Arc" songs and "Pandora's Box". Again, Eileen has expressed her admiration for the preppie-boy looks of the young Paul Humphreys, while I was delighted to discover, in Andy McCluskey, somebody who was clearly paying homage to my dancing style.
But the album title of "History of Modern" itself, and its accompanying sleeve notes, were what caused our discussions this afternoon. The group kindly list a number of things that are "modern" and things that are "not". I will give some examples from their list: if you want them all, I suggest you buy the album.
The OMD List
| Modern is | Modern is not |
| Dada | Rococo |
| Nuclear Power | Thomas Edison |
| Communism | Liberalism |
| Glass | Wood |
| Steel | Sandstone |
| Germany | France |
| English Electric Deltic Diesel | The blues |
Immediately you see the deep waters we were in here - here, for comparison, are some from the list we "kicked around" in this afternoon's "Risotto Church".
My List
| Modern is | Modern is not |
| Richard Dawkins | Brian Cox |
| WH Auden | John Betjemann |
| Carlsberg Lager | Henry's IPA |
| Biblical Fundamentalism | Messy Church |
| Thomas Hardy | Martin Amis |
| The Moog Synthesiser | Bass Viol |
| Phrenology | Homoeopathy |
Of course, what we are looking at is a false dichotomy. For if "modern" is one option, there are surely more options in the world than "not modern" - for if France is "not modern" - is it mediaeval, or is it post-modern? And of course the answer to this will vary according to whether you are reading the works of Jacques Derrida, or trying to use the public lavatories.
But the battle between "modern" and "not modern" is out there, modernists, and we are losing. Those "air conditioned, bright canteens" of which John Betjemann wrote so memorably (and, incidentally, apparently he did not like them) are giving way to a coffee-shop culture, to people "eating at their desks", as if they are in cottage industries. Instead of people travelling in sweaty steel cans to work in gleaming offices, soaring over modernist cityscapes, we are confronted with the idea of "tele-commuting" - or "sitting around in your dressing gown all day", as I prefer to think of it. Yes, the Cold War was scary. But it was modernist scary - this was the fear of being blown to bits en masse in a thoroughly scientific way. Not small-scare, widely scattered, post-modernist fear like we have today. In the past, our solution to Global Warming would have been investment in massive CO2 capture followed by disposal around the Moon - today we think the answer is vegetarianism. Sure, the Shard is a wonderful icon, but it is an image of a modernist world that is passing away. Modernists, we must fight. And we must fight now, for our rights to hygiene, steel, space and minimalism. We have much to lose.
I actually think that we are going back to the days of enlightenment. Because I've never seen so many lights as there are in London's West End on a typical Saturday evening. When I look at the night sky, I can see the glow of millions of street lights not turned off, let alone the glow of millions of lights from houses and businesses. No, We are now, well and truly Enlightened, whether we want to be or not.
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