How The Light Gets In

View from Hay-on-Wye car park

When we were in Hay-on-Wye recently, I picked up the prospectus for an upcoming festival. Now, despite its relative remoteness, Hay is famous for two things: it was long ago established as a centre for the second-hand book trade by Richard Booth, self-styled King of Hay, and for several decades has also been the venue for a high-profile annual literary festival. I was curious to see what this other festival in Hay had to offer, not least because it had the deeply annoying title of HowTheLightGetsIn [1]. It slowly dawned on me, however, as I thumbed through the glossy pages of the brochure listing the events and attractions of "the world's largest philosophy and music festival" (not much competition there, surely) that this was the brainchild of an ambitious and highly-successful university acquaintance of mine, Hilary Lawson, and I experienced a familiar but unwelcome sensation.

In a moment of clarity – I think we may have been discussing the possibility of upgrading my payscale – I once said to my boss that although I might not be very ambitious, I am very competitive. He probably thought I was just being my usual contrarian self, but for me it was a genuine insight into my own personality. For one thing, it explained to me why I have always been uncomfortable in the company of the truly ambitious. Obviously, most of us would agree that the personality traits that attend that unfortunate condition do make such people poor company. If you want to have a laugh, enjoy life, and keep your stress levels low, my advice is: avoid the ambitious, and mix exclusively with the brilliant losers. But – and this may just be me – I realised that, despite a lack of ambition, I can nonetheless never help comparing myself with any ambitious types who happen to be in the same room. I am competitive. Which is stupid; there's no point in wondering how far or how fast you might have run, if you hadn't pointedly ignored the starting gun. Strategy: leave the room as soon as possible.

I think I've always been like this. I like to approach excellence as nearly as possible, but only with a minimum expenditure of effort; I suspect I have an aristocratic soul trapped within my plebeian body. My school reports are full of comments that may be summarised as, "Could go far, but probably won't; too bloody lazy". All true, sadly. Getting into higher education is one thing; leaving it having achieved escape velocity from Planet Ordinary is quite another. In retrospect, those university days are an unreal time when the ambitious, the clever plodders, the brilliant bluffers, and all the other personality types associated with intelligence are brought into a proximity they will never again share in life. Indeed, the crucial differences between them, at that stage, are still emerging and consolidating, like freshly-developing personality Polaroids. You probably don't even realise what it is you are becoming, until all the pictures are complete, and comparisons are possible. Nope, it seems you weren't ambitious, after all; just competitive.

One of the curses of finding yourself in one of  your country's elite educational establishments – even if more or less by accident [2] –  is that some of the highly ambitious types you once rubbed shoulders with will go on to be ubiquitous as politicians and media types. Every time you turn on the TV or radio, or pick up a newspaper, the chances are that one or more of them is bound to show up. I have a peculiar, one-way relationship with a prominent British journalist called David Aaronovitch, for example. For our first two terms at university we had rooms on the same college staircase, and became friends. He was Communist Party aristocracy (see his family memoir), but that struck me as a Good Thing: I was still naive enough to think of the CP as the ne plus ultra of left politics, never so much as having heard the word "Trotskyist" before. He also liked British folk-rock, as I did, had a similar sense of humour, and it seemed we were embarking on a long-term friendship.

However, much as I enjoyed the rough and tumble of student activism, I was not as turned on as he was by tedious backroom politicking and, although he had a distinctly hedonistic streak, he was not as turned on as I was by, um, turning on. But his complete neglect of his studies led him to fail his first year exams, which was convenient for the university authorities [3], and he was "sent down" (chucked out). He went off to Manchester University, became President of the National Union of Students, and I never heard from him again [4]. Except that his ambition ultimately led him to become a prominent journalist and all-purpose current-affairs pundit, hosting panel shows and discussions, so his voice and opinions remain all-too familiar. Like most of my ex-comrades, dawdling or hopelessly lost on the Long March Through the Institutions, I alleviate any pang of competitive comparison by thinking: huh, Stalinist hack. Which is unfair: he's moved way to the right of "communism" (what was that, grandad?) these days... [5] Mi-aow!

So, will I be attending HowTheLightGetsIn? Um, no. Even though I notice Aaronovitch (not to mention Terry Eagleton or, crikey, Anna Soubry) will be participating in a number of what promise to be lively discussions there. The mystery to me is quite who the festival audience is, people who are willing to spend upwards of £158 for four days camping in a field, in order to sit in on discussions of "Metaphors of the Mind", "The Illusion of Now", or "The Mathematics of Thought", even if (especially if?) followed by nights of partying, live music, and "experiences". It's as if the planning of a Master's degree had somehow fallen into the hands of the organisers of an Oxbridge-style Commemoration Ball. I suppose, if I wanted to revive some shreds of ambition, the thing to do would be to blag a ticket and find out who they are for myself by actually interviewing some of them, and then write an amusing, insightful piece accompanied by my own excellent photographs, for submission to some national publication. Quite likely I'd learn something new by sitting in on some of the sessions, but mainly, naturally, I'd be "networking" and handing out flyers and business cards for this blog and my website left, right, and centre. Which, it goes without saying in this Brave New World of Ambition, would be considerably more focussed on promoting the Brand of Me than they are.

Perhaps I'd even go up to my old mate Dave, and re-introduce myself, and we'd have a memorable evening of catching up (as well as partying, live music, and "experiences"), opening up a whole new world of influential connections – for me, anyway. Heh... No, I think not. I know better, these days, than to enter any room where ambition is the currency, knowing that I no longer set any value on anything which is traded in there, and that nobody in the room will be interested in anything I have to offer. I'm not even that competitive, these days. Instead, my sympathies lie with Omar Khayyám, as voiced by Edward Fitzgerald:

But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me
The Quarrel of the Universe let be:
  And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee.

Or, to adapt Rumi, Hendrix, Cohen, and doubtless a dozen others: Somewhere beyond right and wrong there is a pub with a garden by a river. I'll meet you there. And don't be late.

View from Hay-on-Wye car park

1. Strange, isn't it, how so many who used to sneer at Leonard Cohen are fans, now he's dead? The reference is to the song "Anthem": "There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in".
2. I think people don't believe me when I say this, but it's true. This old post gives a reasonable account.
3. One of the downsides of ambition is the desire to be identified prominently with a cause. The university had lost patience with the disruption caused by a wave of occupations and demonstrations in 1973, and took every opportunity to purge the student body of what I expect it identified as "ringleaders". Failing exams, of course, is asking for it.
4. Perfectly normal, of course, in those pre-internet, pre-mobile phone days.
5. But then, haven't we all? There are a few hold-outs for the Old Ways, like the proverbial Japanese soldiers in the jungle, some of whom have gone on to achieve a certain prominence, but most of us (the best of us?) lack all conviction: surely some revelation is at hand? (Come on, class! Keep up! Yeats?).