Bottle

I've been reading about generativity, and generativity's link to care, experienced in humans, usually in middle age. More than one commentator points to the fact that generativity, which is usually defined as:

'the ability of a self contained system to provide an independent ability to create, generate or produce content without any input from the originators of the system'

can stimulate virtue or vice, and not necessarily one at the expense of the other. That is to say, we each can generate good intent and good outcomes in the world, or we can act in, well, in the way of Stavrogin in Dostoevsky's 'The Possessed', or we can sit in a nicely painted beige mediocre, or any combination of these. In any case, a path of development is discernible within the outcomes of our actions, where we get back more than we give to the means by which we are giving. What we care about, what we attend to, for good or bad, matters a helluva lot.

I'm always more than a little hypnotised by paths of development. Paths of development can go in many different directions. The Doug Anthony Allstars, Australian Anarchists of the late 1980's, had a somewhat haunting song called 'Bottle'. There's a development, here. Blessed be the person who finally puts a proper DAAS version of the song on YouTube (there's a somewhat shocking solo by Paul McDermott available online to date).

BOTTLE

A stinking sun burned me awake,
Through the shuttered windowpane.
I recalled through the eyes of claret red,
He had taken me again.
And the hair of the dog revives me,
But I find it hard to swallow.
It's a marriage made in heaven between me,

and the bottle.

A thousand words fell through my hands,
And the room just spins.
This sodden mattress holds my heart,
And it cradles my regrets.
I'll read it once again,
For he knows that I'll not follow.
It's a marriage of convenience between me,

and the bottle.

Now king alcohol comes back,
With his static and his pride.
And he staggers, drunken skinful,
Through my throat all parched and dry.
And if I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Then I could rest,
And never wake again in sorrow.

It's a marriage on the rocks, between me

and the bottle.