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Group Writing: Do You Believe in ‘If’ Anymore?
One of the reasons I like the occasional music posts on Ricochet is that I’ve spent most of my life quite disconnected from whatever was going on in the contemporary entertainment world, and the posts give me a window into what I might have missed (and whether or not I’m glad I did). Although we moved to the United States only a couple of months before The Beatles took the “Ed Sullivan Show” by storm, I never owned a Beatles album. And while The Rolling Stones were hot during my years at British boarding school, we weren’t allowed to listen to them; Mick Jagger’s hips and lips being (in the opinion of the good ladies running The Abbey School) a bridge too far, even for the radio.
Prior to that, my experience ran to the blue wind-up gramophone in Nigeria and the 78, 45, and 33RPM records we’d either brought with us from England or borrowed from the Officers’ Club, and programs such as Desert Island Discs on the BBC World Service. After that, with a few notable exceptions when I would, in a transgressive mood, listen to Jeff Christie on KQV, the most youth-oriented local AM station (he later resumed his birth name and achieved some measure of fame as Rush Limbaugh), I left the music scene to others, and largely ignored it myself.
Thus, in the ’60s and ’70s, what did manage to seep into my musical gestalt was mostly the stuff my mother listened to or played on the gramophone–a world largely comprised of male crooners and peppy young women singing cheerful and upbeat songs. Almost all of them were British, and you’ve probably heard of them rarely, if at all. Men like Val Doonican. Matt Munro (best known for the title song of the movie Born Free), Des O’Connor, Frankie Vaughan. Women like Alma Cogan, Cilla Black Clodagh Rodgers, and Sandie Shaw. (Sometimes, when Mum was in a jazz sort of mood, Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine.)
And Roger Whittaker.
Roger Whittaker (b. 1936) was very popular in the UK for a decade or so starting in the mid-1960s. He had only one song which cracked the top 20 in the United States, “The Last Farewell,” in 1975. In addition to his pleasant baritone voice, he is a superb whistler, as you can hear in this live performance.
But, no doubt about it, his songs, together with their lush orchestrations and generous side-order of British colonial ex-pat sentimentalism, are pure old-lady bait, and he was much beloved by both my mother and grandmother. I’m quite familiar with his oeuvre, including this one that was a hit in the UK and Europe in 1970. It’s not my favorite, and I find the contrast between the staccato delivery of the verses and the lyrical refrain a bit jarring. (I expect he had his own reasons for not believing in “If,” as he’d spent a couple of years in the Kenya Regiment chasing the Mau Mau up and down the country’s Abedare mountains.) But favorite or not, it’s a perfect lead-in to the matter of this month’s Group Writing topic–which is “advice,” in case you’ve forgotten by now). Roger Whittaker, and I Don’t Believe in ‘If’ Anymore:
When it comes to poetry, I can’t think of a set of verses containing more advice per line than Rudyard Kipling’s If. It’s a simple poem, really nothing more than a series of hypothetical syllogisms (if A is true, then B is true), which depend, for their usefulness, on the validity of the premises and the logic of the conclusion given in response. And as that conclusion, which is proffered in the last two of the poem’s 32 lines makes clear, Kipling intended it as a rather exhaustive instruction manual on the art, or perhaps the science, of becoming a man:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss;
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
“My goodness!” I hear you saying. “You quoted the whole thing!”
Indeed, I did and there’s a reason for that. Because I’m interested to know what you think of Kipling’s advice, either in part, or as a whole. Is it a fairly complete prescription for manhood? (And/or womanhood — perhaps we could be inclusive here?) Or is it like The Curate’s Egg–only good in parts? Are there recommendations that you find particularly noteworthy? Ones you disagree with? Ones you’d like to add? Ones you’d leave out? Ones you’ve actually found yourself living, as you’ve gone through your life? Assuming you’re a fan, which do you find the easiest “If” to live up to? The hardest?
Is the advice Kipling offers us in “If” relevant in the 21st century, or is it hopelessly Victorian and outdated? (The poem was written in 1895, but not published until 1910.)
Do you believe in “If” anymore? Does the country? Does the world?
Published in Group Writing
I have seen both in person. Robert Goulet in Man of La Mancha and Roger Whittaker in concert.
What courage! What men! Imagine being in that landing craft waiting for that door to let down. On the other side of that door is, perhaps, death. The young men could probably hear bullets slamming into the steel of the craft. Yet when the door opened, they spilled out onto the Normandy beach and did what needed to be done. What heroes!
You can never get away from virtue and you can never make the world pleasant or fair. Kipling will stick around. Even when surrounded by lies the Truth remains.
I complimented a young man in my office on keeping his head when all about him were losing theirs and blaming it on him. He didn’t get the reference so I printed out the poem and gave it to him and he put it on his wall.
Lot of good stuff in there. I don’t think I encountered the poem till middle age, unfortunately.
I think a lot of the poem is about self-awareness, which is probably one of the reasons why it’s rather out of favor at the moment. There’s a considerable amount in it of “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”–F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Thus, I should be able to “dream,” without becoming so wrapped up in my dreams that I succumb to life in a fantasy world. I should be able both to “talk with crowds” and “walk with kings” and retain, unaffected, a sense of perspective as to who I am myself. I should be able to trust myself, still, when others doubt me, but retain the ability to consider whether they might be right (I think of this as “keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out”). And so on.
I don’t see much of this sort of self-awareness being encouraged these days, especially on the Left. Almost any story about the lunacy that pertains at many colleges and universities makes this point. Most recently, applause please, for the Oxford professor who responded to student demands that the university divest itself from investments in fossil fuels with ““I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice. But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.”
Cue outrage and horror! The students chided him for not being “appropriately serious.” Fergus Green, the organizer of the “Divest” protest said ““This is an inappropriate and flippant response by the bursar to what we were hoping would be a mature discussion. It’s January and it would be borderline dangerous to switch off the central heating.” LOL.
If the students had the sense to listen to Professor Parker, he might have started to make men out of them. But . . .
For my own part, the easiest bit of advice to take is not to start lying about people who are telling lies about me. I always figure that such stories say more about them than they do about me; and that there’s no need for me to lower myself to their level.
The hardest part is to watch professionally malicious and perpetually aggrieved knaves take things I, or others, have spoken which I know to be true, and twist them to make a “trap for fools.” It’s bewildering to me that, facts being what they are, not everyone can acknowledge them; but Lord knows, that is sometimes the case.
Best I can do in either of the above cases is what we were told to do with a bit of food that fell on the floor when we were children, “Kiss it up to God.” And then wait for His mills to grind away to the inevitable outcome.
Longfellow. I really wish it had been Kipling, but it was Longfellow.
My family doctor had the poem engraved on a wooden plaque in one of his waiting rooms. I first saw it there and memorized it. Yes. It is still relevant and at the risk of invoking a cliché perhaps more relevant than ever. The hardest piece? “Watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop to build ’em up with worn-out tools”. Once? Sure. Twice? It’s exhausting.
It was apposite and flippant. That’s tougher to pull off.
Well done, professor.
That will not happen. For evidence, I offer the “Millennial job interview.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo0KjdDJr1c
Third time’s the charm. Been there.
It’s a beautiful poem – and timeless. I think it was KQV, maybe not, that put out this big, psychedelic Led Zeppelin poster that i had on my wall as a kid. Funny how I still remember it – it was a collage close up, but when you stepped back, it was a large head. Your post sounds like a scene from Out of Africa!
So many great lines here. I’ve always been moved by the part where he loses everything on the one big bet, and starts again at the beginning, and never breathes a word about his loss. Also at the beginning where he says to make allowance for their doubting too.
I don’t wonder about that at all. I believe he absolutely did.
Life changing maybe but I don’t believe for a second that it altered his view of what made a good man.
‘Tis a fine recipe for a fine product. A product that is not much appreciated in flabby times such as ours, and indeed a product rather actively discouraged by the priests of popular culture.