Friday 17 December 2010

CHAMPAGNE PHILOSOPHY

DRINKITO ERGO SUM

I DRINK THEREFORE I AM

On a desert what is vital fluids or thoughts?

Descartes was wrong. Because we don't owe our existence to thoughts but to fluids. And the most salubrious fluid water is in a very dominant proportion in any Champagne. Oh yes I do concede: it does have side effects. Well I am quite content to live with that thought.

Friday 3 December 2010

CHAMPAGNE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

Psychoanalysis is dead! Fortunately, Champagne is not!

I attended a public debate at London School of Economics on whether or not it should remain only in the clinic; the word clinic is important as it defines the place where psychoanalytical process takes place, that is that the process has to happen between the analyst and the analysand. The whole point however was dull. Well actually not so much because, and in the end, the panel started discussing the point of purity of psychoanalysis which infers 'that it is not sullied' but not by political influences as depicted on the example of Nazi analysts post WW2 but more like influence from other disciplines of 'psycho' field, such as therapy, psychiatry or psychology. At any rate the public debate was not so much a debate but more of a public reading of the recent works that people who had lovely academically decorated names, recently publish, for what seemed, a last bark of the dying soul of psychoanalysis. And thus I concluded that psychoanalysis was dead (in that not only who established it Herr Freud, but also its relevance to our lives).

Champagne is so much older (as a drink) and it is nowhere near retirement or its dead; and I doubt if it ever dies (Global warming? - increasingly, almost every year is declared as a vintage!)

So in early, and very frosty evening in London I went to the usual shop to get my dose of 'purity' unsullied or tarnished by any thought, any one, any where. Once I got it I thought I was being dull but for the prices I was keen to research the consistency, so I got another bottle of Bollinger La Grande Annee 2000 (because the price went down) and rode Lady Di home with one pit stop in another newly discovered shop where Comtes de Champagne is bargain so I had too bottles and in the end I was infused by own sense of purity.