Something Strange

[jean]

Are you somehow suggesting that it's not 'weird' to have most of you children die in infancy?

I still don't understand why you think that ours is 'the weirdest of times'.

I think he really believes that the existence of Grayson Perry is weirder.

[Pabmusic]

I think he really believes that the existence of Grayson Perry is weirder.

Ah!

[Beef Oven!]

Maybe we should get back to the OP?

[french frank]

I think he really believes that the existence of Grayson Perry is weirder.

Though the only way Grayson Perry can be the persona 'Grayson Perry' is by stepping out beyond the norm. It is the 'public behaviour' that is unusual, but there are also many forms of exhibitionism which some people revel in and others cringe from. This is part of an individual's personality - we don't know how 'weird' it is because we don't know how common the characteristics are if they're hidden away for social reasons.

[Beef Oven!]

Well quite.

Plenty of folk in the past likely had "better" lives than many do now.

Back to the OP, it seems to me that the behaviour in the OP is just one of a range of extreme and understandable reactions to a very difficult life event, and by no means the most damaging, and I would include self damage in that.

And I find it difficult to understand why it might be considered 'disturbing'. Why would that behaviour disturb us? Maybe I'm being very subjective, but the only 'disturbing' feeling would be if we (I?) felt at risk of something physical, no?

[P. G. Tipps]

Are you somehow suggesting that it's not 'weird' to have most of you children die in infancy?

I still don't understand why you think that ours is 'the weirdest of times'.

No of course childhood death isn't 'weird' What on earth is 'weird' about any death? There is normally a perfectly rational explanation. Young death is just 'horrible' as I said, and, thankfully, most unusual nowadays in comparison to former times.

As to your second question maybe best we don't 'go there' as jean's post indicates that there is clearly a difference of view here what what constitutes 'weirdness' so there is little or no chance of any mutual understanding about that, anyway?

Even the dictionary can't help here ...

[jean]

As a child, I had a copy of a Victorian volume called The Little Folks' Birthday Book.

I couldn't really understand at the time why so many of the verses accompanying each day's entry referred to death. One was Keats's

I had a dove and the sweet dove died;
And I have thought it died of grieving:
O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied,
With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving;
Sweet little red feet! why should you die -
Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why?

A second:

Fare thee well, our last and fairest!
Dear wee Willie, fare thee well!
God, who lent thee, hath recalled thee
Back with him and his to dwelL
Fifteen moons their silver lustre
Only o'er thy brow had shed,
When thy spirit joined the seraphs
And thy dust the dead.

And a third, slightly adapted from a source I've just found:

My little one, my sweet one, thy crib is empty now
Where oft I wiped the dews away which gathered on thy brow;
No more amid the sleepless nights I smooth thy pillow fair,
'Tis smooth indeed - but rest no more
Thy darling features there.

There were more, but the book is long lost.

I used to wonder, a child myself, why anyone would give something so lugubrious to a child. I realised later that many of the birthdays the Victorian child would have to record would be of little brothers and sisters who'd died.

[pastoralguy]

Something I find 'strange' is that, as a preadolescent child, Yehudi Menuhin could play the most profound music known to man. And that's before the consideration that he played the violin with total instinctivness.

[Tetrachord]

It puzzles me rather. Do you find it so difficult to imagine what it is like for parents to lose a young child, maybe in a very regrettable circumstance? It probably means nothing whatsoever to the parents if their behaviour disturbs other people. I often wonder how those parents go on living without going completely mad or killing themselves.

We can never know what it's like unless we've been through it ourselves, but people do survive. A friend's sister lost her son at 5 years from Bone Cancer. My friend said her sister refused to leave her bed for 6 months afterwards!! I could certainly understand where she was coming from! Some years later (she lives near me) she seems to have been able to move on with her life, thank goodness.

[MrGongGong]

The great thing about Grayson Perry is that he is not weird at all.

I'm not sure that it's a "great" thing
but he is very "bloke"
I do think that his performance overshadows his art

BUT back to weirdness

http://strangesounds.org

[french frank]

I realised later that many of the birthdays the Victorian child would have to record would be of little brothers and sisters who'd died.

It's a factor, isn't it? My mother was one of six children, three of whom died when under 5. My father was one of two, his brother dying in his mid teens. Going back further, there were bigger families and more child deaths. But one family I knew of had ten children living, and the mother still grieved over the twin who died in infancy. There was a time when people accepted that a certain number of their babies would die, but that isn't the case now. Society pities people whose children die, as it pities people who want children and can't have them. The Victorians seemed to be both more sentimental and more unfeeling.

But we can't guess what lies behind 'strange behaviour' whenever we come across it.

[Tapiola]

As a child I remember my grandmother telling me that, a year or two before she was born, her parents had lost a little girl. My grandmother was christened the same name as her deceased sibling. My grandmother recalled being disturbed at having to visit the grave of a young girl whose headstone bore her own name.

My great-grandfather (from the other side of the family) had an elder brother who died very young. Another, successive, sibling was given exactly the same name (including middle name) as the dead boy. This sibling also died young, and a third boy child was subsequently given exactly the same name. This third child survived into old age.

Different times.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As a child I remember my grandmother telling me that, a year or two before she was born, her parents had lost a little girl. My grandmother was christened the same name as her deceased sibling. My grandmother recalled being disturbed at having to visit the grave of a young girl whose headstone bore her own name.

My great-grandfather (from the other side of the family) had an elder brother who died very young. Another, successive, sibling was given exactly the same name (including middle name) as the dead boy. This sibling also died young, and a third boy child was subsequently given exactly the same name. This third child survived into old age.

Different times.

Didn't this also happen to Beethoven - his parents had had another son previously, whom they had named Ludwig; both boys named after their paternal grandfather (which might explain many of these incidents)?

[Tetrachord]

Didn't this also happen to Beethoven - his parents had had another son previously, whom they had named Ludwig; both boys named after their paternal grandfather (which might explain many of these incidents)?

Yes, that's correct!!! Beethoven given his deceased brothers' name.

An anecdote from country NSW in 1922. I found it in a local history book on my aunt's shelf. The family in question became a friend of my father through the surviving son in this story.

1922 and a record heatwave in outback NSW. A child is born on a remote farm (without cars, all were remote, but this was 750km south west of Sydney). Six weeks later, close to Christmas 1922, the most intense heatwave hits the area and the family is living in a corrugated iron hut, along with a couple of other children. These iron huts are hot beyond description and the child dies at 6 weeks of age. The father fashions a coffin from wood found on the property and before he has it ready for the child's burial there is a sudden change in the weather; so cold that the fuel stove has to be lit to keep the family warm. A dreadful story.

The next child survived and he became my father's school/lifelong friend. They're still made of strong stuff in the 'bush' in Australia!!

[Serial_Apologist]

The great thing about Grayson Perry is that he is not weird at all.

Just listen, instead of taking comfort from your own feelings or normality. You'll be all the better for it.

It was well worth listening to that discussion on Start the Week this morning, btw. There's a shortened rerpeat at 9.30 this evening.