By The Landlord
“Once I make up my mind, I'm full of indecision.” – Oscar Levant
“I have no talent for certainty.” (Fanny Price) – Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
“It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.” – Marianne Moore
“Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.” – T. S. Eliot
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And, enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action …
But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall ...
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” – Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Isabella: “I am at war 'twixt will and will not.” – Measure For Measure, William Shakespeare
“Indecision may or may not be our biggest problem.” – Willie Nelson
“I used to be indecisive but now I am not quite sure.” – Tommy Cooper
Oooh. Now I’m not sure. Should we go for for the sofa in slate, flint, cadet or pewter? Maybe even glaucous, or marengo? But would that match the carpet and curtains, or should we change them too? Oh no! I’ve just spotted further shades in smoke, lead, pebble, charcoal, porpoise and fog! I don’t know where I’m sitting now. It’s a grey area.
But it can also be more colourful. Elvis Presley was trapped for much of the 60s in films of a bright, sunny, Hawaii-type setting where invariably he met one girl, then another, couldn't decide which was the right one for him, so in the meantime sang 14 songs while he wondered what to do. That was the plot, a sign of modern times. Which girl? Which car? Which doctor? Which magazine? The tyranny of choice.
But if indecision was a colour, it might be beige. Does beige show a certain age? Or is it suddenly all the rage? Indecision can be a beige state of mind, a shifting sandpit of banality, at its most chronic extreme, linked to obsession, and depression.
And yet how did Imelda Marcos choose, at least for every next five minutes, which pair of shoes?
If only Neville Chamberlain had made up his mind and been less keen on equivocating, demurral, dawdling appeasement that decision-making achievement. Political history is dotted with irresolution, equivocation, incertitude, costing millions of lives and money, from world leaders to your local council, whose default position is, like some nervous footballer, to defer and make a non-committal sideways pass, kicking it all into the long grass.
It’s all a tricky one. So, here’s a dilemma. Do you kill your uncle for murdering your dad and marrying your mum with the body barely cold, or stop vacillating with those highly articulate internal monologues, and simply make up your mind - between ham, cheese, mushroom, tomato? Also known as Hamlet/omelette syndrome.
Psychology actual has a measure of this state, known as the Frost Indecisiveness Scale, 1 to 5, but I’m putting off taking the test.
Cats may annoyingly dither in the doorway or perch on the fence, yet indecision is very much a human condition, as creative as it’s destructive, and that’s why it’s a fascinating one for a song topic. It’s been pondered over much in the past, but I could never quite get round to it (I think I went for decisive songs instead).
So finally, it’s time to plump for indecision, a topic that could be inspired by anything from picking people for jobs, voting in elections to value-for-money shopping, but mostly where feelings ebb and flow, whether stop or go, to say or be silent, and all the uncertainties and oscillations of love, but also whether throw down the challenge of a dueller’s glove, or like Captain Haddock in Hergé’s Tintin and the Red Sea Sharks, to sleep with your beard under the blanket, or above.
But before you fully commit to the topic, there’s a colourful collection of further vacillators, the great and the good, pondering the subject here in the Bar. What is indecision, and how and why does it arise? What have they got to say, from the general to the personal?
Setting the mood and scene with early evening drinks, and the lighting on an ambiguous setting, here’s Helen Eustis, the award-winning author of mystery novel The Horizontal Man, 1947, who describes how: "Twilight was the worst hour, because it was the hour of indecision."
From the general and the downbeat, perhaps the darkest of perspectives comes from wine-swilling miserablist Seneca the Younger: “Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardship of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.”
That’s dark place to start. Where do we go from here?
“More is lost by indecision than wrong decision. Indecision is the thief of opportunity. It will steal you blind,” adds chief orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, with a metaphor.
Novelist William James is trying to outdo them with some extra detail: “There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.”
"Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile,” adds a crankily philosophical Bertrand Russell, quoting from The Pursuit of Happiness.
“Yes. The worst thing you can do is nothing,” says Terry Pratchett.
“Opportunity never sneaks up on those who straddle the fence of indecision. It's the worst of all human ailments,” chips in Napoleon Hill.
So where does it come from? “Ambivalence is like carbon monoxide - undetectable yet deadly,” reckons writer and life coach Cherie Carter-Scott, describing this state of mind as like the aftermath of a strong curry.
More poetic, however, is this from the great Dr Martin Luther King: “The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.”
Grey area? Elvis in Hawaii. Which way? Which girl? Which career? Sings 14 songs while he ponders …
These are all strong generalisations, but what about more personal confessions of indecisiveness? First, up Jane Austen again, channelling this side of her nature via Fanny Price in Mansfield Park” “You will think me rhapsodising; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain. One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.”
More direct and personal, and darker still, here’s a powerful, vivid passage by Sylvia Plath, from The Bell Jar, with a metaphor that expresses the fruitful, but also fruitlessness, of this state of mind:
“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
Echoing that mental picture, here’s the rarely pithier poet Allen Ginsberg: “I don’t do anything with my life except romanticise and decay with indecision”
Almost drinking the bar dry, W.C. Fields has staggered up, and moodily claims that Tommy Cooper nicked his joke: “Hiccup!! I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure. Same again, barkeep!”
Spanning time and place in only the way we can here, he’s American singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffet. “Indecision may or may not be my problem.”
Shirley Temple is also in the house, extending this subject to her industry. “Delay and indecision are first weapons in the armoury of moviemakers.”
Fellow film star Drew Barrymore is also around, with this to say about how others perceive indecision. “Indecision is the most unsexy thing on the planet. I don't know if I'm sexy but I think decisiveness is sexy. I also lose trust and faith in them when I realise I'm a bit on my own and that's a very disheartening feeling.”
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard reckons indecision is very much part of the modern condition.
"You need an infinite stretch of time ahead of you to start to think, infinite energy to make the smallest decision. The world is getting denser. The immense number of useless projects is bewildering. Too many things have to be put in to balance up an uncertain scale. You can't disappear anymore. You die in a state of total indecision."
“The optimist lives on the peninsula of infinite possibilities; the pessimist is stranded on the island of perpetual indecision,” says American motivational writer and speaker William Arthur Ward, but is there hope for the procrastinators, can indecision be positive times?
Here’s musician Ariel Pink: “I procrastinate, and I push writing to the last available moment, because I don't like to settle on anything. I guess you can call it indecision or you can call it holding out for inspiration.”
And oddly, here’s the normally complaining John Cleese, who makes a case for it, suggesting indecisive delay can sometimes help make something stronger. “The most creative people have learned to tolerate the slight discomfort of indecision for much longer and so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.”
But that’s enough delving and deliberation. Now it’s your turn to toss the musical coin and come up with some entertaining heads. Or perhaps some intriguing tales. And wearing a pair of fetching flip-flops, and turning all this over in a metaphorical tombola of choice, I’m delighted to welcome back the chair, the awesomely amusing Olive Butler, who will act decisively on your nominations from now until the bell goes at 11pm on Monday. Or will she? You’ll help decide. And she will. I think.
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