Ursula K. Le Guin ( 21/10/29 - 22/1/18) -" We will need writers who rememember freedom"

American literary legend Ursula K. Le Guin who wrote science fiction, fantasy, essays and poetry,who died peacefully on Monday in her Portland, Oregan home at the age of 88 years young.A quote of hers is pemanently embedded on this blog. Here is a link to an earlier post I wrote about her https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/ursula-k-le-guin-b211029-dispossessed.html

Pehaps best known for her book ' The Left Hand of Darkness' a science fiction novel published in 1969 set in the Hainish universe, Le Guin often used science fiction to transgress normalised conceptions of gender and sexuality.Not content to limit her incisive examinations of society to fiction and allegory, Le Guin spoke and wrote frequently about contemporary politics. She often described fantasy and fiction as a tool for social change, a way of imagining the world not as it  but as it should be. Her criticisms in both fiction and beyond it , often focused on social inequality and the unsustainability of capitalism .

Her novel  ' The Dispossessed' was a thought experiment on how an anarchist society would work. The novel  begins with the journey of the physicist Shevek from the planet Anarres, which was settled by anarchists a century and a half previously, to the planet Urras, a carcature of our own world in the 1970's.

In alternating chapters, it tells the story of Shevek's life on Anarres and its discontents, leading up to his decision to leave, and his adventures on Urras and how grotesque a society based on  power and profit seems in his eyes.

A truly mesmerising read, given us an idea of how a possible anarchist society could function and, more importantly, the moral foundations of such  a society. Anarres is flawd and falls short of its ideas of individual freedom, mutual aid and voluntary coperation, but is still infinitely preferable to the money- hungry, power-hungry nation of Urreas. 

In short my sort of Utopia. It is a society without government, laws, police, courts, corporations, money, salaries, profit, organised religion or private property. Its  people speak an artificial language, a kind of benign Orwellian Newspeak, which lacks words for concepts such as 'debt or 'winner,'

Le Guin would write more than 20 novels, 100 short stories, seven essay collections and more than a dozen books of poetry. Despite many of her protaganists  being men, she always considered herself a feminist, but was always confident in questioning societal conditioning and how it impacted the human perspective on gender and sexuality. 

In 2010 at the age of 81 she arrived in the digital age and started a blog

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Blog2017.html

and in December published a collection of essays based on her posts called ' No time to spare.' 

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Index-NoTimeToSpare.html 

It included everything from moving reflections on her cat to wry observations about coming to tems with her advancing age, " If I'm ninety and believe I'm forty five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub."

On November 19, 2014, Le Guin was awarded the National Book Foundation's Medal  for Distinguished Contribution to American letters

 http://www.nationalbook.org/amerletters_2014_uleguin.html#.Wmfeh6hl_IU

This is one of literature's most prestigious honors, recognizing individuals who have made an exceptional impact on the United States' literary heritage. Most in science fiction would extend that to include an exceptional effect on the entire genre. 

" We lIve in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings," she said. "any human power can be resisted and changed  by human beings, resistance and change often begin  in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."

Ursula k.Le Guin Rest in Power you will be deeply missed, may you be reborn on Anarres. .

Here is the transcript of her talk:

Thank you Neil (Gaiman, who introduced her) , and to the givers of this beautiful award, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction - writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful awards go to the so-called realists.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.

Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. [ad-lib response to audience: ] Thank you, brave applauders.

Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us - the producers who write the books, and make the books - accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write. [ad-lib response to audience: ] Well, I love you too, darling.

Books, you know, they're not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words.

I have had a long career and a good one. In good company. Now here, at the end of it, I really don't want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want - and should demand - our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit.

Its name is freedom. Thank you.

" Only in silence the word,

only in dark the light

only in dying life

bright the hawks flight

on the empty sky."

- The Creation of Ea, Ursula K. Le Guin

Dreams Money Can Buy - Hans Richter

Hans Richter, painter, graphic artist was one  of the  original members of the Dada movement,  he made  this film in 1947, and it won the best original contribution to the progress of cinematography at the Biennale in Venice.
Richter's goal was to bring the avant -garde out of the museum and into the movie house and the end result in my opinion is utterly fantastic.It's more Surrealist than Dada and deals with the world of dreams. Joe, a young man down on his luck, as he wonders how to pay his rent,  discovers he has the power to create dreams,("if you can look inside yourself, you can look inside anyone!") and sets up a business selling them to others.
The film is broken down into episodes, with  collaborations from a varied cast including  Man Ray, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Darius Mihaud, Alexander Calder, blues singer Josh White and notorious bisexual torch singer (and black widow suspect) Libby Holman.
The film itself turns playful, hypnotic, satirical, charming and nightmarish, but the musical backing, is simply amazing.
The film was produced by Kenneth MacPherson and Peggy Guggenheim.

Dada as the Antidote to war and Capitalism :-

http://www.wilderutopia.com/performance/film/dada-as-the-antidote-to-war-and-capitalism/

More on Richter and his films here :-

http://thesilverscreensurfer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-dada-films-of-hans-richter.html

Anger is an energy

( after Carillion)

They try to control us
the old enemy deep outside,
their words are dust
time to brush them away.
The first five years
are always the hardest a headline cries
rubbing salt into milky eyes.
Time to shake, the sleep away
and catch the fire by its throat,
as they feed us lies day after day
hiding our pain behind their laughter.
Sky is angry, wind comes down
launches its bullets, this should be enough,
we are not surrounded yet
we will not be trampled down,
we are still here unrestrained
this is our season too, our time of discontent.
Capitalism is not working
look at the crimes across the globe,
ideological theft for the few, not the many
yet they still make us pay for their greed,
with systematic theft and robbery out of control
don't go to them crawling back on your knees,
remember anger is our energy too
live with fierce passion, take back what's yours.


https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/anger-is-an-energy-by-dave-rendle/

moonshadow

In the distance, high above
her silvery light is shed,
through the shadows of trees
gaps of branches all outspread,
golden moon keeps shining
releasing brilliant light,
far away from our artificial borders
stops the earth from spinning faster,
caressing the land with her powers
beyond the darkness of this land, never cowers,
like an old lover listens to our thoughts
faithful to the end, consumes our desires
lets honour and adore her guiding energy
a shimmering beauty touching our souls.

Know your Parasites

Never ever trust the Conservatives, they would eat us alive if they could. They are cowardly,  and absolutely devoid of compassion. Used to think they were bad under Margaret Thatcher, but the latest lot seem even more ruthless and cruel.
When Theresa May first entered No 10, she promised to represent the vulnerable, and in her own words to " think not for the powerful, but you."But this has proved to be a lie as she and her fellow parasites  continue to  strip our country of its  valuable assets, tearing peoples lives apart, this festering  party  delivering conscious cruelty to the downtrodden and underprivileged, delivering nastiness and unfairness to all in their paths. We cannot afford to remain apathetic to their actions or remain silent. I don't believe there is a cure to them, they simply have no moral compass, far worse than bloodsucking leeches. They are simply parasites of the worst  order feeding  merrily on their victims. A landmark study has linked Tory austerity to  120,000 deaths. responsible for callous economic murder  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/tory-austerity-deaths-study-report-people-die-social-care-government-policy-a8057306.html
They simply lack the capacity to care about the health of the nation, as they destroy our N H.S,  they will continue to infect, suck on all the essential services and resources we depend on, . The only way we to deal with theses these parasites is to destroy them, because they will never stop until there is nothing left to feast on. We have to get rid of them, the Tories must be  eradicated, as soon as possible, for the many not the few.

Gruff Rhys - A Design for life

Libraries gave us power
Then work came and made us free
What price now for a shallow piece of dignity

We don't talk about love we only want to get drunk

And we are not allowed to spend

As we are told that this is the end

A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life

I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my pretty face to wear the scars
To show from where I came

We don't talk about love we only want to get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end

A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life

Originally created by the Manic Street Preachers, but personally such a beautiful version.

The threat to public libraries is very real, keep defending, this blog would not have existed without them

Songwriters ;James Bradfield/ Sean Moore/ Nicholas Jones 

Happy Birthday Simone de Beauvoir ( 9/1/08 - 14/4/86) - Feminist icon

Today I mark the occasion Simone de Beauvoirs birth. She was many things, an athiest, feminist, existentialist, philosopher, intellectual and political activist, born to Francois and George Bertrand de Beauvoir, her father encouraged her to be an avid reader from a young age. At 14, she had a crisis of faith and decided definitely that there was no God. On all accounts she was a precoucious, but intellectually gifted curious child, who would later come into conflict with her parents over their difference of beliefs.
Educated  at a convent school, she went on to study philosopy at the Sorbonne, seeking a life as a writer and teacher. In 1929. she took the aggregation exam in philosophy at the Ecole Normale de Sueriuiere, even though she was not a student there, and was placed second before Jean- Paul Sartre becoming  the youngest philosopher teacher in France at the age of 21.She would begin a lifetime relationship  with  Jean Paul Sartre,  though refusing to marry or set up house with him, instead oth took and even shared lovers over time, becoming famous Parisian intellectuals and part of the city's cafe culture. regularly meeting other great minds of the time.Together, she and Sartre would develop existentialism, a philosophy that takes freedom to be the highest value in a universe where God is dead and where human beings create their own values through their choices and actions, In the post war period, existentialism was the most challenging expression of radical, secular, philosophical humanism.
She would teach philosophy and literature throughout the 1930's, but was dismissed during  Word War 11 from her post by the Vichy government after the German army occupied Paris in 1940. Both she and Sartre would work for the French Resistance during the remainder of the war, but unable to teach, she soon launched her literary career.
She went on to write many groundbreaking books that can be found today on many bookshelves across the world. She wrote  her best known  book The Second Sex, on the treatment of women throughout history,  in 18 months at the age of 38 in 1949.It  helped raise feminist consciousness but also stressed that women's liberation was liberation for men too, it was subsequently  placed  by the Vatican on their list of prohibited books. if that does not wet your appetite , am not sure what will.
Her first philosophical essay called "Pyrrus and Cineas" 1944, asked such quetions as :" What are the criteria of ethical action? How can I distinguish ethical from unethical political projects? What are the principles of ethical relationships? Can violence ever be justified?"
She would go onto write four volumes of autobiography. After the Second World War she travelled to the U.S, where she would meet and have an affair with the writer Nelson Algren, who is  best known  for his book ' The Man with the Golden Arm" 
The novel ' The Mandarins' . 1954, is based on her relationships  with Algren and Sartre, and is a chronicle of the movement of post World War intellectualls from their  'mandarin' ( educated elite)  status towards political engagement.
It was in the 1970's that she would become an active member of the women's liberation movement in France. Her name was one of the 243 listed in a 1971 manifesto in a bid  to legalise abortion in France, that featured famous women who claimed to have  had a termination, before it came legal in 1974.An intellectual vigilante she used her pen as a weapon, breaking down gender stereotypes and challenged laws that prohibited women fom having control  over their own bodies.Today more than ever it is vital to recognise that freedom can't be assumed. Some of the freedoms that de Beauvoir fought so hard for, have since come under threat.
In 1986 her health,  having sadly declined due to her heavy use of amphetimines and alcohol,, she died aged 78, and was buried next to Sartre in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse, next to Sartre. A life of many contradictions, but nevertheless a fascinating and inspiring woman whose life and work still has huge influence on many over the years. Her  work stll provides us with a fascinating unique point of view, on what it it is to be human and how that still pertains to the struggle for political and spiritual unity. Ideas that still resonate with us today.Happy birthday Simone.

Heart and Soul : Dedicated to Jane Elizabeth Husband (9/5/60 - 8/1/17)

The concept of twin souls ( more popularly known as soulmates) is as old as civilisation itself, I was fortunate to find mine, my muse , at the time of starting this blog, back in 2009,  Jane  Elizabeth Husband,  my dear beloved' the mighty furbster, who I am thinking of today, one year after her passing. She made my life and world so beautiful,and understood the true depths of love and kinship, that  fortunately  we shared together, who  still shines brightly within my heart. The following poem  is dedicated to her memory. She taught me a lot. 

Heart and Soul

Sweet cords of memory
cancel out lines of disbelief,
move moments of regret
in the distance waves goodbye,
this gift of time, who released so much love
a voice so elegant and pure,
who filled up all the empty spaces
continues to be so dear and true,
carries  on dancing in the night sky
a light that cannot darken,
no one will quite replace her
gleaming  now in eternity,
flowing through every day given
giving no cause for regret,
running free deep within
never fades with slipping sun,
everytime I hear an accordian
in heart and soul, we are one.


Last years post :-

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/for-mighty-furbster-jane-elizabeth.html

The Genocidal Blockade of Gaza

The  ten year Israeli-led blockade of Gaza , the narrow enclave that is home to nearly half of all Palestnians living under Israeli occupation, which has decimated the Gazan economy and Gaza's once strong furniture, garment and agricultural sectos have been all but destroyed after more than a decade of restrictions on exports, imports and movement. Gaza has been declared unlivable by the UN, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and 80 percent of people relying on humanitarian aid to survive.
This is a place where life has long been cruel, where refugees forced out of Israel by the Nabka and families who have lved in Gaza for generations have suffered under dire conditions  for nearly 70 years. But in the last decade, it has become a site of stunning misery. Ten years ago this past June, Israel imposed a stringent land sea and ar blockade on Gaza which has restricted most movement to and from  the strip and pushed the tiny territory to the brink of collapse. Conditions hae become so extreme that the United Nations has stated that by 2020 the Gaa Strip could become uninabitable
The crisis in Gaza is not just a humanitarian tragedy, it should be a moral outrage. This ongoing suffering must end.
The above visual was produced in collaboration with Oxfam, and builds on Visualising Palestine's extensive work to highlight the daily realities faced by Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.
View and download here ;-

https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/gaza-economic-collapse?locale=en

2017; Theresa's year of mayhem

A  quick reminder of 2017's year of mayhem. Theresa May though remains a shambolic figure, her authority in shreds. and her lack of leadership and cohesion, and sheer incompetance  is going I fear   be a disaster for this country. as millions face poverty, criminally inflated rents, humiliating benefit cuts and welfare sanctions amounting to state sponsored starvation, 2018 is going to be just  as painful as last year. She is the personifiation of this disunited kingdom. We need to see the back of the heartless Tories as soon as possible.