If you're not suitable for the future,
you probably won't make it in the present either.
- Sun Ra
Tuesday 10 November 2009
The voice of Sun Ra
If you're not suitable for the future,
you probably won't make it in the present either.
- Sun Ra
Sunday 8 November 2009
MICHEANGELO ANTONIONI ( 29/9/32- 30/7/07) - Reflections on the film Actor.
The Film Actor need not understand, but simply be. One might reason that in order to be, it is necessary to understand. That's not so. If it were, the nthe most intelligent actor would also be the best actor. Reality often indicates the opposite.
When an actor is intelligent, his efforts to be a good actor are thrre times as great, for he wishes to deepen his understanding to take everything into account, to include subleties, and in doing so he trespasses on ground which is not his- in fact, he creates obstacles for himself.
His reflections on the character he is playing, which according to populat theoryr should bring him closer to an exact characterization, end up thwarting his efforts and depriving him of naturalness. The film actor should arrive for shooting in a state of virginity. The more intuitive his work, the more spontaneous it will be.
The film actor should work not on the psychological level but on the imaginative one. And the imagination reveals itself spontaneously- it has no intermediaries upon which one can lean for support.
It is not possible to have a real collabotation between actor and director. They work on two entirely different levels. The director owes no explatations to the actor except those of a very general nature about the people in the film. It is dangerous to discuss details. Sometimes the actor and director necessarily become enemies. The director must not compromise himself by revealing his intentions. The actor is a kind of trojan horse in the citadel of the director.
I prefer to get results by a hidden method; that is, to stimulate in the actor certain of his innate qualities of whose existence he is himself unaware- to excite not his intelligence but his instinct- to give not justifications but illuminations. One can almost trick and actor by demanding one thing and obtaining another. The director must know how to demand, and how to distinguish what is good and bad, useful and superfluous, in everthing the actor offers.
The first quality of a director is to see. This quality is also valuable in dealing with actors. The actor is one of the elements of the image. A modification of his pose or gestures modifies the image itself. A line spoken by an actor in profile does not have the same meaning as one given full-face. A phrase addressed to the camera placed above the actor does not have the same meaning it would if the camera were placed below him.
These few simple observations prove that it is the director- that is to say, whoever composes the shot - who should decide the pose, gestures, and movements of the actor.
The same principle holds for the intonation of the dialoque. The voice is a noise which emerges with other noises in a rapport which only the director knows. It is therefore up to him to find balance or imbalance of these sounds.
It is necessary to listen at length to an actor even wken he is mistaken and at the same time try to understand how one can use his mistakes in the film, for these errors are at the moment the most spontaneous thing the aqctor has to offer.
To explain a scene or piece of dialoque is to treat all the actors alike, for a scene or piece of dialoque does not change. On the contrary, each actor demands special tratment. From this fact stems the necessity to find different methods: to guide the actor little by little tothe right path by apparently innocent corrections which will not arouse his suspicions.
This method of working may appear paradoxical, but it is the only one which allows the director to obtain good results with non-professional actors found, as they say, "in the street". Neo-realism has taught us that, but the method is also useful with professional actors- even the great ones.
I ask myself if their really is a great film actor. The actor who thinks too much is driven by the ambition to be great. It is a terrible obstacle which runs the risk of eliminating much truth from his performance.
I do not think I have two legs. I have them. If the actor seeks to understand, he thinks. If he thinks, he will find it hard to be humble, and humility constitutes the best point of departure in achieving truth.
Occasinally an actor is intelligent enough to overcome his natural limitations and to find the proper road by himself - that is, he uses his inate intelligence to apply the method I have just described.
When this happens, the actor has the quality of a director.
From "Film Culture", nos.22-3, Summer 1961, pp. 66-7.
Friday 6 November 2009
A Listening ear?
The Government reclassified cannabis to a less serious category in 2002 after recommendation of their own appointed drug advisory council.Yet by 2004 cowing to the right wing press the government went back to their advisors looking for some reconsideration, or bullying by any other name.The advisors looked into the issue again and their advice remained the same.Fair play to Charles Clarke, home secretary at the time , he accepted their advice.
That was then,but then Mr Brown became P.M and realised he had to appear tougher than his predecessor,so he went back to his advisors to try and get them to reverse the situation. Yet again the advisors stayed true to their original findings, but this time the then home secretary Jacqui Smith overode them.We have to remember this in light, this week of Professor David Nutt's sacking by present home secretary Alan Johnson.
My point is this, the government pretends to listen but fails to do so, why do they set up advisory committees and so forth, pandering to some kind of high sensibility then refuse to listen to the advice given to them, politics is a dirty business, and the government has to appear tough, but public debate is essential, and to sack an expert just because of one remark is clearly farcial.I'm not goin to say here whether the effects of cannabis are harmful or beneficial but scientific experts are appointed because, well their experts in their fields.What is the point of seeking scientific advice that when offered is simply rejected. It does not seem logical to me, but then maybe I've been smoking too long.
It seems to me Professor Nutt was sacked not because of of him crossing the line into politics, he was sacked because his advice does not fall in line with the government's own political position.Professor Nutt and his colleaques are experts in their fields, to snub them so publically is mind boggling!
It appears they missed the ball on this occasion, to much time listening to the editors of the Daily Mail, Express et alle, giving two fingers to everybody else.Personally this is what I have come to expect from this government, when their comfort blankets are taken away, they throw away their toys like spoiled kids. Not saying the other lot would be any different in the end, perhaps the only thing they are all able to listen to are the sounds of silence.
Further listening.
Carl Carlton - " I can feel it "
Brian Eno _ Needle in the camel's eye
The Beatles - Ticket to ride
Sunday 1 November 2009
FOUR LOVE POEMS by Jeremy Reed
Syd Barrett
Exchange vertical for horizontal;
the man is always shifting laterally
towards the big dip. There's a little tree
planted somewhere, a mile before the drop
into a bottomless gorge where dead mules,
scrapping cars, a rotting elephant
are jostled by the torrent.
Madmen pick thrugh the flotsam, poke about
for broken mirrors,books of nursery rhymes.
Reverse the years to 1966,
a ringleted, red velvet jacketed
voyour implodes with chemicals.
His mind's pyrotechnical Van Gogh
exploding into brilliant fall-out,
he sinks a canoe on the Cam and swims
clutching a fuzzy radio.
He picks the water jewels out of his hair,
they are a gift for Emily. She lives
inside a vase, inside a tree,
each green oak leaf's a peacock's ocelli.
His burn out so fast he watches it,
up on the fourteenth floor waves a white sheet
to his blinding demise and scrambles down
into a wasteland. There is no one there,
the town is empty, evacuated
decades ago. He walks through Cambridge dead.
He might be carrying his severed head.
Patti Smith
Delirium. A meteroric blaze
at CBGB's and the Bottom line,
a cocktail-shaker of mixed drugs
imploding,thin as a light flex
sustaining megatons inside a bulb
which had to blow; the Keith Richards',
emaciated grandeur, street poet
in bondage chains, gutteral, whipping lines
to stinging lariats, hyped up to bring
an epicentre to the stage,
an apocalypce of flaming horses
running headless for a ravine
in which junked cars are smashed to nickel cans,
and there's a woman in her pointed boots
celebrating the debris,stomping hard
on a black Cadilllac's bonnett.
Music meant auto-combusting,
pulling hysteria out of the throat
as a volatile fizzing coil,
a hit and run killer crouched at the wheel...
We look for her through fire. It's dead ash now,
the whole impulse defused; the dynamic
remembered through her records, the wild one
like Rimbaud, temporarily static.
John Cale
Symphonic dissonance. A viola
cuts worse than any whip. At Tanglewood
I smashed a table with an axe,
a form of sonic mania, a need
to assasinate harmony,
break things to their minimal components,
then stand back concussed by the noise.
Performance depends on paranoia,
the tension building like a hurricane.
Recording is the tight control
of fortunate accidents, improvised
felicities. Inside a studio
I'm Mozart, Wagner blowing themselves up
to rematerialize as unorthodox pop.
On stage, I've smashed glasses clean of the piano top,
decapitated a chicken,
declaimed like Artaud. And it's not enough.
There's a dimension to be broken through
called extra-sensory insanity.
I travelled that way once with Lou; the mad
empty the ash out of their ears and eyes.
They watch their heads float off into red skies.
I'm waiting for the big experiment,
the potentialized fuse inside my head
to blow, the ultimate schema take shape.
the one that leaves all other music dead.
William S Burroughs
Bullet holes pepper the shotgun painting-
a yellow shrine with a black continent
patched up on wood.
he sit's impeccable, no lazy tie,
the knot perfect between blue collar points,
a grey felt has tilted back off the head,
the face vulterine, eyes which have stepped in
to live with mental space and monitor
all drifting fractal implosions;
the man is easy in his Kansas yard,
his GHQ since 1982,
the New York bunker left behind, and cats
flopping around his feet, finding the sun,
picking up on psi energies.
He's waiting for extraterrestials,
psychic invasion; we can bypass death
by shooting interplanetary serum.
Some of us are the deathless ones. He pours
a cripplig slug of Jack Daniels.
The body can't function without toxins
or wierd metabolic fluctuations.
He's waiting for the big event.
And he has become a legend, now a myth,
a cellular mythology.
His double pressure-locked in the psyche,
for fear he blows a fuse, goes out on leave
and kills. He is invaded by Genet,
his presence asks for love, for completion.
The man wanders to his tomatoe patch;
his amanuensis snatches a break.
The light is hazy gold. He'll outlive death,
be here when when there's no longer a planet.
FROM "Pop Stars" Enitharmon Press 1994.
Exchange vertical for horizontal;
the man is always shifting laterally
towards the big dip. There's a little tree
planted somewhere, a mile before the drop
into a bottomless gorge where dead mules,
scrapping cars, a rotting elephant
are jostled by the torrent.
Madmen pick thrugh the flotsam, poke about
for broken mirrors,books of nursery rhymes.
Reverse the years to 1966,
a ringleted, red velvet jacketed
voyour implodes with chemicals.
His mind's pyrotechnical Van Gogh
exploding into brilliant fall-out,
he sinks a canoe on the Cam and swims
clutching a fuzzy radio.
He picks the water jewels out of his hair,
they are a gift for Emily. She lives
inside a vase, inside a tree,
each green oak leaf's a peacock's ocelli.
His burn out so fast he watches it,
up on the fourteenth floor waves a white sheet
to his blinding demise and scrambles down
into a wasteland. There is no one there,
the town is empty, evacuated
decades ago. He walks through Cambridge dead.
He might be carrying his severed head.
Patti Smith
Delirium. A meteroric blaze
at CBGB's and the Bottom line,
a cocktail-shaker of mixed drugs
imploding,thin as a light flex
sustaining megatons inside a bulb
which had to blow; the Keith Richards',
emaciated grandeur, street poet
in bondage chains, gutteral, whipping lines
to stinging lariats, hyped up to bring
an epicentre to the stage,
an apocalypce of flaming horses
running headless for a ravine
in which junked cars are smashed to nickel cans,
and there's a woman in her pointed boots
celebrating the debris,stomping hard
on a black Cadilllac's bonnett.
Music meant auto-combusting,
pulling hysteria out of the throat
as a volatile fizzing coil,
a hit and run killer crouched at the wheel...
We look for her through fire. It's dead ash now,
the whole impulse defused; the dynamic
remembered through her records, the wild one
like Rimbaud, temporarily static.
John Cale
Symphonic dissonance. A viola
cuts worse than any whip. At Tanglewood
I smashed a table with an axe,
a form of sonic mania, a need
to assasinate harmony,
break things to their minimal components,
then stand back concussed by the noise.
Performance depends on paranoia,
the tension building like a hurricane.
Recording is the tight control
of fortunate accidents, improvised
felicities. Inside a studio
I'm Mozart, Wagner blowing themselves up
to rematerialize as unorthodox pop.
On stage, I've smashed glasses clean of the piano top,
decapitated a chicken,
declaimed like Artaud. And it's not enough.
There's a dimension to be broken through
called extra-sensory insanity.
I travelled that way once with Lou; the mad
empty the ash out of their ears and eyes.
They watch their heads float off into red skies.
I'm waiting for the big experiment,
the potentialized fuse inside my head
to blow, the ultimate schema take shape.
the one that leaves all other music dead.
William S Burroughs
Bullet holes pepper the shotgun painting-
a yellow shrine with a black continent
patched up on wood.
he sit's impeccable, no lazy tie,
the knot perfect between blue collar points,
a grey felt has tilted back off the head,
the face vulterine, eyes which have stepped in
to live with mental space and monitor
all drifting fractal implosions;
the man is easy in his Kansas yard,
his GHQ since 1982,
the New York bunker left behind, and cats
flopping around his feet, finding the sun,
picking up on psi energies.
He's waiting for extraterrestials,
psychic invasion; we can bypass death
by shooting interplanetary serum.
Some of us are the deathless ones. He pours
a cripplig slug of Jack Daniels.
The body can't function without toxins
or wierd metabolic fluctuations.
He's waiting for the big event.
And he has become a legend, now a myth,
a cellular mythology.
His double pressure-locked in the psyche,
for fear he blows a fuse, goes out on leave
and kills. He is invaded by Genet,
his presence asks for love, for completion.
The man wanders to his tomatoe patch;
his amanuensis snatches a break.
The light is hazy gold. He'll outlive death,
be here when when there's no longer a planet.
FROM "Pop Stars" Enitharmon Press 1994.
Saturday 31 October 2009
danse macabre
Zig and
Zig and Zig and zig,
tapping out the rythym on a tombstone
with his heels
Death plays a dance at midnight.
Zig and zig and zag,
on his violin...
Hebri Cazalis, from Danse macabre
It's all's hallow eve so thought I'd post something kind of in tune, hopefully of some interest maybe!
Satan and all that malarky gets good airing at this time of year,and some say he plays all the best tunes,and is drawn to the fiddle to make his music.As a former angel why not a trumpet, surely it would not burn as easy.Why not the drum to beat time with?
The answer is simple enough. With a lot of us Satan needs a little preparation,a little prescription maybe:he must lull us, woo us, lead us down the garden path that he revealed to Faust's Gretchen- surely these are not moments in which to sound trumpets or to frighten us with dearth's loud cadences.Here our dubious friend is the master of those soft modulations that a flute or a fiddle might convey.But even the flute favoured by cloven-footed satyrs of old - is limited largely to life's peaceful and pantheistic moments.Yet after a love song has worked its magic a violin can start its great betrayal leading to incendiary brilliance - towards the flame, into the heat, with dizzying speed and awfulness. This is what a fiddle can do, as long as those who play it can summon up its magical properties.
Anyway Satan did not pick the violin himself. We did though. From myths that Nero fiddled while away while Rome burned , we have placed this instrument in the hands of our own imaginations.For Ambrose Bierce, at least, the fiddle was an annoyance- " an instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat".Bierce famously dissapeared into the wilds of Mexico never to be seen again, perhaps he should not have made fun of Satan's preferred musical toy. Others have been more respectful, not only towards the instrument but also to its makers.The worship which has indulged Stradivari and his " secret formula" for varnish is only one example among many.Are these modern attempts to recreate a magical liquid coating so different from a medieval alchemists attemts to turn lead into Gold?
Guissepe Tartini and Antonio Vivaldi were early masters. Each in their own way profiting from the violins mystique and aura. Tartini actually composed a piece now known universally as the " devil's Trill", thus identifying himself for all ages with Satan.Appropriately , Vivaldi sported a head of red hair and became forever known as the Red Priest.And what of Paginini,not only did he conquer Europe but also convinced her that the Devil stood unseen at his side while he played. Paginini's "Caprices for solo violin are testament to his uncanny abilities, and among the great admirers and transcribers of those works have been the composers Robert Schumann, Franz Lizt and Sergei Rachmaninov. Paginini became a mystical cult figure for the musical world, and no violinist since has escaped a confrontation with the devilish configurations that his long bony fingers appeared to grasp with such ease.Rachmaninov, whose own technical secrets may never be revealed completely to pianists of a newer era , was not wrong to have woven the "Dies irae" into his "Rhapsody on a theme of Paginini".
It's not all too devilish though there are friendlier spirits? Take Grieg's Puck,a mischievious soul out for a good time , and William Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost".At least if we don't trist them completely at least we don't fear them.Perhaps it is us who have created these otherworldly spirits- both good and bad.They are part of us -and perhaps we are partially responsible for what they do. As Bierce said, "To Rome said Nero:If smoke you turn I shall not ceases to fiddle while you burn".To Nero Rome replied: "Pray do your worst,'tis my excuse that you were fiddling first."Rome had her own problems apparently and remained unmoved by the concert. Not so the little goblins of fire and destruction, who took full advantage of the occasion.
Anyway it takes a kind of wizard to play Wizard's music.My grandad was a fiddler and I have seen the powers unleashed with his bow ,enchanting and moving.Anyway have a good evening, me I'm going out, found out their are some Welsh fiddlers playing in a village nearby. As autumn is glowing I'm of in search of an inspiring reel.Peace to all.Happy halloween/ Samhein.
...The winter wind whistles
through the shrouded night;
the lime trees groan, and blanched white
skeletons flit through the darkness-
leaping and scurrying about
in their shrouds
Zig and zig and zig,
each one jigging away.
One hears the rattle of dancing bones.
A lasciious pair sit together in the moss
as if to taste again
the soft sweets of life.
Zig and zig and zig
what a sarabande!
What deathly rounds, all holding hands!
Zig and zig and zag
Ah, what a splendid night for our poor world.
Long live death and equality!
Friday 30 October 2009
Freefall
free fall
80s party theme
smoke gets in our eyes
tequila shots for a pound
180 Beats Per Minute
2 days of white lines
You spin me round
like a cash machine
what time is now
cheap flatulant excesses
and a dozen whispered excuses
record revolves,jumps and skips
Autumn rain
spits its breath
Soon it will be difficult
to remember anything at all
the day after tomorrow forever nightfall
dance not angst, the burning lamp fades
Eveybodies out
everybodies in
in the garden
winter grows
breathalysed cars
with slashed tyres
a 1000 camouflauged soldiers murmour
looking up angry rumours
angry language
a little coarse
the sun is concealed
we call out
flesh of the ivy
the moon is low
the wind is green
sea is monotone.
Everybodies in
eveybodies out
WILLIE DE VILLE (August 25, 1950-August 6, 2009)Rock and Roller
Just found out Mr de Ville has recently passed away in New York of cancer, that old chestnut again.Another true original now sadly gone. Known primarily for being in the band Mink de Ville from 1974- 1986, houseband at legendary CBGBs.He went on to release a load of highly regarded solo albums, though critically recieved, did not sell in the bucketload. Nevertheless Willie was a true original, playing styles ranging from Cajun,blues, latin, primitive rock and roll,through to doowop and cabaret.He had a problem with drugs and lost his wife to suicide,but is remembered foremost for his individuality and raucous style. Sadly he will probably sell more records now, now that he is dead.Willie de Ville R.I.P
Wednesday 28 October 2009
Comfort eating
It's the time of year when my cravings for certain foods run amok. What follows are a few of my favourite recipes. Quite cheap to make in these credit crunching times. Enjoy , their tasty, very very tasty.
CREMPOG Cymreig
Make a batter with 1/2 lb of flour, 1 oz of sugar, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, a pinch of carbonate of soda, and sufficient milk to make it the consistency of cream. Beat well. Lightly grease a hot girdle and drop a spoonfull at a time of the mixture on this, turning as soon as one side is lightly coloured. To serve do not fold the pancakes. They are eaten with jam and butter.Delicious!
LOBSGOWS( Stew)
Put 1 and a half pounds of neck of mutton in a saucepan with just enough water to cover, bring to the boil and skim. Then add 2 coarsely chopped onions,half lb of carrots, cut in dice,half lb of turnips, also cut in dice, and 1 small swede. Season with salt and pepper, simmer gently for another 3/4s of an hour. Coarsely chopped cabbage i like to add. Fantastic
CREMPOG Cymreig
Make a batter with 1/2 lb of flour, 1 oz of sugar, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, a pinch of carbonate of soda, and sufficient milk to make it the consistency of cream. Beat well. Lightly grease a hot girdle and drop a spoonfull at a time of the mixture on this, turning as soon as one side is lightly coloured. To serve do not fold the pancakes. They are eaten with jam and butter.Delicious!
LOBSGOWS( Stew)
Put 1 and a half pounds of neck of mutton in a saucepan with just enough water to cover, bring to the boil and skim. Then add 2 coarsely chopped onions,half lb of carrots, cut in dice,half lb of turnips, also cut in dice, and 1 small swede. Season with salt and pepper, simmer gently for another 3/4s of an hour. Coarsely chopped cabbage i like to add. Fantastic
Tuesday 27 October 2009
Sunday 25 October 2009
7 POEMS BY R.S. THOMAS
DEGAS- Musicians in the Orchestra
Heads together, pulling
upon music's tide-
it is not their ears
but their eyes their conductor
has sealed, lest they behold
on the stage's shore
the skirts' rising and falling
that turns men to swine.
RENOIR- Muslim Festival at Algiers
People: their combs and wattles
rampant upon a background
of dung. The dancers silently
crackling on an unquenced hearth.
A mosque, a tower as deputies
in the clouds' absence; and gazind,
as at a window, the detached
ocean with its ceruean stare
MONET- Roen Cathedral, Full Sunshine
But deep inside
are the chipped figures
with their budgerigar faces,
a sort of divine
humour in collusion
with time.Who but
God can improve
by distortion?
There is
a stonre twittering in
the cathedral branches,
the excitement of migrants
newly arrived from a tremendous
presence.
We have no food
for them but our
prayers.Kneeling we drop our
crumbs, apologising
for their dryness, afraid
to look up in the ensuing
silence in case they have flown.
GAUGHIN- Breton village in the Snow
This is the village
to which the lost traveller
came,searching for his first spring,
and found, lying asleep
in the young snow, how cold
was its blossom.
The trees
are of iron, but nothing
is forged on them. The tower
is a finger pointing
up, but at whom?
If prayers
are said here, they are
for a hand to roll
back this white quilt
and uncover the bed
where the earth is asleep,
too, but neare awaking.
DEGAS- Absinthe
She didn't want to go;
she couldn't resist.
It was an opportuity
to be like other women,
to sit at an inn table,
not drinking,but repenting
for having drunk of a liquid
that made such promises
as it could not fulfill.
Her clothes are out of the top
drawer, the best her class
could provide.The presence
of the swarthier ruffian
beside her guarantees
that she put them on in order
to have something good she could take off.
ROUSSEAU- The Snake Charmer
A bird not of this
planet;serpents earlier
than their venom;plants
reduplicating the moon's
paleness. An anonymous
minstrel, threatening us
from under macabre
boughs with the innocence
of his music. The dark
listens to him and withholds
till to-morrow the boneless
progeny to be brought to birth
RENOIR- The Bathers
What do they say?
Here is flesh
not to be peeped
at.No Godivas
these.Thet remain
not pass, naked
for us to gaze
our fill on,but
without lust
This
is the mind's feast,
where taste follows
participation. Values
are in reverse
here.Such soft tones
are for the eye
only.These bodies
smooth as bells
from art's stroking, toll
an unheard music,
keep such firmness
of line as never,
under the lapping
of all this light
to become blurred or dim.
Saturday 24 October 2009
Ideology tries to integrate even the most radical acts
Dada embodied both the consciousness of the crumbling of ideology and the will to destroy ideology in the name of authentic life. But Dada in its nihilism sought to constitute an absolute – and hence purely abstract-break. Not only did it fail to ground itself in the historical conditions by which it had itself been produced, but, by deconsecrating culture, by mocking its claims to be an independent sphere, by playing games with its fragments, it effectively cut itself off from a tradition forged by creators who in fact shared Dada's goal, the destruction of art and philosophy, but who pursued this goal with the intention of reinventing and realizing art and philosophy – once they had been liquidated as ideological forms, as components of culture – in everyone's actual life.
After Dada's failure, Surrealism for its part renewed ties with the older tradition. It did so, however, just as though Dada had never existed, just as though Dada's dynamiting of culture had never occurred. It prolonged the yearning for transcendence, as nurtured from de Sade to Jarry, without ever realizing that the transcendence in question had now become possible. It curated and popularized the great human aspirations without ever discovering that the prerequisites for their fulfilment were already present. In so doing, Surrealism ended up reinvigorating the spectacle, whose function was to conceal from the last class in history, the proletariat, bearer of total freedom, the history that was yet to be made. To Surrealism's credit, assuredly, is the creation of a school-for-all which, if it did not make revolution, at least popularized revolutionary thinkers. The Surrealists were the first to make it impossible, in France, to conflate Marx and Bolshevism, the first to use Lautréamont as gunpowder, the first to plant the black flag of de Sade in the heart of Christian humanism. These are legitimate claims to glory: to this extent, at any rate, Surrealism's failure was an honourable one.
Dada was born at a turning-point in the history of industrial societies. By reducing human beings to citizens who kill and are killed in the name of a State that oppresses them, the model ideologies of imperialism and nationalism served to underline the gulf that separated real, universal man from the spectacular image of a humanity perceived as an abstraction; the two were irreparably opposed, for example, from the standpoint of France, or from the standpoint of Germany. Yet at the very moment when spectacular organization reached what to minds enamoured of true freedom appeared to be its most Ubuesque representational form, that organization was successfully attracting and enlisting almost all the intellectuals and artists to be found in the realm of culture. This tendency arose, moreover, in tandem with the move of the proletariat's official leadership into the militarist camp.
Dada denounced the mystificatory power of culture in its entirety as early as 1915-1918. On the other hand, once Dada had proved itself incapable of realizing art and philosophy (a project which a successful Spartacist revolution would no doubt have made easier), Surrealism was content merely to condemn the spinelessness of the intelligentsia, to point the finger at the chauvinist idiocy of anyone, from Maurice Barrès to Xavier Montehus, who was an intellectual and proud of it.
As culture and its partisans were busily demonstrating how actively they supported the organization of the spectacle and the mystification of social reality, Surrealism ignored the negativity embodied in Dada; being nevertheless hard put to it to institute any positive project, it succeeded only in setting in motion the old ideological mechanism whereby today's partial revolt is turned into tomorrow's official culture. The eventual co-optation of late Dadaism, the transformation of its radicalism into ideological form, would have to await the advent of Pop Art. In the matter of co-optation, Surrealism, its protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, was quite sufficient unto itself.
The ignorance that Surrealism fostered with respect to the dissolution of art and philosophy is every bit as appalling as the ignorance Dada fostered with respect to the opposite aspect of the same tendency, namely the transcendence of art and philosophy.
The things that Dada unified so vigorously included Lautréamont's dismantling of poetic language, the condemnation of philosophy in opposing yet identical ways by Hegel and Marx, the bringing of painting to its melting point by Impressionism, or theatre embracing its own parodic self-destruction in Ubu. What plainer illustrations could there be here than Malevich with his white square on a white ground, or the urinal, entitled Fountain, which Marcel Duchamp sent to the New York Independents Exhibition in 1917, or the first Dadaist collage-poems made from words clipped from newspapers and then randomly assembled? Arthur Cravan conflated artistic activity and shitting. Even Valéry grasped what Joyce was demonstrating with Finnegan's Wake: the fact that novels could no longer exist. Erik Satie supplied the final ironic coda to the joke that was music. Yet even as Dada was denouncing cultural pollution and spectacular rot on every side, Surrealism was already on the scene with its big plans for cleanup and regeneration.
When artistic production resumed, it did so against and without Dada, but against and with Surrealism. Surrealist reformism would deviate from reformism's well-trodden paths and follow its own new roads: Bolshevism, Trotskyism, Guevarism, anarchism. Just as the economy in crisis, which did not disappear but was instead transformed into a crisis economy, so likewise the crisis of culture outlived itself in the shape of a culture of crisis. Hence Surrealism became the spectacularization of everything in the cultural past that refused separations, sought transcendence, or struggled against ideologies and the organization of the spectacle.
A pamphlet published on 7 June 1947 by the Revolutionary Surrealists, a dissident Belgian group, had issued a salutary warning to the movement as a whole. Signed by Paul Bourgoignie, Achille Chavre, Christian Dotremont, Marcel Havrenne, René Magritte, Marcel Mariën, Paul Nougé and Louis Scutenaire, it declared:
Landlords, crooks, Druids, poseurs, all your efforts have been in vain: we persist in relying on SURREALISM in our quest to bring the universe and desire INTO ALIGNMENT... First and foremost, we guarantee that Surrealism will no longer serve as a standard for the vainglorious, nor as a springboard for the devious, nor as a Delphic oracle; it will no longer be the philosopher's stone of the distracted, the battleground of the timid, the pastime of the lazy, the intellectualism of the impotent, the draft of blood of the "poet" or the draft of wine of the litterateur.
Friday 23 October 2009
Stupidity ; a Poem for Nick Griffin
Stupidity, or dumbness, is the property a person, action or belief instantiates by virtue of having or indicative of low intelligence.Stupidity is distinct from irrationality because stupidity denotes an incapabability or unwillingness to properly consider the relevant information. It is frequently used as a pejorative and consequently has a negative connotation.
POEM FOR NICK GRIFFIN
There was a problem
with question time,
man sat on panel
waiting for a final solution.
They should have
teared him to shreds
booed him out of the studio,
and even though he laughed,
Nothing really was there.
a soul like rotting meat
the deeper the grave he digs
even better, as long as it's only
he who falls in.
`
Sunday 18 October 2009
PABLO NERUDA -July 12, 1904-September 23 1973) Poet of love
I discovered Pablo Neruda's work whilst recovering from a sickness,in a kind of melancholic disconnected drift.I'd been listening to lots of sad songs, not a particular good thing to do everyday,every moment. A while ago now, but around this time of the year.Autumnal breezes failed me, the long nights haunted me, and then a good friend gave me a copy of Neruda's book " The Captains Verses " and I got hooked.I have always been quite lucky ,because just in time Poets arrive and rescue me,their words offering more pain relief than bloody valium, or other so called quick instant fixes.It was years later ,I realised I had been temporarily healed by one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century.
Pablo was born in 1904 in Parral, Chile, the son of a railway worker who later moved hhis family to Temuco in the south of Chile.His first poem was published when he was 14. His original intention was to be a teacher, but he did not complete the course.By the time he was 21 he had published a collection of poems which became a best seller (" Twenty Love poems and a song of despair ",1924) noted for a charged erotism and marked him as a fine purveyor of love poems.With his success in the literary field came the opportunity to travel and earn more money with the Chilean consular service.This at first ,took him to the Far East. Later he was transferred to Beunos Aires, and in 1934 to Barcelona.It was in Madrid University the same year that he gave his first large-scale poetry reading.Shortly afterwards he was posted to Madrid, at that time the centre of a great poetic renaissance.
He was formed ,politically, by his marriage to his second wife,Delia del Carril, a veteran activist, and his experiences of the Spanish Civil War.The effect it had on him was to force him to re-think his approach to content and style.He claimed that from then on his poetry would change with the changed world to become more easily understood by the masses.In Spain he teamed up again with Federico Garcia Lorca whom he had first met and partied with in 1933 in Beunos Aires.It is hard to overestimate the influence of Lorca on Neruda both in regard to poetry and politics.Lorca once said that Neruda was incapable of irony or hatred.The latter is open to question , though a master of words, he often seemed a man of contradiction. Their were periods in his life where he seems very anti-humanist, then he discovers an evagelical proselytising, humanist viewpoint.An enigma really the sheer diversity of his poetic styles truly amazing, from love poems to surrealism, political manifestos to historical epics.An avid reader himself Rimbaud and Baudelaire were also strong influences,but his own unique style rang clear.
Back in his homeland Neruda became furiously active in raising support for the Spanish Republicans, and where he had considered himself an Anarchist became a Communist.One of his proudest achievements was helping to organise political asylum in Chile for refugees after the fallof the Spanish Republic.During the Second World War Neruda travelled extensvelly throughout Latin America.In 1945 he was elected to the Senate and awarded the top literary prize in Chile. As a communist he helped to campaign for the presidency Of Gonzalea Videla who, once he assumed power, turned against the communists. Neruda took a brave stand against Videla in public, and as a result had to take flight. For over a year he lived in hiding, moving from safe house to safe house until he was able to cross the Andes on horseback and escape to Argentina. In 1952 with a change of government Neruda returned to Santiago in triumph. In 1958 and 1964 Neruda took part unsuccessfully, in the presidential elections.In !970 and in poor health, he campaigned vigorously for his friend Allende who became President. In 1971 Neruda travelled to Paris as ambassador for his country, and to Stockholm to recieve the Nobel Prize for literature.On September 11,1973, Allende was killed during the assault on the presidential palace, and 12 days later Neruda Neruda died of heart failure in Santiago.His funeral took place amidst a massive police presence, and mourners took advantage of the occasion to protest against Pinochet's new fascist regime.
In his lifetime he produced an astonishing amount of work, much of it of love and politics, he appreciated without fear of loss, the shared love and sensuality that joins him to the earth and gives meaning to the world.Perhaps their are dark sides to him that I have missed out,his alleged misogony , stalinist tendencies but he taught me about love and many other things, and for that I am gratefull, and of course to the friend who gave me his book.
In a Famous piece,"Concerning Impure Poetry ", he wrote -
"At certain times of the day or night, it is good to look at objects at rest :wheels that have crossed vast, dusty spaces, with their great loads of vegetables or minerals, sacks from coalyards, barrels and baskets,handles and hafts of carpenter's tools. Man's contact with the earth flows flows from them as an example to the poet in torment. Worn surfaces, the marks left on things by hands, the aura of these objects, tragic at times, pitiful at others, brings to reality a kind of fascination that should not be underestimated.
In then can be seen the blurred confusion of human life, the welter of things, material used and abandoned, the imprints made by feet and fingers, humanity's lasting mark carried inside and outside all objects.That is the sort of poetry we should be seeking - poetry worn away as though by acid, by the hand's work, smeared with sweat and smoke, smelling of lillies and urine,stained by the variety of our actions, within the law or outside it.
A poetry as impure as the clothes we wear, as the body, soiled with food and shame, with wrinkles, observations, dreams, wakefulness, prophecies, declaration of love and loathing, stupid behaviour, shocks, idylls, political creeds, denials,doubts affirmations, taxes. "
he also wrote,
"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."
Amen I say .What follows are some of my favourite pieces of Pablo's poetry, best in original language Spanish, but I personally don't speak it so I offer only translations, hope you enjoy.
ODE TO ENCHANTED LIGHT
under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches,
shining
on every leaf, drifting down like clean
white sand
A cicada sends
its sawing song
high into the empty air
The world is a glass overflowing
with water
LOVE SONNETT X1
I crave your mouth,your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the soverign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitrature.
ALWAYS
Facing you
I am not jealous.
Come with a man
at your back,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your bosom and your feet,
come like a river
filled with drowned men
that meets the furious sea,
the eternal foam, the weather.
Bring them all
where I wait for you:
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be, you and I,
alone upon the earth
to begin life
THE INFINITE ONE
Do you see thes hands? They have measuresd
the earth, they have seperated
minerals and cereals,
they have made peace and war,
they have demolished the distances
of all the seas and rivers,
and yet,
when they move over you,
little one,
grain of wheat,swallow,
they can not encompass you,
they are weary seeking
the twin doves
that rest or fly in your breast,
they travel the distances of your legs,
they coil in the light of your waist.
For me you are a treasure more laden
with immensity than the sea and its branches
and you are white and blue and spacious like
the earth at vintage time.
In that territory,
from your feet to your brow,
walking, walking, walking,
I shall spend my life.
THE STOLEN BRANCH
In the night we shall go in
to steal
a flowering branch.
We shall climb over the wall
in the darkness of the alien garden,
two shadows in the shadow.
Winter is not yet gone,
and the apple trees appears
suddenly changed
into a cascade of fragrant stars.
In the night we shall go in
up to its trembling firmament,
and your little hands and mine
will steal the stars.
And silently,
to our house,
in the night and the shadow,
with your steps will enter
perfume's silent step
and with starry feet
the clear body of spring
POET'S OBLIGATION
To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning,to whoever is cooped up
in house or office,factory or women
or street or mine or harsh prison cell:
to him I come,and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up,vaque and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam,
the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.
So,drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, whatever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation,
I may be there with an errant wave,
I may move,passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying "How can I reach the sea?"
And shall I broadcast, saying nothig,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breking up of foam and of qucksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of sea-birds on the coast.
So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.
ENIGMAS
You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study, it at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the Kingfisher's feathers,
which tremble in the pure sprigs of the southern tides?
Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal achitecture
of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armoured stalacite that breaks as it walks.
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?
I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its
jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count,pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the
petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and united its knot, letting its musical thrads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.
I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longtitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.
I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.
Translated by Robert Bly
" As the first bullets ripped into the guitars of Spain, when blood instead of music gushed out of them, my poetry stopped dead like a ghost in the streets of human anguish and a rush of roots and blood surged up through it. From then on, my road meets everyman's road. And suddenly I see that from the south of solitude I have moved north, which is the people, the people whose sword, whose handkerchief my humble poetry wants to be, to dry the seat of its vast sorrows and give it a weapon in it's struggle."
-Pablo Neruda, Memoirs.
FUURTHER READING
Pablo Neruda: a passion for Life, by Adam Feinstein. Bloomsbury,2005
The Essential Neruda :ed Mark Eisner. City Lights 2004
HOPE not hate blog: WDL humiliated in Swansea
HOPE not hate blog: WDL humiliated in Swansea
Shared via AddThis
FASCIST SPEAKER -ADRIAN MITCHELL
armoured like a rhinoceros
He hurls his tons into the crowd
From half a dozen minds he rips
Triangles of flesh and blood
Six shouts,six cardboard banners rise
Daubed with slogans saying Pain
But wilt and tear in the hundredfold
Applause of men as mild as rain
Shared via AddThis
FASCIST SPEAKER -ADRIAN MITCHELL
armoured like a rhinoceros
He hurls his tons into the crowd
From half a dozen minds he rips
Triangles of flesh and blood
Six shouts,six cardboard banners rise
Daubed with slogans saying Pain
But wilt and tear in the hundredfold
Applause of men as mild as rain
Friday 16 October 2009
HOWARD MARKS -The Origins of Smoking
PRECIOUS FEW ATTRIBUTES distiquish humans from animals.Sheep shag, monkeys wank,pigs snort, wolves piss, dolphins talk, tigers fart, dogs throw up,skunks drink,elephants sniff, horses count and leeches suck. But no animal smokes.It's not merely because they can't skin up. Animals, other than reindeer and dragons, are terrified of flames and smoke and stay away from chimneys and tobacconists. I began to research the origins of smoking.
There were two main theories, the first scientific, the second religious.
In the scientific theory ,the Welsh Wizard Merlin was the first human to smoke in the western hemisphere. Merlin shagged witches, used broomsticks as dildos, shat toadstools, and guzzled a mixture of liquid psychoactives from his Holy Grail. Merlin time-travelled to twenty-first century Cardiff and smuggled in a catatonic leek, a stereophonic spliff, a zygotic monkey, a slice of Caerphilly, a bag of magic mushrooms, a manic street preacher, two super furry animals, and a sixty- foot blow- up doll. Back at King Arthur's Round Table, one super furry got dizzy and started doing things backwards. Smoke poured out of his nostrils, the spliff went away from his mouth and he roared, " Drag On." The other super furry animals grew horns, had a huge piss and fucked off to the North Pole shouting,"Reign Deer, I'm a leek."Since then the Welsh haven't stopped drinking and smoking and producing things vaquely connected, like coal, resevoirs, crematoriums and sheep-shagging. That honour the smoking dragon and a leek after a good skinful.
Smoking wasn't exported from Wales until the twelfth century, when Price "Mad Dog" Madog ran aground in America long before Big Chief Lying Bullshit had thought of an Oval Orifice.Mad Dog's stash hadn't run out, so he offered a pipe of peace. Six weeks later, Mad Dog was back in Florida with a load of seeds, and all the Red Indians spent centuries having squaws rather than wars, bongs rather than bombs, and perfecting the art of communicating and signalling over vast distance by smoking enormous spliffs and emitting an ordered series of smoke rigs.
Due to the treachery of Big Chief Lying Bullshit, foreign tribes of Puritans,Prohibitionists and other Pricks were allowed to invade and gain control.Most ganja and ganja smokers were completely wiped out. Lucky ones (the Arawaks) fled to Jamaica and set up their culture over there. The Arawaks played ball games, sang ,feasted, danced, shagged, drank maize alcohol to get pissed, smoked dried leaves to get stoned, and snorted white powders through inverted Y-shaped tubes to get completely trolleyed. They wore sexy short skirts, tattoos, ornaments, necklaces and feathers. They had no wheels ( hadn't even thought of them)and no written language. They had a few words, including canoe (enabling transport)and hurricane (fucking up transport).Barbecue is also an Arawak word. So is hammock.So is tobacco. A typical Arawak day was up at any time, have a smoke, lie in the hammock and wait for some barbecue red snapper. Sorted.
Welshman Henry Morgan, through the devious route of rum, piracy,slavery and trade, managed to stock the island with weed-smoking Africans and hash-smoking shopkeepers from the Indian subcontinent, thereby ensurig a permanent ganja culture. St Bob Marley did the rest.
FROM: Howard Mark's Book of Dope Stories (2001)
Sunday 11 October 2009
IOLO MORGANWG (10/3/1747 to 18/12/1826) Conjurer Of Truth
Pilate Seith unto him: What is truth?- St .John, 19.38Just remembered who I was thinking of, when I started this blog of randomness,Edward Williams, better known by his bardic name Iolo Morgannwg.Have been inspired by him for a spell now so time for a brief introduction.He was born in 1747 at Pennon ,Glamorgan and bought up in the village of Flemington. His father was an intelligent and literate working stonemason whose career he followed, his mother a descendant of Glamorgans dynasties of Welsh poets. She never let him forget his cultural roots and heritage.
After his mothers death he became addicted to laudanum for his ashtma, but also became addicted to the world of books. Like a magpie he began plundering libraries, collections, poets homes wholesale and built himself into the most learned man in Wales on medieval Welsh literature, folklore, history and antiquities.Words and all their associations consumed him, drove him ,fired him.Hunger was in the air!
In 1773 he moved to London and became a significant figure in the Welsh community. On his return to Wales in 1777 he married his long suffering wife Peggy and tried his hand at farming and shopkeeping. In 1789 he produced some of his first known literary sleight of hands, when he bought out a colection of the 14th Century lyrical poet Daffyd ap Gwilym. Included in this edition were a large number of previously unknown poems, Iolo had claimed to have discovered. They were as good as anything Daffyd ap Gwilym had ever wrote, and notablly survived critical attention for over a 100 years when they were discovered to be forgeries.
His success led him to return to London where he founded the Gorsedd, a community of Welsh bards and it was at Primrose Hill on the summer solstice of 1792 that the first Gorsedd, Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys was held. In 1794 he published his own poetry to popular acclaim, now believed to be his only genuine work. He went on to author many more substantial works many now thought to be forgeries. Chiefly their was a 3 volume collection " THE MYRVYRIAN ARCHAIOLOGY OF WALES" published between 1801 and 1807. Essentially a collection of medieval literature, it collected the Welsh Triads and material attributed to Saint Cadoc and poems claimed again to be the works of Dafydd ap Gwilym. It also contained a third series of Iolos forged triads as well as his alterations to the authentic ones.Again undetected.
His vision represented a fusion of Christian and Arthurian influences, a proto romanticism comparable to that of William Blake and the Scottish poet and forger James Mac Pershon and a revived enthusiasm for all things " Celtic" and these elements of bardic heritage have genuinelly survived among Welsh language poets. Part of his aim was to assert the Welshness of South Wales against the prevalent idea that North Wales represented the purest survival of Welsh traditions.
Fuelled on laudenum and an inner quest he dreamt of the primitive purity of an ancient druidic system, and in his forgeries woke not to forget but to evangelise. This was the time of Revolution. A time half of Wales was starved and rioting. A time when people discovered The People, when intellectuals stamped nations out of the ground and wove new tricolours out of old legends, when among " non histrionic peoples" to publish a dictionary was deemed a revolutionary act. In this last warm freethinking , sometimes pagan, glow from an old but awakening Wales , Iolo was reborn as " THE BARD OF LIBERTY".
It is important to note that fabrications aside, he was a major scholar, the first serious Welsh Folklorist, the first to call for a Welsh National Library, museum and eisteddfod. The shop he ran in Cowbridge was notorious as a " Jacobin den; he helped to launch the Unitarian associaton in 1802 at Merthyr, he lost a job with the Board of Agriculture because he was a democrat, and was deemed to have seditious views and if the government had ever read his letter on the French landing in Fishguard in 1797, he would have been transported.He also perpetuated the myth that the Welsh explorer Madoc had gone to America and had settled with the native Americans.Later historians have found no trace.
A subversive of his time then, taking liberties with the facts in his own laudenumbed cause of truth! A time when most of Welsh history had already been airbrushed and buried. If he could correctly identify a truth he would then again correctly identify a necessary connection between it and another truth; if he found no evidence in the record to warrant this connection, he would then supply it in brilliant historical mimicry.
He believed , that Welsh poets had not been "poets" as the English use the word. They had been the ribcage of the body politic. They had been a collective memory honed for historic action. Their function had been to enable a Welsh present to construct a usable Welsh past to serve an attainable Welsh future. They had been remembrancers.
A political and religious radical although he evemntually embraced unitarianism. He opposed the ' tyranny ' of state religion and vehemently opposed the leaders of the Established Church... he considered people like the Bishop of St Davids' Thopmas Burgess ' representing ' a system of Idiotism, of madneess or of villainy'.
The English court had its King's Remembrancer and its own fabricators. Iolo wanted to create a cadre of People's Remembrancers, who he saw perhaps in his opium imagination overload as descendants of an ancient , noble and more natural religion. Burrowing like Merlin in his books, Iolo's Gorsodd was to be the directive and democratic elite of a new and democratic Welsh nation, concieved in liberty. They were to be the People's Rembrancers to a Welsh Republic.
His lasting impact on Welsh culture is felt today. His " Druids Prayer "(Gweddi'r Orsedd) still staple of the ritual of both gorseddau and Neo-druidism.A big influence too on Robert Grave's " White Goddess". Let us remember him as a friend of language, a brilliant debunker and spinner of myth, a friend of the mystical depths, a friend of mankind. In the end the only pockets he picked were his own. Its hard to deny his genius. apparently he was a good flute player as well . At the moment the friends of Primrose Hill want to remove a plaque to him that has recently been erected, still rattling his bones then. nice that a compatriat is still enraging the inhabitants of regents park. A man high on laudanum, high on life, with his pockets full of mischief , sticking his nose up to the establishment, I think it's time for a revival. I'll drink to that.
Further reading:
Geraint Jenkins (ed ) 2005- A Rattleskull Genius:
the many faces of Iolo Morganwg
Cardiff: University of Wales Press
Damien Walford Davies ( ed ) 2007- Wales and the Romantic
Imagination
and Lynda Pratt Cardiff: University of Wales Press
THE GORSEDD PRAYER,called the Prayer of the Gwyddoniaid ( From the Great Book of Margam)
God, impart Thy strength;
And in strength, power to suffer;
And to suffer for the truth;
And in the truth, all light;
And in light, gwynfyd;
And in gwynfyd, love;
And in God, all goodness.
Llyma Weddi'r Orsedd, a elwir Gweddi'r Gwyddoniaid (0 Lyfr Mawr Margam)
Dyw dy nerth, ag yn nerth Dioddef;
A dioddef dros y gwir,ag yn y gwir pop goleuni;
Ag yngoleuni pob Gwynfyd, ag yngwynfyd Cariad,
Ag ynghariad Dyw, ag yn nuw pop daioni.
"My sheets of transcript,the labours of many years, are for the most part unbound and in great disorder, like everything else with me. I have always had to many Irons in the fire, a llawer unhonynt yn llosgi'n ulw ( and many burning to a cinder )."
Iolo in a letter written 26th July 1800
Friday 9 October 2009
PSYCHELIZARD by LION CRUSHER
WE HAVE ONLY ONE EFFECTIVE WEAPON:
THE POWER TO BLOW THEIR MINDS.-Mario Savio
Saturday 3 October 2009
Hakim Bey: RAW VISION
The categories of naive art, art brut , and insane or eccentric art,which shade into various and further categories of neo- primitive art- all these ways of categorizing and labelling art remains senseless:- that is , not only ultimately useless but also essentially unsensual, unconnected to body and desire.What really characterizes all these art forms? Not their marginality in relation to a mainstream of art/discourse...for heaven's sake, what mainstream?!What discourse?! If we were to say that theres a " post modernist " discourse currently going on , then the concept "margin" no longer holds any meaning. Post- post modernism, however,will not even admit rhe existence of any discource of any sort. Art has fallen silent. There are no more categories, much less maps of center and margin. We are free of all that shit , right?
Wrong.Because one category survives: Capital.Too-Late Capitalism. The spectacle, the Simulation, Babylon, whatever you want to call it. All art can be positioned or labelled in relation to this discourse.And it is precisely and only in relation to this " metaphysical " commodity-spectacle that outsider art can be seen as marginal.If this spectacle can be considered as a para-medium( in all its sinuous complexity), then outsider art must be called immediate.It does not pass thru the paramedium of the spectacle.It is meant only for the artist and the artist's immediate entourage( friends, family, neighbors, tribe); and it participates in a gift economy pf positive reciprocity.Only this non-category of immediatism can therefore approach an adequate understanding and defense of the bodily aspects of outsider art, its connection to the senses and to desire, and its avoidance or even ignorance of the mediation/alienation inherent in spectacular recuperation and reproduction.Mind you ,this has nothing to do with the content of any outsider genre, nor for that matter does it concern the form or the intention of the work, nor the navite or knowinness of trhe artist or recipents of the art.Its immediatism lies soley in its means of imaginal production.It communicates or is given from person to person, breast to breast as the sufis say, without passing thru the distotion-mehanism of the spectaculat paramedium.
When Yugoslavian or Haitian or NYC- graffito art was discovered and commodified,the results failed to satisfy on several points :-
1. In terms of the pseudo-discourse of the Art World , all so called "naivite" is doomed to remain quaint, even campey, and decidedly marginal- even when it commands high prices (for a year or two (.The forced entrance of ousider art into the commodity spectacle is a humiliation,
2.Recuperation as commodity engages the artist in negative reciprocity-i.e, where first the artist "received inspiration" as a free gift, and then made a donation directly to the people, who might or might not give back their understanding, or mystification, or a turkey and a keg of beer (positive reciprocity), the artist now first creates for money and recieves money, while any aspects of gift exchange recede int scondary levels of meaning and finally begin to fade (negative reciprocity). Finally we have tourist art, and the condescending amusement,and then the condescending boredom,of those who will no longer pay for the inauthentic.
3.Or else the Art World vampirizes the energy of the outsider, sucks everything out and then passes on the corpse to the advertising world or the world of popular entertainment. By this reproduction the art finally loses its aura and shrivels and dies. True, the utopian trace may remain, but in essennce the art has been betrayed.
The unfairness of such terms as insane or ne-primitive art lies in the fact that this art is not produced only by the mad or innocent,but by all those who evade yhe alienation of the paramedium. Its true appeal lies in the intense aura it acquires thru immediate imaginal prescence, not only in its visionary style or content, but most importantly by its mere present-ness (i.e it is "here" and it is a "gift").In this sense it is more, not less, noble than mainstream art of the post-modern era--which is precisely the art of an abscence rater than a prescence.
The ony fair way (or "beauty way,") as the Hopi say) to treat outsider art would seem to be to keep it secret, to refuse to define it-- to pass it on as a secret, person to person, breast to breast, rather than pass it through the paramedium ( slick journals,quarterlies,galleries, museums,coffee table books,MTV etc.).Or even better to become mad and innocent ourselves.For so Babylon will label us when we neither worship nor criticize it anymore, when we have forgotten it(but not forgiven it!), and remembered our own prophetic selves, our bodies, our "true will."
Thursday 1 October 2009
FIRST MINISTER CHALLENGED OVER DRONES AT ABERPORTH
Amnesty International has serious concerns regarding unmanned drones flown from Parc Aberporth , an assembly Government - funded facility iin Ceredigion, West Wales.Elbit systems flew the Hermes 450 from Parc Aberporth in 2005 -" marking the first time a pilotless aircraft weighing more than 330 pounds had been flown in nonsegregated UK airspace."The site is now being used to test an adapted version for the Royal Air Force.
Amnesty has called on the UK government to suspend all military exports to Israel as there is substantial risk that UK- supplied arms and components could have been used to target civilians in the recent Gaza conflict.
The Hermes 450 is manufactured by the Israeli firm Elbit Systems, with engines made by its UK subsidiary UAV enginesLtd. Elbit Systems claims that the UK company produces engines only for drones destined for export, not for those used by the Israeli Defence Forces(IDF) in the recent Gaza conflict. Amnesty International is seeking assurances from the UK government that it has not licensed components for use in military drones, and that it has taken sufficient monitoring to ascertain that UK engines , parts and technology are not and have not been used in drone aircraft operated by the IDF.
The Cardigan and North Pembrokeshire Amnesty International Group is keeping an eye on the situation in Parc Aberporth, and will continue to press the first Minister and the Welsh Assembly Government to introduce to its industry investment programme.
Meanwhile fears about the safety of testing unmanned aerial systems at West Wales Airport have been expressed after a drone crashed just after take off.
MEP Jill Evans who met with members of Bro Emlyn for Peace and Justice said "I am very concerned about the safety issues, especially in relation to creating the extended airspace for testing. This incident highlights how important that is.They want to extend the airspace over a wide area and the main concerns is one of safety for the local population, which I will raise in the light of this incident. Now it is even more important that WAG looks at this".
Harry Rogers of BEPJ said " thank goodness this plane was not further ino its flight. It could have been over Cardigan or Aberporth before it dropped out of the sky. This crash could be a foretaste of what is to come if a 500- square mile area of West Wales is allocated to the testing of unmanned dreones. Next time it could be someone's home or a school that the plane lands on. We need to get WAG to scrap these reckless plans."
Des Davies member of local ACTYMA campaign group opposed to development said "UAVs are 50 times more likely to crash than military aircraft, and flying them over an inhabited area is irresponsible."
CIVILIAN TARGETS IN GAZA
"Children playing on the roofs of their homes or in the street and other civilians going about their daily business, as well as medical staff attending the wounded were killed in broad daylight by Hellfire and other highly accurate missiles launched from helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles,or drones, and by precision projectiles fired from tanks.
Disturbing questions remain unanswered as to why such high -precision weapons , whose operators can see even small details of their targetts and which can accurately strike even fast moving vehicles , killed so many children and other civilians."
From Israel/Gaza - Operation Cast Lead: 22 days of death and destruction, Amnesty International, 2009
other sources-
Tivyside Advertiser
Carmarthen Journal
Amnesty has called on the UK government to suspend all military exports to Israel as there is substantial risk that UK- supplied arms and components could have been used to target civilians in the recent Gaza conflict.
The Hermes 450 is manufactured by the Israeli firm Elbit Systems, with engines made by its UK subsidiary UAV enginesLtd. Elbit Systems claims that the UK company produces engines only for drones destined for export, not for those used by the Israeli Defence Forces(IDF) in the recent Gaza conflict. Amnesty International is seeking assurances from the UK government that it has not licensed components for use in military drones, and that it has taken sufficient monitoring to ascertain that UK engines , parts and technology are not and have not been used in drone aircraft operated by the IDF.
The Cardigan and North Pembrokeshire Amnesty International Group is keeping an eye on the situation in Parc Aberporth, and will continue to press the first Minister and the Welsh Assembly Government to introduce to its industry investment programme.
Meanwhile fears about the safety of testing unmanned aerial systems at West Wales Airport have been expressed after a drone crashed just after take off.
MEP Jill Evans who met with members of Bro Emlyn for Peace and Justice said "I am very concerned about the safety issues, especially in relation to creating the extended airspace for testing. This incident highlights how important that is.They want to extend the airspace over a wide area and the main concerns is one of safety for the local population, which I will raise in the light of this incident. Now it is even more important that WAG looks at this".
Harry Rogers of BEPJ said " thank goodness this plane was not further ino its flight. It could have been over Cardigan or Aberporth before it dropped out of the sky. This crash could be a foretaste of what is to come if a 500- square mile area of West Wales is allocated to the testing of unmanned dreones. Next time it could be someone's home or a school that the plane lands on. We need to get WAG to scrap these reckless plans."
Des Davies member of local ACTYMA campaign group opposed to development said "UAVs are 50 times more likely to crash than military aircraft, and flying them over an inhabited area is irresponsible."
CIVILIAN TARGETS IN GAZA
"Children playing on the roofs of their homes or in the street and other civilians going about their daily business, as well as medical staff attending the wounded were killed in broad daylight by Hellfire and other highly accurate missiles launched from helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles,or drones, and by precision projectiles fired from tanks.
Disturbing questions remain unanswered as to why such high -precision weapons , whose operators can see even small details of their targetts and which can accurately strike even fast moving vehicles , killed so many children and other civilians."
From Israel/Gaza - Operation Cast Lead: 22 days of death and destruction, Amnesty International, 2009
other sources-
Tivyside Advertiser
Carmarthen Journal
Wednesday 30 September 2009
Monday 28 September 2009
Ivor Cutler- (15/1/23- 3/3/06) - Magical Surrealist
Ah Mr Cutler, beloved scotch poet, songwriter and humorist,I remember fondly listening to him under the bedclothes, on John Peels wonderful show.Cannot forget my first sighting of Cutler as Buster Bloodvessell ,in the Beatles Magical Mystery Show and later on one of Neil Innes television programmes and on Robert Wyatts records.I also remember him appearing on numerous occasions the Andy Kershaw show ( now what ever happened to him).No need for questions, he was a complete original. I think I passed my English "o " level with Ivor's help. Happy innocent days
WINDFALLS
On the turf ,below the tree of life, lie the windfalls.
They are tunnelled through, but the tunnells go
nowhere. If you ask a tunnell where it leads, you
get a bleak look." I am just a hole through a
solid. I was just eaten." The eaters lie on the turf,
little brown dessicated bits of nature, waiting for a
strong wind to blow up to the air and into
the hedge
A SLIGHT CURVE
An insecure man decided to live below a mountain,
so he dug a tunnell till he came to the middle, but
his ruler had a slight curve and he came out a
quarter of the way round. However, all the healthy
exercise inside the mountain cured his insecurity
so he laughed and went back to his wife and
children and grandchildren and in-laws.
MISS PRISM
She gave him, a glassy stare from the top of a
vitreous ladder.
WHAT ABOUT THE HORNS
In the middle of the moon, a huge man who
smells like your favourite granpa lights a candle
and settles down to read.
THE GREAT REFLECTOR
I sit in the dark dreesed in a formal suit. I am
waiting for the moon to reappear so that I can
continue my sketch of the kitchen.
PHILOSOPHICAL SPECULATION
How many anglers dance on top of the bin
A PERPENDICULAR ATTITUDE
When life gets too much , do not lie down and cry,
stand up and weep
THE CAKE OF LIFE
It is only in the autumn that I date the month in
Latin:-IX, X, XI, XII. And then return to Arabic:-
1, 2, 3. It's the icing on the cake of life . An ort of
schoolchild culture. As good as a degree in the
classics.
Sunday 27 September 2009
KENNETH REXTROTH -THOU SHALL NOT KILL ( a memorial for Dylan Thomas )
Kenneth Rextroth was born on December 22,1905, in South Bend,Indiana, and died on June 6,1982, in Montecito,California.He moved to San Francisco from Chicago in 1927 to become involved in leftist politics and began by helping to organize maritime labour unions. During World War II Rextroth was a conscietious objector, a political stance he shared with his friend , the Californian poet William Everson, who later summarized Rextroth's predominant influence on local writers in the essay "Rextroth: Shaker and Maker."
An Anarchist poet, critic, translator and playwright,Rextroth also wrote regular columns as the West Coast literary correspondent for the NATION and the Saturday Review. In particular ,Rextroth's interest in Asian literature and philosophy contributed to the Beat writers' study of what Ginsberg called "Bhuddha consciousness."Rextroth's translations of Asan poetry published by New Directions were a seminal influence on Gary Snyder and other young poets.
It was at one of Rextroth's weekly "seminars in his apartment at 250 Scott Street above Jack's Record Cellar that Ginsberg heard him read an early mimeographed version of his eulogy for the popular Welsh poet Dylan Thomas titled "Thou Shalt Not Kill."Rextroth wrote the poem shortly after Thomas's death from alcoholism on November 9, 1953. In "Thou Shalt Not Kill," Rextroth's scathing charge that capitalism had vanquished the century's most promising writers in it materialistic pursuit of power and its worship of the destructive god Mammon would reverberate in Ginsberg's' later poem "Howl."
AUTHOR'S NOTE......
This poem was written in one sitting, a few hours after a phone came from New York with the news that Dylan(Thomas)had died. It was circulated widely, mimeo'd to all my friends. The copies were all plainly labelled "NOT FOR PUBLICATION".Nevertheless it has been printed without my permission, in Japanese, Greek, French, English and several other languages, in a shortened form. In most cases I believe it was thoght to be effective ammunition in the Cold War. After seeing the last section in print a friend wrote me "You have a point, powerfully put, but the other side is much worse." The "other side "? Dylan and I are the "other side" The poem is directed against the twentieth, the Century of Horror. It says the same thing Holderin or Baudelaire said of the nineteenth century, but it has the benefit of what the philosophers call " an inclusion series ";one hundred more years. I am well aware that ther are no loger the suicides east of the Iron Curtain there used to be. The first wave was thorough and effective.
Kenneth Rextroth
1
They are murdering all the young men.
For half a century now, every day,
They have hunted them down and killed them.
They are killing them now.
At this minute, all over the world,
They are killing the young men.
They know ten thousand ways to kill them.
Every year they invent new ones.
In the jungles of Africa,
In the marshes of Asia,
In the deserts of Asia,
In the slave pens of Siberia
In the slums of Europe,
In the nightclubs of America,
The murderers are at work.
They are stoning Stephen
They are casting him forth from every city
in the world.
Under the Welcome sign,
Under the Rotary emblem,
His body lies under the hurling stones.
He was full of faith and power.
He did great wonders among the people.
They could not stand against his wisdom.
They could not bear the spirit with which
he spoke.
He cried out in the name
Of the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness.
They were cut to the heart.
They gnashed against him with their teeth.
They cried out with a loud voice.
They stopped their ears.
They ran on him with one accord.
They cast him out of the city and stoned him.
The witnessess laid down their clothes
At the feet of a man whose name was your name -
You.
You are the murderer.
You are killing the young men.
You are broiling Lawrence on his gridiron.When you demanded he divulge
The hidden trasures of the spirit,
He showed you the poor.
You set your heart against him.
You seized hin and bound him with rage.
You roasted him on a slow fire.
His fat dripped and spurted in the flame.
The smell was swwet to your nose.
He cried out,
"I am cooked on this side,
Turn me over and eat,
You
Eat of my flesh."
You are murdering the young men.
You are shooting Sebastion with arrows.
He kept the faithfull stadfast under
persecution.
First you shot him with arrows.
The you beat him with rods.
Then you threw him in the sewer.
You fear nothing more than courage.You who turn away your eyes
At the bravery of the young men.
You.
The hyena with polished face and bow tie,
In the office of a billion dollar
Corporation devoted to service;
The vulture dripping with carrion,
Carefully and carelessly robed in imported
tweeds,
Lecturing on the Age of Abundance;
The jackal in double-breasted gabardines,
Barking by remote control,
In the United Nations;
The vampire bat seated at the couch head,
Notebook in hand, toying with his decerebrator;
The autonomous, ambulalatory cancer,
The Superego in a thousand uniforms;
You,
The finger man of behemoth,
The murderer of the young men.
II
What happened to Robinson,
Who used to stagger down Eighth Street,
Dizzy with solitary gin /
Where is Masters, who crouched in
His law office for ruinous decades?
Where is Leonard who thought he was
A locomotive? And Lindsay,
Wise as a dove, innocent
As a serpent, where is he?
Timor mortis contubat me.
What became of Jim Oppenheim?
Lola Ridge alone in an
Icy furnished room? Orrick Johns,
Hopping into the surf on his
One leg? Elinor Wylie
Who leaped likr Kierkeegaard?
Sar Teasdale, where is she?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Where is George Sterling, that tame fawn?
Phelps Putnam who stole away?
Jack Wheelwright who couldn't cross the bridge?
Donald Evans with his cane and
Monocle, where is he?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
John Gould Fletcher who could not
Unbreak his powerful heart?
Bodenheim butchered in stinking
Squalour? Edna Millay who took
Her last straight whiskey? genivieve
Who loved so much; where is she?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Harry who didn't care at all?
Hart who went back to the sea (Hart Crane 1899-1932)
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Where is Sol Funaroff?
What happened to Potemkin?
Isidor Schneider? Claude McKay?
Who animates their corpes today?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Where is Ezra, that noisy man? ( Ezra Pound)
Where is Larsson whose poems were prayers?
Where is Charlie Snider, that gentle
Bitter boy? Carnevali, (Italian poet)
What became of him?
Carol who was so beautiful, where is she?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
III
Was their end noble and tragic,
Like the mask of a tyrant?
Like Agammemmon's secret golden face?
Indeed it was not. Up all night
In the focsle, bemused and beaten,
Bleeding at the rectum, in his
Pocket a review by the one
Colleaque he respected, "If he
Really means what these poems
Pretend to say. he has only
One way out-." Into the
Hot acrid Caribeann sun,
Into the acrid, transparent,
Smoky sea. Or another, lice in his
Armpits and crotch, garbage littered
On the floor, grey greasy rags on
The bed. " I Killed them because they
Were dirty , stinkin Communists.
Ishould get a medal." Again,
Another, Simenon foretold,
His end at a glance. " I dare you
To pull the trigger." Sheshut her eyes
And spilled gin over her dress.
The pistol wobbles in his hand.
It took them hours to die.
Another threw herself downstairs,
And broke her back, it took her years.
Two put their heads under water
In the bath and filled their lungs.
Another threw himself under
The traffic of a crowded bridge.
Another, drunk, jumped from a
Balcony and broke her neck.
Another soaked herself in
Gasoline and ran blazing
Into the street and lived on
In cutody. One made love
Only once with a beggar woman.
He died later of syphilis
Of the brain and spine. Fifteen
Years of pain and poverty,
While his mind leaked away.
One tried three times in twenty years
To drown himself. The last time
He succeeded. One turned on the gas
When she had no more food, no more
Money, and only half a lung.
One went up to Harlem, took om
Thirty men, came home and
Cut her throat. One sat up all night
Talking to H.L Mencken and
Drowned himself in the morning.
How many stopped writing at thirty?
How many went to work for Time?
How many died of prefrontal
Lobotomies in the Communist Party?
How many are lost in the back wards
Of provincial madhouses?
How many on the advice of
Their psychoanalysts, decided
A businss career was best of all?
How many are hopeless alcoholics?
Rene Crevel!
Jacques Ricgaut!
Antonin Artaud!
Mayakofsky!
Essenin!
Robert Desnos!
Saint Pol Roux!
Max Jacob!
All over the world
The same disembodied hand
Strikes us down.
Here is a mountain of death.
A hill of heads like the Khans piled up.
The first born of a century
Slaughtered by Herod.
Three generations of infants
Stuffed doen the maw of Moloch
IV
He is dead.
The bird of Rhiannom.
He is dead.
In the winter of the heart.
He is dead.
In the canyons of death,
They found him dumb at last
In the blizzard of lies.
He never spoke again.
He died.
He is dead.
In their antseptic hands,
He is dead.
The little spellbinder of Cader Idris.
He is dead.
The sparrow of Cardiff.
He is dead.
The canary of Swansea.
Who killed the bright-headed bird?
You did, you son of a bitch.
You drowned him in your cocktail brain.
He fell down and died in your synthetic heart.
You killed him,
Oppenhemer the Million-Killer.
You killed him,
Eintein the Grey Eminence.
You killed him.
Havanahaana, with your nobel prize.
You killed him,General,
Through the proper channels.
You strangled him, Le Mouton,
With yor mains etendus.
He confessed in open court to a pince-nezed skull.
You shot him in the back of the head
As he stumbled in the last cellar.
You killed him,
Benign Lady on the postage stamp.
He was found dead at a liberal weekly luncheon.
He was found dead on the cutting room floor.
He was found dead at a Time policy conference.
Henry Luce killed him with a telegram to the Pope.
Mademoiselle stangled him with a padded brassiere.
Old possum sprinled him with a tea ball.
After the wolves were done, the vaticides
Crawled of with his bowels to their classrooms
and quarterlies.
When the news came over the radio
You personally rose up shouting, "Give us
Barrabas!"
In your lonely crowd you swept over him.
Your custom built brogans and your ballet slippers
Pummelled himto death in the gritty street.
You hit him with an album of Hindemith.
You stabbed him with stainless steel by Isamu
Noguchi
He is dead.
He is Dead.
Like Ignacio the bullfighter,
At four o.clock in the afternoon.
At precisely four o'clock.
I too do not want to hear it.
I too do not want to know it.
I want to run inyo the street,
Shouting,"Remember Vanzetti!"
...And all the birds of the deep sea rise up
Over the luxury liners and scream,
"You killed him! You killed him.
In your God damned Brooks Brothers suit ,
You son of a bitch."
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