The Plain Sense of Things

After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savior.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
Required, as necessity requires.

Wallace Stevens

"surreal documents" weighs in on burzum

Pere Ubu,

words fail me!

I’m off to Venezuela for a “holiday” in two months. Can you guess which of the two videos below my holiday will most resemble?

Most Venezuelans (and other "middle-class" (read: rich)) South Americans I meet regard my guarded optimism re Chavez as ludicrous and incomprehensible and invariably end up by suggesting that never having been there and seen what a disaster it is, (presumably there were no barrios before Chavez got in power…actually there weren’t officially.. it’s only since Chavez came into power that the map of Caracas has been redrawn to include them, before, they were simply empty green spaces, howzat for homo sacer!?) I have no right to hold an opinion, to which I always counter that they wouldn’t say that to anyone who AGREED with them would they? It’s the old “don’t generalize” thing, no-one ever says “Oh, that’s a huge generalization” when you say something nice about people. ( “ You Brazilians are such lovely, warm, open people aren’t you?” “ I resent that generalization about my nationality, many of us actually are utter cunts!”) So, anyway I’m off there, not that this will make any difference of course as they‘ll simply say, “Two weeks, is that all…? You STILL have no right to hold an opinion.” Unless I come back with a negative one, of course. (Just as they have no opinion on, err… Fidel Castro.... I mean never having been to Cuba.. but he’s a Communist, right.. they’re self-evidently evil.. you don’t NEED to go there to know that…)

Ahh…. no doubt corruption and cronyism are rife, inflation’s at 20 percent and the super-rich are blithely unaffected by it all, while the small businessman loses his livelihood/assets. What’s more significant than the successes or failings of Chavez’s term however (or indeed of any variety of “Socialism”) is the fact that, as one of the interviewees points out at the end of John Pilger’s “The War on Democracy,” it’s much more important than Chavez, it doesn’t depend on him, he’s hopefully, simply the catalyst for the raising of the broad mass of Venezuelans (and more broadly, the indigenous mass of South America) to political agency, that’s the decisive stroke, making them believe that they don’t just “count” in the political process, they are the political process.

Excitingly, yesterday it seemed that Chavez was ordering out foreigners who claimed Venezuela wasn’t a democracy, (the irony!) but on closer inspection it was simply a veiled warning to the Mexican ambassador, who had the cheek to suggest that DIIPIV (Democracy Is In Peril In Venezuela.) Well, he should know all about democracy in peril and a polarized nation after the last Mexican elections shouldn’t he? Shame they didn’t get Jimmy Carter in to verify it all like Chavez did.

Venezuela!

Caracas, Venezuela

"I can't hear what you are saying, what you are is shouting too loudly in my ears."

Further condensation.

The End of History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

busy, busy, busy.....

so here's Bertolt, summing it up for the mo...


On the Critical Attitude

The critical attitude
Strikes many people as unfruitful
That is because they find the state
Impervious to their criticism
But what in this case is an unfruitful attitude
Is merely a feeble attitude.
Give criticism arms
And states can be demolished by it.

Canalising a river
Grafting a fruit tree
Educating a person
Transforming a state
These are instances of fruitful criticism
And at the same time instances of art.

Bertolt Brecht

A reflection on two exemplary artists!

Well, despite having seen the towering piece of work that is “Gummo” several years ago, I‘d sort of dismissed Harmony Korine as the useless, dilettante son of wealthy New York Bo-Hos making dubious capital out of the “exotic” lives of America’s Permanent Underclass, but clearly I was wrong. As the comments box informs me, “he doesn’t care if Burzum are Nazis, so long as it’s good music.” And he’s a JEW.

It sort of takes the breath away, doesn’t it, the degree to which he can nobly rise above petty ideological and historical concerns? Though as they say, that is the true aesthete at work, inhabiting a universe in which there is only form and affect, tone, colour, texture, line and their variously delightful arrangements, a truly rarified soul, no wonder he has so much cache among the young from all walks of life, but especially in just those impoverished constituencies his work so soulfully represents. It’s not just the amazing “sympathy” he feels for trailer park trash and schizophrenics, it’s his ability to get “under their skin” and really represent their worlds in a meaningful way that gets at the deeper, underlying, kookily beautiful, surreal and bizarre dimension of it all once all the superfluous socio-economic stuff has been stripped away. Isn’t this, after all, the true liberation that in a way they/we should be seeking, rise above the petty daily concerns, become SPIRITUAL, and view the world again with the eyes of a child, there’s a dark magic and enchantment everywhere, even in the ghetto. You just need to learn how to LOOK and artists such as Harmony Korine are our great teachers.

You have to say that Burzum, in his own way, hasn’t quite managed to become the true artist that Harmony Korine is, he’s still caught up in all other kinds of “issues” (church burning, murder) that Harmony has superceded, or perhaps not superceded exactly as Harmony was simply born with a divine ability to not care at all, in any way, about “ideological” concerns and thus is by his very nature a TRUE artist, while Burzum is still struggling with all that earthly, let’s-change-the-world stuff, with the Heathen Front. As his website says:

“What makes Burzum special - and what elevates it above mere 'rebel' status - is that Varg has a very definite vision of a new society and has very real aims (backed up by very real actions). If you walk down a street wearing an Anal Cunt shirt, you might get the message across to certain people that you hate them, hate society and hate its values. If you wear a Burzum shirt, you get the message across that you hate society and its values and you are working to create a new society with new values.” (italics mine)


Interestingly though, there may be some overlap between the two men, Varg is doing time for arson and stabbing one of his ex-band mates to death and Harmony’s wikipedia entry informs me..

“He originally intended to follow up Gummo with a short-lived project known as Fight Harm, directed by illusionist David Blaine.It comprised footage of Korine engaging random people in actual street fights. In these he followed rules of always provoking the fight and continuing until threat of death. Korine, who often said he would die for the cinema, hoped to make a cross between a Buster Keaton vehicle and a snuff film, but after only six fights, he was hospitalized and forced to abandon the project.” (italics mine)

So perhaps once Varg’s released, the two could get together and fulfill both Varg’s desire to institute an overthrow of the reigning Judo-Christian world order and Korine’s laudable commitment to die for cinema ( more evidence of his artistic stature, I mean, I love cinema, especially edgy, low-budget American Indy stuff by really profound thinkers like Gus Van Sant, but I wouldn’t be prepared to die for it. I guess I just don’t really grasp how truly important it is, what’s at stake here. Still, it’s nice to know that there is still something worth dying for.)

Naturally Varg will have to go back to prison afterwards and Korine won’t be around to make any more films like the epochal “Julien-Donkey Boy” but if they’re prepared to make these kind of sacrifices, I, for one, am FULLY prepared to support them.

Poptimism: A Modest Proposal.

Dear Blogreader.

I’ve been quite enjoying the works of black metal band Drudkh recently. Now top Blog polymath Poetix has informed me that they’re Nazis.

I’m ashamed to say that this information has thoroughly ruined my enjoyment of them. I just can’t seem to get it out of my mind whenever I listen to them now. I mean they’re obviously not to blame, they’re exactly the same as they were before, the problem’s with me. It’s like that moment in the Horror movie when the character suddenly realizes that the juicy steak they’re tucking into is in fact human flesh and suddenly it becomes repulsive to them. Ridiculous, of course, the steak tastes exactly the same and the fact that you know it’s a human being doesn’t make any difference to its flavour. So if you were to say for example “I can’t eat that, it’s disgusting,” you’re wrong, aren’t you, because if you didn’t know it was human flesh then you’d enjoy it. I might try to kid myself that humans have a natural aversion to eating other humans but obviously I’d just be falling back on some kind of bogus essentialist justification, when in fact many people have eaten human flesh under numerous circumstances, and some have certainly enjoyed it, so it’s hardly absolutely and categorically a universal aversion. Maybe most people would feel an aversion to it, then, but of course just because most people do it, doesn’t mean anything. Most people are in favour of hanging.

So how can I get rid of this stubborn aversion to listening to them now, this feeling that I’m doing something wrong, that I simply can’t enjoy it, that some new element is tainting my reception of the work, how can I get a pure, clear, lucid, rational and unmediated response, a proper and fitting adult response unencumbered by all this juvenile “ethical” silliness. It’s starting to depress me as I feel, y’know, just so….. unsophisticated. Clearly I need to work on this as I’m simply not doing justice to Drudkh as a sonic artefact, in terms of the texture and dynamics of their sound, after all, their being Nazis isn’t a component of their sound, is it? They don’t have intelligibly Nazi lyrics (and even if they did, I mean, come on…..) and already having the record, if I listen to it repeatedly I won’t be contributing any more money to them, will I? And besides, Nazis are such a negligible force politically that even if I did provide them with a few more pounds it’s hard to get worked up about, isn’t it? Plus…. many people actually are Nazis and enjoy Nazi literature and music so who am I to dismiss it out of hand with my flip, left-liberal, hand-wringing “responses.” Who am I to say being a Nazi is wrong? I mean what right do I have to stand in judgement, aren’t we all racists in a way, am I so sure that under certain circumstances I too couldn’t become a Nazi? How many Nazis do I know personally? Have I ever even been to a BNP meeting, can I honestly say that I’ve read “ Mein Kampf?” I can’t. So isn’t it just another one of those poorly thought out, really baseless prejudices that I ought, as an intelligent man to be ridding myself of?

It is, it is! Can anybody out there help me out.? I’ve tried a couple of techniques, downloading Skrewdriver tracks and focusing in on what a tight, aggressive hardcore band they were, the quality of the guitar sound, hanging around on so-called "hate" forums (actually there’s a lot of love there too, remember! Real, brothers-in-arms, underdog bonding) trying to enjoy the energy of some of the posters, the sense of shared mission, the undeniable passion, Googling up pictures of Aushwitz and Treblinka and trying to get past the bog-standard “horrified” thing and focus on how a lot of the shots of camp guards standing next to mass graves are really quite well composed, re-reading “ If this is a man,” re-watching “Shoah” and trying to see things from the other side, reminding myself, well, there are two sides to every story, a lot of these so-called Nazi’s were just regular guys who were trying to get on, they didn't invent the system! It’s helping, but it’s taking a long time and I’m kind of embarrassed to be wandering around with this, well, frankly, atavistic, undergraduate set of “attitudes” toward stuff.

After all, when I look around I know that many people smarter than me have managed to get rid of all this irrational, left-liberal humanist baggage that’s still weighing me down (maybe they were just lucky enough never to have been lumbered with it in the first place. Wow! What a great life that must be.) Really, compared to them I feel like half a person, feel it’s preventing me from getting as much out life as I could. Help me understand, really and finally that, of course, it just doesn’t matter, Nazi, not Nazi, is it good music? It is! Then don’t you deserve it? I do! I dream of a Poptimist therapy that could address these issues, help to heal these old wounds that have been inflicted on me.

Yours sincerely

Mr Impostume

WARNING! THIS REALLY IS HORRIBLE.

Which one's your favourite? I rather like Shalom Volchok's H.R Gigeresque, unravelling DNA helix number, myself. Well done that man! And those grinning, grateful almost parentally-proud faces!

Where do I sign up?

It would be a hard-hearted man who could resist the sheer panache of these guys, wouldn't it?

An extract from the current work-in-progress, the title of which I refuse to reveal for fear that someone will pinch it!

“It’s true that for a long time I dreamed of revolution, of a great uprising of which I would be, if not quite the head, then at least one of its vital components, a fearless second-in-command, an indomitable right-hand man. I had expected unconsciously all through my teenage years that I would have someone to represent, someone to speak up for, that the purpose of the education my parents had fought to give me, my existence in the world, was on someone’s behalf, and it has taken a long time for this sense of mission, however vague, to fade, for me to accept that there will be no great transforming moment in which relations between men are permanently altered.

This, then, is who we are, I tell myself, this is what we have become. We eke out our little lives here, on the other side of the river, in the shadow of Canary Wharf, grateful that we don’t have nothing. We save what money we can, we try not collapse under the boredom and futility of it all, we prop each other up, search out the kindness in each other’s eyes. She is a good, good woman, she’s strong and passionate and patient. Doesn’t she deserve more than this, something a little less limited, less hedged in by worry, less constrained? I wish I could have shown her things, things I myself have never seen. Corny stuff, passé things to others, things she would known the value of, that she would have treasured. The pyramids at dusk, an air balloon drifting over teeming plains. To have driven fast in a car with her, the top down, the wind whipping past us and the sea coming into view around the next bend. But instead we have this, we have each other, and it’s within each other’s orbit, within each other’s store of memories, hopes and needs that all our journeys will have to be taken.

She was standing at the kitchen sink when I came home from work today, one hand on her belly, three months gone now, lost in thought, the sun warm in her hair. I paused there in the doorway and watched her for a moment, total stillness, barely a sound from the street, all the love I bear for her, all the love I have for life, tumbling against my ribs. Who can I give all this love to now but her alone, even though it burdens her? Where can we look for any joy in this world, if not in each other?”

The people will survive

In their environment

The dirt, scarcity, and the emptiness

Of our South

The injustice of our greed

The practice we inherit

The dirt, scarcity and the emptiness

Of our South

There on the beach

I could see it in her eyes

I only had a Corona

Five cent deposit

throughsilver defends the Melvins and others with unusual eloquence, for a Northener.

for Poetix!

Brings a tear to the eye, dunnit.

(not waving but jumping: Motion to step down)

Breaking news: It’s the man they’re hailing as the James Blunt of grime! Wiley’s latest single puts him in contention for Poet Laureate.

Those Wiley Lyrics in full.

“My name is Wiley.”

My name is Wiley
Your name is not Wiley
If your name was Wiley
Our names would be the same.

But it’s not like that
Because I am Wiley
And you are not
So why don’t you just be yourself
And let me be
Who I am
Wiley Kat

Chorus:

You are you and I am me
And I am Wiley (repeat 38 times)

The people call me Wiley
Wiley is my name
Not your name.
If your name was Wiley
You might have my fame.

But it isn’t, so you haven’t
I am the original Eski boy
Not you, remember who is who, I am me
W-I-l-E-
Y
Get me?

Chorus

You are me and I am you
Hang on minute, I’ve got confused……..


Serving Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, who is believed to be voluntarily stepping down from the position to make way for “ the true, contemporary Bard of Stratford” spoke glowingly of the Wiley’s latest lyrical triumph. “There is something deeply, powerfully resonant in the repetition, the constant martial reiteration of the, dare I say “poet's”, identity, which powerfully bespeaks the modern, urban persona's terminal state-of-siege, constantly assailed by forces that threaten to breach its hard-won boundaries, the recombinant intensity of the small number of units, playing on the “I- thou” distinction gestures toward a minimalist, almost ascetic philosophical investigation of self in the urban present.”

The Royal Family are already said to have reacted with delight at the prospect.

"I been in some big towns, I heard me some big talk. But there's one thing I know." VERSUS "the inarticulate speech of the heart."

"My mama done tol' me,
when I was in knee-pants
My mama done tol' me, " Son a wo/man'll sweet talk"
And give ya the big eye, but when the sweet talkin's done
A woman's a two-face,
A worrisome thing who'll leave ya to sing the blues in the night

Now the rain's a-fallin', hear the train's a-callin, "Whooee!"
(My mama done tol' me) Hear dat lonesome whistle blowin' 'cross the trestle,
"Whooee!"(My mama done tol' me) A-whooee-ah-whooee ol' clickety-clack's a-echoin' back th' blues in the night

The evenin' breeze'll start the trees to cryin' and the moon'll hide its light when you get the blues in the night

Take my word, the mockingbird'll sing the saddest kind o' song, he knows things are wrong, and he's right

From Natchez to Mobile, from Memphis to St. Joe, wherever the four winds blow

I been in some big towns an' heard me some big talk, but there is one thing I know.

A woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave ya to sing the blues in the night

My mama was right, there's blues in the night."

The scratch.


I woke up with a spot of blood over my eye.
A scratch halfway across my forehead.
But I'm sleeping alone these days.
Why on earth would a man raise his hand against himself,
even in sleep?
It's this and similar questions I'm trying to answer this morning.
As I study my face in the window


Raymond Carver

Not such distant cousins as you might think.

"He might have one of the worst quality to productivity rates in the world, but when he get's it right!!!!!! Also note late inclusion in video of Token White Beatch."

This post, (see below) has incited the ire of my good friend James, who has suggested to me that the RZA is "wack", that the song "We Pop" is "weak" and an "embarrassmet" and that I should remove the link to it lest my otherwise excellent standing in the International Hip-Hop Community plummet.

I refused, suggesting that he should come up with something better and I'd link to that as well, so we could all assess just how street and real HIS sorry, white, philosophy-graduate ass is, immediately rejecting his suggestions of something by Gang Starr/Pete Rock as too obviously uncontroversial.

So he went for this































































Nah I'm only kidding, actually it was this.



















































Alright already!