Industry

‘Mankind has been persuaded to give up its natural relations with reality and to seek the magic formula of some kind of social or economic witchcraft’.
Albert Schweitzer

Industry

Coke Town:
A forest of tall chimneys puffing columns of black smoke into a lowering sky which here and there reflects the furnace fires below onto the dark clouds above.
Great wheels of iron turning
Sparks from giant hammers flying
A fearful din assaulting ears
With noxious fumes the nose.
This!
Is industry.

Now however, the word ‘industry’ has been commandeered by the Lords of Commerce which enables them to view all manner of things as a form of business and thus accessible to their avaricious machinations.

This manipulation extends now into the more artistic of the common social modes.
Thus we now have:

‘The Fashion Industry’.

To equate the narcissistic and butterfly world of fashion with the black smoke and flying sparks of industry seems somewhat oxymoronic – if not downright moronic.

Entertainment has of course already been taken over:
Ballet; Opera; Beethoven, Bach or Scarlatti at the Albert Hall; Shakespeare; performances of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (better check with your line-manager that you have Tatiana’s lines correct), and a host of other artistic pursuits now collectively known as:

The ‘Entertainment Industry.’

All these are far, one might think, from the factory’s stink and roar, but not in the minds of those who
distort the language to their own ends.

Actors:   ‘The Film Industry’
Comedians, clowns and conjurers,
Violinists:    ‘The Music Industry’
Have become a work-force and art just an embarrassing word.

Where will this creeping control stop?
Will they even audaciously attempt to get their hands on the final bastion of soulfulness – Poetry?

‘The Poetry Industry’?

Already one of the most important means of poetic communication has yielded its noble task and given a handle to the barbarians:

‘The Publishing Industry’.

One hopes that poetry will prove to be too slippery by far to allow this obscene take-over to happen.

Or happen it will.

Dave Tomlin
Art Nick Victor