‘Out of the Gloom Comes Salvation’

Goth. A History, Lol Tolhurst (242pp, hbck, Quercus)

Were The Cure ever Goth or were they just miserable bastards? Was their music simply a rejoinder to the high speed (and speed-high) energy of punk? Music for and by those who’d rather lie in bed mumbling rather than wake up? Music made by those who revelled in their own depression? When exactly did Robert Smith decide not to comb his hair? And when did his make-up get so smudged, allowing the music press to decide that because of The Cure and the by-then-cheesecloth-bedecked Siouxsie & The Banshees, Goth was a thing?

Tolhurst’s book is a strange mix of band biography and autobiography, a beginners guide to Goth and a fan’s review of other music. The Cure became the band of that name in 1978, recorded a first album they didn’t like the year after, then went on tour as support to the Banshees. By 1979 they ‘were neophytes to the glamourous and sometimes riotous world of London’s punk rock scene’ and recorded a stunning trio of albums: Seventeen Seconds (1980) Faith (1981) and Pornography (1982). The tour which followed was, according to band biographer Jeff Apter, when ‘the band […] first adopted their signature look of big, towering hair, and smeared lipstick on their faces.’

Smith then became a fill-in Banshee and it was only with record company persuasion that he and Tolhurst recorded ‘Let’s Go to Bed’, the first of their successful pop songs. This new focus on witty lyrics and accessible tunes brought the band fame, fortune and alcoholic addiction to Tolhurst, who was kicked out of the band in 1989 after their Disintegration album, which many (including me) saw as a return to the form of their defining trilogy. Tolhurst played in a couple of unsuccessful bands, played again in some reunion shows with The Cure in 2011, and published a book, Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys in 2016. He also has a podcast series, Curious Creatures, examining the legacy of post-punk, which he makes with Banshees drummer Budgie.

The earlier book explains why The Cure history is not a more significant part of this new volume. Instead, Tolhurst rounds up a number of artists for several chapters about the origins of gothness and what he thinks of them. ‘The Poetry of Pain’ has the usual suspects Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, Camus and Sartre, along with T.S. Eliot whom Tolhurst brands a ‘Modernist Goth’. I imagine Eliot is turning in his grave and Tolhurst doesn’t make much of a case for this peculiar inclusion.

Chapter Three, ‘Prototypes’, also contains some strange choices. Teutonic chanteuse, film star, ex Velvet Underground singer and heroin addict Nico? Fair enough. Mascara-clad pantomime frightshop Alice Cooper? If you must. New York electronic psychorockabilly confrontationalists Suicide? Great band but I’m not convinced. Scott Walker? Nope. David Bowie? Not really. Marc Bolan? Oh come off it, now you’re just being silly. He was a pixie not a Goth.

The people we might truly blame for Goth music are highlighted in the single chapter which makes up Part Two of the book, ‘Eternals’. Here we find Joy Division, Bauhaus, the Banshees and The Cure themselves singled out as ‘Architects of Darkness’. I tried to type that with a straight face and failed, I mean come on… it’s only rock & roll and even though I like it, Joy Division weren’t anything to do with Goth and Ian Curtis’ suicide was a result of mental illness and emotional instability, nothing to celebrate and not a Gothic suicide following in the footsteps of Plath and Sexton (who were, of course, also both dealing with mental health issues). And I blame the remaining members of Joy Division for New Order, who I suppose we could consider a Gothic counterpart to Pet Shop Boys. But Tolhurst didn’t think of that, and I know who I prefer listening to.

Bauhaus made a 12″ single about Bela Lugosi, which was truly awesome despite or because of the out-of-time bass and flange pedal abuse, and also gave us the best cheekbones in the music business along with a great couple of adverts for Maxell cassettes. Siouxsie and the Banshees? A great band who slid into recycled hippydom (I mean, there are even recorders on A Kiss In The Dreamhouse!) and were the cause of a massive spike in hair crimper sales as punks bought into the softer image the band adopted from Juju onwards. Like The Cure they produced three great albums, but not in a row: the suitably titled The Scream in 1978, Kaleidoscope in 1980, and the aforementioned Juju in 1981. Then, like other bands, Siouxsie put on the punk version of Kiss make-up and offered up an endless number of cod-psychedelic albums with hints of the occult, horror and subversion, although Tolhurst labels it ‘Liberation and Lament’.

And what about The Cure in all this? Tolhurst deems their music ‘”Phil Spector In Hell”: Cold Psychedelia’, though I guess that’s better than the cod version. Not only does Tolworth talk about songs which came from his weird dreams, ‘full of shadows and statues and the dark of night’, but he coolly declares that he considers The Cure ‘one of the fertile fields that Goth arose from’. Suddenly all those poets and authors and musicians who paved the way are put aside: THE CURE ARE HERE. The trio of their great albums gets compared to a Francis Bacon triptych: high praise indeed, but not a comparison that is explained, and not quite so convincing when it comes from one of the band members who made those albums. What else made The Cure so great according to our guide? Catholic guilt, ‘deeper, darker feelings’ taking hold of the music and a realisation – courtesy of a quote from the singer of All About Eve – ‘about the ultimate healing power of music and lyrics’.

Tolhurst is magnanimous enough to admit that the band weren’t the result of immaculate conception and  that there were precedents in the shape of ‘a rich vein of English musicians like Bowie, Drake and Martyn that shaped the making of Seventeen Seconds.’ This feels like a namedrop and adopted lineage rather than any serious influence, but maybe I’m just cynical? I confess that I find it hard to take Tolhurst’s discussion of the past very seriously:

                                                                              The first line of the album Pornography
     revels in nihilism and negation galore, but then consider the last line’s determina-
     tion to fight. Underneath it all, as much as death swam by, I found hope.

I don’t wish to belittle how grief affects us, especially as Tolhurst discusses his mother’s death, but in this section he weaves a rather tangled web of rejected Catholicism, hatred of the institutional church, grief and loss, quite rightly noting that ‘If you think [it is] all doom and death, you’re not paying attention […] It’s more ecstatic than that.’ But then Tolhurst returns to self-praise and self-analysis: ‘We put everything into that record. It was our therapy and our salvation’, indeed those three albums turned out to be:

                                A transcendent light compressed into a pinpoint that then
     flooded and washed the known and unknown universe. Out of the gloom
     comes salvation.
          What a blessing I was given.

Amen brother! Despite the fact he ‘played with the urgency of punk and the sadness if Plath’, Tolhurst now sees the music as something bigger:

          In the end it’s all about the music and the instrument we played that
     brought us here in the first place. It’s about the meant to an end. How to liber-
     ate your soul and have a happy-sad time doing it.

Having written Goth large as a spiritual exercise, a liberation, therapy and salvation, the third part of the book returns to chapters full of other bands, who Tolhurst seems torn between taking acclaim for as an inspiration or wanting to question or perhaps disown. The ‘Spiritual Alchemists’ in Chapter Five include the Cocteau Twins and Wire, neither of whom are even Goth-related, the (genuinely) anarchic and ramshackle pop-punk of The Damned, along with the poseur brigade: Sisters of Mercy, The Mission and All About Eve. Oh, and also And Also The Trees, though that seems to be because Tolhurst had something to do with producing their album rather than anything else. I can’t quite see the leather-clad soft-metal of The Mission or Sisters as ‘spiritual’ or any alchemy going on: gold discs perhaps, but mostly shit, which is also my general reaction to the pages exploring The Batcave, Californian Deathrock (a genre I’ve never heard of before) and an autobiographical interlude where our scribe goes to The Priory for rehab and bumps into some of Depeche Mode. Well I never. Serious questions: Is addiction Goth? Is synthpop Goth? There are no answers here.

Chapter Seven drifts into a whole bunch of bands I’ve never heard of and which, because they are here alongside Nine Inch Nails, I never want to hear of again or ever listen to. I suspect by this time even Tolhurst didn’t quite know where he’d end up if he continued on this trajectory, so Chapter Eight returns to another version of the history of Goth, this time in terms of the visual and fashion, attempting once more to round up another bunch of artists and musicians as honorary Goths. The Symbolist poets get enrolled straight off, and on the back of him changing his name in honour of one of those poets (Paul Verlaine), Tom Verlaine of Television gets included. The painters Edvard Munch, Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau are also members of the club, and several Expressionist artists are added to the list, whilst Francis Bacon gets another namecheck, this time along with his mate Lucian Freud. Tim Burton’s films were ‘dark and strange’ (well, they still are), so he’s in, and Batman gets a mention by association.

Better still, Goth must be good because Tolhurst ‘know[s] a lot of people in the Goth subculture, and many of them are still doing creative things.’ OK. The trouble is I know a lot of people in a lot of subcultures who do the same, so I am not persuaded by Tolhurst’s apparently rhetorical question ‘Does the Goth mindset help people deal with the problems of aging?’ I’ve no idea, though I guess choosing which black t-shirt and jeans to wear makes life much simpler. And I’d question his statement that ‘Both punk and Goth espouse a “fuck you attitude”‘, because of the tense. Espoused, at the time, past tense, yes. Now? I don’t think so. As Tolhurst himself says ‘you might ask, Why does Goth matter? After all, it was just part of the story of the eighties, right?’

Sorry, but yes, exactly. Goth isn’t or wasn’t ‘the last true alternative outsider subculture’ and like most subcultures it isn’t ‘a type of cultural resistance’ any more; in fact it probably wasn’t for more than a few months back in the day, before it got swallowed up and vomited out in a hundred commercial variations by the record companies, music press and t-shirt manufacturers. Tolhurst thinks it’s great that fashion designers now create Goth wedding dresses, but I can only see that as something that raises questions about patriarchy, feminism, religion, cultural assumptions and money-making. To be honest I think Asda’s (or whichever supermarket chain it is) new line of £25 wedding dresses is far more revolutionary!

The trouble is – and I imagine I am around the same age, certainly the same generation, as Tolhurst – there have been other outsider subcultures since punk and Goth, it’s just that we were probably both too old to get excited by and partake of them. But the whole rave scene happened, Britpop happened, grime and new r’n’b, grunge, hardcore, EDM, ambient, Emo, Industrial and loads of other stuff have come and gone. I’m sure they changed people’s worlds too, and am also aware that mainstream pop carried on regardless, singer-songwriters carried on singing and song writing, Eurovision happened annually, and genuinely avant-garde music went on its meandering way, dipping in and out of contemporary classical, noise, electronics and improvisation. But let’s give Tolhurst the final word, from his annoyingly upbeat and chirpy Afterword:

         I’m sure some will have heard stuff went down a different way, but this is my
     version—how I perceived things. For better or worse, it’s my reality inhabiting
     these pages, showing how the atmosphere if the times fused all this together,
     reflecting on the societal changes, and demonstrating why we need to hold on
     to the good transformations even more than ever.

I’m sure he’s right*, but I think I might go and play a Cure album in the dark and make myself properly miserable. I’m not sure (and neither, in places, is Tolhurst) the band were ever Goth but they certainly knew how to write depressing songs. Tolhurst in one of his most lucid moments tells us that the band ‘started with gently smudged colours and ended up with slabs of darkness’. Sounds good to me.

 

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Rupert Loydell

(*Sorry, I changed my mind. It’s my review, so I get the final word.)

 

 

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LARPing the Apocalypse

 

I lower myself into the river, holding my breath, waiting to grow gills and fins. I tell myself I’ve time. I tell myself I’ve no obligation to intervene, but at the same time I’m aware of climate concerns and chemical spillage. It’s a matter of habitat and habitual avoidance. It’s an issue relating to relative levels of long- and short-term solutions. The water’s low at this stage of the cycle, but I’m looking at the long game: evolution to extinction; big bang to singularity; inbreath to outbreath. Gills, fins, and a leathery carapace. My eyes have seen things unknown to air. I’ll leave my script of dry bones where once was all the water we needed.

 

 

Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor

 

 

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hell bus tour begins

 

HELL BUS TOUR BEGINS

It’s going to be a hell of a trip etc etc

 

I’m currently on the road with the Hell Bus! Come and see it in any of the above locations.

It’s open each day 11am-7pm although on the first day in a town it might be a slightly later start. Also I have put 1st Oct for Manchester on here to be on the safe side but we will actually be arriving on the 30th Sept and if all goes to plan it’ll be open by early afternoon.

I’m also doing a series of free panel discussions with Ad Free Cities and SwitchIt.Green who have both been organising the logistics of the tour, (leaving me to concentrate on my colouring in and bum jokes.)

Dates for the panels/talks are as follows:

 

 

SELL THEIR HOUSES TO WHO, BEN?

 

“And even if climate change happens, and all the low-lying areas around the coast are underwater, don’t you think those people would just sell their house and move?”
– Ben Shapiro

Inspired by the Hbomberguy video on Climate Denial, in particular this bit. But the whole video is great, well recommended.

I took these photos on a recent visit to the southern coast, and somehow forgot how much wood likes to float, which resulted in my floundering around in the sea trying to take a photo of a For Sale sign while swimmers and sun bathers looked on in sheer bafflement. Good fun.

 

 

 

 

 

GLASGOW EXHIBITION

 

Thanks to everyone who came to my Glasgow exhibition at the Alchemy Experiment last week and what turned into three nights of talks after each got packed out! Was such a great response and a welcome back to one of my favourite cities. Massive thanks to Pierce and all the staff at the Alchemy Experiment for being so great.

 

 

MANCHESTER

 

While I’m in Manchester with the Hell Bus I have a couple of t-shirts in an exhibition about political t-shirts starting this Saturday. It’s called TEES and is at Rogue Project Space, 2-6 Barrass St, M11 1PU. Show runs until 31 October 2023
Opening Times: 12-4pm

I’ll also be doing a talk there on Sunday 1st Oct at 2pm! You can book a free ticket here.

 

MINI DAILY MAIL RESTOCK

I’ve had another restock of the Mini Daily Mails arrive last week. This is the fourth printing of it, which makes it I think the most popular thing I’ve ever made. And what a horrid little thing it is! You can read it for free at MiniDailyMail.co.uk or order a physical copy from my website shop.

That’s it for now! Hopefully have some more art next month instead of all these events!

Massive thanks for your support!

This update is public and shareable so please feel free to pass it on. If you’re not on my mailing list but would like to be
you can sign up here.

Eternal thanks to anyone who’s ever backed my work on Patreon or through the shop!

And thanks for reading!

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SURINAME

Blake’s depiction of Europa supported by Africa and America
doesn’t give a location, but it’s obviously warm enough
to allow them to stand without clothing while William takes
forever to engrave them. They’re young and healthy looking

all three of them. Africa and America both have metal bands
around their biceps, a dangling length of chain, signifying
slavery, freedom, resistance. A bit of everything, probably.

Europa’s got a long and sexy necklace. Snaky.

The crotches of the darker girls are decoratively hidden
by fortunate twists of garland. The pale Europa
has a flimsy something trapped between her thighs
which covers the actual entrance to her vagina.

This was the custom, artistically.

Breasts, meanwhile, are proud and visible. Two
for Africa, the same for America. A binary trio. Six in total.

The girls are smiling at us, unselfconscious.

It’s a genre piece with political overtones, so we can talk about it.

Abolition is desirable, obviously
but the practical aspects are problematic.

Who would compensate their Masters?

 

 

 

Steven Taylor

 

 

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The Good Beast

 As it says on the poster: “The debut album tour!”

Thoughts and words from Alan Dearling:

“Shades of Great Society/Airplane… soaring Grace Slick or Beautiful Day sounds…laid-back guitars, psych-whirling harmonics… Floydian, even Doors and Dead-like too…some heavy riffing, chanting mantras…Nicely balanced musical light and darkness…”

The Good Beast arrived in Todmorden as a newly battle-hardened tour band. Bea Piper, the main singer, spoke eloquently of wild-camping, three nights in the Lakes keeping the fire going, mixed receptions at gigs, adding, “We even had to pay to play at one venue”.  It sounded more than familiar to anyone who has ever been on tour with a band in their early days. The days when each hour of each day is an adventure. Bea continued: “We really like it here…everyone’s so friendly. Last night we were in the Lake District. We’re still giggling about how we shared out our last can of peaches, divided between seven of us.”

Lovely insane musical capers. And so, onto the gig and the music of The Good Beast.  Perhaps the centre-piece of the gig and the live album is ‘Marshum’. I think we were informed that it is the song of the marshes, the bogs and the lakes. It’s a good example of their unity as a band, with guitar subtlety, some lovely moments of quiet guitar noodling and keyboard drones, before morphing into an epic, thunderous, psych-freak-out. The track ‘Ancient Cry’ possesses a similar patina of loud and quiet, temperance and frenetics.

Here’s a video of ‘Marshum’ from on-line:

https://www.facebook.com/100087514268362/videos/595740886106328

And, a little video clip by Gig from the Golden Lion set in Todmorden – laid back and funky: https://www.facebook.com/100000911082642/videos/pcb.23972536032360098/699487408661819

Other highlights on the night were the catchy ear-worm riffing of ‘Everything’s a butterfly’ – the tale of Psychedelic Sam, and his ‘butterfly-dreams’. This is Bea at her most Grace Slick-like. At the other end of the musical spectrum is the haunting ballad, ‘Waiting for love’, which is closer to Joni Mitchell territory at the time of ‘Hissing of Summer Lawns’. Blissful beauty. An aural haunting with some gorgeous high-flying guitar sounds disappearing into the stratosphere. The band explained that their first album was captured live: “A snapshot of us. A sonic postcard. It’s been a long journey to get here. So many doors closed…This is us. Travelling together. Doing what feels right.”  

This is what the band say of themselves:

“Who are we?

We are The Good Beast.

The Good Beast is a six-piece whirlpool of crunching psychedelic rock that will blow your aura to next Wednesday. Many of the band members originate from the Isle of Purbeck and have been playing music in various formations for a decade.

This debut album is a coming together and celebration of years of collaboration and friendship. The songwriting is primarily down to Bill Merrick, whilst the songs are sung by the truthful voice of Bea Piper. Louis Alberry and Bill Merrick alternate in playing lead guitar. Jack Cullimore is on synth and percussion and has also mixed the entire album. Michael Alberry plays kit and Alec Harrison on fretless bass. We have worked collaboratively to come up with arrangements for all the songs, producing something that feels special and very exciting.”

Here’s a video from Antropos Festival  in 2022.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9fFTkF1eCI

Their debut album was mixed and recorded in Bristol at J and J Studios, under the keen eye of producer Matt Mysko, who has previously worked for many years at Abbey Road Studios. The album has been mixed by Jack Cullimore. Jack has also mixed many Bristol based music projects and is gaining a name for himself in this field. Mastering was undertaken by one of the UK’s number one independent mastering engineers, Pete Maher. It’s a mighty impressive, almost audacious album if you want to catch some glimpses of the essence of the late 1960s/early ‘70s’ psychedelic melange of the Incredible String Band, the Sallyangie and the American San Francisco sounds. Live they are formidable, raucous, purveyors of waves and walls of sound, and far more noisesome than on their album.

In Todmorden, The Good Beast had the able support from the melodic duo-version of Peregrin Shams. Jazz-tinged, classy lounge music, double bass, sometimes bowed by Alice Phelps, with some bluesy guitar-picking from Peregrin. The crowd especially enjoyed a song and playing from the duo, with Alice on vocals. I think it was probably entitled, ‘The rain came down’.

Finally, here’s a video of Peregrin Shams in solo-mode on the Kitchen Sing Sessions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBZj0hfxiSY

 

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Zephyr Sounds Sunday Shuffle No. 141

 

 

Steam Stock

 

Tracklist

Playing tracks by Ennio Morricone, Little Willie John, Etta and Harvey, Little Walter and His Jukes, Muddy Waters and more.
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Garden of Time

I am in a journey of awakening
Time is my companion of life.
Time kissed me on my forehead
When I was a child.
I have been walking
In the garden of time.
I have few known
Flowers of companion
In this blooming bliss.
My chapters of gratitude
Teach me voices of humanity.
One blooming season,
We can build
Another garden of heart
To live, pray and play.
I want to keep the flowers blooming
In companionship and bonding.
Time is a great teacher to me,
It keeps on evaluating my garden.
Every fragrance of flower in the air
Will awaken a life of admirers.
I have your photograph
That does not age
In this garden of my time.

 

 

 

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Copyright Sushant Thapa
Picture Nick Victor

 

 

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The Case Against Voting

Emma Goldman:

‘participation in elections means the transfer of one’s will and decisions to another, which is contrary to the fundamental principles of anarchism.’

Colin Ward:

…it is the anarchists who, for well over a century, have been the most consistent advocates of conscientiously staying away from the poll. Since anarchism implies an aspiration for a decentralised non-governmental society, it makes no sense from an anarchist point of view to elect representatives to form a central government. If you want no government, what is the point of listening to the promises of a better government? As Thoreau put it: ‘Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.’

The various streams of 19th century anarchist thought were united together in their opposition to participation in elections. Most of them shared with the early Marxists the view that the State was simply the executive committee of the ruling classes.

Political democracy, they declared, was just a facade concealing the real effective power of the owners of capital and land. If the workers withdrew their labour power the capitalist class would be impotent and its State would fall to pieces. For the anarcho-syndicalists, every industrial dispute was to be fought through to the bitter end with no compromise. The culminating general strike would make the ruling class powerless and the people would take over through their own forms of industrial organisation, providing goods and services. under workers’ control. Parliamentary elections were not merely irrelevant, they were a ruling-class conspiracy to divert workers’ attention from the real struggle.

Anarchist-communists of the school of Kropotkin linked industrial autonomy and local autonomy. The means of sustenance and livelihood would be in the hands of the local commune on the principle ‘to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability’. This conception of the way society should organise itself through federations of autonomous self-organising groups drew upon innumerable antecedents older than the nation state: the medieval city with its guilds and confraternities, the Russian mir and artel, the American town meeting of the 18th century. It exemplifies Kropotkin ‘s concept of mutual aid as the mainspring of human society, and like Swiss federalism it implies no parish pump isolation. From the anarchist., communist standpoint, general elections to a central parliament are a form of social suicide since they imply the surrender of local autonomy and local revenue- gathering to central government which throughout history has shown itself to be the destroyer, not the upholder, of communal decision-making.

Finally, there is individualist anarchism. proclaiming that it is absurd for individual people to surrender their right to run their own lives to an outside body. Objectors see this as absurd selfishness and maintain that government is necessary to restrain our anti-social natures. Anarchists of all varieties respond with William Morris’s warning that no man is good enough to be another man ‘s master .

Did anarchist abstentionism ever, in the slightest degree, affect the course of events? There was one occasion when it was tested simply because it was one of the rare times and places when anarchism really influenced a mass movement. And the irony was that the effectiveness of abstentionism was demonstrated only when it was abandoned.

In Spain, in the 1930s, there were two huge trade union federations. On one side was the socialist UGT and on the other the syndicalist CNT, strongly influenced by the anarchist federation FAI. The membership of both these bodies was vast. (By the time they agreed on joint action each could claim, according to whose estimates you read, between a million and one and a half million members.) After the dictator Primo de Rivera resigned in 1930, his supporter the King abdicated in 1931, but the new socialist-republican government continued the repression of the revolutionary left. In the elections of 1933 the CNT used the slogan Frente a las urnas, la revolucion social (the alternative to the polling booth is the social revolution). The triumph of the right was attributed to the mass abstention of the workers, and the usual sporadic confrontations followed.

Then came another chance to vote in the February elections of 1936. Very quietly, the CNT leadership tacitly abandoned the position it had held since 1911, that elections were a fraud and that “workers and peasants should seize the factories and the land to produce for all. They and their members voted for the Popular Front (a kind of joint Alliance and Labour tactical voting). Our most revered chronicler of the events of 1936, Gerald Brenan in his Spanish Labyrinth, explained that the electoral victory of the Popular Front ‘can to a great extent be put down to the anarchist vote’. And certainly a deal behind the scenes ensured that many thousands of political prisoners would be released. Brenan says that ‘in many places the prisons had already been opened without the local authorities daring to oppose it’.

But the triumph of electoral common sense over the convictions of a lifetime had many consequences in Spain that no one had anticipated. The Spanish workers were ready to take on the political right, but the politicians of the left were not. The army was poised to seize power, but the government was not willing to resist. In his book Lessons of the Spanish Revolution, Vernon Richards raised a forbidden question: did the CNT leadership take into account that by ensuring the electoral victory of the left it was also ensuring that the generals of the right would stage a military putsch which the respectable left politicians would not restrain? ‘On the other hand a victory of the right, which was almost certain if the CNT abstained, would mean the end of the military conspiracy and the corning to power of a reactionary but ineffectual government which, like its predecessors, would hold out for not more than a year or two. There is no real evidence to show that there was any significant development of a fascist movement in Spain along the lines of the regimes in Italy and Germany.’
In fact, Spain had three different Popular Front governments on 18 and 19 July 1936, each of which was anxious to cave in to the insurgent generals. It was only the popular rising ( on traditional anarchist lines) and the seizure by workers and peasants, not just of arms and military installations, but of land, factories and railways, that ensured that there was any resistance at all to the generals. These are ordinary facts, totally contrary to what Orwell used to call the News Chronicle / New Statesman version of what happened in Spain. The Spanish revolution of 1936 was forced upon the working class by the election of the Popular Front and its capitulation to the insurgent generals. It was subsequently eliminated in the name of national unity in combating the right, which by then had won international backing. Having participated in the elections the next step was participation in government by the CNT/FAI leadership. This led to the permanent destruction of their own movement and the suppression of the popular revolution, and was followed by 40 years of fascist dictatorship.

And all this because of the decision to abandon the tradition of non-voting. If history has any lessons for the conscientious abstentionists it is that every time they get lured out of their self-imposed political isolation into participation in the electoral lottery, they make fools of themselves.

We might object that there is no parallel between Spain in 1936 and Britain in 1987. But isn’t it interesting that the same politics-fixated people who peddle horror tales about the power over government of various non-elected bodies, whether it is the secret services, the military chiefs of staff or the Association of Chief Police Officers urge us to abandon any notion of principles or policies, and vote strategically?

Form an effective Popular Front, they imply, and cast a tactical vote for whoever the market researchers tell us is likeliest to unseat the Conservative candidate. At the same time they revel in the allegations that recent governments have been under suspicion from the State’s own secret services because Harold Wilson was thought to be a Moscow agent, and that the service chiefs were planning a takeover of power should anyone to the left of Wilson take office.

Seasoned non-voters take a different and longer-term view of history. They know that the similarities between the present government and both its predecessors and successors far outweigh the differences. They realise the truth of Kropotkin’s observation, 75 years ago, that ‘The state organisation, having been the force to which the minorities resorted for establishing and organising their power over the masses, cannot be the force which will serve to destroy these privileges.’ In urging the need for more popular, more decentralised, forms of social administration, he stressed that we will be compelled to find new forms of self-organisation for the social functions that the state fulfills through the bureaucracy, and that ‘as long as this is not done, nothing will be done.’

The non-voters will watch cynically as the politicians’ lies and promises mount and the government good-news machine rolls into action, quietly repeating the anarchist slogan : ‘If voting changed anything they’d make it illegal.’

Source: Thepolarblast.wordpress.com

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Viewfinder


 
At moments of high peak
dreams show errors 
in our genetic code:
arrows on the skin’s map
erasures concealed by grammar.
We practise the waltz steps
between dots strewn on marble.

In our lives’ antechambers
the cameras record us blushing,
holding hands, sharpening knives.
Like in any rehearsal, the blades fall
on past things, on future plans.
Time decides for itself how long
the echo, how short the call.

There are no corrections.

 

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© Maria Stadnicka and Andrew Morrison 
Art: Rupert Loydell

 

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Anarchist Bookfair, London 2023

 

Spark your rebel spirit at the Anarchist Bookfair in London

With over 70 stalls showcasing books, zines and campaigns the bookfair also includes an engaging series of talks, films, workshops, a kids programme, and two after-parties headlining bands and DJs from the anarchist scene.

Open to all and split across several venues, including Rich Mix, Whitechapel Gallery, Freedom Press and the London Action Resource Centre. the bookfair is a space to celebrate, enjoy and explore the world of anarchism.

We’re once again teaming up with the fantastic ANTIUNIVERSITY NOW for a week long series of free, accessible, inclusive, non-hierarchical, participatory workshops, discussion and other events, open to anyone to organise.

 

Details of stallholders, childcare facilities and venues at

https://anarchistbookfair.london/stalls/

 

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SAUSAGE LIFE 282

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which, although it may disapprove of what you say, defends to the death its right to punch you in the face.

READER: I really can’t believe this Brexit thing is still dragging on like this. I mean the people spoke and they voted to isolate Britain from the frogs, cloggies and Krauts, so why can’t all the Remoaning Remainiacs should just accept defeat and shut up so we can go back to 1959 where it’s all warm and comfy?
MYSELF: Mmmm…
READER: We need discipline, cruelty and harsh punishment, whish is what made Britain Great. That Cruella Braverman’s got the right idea.
MYSELF:  She certainly seems to have the common touch.
READER: Exactly. If you ask me, it’s about time everyone who disagrees with her or Nigel Farage was sent to Rwanda.
MYSELF: Sorry?
READER: Look, if we had continued to allow ourselves to be dictated to by a bunch of unelected foreign bureaucrats sitting in judgement in some distant far-off land somewhere overseas…
MYSELF: You mean Brussels.
READER: Wherever…. we’d all be eating straight bananas, reeking of garlic, and throwing our own dead fish back into the channel instead of stopping the boats by putting all the illegals into a boat. Nigel knows all about this.
MYSELF: Speaking of dead fish, wasn’t Mr. Farage on the European Parliament Fisheries Committee when we were in the EU?
READER: Yes, he was, which is why he is so fish-knowledgeable.
MYSELF: But out of a total of 42 meetings of the Fisheries committee, he only turned up for one.
READER: I expect that was probably the really important one. Nigel is a very busy man you know.
MYSELF: Exactly. I mean how is one supposed to find the time to claim one’s expenses? And let’s face it, beer doesn’t drink itself.
READER: Eureka. At last we’re singing from the same hymn book.

TREE MENACE
Ace newshound Bebé Mucau, our new investigative journalist recently headhunted from The Cockmarlin Bugle, has already uncovered a scandal, one which Tory councillor Onya Byche dubbed “an accident waiting for someone to happen to”. The story involves a 300-year-old oak tree in Upper Dicker’s High Street, which is still standing despite being described by Upper Dicker resident 43-year-old mother of five Lulu Nagasaki as a ‘cat magnet’
“Once an unsuspecting cat does get up there,” she told us, “the likelihood is that the poor animal will be unable to get down again and inevitably the fire brigade will have to be called”.
Pointing out that The Upper Dicker Fire & Rescue Service possesses only one turntable ladder, she added, “I wouldn’t want to be the unfortunate police officer who had to break the news to someone that a family member had perished leaping from the fourteenth floor of a burning building, simply because a cat was stuck up a tree”. A petition to have the tree humanely destroyed was signed by over 3,000 residents on TikTok, and is expected to attract protests from all over the world. Armed traffic wardens have been put on special alert.

POETRY NOW
Jesus
by Jeremy Wuss

I think of Jesus In my shoe
And in my velvet trousers too
He cleaneth up his doggy-doo
And maketh all the cows go moo

From hurricane to balmy breezes
Chesty coughs to breathless wheezes
Even in the strongest cheeses
Hold your nose and you’ll find Jesus

Men in frocks
With chains and locks
Conceal Him in a little box
He’s tastier than Belgian chocs
Bless His Holy Cotton Socks

CACHE IN THE ATTIC
During what Upper Dicker’s famous swinging vicar the Reverend Len Startling described as “a normal straightforward exorcism” on Bill Wigwam (39), a possessed window cleaner of Cockmarlin, a section of the ceiling in St. Bodolph’s, an abandoned Lutherian chapel, slid away to reveal a secret loft.
“It was a bit like Rosemary’s Baby meets Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the Reverend confessed.
“Then, shortly after he turned green, Bill’s head started revolving and he began swearing like a merchant seaman. That’s when I decided to get him a cab home and investigate further.”
“By standing on the font”, he continued, ” I somehow managed to haul myself into the secret loft, which was littered with bizarre fetish items, voodoo dolls and large trunks full of ceremonial garb, which I took at first to be Masonic gowns or pantomime horse costumes. Hidden in the concealed pockets of one of them, I discovered a mysterious ritualistic scroll decorated with magical symbols and several forged prescriptions for morphine and opium”.
“Right away I knew I’d found a secret stash belonging to infamous Beast of Hastings Alestair Crowley.” said the vicar, “Then, bingo! There, in a corner, buried amongst the mummified cat remains, heretical texts and a subscription to Punch magazine, I unearthed a box containing the artwork for the cover of a recording Mr. Crowley had made shortly before his death in 1947. That’s when I started to get excited.”
In the false bottom of the box, he discovered a cache of audio tapes, which he took to a friend’s recording studio. Disappointingly, most of the reels revealed nothing but manic ritualistic chanting and unintelligible babbling in tongues…except for one. Here, in ‘breathtaking mono’, was the master recording for Alestair Crowley’s Greatest Hits the black magician’s one and only bid for popular musical stardom. (I should add here that the immodest title is slightly misleading, since Mr. Crowley never actually had any hits, but the founder of The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn – later known as The George Formby Satanic Appreciation Society – rarely allowed mere facts to obstruct his quest for self-promotion).
Reverend Startling has had the tapes digitally remastered for general release on CD and download, and summed up the unique collection in his sleeve-notes: “This album is a must-have for all collectors of audio-satanism. Alestair’s sweet, well-modulated contralto belies his popular image as a blasphemous drug-addled charlatan. Here, on what turns out to be both his debut and farewell album, the fraudulent old goat croons his way competently through some devilish arrangements of popular standards in his own uniquely bestial way.

 

The CD of this previously unreleased masterpiece will shortly be on sale in the crypt of The Church of the Undignified Martyr, Upper Dicker, or as a digital download from www.crackpotrecords.com

After costs are deducted, all proceeds go to Guard Dogs for the Rich.

Sausage Life!




Click image to connect. Alice’s Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

NB: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO SPOTIFY, THE SONGS WILL BE OF RESTRICTED LENGTH

JACK POUND: JESUS WANTS ME FOR A SUN READER aka PASS THE INSTANT YOGA

 

 



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Marcus Aurelius Naturalist

 

 

Early in life I discovered
Literary lions were jackals
Simply digging up old bones
Dining out on carcasses
Never in present time

Now no-one is prepared
To be ‘collateral damage’ for The Arts
They must devour their own home-grown
Hyena steak or two-faced snake

Art pretends partition
Imaginary islands
Offshore havens safe from moral law

There if a sick man vomits in your shoe
This might not be preventable
But if in his delirium
He is convinced all things his vomitoria
That is failure of reason   –
Reason follows only natural law

That is why my meditations
Are never novels   plays   nor purple prose   –
If Mr Saint insists
I am the world’s great elegiac poet
That is entirely his affair
The reliably unreliable narrator.

 

 

Bernard Saint
Montage: Claire Palmer

 

 

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What Bruno Knows

                                                               

Reviewing SHAKINGSPHERE’S ON THE WHEREABOUTS OF DEAN MORIARTY

                                                              (Suriya Recordings 2023)

 

 

Suitably, a snatch of answerphone starts THE LONG GONE
And this tribute to Dean Moriarty, Beatnik in exelcis,
And totem it seems from the start, for Bruno Oliveira’s
ShakingSphere, whose album goes in search of his guru,
Travelling through the troubled times we’re all living
And in need of a returning path to the heart.

Ricardo Mendes and Thiago Arruda’s plaintive guitars pulse
And moan for the departing spirit that’s driving songwriter,
Singer and drummer Oliveira to the point where while
We are living in hell, angels rise from books and dreams
And departures (from both flesh and direction), to flow
Through music that soothes and stirs, like a joint.

Lines like ‘the long done blown song of the righteous wrong’
Tell the story of the fools who persuade us, surrounding us
As we search – for the rainbow which fades even though
We keep looking, without realizing that the night has arrived
To seal hurt. This then is ‘ the beaten generation’ once more,
As foreseen by Matt Johnson, and Oliveira’s croon is smoke

Centred, as the heart’s fires fume. Arruda’s electric strings shine,
As Mendes and Otavio Ribiero’s bass subtly ground him,
Before an ecstatic solo sends this song higher as each perfect
Sound sparks and spumes. Live a new way, like Dean and the Beats
Did in each story. Kerouac was compromised by his drinking,
But Dean and Neal lived some dream. Part creations, part men,

‘Stumbling all along that thin line/Traced to shuffle myths
With real life,’ their souls scheming to become inspirations
As they are for Shaking Sphere: lives as theme.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING begins as a Costello like rant
But soon softens into something more sacred, despite
The despair at its core. The singer’s soul ‘is not dark,  

its just a blueprint of my heart,’ says the lyric and the ‘holy
grail of emptiness’ can be searched for after ‘bleeding gas so hard
That ‘the lighter lit/Across the Street’ ignites more.
The complex melody weaves, rethreading itself as you listen,
As Oliveira’s self-styled backing band form the fabric
That quickly sounds seamless as the song completes perfectly.

It could be Jeff Lynne’s Threetles, so smooth is the band’s
Blend in playing, and with Oliveira as singer and drummer
He focuses front and back easily. Guitars crash, keyboards
Gleam (courtesy of Edu Mariano), and the night achieves
Morning as sun spears the darkness and we try in new ways
To feel free. DEAN’S HEART (YOUR HEART DENIES THE NIGHT)

Threads this thought and exuberantly delivers this message.
Lorena Pires joins Bruno in this love song to a cause
Epitomized by a man but shared with all people,
For as these songs prise doors open, the spirits within
Seek their source. FADE AWAY is American rock; Boston,
Toto, or Kansas are conjured. The song soars like The Eagles,

From its piano and baritone start. While MAXIMUM & MINIMUM
Eno’s through before reaching an R.E.M. shimmer,
Oliveira’s voice almost snake-like as it wraps itself around
Visions of what awaits us, for as Death becomes sculptor
So everlasting love becomes art. This is a Brazilian Band,
But they contain Burroughs’ western lands deep within them.

Bruno’s beat is pure beatnik, his rhythm and rhyme
Stoke jazz flames. Which make no playful tunes, but rather,
Those of deep exploration of the discord around us
As the reign of ravagement rages and the weapons of war
Play death’s game. GOODBYE’s glistening guitars and keys
Flow like wine, or some soured river, as Oliveira’s long lyric lines

Ripple across the shadows and ghosts of our past.
‘Goodbye to everyone who still can draw a true smile,’ he sings
Sweetly, ‘A happy face amidst the sick to death skies turning cold;’
A dark chorus colouring the bleak present as part of the die
And dye that’s been cast. As a warning call, this two-part song
Is almost stirring, as if hands held up in defeat we were dancing

Before the will and the whims of our fate. There is a Jesus Christ
Superstar sheen to this song as the guitar solo starts soaring.
While Part 2 vocoders, before Bruno turns Brit-pop
Into a youthful stamp and stance at hell’s gate.
The lyric has a slight variation but shows
How a sense of helplessness is no burden, but can instead

Be used wisely if we are able to rouse our deep needs
To reform and to rise and to explore the far country
That Kerouac, Corso, Gysin, Kesey, Burroughs and Ginsberg
Encountered, for the heart and mind can continue
To search and to want as they bleed. And so, DEAN MORIARTY
Concludes this visceral album. Oliveira treats Dean like a lover,

As if inspiration were, as it is, a romance, for both the person
And place in which the prized subject suffered. And through which
They travelled, known or unknown, lost to chance.
Where have you gone? And will we meet again? Words imploring.
Love like a fire, claiming the moment and taming the young
And the wise, light from black. A song as narrative end

To an essential new album. Starting with a snatch of Steve Allen
And Jack Kerouac, before Mariano resumes, and the torch song
Starts blazing. ‘Nothing seems to be in place,’ yet the searching
For Dean’s perfect pose bars attack. There are not many examples
These days of such dedication. Not many bands, or much music
Which resists the ego. And yet this record is pure.

It is one man calling out for another,
Cast as his temple and erected in the place Edens grow.
Not that those can be found. But on the shaking sphere
On which we live, there’s a turning, digitally imagined, yes,
But directed to the secret place where dreams flow,
As if they were oceans or streams or the very ideas

That make writers become their creations.
This then is art’s secret. And this is the very thing
                                                  Bruno knows.    

 

 

                                                                                                                    David Erdos 13/9/23

 

https://linktr.ee/shakingsphere

 

 

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Voice Of A Tree After Being Cut Down

I was a sapling once
with my whole life ahead of me.

I felt the kiss of the warm sunlight.
I gratefully drank in the gentle rain.
I swayed with the rhythm of the wind.

The sap of life
coursed through my veins.

I lived!

Though cut down in my prime,
remember me as I was –
a living vibrant being.

And when you think of me,
think of my fellow trees
who are living still,
in the light,
and the rain,
and the wind.

 

Lady of the Trees

 

 

/

 

 

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One Year To The Day



                             

                                      For Niall McDevitt

 

Dear Niall, we cannot measure the thoughts that would have been
In your mind at those moments when you glimpsed the glare
From those places where metre and rhyme do not stray.

You became your own poem, then, bid by your beloved Blake
To walk with him and to walk wisely, keeping your counsel
As well as the judgement of a lesser man’s fears well at bay.

While death’s tide drew you back from the scented shore
Shared with Julie, to something more sainted, that ephemeral
State where the rain is made entirely of words; that poetry

Found in far thunder, in which the sky reshapes as it swallows
The spirits and smiles that trounced pain. You made sure
This would be, both with dignity and seclusion. Keeping pain

Private and away from the eyes which would pry
And not understand the reason or rhyme for decisions;
Particularly as the blank verse of grieving does not read

The elision and near iambic exeunt as we die.
That steady beat houses hearts and the classicism
You mastered. Now, those who follow must learn to read

Their own charts, cataloguing their fears and erstwhile
Shortcomings, while travelling still, your lines lengthen
As your illuminate death’s dark art. You read life’s last page

One year ago as I write this. The 29th of September 2022:
Your deadline in which you were forced to deliver yourself
And tragically soon for an author, and for a man whose strength

And charisma and whose written work will align
With the best of any we know, from Bill to Lee, Johns
To Heathcote, Michael and Percy, Sydney, George, Oscar,

Sam: that pride of poets for whom the captured word
Calmed all chaos, which has surmounted since. Beyond silence
Each wave reforms at death’s dam, creating new life

And Niall, you were your own irish ocean. Your own pure stream
We swim slowly as you show us the esprit de corps to retain.
I refer to those who truly knew you and shared each precious

Part of your journey. We should each ask ourselves to what
Limits, and to what degree did we tread in either shadow,
Or light. Niall, you braved them both. I remember. As does

Your beloved and those you sought to grace. Is death dead?
Or just another translation perhaps into some myth-marked
Unknown language. You can speak it now. Teach us.

As you did in gold or suede shoes. We still follow. Saturday
Sees this published. Yet Julie’s year of tears will still shine.
She is a Goldsmith after all, and you are such stuff sent

For sifting. We smile and frown, friend, downcast,
Yet uplifted. And so you are found once more.

                                 Let love climb.

 

 

 

                                                                                        David Erdos 29/9/23 

 

 

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It is not a question of right or wrong

It is not a question of right or wrong; it is a question of freedom for everybody, freedom for each individual so long as he respects the equal freedom of others.

No one can judge with certainty who is right and who is wrong, who is nearest to the truth, or which is the best way to achieve the greatest good for each and every one. Freedom coupled with experience is the only way of discovering the truth and what is best, and there can be no freedom if there is denial of the freedom to err.

Errico Malatesta, Umanita Nova, September 11, 1920

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Hauntology

The labels are confusing:
this is no longer the corner
of the street where I live
although the signs are still there,
the mental Post-It notes,
and the feeling that if
I want a pint of milk
I must walk that way,
turn left, turn right –
two minutes at the most.

The whole is overlaid
with lines of thought
that reassert themselves unbidden.
The park across the road
where the children used to play
while I kept half an eye
‘s still there as is the man
(much older now) who walks
a different dog.

I never knew his name
and it strikes me now that
things on the periphery
are easier to reinstate:
the man, the park,
the corner of the street,
these things remain in place
whereas it is impossible
to visualise a version of oneself
shaped by so many small decisions
that never came to pass although
perhaps I catch a glimpse (back view)
of a man about my age
(his hair’s beginning to turn grey)
dressed in an overcoat,
who walks away.
He could be anyone I never knew.

.

Dominic Rivron
Photo Nick Victor

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Exorcising the Evil Spirits of the Pentagon

In the name of the amulets of touching, seeing, groping, hearing and loving, we call upon the ‎powers of the cosmos to protect our ceremonies in the name of Zeus, in the name of Anubis, god of ‎the dead, in the name of all those killed because the causes they did not comprehend, in the name of the lives of ‎the dead soldiers in Vietnam who were killed because of a bad karma, in the name of sea-born Aphrodite, ‎in the name of Magna Mater, in the name of Dionysus, Zagreus, Jesus, Yahweh, the unnamable, the ‎quintessential finality of the Zoroastrian fire, in the name of Hermes, in the name of the Beak of Sok, ‎in the name of scarab, in the name, in the name, in the name of the Tyrone Power Pound Cake ‎Society in the Sky, in the name of Rah, Osiris, Horus, Nepta, Isis, in the name of the flowing living ‎universe, in the name of the mouth of the river, we call upon the spirit to raise the Pentagon from its ‎destiny and preserve it.‎
‎ ‎
OUT, DEMONS, OUT!‎
BACK TO DARKNESS YE SERVANTS OF SATAN!‎
OUT, DEMONS, OUT!‎
OUT, DEMONS, OUT!‎
OUT, DEMONS, OUT!‎
OUT, DEMONS, OUT!‎
OUT, DEMONS, OUT!…‎

Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon October 21, 1967 (2006 Remaster) · The Fugs

Electromagnetic Steamboat: The Reprise Recordings

℗ 2006 Warner Records Inc.

Writer: Ed Sanders

 

 

Thanks to https://crookedfingers.livejournal.com/7389119.html

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For the cold-eyed poet

 

a gift here, the easy surrealism of random juxtaposition in the procession, the temporary collection of misfits and freaks that move through the world’s bus stations. Shuffling by tortoise-slow a shabby couple grown old and ugly together. A thin lad with, not so much dreadlocks as a ragged mat of elflocks, self-consciously lifts his legs into different sitting positions. A man as fat and greasy as a parson’s nose expands his backside over two seats. Just why does this leaning man think his careless eating habits irritating his partner should be so amusing? A hurrying mother has her shopping bag split and spill its contents, a bottle rolling under one of the metal benches. The waiting/passing crowd look indifferently upon the comedy of her fussed embarrassment. A small child regards the bottle: a child’s view always a close-up, in the moment, without context. Terrorists target bus stations. Got me to thinking that the more one encounters fanatics the more one suspects they know very little of each their religion, the religion in whose name they are prepared to commit atrocities. Where there are no bus stations they bomb markets – a similar clientele. Poems are where events get packaged and sent to the past.

 

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Sam Smith

 

 

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SEE IT. SAY IT. SORTED.

see it, say it, sorted,
you’ve seen the chaos of my life,
you’ve said it, yet it’s far from sorted,
there are things I must do beyond sorting,
climate change to reverse, a planet to salvage,
hedgehogs to pluck from hazardous highways,
migrants to save from sinking dinghies,
rough-sleepers to ease, fascists to fight,
women to free and gender minorities
to liberate from repressive regimes,
armies to expel from occupied lands,
litter to pick up in the park,
we’ve seen it, we’re saying it,
why the hell ain’t it sorted…?

.

 

 

Andrew Darlington

Website: www.andrewdarlington.blogspot.com

 

 

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a partial history of the absurd

in everybody’s mind
there must occur sometimes
a blinding flash
which catches not quite fire
yet even so flares briefly
and mysteriously
into the collective conscience
if not the collective consciousness
of their world
without them ever really knowing
how or why it leaves many lives
not only disturbed and charred
but also as mysteriously adrift
as cosmic flotsam and jetsam

it’s another illustration maybe
that the world has no meaning
beyond being as beautifully absurd
as the Marx Brothers and Twin Peaks
so is comic flotsam, and Jetsam
the best they can hope for?
maybe but remember
for many it’s what spurred them on
against tyrants tycoons and oligarchs
who were the prototypes
of the Trumps and Putins de nos jours
before Groucho and The Log Lady
arrived just in time
to make perfect sense

 

 

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Jeff Cloves
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

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THE NEW MONTESQUIEU

The factions sort themselves
into the left, right, and centrist
via birthright, and interest,
and contents of bookshelves.

Politicos maintain
the stability of chaos
through civility and payoffs
to competing claimants.

 

.

Duane Vorhees

 

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Random Access Memories: Street Art in the Northern Quarter, Manchester

 

Mostly a photo story, as Alan Dearling ‘randomly’ roams the streets with his Sony A7s camera to share images of this ever-changing, creative neighbourhood.

September 2023: Manchester’s Northern Quarter: is a creative hub, lots of independent shops, cafes, old-style and hipster pubs, artsworks and fashionistas. It’s not far distant from Victoria Rail Station, half a mile to the east, with Stevenson Square spilling over with brightly coloured art from artist in residence, Sheffield’s Marcus Method, surrounding and enlivening the public area outside of the Fred Aldous art store. It’s a vibrant, socialising, eating and drinking space.

I’m not attempting to replicate the many on-line sites which already exist to share images and locations of the small, large and in-between art, graffiti and commercial advertising. It’s evolving daily. Buildings are demolished, new ones are constructed, favourite examples of street art are tagged, exciting, innovative and sometimes tacky, or, messy, new art appears. It’s a street photographers’ dreamscape. It’s lush, edgy and eye-catching. I’ve added in some on-line sites which offer maps, more images and descriptions of some of the street artists represented through their works in the Northern Quarter.

This is the Manchester sister-site of Sheffield web arts organisation, Street Art NQhttps://streetartnq.com/

Secret Manchester: https://secretmanchester.com/manchester-street-art/

Manchester Pocket Guide: https://www.manchesterpocketguide.com/street-art-manchester

I chose to arrive by train into the city at 10 o’clock in the morning and spent about three hours bimbling up and down a lattice-work of narrow and wider streets, dodging around buses, building workers, cranes, car fumes – just as the tables and benches for outside cafes and bars were beginning to be set up. It was during the quieter period before the new daily rush started to take place. A warm sunny day in early September. Getting humid – indeed, towards ‘hot’.  Transitional spaces and people.

Taking photos on the ‘hoof and without any plan is a delight in itself. It’s a liminal experience, in-between realities, which is not a bad way to view the creation, and life, death and even destruction of street artworks. Some of the buildings themselves are ‘artworks’, with or without artistic adornments. Between rubbish bins, darkened doorways offer beguiling canvases for stickers, stencils, transfers, mosaics and spray-can art. My visit today is unique, a one-off, the same places, faces and art will never be replicated. It’s all about change. A temporary moment, frozen in time. Many of the Northern Quarter prime street art sites are contested spaces…

With my fairly bulky camera clutched to my chest for safety, I was asked questions from a number of people about the art and artists. Sadly, mostly I couldn’t provide answers! One young guy even approached me and asked me how much I would charge to take his photo. I said: “Nothing”. I told him that I would just take a couple and then send him by email. He’s been in touch, and as I half-suspected, Fabian Ikubor is a model looking for a creative career. Good luck to him.

After noon, I settled down in the public space by Cheetham’s Library, happy to take a break before the train journey back from Lancashire to my home-base in West Yorkshire. In fact, I was somewhat foot-sore, and  so it was that I thoroughly enjoyed slowly supping and savouring a quality litre of lemonade and an egg and cress sarnie, whilst watching the lunchtime Manchester folk enjoying a break from work or whatever. My Northern Quarter street-art journey  was fun, provocative at times, and also thought-provoking, particularly those images and spaces that convey ‘stories’ and/or ‘messages’. There’s a lot of social commentary and social realism embedded in the Northern Quarter’s street-art. That’s particularly true of the works, mostly portraits, created by French-Vietnamese, Mancunian artist, AKSE P19. But, then over time, there are always new kids on the artistic block willing to share their creativity and bold visions. Old visions decay; new ones burst into life. Other notable artists include: tankpetrol; SNIK; wrdsmth; MC Matos; Liam Bononi; Mr TeaOne; Cbloxx; Evan Barlow; Shaun Dev; Frodrik; Perspicere; Faunagraphic, and many others – but go check  out the online sites. Hope I haven’t got too many of the names wrong! Respect! I’m not pretending to be a specialist, but the street and its art belongs, even if it’s briefly, to everyone – residents, tourists, workers, creators and their audience.

Altogether, this was another creative adventure, with the added bonus of some outcomes to share via the images and memories.

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A Nation of Snitches: DHS Is Grooming Americans to Report on Each Other

 

“There were relatively few secret police, and most were just
processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking
fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale
surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the
ordinary German people who were informing on their
neighbors.”—Professor Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler

 

Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?

Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?

Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car?

Are you among the 44% of Americans who live in a household with a gun? If so, are you concerned that the government may be plotting to confiscate your firearms?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention.

Let that sink in a moment.

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

I assure you I’m not making this stuff up.

So what is the government doing about these so-called American “extremists”?

The government is grooming the American people to spy on each other as part of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3 program.

According to journalist Leo Hohmann, the government is handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”

As Hohmann explains, “Whether it’s COVID and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential ‘violent extremist’ and terrorist.”

Cue the dawning of the Snitch State.

This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, hyper-vigilant, technologically-wired age.

For more than two decades, the Department of Homeland Security has plastered its “See Something, Say Something” campaign on the walls of metro stations, on billboards, on coffee cup sleeves, at the Super Bowl, even on television monitors in the Statue of Liberty. Colleges, universities and even football teams and sporting arenas have lined up for grants to participate in the program.

The government has even designated September 25 as National “If You See Something, Say Something” Awareness Day.

If you see something suspicious, says the DHS, say something about it to the police, call it in to a government hotline, or report it using a convenient app on your smart phone.

This DHS slogan is nothing more than the government’s way of indoctrinating “we the people” into the mindset that we’re an extension of the government and, as such, have a patriotic duty to be suspicious of, spy on, and turn in our fellow citizens.

This is what is commonly referred to as community policing.

Yet while community policing and federal programs such as “See Something, Say Something” are sold to the public as patriotic attempts to be on guard against those who would harm us, they are little more than totalitarian tactics dressed up and repackaged for a more modern audience as well-intentioned appeals to law and order and security.

The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own policing.

After all, the police can’t be everywhere. So how do you police a nation when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do you carry out surveillance on a nation when there aren’t enough cameras, let alone viewers, to monitor every square inch of the country 24/7? How do you not only track but analyze the transactions, interactions and movements of every person within the United States?

The answer is simpler than it seems: You persuade the citizenry to be your eyes and ears. You hype them up on color-coded “Terror alerts,” keep them in the dark about the distinctions between actual threats and staged “training” drills so that all crises seem real, desensitize them to the sight of militarized police walking their streets, acclimatize them to being surveilled “for their own good,” and then indoctrinate them into thinking that they are the only ones who can save the nation from another 9/11.

Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.

This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.

This is how you turn a people into extensions of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent police state, and in the process turn a citizenry against each other.

It’s a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other and shadowy forces from outside the country, they’re incapable of focusing on more definable threats that fall closer to home—namely, the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

Community policing did not come about as a feel-good, empowering response to individuals trying to “take back” their communities from crime syndicates and drug lords.

Rather, “Community-Oriented Policing” or COPS (short for Community Partnerships, Organizational Transformation, and Problem Solving) is a Department of Justice program designed to foster partnerships between police agencies and members of the community.

To this end, the Justice Department identifies five distinct “partners” in the community policing scheme: law enforcement and other government agencies, community members and groups, nonprofits, churches and service providers, private businesses and the media.

Together, these groups are supposed to “identify” community concerns, “engage” the community in achieving specific goals, serve as “powerful” partners with the government, and add their “considerable resources” to the government’s already massive arsenal of technology and intelligence. The mainstream media’s role, long recognized as being a mouthpiece for the government, is formally recognized as “publicizing” services from government or community agencies or new laws or codes that will be enforced, as well as shaping public perceptions of the police, crime problems, and fear of crime.

Inevitably, this begs the question: if there’s nothing wrong with community engagement, if the police can’t be everywhere at once, if surveillance cameras do little to actually prevent crime, and if we need to “take back our communities” from the crime syndicates and drug lords, then what’s wrong with community policing and “See Something, Say Something”?

What’s wrong is that these programs are not, in fact, making America any safer while turning us into a legalistic, intolerant, squealing, bystander nation.

We are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall, widening mass surveillance dragnet comprised of fusion centers, red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, terror watch lists, facial recognition, snitch tip lines, biometric scanners, pre-crime programs, DNA databases, data mining, precognitive technology and contact tracing apps, to name just a few.

This is how the government keeps us under control and in its crosshairs.

By the time you combine the DHS’ “See Something, Say Something” with CP3 and community policing, which has gone global in the guise of the Strong Cities Network program, you’ve got a formula for enabling the government to not only flag distinct “anti-government” segments of the population but locking down the entire nation.

Under the guise of fighting violent extremism “in all of its forms and manifestations” in cities and communities across the world, the Strong Cities Network program works with the UN and the federal government to train local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal.

What this program is really all about, however, is community policing on a global scale with the objective being to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police will identify, monitor and deter individuals who could be construed as potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats.

The government’s war on extremists has been sold to Americans in much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was sold to Americans: as a means of combatting terrorists who seek to destroy America.

However, as we now know, the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that has turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect.

Similarly, the concern with the government’s ongoing anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal rights activist groups as extremists.

These reports, which use the words terrorist and extremist interchangeably, indicate that for the government, anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—can be labeled an extremist.

Fast forward a few years, and you have the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which each successive presidential administration has continually re-upped, that allows the military to take you out of your home, lock you up with no access to friends, family or the courts if you’re seen as an extremist.

Now connect the dots, from the 2009 Extremism reports to the NDAA and the far-reaching data crime fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

Add in tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that identifies and tracks you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the circle, toss in the real-time crime centers which are attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, unless we can put the brakes on this dramatic expansion and globalization of the government’s powers, we’re not going to recognize this country five, ten—even twenty—years from now.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.

It’s already worse.

 

 

John Whitehead

 
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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Bum   Thumb   Crumbs

Time was I would get off my bum,
yank on boots, banner wave and chant.
These days the agent of dissent
is my thumb. It clicks for clean air,
whales, nurses, the icecap, younameit.

Repetitively strained, my hand in pain,
I cannot stop. Help may be a tweet away,
a petition signed. A tick bestowed.

But am I tricked by the tech moguls,
bought off with crumbs from their table?
As I click, click on Twitter et al
what am I missing when I’m clicking?

 

 

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Joan Byrne

 

 

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Monalisa Smile.

Midwest amongst my july days
Some stayed and Some left
My bouquet of autumnal florals
Smelling of hydrangeas
And forgotten bleached Scarlet
My red red heart
Overthrowing at your beautiful decay
Like I am owning
My Monalisa Smile
And My Beethoven dreams
Where we hide in our
Planetary swirl
That’s why The autumnal bliss
Is always my own
Where I can own my
July days
And My red red heart
Speaking of safekeeping
And the mystical Night jewel.

 

 

 

SAYANI MUKHERJEE
Picture Nick Victor

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Orchid Flower

Some look like Monkey
Some look like Turtle.
I am in a nursery
With different names
Of Orchid flower.
Flowers adapt,
Some say “They don’t have a memory like people do.”
Well, I believe flowers have a memory.
When you treat them like a bouquet
They lead you
To a beautiful healing doorstep.
And when you treat them
To break a heart,
The heart still breaks
Like a shattered mirror.
Just accept the flower
They make you less lonely,
Among stone-hearted world.
The orchid flower when it gets pollinated,
The love making of an insect
To the flower
Makes the world,
A little bit of less lonely,
Once again.
I see how beautiful
The creator of the world is,
Since it created a friendly companion
Hugging anyone
Who is an extractor of aesthetics.

 

 

Copyright Sushant Thapa
Biratnagar-13, Nepal

Loosely based on the movie Adaptation 2002
Photo: A night Orchid

 

 

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The Mysterious Forgotten Founder of The Velvet Underground

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ANOTHER BUNCH OF POEMS BY ERIC ERIC

CAULIFLOWER

Did I already
write a poem
called this?

Maybe I’ll change it to
COURGETTE

§

SUNRISE

The vicar
says
it’s God
turning on
the lights

§

VICAR

A van came
and
took him
away

§

MYTHOLOGY

Our history teacher
Miss Smith
had a lisp

We called her
Myth Myth

§

CHEESE

Children love
cheese
and often smell
like it

§

FORGET

If I could
remember

this poem
would not be called
FORGET

§

ROB

He’s a nice bloke
but
I can’t
approve
of his shoplifting

§

LAPTOP

It’s a new one

Rob got it
for me

*

 

 

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Eric Eric
Picture Nick Victor

 

 

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Give Me Moor: Myth, Magic, Madness and Mating Rituals in Cornwall

Zennor Spirit of Place, Bob Osborne (Rebel Not Taken Publishing)

Bob Osborne’s new book – published in a limited edition of 666 signed copies – is a gloriously ridiculous compilation of the facts, fiction, rumours and possibilities that inform this small area of North Cornwall. Osborne relies on gossip, hearsay, folk tales and hunches as much as historical and literary evidence to compile 23 chapters alive with occult narratives and hidden desires.

Osborne is obsessed by coincidence and synchronicities. Somebody’s love affairs are as important as leylines to him, and the fact that different writers lived in the same house, albeit at different times, must mean something. Of course, the fact that these writers include D.H. Lawrence and Aleister Crowley, not to mention a whole host of poets, artists and visitors from London, means there is plenty to write about and for the reader to ponder on.

Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury set put in an appearance, as do the artists Francis Bacon, Karl Weschke, Bryan Winter and Anthony Frost (reminiscing about his father Terry Frost). ‘The Zennor Romantic Poets’ or ‘Moor Poets’ are described as a ‘collection of misfits’, people are driven from the county on suspicion of being Nazis, the villages and lonely hamlets are full of reports of covens and orgies, magic rituals, and King Arthur returns as a wild-haired pensioner in fancy dress to claim an iron-age fort as his own and anoint Osborne ‘The Earl of Tregerthen’.

Everyone, it seems, sleeps with everyone else and is prone to bouts of serious drinking or drug-taking, dressing up, occult rituals and alleged espionage. However, despite their busy lives, some still find time to paint or write: Patrick Heron, Sandra Blow, W.S. Graham, Karl Weschke, Margo Maeckelberghe and Sandra Blow all feature here.

Osborne is clearly fascinated by all this stuff, and regards Lower Tregerthen Farm, which seems to be his current abode, as  one of the epicentres of whatever it is that is going on and has previously gone on. (The others are Zennor Quoit and the house nowadays known as Eagles Nest.) The book is a crazy assemblage of would-be-communes, decadence, obsessions and all written with apparent suspension of belief: Osborne clearly believes in magic, incantation and sexual energy, or is keeping a very straight face anyway.

Cold reason suggests that there have been a lot of seriously deluded and idealistic people over time in the Zennor area, and close reading reveals that there’s a lot of implied and possible connections here that don’t bear much scrutiny. It’s a kind of hippy revisionist history of the area, a version of what might have or could have happened if only idealism, magic and folklore had been taken seriously. Or it might just be a case of people inventing their own entertainment in a place where’s nothing much else to do.

Either way, this is a fascinating pot-pourri of nonsense set in Cornwall, all wrapped around real places, people and images, although I was somewhat put off the whole thing when some brief online searching reveals that Osborne is a conspiracy theorist spreading lies and disinformation about vaccines, digital currency and ‘the great reset’. Still, anything is possible it seems, if you believe it.

 

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Rupert Loydell

 

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from Jim Henderson’s A SUFFOLK DIARY Friday, September 15th

Things are not going at all well. As if were not bad enough that my wife is currently absent chez nous but shacked up in Stowmarket with her Jan fellow, when there is a meeting of our village’s action group that aims to put a stop to the government’s plan of shipping in a load of illegal immigrants to make their home in our village hall – GASSE (“Go Away! Stay Somewhere Else!”) – it feels like we are not doing much apart from talking. We do a lot of that, and sometimes argue (especially if Michael Whittingham has had a few beforehand in The Wheatsheaf), but positive outcomes are almost non-existent. And I have landed myself with an irksome task.

Although it seemed like a good idea at the time, I am worried that I may have bitten off more than I can chew by suggesting we should claim that the hall has RAAC (Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete). Because it was my idea I was given the task of finding someone who could help us with paperwork to back up what I thought was a pretty clever ruse. I found out we need a chartered building surveyor, and not surprisingly it turns out that it is currently a very busy period for chartered building surveyors, and trying to find one who has the time for you is a bit like trying to get a dentist to take you on as a new NHS patient, except in this case you do not get offered an alternative and far more expensive option. After a few telephone calls it has become obvious that at the moment all these surveyor chappies are working round the clock and, as one rather bad-tempered lady informed me, they cannot be everywhere at once. The upshot is that the chances of my getting one of these people to dish out a fake declaration about the hall seems unlikely because arranging even just a preliminary chat has so far proved impossible. I have reported this to the GASSE management team, but I have not yet given up. It occurred to me that surely Bob Merchant, our local builder and GASSE committee member, should know someone in that line of business, but Bob is not in the best of moods at the moment, and seems to have taken criticisms about his purchase of expensive security fencing to heart. When he was asked if he knew any surveyor chaps he replied rather brusquely that he doesn’t, and got up and asked if he could use the Shepherdson’s loo. (He was allowed, albeit reluctantly. We have our meetings in their summerhouse, but we are never asked into their actual house. I am not sure why.) But today I remembered that my wife’s brother’s wife’s brother (I am not quite sure what relation that is) does something in the surveying line, although I am not quite sure what. If I can get in touch with him it might prove useful, but this may not be the best time to contact anyone in the family. I do not know what if anything my wife has told them about our current situation.

Michael Whittingham says we should – to use his words – “bluff it”, by which he means tell the people in Whitehall that we have RAAC and wait for them to respond. Probably they will eventually ask for documentary evidence, by which time Michael says he will have had time to knock up a few fake documents and the civil servants will never know the difference. I admire his confidence, however misplaced it may be. Miss Tindle was quite vocal, for her, on insisting that she believes we should not be considering deception of any sort, and I am beginning to think it would be easier all round if we forget the idea. But it was my idea in the first place, so it will not do for me to go back on it just yet. The whole thing is complicated by the fact that Bernie Shepherdson told us that our MP wants to “Zoom” with us on Monday evening to discuss the situation. I am pretty sure he would not approve of the RAAC plan, and we are currently split 50/50 on whether or not to tell him about it, which surprises me no end, to be honest. This is surely what people call a no brainer.

As you may be able to tell, things have become more than a little complicated. The GASSE team has not actually squabbled yet, but squabbles do not seem far away. This evening one or two people began to murmur about there being nothing we could do and we should instead think about how to make the foreigners welcome in the community and see it as good for the local economy. That the local economy is one general store, a part-time coffee and tea shop, one pub, and an ice cream van from somewhere else that sometimes takes the trouble to drive through if he can be bothered, I am not sure how that is a sound argument but we may have to accept it. Between you, me and the bedpost, I am rather weary of it all. I suppose the trouble with my wife is not helping. I am still not sleeping well, and perhaps the strain is beginning to tell. I hate ironing, hoovering is another nightmare, and while I am not a bad cook I do not have a wide variety of dishes in my repertoire. I tried out one of those delivery services you see advertised on the television for a dinner on Tuesday evening and I am still waiting for the food. I have been trying to get my money back, and was told it may take a while because they have to ask the delivery chap about what happened and apparently they are not always easy to track down. I suppose it is because they are young, and live on the street on their bicycles instead of in proper houses. The lady on the telephone said my order should never have been taken because they do not deliver, and I quote, “that far out in the sticks.” Bloody morons, excuse my French. I am tired, and my clean pyjamas need ironing.

 

 

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James Henderson

 

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THE VELVET GLOVE AND THE IRON FIST

AGAINST SALVATION

So why not have fun? I sense an underlying dogma here
 to which I am not prepared to submit.- William S. Burroughs

 

A common value system based upon the principle of deliverance unites all the major faiths. In Christian thought this principle is called ‘salvation’ and Christ is The Saviour of the World. In the Indian-Vedic tradition this principle is called ‘enlightenment’ or ‘liberation’ from the World.

Clearly the notion of ‘deliverance’ depends upon the view that the world is a ‘fallen’ state. However, even though the material universe may be described as a hostile environment it is self-evident that the doctrine of the fallen world is not only an untenable assertion; it is also an ideological construct.

Prior to the emergence of this distinctive moral paradigm styles of worship were different and earlier forms of religion (animism, the religions of the ancient world) are often termed ‘pagan’ or ‘heathen’ in a pejorative sense by the followers of more recent faiths. All morality is ideology.

There are two main branches of post-pagan belief: there is the Indian-Vedic branch including Hindu and Buddhist teachings, and there is the Middle Eastern (or Abrahamic) branch comprising Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Historically the Indian-Vedic branch may count as the earliest form of world-renouncing, ascetic, flesh-rejecting salvation religion. These faiths which are often exceptionalist, schismatic, patriarchal and missionary in character have been labelled Axial Religions by some sociologists (Jaspers). Despite cultural differences the two main branches are variations of the same ascetic ideology of sacrifice and renunciation.

Dispassionate examination of Axial religious ideas and behaviour uncovers a number of features highlighting the negative influence of salvation religion on wider society:

All religious teachings are based on ethical and metaphysical claims that are false and without foundation. The false claims of the Axial Religions are (1) that there is an ultimate cause (2) that the world is ‘fallen’ or evil (3) that scripture is true revelation, and (4) that faith is good in itself. Such teachings inculcate ignorance and slavish submission among the weak and vulnerable.

Salvation doctrine is driven by sadomasochistic obsessions with sacrifice and atonement and is rooted in ideas of purity and death. Contrary to the claims of believers, these psychological compulsions have absolutely no ‘moral’ value, or ‘spiritual’ significance whatsoever.

The female reproductive system is the engine room of faith. This is why an often celibate priestly caste places such high value on The Family and why ‘family values’ are at the very heart of religions throughout the world. For the religious hierarchy paternity is an expendable factor while maternity is absolutely essential for continuity. Even though women have been called The Devil’s Gateway, they are defined by maternity because they are the breeding stock.

The rhetoric of ‘family values’ is a way of legitimising childhood indoctrination. The glorification of motherhood (the ‘maternal instinct’) is the misogynist basis of pro-natalist oppression and gender apartheid.

Most if not all true believers practice various levels of duplicity and deception in their dealings with the world – a world they despise. Where matters of ‘conscience’ are concerned politicians often mislead voters regarding their real evangelical objectives. ‘Conscience’ is usually an excuse to proselytise and is always a euphemism for prejudice.

Affluent semi-religious quasi-believers who take full advantage of the materialistic lifestyles and secular freedoms of developed industrial societies are hypocrites. Clearly the road to salvation is often paved with gold – faith-wash and bad intentions: the Protestant Spirit of Capitalism.

Religion operates behind an elaborate façade of mystification and pseudo-scholarly obscurantism. This smokescreen is designed to confuse both critics and followers alike particularly regarding such insoluble sophisms of Theodicy as ‘the problem of evil’ or vague issues like ‘the purpose of life’. The cultural kudos of high-mindedness associated with ‘profound’ ideas, ‘eternal values’ and the pernicious gravitas of ‘great’ religious art (propaganda) are further cases of this all-pervasive mystification.

Faith is never a civilising influence. Religion asserts that it is indistinguishable from civilisation because, over the centuries, it has deployed the power structure of ‘culture’ to negate individual autonomy. While popular culture may occasionally serve rebellious causes all culture is tyranny because it is permeated by reactionary religious ideas. Culture, particularly ‘high culture’, is the velvet glove of faith – theocracy is the iron fist.

Religious doctrine is propagated and enforced by techniques of indoctrination, conformist regimentation and cultural coercion involving traditional taboos, mandatory ‘parrot-fashion’ learning and rigid commandments. In civil society indoctrination is implemented via institutions such as the state, the family, the voluntary sector and the education system.

The function of religious teaching is the regulation of behaviour, typically in the realms of reproductive choice, sexual orientation, mortality, dietary practice, dress code and linguistic identity. The appropriation of linguistic identity in religious teaching is closely allied to a pernicious linkage of faith allegiance with ethnic and racial factors.

Religious teaching is the denial of choice and freedom of expression – camouflaged as ‘moral’ instruction, or ‘spiritual’ guidance, it is the antithesis of education.

Ecclesiastics and their apologists vilify their opponents to stifle criticism, seeking to denigrate alternative viewpoints as seditious, debased and depraved. This is the mechanism of witch-hunting, moral panic and persecution mania. It is the demonic world-view of book-burners everywhere – yet it is they who claim a monopoly of altruism and always take the ‘moral high ground’ on any issue.

The faithful characterise all criticism as persecution and intolerance, claiming ‘respect’ as a right, using the taking of ‘offence’ as a form of intimidation whilst complaining of ‘marginalization’. Furthermore, any challenge to belief is defined quasi-theologically as a temptation (the Devil’s work) or a test to be overcome, a watertight psychological stratagem impervious to rational argument.

Believers assert religion is beyond criticism and above the law but reserve the right to defame unbelievers, attack social mores and preach against idolaters and apostates at every turn. It is commonplace to find faith-leaders claiming that social problems are the result of immorality (the collapse of ‘core values’) and ‘godlessness’. Rabble-rousing messianic preachers find no difficulty in transforming this kind of moral assault into a militant cosmic war against evil forces, inciting hatred, causing resentment and stirring up millenarian mass hysteria.

One teaching of salvation is the idea that humanity is the source of everything bad. Conversely God is the source of everything good. In practice this allows religious believers to appropriate any positive social development, treating every ‘good cause’ as a bandwagon, or a crusade. Claiming credit for altruism (in fact a naturally-occurring form of animal behaviour), religious organisations argue ‘faith-based welfare’ is a better form of philanthropy superior to alternative approaches; beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Many naïve observers are taken in by idea that all charity is God’s work, even an act of worship whether recognised or not. Whereas religious charity (including missionary work) is actually a devious form of entryism; a ‘Trojan horse’ tactic – a way of infiltrating social services, patronising the destitute, exploiting the vulnerable and generating publicity – propaganda by deed.

In any faith community persecution mania is endemic and siege mentality the norm. This is why many religious believers think that the mass media is an atheist conspiracy, even though the media is infested with religious fellow travellers, pro-clerical sycophants and finger-wagging moralists. However, the dogma that glamour is idolatry or that entertainment is sin, is the real reason why puritans attack the media – the media is fertile ground for moral panic.

Salvation teaching invariably promotes self-righteousness and atavistic, elitist assertions of racial, cultural and moral superiority provoking sectarianism and other forms of social division rendering most theories of social conflict (e.g. Marxism) quite superfluous. The schismatic internal factionalism and megalomania within the religious sphere is self-evident, yet the self-contradictory notion that faith is a benevolent kind of ‘social glue’ is widespread.

All religious authorities use the puritan ideology of salvation morality, redemption and renunciation to hi-jack civil society and control all aspects of public and private life. Axial Religion is an authoritarian caste system driven by the pursuit of power and prestige for its own sake. The history of humanity is a war against theocracy – and the essence of theocracy is the arrogance of human exceptionalism.

 

 

 

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AC Evans

 

 

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Chromatics: A Pragmatic Approach

 

The rainbow is a distraction from a mismanaged system: boat people imprisoned on boats; animal skins scorched in parched scrub. Red rats leap from sinking ships beneath a livid orange orb. Yellow yells in the blistering car park, green twigs bending to the point of snap. Blue notes bend to an indigo mood, as violet bruises spread beyond the confines of individual faces. Sexuality, gender identity, doctors and nurses, children’s playgrounds: rainbows upon rainbows, anywhere but in the sky. Supermarket shelves sag with the weight of hot air, as hard-working families oil rusty pliers to extract their own teeth. If we had the resources, we would all bleed together. The Minister proclaims doves for all, though all we’ve seen have been crows bearing burning branches. Walls run slick with tears and mould. We could use some colour in here, but even our words are bleached to their roots, and border after border is nailed shut.

 

 

Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor

 

 

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How To Be More Alive.

Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education

‘Wonder is where it starts, and though wonder is also where it ends, this is no futile path. Whether admiring a patch of moss, a crystal, flower, or golden beetle, a sky full of clouds, a sea with the serene, vast sigh of its swells, or a butterfly wing with its arrangement of crystalline ribs, contours, and the vibrant bezel of its edges, the diverse scripts and ornamentations of its markings, and the infinite, sweet, delightfully inspired transitions and shadings of its colors — whenever I experience part of nature, whether with my eyes or another of the five senses, whenever I feel drawn in, enchanted, opening myself momentarily to its existence and epiphanies, that very moment allows me to forget the avaricious, blind world of human need, and rather than thinking or issuing orders, rather than acquiring or exploiting, fighting or organizing, all I do in that moment is “wonder,” like Goethe, and not only does this wonderment establish my brotherhood with him, other poets, and sages, it also makes me a brother to those wondrous things I behold and experience as the living world: butterflies and moths, beetles, clouds, rivers and mountains, because while wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity.’

But while we are born wakeful to wonder, our cultural conditioning and indoctrination – what we call our education – often schools us out of it. A century before scientists came to study the vitalizing psychology and physiology of enchantment, a century before our so-called liberal arts education had become the factory farming of the mind, Hesse laments:

‘Our universities fail to guide us down the easiest paths to wisdom… Rather than teaching a sense of awe, they teach the very opposite: counting and measuring over delight, sobriety over enchantment, a rigid hold on scattered individual parts over an affinity for the unified and whole. These are not schools of wisdom, after all, but schools of knowledge, though they take for granted that which they cannot teach – the capacity for experience, the capacity for being moved, the Goethean* sense of wonderment.’

(*Goethe: ‘I am here, that I may wonder!’)

This is an excerpt from an article by Maria Popova at The Marginalian.
The full article is here.

The Hermann Hesse quotes are from Butterflies, Reflections, Tales and Verse.

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DELIVERING AMBIGUITY

My favourite side to England
is Vivienne Westwood
who went to Buckingham Palace
to collect a silly medal

but then did a twirl
for the cameras who unexpectedly
captured with a click
she wore no knickers

 

 

Steven Taylor

 

 

 

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Managing the Brand



When she woke in the morning
she was sitting bolt upright, staring
into the mirror at her own exhausted
face. “Here we have a mechanical

monkey and here we have a trunk
of creepy clown heads,” she said.
Our fears may be well-founded but
a rise in bee-keeping could be hurting

wild bees. How can we see to take aim?
Lean, taut and dynamic, that’s your
average gannet! “We need to read the
sky before making any serious decisions

but you are reminded to bring your
voter ID,” he said. It’s an army of the
landless, the same old story, yet cut off
from the world and disheartened, we

are living in a bubble. She’s the only girl he
ever met who didn’t mind the smell of fish.

 

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Steve Spence

 

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Confetti

My Confetti of small baked dreams
My own peripheral vision
Eating me alive
Too fast it spreads
Individual is in decay
The lovely bridal vision
Wear your best sunglasses
Into the open wild
The nemesis is my own.
Reflection of my own
Designs and marmalade sky
Please keep your safety pin
Understatement and autocracy
The beautiful Sofia
Maiden high my own daisy dreams
Smallstars and paint me blue
Let’s dive Into the autumn wild
Before you lie to yourself
Learn to tie your shoes
My mother’s own place
The all knowing eye
Blinded by sea green gold
Old spice here your own voice
My better known white.

 

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Sayani Mukherjee
Picture Nick Victor

 

 

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A Good Robot

The bygone garment
befalls around her flesh;
in this dress the bride
looks like the bird trapped inside
and her own cage.

Today, the air streams in sepia.
Our heads are steampunk.
The wedding occurs at
an abandoned carport
before an old Ford – both
a junk and a god.

The bride and the bird within
whirr, rev and ching.
The movement of time ticks.
I raise a toast to the future child.
May it be a good robot.

 

 

 

 

Kushal Poddar
Robot Edward Bateman

 

 

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1968

we were told to stay indoors
the marchers were coming through

it wasn’t safe on the streets they said
in a way they were right

there were dangerous ideas in the air
we were young and impressionable

and perhaps they thought we might see
what was written on the placards

so we stayed in and watched TV
saw Valerie Singleton on Blue Peter

performing miracles with cardboard tubes
and sticky-backed plastic

while the marchers spray-painted
U.S. GET OUT OF VIETNAM

on the wall at the end of our street
in six-foot high letters

next morning on my way to school
I saw them and realised

I’d missed something wonderful

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Dominic Rivron

 

 

 

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They are magical

They are magical,
the minutes with you;
jingle like a crystal bell;
I hear the echo of my heart,
I feel the pulse of your calmness,
you are like a rock by my side,
I step confidently on the path of time…
Wherever it leads me,
however it meanders up and down,
I walk boldly
the whole journey is magical…

 

 

 

Dessy Tsvetkova
Bulgaria
Art Rupert Loydell

 

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ANNIVERSARY

It’s 9/11

That thing we’re all going to watch
On television is about to happen

The pale blue sky is perfect
Ready for the cameras

Members of the audience
Are unconsciously gathering

Settling

Picking spots and chatting
Sharing popcorn, buying colas

Trust me, it’ll be amazing

The people not responsible
Will be taught a terrible lesson

Towns will be obliterated
Cities reduced to rubble

Fireworks costing trillions
Will be used to show us winning

Liberating Babylon

It’s how we deal with things
In a democracy. Seriously

Victory is the message
Great Britain loves America

Laurel and Hardy
Bush and Blair, our leaders

Killing farmers, peasants
Entire families. All ages

No distinctions

Attending weddings on a mountain
In a country somewhere different

We don’t need to know their language
Freedom’s universal

 

 

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Steven Taylor

 

 

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YES. I REMEMBER ENGLAND.

 

With apologies to Edward Thomas
And ‘Yes. I remember Adlestrop.’
These items will not be in the memories
of anyone less than 70 years old.
However, they might be of some use
to future Cultural historians
*
Yes.
I remember England.
In most cities
Cosy corner shops
Never more than
five minutes walk
in any direction
Presided over by
Mrs Smith, Brown or Green.

Pop in for
a crusty unsliced loaf
the pride of all mums
Or a pint of run-out-of milk.
Shelves replete with multicoloured
Packets of fags
Hearts-of-Oak Players
Senior Service, Craven A (Black Cat) or
the cheaper sort for the plebs
Jars of boiled sweets loved by kids
Jelly Babies, Barley sugar and black liquorice
Sherbet dabs, lump of toffee on a stick
sealed in a bag to be dipped and sucked
flying saucers soon dissolved
to shed sparkling powder
on innocent tounges
Lemonade and Tizer to swig
and brown paper bags for the lot.

The grocers shop
proudly displaying its red bacon slicer
a spinning silver wheel to slice rashers
thick or thin as you like,
cheese cut with a length of silvery wire
and butter patted into shape
with wooden spatulas
Rows of half empty sacks
their tops folded down
Peas, beans, rice and orange split peas
Jams of all colours
and, Oh golly! Nearly forgotton
Robertson’s Marmalade.
Much gossip from ladies sensibly clad
Clutching worn leather purses
and oil cloth bags
for potatos from the greengrocers
King Edward’s
at tuppence ha’penny a pound.

Yes.
I remember the greasy spoons
Bacon egg and chips
or sausages with tea and two slices
for one and ninepence
Smoke from Players Weights and Woodbines
rising around worn flat caps and Daily Mirrors
the silver tea urn pluming steam at the counter
and everyone speaking understandable English.

When schools come out
Posh boys
flaunt their Grammar school blazers
while the riff-raff make do
with their dad’s cast off trousers
their bottoms cut shorter
and hemmed by Mum.
Ball games in the road
fearlessly running to catch
’till someone shouts ‘CAR’
as far down the street
comes a boxy vehicle
Slowly grinding its way
through the gears
to build up a some speed
but plenty of time
to dash for the pavement
and wait for the danger to pass.

Yes.
I remember
Prescreen indoor games,
Monopoly, Ludo,
Snakes and Ladders.
Tiddly Winks
While outside
Belisha Beacons, blinking a gentle safeguard
at pedestrian crossings.
Hop on and off buses
with cheerful conductors
Rattling their bag of coins
and dinging their ticket machines.
With racks of multicoloured tickets,
Indiginous motor bikes
AJS, Norton, BSA and Matchless.
Royal Enfields, Ariels and Triumphs.
Vincent Black Shadows
Speeding the highways, ton up to the next cafe.
Teddy boys putting the frighteners on oldies
With their smart Edwardian velvet collared suits
and D. A. (ducks arse) haircuts
Police cars, black Wolseleys with silver bell
fixed to front bumpers
A shrill authoritive ring, but not offensive
in melodious pursuit of criminals
unlike neurotic sirens copied from America
Ambulances similarly equipped.
Fire engines with a large and lustier bell
vigorously hand rung by a crewman
clanging its way on possible missions.
Roger Bannister and his four minute mile
as commendable as Hilary and Tensing’s
Everest achievement.
Girls, their pointy bras
sticking out from proto T shirts
(Sloppy Joes) sharp enough to take out an eye
if venturing too close.
Hair backcombed and piled high
Into a ‘Beehive’.
and later
such is the fickle nature of fashion
‘Bohemian girls’, flat shoes, black sockings
and mascara blacker than black
Haunting the sixties and nearly all on the ‘Pill’.
Fashionable youths wih yellow socks
Suade shoes, ‘Brothel Creepers’
with half inch thick crepe soles.
coffee bars, a tasteless brew
With useless foam piled high.

Works outings
Charabancs to the coast
for ice creams and ‘Kiss me Quick’ hats
Returning along dual carridgways
with obligatory sing song.
Does the driver want a wee wee?
Cos we all want a wee wee too
Then a scramble in the dark bushes
Men one way,
Ladies another.
And more songs
Roll out the Barrel, Nellie Dean
and Pack up your Troubles.

Yes.
I remember
The ‘Dandy’ and ‘Beano’
with Corky the cat to enjoy.
‘Desparate Dan’
Tucking into Aunt Maggie’s
Cow pie, the horns sticking
up through the crust
Hungry Horace and Keyhole Kate
The ‘Film Fun’, with capers of
Laurel and Hardy
‘The Rover’ and stories for senior boys.
Brave heroes in foreign parts take no cheek
from the natives,
evading their spears with a machine gun’s burst
to show them who’s boss
Greyfriers upper class boys
with Quelchy the Master
and Bunter the fat fool
‘Ow! Leggo you rotters’

Yes.
I remember
The food.
Toad in the Hole
Faggots, Rissoles
Pig’s Trotters and Chitterlings.
Sunday teatimes
with Cockles and
Pins threaded into table cloths
beside each place, to skilfully
winkle out the Winkles.
Porridge and the odd Kipper for breakfast.
Fish and chips
wrapped in newspaper sprinkled with salt
and soggy with too generous a libation
of vinegar and perhaps
a gerkin or two as the taste might be.

Yes .
I remember
‘Made in England’ cars.
when ‘Made in England’
was the emblem of top quality.
Standard, Humber, Riley.
Morris, Lanchester, Austin.
Armstrong Siddley, Hillman.
Wolseley, Singer, Sunbeam Talbot.
Made in Dagenham Fords.
Proto plastic ‘Bakelite’.
Bakelite doornobs, ashtrays.
Tuning nobs on wireless sets.
Bakelite this.
Bakelite that.
Bakelite everything.

Yes.
I remember
Old men watching children playing
the same games they knew as a child
Conkers in season soaked in vinegar
to make them harder and threaded on a string
ready to give or receive a mortal blow
from another of its kind.
Roller skates in season and marbles along the gutter
Home made Bows and arrows and catapults
Cigarette cards, one in each packet,
soldiers uniforms, warships,
sportsmen displayed.
Flicked against a wall to lay like leaves in autumn
If your card overlay another – it’s yours,
therefore old tatty ones flicked first
and a more niggardly caution with new ones.

Children’s Saturday morning cinema,
Abbot and Costello
The Three Stooges
The Lone Ranger with side kick Tonto
and ‘High Ho Silver’ his horse.
Flash Gordon
All in black and white.

Then on the horizon a whiff of the future
Dan Dare in the ‘Eagle’ a modern format
Tho’ not much of a challenge to Rupert the Bear
His mystery adventures to unknown lands
always ending well and returning to Nutwood
with Mummy and Father Bear at the gate.
Just William, no TV or phone for this lad
his mischievous tricks making fun of his elders
in spite of the threats of Violet Elizabeth
‘I’ll thcweam until I’m thick’
Her childish blackmail works every time.

Yes.
I remember
When most boys carried penknives
Boy scouts and cubs
with sheath knives on their belts
No dangers here
For a well known fact
No Englishman would ever
draw a blade and use in anger.
Only Dagoes liable to such unsporting behaviour
Dagoes (Spanish), a cast of humourous
but not too unkind nicknames
for foreigners – Wops (Italians)
Spics (Greek), Wogs (Dark skinned)
Kikes (Hebrews) wartime comic’s (Japs)
with large round spectacles and too many teeth.
Chinks (Chinese) Micks (Irish), Frogs (French)
and other now unmentionables.
Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman jokes
Now also Tabu!

Yes.
I remember
The wireless, wait for the valves to warm up
with ‘Home’ ‘Light’ and ‘Third’ for the snobbish
Monday night at eight o’clock
and once more we stop the mighty roar
of London Traffic to see who’s ‘In Town Tonight.’
Valantine Dyle as ‘The Man in Black’
Sending icy chills up the spine
Housewives choice, Donald Piers and his ‘Babbling Brook’,
Vera Lynn, ‘Bluebirds over the White cliffs of Dover’
Gracie Fields, ‘Sally, Pride of our Alley’,
Max Bygraves, ‘Tulips from Amsterdam’.
George Formby the naughty window cleaner
who sees hairs on many things
when he’s cleaning windows.
Banned from the BBC for that little ditty.
Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth Light Operatic duets.
The Ink Spots and Nat King Cole
Victor Sylvester and his ‘Strict Tempo’ dance band
Vic Oliver, jokes and fiddle. And worker’s playtime
giving the factories a voice.
Tommy Trinder. PC 49.
Eddie Calvert trick valve trumpet.
Then silence while dad listens to the football results
Fills in coupons to win or to lose.

Now the exciting ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’
the hero toff with ‘Snowy’ his Cockney support
and Scotsman ‘Jock’ his other pleb accomplice
thwarting all the baddies.
While Paul Temple, another Etonian stalwart
with his wife Steve quaffing her ‘Dry Martini please Darling’
at the close of each episode.

For humour ‘It’s that man again’, Tommy Handley
‘I Don’t mind if I do’ Colonal, and Mrs Mop
‘Can I do you now Sir?’ or Arthur Askey’s
‘Hello Playmates’ with Dicky (Stinker) Murdock.
Flanagan and Allen. The Crazy Gang’. ‘Underneath the Arches’.
Round the Horn’ with Kenneth Horn, and Ted Ray ‘Ray’s a laugh’.
Ronny Renaldo, whistling imitator of birds,
Terry Thomas Naughty Cad and silly Norman Wisdom
On the Third, Professor Joad and the Brains Trust
Too much for the ‘Proles’ who preferred Funf the Hun spy
‘Zis is Funf speaking’, a comic German accent.
Children’s hour at five.
Uncle Mack with Toytown and Larry the lamb.
Dennis the Dashound another comic kraut, and Ernest the Policeman.
We are the Ovaltinies little Girls and Boys
Then ‘Goodnight Children,
Everywhere.’

Yes.
I remember the dark side of childhood.
School and ‘The Cane’.
A threat more terrible
than a trip to the dentist.
The street cries.
Horse and cart
‘Rag a Bone’
Horse and cart milkmen
or hand pushed barrow,
‘Milko!’
The shouts of Newspaper boys.
‘Star, News and Standard!’
and the coal men.
Huge draft horses
Pulling a heavy cart, rows of filled sacks
The men taking a sack on their back
and carrying it through the house
to the coal bin next to the outside mangle
with wooden rollers,
to be emptied into the bin
with a roar like thunder
while the mum followed the
man with her vacuum cleaner
to rescue her carpets from his
dust shedding boots.

Red phone boxes mostly working
Press A to connect, press B for money back.
Often small queue outside, impatiently tapping window
While inside chat with girl/boy friend takes too long.
Sensational Kahoutec.
Famous comet of the time
Haunting the skies for all to see.
The demise of King George VI.
The accession of Elizabeth II.

Yes.
I remember
‘The War’
Skies filled with tangles of vapour trails
where Messerschmits, Focke Wulfes
Spitfires and Hurricanes dueling to the death.
Growling bombers, Dorniers and Heinkels
nightly terrorising the quaking population below.
Air raid sirens wailing a ghastly song
Until the relieving ‘all clear’.
Little boys hoarding their collections
of shrapnel and nose caps from Ack Ack shells.
Dug up after the nightly raid
from the molten tarmac pavements
with a large nail
Silver barrage balloons
hanging over the cities like shoals of fish.
But always with a song,
‘Kiss me goodnight Sargeant Major’
‘Bless ’em all’, ‘Keep the Home fires burning’,

Yes.
I remember
The days of austerity
Utility clothes,
Utility shoes
Utility everything.
Returning evacuee children
with strange sometimes
incomprehensible accents,
Welsh, Scottish, Geordie and Mancurian.
British Restaurants for the Plebs
Plastic tokens
Different colours for main meals, sweet or cup of tea.
The advent of newfangled hardboard.
(pressed cardboard) for furniture etc.

Yes.
I remember
‘Comet’ the world’s first jet airliner
A tragic end, and ‘Brabazon’
Titanic of the air – a useless one off.
The Vickers Viscount VC10.
The Bristol Britannia
Soho in the late Fifties
Tommy Steel live at the ‘Two Eyes’ coffee bar
Sam Widges and the Nucleus for off duty Jazz musicians
‘The Farm’ with the singing folk
Davy Graham and Long John Baldry
Trad bands – Cy Laurie, Ken Collier and Bill Brunskill.
The Moderns – Ronnie Scott’s at the old place
in Jermyn Street, or Chris Barber with Beryl Brydon.
Humphry Littleton, Bruce Turner
featuring virtuoso Trombonist John Mumford.
and Sandy Brown at 100 Oxford Street.

The film stars – ladies first.
Valery Hobson
Married to the scandalised War Minister Profumo
in association with ladies of the night
Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies.
(‘Well he would say that wouldn’t he?’)
Jean Simmonds and Elizabeth Taylor,
Flora Robson, Margaret Lockwood and Glynis Johns
The comic Margaret Rutherford
Often with accomplice Alistair Sims.

The men – …
Kenneth Moore and Trevor Howard,
John Mills and Dirk Bogard
James Mason and Charles Boyer
Michael Redgrave and Jack Warner.
David Niven, the dwarfish Richard Todd,
playing Guy Gibson in ‘The Dambusters’
with his ‘N’ word black Labrador.
True blue Englishmen all.

And Sport.
Top of the list of fame.
Stanley Matthews genius centre forward
a name familiar even to those
disinterested in football.
And boxing’s heavyweight Bruce Woodcock
England’s great hope with an unfortunate ‘glass jaw’.
Or middleweight Bombadier Freddy Mills
Cricketer Jack Hutton another household name
Eric Chitty New Cross motor cycle speedway champion.
Speedsters Stirling Moss and Malcolm Campbell
A rollcall of familiar cultural aspects
unremembered by younger generations.

Yes I remember
A warts and all but stable common reality
Then one wave of an electronic wand and…
ABRCADABRA, POOF gone!
Potatoes and motorbikes
Hairstyles and comedians
Footballers and filmstars
A lost world now unremembered
Replaced by the online and charmless
screenworld of WWW.uk.com

 

 

 

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David Tomlin
Photo Nick Victor

 

 

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Further Reading

Filling virtual voids:
the meaning of work
in a post-material world.
Ariadne’s thread as
superconductor:
magical beasts and
magic keyboards.

Contour and ‘Perfect Pitch’:
Altitudinal resonances.

Unwindings:
the valedictoryl gesture in
innovational automata.
A Century of haunting:
collective dreaming
in the age of individuality.
Parallels;
Two lines of a poem
that converge in infinity.

 

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© Maria Stadnicka and Andrew Morrison 
Art Rupert Loydell

 

 

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Everything Must Go

Check-outs bloom with tattooed prophets speaking in pierced tongues. It’s not quite the End of Days, but it’s the end of three-for-two offers, and this in itself feels somehow apocalyptic. It could be the way that they’re burning signs in the aisles, without two hoots for health and safety. It could be the way that the usual anodyne muzak’s been switched for Swedish metal, and it could be the way that the youth with the split lip rolls their eyes to the bloodshot whites and spits with each bland utterance. When they ask if you’ve plans for the weekend, you’re sure they already know. When they ask if you need a carrier bag, you’re compelled to look away. Whether you’ve cash or card makes no difference now that all you desired is packed for a hasty exit, and when they command you to have a nice day, there’s the hand on your shoulder that you have dreaded all your life.

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Oz Hardwick

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The Isle of Dogs



Fragments of a wikipedia article

the Isle of Dogs
cannot be reached without the crossing of water –
this is always dangerous.
dogs live happily on it
but it’s a dog’s life for everyone else.
it was originally called the Island of Ducks
but people mispronounced it.
or, perhaps, it was the dead dogs
always washing up on its banks
that gave it its name.
or, maybe, it was all the barques moored there
that the dogs themselves confused
with their own incessant barking at the ducks
and the canaries jubilantly warbling all day on the wharves.

in The Man from Uncle Mr Waverly always smoked
Isle of Dogs #22.
the canaries stayed away from him.

 

 

Robert Mapson

 

 

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Lines in Sand

 

Failed and glassy eyed

though the other one has been

removed.  Their silent tower’s

theater is warm,

at least.  Above hard time is

an inaudible rush, at

least.  Not many

uncontested nights when blades

can clear a path for

fountains, stairways.  

 

.

 

 

Joel Chace

 

 

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NUMBERS

1/
jesus it’s cold away from the ovens/the rules of the documentary bleed/worshipping/opening tin cans/the shopping malls signify/ rules for the unemployed/we promptly signed our names to the documentation/sealing our society into alleyways/
we promptly signed our names/to the documentation/sent sprawling into/queues for the medication/& we polished the sanitised news/jesus the ovens are hot/heat turned up by governments/we’re about to explode/trapped in the shopping malls/
& it’s sealed with a kiss/the cops fuck us over/& over/no animal rights/no human rights/bedtime stories for children/

2/
it was a trick of the light/first off the marrying kind/signed certificates/adorned walls/as passions lurk/the keys to industrial heartlands/exchanging metaphors/blue monday’s mournful tune/echoes of the moneyed class/dancing on thin ice/the keys to brokers exchanging metaphors/for arts council grants/telephone numbers scribbled in darkened booths/torn pamphlets/the poets trail off.

3/
an irony of secretly unemployed/unpacking the memories/home offers no security/social niceties at the gym/liberals scream/murder from their electric cars/jaywalkers torn from the mouth/sail across the straits of dover/lording it over cormorants/boris’s entrails of power-plays/AI melts into future space/while soldiers split over suicide cracks/ 

4/
awaiting the outcome of local abattoirs/where corn melts/into liquidity/braving whoops from harried chancellors/skipping by electron particles/ sued royal warriors/mouthing baboon roll-calls/river basins riven by rust/naked newscasters shower their guests with vinegar/substantial darkness where subway walls call out/undressing secret parliamentary sessions/brief respites then a short howl/epileptic dancers skate/thin ice cracking/

 

 

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Clive Gresswell
Art Rupert Loydell

 

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REVIEW: LOOKING FOR A KISS BY RICHARD CABUT

 

Three years ago, during the first COVID lockdown, I swapped a couple of copies of Richard Cabut’s self-published novel Looking for a Kiss for a lathe-cut of Dark Jazz, my band Necessary Animals’ second LP. I gave one copy to my partner, Amanda, and read the second in a single sitting, finding myself in a whirl of dense colours, sounds and mercurial impressions that wrenched my brain open and tipped in an account of a day in 80s London spent tripping on acid. Some I understood, some (the more obscure literary references) eluded me. But I was spellbound.

The blurb on the dust jacket of the new hardback edition describes Looking for a Kiss as ‘the classic post punk novel’. To me it is as much post-Beat as post punk. Speed, sex, hallucinatory memories of childhood that read like a sequence from a David Lynch movie , visions of the future, more sex; fear and disillusionment, a UFO over Camden; more speed, booze, sex, self-loathing and a kind of tattered redemption (though not for everyone) all surge through the veins of this remarkable book. Cabut details a compellingly unglamorous account of life in London in the 1980s, a time when the Old Britain, exhausted by war and with its global influence beginning to fade with its crumbling empire, looked to a bright shiny future to reinvent itself. Having fucked over its colonies and ‘dependencies’ across the world in the names of greed and self-aggrandisement, it decided to turn on its own and do the same to them. We are living through the shitshow that this era sparked off now. If we had known would we have done anything differently?  Did Robert and Marlene, the central protagonists of this day trip to psychosis stop to wonder what they were doing? In both cases, I doubt it. Quite what the post-war British political establishment thought it was doing, who knows. Youth thinks life comes with guarantees, that no matter how baffling it seems, and/or how disappointing compared to the hype, it’ll all work out in the end.

Sadly, for Marlene, it doesn’t. Happily for Robert things fare better – working for the NME  (though here I’m unsure about the epithet ‘happily’, the NME sounding as it does like a toxic arena for the sneering arrogance of male chauvinism) and a visit to New York to hang out with legendary photojournalist Nat Finkelstein.

Happily also, for Robert/Richard and the rest of us, we have Looking For A Kiss, an anti-memoir that fearlessly rejects cosy self-mythologising or the fevered wank of self-congratulation in favour of a coruscating account of lives innocently skating the edge of madness in a scramble to experience life, no matter what the cost.

As all such stories must, it ends with Robert giving up the rattling handcart to oblivion for a more measured later-life journey – the alternative being the true Beat dénouement of an unglamorous death, or a life spent trying to piece that life back together, often with no happy result.

With so much writing mired now in self-righteous post-woke virtue signalling, Cabut’s searing honesty comes as a welcome relief. Stripping away artifice and pretence, his lucid prose roots you to the spot and refuses to let you look away. It is a fever dream you’ll awake from refreshed and emboldened to face the day.

Highly recommended.

Click here to buy the book https://pcpressshop.greedbag.com/buy/looking-for-a-kiss-by-riachrd-ca/?fbclid=IwAR1wa1sXPHadmsMLOX1SeTUP2u3u-_0iPhR2oTsw8qlo3rSC5u05MvduKkE

Or here https://amzn.eu/d/ebg5KSf

Listen to Unkempt Magic – Richard’s spoken word collaboration with Necessary Animals on Bandcamp https://necessaryanimals.bandcamp.com/track/unkempt-magic

 

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Keith Rodway

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FREAK DOUBT (WATCH YOUR STEP)

Hello to all of you! It might be ironic:
Traffic noise ‘off stage’ music, revolver shots
Civic functions and ceremonies
All effortlessly combined and (freak doubt)
Subjected to experiments by scatter-brained socialite
Lana Driver: Life doesn’t get much better than this!
She called him Strange Rover – where’s he going?
Where did he come from? Who the hell is he anyway?
Scene-stealing hot jockey violence flashing images
Masked by rotating shutter – twitching
Movement of limbs upper right hand corner
Of picture (ooh kinky!) What’s the mood there?

Wooaaa! Go girl! YeeeOUCH!
Giggles uncontrollably: so now what?
She rocked slogan knickers like
Please Hug Me
Naughty Nice
Kiss My Ass
Dirty Girl
No Hot Ashes
Wi Fi Here
Watch Your Step
Hey! What are the chances?
Tsk! Tsk! Oh behave!

Elaborate forms of life carried out
In the style of recent trends – over to you!
It speaks volumes! Oh yes it does!
Viewers wore coloured spectacles
(Right eye green left eye red)
Had to undergo another drastic change
Well there’s plenty of reaction! Oh my!
Oh no! What do I do now? Spooky chic
Torrid nail-biter that’s the way to do it
I think we’re good to go you creep!
Ok that’s about it from me (chirpy tone)
Do have a lovely afternoon. Stay tuned!

 

 

 

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AC Evans

 

 

 

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Bohemian Cartography

untranslatable avian languages
beneath an imaginary moon
copse laden with regret
geography of longing
broken autumn wind

 

 

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Words & photo
Terrence Sykes

 

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ALL THAT GLIMMERS IS GIL

On MIRROR WORLD, the new album by Gil De Ray

 

The kick drum propels Gil De Ray’s sparkling synths
And the sulky sneer of his vocals, as he myths his muse
Jimmy Morgan in this ballad single and slow L.A. noir.
Mirror World opening the secret doors De Ray phases
As the mundane dunce-dance meets magic
And the dusk light brims, full of stars.

‘Fuck a job/Stay in Bed/Read those books
You haven’t read..Politicians/Celebrities/
Click-bait to limit your fantasies.. and so attend

To hear this song Prophet ballad the loss of society’s soul
To chart scars. For there is always an agenda within
Gil’s sly psychedelic; lyrics as lesson for the actual way

Things should be. For this song details the true
Tuning out, not just from the job, but from this unfriendly
Dimension, as his effortless pop broils and simmers
And an internal summer of love sets you free.
Like all of his songs, the craft is so strong you could ride it,
On top of the ocean, or all the way towards stars.

De Ray’s self-directed video shows this other view,
This aesthetic made for the aether,
As Jimmy Morgan falls, stalls and encounters
Through Gil’s hand-held swooping frame,
Earth as Mars. That second planet within
The corrupted one we inhabit. The mirror now,

In reflecting and refracting us, tilts and jars.
As MONEY IS THE VIRUS’s woeful tap ‘Clots the heart
of the city.. The cash cow chaos matrix’ is the kind

Of cage that’s all bars. The understated music
Allows the clarity of the message. The song is tight,
Yet expansive as its pulse persuades all the while.

‘Money is a crisis/A debt to buy your silence,’
He sings and the truth chorales in you. Suddenly,

Strings are soaring as you solo within to your style.
Gil De Ray sings to you, you are walking with him
Through the ghetto, all the way from the grotto
That first sucked you in as a child. En route to the shops,

To the pub, or club, market, mountain; the feel
Is American fused European and carved from a Celt,
The will’s wild.  As evidenced by track three,
THE PRICE IS PSYCHOLOGICAL; jazz meets soul
As if Grant Green met Marvin. It is Django slowed
By Santana, as the poetics of place sees each card

Falling and show us all what’s been dealt.
‘My soul a secret orchestra/Ram-dassing to myself/
Becoming nobody with every breath I take/
I am becoming something else.’  Each song’s

A hummed hymn to a numbed congregation,
And so De Ray rouses with a laid back groove

To transform your lethargy into an elegy
For transgression. These songs are soul soundtracks
As the buzz of a deeper belief starts to swarm.
BLOODCLOT  scars and skas as its reggae strut carries,
The eternal message as the soothsayer sings,
‘If you could see half the bullets you don’t know  

you’ve dodged,’ I hear Matt Johnson,
With the same level of lyric, and the same
Tortured truth; this Gil brings. These, then are the new
Protest songs. And this is how you modernize Dylan,
With De Ray’s slow-sung woeful wisdom, you can truly
Separate from the throng.

GHOSTS OF STARS’ guitar chord is a six string
Cosmos cleanser. It washes confusion like grime
From the skin in free space. The listener floats,
Borne aloft by the lightness and by the beats
That begat you and by the spirits who come to save
Us all, without trace. You can lose yourself easily,

But those stars will still find you.
What their ghosts gain is the imprint of all
That you are and can be. These are some of the special
Secrets in songs. These are the myths of their message.
Songs shine through their shaping, and as they
Speak of the dark we still see.

CLOSE YOUR EYES follows us, its stumbling synth
Sets the rhythm. De Ray white-raps, pronouncing,
With a poet’s take on that style. He also preaches,
Far reaching for you and fear’s kingdom. ‘Its okay
to be frightened,’ he sings. And his two note phrases

Protect us. Pure pop as potion, motioning us

To align with the new moves and stance
In this doven-like dance, small explosions,
From which we recover, re-piecing ourselves
Outside time. For Mirror World is just that.
The Twilight Zone found its morning. And it is one
In which dusk and dawning form their own magic mix.

With this one man band as guiding hand, guru,
Gourmet, selecting sensations from both the lesssons
In light and their tricks. FELT PRESENCE is synth as braille
For the seeing. You can feel and peel the dimension
That still suffers us. Even Plato’s on hand, lending words
To the chorus as what ancient Gods such as Horus

Can hope to gain from our trust. Which is unnaturally,
To transcend and thus ascend, should we wish it,
By pushing past binding structure the future is loose.
Pages fly. And we are the book and we are the sign
And the sigil, as babble and bible are but the crumbling
Shroud when we die. HOSTAGES seals the deal.

Its near muezzin call starts seduction.
But then De Ray allows himself a Barry White style
Affirmation, before the song evolves and refines.
‘I want to enrapture you/I want to capture you/
Make you more like me/Make you think like me/
And for a moment, we, glistening as we listen

May believe it is a duplicitous hill we have climbed.
But only then do we see that this final song is from
The singing stars, truly and that this is a quantum
Quandary which Gil feels free to explore.
We have the other options ahead, if not here
Than new regions, where the multiverse hold us hostage

And where wits refashioned, we can finally access
Huxley’s doors. It is not just about what we see,
For true listening creates visions and there are clues
In this album for how Life can once more be bountiful.
We just have to retune, drop out and let the psychedelic
Become penicillin. Cure all ills. Curate chaos.

Call for changes inside and around you. You will escape
While reclining. ‘Then everything will be so very strange’
And as De Ray beams,

                                                     Beautiful. 

 

 

 

                                                                            David Erdos 13/9/23

 

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GIL DE RAY
MIRROR WORLD
Release Date 08/09/2023
&  ALL STREAMING SERVICES from 22/09/2023
 
Mirror World is Gil De Ray’s tenth studio album.  A hot summer slice of psychedelic soul.  
Imagine Eddie Chacon recorded on a Tascam 4-track, raw and uninhibited by commercial pretensions.  
 
Teaming up with long-time collaborator, the Parisienne, Benjamin Goursot, this is Glaswegian-born Gil De Ray’s follow up to his 2021 album release,  Yellow Eyes which Bandcamp called 
“Dreamy, dubbed-out UK Psych-Rock that mixes aesthetics from across the decades for something strikingly contemporary.”
 
Mirror World moves into a rawer space. Pulsing 808 underpins the album with glimmers of guitar, synth and Gil’s deep, dry vocal delivery. Additional sparkle is provided by Berlin’s Danielle De Picciotto’s sweet autoharp (on Ghosts Of Stars) and Edinburgh’s George Thomson’s melancholic melodica (on Bloodclot).
 
By Gil’s own admission, Mirror World is an album of two halves.
“Since i was a little kid i’ve always thought of life as being split into two distinct parts. The so-called ‘real’ world and the world of my own imagination. Now the lines between both worlds have become increasingly blurred with AI, virtual and augmented reality. It’s becoming harder to tell what is real and what is fantasy. In Mirror World i’ve tried to capture those two overlapping worlds, with the woes and the traumas and the more esoteric, beautiful and psychedelic. Each of us is trying to infect, shape and influence one another to create society and cultures we personally desire to live in and be a part of. And this is my attempt to infect you.” 
 
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR “THE BALLAD OF JIMMY MORGAN” HERE
 





Gil De Ray
Musician, Artist and Film Maker
 
 
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Listen to the Music

Quantum Criminals, Alex Pappademas & Joan LeMay
(University of Texas Press, hbck, 268pp)

The difference between US and UK book cover design has always been strange. For a while my publishing operation Stride used an American illustrator and the UK reps and bookshops hated his work whilst the Americans lapped them up. I’m afraid I’m not at all keen on Joan LeMay’s illustrations here: they’re like amateur comic book illustrations, especially the many floating heads which have a crude red line drawn round them.

In a way, however, they suit the whole awkward smartarse concept of the book. Subtitled ‘Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan’, Quantum Criminals is hung on the characters who populate Steely Dan songs (and to a lesser extent, the musicians who played them). It’s a nice idea, but one that doesn’t quite work. You see, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker – who basically  were Steely Dan – enjoyed writing dense, obscure and elusive lyrics, and then making up shit about it for journalists. Not to mention being obsessive audiophiles, as well as studio and production fetishists who scrapped hours of work by session guitarists, and massive consumers of alcohol, cigarettes and mind-bending drugs.

So, to rely on the composers of the songs is as unsound as it always is, especially when their statements and interviews were renowned for being deliberately obscurist and diversionary; jokey and entertaining for sure, but you wouldn’t believe anything they say. Nor would you buy a used car from either of them, trust them an inch, or take them home to meet your parents.

Pappademas has, of course, rounded up a mass of material about the band, which is referenced at the back of the book as notes for each chapter (unfortunately, there’s no bibliography included here; no index either) but in the main it is music press stuff rather than books, musical criticism or cultural studies he draws on. Sometimes he seems out to prove that so-and-so, named in the song is based on this or that character, at other times he simply turns to storytelling, riffing on a phrase, image or idea that Fagen & Becker have thrown out somewhere along the way.

This is, of course, all fun stuff. It’s readable and entertaining, but I’m not sure it tells me much that I don’t know already about Steely Dan, having read the same music press stuff and several books about the band that are available. It certainly doesn’t really get to grips with their obsessiveness in the studio and later move towards a more relaxed touring model, nor many of their characters’ unpleasant inclinations towards underage sex, pimping, larceny and blackmail, or even the band’s ‘feud’ with The Eagles. Yes, these all get mentioned, but Pappademas neatly sidesteps round the issues, despite there being real questions to answer.

Many people regard later Steely Dan as soft rock affiliates of The Eagles, smooth operators writing muzak for FM radio (look it up kids) and it would be good to have explored the musical subversion that I believe lurks under the musical gloss. Although Pappademas states that ‘the solos are the most famously overdetermined parts of Steely Dan’s songs’, I’m not sure that

   they are the one moment in a Steely Dan song where the deeper
   feeling of the song is allowed to break free of its tightly composed
   and arranged frame, the one time a player is permitted to step
   outside the constraints of the track, breaking through the constraints
   of anonymized slickness this band used to such brilliant rhetorical
   effect.

I don’t think Steely Dan’s music is ‘anonymized slickness’, it has a depth that takes time to reveal it’s textures and intricacies; and to suggest that it’s only the solos which somehow break free, is a nonsense, as is talk about feelings. The last twenty years of the band live (although it’s now more of a Donald Fagen big band) show that the songs work as songs, however they are rearranged, extended, dissected or deconstructed. The fact that the live versions don’t try and reproduce the studio originals evidences the songs’ strengths, which often shone through on albums despite the (over-)production.

I’m not a musician, so I’m not looking for technical analysis of Steely Dan songs, but the whole New York and then LA and then NYC again context for this music – dirty city streets, drugs and violence vs. drugs, freeways and sunshine – seems as important as the characters in the songs. These are the worlds the band inhabited, often alien ones to us in the UK (though I’ve been to both), and also now part of recent history. I’d like to have seen more about musical influences, some close reading of lyrics, and some writing that situates the band critically, culturally and musically. Jazz was a thing, jazz-rock was a thing, singersongwriting was a thing, blues was a thing, so how did it all (and much else) combine to produce Steely Dan?

As I said earlier, this book is hugely entertaining and eminently readable. But it could have been better. Some photos would have been nice, as would more about personification and characterization, an exploration of the contrast between lyrical content and musical form (seedy vs polished), and a bit less authorial attitude and presence. The real problem I think is an aside on page 163, where Pappademas states that he is ‘pretty sure I could watch Donald and Walter snicker at rejected solos for at least three hours.’ That’s not natural! – the albums are where it’s at, the songs are what Steely Dan is about. The rest is all background noise.

 

 

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Rupert Loydell

 

 

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Fire in the Wire (tribute to Bob Marley)

Seam Stock

Tracklist:

Bob Marley and the Wailers – Keep on Moving
Augustus Pablo – Keep on Moving
Robert Marley and Beverly’s All Stars – Judge Not
Lone Ranger – Tribute to Bob Marley
The Soulettes – King Street
U-Roy – Natty Rebel
The Upsetters – Kaya Skank
Joe Higgs – I’m the Song My Enemies Sing
Winston ‘Pipe’ Mathews – Sun is Shining
Bob Marley and the Wailers – Trench Town Rock
Johnny Clarke – Time Will Tell
The Aggrovators – Drums of Africa
Dillinger – Check Sister Jane
Bob Marley and the Wailers – Slave Driver
Joe Gibbs and the Professionals – Roots Kunta Kintye
Keith Hudson – Satan Side
Rita Marley – Friends and Lovers
The Gaylettes – Son of a Preacherman
Marcia Griffiths – Feel Like Jumping
Damian Marley – Welcome to Jamrock
Bob Marley and the Wailers – Rebel Music (3 O’Clock Road Block)
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry – Exodus (7″ mix)
Cornell Campbell – I’m Still Waiting

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A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 Isao Hashimoto

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear). Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen.

Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

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Dreaming Desire

Life is a beautiful river
If you know to swim.

Life is a beautiful dream
If you know to weave

Life is a lived experience
If you care.

Every heartbeat
Speaks of the desire,

Paint the face of arrival
Where letters are written for the departure

The shadow is darker
Only when you are not cheerful.

Life is a welcoming opportunity
Let it find you at rest

Move the horizon closer
If your purple sun doesn’t set

The cascade of the moon
Is a storyteller

It helps in knowing when to tuck your work
And let desire dream for you.

Let the river of life flow
Time is a boat, even if you cannot swim.

 

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sushant thapa
Picture Nick Victor

 

 

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from Jim Henderson’s A SUFFOLK DIARY Friday, September 8th

I am not really in the mood to write this week but I suppose I should. Since my wife dropped what I can only call a bombshell on to me when she came home from her regular Friday night out with her friend Jan in Stowmarket it has been difficult to keep my mind on the government’s intention to lodge so-called illegal immigrants in the village hall, and on my GASSE (“Go Away! Stay Somewhere Else!”) responsibilities and duties. I have never met Jan, and I always understood her to be a former work colleague of my wife’s from when she worked for Axa in Ipswich. I say “she”, but my wife has informed me that Jan is a man! I consider myself quite modern in my approach to life, and have no objection (within reason) to my wife having male friends, but when she told me that Jan is, and I quote, “very special to her” I am sure you can imagine my feelings, and the kind of conversation we had afterwards. I do not intend to go into details here. Suffice it to say that this evening Jan has not gone to Stowmarket as usual on a Friday because she has been there since Saturday. I have told friends and neighbours that she has gone to stay with a friend who is poorly, and I am doing my best to act as if nothing untoward is going on. I think my thespian experience with The Polstead Players several years ago – my Jack Worthing in “The Importance of Being Earnest” is still talked about – is standing me in good stead.

But enough of that. On Sunday afternoon a gathering of the GASSE management team in the Shepherdson’s summerhouse, hot on the heels of last Friday’s rather acrimonious meeting, went off much more smoothly than I had anticipated. This was mainly owing to the fact that Michael Whittingham was unable to attend because he was laid low with a bout of food poisoning. That will teach him to have the seafood platter at The Blue Lion – he should know better. Bernie Shepherdson said he had tried to contact our MP but without success, which did not surprise any of us. (Update: as of this afternoon he still has not been able to get in touch with him. He is probably back in the Caribbean, playing golf.) There was some fairly lively discussion around the cost of the security fencing Bob Merchant has committed to purchasing, but since we are not likely to see it any time soon because of supply and delivery issues it was agreed to put our concerns on the back burner for the time being. But I think it is fair to say that Bob is not now regarded by some in quite the same light as of yore.

 

The high spot of the meeting, although I say so myself, was my suggestion that we tell the people in Whitehall that the village hall has Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) in the roof and is unsafe. There were some objections, the main one being that we would probably have to find a tame surveyor/engineer person to certify that there is RAAC in a Victorian village hall that does not have a flat roof. In my opinion, the twits in Whitehall are incompetent enough to fall for it. Also, I think it would mean two or more government departments communicating with one another, which is almost certain to cause them plenty of confusion. I think it is a far better idea than having t-shirts printed with some kind of slogan, which as far as I can see would achieve next to nothing, and also better than what someone else said about putting up big signs on all the roads into the village to the effect that we have nothing against foreigners in principle but feel very strongly that we rather hope they do not come here. I for one do not know how we would get all of that phrased succinctly enough to put on a sign by the side of the road for passing drivers to read, and actually there are only two roads into the village and we do not get a lot of through traffic. Anyhoo, my RAAC suggestion was not thrown out completely, and I have been delegated to see if I can find a surveyor or engineer or whatever we need willing to help us out by falsifying documents and potentially committing professional suicide.

I am going to bed now, although to be honest I am not sleeping very well since my wife dropped the Jan bomb. I have spoken with her a couple of times on the telephone but I do not know quite what is going to happen or, for that matter, how I feel about her thoughtless and hurtful duplicity, downright dishonesty and terrible treachery. But life goes on, and this weekend I shall be in the vegetable garden and the kitchen to take my mind off things. There is a hefty crop of apples (cookers) on and around (windfalls) the tree, and I am planning to get a load of them cooked and put in the freezer. Stewed apples and custard is my favourite afters on a chilly winter evening, and my wife makes a very good apple pie. Oh . . .      

 

 

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James Henderson

 

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‘A Pocket Guide to Dream Land’ from Dave Clarkson

 

Some words and images from Alan Dearling

A little bit of context…

Found sounds, field recordings, ambient music – mixing and sound sampling…these are all components in many musical psychogeography projects. That is the ‘study’ of the context of places and the meaning of spaces in everyday and community lives.  Something like that, anyway!

Indeed, ‘samples’, especially of bird songs, have featured in literally thousands of recordings throughout the history of recorded music. I’m no expert in this field, but Dave Clarkson is, and I saw him play live at Hope Chapel with one of his bands, Scissorgun in Hebden Bridge earlier in the year. As you can see in the photograph, Scissorgun like to  provide a sumptuous audio-visual feast.

At that event – a mix of electronic and World music – I bought Dave’s latest solo ‘Pocket Guide’ album. It’s been a nice addition to my own fairly massive musical collection. And, it has grown into becoming a musical ‘friend’ – a companion. Ethnomusicology – is the quasi-academic discipline –which explores cultures, people and places and the related musical traditions. I would liken these mixed media experiments to sound-scapes. Even the Rolling Stones contributed with their mobile recording studio being transported to North Africa – Morocco to be precise, to record the ‘Pipes of Pan at Jajouka’, organised by Brian Jones, way back in 1968 . Not an easy treat for the ear, being incredibly discordant! Here’s an example, ‘War Song’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwRS__2ddYc

However, It reminds me of a number of personal favourite albums and tracks from the likes of Virginia Astley who produced some rather wonderful pastoral masterpieces, based on many ‘field recordings’ of ‘found sounds’. Especially memorable are her ‘From Gardens where we feel secure’ and ‘Sanctus/Melt the Snow’.  In my university time, I fell in love with some early experimenters with field recordings, such as Beaver and Krause, particularly their use of Native American words and chants, mixed into electronica in the track ‘Legend Days are Over’ from 1972 on the ‘All Good Men’ album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arQ7uI-NcvQ

Likewise, the sounds of whales, dolphins and porpoises were introduced to pop and rock and folk  audiences by the likes of Judy Collins on: ‘Farewell to Tarwathie’ from ‘Whales and Nightingales’ (1970). Check it out. Still evocative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Bv19YVdZw

 I also discovered a 1994 album on the island of Lanzarote, ‘Musica de los elementos’ by Solar, which was used as background to some of the green architectural spaces and landscapes, including the underground volcanic lava caves at Jameos del Agua. The mix of natural landscape, art and music was created by the artist, Cesar Manrique. It’s a really well integrated mix of sounds and instrumentation. Here’s ‘Volcanoes’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5YhYUV-LW0

It’s something of a precursor to the techniques used by Dave Clarkson in his musical assemblages, ‘The Pocket Guides’.

More well-known, but no less experimental, David Byrne utilised ‘field recordings’ in many of his widely influential albums in the 1980s. These built on earlier African field recordings on classical labels such as Nonesuch, and the Congolese version of ‘Sanctus’ from the ‘Missa Luba’, was used to startling effect in the film, ‘If’,  by Lindsay Anderson in 1968. Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqwyiFDnhXo

The integration of recorded ‘sounds’ into song structures  is perhaps best known from some of the recordings performed by the Beatles when they worked with their producer, George Martin. For instance, ‘Being for the benefit of Mr Kite’ included fairground and carnival sounds, and ‘Yellow Submarine’ featured the sounds of ocean waves, clanking chains, hooters, bells and more. There is even a recording largely full of the sound effects from the track! Mucho weirdness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SyxDtLUsf8

Far simpler, but very effective, was the use by Pink Floyd of cash registers and jingling coins in their world-wide hit penned by Roger Waters, ‘Money’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_oyemr9n2A

Albums such as ‘My life in the Bush of Ghosts’ in 1981 with Brian Eno tiptoed on the fringes of the mainstream psyche. Then there are Eno’s own albums such as ‘Another Green World’ (1975), ‘Ambient 1: Music for Airports’ (1978) and ‘Ambient 4: On Land’ (1982). They were very much forms of ‘expressionism’ – sound paintings.  I also remember marvelling at David Byrne’s musical experiment wiring up the insides of the Roundhouse in London into a giant Sound Board Musical Instrument – via an old pump organ. ‘Playing the Building’ in 2009 was the result.  Weird and indeed wonderful! Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIIao7dJi2M

A Pocket Guide to Dream Land: Faded Fairgrounds and Coastal Ghost Towns of the British Isles – by Dave Clarkson

I think this is a real musical gemstone. I grew up in a faded seaside town, Bognor Regis, on the south coast of England. It was during the 1950s and into the ‘60s – and the sounds of fairground rides, bumper cars, amusement machines, steam-powered engines – these were the sonic tapestry of my early life. The album is a sound collage. Industrial clunkings, swirling ghosts that seem to have escaped from an early episode of Dr Who, and the ‘Illuminations’ – what Dave calls, “dirty electricity”. Repetitive stutterings.  Sirens.

From the very first sounds of the organ, its looping strains, the music becomes transformative. It captivates and nurtures the imagination, rather like an audio Stephen King horror. In ‘Sizzling Hot Dogs and Burnt Onions’, I can almost picture Jack from ‘The Shining’ careering in pursuit, axe in hand, a mad, sadistic smile curling on his lips!

As one humourist on-line has commented:

Otis Nugatory:  “Dis here, dis is sum vacky veirdness”.

For me, this ‘Dream Land’ is stuffed full of nostalgia. Half-glimpsed and heard sounds and images. Hauntings. Faded places and memories that are cracked, jaded, but still evocative. It’s also actually very musical too… at times a little reminiscent of Tomita and his Debussy interpretations in ‘Snowflakes are Dancing’. Just much darker and much more menacing. The track titles are well chosen too: ‘Memories and Loss’, ‘Penny Arcade in the Rain’ and ‘Organ Transplant’.

It’s an Audio Hallucination. Atmospheric.  Mesmeric. As one title suggests, it provides us with: ‘Tiny Lights (Magic in a Child’s Eyes)’. Bizarrely perhaps, I can actually imagine tracks like ‘Penny Arcade in the Rain’ working well on the dance floor in an EDM chill-out zone.

Here’s how the producers from Cavendish House Studios describe Dave Clarkson’s’s latest album: “Following previous albums exploring British coastal quicksands, shorelines, caves and forests, Dave Clarkson takes his recorder into faded seaside towns and fairgrounds (including Rhyl, New Brighton, Blackpool, Porthcawl, Northumberland, Margate and Hastings) and applies his production technique to the results. Some tracks are melodic and rhythmic while others are more desolate, capturing the unique fading atmosphere for the locations. Music was generated from the source sounds he recorded of penny falls, on-board rides, fairground organs, demolition noise, electrics and location ambience. One track (Spectral Pier Ballroom) is a spliced and stripped composite of three separate old musical recordings from his family archive, featuring his late father, grandmother and grandfather.”

The Pocket Guide to Dream Land is a strange manifestation. Half glimpsed, but leaving some kind of irradiation in the subconscious. Eerie and unsettling, psychedelic even, but essentially strange and spectral. I feel that I need to go and explore more of Dave Clarkson’s Pocket Guides.

From the Cavendish House press release again: “The final track, Organ Transplant, speaks to this reshaping – layers of organ, clockwork ticking, silent ambience fold into one another giving way to what sounds like the distant noise of construction and architectural remaking. A new idea of place, formed of nostalgia and progression, often awkwardly squeezed into an existing situation, montaging into a complex collage”.

https://cavendishhouse.bandcamp.com/album/a-pocket-guide-to-dream-land-faded-fairgrounds-and-coastal-ghost-towns-of-the-british-isles

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Death is festival

Death is a occasion like Dashain
To honour the life.
One expects nothing from death
And nothing is expected by death
Salvation, because of death
Is ultimate freedom, eternal peace.
Like, the sun is source of each energy
Death is inspiration for each creativity.
Death is not absence of life
Death is full of life.
Like a sculpture carved in a stone.
Death is not curse
It a boon.
Life must be grind and wait for years
To welcome its arrival
Like the flower welcomes springs.
Death is festival welcome it by
Grand celebration.

 

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©️©️©️©️ to
Kumar Ghimire
Biratnagar-12, Nepal
Art William Blake

 

Bio of the poet: Kumar Ghimire is a student of BBA in Lincoln University. He writes poems in Nepali and English. His poems have been published on various national and international platforms like Sahitya Post, Himalaya Diaries, Polish Magazine from Greece, spill words, synchronized chaos, writers club etc.

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ANTIMANIFEST() Interior Ministry

 

Alienism isn’t an idea, but the repudiation of an empty premise.

Alienism abjures the notion that the personal is political: “individual autonomy” is pure sarcasm.

“Collective consciousness” is TV ratings.

Alienism doesn’t seek the redistribution of meaning, but the permanent devolution of its “modes of production.”

The sole universal “positivism” is entropy.

Alienist poetics aren’t a subversion of language, but a “return” to the meaning of language as subversion.

Experimentation isn’t a search for new aesthetic forms to exploit, but for weapons against the old collusion of morality & profit.

Alienism declares that all experience flows from delusional technologies.

Failure isn’t inevitable to art, but a necessary step on the path of its disillusionment.

Alienism asserts that “politics” & “culture” aren’t benign outgrowths of a human cancer, but instruments of oppression in the hands of idiots.

Art is the negation of “humanity” by future emanations, a gravitational lens held up to the will-to-power forged in the crucible of its own redundancy.

Alienist theatre doesn’t seek to awaken the world to injustice & inequality, but to abolish such a world that needs to be awakened in the first place.

Power is only corrupt when it pretends to be something else.

Alienism isn’t a political movement that seeks to reform or improve the existing system: it is the antithesis of all “political systems.”

New possibilities for “understanding” & “expression” are the productive labour of alienation.

Alienism recognizes that the forces of oppression won’t give up power willingly: it does not seek consent.

 

Interior Ministry

April 2023

 

 

Find out more about the Alienist Manifesto and Interior Ministry at https://alienistmanifesto.wordpress.com/

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MARCUS AURELIUS WATER WORLD

Because the mania seems so universal
Does not declare it yet ‘reality’
Nor ‘progress’   –   there is no repose
But a craze for competitive ageing

No quarter for computer-baffled buffers
Clear them out for techno-coated bipeds
They’re on their screens till ten
Then pace the treadmills in their gym again

Meanwhile a sinister weather
Writhes in freezing fogs or wreaths
Brazen burning tribute
To monetarist myopics
Who train our young in a trade
Then make that trade redundant

Planet earth
Is another name for injustice   –
Once its systems balanced
The mud of man foresaw no counterweight

Lip service paid to ethical laws
Proved elastic then dissolved
So it is with moral law   –
Justice is liquidity

And we are all in liquidation

 

 

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Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

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Vapour Eyes

 

The planes with their vapour trails high in the sky
Spread their sweet droplets to make the clouds cry
Flames, fingers in the forest air, crackle, then fade
As bombers spread water, reflections of our age 

Ladies, dressed up, watch in this hall of spectacles
The players on the stage, mirror us as ghouls
My mind full; ash and dust in the air, I cannot see
Believe it or not, vapours are rippling through me 

The Hell Bus here*, USA camp at Burning Man flood
Engines hum comfort; as rain turns desert to mud
Merciless sun beats, eyes blurred, haze on horizon
My mouth is dry, I walk the fields, cross the rubicon 

Water everywhere on the land and the sea
But nothing to drink in this heat safe for me

 

©   Christopher 2023 

 

 

An aside:

*spellingmistakescostlives.com  Darren Cullen     

internationaltimes.it/a-tour-of-hell/

2nd September 2023 with info. & tour dates    

  

youtube.com/watch?v=IHULquhEes8

youtube.com/watch?v=GP4TSYvFR-M    

https://theworldtransformed.org/twt-22/programme/the-hell-bus/

               

 

TWT23 // Programme from 7 to 10 October 2023 in Liverpool 

https://theworldtransformed.org/twt23/programme/?view= 

 

 

.

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from Jim Henderson’s A SUFFOLK DIARY: Friday, September 1st

They say that a week is a long time in politics. I do not know who ‘they’ are, but I can tell them that a week can also feel like a long time here. This afternoon the Parish Clerk, John Garnham, had a telephone call from Whitehall intimating that the government’s plan to donate a load of illegal foreigners to the village and put them up in the village hall is likely to be back up and running as of next week. It seems that the Home Secretary, compassionate as ever, thinks sleeping on a bunk bed in a hall with a hundred or so other people also sleeping on bunk beds is absolutely fine and if they can handle being in a crowded boat then a village hall in Suffolk will be comparatively heavenly. Needless to say the news went round here like the proverbial forest fire, and Bernie Shepherdson convened an emergency meeting of GASSE (“Go Away! Stay Somewhere Else!”) which I have only just this moment arrived home from. I am writing this diary entry while I have a late night mug of cocoa to calm me down. It was not a very good meeting, to be honest, and cracks are beginning to show in what has been a pretty united front up to now.

Disturbingly, we have also had a taste of what it is like to have a load of unwanted guests in the village hall. It turned out that the reason Reg and Irene Farmer (whose daughter got married on Saturday) booked the hall for the entire Bank Holiday weekend was so that hordes of young people – wedding guests! – could take over the hall for the next two days and have a very noisy time of it, and as for what they got up to . . .  Well, Miss Tindle said she is still not sleeping properly after seeing some of the things she saw and hearing some of the things she heard. The music blared out and never seemed to stop, and the whole fiasco played havoc with the 24-hour security for the hall I am in charge of in my role as the GASSE Advanced Round-the-clock Security Executive (ARSE), and my sentries abandoned their posts and went home. On top of which, words fail me when it comes to describing the mess the partygoers made – inside the hall and outside. Mrs. Tatlock, who goes in a couple of times a week to sweep and dust and so on, refused to have anything to do with it. Long story short, John Garnham called in a professional cleaning company, and the costs will have to come out of local funds. Speaking of which, and this did not at all help the mood of the meeting, Bob Merchant let slip the cost of the security fencing he has ordered, the exact details of which he had somehow managed to keep to himself. We now know why.

All this coming at the same time as the news that the government might try to send the foreigners here after all meant people were not happy, and there was more grumbling and finger-pointing than constructive conversation. Michael Whittingham, who is more and more vocal at these meetings, and not always usefully if you want my opinion, said we should summon Reg Farmer, and I quote: “to stand trial and be held to account” and be made to pay for cleaning the hall, and then someone, I forget who, pointed out that cleaning the hall was Parish Council business and not GASSE business, but Michael ignored that and went on to say that Bob Merchant should pay for the security fencing himself since he had taken it upon himself to buy it, and anyway he is rich enough what with the prices he charges – (we all know about the argument the two had about the Whittingham conservatory) – to which Bob Merchant took unsurprising exception, and then we were completely sidetracked in a convoluted discussion about how GASSE was or was not acting on behalf of the Parish Council, and I lost track of who was saying what and why to who, and at one point John Garnham nipped to his cottage and came back with a copy of the Parish Council’s constitution, but the upshot was that not much was achieved as regards what to do about the foreigners, and everyone went home much later than usual in a very bad mood and I have no idea what is going to happen. I think there will be another meeting on Sunday afternoon, when hopefully people will have calmed down a bit.

Anyhoo, I will sign off now as my wife has just arrived home from her weekly jaunt into Stowmarket to have supper with her friend Jan. She has told me to put away my writing because she has something she wants to talk to me about, and by the look on her face I think I had best do as she says.

 

 

James Henderson

 

 

 

 

 

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resurrection song: A READING

 

a review of ‘Resurrection Song’ by George Wallace, Roadside Press, 2023

SO, ‘To make a start, out of particulars…[i]’ as in the roll of stanzas that is Paterson, where do I begin?

Where do I begin with a swirling glass of the blood of a poet – port that is – and this: George Wallace’s latest, Resurrection Song?

I start with outside in the evening. Golden hour they call it.

Who will we resurrect?

Whitman of course. Allen perhaps?

Death, here at my side, what songs shall we sing?

‘Poetry,’ she concedes. ‘Poetry – song of the twilight night. Song of the soul.’

The port like warm liquid iron. Yes, blood of a kind.

Here I am, Albion-side, sat under the shade of Forest of Dean pine & wise old oaks. In my hands these leaves stare at me having blown in Stateside.

Wallace pages, lines. Waves of lines. Just so. Like Whitman’s ‘inbound urge and urge of waves. / Seeking the shores forever.[ii]’ Lines and leaves that seek loving readers, listeners of life. Come! Hear this: a fine workman’s poetry as if through a shell, the sea, you, you wandering beachcombers of the universe.

So, to it then, Death.

We climb aboard his soft rolling thunder.

‘Let’s go,’ says my heart. Warmed with booze.

‘Freight Train’ is first. It rattles real. Who has slept in these boxcars before us? What readers will curl under this night of reading beside us?

George Wallace, in a world starved of compassion, asks for all, asks for every single one of us out here alone: ‘love me now, the weight of the world is upon us[iii]’ and calls out, reaching, to the place where ‘forgiveness {is} divine[iv]’.

Some destination, for sure.

I want in.

This is how we’ll roll, then. ‘What if the darkness ignored its own reflection[v]’ or, later (pg.216), he’ll ask ‘How to measure the true depth / of heaven on earth?[vi]

Pages that pause. Lines that deservingly demand big gulp of red. Demand reflection, as the poet’s scrawling stanzas sink thru the life of moment and meaning.

Fool. This is just the first page! Stop yr drunken lingering. You’re holding up the train.

On then.

Now we’re ‘Shovelling In The Ruins[vii]’, digging into psyche – like the barfly mind of Henry Chinaski sat perhaps at the edge of his lonely bed in the neon night, morose. I can see the arch of his sad back and, squinting, looking longingly into the darkness of an empty bottle. Wallace conjures easily such word thought images of mind. Can you hear them? Almost as Bukowski monologue. Short lines, outlaw poetics. Easy on the ear. Workmanlike. To the core. Honest.

‘For All We Know This Is Paradise[viii]’.

Ah, fuck you, George. With your lines of tormenting greatness.

I’m jealous. Of course, I want to scrawl like this.

Nothing to do but wash down the envy. Reach for the bottle again. Refill. Turn the page, another page another drink done.

If a writer wants to write like this then the writer must write, must read. Read, re-read and read. And yet, live. These poets, these next gen Beats: Wallace, Whitehead and Mimi German to name but three clothe us in new stanzas of raw finery. They’re the new grand hoodlums of song. We divine our own verse from lines and moments. Wear heavy coats made of rain and stars. As Beckett opened The End, ‘They clothed me and gave me money.[ix]’ In this case I fantasise clothes being the songs of these poets and the money, I contest, the strange currency of inspiration. Not money at all. Money is useless. Inspiration and truth the only currency of the real writers.

Death pulls her fine pocket watch, shows how moments slip by.

Ah, I’m sick of port. Drinking it only for nostalgia’s sake. Remember? Memories of staring out the window of first apartment, listening to ‘Trane (bless you in ‘Paradise Lost’, pg.193), Bird, George Harrison and the poor boy – Nick Drake. Back then, days of bachelorhood. Lightning of youth still in my veins.

I reach for uncomplicated beer. Flip the page. ‘Picasso’s Cup’ and the ‘terrible dusk of Montparnasse[x]’…

…and on, soul explorer. Each poem a mirror of the self of a kind. Wallace pours the silver, uses form to shape the frame. And then he turns on the light. ‘The Kiss’. The title shared a 1945 poem by Paul Eluard (‘Sweet delectable you float / Past your body’s boundaries / And you do not lose your way[xi]’). God, how I loved that poem back then. But here, see these new words of a man who has tasted more than one magical heaven kiss. Entrance us w/traces those touch echoes of Neruda, mysticism of Borges. Wallace’s boy painted in the fragile courage of Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel (Les quatre cents coups, 1959).

By the time you get to ‘A Wild Bird Caged In An Old Man’s Ribs’ (pg. 11), you realise there’s a long way to go. He can’t possibly keep this up. But, Sisyphus of stanzas, Wallace rolls that stone, leaving a trail of wonderful flowers across 244 white leaves.

You should drink to a great poem.

So I do.

Now drink drunk in the evening as it eases along the sky. My nurse partner, she’s working late and here I am getting buzzed to port & poetry as the bats begin their darting. As birds begin to die down, lie down. Except for the Martins who glide with just enough evening left.

‘In A Town Called Hope’ (pg.25) wouldn’t be out of place in a Bukowski collection. Nor would ‘Clumsy In Paradise’ (pg. 40), ‘Valentine Of The Untamed Heart’ (pg.217) or others here. But this ain’t derivative drivel. I’ve seen much of that. No, here’s someone who knows how to trim, edit, keep it tight. And I mean Mingus-tight; rhythm of the flow, the read, punctuated w/keen solos that really fly. A writer w/concluding lines that wrap up the whole song, not fading away, but echoing. As all good art and love should.

I see it. An array of word islands w/soft hills. Or, on some pages, hard-sided mountains of stanzas. An archipelago of hopes, images, disappointments… whole fields and valleys of verdant wandering, lakes of loneliness, rivers running alive bubbling fresh w/beautylines. Letters like blades of black grass, blades that coalesce into words, whole lines of sorry sorrow and fugitive anger. Streets, sidewalks and cities. Laments for an America as it could be should be. And still room for the twilight dying sun of American nostalgia or the dark that sometimes lives there[xii].

Jesus. ‘Now We Are Married’ (pg.50).

Another mirror: ‘The Poet’ (pg.71). Taste its knowing, fellow scrawlers of the heart.

Or page 88 and ‘Los Ebanos Crossing’, like a whole tanned Steinbeck novel distilled.

The cat out here with me sits prim in this Albion evening sun that is dying from my eyes. She slow blinks at me, content. And, w/drinkbuzz firing now, the world is fine. For a while. Pages roll, like the ‘composite dandelion that changes its face overnight[xiii]’. A multiplicity. 247 pages these outlaw hymns.

Transported into the insect heat of ‘Cuchitril’ (pg.104), I love this journey around one man’s prolific heart of mind. A mind that calls to Rimbaud.  California. Chet Baker and the ‘artless laughter[xiv]’ of first love. Zapatistas. A lament for Jack Hirschman (pg.29). Political pomes as they should be: like barricades, arresting bulwarks of all that despises our progressive arms that reach out to those who know injustice every day. And then Lorca. ‘Trane. Or – I smile – when was the last time you read a poem that referenced Pasolini? (pg.107).

And, of course, those touches of Whitman (‘All Rivers Sing The Same Song’, pg.45; ‘Holy Lands’, pg.48 or the title poem just a few). Whitman who sang. Sang of America and its real people. Where ‘loyalty counts[xv]’. Walt Whitman. Who gave America his own leaves, blown over war-ravaged states. Over bodies of uniformed skeletons of the revolution that lie there returning to earth. These States that now bow down to the war on its own people. The hollow, cold consumer war. This monetised cultural technodata-information image war. This is the beat for the Beats of today. It’s easy to rage. But to rage real, that’s something else. Wallace gets it.

Some pomes here open the sadness of the world. The writer taking us where dreams die. ‘Civilization Rise and Fall’ (with its meter like Ferlinghetti’s ‘Autobiography’ – maybe that’s just the way I read it – this pome a friend beside those friends that make up A Coney Island of the Mind), against which we might place other Ferlinghetti-like songs like ‘All The Animal Graces’ (pg.34), ‘Red Poppies And All The White Camomile (pg.138), ‘Life In The Cozy-Ozy’ (pg.200).

This collection is a credit to the next gen Beats, post-Beats, outlaw poets – whatever you gather them up by, and anyway, all too rarely recognised for their humanity. Too often the links back to Whitman overlooked. All that love. Here it is. Come taste it.

How fitting, how necessary that this poet in residence of the Walt Whitman Birthplace brings forth his new songs of America. His new volley of words, spat into the throng of Trumpland America.

America, what have you become? ‘Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb[xvi]Howled Allen.

Now another fantasy as I imagine Wallace reading his ‘Party With The Animals’ (pg. 168) in a half-filled club, this time his words recall Steven Jesse Bernstein. And then the ‘Blackberries’ (pg. 176) bring us right back around to WCW. Or, ‘Hard Apples’ (pg. 228) a perhaps song by Leonard Cohen left in Suzanne’s beside cabinet. These fantasies of welcome heroes that Wallace can convincingly possess w/words all his own.

I stand up. Stretch.

So much magnificence is intoxicating.

Only then do I notice that Death has gone. She finds poets too easy to cull. Too beautiful and lonely.

So, it’s just me and the night. And the words. This collection. Like when Wallace wrote ‘unlatch the barn door and set all the animals free…[xvii]

Evening has become night.

A night of stars.

They have come. I guess we knew they would.

But sometimes the doubt holds.

Anyway, they’re here. And in their bright dying and falling they sing ‘come take yr fill of these pages, this helping of soul food.’ And I say join us, dear readers, friends, join us in this harvest of images, truth & pain, loneliness & beauty. Scrape from the Resurrection Song compulsion and dreams, and glimpse with me these rages of heart. For, in doing so, together we might crown Wallace one of Whitman’s Wild Children[xviii].


[i]  Paterson by William Carlos Williams (from the Preface of the 1963 text; I am using Penguin’s 1983 paperback edition, pg.3)

[ii] ‘From Montauk Point’ (Sands at Seventy) by Walt Whitman from November Boughs (1888, but a fine and cheap 2014 Dover Thrift edition, pg.16)

[iii] ‘Freight Train’ by George Wallace from Resurrection Song (Roadside Press, 2023, pg.1)

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] ‘Heavenly Street Of Unreal Dreams’ by George Wallace from Resurrection Song (Roadside Press, 2023, pg.216)

[vii] Title of the second poem in the George’s collection Resurrection Song (Roadside Press, 2023, pg.2)

[viii] Title of the third poem in the George’s collection Resurrection Song (Roadside Press, 2023, pg.4)

[ix] ‘The End’ by Samuel Beckett from No’s Knife: collected shorter prose 1945-1966 (Calder & Boyers, 1967, pg.43)

[x] ‘Picasso’s Cup’ by George Wallace from Resurrection Song (Roadside Press, 2023, pg.5)

[xi] ‘The Kiss’ by Paul Eluard (translated from the French by Gilbert Bowen) from Selected Poems (John Calder, 1987, pg.115)

[xii] As in ‘Jimmy’ by George Wallace from Resurrection Song (Roadside Press, 2023, pg.27)

[xiii] Paterson by William Carlos Williams (1963 text, Penguin 1983 edition, pg.189)

[xiv] ‘The Ice Blue Root of Nothingness’ by George Wallace from Resurrection Song (Roadside Press, 2023, pg.124)

[xv] ‘Pete’ by George Wallace from Resurrection Song (Roadside Press, 2023, pg.24)

[xvi] ‘America’ by Allen Ginsberg from Howl (City Lights 1956, 50th edition – 1993, pg.39)

[xvii] From ‘Dance Like A Thief’ by George Wallace from Resurrection Song (Roadside Press, 2023, pg.152)

[xviii] Tiitle of Neeli Cherkovki’s introductory portrait of 12 Whitman-spirited poets (Allen Ginsberg, Harold Norse, John Wieners, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, William Everson, Gregory Corso, James Broughton, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bukowski, Michael McClure and Jack Micheline) (1988/99, Steerforth Press, 1999 edition)

 


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And Now the Good News

 

The self-elected committee is downgrading all threats. Economic collapse: unlikely. A new pandemic: one in several million. Nuclear annihilation: not the slightest chance. Climate catastrophe: oh, come on. I’m not convinced, but part of me’s reassured: the part that still waits for Santa on Christmas Eve, that still puts my trust in railway timetables, and is tempted to pull all my teeth out and leave them under the pillow for the guarantee of a few pounds in the morning. The committee asserts that it was elected, and that I voted for them, and for proof they send me a scan of my name crossed off a list. I can tell by the other names that it’s actually my old school register, but they used to use the hall as a polling station, so it’s near as dammit to democracy and, besides, if a routine check for absenteeism can’t self-identify as a fair basis for government, just how far have we come in the twenty-first century? The Committee, who now insist on a capital C, is downgrading the century to the fourteenth. There’s a plague coming, possibly the end of the world. We’d better just do what we’re told.

 

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Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor

 

 

 

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We Can Figure Out The Rest From Here

even though the sun doesn’t restore order
and nothing tastes like what it says it is
i like it anyway
that’s how i was explaining a joy
that wiffles across the rampant scenery
what i hope you find worthwhile to discern
sometime later i lie back in the stream
washing out my ears
disguising myself as a little waterfall

skipping again for now
the discussion whether we are all fruits
of an endless style
and whether pondgrasses
appalling in their vertiginous stillness
wait for the shadow of the pendulum to eclipse
the little strokes of the eye that reads them
let’s refuse for once the easy triumph
of registering and treat the fruit aisle
like a fucking buffet let’s treat everything
as what it offers to be
looting our living like some troubadours
concluding about poetry
in a controversy between geese
on the winter pond behind the fine arts building

so prophetic fires arrive
on a landscape you can picture
straining the gape of a world
that is offering all the time to be paradise
the sun with increasing frequency
walks over us again
luffing cedars overlook
the crumpled sea
the human being generally
helps falls runs
out of breath refuges
in emphasis
sadness blowing under its eyelids
unaware that real living actual lions
have deserted the savannah exhibit
and now parade in radiant consequence
toward the supermarket
everyone knows they’ll open
the butcher’s frostsweating
vitrines like a delorean

 

 

Joshua Krugman
Art: Rupert Loydell
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Larry Can Laugh: Bricolage

Michael Garcia and Tony Flynn have been working together as a duo for a few years now. They first came to public attention (under the name LogaRhythm) in 2021, when their music featured on Corey Mwamba’s late-night Radio 3 show, Freeness. Prior to that, both of them had been involved in the free improvisation scene, Michael in London, Tony, in London and the North of England.

Their early work was more pitch-based, Garcia playing marimba and Flynn, piano. Since then, there seems to have been a definite shift in their philosophy, which perhaps they wanted to signal by changing their name to Larry Can Laugh. These days, though marimba and keyboard still feature, Garcia is more likely to be heard playing accordion and Flynn, electronics. Accordion chords and clusters and electronic sounds morph into each other (sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which), the whole sometimes clarifying into drones and snatches of sometimes folk-like melody. The result is an engaging sound, a music that has more edge and energy than this description might suggest. Garcia cites influences as diverse as bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi and composer Iannis Xenakis. Flynn, John Cage and Cecil Taylor. Whatever their influences, the result is a distinctive sound which avoids a number of clichés it could easily slip into. Free improvised music is often seen as something of a Marmite genre, but Larry Can Laugh might well come as a pleasant surprise to many people who think they hate it.

I listened to this, their new album Bricolage (their first as Larry Can Laugh) in one go. It was hard not to. It’s not one of those albums made up of, say, three really good tracks padded out with a few more that just ‘cross the line’: all ten are an engaging listen. Two, though, do stand out: Far From the Centre with its intriguing sound-world and novel melodic ideas and Chrome Yellow, the central – and longest – track, with its rich drone-sounds and which features Garcia on both marimba and accordion. Colours often pop up in the track titles: Magenta, Red Iron and, playfully, Burnt Umbrella. I was reminded by this of Derek Jarman, who, of course, lived at Dungeness, not far south of Larry Can Laugh’s base in The Warren, Kent. It must be something about the light down there.

 

 

 

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Dominic Rivron

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Signs

 

  1. the way people walk up to a house they’ve never been in before, slowly, as if afraid of the stories it contains.
  2. the shy Madonnas standing at their windows speaking eloquent words of water and tears.
  3. the beat of the heart the fading rasp of the breath the beat of the heart.
  4. sometimes a certain slant of light enters the amplified realms of night.
  5. those who do not see visions in the city’s apoplectic estrangement.
  6. those who see visions in the city’s apoplectic estrangement.
  7. the way our shadows walk quicker than us, outpacing us.
  8. the chamaleucium’s strident bending to the sun’s billow.
  9. the days without pain like the last scattered rice grains.
  10. similes that surprise like dances on the Titanic.
  11. a desert wind and your hand convulsing.
  12. melons, tomatoes, corn, raging at noon.
  13. talking like trombones in the deserts.
  14. the Trinity of the Christians.
  15. the Trinity of the Bomb.
  16. people at parties.
  17. you.
  18. me.
  19. us.

from these signs the deus absconditus may be inferred.

 

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Robert Mapson

 

 

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Twist


Twist of lime squeezed
down into fizz like family
new pool’s edge language
light and sweet and 
golden small with feathered
sense of sight the action
planted in the carapace 
the leisure fall tones
dry with finished leaves
to show bare branches
drawn across the seeds
collated slim to meaning
warm sight first blond
where silver lives now
lack of paucity of haste
of sequins sprawled across
the empty

 

 

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Sheila E Murphy

 

 

 

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Satellites

Footsteps on gravel pineau on arrival
giant sky western rolled plateau
windmill horizon early fields await
movement deck the hall in blue
square atmosphere some planes trail
some don’t it’s not the noise of a train
but a baling machine Armagnac shimmer
grips the glass nostalgic curiosities in city
centres spotting the movement in lines as
if on an autoroute gate leaning morning
light as good as it appears on film

 

 

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Andrew Taylor

 

 

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MYSTICAL NATURE

The dawn is joyful,
Mystic beauty is hidden in the hands of Mother Nature.
The morning sun gives us energy for a new world.
The lullaby of chirping birds soothes our ears.
River water quenches the pain of our thirst.
Juicy fruits give us energy to fight.
Every raindrop gives birth to new life.
Charismatic rainbow catches our living eyes,
And paint our lips.
The afternoon shines with an azure sky,
Which strengthens us to fight in life’s battle.
The forest organize fair of colors,
The smell of wild flowers cleanses our body.
Nature is a blessing from heaven above.
The smell of the sea and the music of the waves invigorate our soul. Dewdrops glisten on a winter morning.
The night sky kissed the starry sky. We are just tiny specks in this universe,
Bounty nature is a healthy man host pub.

 

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Deepika Singh

 

Short Bio-
Deepika Singh from Margherita Assam India, qualification- Master of Arts, B.Ed, teacher by profession. Her writings reflect her personal observations of day to day life. She started her writing journey from the year 2011.She believes that the right words can change our society. Some of her poems got featured in The Poet Magazine Womensweb, Changed Forever Anthology, Atunis galaxy poetry, Poetryzine Magazine, Archer magazine, Too Well Away Literary Journal,Silk Road International Poetry Festival, The Mediterranean Waves Anthology etc. Also some of her poems got translated in Spanish, Chinese and Serbian language.

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Guitar Summit! Cian Nugent and Joe Hollick

Alan Dearling witnesses two guitar maestros in formidable action

Cian Nugent informed the crowd that, “Joe has never played these songs before.” Indeed, I was at the gig early and witnessed Cian and Joe heading off to a room to ‘rehearse’ as the audience trooped in.  A new musical alliance. Joe told me that Cian’s name is pronounced ‘Kee-Ann’, which I didn’t know!

It proved to be something of an intimate, international Guitar Summit upstairs at the Golden Lion in Todmorden. The evening opened with Joe Hollick (from Wolf People) caressing his acoustic guitar into some sublime sonic moments. Joe presented 30 minutes of gentle, even at times whimsical instrumental guitar sounds, full of under-tows of bass notes and unusual guitar tunings. His recent solo album, ‘Restless Ness’ rapidly sold out. Its eclectic sounds are a mix of ‘60s folk-styles from the likes of Davey Graham/John Renbourn, Mali blues from Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder, and later with Cian, evocations of the improvisational jamming of Jerry Garcia and the eternal, Grateful Dead.

Of Joe’s recordings with Dave Cambridge (Cardinal Fuzz):  “…each of the meticulous notes Joe plays has a feeling of wide open space and exploration – like the flow of a gentle stream as it makes its way up to a waterflow whereupon the echoing growl and twang brings forth a sublime dissonance.”

And, I can’t add much to the review in ‘The Ominous Drone’: “Excellent acoustic guitar playing… I’m not sure how the labels let this one get out with such a limited pressing because it needs to be in more hands. It’s that good. This record will take you to other places.”

‘Madrigal Wagon’ (2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T38l9BfSyok

I have previously really enjoyed the cosmic psychedelia of Wolf People. Joe’s solo excursions are different, but equally innovative. Circular, repetitive riffing. Light, tinklings in the stratosphere…

https://jjhollick.bandcamp.com/album/rest-lessness

Then, after a short interval, Joe returned to the stage to play with Cian Nugent from Ireland. A formidable guitar ensemble – electric and acoustic full of soaring raga-like harmonics. The set included long improvisations around Cian’s songs: ‘High up airplane’ and ‘Pass the Time Away’. A bit special, methinks.

From Wikipedia:

“Cian is an Irish guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and producer. He has played both as a solo artist and with the backing band The Cosmos as Cian Nugent & The Cosmos. He has also collaborated with musicians Steven Gunn, Conor O’Brien and Aoife Nessa Frances. He has released albums on the labels Woodsist, Matador, and VHF. His music has been described by Kitty Empire in The Observer as ‘…pushing at the seam where psychedelia, country and the Takoma school of folk ragas meet.’ ”

Whether one calls the guitar wrangling interplay between Cain and Joe, ‘improvisations’, ‘extemporisations’ – it was ‘jamming’ and ‘jamming good’. With an added measure of magic Irish Blarney dust wafting through the air. Complementing each other, challenging each other, Cian’s songs developed an entirely different personality from solo versions.

Here’s my friend, Paul Thorpe’s camera video from Cian and Joe inter-playing together on ‘High up airplane’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnHHg_z8b7w

In 2020, Cian released the live album ‘Live from Cafe Oto’ in London. It was distributed  through Rough Trade Publishing. And a collaboration with Conor O’Brien (from The Villagers), ‘Do I Care’ is featured on the compilation album ‘In The Echo: Field Recordings from Earlsfort Terrace’, released in September 2021 by Ergodos Records.

‘High up airplane’ (2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGqIGBGxMWw

Cian, as represented on-line, comes over as melodic, vaguely Byrdsy. Live with Joe it was altogether a more explosive, incendiary mix! A real dynamic, musical experience.

Cian Nugent ‘Pass The Time Away’/ ‘How The Time Passes’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3xSPddao6U

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From the Tower

 

Writing down words, the paper stippled with snow. An ice sky, grey light wrapped into the trees. I am not concerned with communication anymore, the first step towards leaving town, emerging from the streetlights’ circles, the tense syncopation of tires and voices, headless sounds into the night, swooping with the day’s noise. It doesn’t make any difference anymore if someone walks by the tower, turns around, strains to see if the window is dark or if the lamp is on. The light isn’t on anymore, nothing is on anymore, the window is illuminated from without, a source similar to the sun or moon or imagination’s surly beams. Under the woodshed, a possum. Under the back shed, mice. Under the house, snakes and bees. Under the brush pile, maybe rabbits, more likely a fox or groundhog. Nothing is certain, the light is pearlescent. I am writing down words, stippled with snow, an expression of absorption. The material description is clearer. Words on paper, without exposure to the outside. Outside this tower. Where the windows lead if one were to jump quickly, catch the breeze, lift the clouds up higher and higher. An airplane passes. A space station. A craft from another galaxy. If pearls were uncovered here, they would be grey, their protecting shells undiscovered. A phenomenon of the imagination, likely refuted by the majority of the population. An undercover agent from downtown would not accept that proposition. Carve out an empire of words, superfluous when taxes rise and the wars multiple. The political scene is omnipresent, false hope, false glory, the credo of the victorious messiah, one who never was killed, never died, never performed out of body feats.

 

From the tower I can see beyond the immediate hayfield. A line of trees, the impression of a former stream. I know a rusted barbwire fence runs through the backside of the field. Chokecherry, sumac, honeysuckle, swamp willow, primrose, pokeberry, New England aster. Crossing the field is quick. The fox does it early in the day. No one is watching then, everyone is in the shower or the kitchen, listening to the radio, the TV, the computer. A nimble rough-coated animal, high on his feet. A darker companion, perhaps last season’s kit. I haven’t seen them since then. Then? I’m falling into those references without anchor. That’s too bad. No one can follow that, those, this, these, the politicians say. And the agents from downtown who want to measure the back plot, tax the front more, put in surveyor’s tags so the toads will know the limits, the snakes can turn around before, and we can all hover with the possum until the woodshed until the snow stops, the storms pass, the sun cools down. Blinking away former realities; existence remains on the frontline. Maybe the snowplow will straighten the street, redefine the terrain, cut a channel for the run-off. Or someone will boldly close this tower, shut the windows again, turn off the power, remove the rug, the table, the desk. At that point, maybe I will have snow words, there won’t be any snow-stippled words because there won’t be any paper. Requisitioned by the agents from downtown. The mayor’s committee on unproductive realities. The streetlamp tenders. No gas, no electricity. Solar. Warm and steady. Like the sun, or like our conception of the sun. Whose? Anyone who doesn’t dwell on the subject, brood on the fleeting nature of whatever is conceived, discovered, invented or created. With or without creator. We aren’t very strong, that’s clear. I’ll put some water on for tea. That won’t stop the imagination, though, it’s running away again, lost on a limb overhanging the ravine again. It’s green there and warm, winter has dissolved, but summer never and the soon returning autumn recalls spring and the first shoots under the ice. I’m still in the tower. The sky is pearlescent. Brooding. With the birds. The morning’s seeds, black on brown and white, smooth and cool to the beak. Someone scratched in the pine needles, indentations and small piles of dark bronze needles. A hollow space for the beak, for the claws. The woodpeckers are still in the pines. I haven’t seen them for days. Mysterious comings and goings while I pour tea, write words with a snowing pen, a white bleached plume of the sky that I can barely control. Electrify your house, they say. Put up solar panels, they say, you have so much light coming in from the field, they say. And I remain without disturbing the bees under the house or the possum under the woodshed, everyone is still sleeping, it isn’t that warm out, it isn’t spring yet, there’s a storm working its way up the coast now and the depth of the snow and the height of the waves and the burning, bewitching winds are moving this way. I’ll light the lamp again, set out the candles, move some wood inside, taking care not to uncover the hollow space, not to let the air in, the snow in, the wind whistle against the still sleeping grey possum.

 

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Andrea Moorhead

 

 

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Thomas Smith (1699/1700–1744), his Family and an Unidentified Attendant

Father had us sit for our portraits with Mr West, the Irish artist. The result is so unbelievably horrid I hardly know how to describe it. Joseph’s head is quite enormous compared to his body, and his legs so short and spindly you’d think he was deformed. The new baby, who mother is holding, is miniscule and looks more like a miniature adult than a three-month old child. She could just as well be one of my dolls. I’m an absolute fright, despite my gorgeous dress. I’ve just turned fourteen but all the youthfulness has fled from my face, and my hand is so tiny the cup I’m holding looks like a thimble. There’s only one figure in the painting who’s normally proportioned and that’s our black house boy William, who’s laughing as though he can’t quite believe how ridiculous we all look. Is this how we’ll be remembered?  I fear there was some dispute over fees, and this is Mr West’s manner of taking revenge.

 

 

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Simon Collings
Painting Robert West (d. Dublin 1770)

 

 

 

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The silent sonata

 

In a crowded café near Paddington Green,
she sits segregated; phagocytosed by delirium.

Memories trump reality:
she’s back in the conservatoire.

Finger-taps on sebaceous-smeared Formica,
replace painfully acquired arpeggi on her Steinway keyboard.

From her repertoire, she solos a Liszt sonata
that only she and I hear.

 

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Mark Greener
Painting: Sainz y Saiz

 

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a poetic love affair in London

somewhere over the Rimbaud
Verlaine sighs
pistol in his hand
confusion in his eyes

somewhere over the Rimbaud
Verlaine shoots his lover
yet he only wounds him
so there’s no bloody murder

les poetes maudits
simplement fait querelle
Verlaine goes to prison
Rimbaud’s saison is hell

somewhere over the rainbow
skies are blue
but the London dreams they dreamed
never did come true 

 

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Jeff Cloves   2023

Pic: Claire Palmer    

I’ve pinched some lines from ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’
(music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Yip Harburg)
sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, 1939)

Verlaine and Rimbaud lived in Great College Street 
(now Royal College Street), Camden Town May–July 1873

 

 

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Broadsheet Sky

Your own weather
Has its own sky of personhood.

Your weather of personhood is read
By every strange eye who wants to be familiar.

You become a broadsheet sky
With weather clouds of moods
Being exchanged and read.

We can have a soulful search
In awakening to know a fellow being.

A kind poem if mistaken
Can tell you to walk a few steps alone.

Gazing at the sky to aim high
As if a message will rain
Provides consolation,
A slight attire of confidence too.

What is a meaning if you don’t care?
Happiness to be multiplied
Seeks removal of weak gestures.

A broadsheet sky of smiles
Re-writes the tabloid sky of ashes.

Sky is just an outlook
And your earthly touch has healing powers.

Happiness and satisfaction for long
Is in calling happiness an
Optimistic choir of time.

 

 

Copyright Sushant Thapa
Picture by Nick Victor

 

 

 

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‘Human Augmentation’ Warfare of the Immediate Future?

 

German and UK Government’s Collaborating on Military
Exoskeletons and Genetic Engineering

We have to have the courage to face our enemies. I think most readers of this article will already know that the psychotic element of the human race which has succeeded in establishing itself at the top of end of the control pyramid, will stop at nothing to get its way.

That ‘way’ is to destroy the soul of humanity and bulldoze all but the most elementary expressions of nature.

What I have to report today escaped my attention until very recently, but unfortunately fits the above description all too well.

On 13 May 2021 the Defence and Armed Forces Ministry (MOD) of the UK government published a document entitled ‘Human Augmentation – the Dawn of a New Paradigm’.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/human-augmentation-the-dawn-of-a-new-paradigm   (updated version)
That title alone sent a shiver down my spine; but that shiver extended upon reading the first paragraph.

“The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre worked in partnership with the German Bundeswehr Office for Defence Planning to understand the future implications of human augmentation, setting the foundation for more detailed Defence research and development”.

Why is it that a link-up between the German Bundeswehr and the British Ministry of Defence sent an extended shiver through my body?

Next we learn that “The project incorporates research from German, Swedish, Finnish and UK Defence specialists to understand how human augmentation emerging technologies could affect the future of society, security and Defence.”

Well, well, are we supposed to believe that these ‘defence specialists’ are coming together to make a detached survey of the state of the art developments of human beings re-engineered to become instant battlefield weapons?

Not likely! This is a description of a collaboration designed to work-out the optimum potential of such cyborgian kamikaze bipedals, to be at the cutting edge of offensive military hardware in the very near future.

We read on “Human augmentation technologies provide a broad sense of opportunities for to day and in the future. These are mature technologies that could be integrated today with manageable policy considerations, such as personalised nutrition, wearables and exoskeletons. “

What in God’s name are they talking about? Are readers of this UK government document supposed to know what ‘personal nutrition’, ‘wearables’ and ‘exoskeletons’ actually are? Bear in mind that this was written in the middle of the great Covid hoax. Doesn’t it ring of something equally diabolical?

But wait, it gets worse “There are other technologies in the future with promises of bigger potential such as genetic engineering and brain computer interfaces.”
OK, thanks. Now you have let us into an uncloaked description of what’s to come in a language most can understand. The weaponised corporals in the front line of the war with…China?..Russia? will be computer programmed Transhumans – the jewel in the crown of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset, Fourth Industrial Revolution. We might have guessed.

But hey, just take a look at the next revelation “The ethical, moral and legal implications of human augmentation are complex and hard to foresee and regular engagement with these issues must be thoroughly considered.”

Hard to foresee? Only if you are a deeply psychotic, mind-blind and insentient demon disguised as a human being.

The document ends with the following statement “Human augmentation could signal the coming of a new era of strategic advantage with possible implications across the force development spectrum.”

“A new era of strategic advantage with ‘possible implications’ across the force development spectrum”. Now the shiver has reached my heart, but I’m not letting it dwell there for more than a couple of seconds. In fact I’m outraged by the utter obscenity of all these statements.

What kind of ‘strategic advantage’ are these technocrats talking about? What kind of ‘possible implications’ for the ‘force development spectrum’? Possible implications?

“Hi Sam, this is Houston Automated Army Digital Defence Centre, here’s your instructions: plug-in corporal Jones and line him up with target 371. Make sure his wearables are set on invisible mode and that he is equipped with ‘insecto-synth-nutrit’ augmentation capsules. We’ll be steering him from here. But you guys need to be alert to any retaliation within the war theater.”

It is highly instructive that in the ‘related content’ section at the end of the MOD document are the following links:

Financing the 2030 Agenda through Covid-19 and beyond

Agenda 2030: delivering the global goals

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Investing in a Better World: Results of UK Survey on Financing SDG’s (Sustainable Development Goals).

This is an in-your-face head’s-up for anyone still failing to understand ‘the programme’ being driven forward by the darkly possessed globalist cabal. A programme designed to exterminate warm hearted, living breathing human beings like you and me and replace us with a mix of mind controlled/hypnotised slaves and digitally programmed robotic devices that ape elementary human behaviour patterns.

The authors of this report should already be in the dock for advancing the implementation of such egregious crimes against humanity. This is ice cold techno-military gamesmanship portrayed as a shared and even ‘ethical’ scientific overview of the latest developments in high-tech sub human battlefield deployments – and its all part of Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development and the Great Reset.

One must not underestimate the lengths this evil cohort will go to achieve its ambitions. It will ‘voluntarily’ stop at nothing. So it must be stopped by us.

If we want the light of day to shine on future generations – we must resolutely commit to putting our best energies into making sure we win this war; empowering our light to vanquish the darkness.

Warriors of the Golden Dawn – step forward!

 

Julian Rose

Julian is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, a writer, broadcaster and international activist. He is author of ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind’ ‘In Defence of Life’ and ‘Creative Solutions to a World in Crisis’. For more information see his website www.julianrose.info

 

 

 

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Barbenheimer: Memes on the Opening of Barbie and Oppenheimer on the Same Day

It’s “highly regrettable” that the U.S.-based account for the film engaged with the “Barbenheimer” movement in an inappropriate manner, Warner Bros. Japan LLC said in a statement posted on the official Japanese account for Barbie.
–Time magazine

In Barbie’s white, cat-eyed sunglasses—roiling, rolling atomic fire.

*
Her bodacious blond hair gushing up into a mushroom cloud, Barbie confesses: This Ken is a stylist.

*

A cuddly Ken crows: I am become Ken, Destroyer of Beach.

*

In their sleek, pink convertible, Barbie and Ken cruise the desert, a perfectly pink mushroom cloud blossoming behind them.

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Cowgirl Barbie in pink jumpsuit shakes hands with J. Robert Oppenheimer, his civilian-military-scientist-professorial suit aflame.

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Sporting a knowing smile, Oppie glows, a massive mushroom cloud ascending a mountain range behind him, while an offscreen Barbie coos: Come on Bobby, let’s go party.

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A hunky Oppenheimer with a long-legged Barbie perched on his shoulder, the firestorm raging behind them not daring to ignite the oh-so-polite palm trees.

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Two torn half-faces fitted together: in Barbie’s sunglass lens, Trinity simmers; in J. Robert’s lens, a slinky-pink highway unwinds.

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Take the bathroom tissue test: Pink or black? Are you Barbie or Oppenheimer toilet paper?
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Half black-hatted, half-white hatted, this two-faced creature states: I am become Barbie, Destroyer of Worlds.

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Blindingly blonde Barbie, wildly waving her white hat while astride that nasty, naughty infernal gadget.

*

O look and see what Little Boy did to Barbie Land. All the dreamy Dreamhouses—Hiroshimaed. Chorus the Kens and Barbies: The horror! The horror!

 

 

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John Bradley

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THE HERE AND NOW

On the go? Yeah! Always!
So – back to the here and now:
We’ve highlighted the pressure right?
Re-tune your no-holds spin-off drama
Get off my toe you idiot!
We were a couple of stylish geezers
Skirt-crazy thrill-seekers melting hearts
Chasing down answers and – oh yeah!
Looking for alternative objects, or
Nubiles on the razzle – phwoah!

Time to splash the cash right?
Thought you’d never ask! Doncha
Love that Pina colada chill-out experience?
Ha! Ha! So what’s going on?
I’m good! You? Laugh or cry?
Smarten up your day no visible lines
Here’s the latest pop-up production sort of
Orbiting space junk unintentionally weird
A big bold move – yet it’s more of the same
Oohs and aahs, hugs and tears, flounces – crikey!

Bring it on! Cummin’ up! Voila! Tres bien!
It’s a people thing – how about that?
Well that’s when the mystery magic happens
And it’s spine-tingling stuff!
You gotta feel it to believe it right?
Quite a pivotal moment – yeah well
Hi there! Cheesy grin – thanks very much!
It’s a day of mixed emotions almost amusing
Let’s take a look: lot of nerves jangling here
Very tense situation – what more do we know?

A space storm warning from left-field
I know this is a big ask just bring yourself to
Tell a surprising and untold story or whatever
Tempting? Just talk us through on stilts.
That was quite bizarre but we are where we are, right?
If you squint you can see from those crazy pictures
Roots branches knockout shapes and shadows
Night has fallen so just go with the flow…
No let-up in pressure on those regular updates
Nu disco invisible mending and a cuddly toy

It’s the way of the world doncha know
Technicolour Vista Vision opens every day
Human drama dodgy cigs shocking blue films
To flip your vibe; more sizzle makes it easy!
Hurry! Hurry! Where’s the pause button?
See you in court ducky – oh right ok ok ok
This demands a moment of celebration an
Up-to-the-minute snappy-clappy chat
Well I said to them I said it’s what we do!
That’s it! Back to you!

 

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A C Evans

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That Scary Feeling Of Being A Freed Baloon

Yeah, the baloon I let loose
has become a lone-star, recluse,
floating, art, two-way sadness
and a stoic in search

for my fingers still curled,
but when a breeze brings it
down to the tree we named a name
now unremembered in our childhood,
yeah, freedom has made it ascetic

as if the fright of its solo flight
has filled an immortal but wrong soul
into its rubber skin. At night it

is my moon, the south side of it,
asking ‘why’. “I was scared too.”
I murmur. Crickets form a vast
meadow around us.

 

 

Kushal Poddar
Painting Nick Victor

 

Kushal Poddar lives in Kolkata, India
amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
 Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/ 
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
 
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It Rains Somewhere….

Sky reminisces. Our bygone pillow fight
reoccurs out of blue. The flight
of the clouds’ feathers, northbound,
jets in time-lapse over my head.

The excitement of the game,
guilt and shame, panting, I feel again.
I murmur, “Forgiveness, I beg,
for this mess.” My mother
opens up like a door. I see the sky
arround her heart. She has something
more pressing in her mind, and so she
doesn’t react. I cannot remember
my playmate. It is the sky, always,
that blinds me as I scatter in her bosom.

 

 

 

 

Kushal Poddar
Photo Nick Victor

 

 
 
 
 
 
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Strangely Imbalanced


Sonic Life: A Memoir, Thurston Moore (Faber, 26.10.23)

‘When I delivered my manuscript, I wrote too much. And I had so much downtime during the pandemic and I was really concerned about having enough content, so I just wrote everything. And then the editors were like, “It’s 10 times too long.” So all of last year was just editing it down, scissoring and shearing. I give histories of just about every single band that we ever intersected with, and try to talk about anything except for myself.’
     – Thurston Moore, in ‘Thurston Moore and Bush Tetras Look Back on the No Wave Scene’,    
         Interview magazine, August 11, 2023

As one of the co-founders/guitarists/vocalists in Sonic Youth (as well as many other bands/collaborations, alongside his work in writing and publishing), Thurston has dedicated himself to an influential range of independent and experimental practices since the late 1970s. Sonic Life is a hefty 470-page memoir which is neatly summed up in the quote above – it’s as much about Thurston’s engagement with other music as it is with his own, and with that central focus on music throughout the book, it shies away from deep personal or psychological reflections about himself, those close to him, and the music business. It’s a greatly enjoyable read, albeit one where I increasingly felt that there was more to be said about Thurston Moore, and indeed Sonic Youth.

My own connection with Sonic Youth started with a free NME 7” single, which included a blistering live version of ‘White Kross’, a song which would soon appear on their album Sister (1987). A few weeks later, I caught the band live in a Glasgow nightclub (supported by fIREHOSE, a formidable double-bill). By that point I was smitten – for me, their run of albums from EVOL (1986) to Dirty (1992) is astonishing, with lots of remarkable work since then in various contexts inside and outside of Sonic Youth.

The first decade of Sonic Youth’s existence coincided with many shifts in rock culture, and they were clearly a key part of many of those histories. However, apart from an awareness of Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo’s work in Glenn Branca’s massed electric guitar ensemble in the early 80s, I was unaware of the band’s or band members’ activities prior to 1985 – this book certainly provides much detail from that period.

With a heavy focus on the late 70s to end of the 80s, the book then moves at a faster clip through to the end of the band in 2011. There’s no question that what it offers from the 70s and 80s is musically rich and illuminating, but the relative lack of focus on the 90s and beyond, and with no focus on Thurston’s life and work after Sonic Youth, makes the book feel strangely imbalanced.

By page 100, it’s 1979, and Thurston’s deeply engaged with punk, post-punk and no wave in New York City, while starting to play in his first bands. By page 200, it’s 1981, and Sonic Youth are a trio, with Thurston, bassist Kim Gordon and guitarist Lee Renaldo. By page 300, it’s 1985, Bad Moon Rising is about to be released and drummer Steve Shelley’s about to join the band. By page 400, it’s 1992/3, and Sonic Youth are touring internationally ‘nearly nonstop’ for nine months. 70 pages later and the band (and book) ends in 2011.

That’s a painfully reductive summary of the book’s timeline, and many interesting stories and developments are woven throughout, but I hope it gives a sense of its structure. Thurston was present at so many gigs (not to mention performances, readings and galleries) in NYC from the late 70s onwards, with a national and international engagement with bands, fanzines, venues, record stores and labels a constant throughout the book – there’s a lot to tell. Full pages, if not short chapters, are devoted to key gigs he attended – Thurston may just have been an audience member, but he witnessed an astonishing number of important shows. A gruelling and unnerving Suicide gig is a standout story. Thurston may have been poor, and struggled to hold down a day job, but he was committed to being in NYC and becoming more and more immersed in the cultures which he was enthused about.

Key figures who appear multiple times in the book are Patti Smith (from attending concerts and readings in the 70s through to the 90s, when Thurston interviewed Patti for Bomb magazine and played acoustic guitar at some of Patti’s readings); Glenn Branca (a key artistic influence from his early bands, through to inviting Thurston to be in his larger guitar ensemble, then releasing Sonic Youth’s first records on his Neutral Records label); Lydia Lunch (as friend and artistic collaborator); the importance of the Blast First label in the 80s; plus friendships with Mike Watt, Nirvana, Michael Stipe, and Michael Gira.

Being part of an important and influential cultural scene was clearly crucial for Thurston and the band, and Sonic Youth’s continued commitment to experimentation shines throughout the book. Thurston’s succinct and incisive descriptions of music and its effects resonates repeatedly across the book.

The book does not aim to dwell on negativity or critique. While Blast First’s work is praised, the band’s US label at the same time, SST, are briefly described as being wanting in comparison – but what those issues were isn’t explored in any detail. The band’s shift from independent labels to DGC/Geffen in 1990 is clearly a key moment in the band’s narrative, and although it’s acknowledged in the book as a decision that the band and others laboured over, that label move is not explored ethically or financially in detail, and I didn’t come away with much of an understanding about what the bigger label allowed the band to do in terms of recording, distribution, marketing or touring – clearly, all of those things shifted in the 90s for Sonic Youth.

The break-up of Thurston and Kim Gordon’s marriage is also not expanded on beyond a brief summary of Thurston falling in love with someone else, and the resulting fallout; the book makes clear that it is not the place to go into more detail on that ‘intensely personal’ matter. In many ways, that’s in alignment with the book overall, given the reluctance to share much about Thurston’s inner life (there are brief mentions of his early shyness; some later sarcastic behaviour towards an old friend; and an acknowledgement of the band’s growing maturity with age), minimal information about Kim, even less of a sense of Lee and Steve, and nothing about Thurston’s life after Sonic Youth. The band’s interpersonal dynamic, which like a family could be occasionally fraught, comes up, but a sense of how that family’s line-up stayed stable (with two additional bassists along the way) for over 25 years is not illuminated.

While it might be said that the book didn’t set out to engage with label matters and the band members’ personalities, the imbalance in its timeline feels like its main shortcoming. Given the level of detail shared about the 70s/80s, sometimes charting developments on a monthly basis, a comparable engagement with the 90s/00s, when the band continued to deliver important recordings and performances, would have been welcome. The book is crammed with stories, but not all of the anecdotes necessarily merit inclusion – it’s great to hear about Iggy Pop joining Sonic Youth for an encore of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ in 1987, but a later page devoted to security stopping them watching an Iggy Pop festival performance from the side of the stage felt inconsequential.

This is a book bubbling over with incident, and the formation and work of one of the key rock bands of recent decades is a vital story. If you have an interest in Sonic Youth, it’s definitely worth reading, though with the caveats above.

 

 

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CJ Mitchell

 

 

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Panorama

 

Clarity of bemused musings
Your opulence is dark
Dimly lit
A cranky of tipsy mahogany high
Locations and Culture
Borrowed and located
Your whiteness is too loud
Before we come to your coastline
A blinding red tissue
Scars and hummingbird’s homecoming
Monsoon ended
A panorama of whiteboards
My checkerboard
Until
My familiarity of
Little pinks attached
To your smile.

 

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Sayani Mukherjee
Picture Nick Victor

 

 

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Zephyr Sounds Sunday Sermon No. 138

 

Steam Stock

Tracklist:
The Herbaliser – Something Wicked
Black Sabbath – Planet Caravan (Poolside Rework)
Timmy Thomas – Why Can’t We Live Together
BB Davis and the Red Orchestra – Get Carter
Earth, Wind and Fire – Brazilian Rhyme (Interlude)
Azymuth – Dear Limmertz
Anderson .Paak – Put Me Thru
Don Blackman – Heart’s Desire
Portishead – Sour Times
Lalo Schifrin – Danube Incident
The Bees – Listening Man
Massive Attack – Protection
Gorillaz – Demon Days
Tyler the Creator – Are We Still Friends?

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BEHOLDING THE HEART

       

On Shaking Sphere’s YOUR HEART DENIES THE NIGHT
(Suriya Recordings, 2023)

Sitar drones colour sky as the night seeks admittance
As Bruno Silveira De Oliveira’s Shaking Sphere find fresh orbits
In which to sail to your heart, which denies that night in this song,
While retaining all of its essence, each beauty, as stars spring
Through singing, and through the easing of strings, to make art.

Pulsation transports before guitar carries, as De Oliveira’s song
Turns what is almost Indian into folksong from a quite different shore.
As clouds above become frequencies and the tricks performed
By illusion compel to complete us as this single appeals
To the plural of each of us listening now, wanting more.

‘Fantasies are dreams we believe’ De Oliveria and Lorena Pires sing,
And as they coalesce the song sifts them, as instruments
Translate for each other to make this language and light
Behind sound. For Your Heart Denies The Night is a hymn
To her and they and all lovers of sensation and wonder

And of the spirits which spark above ground.
Each singer exults through the joyful ascent of their vocals,
The bubbling springs of endeavour as we each make our way
Through the world, epitomized by sitar, guitar and synth,
And percussion; each soundwave stirring potions

To nourish and shine this song-pearl
Of hope and of change as we resist the time
That would trap us, until the point we all realise
That by wanting more we are free. So, this ecstatic call
Pushes us, imploring us and adoring each star’s

Bright enchantment, until we recognise what to be.
This trio cojoin to share the spell they’ve made us.
Pires and Arthur Navarro and Edu Szjanbrum sail fresh seas.
And their song is a tide to bare you away and to cleanse you.
Chart your course as you listen and in approaching dawn

You will see hope held in the hand as in the lyric video
For this single. As hands create heart-shapes, sun kisses through.
For this is single as gift. This is sound as sensation. A folk stung
Eastern mantra that in following light finds what true.
Do not be afraid. Do not fear. And brave the dark

Which surrounds us. Song shared can show us
How to learn and to listen and how to finally know

                                 What to do.

 

 

                                                                       David Erdos 8/9/23 

 

 

Home New

 

 

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SAUSAGE 281

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which says “give me a razor big enough and I will shave the world”

MYSELF: was having dinner with some of my brainy university professor friends the other night and one of them, a physics lecturer, told me a very funny intellectual joke.

READER: A joke! At last! 

MYSELF: Steady on, it’s not for the likes of you. 

READER: I’ll be the judge of that young man! 

MYSELF: Very well, did you hear the one about sodium? 

READER: Na. 

MYSELF: Ha ha ha! Na. Get it? 

READER: Get it? Get what? Explain please. 

MYSELF: Google it.

KISS CONTROVERSY RUMBLES ON
Former Hastings & St Leonards Warriors FC manager Giovani Fuctivano (The Goalfather), who left the club mired in sleaze after accusations from curvy physiotherapist and former lapdancer Sabrina Petto-Massiccio, has, in his new position as chairman of the Nuclear Waste Disposal Solutions League (South), courted yet more controversy, this time in front of dozens of fans at Upper Dicker’s Poundshare Stadium, after the final of the Corby Trouser Press Cup.
The Warriors won the trophy by default when opponents Chiddingly Pharoes FC failed to turn up due to the team bus running out of petrol on the A22.
During the presention of medals, Fuctivano grabbed skipper Nobby Balaclava’s head in a “vice-like grip” and thrust his tongue down the midfield enforcer’s throat.
“It was horrible” midfield dynamo Craig Cattermole told us, “Poor Nobby was powerless to resist the uninvited kiss, which caused his muscular legs to quiver like wobbly jelly. It was a full minute before he was able to compose himself enough to apply the much-feared Balaclava knee to his former boss’s Cohones, followed up with a professional head butt resulting in the so-called Goalfather being stretchered off with a suspected concussion.”

ART REVIEW: FELLATIO POON AT GALLERIA SPAZZURA
I recently visited Upper Dicker’s latest and hippest art centre Galleria Spazzatura, where Le Mie Stronzate, the retrospective featuring Milanese installation artist Fellatio Poon continues to shock
The first thing I was struck by as I entered the gallery was fearsome tattooed curator Celia Dwork, who punched me hard on the upper arm as if to say; “This is art, you ignorant little peasant, open your eyes and get some culture or I will hit you again.”
Once inside, I was confronted with a small knot of angry people gathered under the artist’s vast, epic canvas; If I Had A Million Pounds I’d Spend It All On Biscuits (lemon curd, tea stains and peanut butter on prepared tablecloth, 2005). They are milling around with their sleeves rolled up, comparing bruises, taking selfies and in one case, calling the police.
Classic Poon pieces like Atomic Bomb Occasional Table (1995), and the terrifying Bulbous Lampshade (2002) have lost none of their frisson, whilst the more recent work retains the wilfully obtuse inaccessibility one has come to expect from the great man.
All in all this was a typically provocative Poon show climaxing with four dazzling new interconnected pieces, Unseen I, II, III & IV (media unknown, 2016), all of which are installed in an industrial refrigerator with the artist’s instruction that they be kept securely sealed until 2051. The audacity of the work leaves one stunned, able only to speculate on its content. Would it be a typically Poonish juxtaposition, embracing all the ramifications of unmitigated circumlocution? Or perhaps a playful smorgasbord of titillating fragments, harking back to his earlier, smuttier, wonderbra period? We may never find out, but rumour has it that a certain art collector has secretly purchased the piece for £350,000,000. 

COMPETITION SEEKS WINNER
The Sausage postbag was full to bursting point thanks to the enormous number of entries to last issue’s Spot The Pie competition, but alas, I cannot conceal my disappointment. Yes it was a difficult conundrum, reflecting my total confidence in the intelligence of Sausage Life’s readers, but imagine my horror when I discovered this: There was not one correct answer!
I am publishing the solution next week with a heavy heart, and the competition is now closed.

RUMBLE IN RIO
Cockmarlin-born brawler Typhoon Anger is in Rio de Janeiro, preparing for the heavyweight Olympic qualifier bout with Thailand’s Lala “Ladyboy” Chaluay. Just how fit is the reclusive Typhoon, and can he floor the so-called Bankok Bruiser and go on to win gold? We sent our boxing correspondent to Team Typhoon’s penthouse training centre at the Copacobana Hilton to put these questions to Anger’s flamboyant manager Ron Maserati.
“Make no mistake about it” he told us, “Typhoon is ready. He’s fitter than a Playboy bunny. Skipping is his secret weapon. He skips all the time, including in his sleep. He’s eating nothing but the new superfood, tofu grass. That’s all he eats. It’s made him not just angrier, but hungrier. He’s like a boxed set of The Sopranos”.
“Ladyboy? He doesn’t stand a chance. His footwork is clumsy. My boy’s footwork is like Fred Astaire meets The Bolshoi Ballet in Riverdance . His fists are like two blacksmith’s anvils fired from a medieval catapult. The Bankok Bruiser is a loser. We are already winning the psychological battle. Typhoon’s media team bombards Ladyboy’s TikTok channel every day, making sarcastic comments about his mum, and suggesting he wears lingerie.”

READER: I can’t wait to see that bout! Don’t you love professional face-punching?

MYSELF: Put it this way, I can think of better things to do.

READER: Better? Like what? 

MYSELF: Like, saw my own head off with a breadknife? Like visit Disneyland Paris during the school holidays?

READER: God you’re a misery sometimes. Do you actually like anything?

MYSELF: Of course. I like The Paranormal Games, especially the 100 metres Ouija; and pretty much anything that doesn’t involve obsessive half-witted narcissistic sports-bores who dress like chavs and appear to have learned nothing of value since the age of nine.

READER: You don’t believe in beating about the bush, do you?

MYSELF: Certainly not! How dare you!

DICTIONARY CORNER
Lambasted (n) Sheep born out of wedlock.
Musketeer (n)   Mild deafness, caused by firing antique rifles.
Mumble (n) A cow with a calf.

 

Sausage Life!




Click image to connect. Alice’s Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

NB: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO SPOTIFY, THE SONGS WILL BE OF RESTRICTED LENGTH

JACK POUND: JESUS WANTS ME FOR A SUN READER aka PASS THE INSTANT YOGA

 

 



SAY GOODBYE TO IRONING MISERY!
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Take years off your smalls with Botoxydol!
CAUTION
MAY CAUSE SMILEY FACE T-SHIRTS TO LOOK
INSINCERE

 

SPONSORED ADVERTISEMENT
“Sometimes you just need a tool that doesn’t do anything”

https://guanopoundhammer.bandcamp.com/album/people-who-are-dead-dont-know-that-they-are

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Directed by Jeff Nuttall

Outside Peabody flats, we uncover a cache
of Health & Efficiency magazines studded
with nude women poised in mountains
lustily inhaling spring air. Naughty as that.

Our play is a happening, spurred by the accidental,
which is why I’m starkers (never knew you dyed your hair)
with the audience’s mince pies on Jeff Nuttall,
fleshy, naked, writhing like a sci-fi slug.

 

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Joan Byrne
Oval Theatre, London, 1971

 

 

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Some More Poems

NAILS

“He had bitten
his toe nails
down to the quick.”

I think it’s from
Great Expectations

§

BALLS

I miss
balls

the dressing up
the gowns

§

VOUCHER

It says
this voucher
has no
monetary value

(Well,
nor does
this poem)

§

CORONATION

No –
it was “Carnation”
condensed milk

I liked it
when I was a lad

§

MOTIONS

Don’t
you hate it

when people
go through

the motions?

§

ANNOUNCEMENT

You should–

Oh, come to think of it  .  .  .

No,
nothing

Forget it

§

WARNING

Look out!

§

WALK

Up hill
and down dale

I’m looking for
a bus stop

§

UNDERWEAR

Sometimes
it keeps me awake
at night

O memory!

§

POLE

There’s a man
in the street
up a telephone pole
fiddling
with the wiring

I hope he doesn’t f-

oh, he did

(I know this poem is almost the same as my poem called LADDER but that was a good one and so is this.)

.

 

Eric Eric

 

 

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MACHO

 

‘Without roots in the Mediterranean
You may never understand this word machismo

Inferring as it does an upright bearing
Shunning fall-down drunkenness in public

Bald men brawling in the street then pissing in the pool
Bawling after midnight ‘We are the Champions’

Machismo means a chivalry at all times to all ladies
Drunker than their menfolk so mislaying shoes and sundries

Not to swear on holy names when merely to lament
Misplacement of a latchkey or ‘deciding penalty’

Nor prelude to pronouncing loud political world views   –
Machismo is to stoically endure

All unfortunate things and to endure
All European tourists to these islands’

 

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Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

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Last Day of February 2023

 

                                                       “It’s a day like any other.”
                                                           February, James Schuyler
 
 
To Jade and Bunny, dogs, today is like
(they’d quote James Schuyler) any other.
 
They make no bones about their lot & bona
fides mean nothing to them. They eat
 
a calendar. They don’t remember the number
of days that humans say months chew up.

 

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John Levy

 

 

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From My Window’s Eye

 

From my wooden window,

The snow outside

Is like the arrival of spring.

I can endure the snow

As long as I can understand 

The world from a window.  

Life looks messy

My window changes my heart.

The observation from it

Is what I seek to behold.

My world otherwise,

Fitted in a room

Seeks a vantage point.

I see thousand birds,

Flying like kites of togetherness.

I want to leap

And kiss the sky.

Nature sees

A delicate flower blooming,

I want to see the same flower and

Be mesmerized by its delicate fragrance.

I want to keep that fragrance

And let it knock

The big door of my memory.  

The hearth of the concrete world,

Is cold from inside.

Out there through the window

I hear nature calling me.

Every beautiful soul

Captures the mesmerizing essence slowly,

Outside the window. 

 

 

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Sushant Thapa 
Biratnagar-13, Nepal 
Picture Nick Victor

 

 

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SAUSAGE LIFE 280

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column that thinks women spouting absurd clichés are just as irritating as men

READER: Three cheers for the plucky lionesses!
MYSELF:  You managed to get a pint of patronisation into a half-pint pot there. Why do they have to be named after animals?
READER: Cynic! Misogynist! I might have known you’d dislike women’s football.
READER: So what if I do I prefer my soccer to be 90 minutes of angry violent male ego-powered warfare conducted with extreme prejudice by uber-rich morons?
READER: Yuk. What happened to the concept of fair play and may the best person win?
READER: I think you’ll find all of that vanished shortly after centre forward Alabaster Tipperary of Herstmonceaux Cannibals FC became the first professional soccer player when he was transferred to Cockmarlin Thunderbolts for a fee of fifteen shillings in 1865

ART NOOSE
The controversial Geordie performance artist Aiye Waiaye has declared that art is dead. The Inedible String Band, his latest gallery installation at The Upper Dicker Cube consists of a series of TikTok reels featuring Dominic Raab wearing baggy trousers and a hoodie performing his salutary rap song I’m innocent:

i’m innocent
It was not me
it was another sucker
Just another out o’ lucker
It was not me
It was a spear chucker,
A long distance trucker
A cross-dressing chicken plucker
Hear my plea
set me free
it was not me
it was another motherfucker

 

POLITICS
Prime Ministers Questions from Westminster 

MR SPEAKER: Ms Pamela Thicke, Conservative, Cowes

Ms THICKE: First of all may I congratulate the Prime Minister on being married to a woman. 

OPPOSITION BENCHES: Where’s the Bloke? 

MR SPEAKEROrdaaar! 

Ms. THICKE: Will the Prime Minister agree with me that Rwanda, like The Marshall Islands, is a country far far away to the south and much farther away than, say, the Isle of Wight, which many of my constituents tell me is ideally situated for the incarceration of these troublesome foreign boat people? 

SUNAK: I’m very grateful to the right honourable lady and congratulate her for all her selfless work conducted in the important field of comparative geographical locations at her constituency of Cowes, lying as it does approximately 4000 miles north west of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. On the question of The Marshall Islands, may I say that as far as the distance from Westminster goes, and as our friend the crow, or Corbus-corbus flies, that it is indeed very far away indeed….. 

TORY BENCHES: Hear hear!

SPEAKER: Ordaaar!

Ms THICKE:  Mr Speaker, my constituency on the Isle of Wight, nestling in the Solent and reminiscent of the gleaming island of Elba, where the great Napoleon holidayed in the heady summer of 1814, is not only closer than Rwanda but is a BRITISH territory, entirely free from deadly spiders and requiring neither blue passport nor one of those hats with dangling corks to keep the flies off. 

MR SPEAKER: Sir Kier Starmer

GARFIELD WANDERLUST MP: Show us your bum!

OPPOSITION BENCHES: Baaaaa! Baaaa!
SPEAKER: Orr-orrr-orr ordaaaaar! If the right honorable member for Hull wishes to amuse this house perhaps he would be better off removing his trousers and reminding us how much we miss the very BRITISH art of understatement. Sir Kier Starmer

SIR KIER STARMER: Thank you Mr. Speaker. Many of my constituents are writing to me…

RT HON AUGUSTUS RAMBUNK MP: (to ribald laughter) “Are they still writing things? Show us your bum!”

MR SPEAKER: Orrrrrr darrr! Perhaps the right hon member for Hartlepool has become disorientated since being in the big city? Let me assure him that if he continues in this vein his ordeal will very soon be over because in no time at all he will be back behind the red wall, reminiscing with his unemployed constituents about how they used to build Japanese cars and pretend they were ships, or perhaps proposing the reintroduction of capital punishment for monkeys…Sir Kier

SIR KIER STARMER: thank you Mr. Speaker. Let me rephrase the question more simply, since the party opposite appears unable to understand it. Would the Prime Minister like to explain to the house exactly where the Marshall Islands are located, particularly in relation to their chief export, Pearl Barley, a vital ingredient in the production of the traditional Scottish haggis? 

SUNAK: Here we go.

TORY BENCHES: “here we go here we go here we go”….

SPEAKER: Orrrrder! Any more of this and I shall get my accordion! Mr Sunak has embarked on a long journey and must be permitted to arrive at his destination with or without the required documents. Prime Minister 

SUNAK: Thank you Mr. Speaker. The leader of the party opposite clearly has no idea that the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere are home to countless species of fish. Many of them, such as the Giant Hogfish are unfamiliar on our high streets, yet are extraordinarily delicious,. How then can he expect the British public to gallop blindly, like the 600 fishermen, into the valley of death, cod to the left of them, haddock to the right, whilst he and his neo -Marxist  cohorts bicker about the location of some foreign archipelago of which no one has heard?

SIR KIER STARMER: Let me put it another way Mr. Speaker. Since the Prime Minister is so familiar with oceanic topography, could he explain why certain groups of islands cling tenaciously to the wave-lashed far north-western coast of Scotland, whereas many others of a similar size are situated hundreds or even thousands of miles to the south in warm agreeable climates?

SUNAK: Once more Mr Speaker, the leader of the opposition attempts to pull the wool over the electorate’s eyes by claiming that his party, which, I would remind you, voted recently for the abolition of Scotland, would be well advised to consider that nation’s position not only as the mighty engine of the international haggis industry, but also its close proximity to the sun dappled uplands of this green and pleasant Jerusalem of a sceptered isle we call Albion. 

TORY BENCHES: (singing): God save our gracious King…

OPPOSITION BENCHES: (singing): Knees up Gordon Brown…

MR SPEAKER: (playing accordion) And did those feet…” 

 

DICTIONARY KORNER:
Hamas (n) tools used by Geordie carpenters (see also spannas, glew, tyape meshas)

CANNIBAL NEWS
A resurgance of the ancient custom of killing and eating those found guilty of of breaking and entering is beginning to concern the Bornean authorities. A Government spokesman said; “The average weight of Borneans has risen dramatically over the last two years, and there is a direct correlation between the consumption of burglars and the increase in obesity levels. We are not saying stop eating burglars. As long as they are consumed as part of a healthy balanced diet containing nuts, grubs, monkey spleen and tiger penis, there is no cause for public concern. The problem for certain sectors of the population is that this kind of food can become addictive. Some people are faking burglaries just so they can eat their neighbours.”

 

 

 

Sausage Life!

 




Click image to connect. Alice’s Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

NB: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO SPOTIFY, THE SONGS WILL BE OF RESTRICTED LENGTH

JACK POUND: JESUS WANTS ME FOR A SUN READER aka PASS THE INSTANT YOGA

 

 



SAY GOODBYE TO IRONING MISERY!
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A Tour of Hell

A TOUR OF HELL

The Hell Bus is coming to a population centre near you!


I made a short documentary about my visit to Nigeria last month. It’s now on YouTube, I’ll also be showing it in Glasgow on the 20th September as part of my exhibition at The Alchemy Experiment, more details below.

I’ve also been discussing the possibility of making a Hell Bus in the Niger Delta later this year, for use by Ogoni anti-Shell activists. More on that in the next newsletter!

 

HELL BUS TOUR

 

25th-29th Sept – SHEFFIELD – Theatre Deli

30th Sept – 4th Oct – MANCHESTER – St. Anne’s Square

7th – 8th Oct – LIVERPOOL – TWT @ The Black E

9th – 11th Oct – LEEDS – Leeds University TBC

12th – 13th Oct – BIRMINGHAM Kings Heath National Spiritual Church

14th – 15th Oct – BIRMINGHAM – Second Saturday Festival

22nd-23rd Sept – OXFORD – TBC (Need a parking space!)

16th – 18th Sept – ESSEX – University campus TBC

30th Oct – 1st Nov – BRISTOL – Location TBC

I’ve only been able to do this thanks to a collaboration with the activist groups Ad Free Cities and SwitchIt.Green, both fantastic campaigns that I’m delighted to be working alongside and can hopefully direct some eyeballs towards. They’ve been doing all the heavy-lifting of logistics and planning, leaving me to get on with fixing up the Hell Bus.

In each city we’re planning on running an event of talks with myself and Ad Free/Switch.It which I’m really looking forward to. If you can help host or promote any of these events, especially in universities/colleges get in touch!

Which reminds me, massive thanks to everyone who chipped in towards the Hell Bus renovation crowdfunder on my website. It’s made it possible to fix some real problems with the bus and get it in ship shape for a proper tour.

I’ll keep the donations open until the end of the tour – all proceeds go towards making the Hell Bus even better/worse and keeping it on the road.

 

Massive thanks for any and all support!

 

CARBON OFFSETTING THE HELL TOUR

Some people have quite rightly pointed out the problem of driving a polluting bus around the country in the name of shutting down an oil company, but that’s where the fascinating world of carbon offsets, credits, and trading come in. By paying someone, possibly you, one pound for you to promise not to buy and drive a bus around the country for a month, we have, theoretically at least, removed the carbon you could have generated out of the atmosphere, thus making the actual Hell Tour carbon neutral.

The free market, truly one of the most foremost innovators in
unbelievable bullshit ever created.

I will be running this as a competition, you can enter by paying £1 for entry here. You can enter as many times as you like, and the winner will be drawn at random. The winner gets £1 in a special commemorative display case I’ll make for you by the end of the tour. If you win and then do actually go and buy a bus and drive it around I will send you a stern email.

 

GLASGOW EXHIBITION

 

I’m coming back to Glasgow in September to do a solo exhibition of my prints at The Alchemy Experiment on Byres Road.

Opening night is 14th Sept 7-9pm.

I’ll also be doing a talk/screening there on Weds the 20th from 7pm-9pm, all free entry.

 

HELL BUS CREW JACKETS

The Hell Bus Crew Jackets which were adapted by Kestra Laurent for Glastonbury this year got a lot of compliments so we decided to offer them for general sale for the rest of September. You can order one here. Kestra makes each one from real oil-worker overalls, which are flame retardant and feature things like a gas detector pocket?? Just what you never thought you needed.

 

IT’S FANTASTIC

 

Finally got the I Am Become Plastic t-shirts back from the printers yesterday so if you pre-ordered one it’s currently on its way to you.

I ordered a few extra to cover returns and mistakes so if you missed the pre-order you can still get one here.

 

 

 

 

This update is public and shareable so please feel free to pass it on. If you’re not on my mailing list but would like to be you can sign up here.

Eternal thanks to anyone who’s ever backed my work on Patreon or through the shop!

And thanks for reading!

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Manifestos (Old & New)


 
Use (the) rhythms of the blues
And sickness
Three different ways – or more
For / Plague dances
With / Rules and checklist
Brittle chances
At work
At carnival
 
Detune, and, anyway, decay
 
Commitments from an old manifesto
By C. Day Lewis
Is this possible?
Worth a shot?
(Though probably not).

 

.
 
 
Stephen C Middleton
Art: Rupert Loydell

 

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Start Anywhere—


 
In the empty garden before dawn.
On the verge of all the changes
we never seem to make
in the wake of fossil-burning devastation.
Somewhere in the shadow
of a knowledge long forgotten
in the vaporous dream of being.
Before eros became pathos.
Before Caine picked up the stone.
Before we joined him
in the great caress of hate,
the dopamine grin of enforced superiority.
Before the human invention of hypocrisy.
Before grunts became language,
became doctrine, dealing death.
Before gun and grift and gadget.
Before technology swallowed us whole.
Before the rise and fall of our best intentions.
Before fear bested us, left us empty and cold
and ready for the taking. Before the sucker punch
of capitalism enslaved the sleepy masses,
flag-tied, tongue-tied and blue-light sated.
Before the next atrocity,
and the next. Before the numbness,
blind-deaf-dumbness of American life.
Now. Before the last ice melts,
before the next ammunition belt is emptied
at the school, in the synagogue.
Here, standing on desecrated soil,
the best in us waking, listening
to the Earth-voice rising,
wonder and wisdom shining all around
at the rebirth of everything in us
worth saving. Today,
waking in the aftermath of healing,
lightened and empowered, let us break
the chains of culture, give back
what was never ours to take.

 

.
 
 
Alfred Fournier

 

 

.
 

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August

Teal blue of my fairy strands
The murderous blues
The hauntings of sun dried cuts
Kill your belongings
It’s August
They said
But I’m still
Hooking my drunken soul
My red wined Coolings
Can’t
Your own dealing
Homicides across globe
My spirits a childish grimace
Enjoy your youth
Sip be merry
A good natured wife
Milk of human kindness
Halted on
London bridges
Cycling through ages
Your white coloured tie
Pattern of your very being
Still my child’s sweater
Warm sipping
A home cooked meal
But
The city’s on fire
A Phoenix Soul
Soon a torpedo glory
Sky high nebulas
I screamed through
Be drunken white
Your own patterns
Still it’s August
They said
And My.

 

.

 

 

SAYANI MUKHERJEE
Photo Nick Victor

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Rumours of Glory

Bruce Cockburn, O2 Academy, Shepherds Bush, Friday 25 August 2023

Bruce Cockburn is a blues player nowadays, and he has the beard to prove it. He looks old these days and used a couple of sticks to walk on stage, although they were quickly abandoned. With two guitars and a few pedals (rather than the digital box he has used previously) he conjured up wonderful songs from not only his recent album O Sun O Moon but also from across his extensive catalogue.

Having started the concert with ‘The Blues Got the World…’, Cockburn continued in a laid back, comfortable groove for both his two sets. He seems to have accepted old age and the ways of the world, rather than raging against violence, wars and evil as he once did. The perky ‘On A Roll’ acknowledges that ‘Time takes its toll / But in my soul / I’m on a roll’. And judging by this concert he is on a roll, although Cockburn didn’t chat as much as he sometimes does, and mentioned that he can’t play some of the requested tunes any more because his fingers don’t work as well as they did.

What he hasn’t lost is the ability to turn snapshots of society, the world around him, into poetic song lyrics. Instead of an us vs. them divide, Cockburn notes not only that ‘Like it or not the human race / Is us all’, and that ‘Our orders are to love them all’.  Sometimes that takes people to strange places, and Cockburn in his time has been in various war zones, inner city fronts, and elsewhere; but as he sang in ‘Strange Waters’ he has learnt that ‘Everything is bullshit but the open hand’. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care of course, and the second set contained acoustic versions of both the declamatory ‘Lovers In A Dangerous Time’ and the ecologically concerned ‘If a Tree Falls’.

The singer’s settled performance was at times slightly melancholy, with a seeming acceptance of old age and inevitable death. Although Cockburn performed the questioning ‘Soul of a Man’ (a cover of a Blind Willie Johnson song) early on in the first set, it seems that he has found some sort of answer. He performed contemplative version of  both ‘Wondering Where the Lions Are’ and ‘All the Diamonds’, the latter a song which rejects man-made wealth in favour of the momentary:

     All the diamonds in this world
     That mean anything to me
     Are conjured up by wind and sunlight
     Sparkling on the sea

Towards the end of the first set he also performed a marvellous version of ‘The Rose Above the Sky’, from his Humans album, which draws on the imagery of T.S. Eliot’s poetry. Despite ‘the weight of inherited sorrow’, the song describes some kind of mystical or spiritual union ‘in the silence at the heart of things / Where all true meetings come to be’. As well as many other songs and an instrumental I haven’t described, there was also the more down-to-earth ‘When You Arrive’ as a closer to the second set, which perhaps describes a very low-key heaven:

     And the dead shall sing
     To the living and the semi-alive
     Bells will ring when you arrive

It felt like an effort to travel to London for this – bank holiday weekend, crowded trains, tourists and rain – and I nearly didn’t, but I am so glad I made myself go. Cockburn continues to have interesting things to say, or rather sing, and interesting ways to sing them. His days of lengthy electric guitar solos or hybridising world music may be gone, along with the poetic visions inspired by the strange occult novels of Charles Williams and political anger, but his straightforward and accomplished blues evidence a maturity and balanced world view that more than makes up for any previous musical excitement. This is simply great music which provided a great concert.

.

Rupert Loydell

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BLUES FROM THE WANDLE DELTA

 

Gig Review of:
SIMON PRAGER and KEVIN ‘DOC’ STENSON

with WENDY LANCHIN
at
‘COLOUR HOUSE BLUES’

Merton Abbey Mills, Colliers Wood, S London

(27 August 2023)

William Morris died here’ announces Simon, in recognition of the great textile designer poet-socialist’s connection with this Colliers Wood dogleg of the River Wandle. Then corrects himself, ‘William Morris dyed wool here,’ which is both funny, and more historically accurate.

There are three chairs centre-stage at the delightful red-plush boutique ‘Colour House’ theatre, to the right Doc Stenson curls in around his harmonica playing a high-energy mash-up of Blues-flavoured Irish reels, while to left Simon holds forth on the detailed histories of obscure Blues rarities they’re about to perform, running his hand over the smooth dome of his head in a massaging memory-prompting motion. ‘I hope you’re taking notes’ cautions Doc, ‘there will be questions later.’

They cake-walk into town on an acoustic raft of Country Blues, skiffle, jugband themes, and the swing of Little Walter’s storming stand-out ‘My Babe’. Doc adds his own ‘Get Ahead Woman’, then they share a guitar swing with shout-back audience participation.

Doc Stenson has been around long enough to have travelled to Barnes at seventeen to see a dapper Jimmy Witherspoon play. Simon Prager has been around long enough to have stepped in to duo for Sonny Terry when Bownie McGhee was ill. His 1968 album Blues Like Showers Of Rain marked him out as a musician to watch. Describing Rev Gary Davis as his hero he does a ragtime ‘Hesitation Blues’ that ‘teaches the angels how to jellyroll’ while Doc adds breathy harmonica. That Hot Tuna, and Taj Mahal have done their own versions illustrates the song’s effortless adaptability.

Simon defines ‘modern Blues’ as that which came after the 1950s. He traces a lineage from Louis Jordan to Ray Charles to Stevie Wonder to Michael Jackson and then… Prince maybe? Until you suspect that Blues – the music of the post-slavery poverty black experience, is rapidly becoming the preserve of dyed-in-the-wool white academic practitioners. What does R&B stand for today… Rum & Blackcurrant? But then they do a surging version of Levon Helms ‘Up On Cripple Creek’ to demonstrate that the spirit is ever-renewing.

Wendy steps up to occupy the centre chair to deliver a spine-shivering reading of Ma Rainey’s ‘Jellybean’, and meanders down sad song Hoagy Carmichael byways.

Simon dedicates Blind Alfred Reed’s 1929 Depression-era ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live’ to Nadine Dorries, as a nudge that financial crisis is no new thing, and that poverty is forever with us. Then they finish on a riotous ‘Saturday Night Fish Fry’.

William Morris would surely have smiled.

 

.

BY ANDREW DARLINGTON

www.simonprager.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXrhmtoI79s

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Evolving a Creative Space: Unit 27c

 

Weird new goings-on in the Calderdale Valleys – a shape-shifting report from Alan Dearling

Just over a year ago, June 2022 in fact, the remains of my old life up in the borderlands of Scotland were transported into my new home in Todmorden. A modest Yorkshire back-to-back. Small rooms, lots of awkward stairs. It was crammed to the gunwales, from deep in the bowels of the cellar in every room right up to the relatively large loft room and nooks and crannies under the roof. Books, vinyl, dvds, cds, music-making instruments from around the world. In fact, the very creative detritus of life! Trouble was, and it was pretty major trouble, there was no room to live amongst the piles of boxes. And so, onto the search for creative solutions…

I went out and about, mostly on foot, from Todmorden in each direction following the valleys towards Hebden Bridge, Rochdale and Burnley. I had a slightly wonky and vague dream – I was in search of storage that could also double up as a creative studio space for small(ish)-scale music and arts events. I wanted to provide opportunities to display my own photographs, art-works and info about books that I’d helped helm or nurture, especially those about the environment, making eco-spaces and dwellings, environmental actions and protests, Travellers, festivals, music and more.

There were a number of storage container units available, but none that offered any open access for visitors or looked like feasible venues for any small events. The Calderdale valleys contain rivers and canals which are bordered by old mills, many of which are decaying. Nearly all that I visited were also very damp…remember that I was looking to keep my books and music, indeed much of my ‘life’, in a reasonable state for use into the new futures being forged in Yorkshire and Lancashire.  I had already been overlapping my old life in Scotland with nurturing a new life taking photos and reviewing gigs around Todmorden (known as Tod). These local venues attract many major national and international performers at the Trades Club and Hope Chapel (Hebden Bridge) and the Golden Lion and upstairs at the night club, currently known as The Big Tree (Todmorden). The collage pic is of RDF: Radical Dance Faction playing in Tod. Covid had gotten in the way in my plans (and indeed my health), but I was already more than four years into the new-to-me creative landscape.

I visited rooms in an old college and more mills, even more mills and even more storage containers inside old mills. It was getting dispiriting and I still had no space at home to enjoy simple things like eating from a table, or watching TV. Then came information of the private development of one large floor in Robinwood Mill, just a mile and a half walking distance from my house up the Burnley Road to Lydgate. It had been part of the local Town Plan, but  perhaps it came up against the hurdle that the Mill was neither a charity or a not-for-profit co-operative. I’m led to believe from what the Robinwood crew told me, that this precluded it from remaining in the master plan for the regeneration of Todmorden.

In fact, Robinwood Mill is privately owned and leased out to range of existing companies and individuals including a kitchen fittings company, a pottery, a furniture removal company, two art galleries, artists, prop-makers for film and TV, up-cyclers of bicycles, motor-bikes and furniture, recording studios and more. So, it was already something of an artistic base at the point when I arranged to visit the Mill, and potential studio and storage spaces in late autumn 2022.

Long story – short: I took over a tenancy at what was to be designated Unit 27c in December 2022. It was literally just a corner ‘space’ in an empty mill room. I had

to try and envision the future for my space as a studio and store. Eventually to become a multi-function area. I asked the Mill owners’ permission to have a mezzanine floor constructed by their in-house caretaker and carpenter, Cliff. This was done effectively by Cliff and his colleagues, and a secondary wall of plaster-board was added, to help with noise and heat insulation. But, very much on the plus side, the studio possessed really stunning views over towards the railway viaduct.

I had a variety of shelving units constructed up and downstairs in the unit. But, it was humid…the hygrometer reading was 87%. That’s high and will damage books, cds and anything vulnerable to damp. And so, I worried and pondered, whilst needing to put my gear into the new unit… Eventually, the move of my masses of boxes, PA, sound and lighting gear took place in a couple of tranches late springtime 2023.

I added curtains and filled in holes in the wooden mill floor with corks. Unit 27c is above Eagles Crag brewery and the mill stream. I have then gradually added in rugs and carpets to help insulate the area more effectively and purchased a fairly powerful dehumidifier and an electric space heater. More small steps. I didn’t try to unpack any of the contents of my boxes until the hygrometer reading was below 65%.

 

The build of the new units in Robinwood Mill has been lengthy and is still ongoing at the time of writing at the beginning of September 2023. Probably it will always be ‘ongoing’ with maintenance, safety and access issues and challenges! The Mill is steeped in history (and dust!). The central, spiral staircase is worn with history ingrained in its steps. The new and old tenants really don’t know each other – yet – but hopefully it will all come together, develop and flourish.   

 

I have plenty of ideas, but not firm plans yet. But I have hung a small arts exhibition, welcomed the first guests into Unit 27c. Held pre-preview event with live music from Rik M. Small beginnings perhaps, but there’s plenty of potential, especially as the word gets out into the community about a new ‘creative arts and music space’ at Robinwood Mill.

A lot depends on that word of mouth messaging and social networking. Plus, of course, the creative endeavours of the old and new Mill tenants. Creators all. Hopefully, it is a saga that will evolve in positive ways

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Don’t Get A Job – Brian Eno

“I often get asked to come and talk at art schools,” says Brian Eno, “and I rarely get asked back, because the first thing I always say is, ‘I’m here to persuade you not to have a job.’”

That doesn’t mean, he emphasizes, that you should “try not to do anything. It means try to leave yourself in a position that you do the things you want to do with your time, and where you take maximum advantage of whatever your possibilities are.”

Easier said than done, of course, which is why Eno wants to “work to a future where everybody is in a position to do that,” enacting some form of universal basic income, the general idea of which holds that society will function better if it guarantees all its members a certain standard of living regardless of employment status.

 

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from Jim Henderson’s A SUFFOLK DIARY. Friday, August 25th

There is some big news from our masters (and mistresses) in London. The plan to ship a load of what are officially called “illegal immigrants” into our village hall has been put on hold. But there is no indication about exactly what “on hold” means, and the GASSE (“Go Away! Stay Somewhere Else!”) management committee, at a hastily convened meeting in the Shepherdson’s summer house yesterday afternoon, decided that we should not let our guard down, and carry on as if the threat is still very much ‘live’. Major “Teddy” Thomas said that the first rule of combat is to not take your eye off the ball. I thought that was more for cricket, but I did not say anything. Be that as it may, the decision was unanimous because nobody wants the armbands Miss Tindle made for us to go to waste.

 

This news came 48 hours after our Member of Parliament showed up in the village to talk to the members of GASSE and other villagers, and explain what he might do to help us. It turns out he had been on a golfing holiday in the Caribbean as the guest of a merchant banker he knows from his days at Eton, and had kept it a secret so as not to be disturbed. One can see his logic. It was an indication of our elected member’s usefulness and how close he is to the people he represents that he got lost on the way here, and was an hour late. I had never actually seen him in the flesh before (not many of us had!) and if you can imagine a damp used tissue with legs you won’t be far off the mark. Also, of course, he does not actually have any opinions of his own, and borrows them from whoever he is trying to please at the time. The upshot of the meeting was that he went away assuring us that we could rely on him. Rely on him to be useless, said Michael Whittingham. Anyhoo, we enjoyed watching him drive off in the wrong direction. He probably ended up in Norfolk or, as we call it, The Waste Land.

 

It is a near certainty that he had nothing to do with the government’s rethink, if that is what it is, but of course he is claiming it as a personal triumph. Bernie Shepherdson said he had telephoned to say he had “had a word with Rishi and Suella” and fixed things. I bumped into Michael Whittingham in the village stores and he called that claim “absolute ******* bollocks”. (No expletives here!) The following day the East Anglian Daily Times finally picked up our story. Their report was on the inside page where it took up significantly less space than a piece about the closure of a haberdashers in Ipswich that has been there for more than 50 years but trade is now almost non-existent and 69 year old owner Betty Higgins is selling up and going to live with her son and his family in Hemel Hempstead. Bernie Shepherdson is very upset because the paper called him Mr. Shepherd. Apparently he has asked them to print a correction, which I think is quite optimistic.

 

As the end of August approaches we are getting a lot of runner beans. We always have a glut of them, and this year looks like being no exception. Every year my wife and I spend what seems like hours blanching the pesky things. I quite like them, but I am not sure they are worth all that palaver. However, my wife says we cannot give all our surplus produce away because people will start to take us for granted. The greenhouse is also now beginning to yield lots of tomatoes, and I think most of those will get frozen too. The freezer in our kitchen is not big enough, but we have an old one in the garage which we kept on purpose for all the things we grow too much of. We had a look in it today to see how much room there was, and there are still some of last year’s runner beans in there, and something we have no idea what it is and will not find out until we pluck up the courage to defrost it.

 

 

James Henderson

 

 

 

 

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Joining Up The Dots


Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors, Ian Penman (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

This appears to be another case of biography as speculation, inferred rather than researched; but actually it’s really ‘a collage of references’, an elliptical, wandering, pointillist essay, about a filmmaker whose films I have never seen. (I fast-forwarded through one around page 40.) It’s not really about Fassbinder, it’s about Penman and his wide-ranging obsessions.

Penman is very concerned with the artificial versus the authentic as a concept, as well as notions of doppelgangers, twins, reflections and selves (plural). I would suggest that his essay in numbered parts is ‘a private constellation of meaning’, a term he uses to describe Fassbinder’s films. It would have been good perhaps to have had a star chart to aid textual navigation, assist in joining up the dots.

But that would be a different book and getting lost is part of the fun. I teach different forms of essay writing at university, and Penman’s book is the epitome of how essay writing can be part of what gets called creative non-fiction these days. It is a call to arms, notes from a failed revolution, full of reconsideration, regrets, reflection and reassessment; all fuelled by an attachment to Fassbinder.

At times, Penman busily namedrops but then feels guilty about it, beating himself up a few paragraphs later, or perhaps beating his reflection up in the mirror on the page. He seems to have deliberately misunderstood the ‘death of an author’ concept, and insists he is very much alive. This is only to be expected, as the death was to do with the idea that an author somehow controlled what a reader read; the book still had or has the writer’s name on.

If I sound like I struggled with this, I didn’t. I loved it, especially when Penman becomes his own critic. In section 247 on page 102 he asks

     How do you inscribe a form of self-portrait into your work
     without seeming to do so. The long-time dream of
     a deeply personal text made up of other people’s words.

Well, these days, there are plenty of this kind of text, and plenty of theorising that all writers have ever done is remix what already exists, selecting and rearranging things. Penman’s 450 sections add up to what may be a book of film criticism, a book about Fassbinder, a selective autobiography of Penman, a discussion of post-war Germany, of terrorism, drugs, queer sexuality, rock and roll, apocalypse, nostalgia, etc. After all, as Penman notes, we are all ‘afloat in the digital aether, no point in pretending otherwise.’

I suppose I could watch the films but I prefer words.

 

 

.

Rupert Loydell

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A Road Map to the New Eden

At the breathless river, we are passionate, making our hazy way to a truly exceptional land. We weigh water to transform gravity, some of which might not have initially considered air to be realistic or attainable. To achieve this, we collect pebbles and grind them – small, small, small – for ages into ice, with a story and a song which helps them to flourish and exceed their own experiences of night. We spend everything but frogs in achieving this perfect equity, which is nevertheless wholly dependent upon the market, with its dust, its times, and its raincoats. We do all this so that that the ripples we create, and the blood in which we recruit, engage anecdotally and manageably with all contingencies. Our bang is key in supporting the quad of our bodies and crucial to us retaining a thriving, sustainable share of the flood. We are committed to ensuring that life remains professional, and that those who may seek to join us understand from our very bodies what our life is: that is, a living life of positive educational enrichment which wants to take our nervous systems beyond story and make them relevant to employers. Our everything is to develop and innovate, whereby nothing will be empowered, developed, or supported. Everyone will be expected to deliver against clearly defined absence, strongly aligned to our strategic hiatus.

 

 

 

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Oz Hardwick
Photo Nick Victor

 

 

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Get Out of Your Own Way: Anarchy & Peace with Penny Rimbaud of Crass

 

 

Penny Rimbaud is a 73-year-old artist, poet, and activist who, in 1977—alongside Steve Ignorant—founded Crass: the most influential anarcho-punk group of the 20th century​. For this punk collective activism was just as important as the music. Additionally, as Rimbaud puts it, “we wanted to help people understand was a sense of autonomy and authenticity of the individual human soul.” These days Rimbaud lives in a farmhouse in the middle of the English countryside ​alongside fellow Crass member, artist Gee Vaucher. Together the two continue dedicate their lives to art and literature; still adhering to and promoting Crass’ core values of anarchy, peace, vegetarianism, and anti-authoritarianism.

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WISDOM’S WAY

                 On Weird Walk’s Wanderings and Wonderings Through the British Ritual Year

                                                                       (Watkins Publishing 2023)

 

 

Housed in this precious tome of forgotten time, landscape’s living.
Origins of perception from the age of ice to fate’s heat
Returned in the words of the Weird Walk collective,
Names withheld and yet hidden as England’s old identity now completes.
Stewart Lee sets the scene with his pagan primed introduction,
By connecting with Modern Antiquarian Julian Cope in perspective,
                                                              if not in direct content, or style;
Years once thought lost are sourced in streams, stones and ruins

Newly tasted beneath us, as if there were flavours inside secret miles.
Ice preserves all, yet under solstice sun sleepers travel;
Countries formed from such crossings saw the pre-historic create wall and moor,
Home and life sprung from soil, as if survival’s rose could charm nature,
Only to find the Earth Mother’s tit turned like witches towards the mystic air’s
                                                                                              open door.
Leaving the Now is the aim of the aim of this book and is accomplished by walking,
Leasing split Britain in order to secure Albion
Sets both a task and a tide. As the present recedes Weird Walk’s guiding

Through time-travel traipses across soil as sea to stand on.
Ridgeway’s Trail sets the path, charted towards the Avebury Stone Circle,
Offering an ancient age’s assistance in the fresh telling of a horrifying new tale.
Mesolithic and myth grow despite our dead gardens’ curations,
Apostolic archives, says Stewart, which shift the tectonic under each day
                                                                            as dreams sail;
New voyages, as what was weird works its magic.
Silsbury Hill climbed as a summit despite the missing o with Peter Gabriel’s
                                                                    Song-sound.

Hours peeled to free fruit from the dried out days we’re all living;
On foot we are brailling each word and wound on old ground.
Rituals unearthed through these seminal and seeding guides to location,
Notes granted as Weird Walk become our ghost-writers and allow
                                            all we once were to be found.
Spring starts us off as sunshine and squall aide renewal.
By Pentre Ifan and Bix Bottom we witness the first equinox.
Yearning learnt and time earned, epitomised by the Cerne Abbas giant,

Nipples as eyes, while his phallus of penis and club levels rocks
Into flat-earth submission, as seen from an A352 Car-park;
Caretaker of portent and passion as his pornography on the hill
Honours some past spell of sex as the still fertile field flowers,
Opening orifices as we witness the strength of his seed and the spill,
Lapped up by land as if Wales wanked for wisdom;
Lust leaving traces as the giant’s graffiti cock becomes quill.
Suffice to say, there’s much more as the Weird Walk comes to Yorkshire,

Temples raised by the druids outside of Ilton Village HQ
Reversals of faith as the pagan promise delivers
Objects of fascination and fear, from cromlech and altars, to menhirs
                                                                   And trilithons.
Masham’s the place and its Baroness talks of camping students
All of whom heard devil-worship and saw the stone tables which had                                                                                          a pig’s head blooded on.
Nearby breweries help to foam each watering hole with time’s tincture,
Swinton Bivouac has a car-park from which we can see these dark oaths.

Holes within stone are portals and proof of the touches
Of those who tore madly at the fabric of time and of clothes;
Rites rhymed with light which is still the same shining on us,
Night and time now condemning as we become the thing legend loathes.
Summer arrives at Stanton Drew, formed through the arcane kiss of folklore.
Beer becomes potion, brothering with time’s stream,
Yeast yielding years while making them rise as we’re reading;

Near Thaxted we’re dancing, Morris-ing back beyond Middle Ages,
Intoxicants for feet and throat granting rhythm to this walking work’s
                                                                     Scheme and theme.
Castlerigg captures all, as it has led to centuries of enchantment.
How many poets from Keats and Coleridge on
Oracle in their lines the seeds within this special stone circle,
Langdale’s Axe engineering the neolithic as well as the modern work-song.
Look into Bryn Celli Ddu and you see a still sacred entrance.
Sex with the past. Stone vaginas pagan penetrated widening to give birth

To the buried sons and to the progeny and old order.
Return to these children and to the daughters of dream and find worth.
Opening as a wound weeping the primal blood of beginning;
Man, child and woman find flesh and form from such stone.
As painted cloudscapes perform through the mystic mask’s contours,
Now rock and ruin are actors, with grass grown as chorus,
Spotlit to show you how the knoll on which you perch becomes throne.

Harvest festivals usher Autumn in as we approach Coldrum Long Barrow.
On Pilgrim’s way from Winchester to Canterbury and Kent
Ramblers commune with Thomas Becket, as Julia Cartwright
Near Medway shows how silt becomes heaven sent.
Stone Circles surround. Coldrum’s megalith is one of Britain’s oldest structures,
By picking hops, beer is worship as the gathered throng now imbibe
Yesterday as the wine as the encountered land becomes bible

Not just a guide-book, but guidance itself. Thank you, Scribes.
In reading, we walk, whether on foot, or sat simply,
Curations of essence and of what we have lost filling us.
Here in this beautiful bind and this book which Watkins Publishing savours
Oil is ink burning brightly illuminating revelations to both observe and discuss.
Lessons left out in the cold for far too long,
Light moved from them. Thankfully Weird Walk’s footsteps fire
Stonehenge, Chepstow and Dunwich which are still strong with winter
                                         and able to defend dream’s deep trust.

Treks to England’s haunted Atlantis entice. As on page 218
Recorded echoes remind us.
On Land by Brian Eno captures the famous Dunwich Beach and its air
Made both otherworldly and real, as Stonehenge is also trap and tease
                                                                           for all tourists,
And at the Devil’s Arrow in Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire
Nature is not just the soundstage but the true character set for time’s care.
Stages prepare extremes of evolution.

Giants dance on old platforms, long toppled now.
There are entire civilisations we’ve lost.
We do not feel their lack. This condemns us.
This book serves our sentence.
Within the reverberations of reading, and of walking
We ride truth’s last vow. 

Thus, this is the most crucial of books,
As it is about the world we’ve lost sight of.
Now, in our blindness and in our blandness, too
We are damned. Not just by soil but by sense.
As we anchor our own poor Atlantis.
We are sinking through stone. In these pages 

Are the things we should search for.
And yet for now, there’s one question:
Caught in our chaos, will we in time, understand?
We do not know. Harsh winds blow.
But we cannot feel them. Stone is a mirror
As well as mask.  

                                          This graves know.  

 

 

 

                                                                    David Erdos 5/8/23

 

 

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ALIENISM REDUX

 

When humanity is extinct, ALIENISM will be its triumphant ideology.

The “real” virus is the placebo?

No matter how much they steal from the future, it will not enable them to resurrect the past.

Regimes are the spiritual foundation of every pandemic.

“Bare life” is the one you pay for.

Forced to breathe oxygen without respite, the astronauts mutinied & abandoned ship.

Politics is social merchandising.

The means-of-production are to progress as plagiarism is to power.

How many hidden hands does it take to change a lightbulb?

Mediocrity is the primus inter pares.

Two wrongs don’t make a Philosophie des Rechts.

The only universal explanation is the one that kills you.

Everyone gets the revolution they deserve?

Alienism announces the mass-movement of psychic crypto-currencies.

The instructions are printed on the back of your head.

What is humanity but a variety of one thing?

History has always played an important role in undoing time.

All concrete facts begin with a true conspiracy.

What if the universe is a neural network with irreparable brain damage?

Evolution is always fatal.

 

INTERIOR MINISTRY, 17 NOVEMBER 20XX

 

Find out more at https://alienistmanifesto.wordpress.com

 

 

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I Claudius

Watched I Claudius on BBC 4 and it was a feast of classic English acting with good scripting. Sian Philips of course steals the show but the quality throughout is high and very entertaining. Jacobi’s Claudius was painfully detailed. It anticipates the method-cripple fad of the 80’s by a good few years without any American hype. It also shows where new TV serials like Succession and Righteous Gemstones come from. They are pushing the envelope of comedy and satire but are firmly based on traditional models. Essentially there is nothing new in either Succession or Gemstones that is not in I Claudius, Julius Caesar by Shakespeare and closer to TV home, The Sopranos. Tony Soprano’s first person narrative frame is just the same as Claudius’. The Soprano’s is like a bridge between the straight if very funny drama of I Claudius to the extreme comedy of Succession and Gemstones. I love all this TV but the pressing problem remains that TV drama and comedy do ALL the work for you. You just sit and consume it like some hamster or rabbit nibbling away their generous helpings of mammal muesli. At least with books, the great classic books that all the TV serials are based on in scope, theme and character force your brain to operate to create the visuals of the story… you are 50% part of the creative team in a book fiction. This has to be good for the brain and spirit. I wonder if there are any studies comparing TV watchers with book readers in terms of mental health and clarity in older age? I know of at least one book reader who went demented and I know a few rascals who never read a book in their lives and binge on TV and are perfectly compos mentis… but I wonder if there is any science on it? There is no doubt in my mind that the sense of satisfaction and wellbeing you get from finishing a great fictional drama in book form is far greater than the equivalent satisfaction from completing a big TV series.

 

 

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Roddy McDevitt

 

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SAUSAGE LIFE 279

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column with a mobile phone in every room

READER: Looks like Vlad the Inhaler got his revenge on that Wagner bloke who used to be a window cleaner. You know what they xsay, revenge is a dish best served cold, in business class.
MYSELF:  Be that as it may, but a lot of people forget about warm revenge. If your having a barbecue in November for example, or if you’re receiving first aid after falling through thin ice on a frozen Scandinavian lake, a bowl of warm revenge, perhaps with a glass of mulled Schadenfreude, can be just the ticket for boosting the circulation, and restoring a warm glow to the cheeks.
READER: Unless of course it was a genuine accident.
MYSELF: Quite so. In view of his recent history though, I think it’s only fair we should give Mr Putin the benefit of the doubt.

CRAZY ROLF
Every year the International Miniature (don’t call it Crazy!) Golf Tournament is hosted at the championship course on Hastings’ seafront. The current holders, crack German team, The Teutonic Teeboys, has already arrived here to prepare for the next encounter, due to take place in June 2024. During a torrential downpour, team captain Rolf Schlepper broke off training to talk to me about their careful preparations to lift the trophy for a record breaking 17th consecutive year;
    “Your English weather is full of wind”, he told me from beneath a giant, partially destroyed golf umbrella, “and we do not like this. On the third hole for example, the sails of the windmill go around so fast that the doors at the bottom do not open long enough for a regular ball to enter. This is why we have in the laboratory developed a new ball which is slightly rounder than the old ball. We have even spoken with Hastings’ famous inventor Gordon Thinktank, who has agreed to supply us with his revolutionary motorized putter, which incorporates a tungsten laser – guided shaft with a fake leopardskin grip. Although it is true that the rest of my team, Klaus Wunderbra and new member Deiter Klansmann, are megastars in the world of MiniGolfputten, it will always be necessary to make arrangements so that it is certain that we are triumphant”.

DON’T MENTION THE WATER HAZARD
When I asked Rolf whether there was any special strategy planned for the 2015 competition, he sneered, straightened out his artificial robot arm and made a noise like a chicken before replying;
    “So, you wish to see our plans Englischer Scheisskopf? Ha! We have developed a perfect plan which is unbeatable and which is impossible to counter. Our caddy, Horst Scheiße, will be paying particular attention to the ninth hole, The Big Clown Head, which is the most difficult. New team member Deiter Klansmann is the specialist for this hole, which requires a perfect 9-iron tee shot to clear the water hazard and collide sharply with the red nose, causing the clown’s mouth to open wide. This must be followed by a lightning putt to the exposed tonsils.
  A dark teutonic shadow spread over the captain’s rain spattered face as he told me;   
    “The Big Clown Head was the only hole we did not win at the 2014 contest. This was the reason for the tragic suicide of our star player Gottfried Schtumm, who last Christmas Eve drove his top-of-the-range Audi to Potsdam and beat himself to death with a sand wedge”.

READER: Its difficult to believe now, but the British invented this game.
MYSELF:  I know, we should never have admitted foreigners. 

READERS’ LETTERS IN BRIEF
To Mr Donald Sinbad of Dymchurch: No, it is not possible to catch racism from a toilet seat, although you can catch it by drinking pomegranate juice, droning on about how you ran the half marathon without dropping dead, or simply by standing next to a jockey during an eclipse. 

To Mrs. Beatrice Rasputin of Lilliputtenden:
Absolutely not. Always leave the cellophane wrapping on in case of snakes.

FILM NEWS
Paws III (The Revenge) is coming!

 

According to Hollywood gossip the British-based production will star OJ Simpson as Brad Hindley, an innocent murderer who finds a stray kitten left on his doorstep. After it begins to display violent tendencies, Hindley flushes it down the lavatory, and during a terrifying journey through London’s Victorian sewer system, it is tormented by giant mutant alligators. Finally, due to the enormous amounts of dangerous chemical waste, the cat begins to mutate, gaining immense bulk. After eating the ‘gators it is pumped into an Essex reservoir by a ruthless water company, where it begins to mate with the fish. Retired detective Dan Fortune (Ray Palooka) smells a rat, as one by one, local teenage skateboarding anglers start to disappear, leaving behind only their elbow pads.

READER:  Oh come on! Cats mating with fish? Elbow pads?
MYSELF:  The elbows were still in them.
READER:  Ew!

VIRTUE SIGNALS
Dave Peacock, captain of Hastings & St Leonards Women’s football team, has posted an appeal on their TikTok channel for fans to coin a nickname for the team in time for the Lillett’s World Ladies Championships next season. Suggestions so far include The Warrioresses, The Female Hamsters, The Fluffy Kittens and current favourite The Baby Moo-Cows.

 

Sausage Life!




Click image to connect. Alice’s Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

NB: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO SPOTIFY, THE SONGS WILL BE OF RESTRICTED LENGTH

JACK POUND: JESUS WANTS ME FOR A SUN READER aka PASS THE INSTANT YOGA

 

 



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Jesus Revolution

 

Jesus Revolution (2023) is the new drama starring Jonathan Roumie, Joel Courtney, Jim Gaffigan and Kelsey Grammer.

Released June 2023

It tells the true story of a young Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney) being raised by his struggling mother, Charlene (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) in the 1970s. Laurie and a sea of young people descend on sunny Southern California to redefine truth through all means of liberation. Inadvertently, Laurie meets Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), a charismatic hippie-street-preacher, and Pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer) who have thrown open the doors of Smith’s languishing church to a stream of wandering youth. What unfolds becomes the greatest spiritual awakening in American history. Rock and roll, newfound love, and a twist of faith lead to a JESUS REVOLUTION that turns one counterculture movement into a revival that changes the world.Lionsgate

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Archaeology for Losers

 

Bone-formers / bone-losers: it would depend how much you want to live in a world like this. Calling the novices lunatics misses the fundamental point about an expansive time-frame for their existence and survival and evidence of having done so. To learn new things by looking at old things is a win win win. Neanderthals were humans, though not ‘new’. When a tangible link with the past reveals a long lineage of loss. That ‘history is written by the winners’ becomes the archaeology of lies: not that we should decolonise in times of trouble.

 

 

Mike Ferguson

 

 

 

 

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The Albatross

(‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!
—With my cross-bow! I shot the ALBATROSS.)

using energy stored in the wind
dynamic soaring the albatross can
fly for hours without flapping its wings
for only a few second at
a time can sleep while flying a 
large friendly bird even playful in disposition
with abundant curiosity as to human
presence and activities within the realm
of open ocean over which it precedes it is
seen as bad luck to injure or kill the bird
as in Coleridge’s epic the mariner must 
atone through suffering for taking its life
condemned to wander the world telling
his story of woe how he without any reason skewered 
the natural world of its innocence a symbol 
of Christ the bird the Mariner as
the betraying Judas the dead bird
is significant even then men knew that
nature was something to be revered just
as God was revered that like God nature
was beyond both mastery and comprehension 
by killing the bird there were consequences
all 200 crew dropped dead the sailor
lived on in agony and guilt imagine
then a black footed Albatross on seven foot
wingspan flying 3000 miles from
the Midway Atoll to the food rich shelf
25 miles off the coast of California 
as dawn breaks you pick up a neon 
flying squid with the intent of much needed
food for waiting chicks you descend on 
the mariner in innocence and sanctity only 
to find sin and repentance on a 
100 mile grade A nylon fishing line set
on a thousand steel baited tuna hooks

 

James McLaughlin

 

 

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Swarm

swarm bankers’ hotels dine suits
putin and his cronies implicated
several market crashes storm in
all indications are that jeremy
hunt resplendent in his red
recession leaves bankers’ hotels
swarm putin all indications are
several market crashes whisper wars
newspaper ink marks out bankers
the imf regurgitates sluice money
all the indications are that prime
cronies implicated jeremy suits
hunt torn newspaper story trails
ripped off subject cronies
several hotels subject.

 

Clive Gresswell

 

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End

 

They gaze across obsidian

water, to speculate

about that final

launch they’ll board.  Hope

and fear of Hurry, and

get your things.  What language will

possess the air.  Hills they’ll stand

upon, halls inhabit.  Tokens

to exchange  —  rings of

beaten gold or black tin, smocks

of fine holland or Scotch

cloth.  The will they might

have of each other.  What

dews will wet their skins; what rains

fall on their locks.  And who

will let them in. 

 

 

 

 

Joel Chace

 

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Meaningful Journey

Every beginning
Can be meaningful,
But it is more meaningful
To make ends beautiful.

In wisdom’s inquiry
The bell rings
With an awakening.

The spring is a tale of the past.
There is no fragrance in the flower
Until it reaches you.

Life is so common
Yet is lived differently,
Because it leads to unwelcomed roads.
Courage only blooms under observation.

The fate is a rolling stone
Let it not roll like a playful dice
At the cost of life and death.

The efforts can rain joy
Bringing contagious smiles,
That can move the mountains in you.

A wandering journey
Can be the alchemy
To discover the gold of survival.

Seizing the future is knowing
The value of present time.

 

 

 

Copyright Sushant Thapa
Biratnagar-13, Nepal

 

 

 

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nocturne 1: practice room

                                                4 lowell Liebermann

while everybody has to practice
hand-positions to shed bad habits
(like pressing full-strength into the keys)
& learns to take in all things
car radios spices art museums
reading Moby Dick the freedom
to explore New York on your own
everything else is secondary
you never give up some big performance
& then you wake up to silence
the life beyond that doesn’t include you
gargoyles on spotify roof tiles
& rainwater it doesn’t travel
not what you had in mind at all

this is wednesday you never know
when the next commission will come
recording in the studio
then direct to the dress rehearsal
always something out of nothing
at the rate of one minute per day

nocturne 3: harmonic overtones

                                                4 maggie o’sullivan

some exile angel deprived of land &
language without expectation
performing the world as we know it
dismembered with broken letters
whorls & knots from the scars of history
it could have been anyone’s impairment
orange & amber tracings & foxgloves
a dance of synaptic accretions
three is for riverrun Eve & Adam
or Mountjoy Jail one Monday morning
four is for more than the human world
in & out of audible frequencies
sound clusters sound textures shapes & marks
carried through time in the grain of the voice

the weather on everyone’s lips
wind blows through the pages
sounds out the disappeared

nocturne 4: round about midnight

                                                4 jeanne heuving

It was hard to come back to a habit
& the curse that was always there
there was no way out of that thing
not even with workouts in the gym
the attitude barely filled his suit
monosyllabic cool & surly
no smiles for photographers
but had the zeitgeist buttoned down
it takes courage to play a ballad
pure & elegant & clean
anger turned back to the audience
face bloodied by a racist cop

 

 

Robert Hampson

 

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Totally Wired: The rise and fall of the Music Press

 

Paul Gorman, Thames and Hudson  ISBN 978-0-500-29746-9

384 pps including lots of music media images

A celebratory review by Alan Dearling

A really rather wonderful book, recently published in paperback. I’ve worked in and around publishing for much of my own life and have had many friends who’ve earned a crust and more in the rock ‘n’ roll media. This book is a delightfully irreverent, salacious, gossipy account of the music magazines, and their writers and photographers in the UK, the USA, with little excursions over to Australia, and ‘trips’ into the counter-culture. ‘Melody Maker’ kicked off the genre in 1926. The ups, ‘the up, up and aways’ since then, have been followed by the Music Press balloon bursting in the wake of on-line social media. It all seems to be retro now, looking back over the proverbial shoulder at the ‘golden ages’ of rock-writings. The context – the ‘life and times’ – the explosion of youth culture, fashions and the markets it created, are as much cultural importance as the actual magazines, whether they were ‘Rolling Stone’, ‘Friends’, ‘Creem’, ‘Bomp’, ‘ZigZag’, ‘Disc and Music Echo’, ‘Sounds’, ‘MM’, ‘The Wire’ or the ‘New Musical Express’. How can we value music?

Mick Farren: “Why bother about the new ELO album on the day ‘The Godfather’ comes out?”

Paul Gorman’s book is a real page-turner…it’s a Gonzo-style roller-coaster, crammed full of delightful and frequently rude and even crude vignettes of music stars and the writers who sometimes clambered on the shoulders of the ‘stars’ and became icons in the their own rights and writings. It shines a floodlight on the Mad Max antics of many members of the music press. Much drugs, alcohol, tall stories and a curious and at times conflicting mixture of fun, serious music criticism, mayhem, snide rudeness and debauchery. Nick Kent, one of the most prominent and talented music journos sums it up:

“I wasn’t interested in temperance…I was devoured by rock ‘n’ roll…I wasn’t a great writer. I was more a work-in-progress. But I had the energy, passion and drive to go out and find that fucking story.”

Likewise, Charles Shaar Murray is quoted saying: “We despised the record industry…gave not two hoots for the sensitivities of our publisher or the profits of our shareholders, and relentlessly satirised favourite musicians like (Brian) Ferry, whose ludicrous clothes and fragile ego inspired us to seek endless ways to mis-spell his name; the most memorable including not just Byron Ferrari but also Brian Fury, Biryani Ferret, Brown Furry and Brawn Fairy!” Adding, “I miss that spirit of collective transgression.”

This book eloquently evokes the loving mis-deeds of many writers. Creators with pens, typewriters, reporters’ note-pads and cameras, who kept alive the spirit and energy, of school and college magazines and newspapers. Perhaps bizarrely, it was the listings magazine, ‘Time Out’, that took over the hard graft of the gig listings (and some of the paid adverts) from ‘IT’ and made a significant buck or three. Tony Elliott and the young Bob Harris, later to host ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’, were the two entrepreneurs who set up the new London gig guide!

There is much in the book to inform, amuse and illuminate a reader’s knowledge and understanding of the music industry in all its myriad parts. Who were the ‘players’, the shakers, the movers and groovers? A ‘for instance’: I hadn’t realised that Chrissie Hynde, originally from the USA, worked as a relatively young writer on the NME in 1974, when she was without a work UK visa, so used ‘Hynd’ as her pseudonym. Like Farren and Lenny Kaye, she was a musician first and a writer, second. ‘Totally Wired’ also provides a glimpse of the various eras of the different ‘Old School’ staff writers from Jack Hutton to Jann Wenner, Maurice Kinn through to Caroline Coon, Lester Bangs, Julie Burchill, Alan Lewis, Viv Goldman and beyond. Times and tastes change and younger audiences were catered for by newer titles such as ‘Smash Hits’ and ‘The Face’. In a post-punk era, the musical audiences and genres splintered even further. New Wave, glam, two-tone, shoe-gaze, Britpop, dub, hip-hop, rap and especially disco and dance, and then EDM, further fractured the potential readership(s). Some writers, like Allan Jones and Caitlin Moran are still active. David Hepworth and Mark Ellen were very prominent in the new wave of the music media. ‘Mojo’ and ‘Uncut’ are among the glossy monthly music magazines still published in the UK. But most articles are reminders of previous eras, especially the sixties’ pop and psychedelia and the seventies’ punk era.

In ‘Totally Wired’, sexism and feminism and the impacts of Rock against Racism and Oi! bands are discussed, but thankfully without too much political correctness. Caroline Boucher from ‘Disc’ reminisces:

“If Mick Jagger wanted to be interviewed with his head on my lap, which has happened quite often, go for it. It was fun!”

The print music press in my view has largely become moribund. It’s certainly less subversive, a minor reflection of its old glory days. Paul Gorman’s ‘Epilogue’ ends with a quote from David Hepworth, founder of ‘Q’, from when it closed in 2020:

“You’re going to miss the music press…Why? Because it did one thing that you failed to value. Through its lens it made your acts seem exciting and larger than life, even when they weren’t.”

I miss the days, nights and early hours of mornings in the company of some of my friends and colleagues, music writers and editors such as Dave Robins, Graham Keen, Mick Farren, and Carol Clerk, from ‘International Times’, ‘Melody Maker’, and more. Fun, chatting, frolics – before, during and after gigs. I’m still active with on-line zines: ‘Gonzo’ and ‘International Times’. It still seems worthwhile. A small creative contribution to the music business and the music press.  The ‘blurb’ on the book back cover suggests it is the “…definitive account of the music press on both sides of the Atlantic.” Actually, and thankfully, there’s still plenty of naughty tales to be shared and published. In the meantime, Paul Gorman’s contribution in ‘Totally Wired’ offers plenty of musical, magical, angel dust! Well worth getting hold of your own copy.

Not from Paul’s book, but here is the signed Pink Fairies’ poster that Mick Farren gave me some years ago at a gig under the fabled West Way in London. In some ways it sums up the symbiotic relationship between the more edgy excesses of leftfield music and the music press.

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I don’t Know Why…

I don’t know why horizontal is the best
he just seems so much better than all the rest
all the rest?
there really is only vertical to beat
and he is always on his feet!

here and there and always busy
the ground he covers makes me dizzy

horizontal needs so little space
and he is not interested in verticals rat race

of course
many say
“Well, horizontals lazy!”
but really
look at vertical and you tell me
is he not just plain crazy?

 

 

 

 

Nathaniel Fisher
Picture Ava Daniels

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from Jim Henderson’s A SUFFOLK DIARY. Friday, August 18th

Youngsters these days can be too full of themselves with their phones and their Tick-Tocks and the like. A few of ours – teenagers who loiter around the war memorial – have made it known they are against our being against the government’s plan to house some foreigners in our village hall while their asylum applications are assessed and before they are deported. At Wednesday evening’s meeting of the GASSE (“Go Away! Stay Somewhere Else!”) management committee Nancy Crowe, our Publicity Operations Officer (POO) – she used to edit the village newsletter when we had one – was accompanied by her daughter Naomi, who said she and her friends thought we were being racist and xenophobic, and she rattled on for a bit about love for your fellow human beings and mentioned the European Convention on Human Rights. It was explained to her we are not in Europe anymore now we have taken back our sovereignty, and that we are not against foreigners as such, but they simply cannot be allowed to come here to sleep because we use our village hall all the time. It’s the Scouts’ Jumble Sale tomorrow, and Reg and Irene Farmer’s daughter’s wedding is next weekend, when for reasons I am not clear about they have the hall booked for the entire Bank Holiday, and we also have our regular activities, including my wife’s Oh Yeah! Yoga! class. I have a funny feeling we haven’t heard the last of these youngsters. This afternoon, when I bicycled past the war memorial on my way to the hall to make a routine check on the security situation wearing my ARSE (Advanced Round-the-clock Security Executive) armband I heard a few ribald remarks aimed in my direction, but I will not lower the tone here by repeating them.

 

Major “Teddy” Thomas has not yet tracked down our Member of Parliament. There was a rumour he had been seen at a gay bar in Lowestoft, but the Major says there is no gay bar in Lowestoft, although The Queen’s Arms has a bit of a reputation. We are still trying to get the East Anglian Daily Times interested in our story. Nancy Crowe (POO) said she has been on the phone to them and demanded they send someone (that’s what she said: demanded!), and this time a proper journalist and not their football reporter, which is what they sent a couple of weeks ago. Nancy said she is confident someone will come, and that the lady she spoke to was very interested, even though she had sounded like she was eating and perhaps not fully concentrating. That seemed like a contradiction to me, but I didn’t say anything. Nancy can be a bit touchy at times. Meanwhile, it looks like we are not likely to see any security fencing this side of Christmas. Bob Merchant says there have been problems with the supply chain ever since Brexit. We had thought he would be hiring some, but he said that buying it would be more economical in the long run. I have my doubts. Bob is a good builder, but I have looked at him in a different light ever since he came to put up our gazebo wearing an Adele T-shirt.

 

My wife is in Stowmarket this evening with her friend Jan as is usual on a Friday. Last week she decided at the last minute to stay over, and didn’t get back until Saturday afternoon. Call me old-fashioned, but I was a bit upset because we had planned to go to  Baylham House Rare Breeds Farm if the weather was nice, which it was, apart from the odd shower. She says she will definitely be home tonight because she plans to go to the Scouts’ Jumble Sale and says you have to get there early or all the good stuff will be gone.

 

 

James Henderson

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The Station


The Midland Hotel seen from The Station,
17th July 2023

 

 

Undermined by the dragging administration of life my

hope for profound or even coherent thought is

very low, despite the sun-setting drama approaching from

behind The Midland – that

white winged Deco

grace seagull curve with frosted atrium built

the year my dad was born: “extravagant

gesture of hope in an age of uncertainty” . . .

 

 

Thoughts I don’t want to examine pass

like road noise.

Canned Wuthering Heights from the pub’s outdoor speaker competes

with live R&B crossing Marine Road East,

and even the road signs now are either resisting

or taking on

metaphysical significance

– I can’t tell which.

 

 

If its good enough for you, then its good enough for me

runs another familiar ditty

clutching

waiting for magic hour, twilight

when the holiness of streetlights will elevate the sky.

Am I on something?

No

– nor would I wish to be.

 

 

An onshore breeze tangles the yard’s exhausted bunting

and the strung lights wait

somehow suggesting

– via Feelgood Dr. Wilko[i]

shunting psycho-zombie-like

back and forth across the stage unstopping –

the Thames delta

– to me at least

 

 

Canvey is a place I’ve never knowingly been

but the overlap conjures significance

out of nothing

even though there may be none in the end

just an ebb of impressions to give a kind of freedom.

“Can you imagine Welles – Orson – in flowing robes

doing Falstaff on Morecambe beach?”

“Surreal man!”

 

 

 

© Lawrence Freiesleben

Morecambe/Heysham, 2023

[email protected]

 

 

NOTES    Notes accessed on 24th August 2023

[i] Wilko being the stage name/nickname of John Andrew Wilkinson (12 July 1947 – 21 November 2022)  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilko_Johnson   See Julian Temple’s wonderful film: Oil City Confidential  (2009)  imdb.com/title/tt1379092/ 

The Station, is pub ‘poem’ number 13 – the restriction or encouragement being that they have to be (mostly) written at the time (usually while alone) in pubs (almost always their gardens or yards) and incorporate whatever crosses the senses or mind. Although the idea of forcing myself to do this only occurred in March 2023, I’ve retrospectively counted three earlier ‘poems’) including The best thing about dreams is not having to tidy them up at the endinternationaltimes.it/the-best-thing-about-dreams-is-not-having-to-tidy-them-up-at-the-end/ 

In Memory of Nagasaki written in the garden of The Duke of Rothesay and used at the end of internationaltimes.it/in-remembrance-of-nagasaki-city-of-lancaster-august-9th-2023/ became number 14. 

The Station pub whatpub.com/pubs/LUN/187/station-morecambe used to be a part of Morecambe’s main railway terminus – which greatly diminished, was shifted further away from the promenade in 1994  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morecambe_railway_station

 

 

 

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Fire

When I occasionally remember to breathe, I take the opportunity to scream, though I find it hard to do so without visualising that twisted movie mask. This is worth thinking about. I’m an Art Historian by trade, and even though it’s not my period, one would expect Munch to come to mind; but even though the world’s on fire and the 80s revival’s peaking with the threat of nuclear Armageddon, my conception of disaster remains inextricably linked to masks. À propos of diddly squat, there’s a man on TV explaining the necessity of burning a barnful of pianos, and I see him shuffle through the solemn ritual of petrol and safety matches, his face masked like a surgeon in a Hepworth study, his soft eyes surveying a world cast to scrapping hounds. I remember the breath of cool music in a Baroque chapel, and I scream like a siren at the heart of a dissolving city. My mask is blazing celluloid leaves.

.

Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor

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