– This is nice. I do like to be in the open air.
– The air is indeed at its best when it’s open.
– I can’t abide closed air.
– Closed air is the worst kind of air.
– If only we had our own garden.
– Indeed. Our own garden would be lovely. This yard has its shortcomings.
– But the open air, I do like to be in it.
– So you said.
– What can I smell, wafting in on the breath of the summer’s breeze? Laburnum? Lilac? Lily of the Valley?
– I think it’s the drains.
Martin Stannard
.
In the ‘Good Old Days’ things were much clearer
a spade was a spade you knew where you stood – it
was Black and White, crystal clear – clear as the back of
your white hand. No Blacks No Irish No Dogs!
A bit harsh on dogs was the common retort.
I mean what have dogs ever done to us? Imagine
today writing on a piece of paper and sellotaping
it to a window or onto a public house door or onto a nightclub
boarding. We all knew the inference – the mention of dogs
was unnecessary yet was always added nonetheless.
Ok for Blacks and Irish to wipe our arses and dig our roads
and drive our buses; and be the butt of inane jokes and innuendos.
These people were not really us – not really human – a sub grouping:
only nice white people were allowed in only nice white people
were included only nice white people were accepted!
Only nice white people without dogs need apply.
Today this has all gone! We are all new men and new women
– allegedly. We shrink from the past, try to move on, try
to make amends, try to reconcile a wrong. Yet something remains:
something inexplicable – a sort of collective transmitting psyche
– a shard of spirit – a pneuma – a phantom that lingers in the air,
folds in the streets, cries in our voices and actions: a sound that
drags – like chains and clamps, that tarries – that won’t go away –
that will not be silenced: an unforgettable acrid stench – as a dog
that is beaten will not come; as a man cannot be unhung
from a tree; as a whole diaspora cannot be unexcluded; as a race
subjugated unwanted unloved battered beaten hated.
This remains.
James McLaughlin
.
The flower is an art.
Have you admired it?
The color, the flower spreads
Is happiness.
The consolation of art
Is the flower’s admiration.
My layers of abstraction
Are the petals of flowers
The fragrance makes a dead alive.
The wildflower tames you not,
Doesn’t make you a captive
Of beauty,
Let the flower bloom like life
To pluck it is to speak of cruelty,
It is only an excuse.
My devotion
Is my innovation
In life.
My innovation is a new form of beauty.
Flowers are there to admire life,
A bouquet of togetherness
Spreading happiness.
Copyright Sushant Thapa
Nepal
Picture Nick Victor
.
The Artist’s Books, Francesca Woodman (Mack)
Francesca Woodman was a young artist who killed herself in 1981, at the age of 22, in New York City. She left behind a now critically acclaimed body of photographic work which mostly depicted herself or female models often placed as part of the room. Sometimes blurred, sometimes unclothed, often folded into awkward poses or around furniture or fittings, the images are mostly unglamourous and alluring, suggestive of untold stories or hidden secrets.
In addition to the careful management of her five years of work by her parents (which resulted in major exhibitions at the San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York), word-of-mouth and feminist critique have built up a somewhat cult-like posthumous fame, with Woodman joining the ranks of struggling female artists who lost the fight with the patriarchal art establishment. Woodman is in the canon now, up there with Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton, as abused, suicidal, ignored creatives.
Now, Mack have published an exquisitely produced hardback book which shows Woodman’s working in a different way: creating artist’s books. Found books, such as business ledgers or old journals, are used as a ground for photographs, negatives (or prints on acetate), as well as found images and writing, resulting in highly personal, evocative and sparse one-off folios.
These assembled and curated albums are fragile journals, which arrange evocative images of architecture, human bodies and interior space, into loose yet obsessive clusters and sequences. Much of each book (there are eight collected in this volume) remains either empty or left as found – beautiful inked scripts, folds and stains, fading lines – with occasional photographs glued or sellotaped in, and even scarcer annotations and notes.
If anything, this all adds to the strangeness of the photographs. Why are the photos of a blurred woman jumping or dancing in a loft space made even more otherwordly because of the aged sellotape which fixes it to the chosen page and the sellotape stains on the page opposite, which reflect the form? What does the handwritten text already in the book do to the way we see the work? Why are some pictures a different size to the others in the same series or sequence? Why is the top third of one image dark? And why does the umbrella leant against a wall draw the attention of the viewer much more than the abstracted breasts of the model who fills the foreground at the bottom of the photo?
The marked pages and occasional empty photo mounts, the creases and unchanged pages are not questions that can be answered, or puzzles that can be assembled or decoded. They are enigmatic and personal, and we do not know if the work gathered here were intended as ‘artist’s books’, or as workbooks, a way of thinking about order and sequencing work-in-progress. They are both impersonal and highly personal, the artist distant from yet also very present in her work at the same time. The often gnomic phrases and occasional lists add to the tentative feel of these assemblages.
For me, there are few points of artistic reference for Woodman’s work. Occasionally, her naked bodies remind me of Andre Kertesz’s ‘distortions’, and sometimes the soft-focus strangeness and sense of surrealism seems to give a nod to fashion photographer Deborah Turbeville, whose name is mentioned once in the pages of these artist’s books. The photos are small-scale, intimate, images which invite the viewer in; they do not shock or shout, hector or cajole, they veer towards polite mumbling and softly spoken seduction.
When I first received this book I thought how strange it was to have the whole of each of Woodman’s books reproduced even when there was ‘nothing to see’. Several weeks later, I can appreciate that they have been very deliberately left as found by the artist, adding a different sense of texture, speed and density to the work. This is a strange and enigmatic publication, that will only add to the allure and reputation of Francesca Woodman’s all too brief engagement with the visual.
Rupert Loydell
Photos by MACK
Pledging my Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members, edited by Ray Padgett
(EWP Press, 2023, £20.99, 441pp.)
Nearly every possible angle on Bob Dylan has been covered in book form over the last fifty years (yes, I know, fifty years), except perhaps one of the most obvious. Interviews with the man himself being rarer than hen’s teeth, what about those who’ve played alongside him during the twists and turns of his lengthy, storied career?
Ray Padgett set out to talk to as many of these fellow-travellers as he could, recording their memories and, in some cases, exploring their hurt feelings as they recall standing onstage night after night, feet away from the main man. Curmudgeonly, sweet, incommunicative, frustrating, magical, unpredictable – all these sides of Bob Dylan are clearly on show here, set out in simple Q and A format. As a bonus, they’re illustrated with some genuinely rare photos, many of which have not been used in Dylan books before.
Many interviewees here are clearly still under Dylan’s spell, whatever their rancorous feelings, and would do it all again in a moment. Some, like former Heartbreakers drummer, Stan Lynch, remain gushing fans at heart. Others reveal surprising aspects to his character, not least many testifying to their genuine sense of how crushingly difficult it must be to be Dylan, with the weight of expectations never far away.
The interviews gathered run mostly chronologically, from Noel Paul Stookey (the ‘Paul’ of Peter, Paul and Mary folk trio), who first ran into Dylan in the Gaslight folk venue in 1960, right up to Benmont Tench (another Heartbreaker), who played on 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways, and most points in between. There are a few notable absentees – Robbie Robertson of The Band, for instance, or Al Kooper, or even Joan Baez, but I’m guessing these names operate at an altitude beyond Padgett’s range. Conversely, I’ve never read interviews with Scarlet Rivera (violinist on the Rolling Thunder tour, 1975) or Richard Thompson about playing with Dylan, so there is a pretty wide selection of voices represented here, many of them interesting in themselves.
While most of those interviewed look back on their time onstage with Dylan fondly, there are exceptions: Duke Robillard, for example, who played on Time Out of Mind and then toured with him, seems genuinely angry and bitter about Dylan’s changeability and lack of communication skills. There are plenty of comments about these character traits, but most of the musicians interviewed seem to accept that this goes with the territory of being Bob Dylan. Marshall Crenshaw stoically acknowledges this as one who auditioned, but eventually didn’t get the gig in Dylan’s band of the time, freely admitting that he didn’t fit in.
Purple patches in Dylan’s career get plenty of coverage: the ‘born-again’ years of Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love are described lovingly by session drummer ace Jim Keltner, backing singer Regina McCrary and guitarist Fred Tackett, the potency and power of those tours now fully available for all via the recent Trouble No More Bootleg Series release. Similarly, the Rolling Thunder travelling circus tour of 1975 is fondly recalled by some participants, although here the witness of someone like Joan Baez (or even Roger McGuinn) might have added more context or possibly been less fulsome.
Some of the most interesting interviews are with those not actually onstage musicians at all. Richard Alderson, sound engineer on the 1966 ‘Judas’ electric tour, has only a few pages, but is fascinating. He also outs himself as the source of the 1962 Gaslight live tape, a widely distributed bootleg, now legitimised by a CBS release. Tour manager Richard Fernandez also fills in some of the day-to-day logistical issues behind an important tour: incidentally, here and elsewhere in the book, Tom Petty and his fellow Heartbreakers come across as the uncomplicated musos with hearts of gold that we always suspected they were.
Other peculiar detours in Dylan’s career also feature: his 1984 appearance on the David Letterman Show in the US, backed by The Plugz, a Latino punk group, his guest appearance in an episode of US sitcom Dharma & Greg in 1999, playing for the Pope during the Never-Ending Tour – the somewhat random nature of these incidents perhaps illustrates Dylan’s unpredictability, something which seems to have increased as he’s grown older. No one, for example, can explain why he might appear onstage sporting a long wig and false whiskers at the 2002 Newport Folk Festival; no one can explain why he strikes up some casual acquaintances yet refuses to speak a word to some of his own backing musicians for long weeks on tour. It’s just Dylan.
Ultimately, this is why books like this continue to be compiled, and why large numbers will read it: it’s just Dylan. What these interviews underline, again and again, is that there’s no one like him. There is literally no one who’s put up with the trials and perks of fame for so long and remained so dour, curmudgeonly and so…so Dylanesque, for want of a better term, for so long. Those of us who admire his music put up with it because every now and then an Infidels or a Time Out of Mind comes along to remind us of his gifts as an artist and songwriter. Of course, if your luck’s out, you might get a Down in the Groove or a Dylan and the Dead instead – you pays your money and you takes your chance.
Ultimately, this book goes a long way towards capturing the essential Bobness of working alongside Dylan very well. There are famous names in the world of Zimmerman – Spooner Oldham, Dickey Betts – who are just as puzzled and prone to mixed-up confusion as the rest of us who follow his career. This book takes you as close to that phenomenon as the man’s own Chronicles, and maybe more reliably. It won’t unravel the essential paradoxes of the man, but then we wouldn’t really want that, would we?
M.C.Caseley / July 2023
Regardless of the style or mode of a poem, regardless even of the stated intentions of the poet, who may vociferously deny his or her own voice, a ‘voiceless poem’ is an impossibility – the phrase “a voiceless poem” is simply a flat contradiction in terms. To be clear, there is no such thing as a voiceless poem.
Notwithstanding the inherent difficulties of defining the ‘voice’, you cannot surgically remove the individual (‘voice’) from the creative process without destroying the mechanism of the creative process itself. Beyond all the textual analysis and critical theory that can be directed towards a specific poem, the ultimate defining characteristic of the work is the unique ‘signature’ (strong or weak) of the author; it is always the product of unique sensibility. The essential criterion of difference between a poem by one writer and another is ultimately a difference of personality; it is matter of psychology, irrespective of literary theory. This is self-evident. It is also true of poems written by poets who tell us they deny the voice – all you hear is their voice.
The existence of an authorial voice does not imply interpretative exclusivity. In principle, the potential for plural meanings in a text and the creative involvement of the reader remains unaffected by the presence of an authorial voice. The ideal poem will always resist, or subvert, clear-cut interpretations or didactic messages; it is unlikely to conform to expectations derived from the received wisdom of either traditional dogma, or fashionable orthodoxy. Of course any given poem may be less than ideal.
In the Sixties, British poetry was divided into two symbiotic warring camps: conservatives and radicals. The conservative anti-modernist counter-revolutionaries can be epitomised by publications such as Encounter magazine (1953-1967), and by poetic ‘schools’ such as The Movement and the Confessional Poets. The ‘radicals’ comprise what is now known as the BPR (British Poetry Revival), but was recognized in the Sixties as the Underground, or the Children of Albion. We can refer to the latter as the Albion Underground.
The abuse of the word ‘radical’ to mean ‘progressive’ is endemic when looking back at this era and its immediate aftermath. There is an assumption that experimentalism must be ‘radical’ by definition but that is not necessarily the case. Poetic movements of the Left tend to monopolise this terminology, conflating the meaning of ‘progressive’ and ‘radical’, terms sometimes used as a synonym for ‘militant’. Radicals like to think of themselves as working to a ‘progressive’ political agenda, often involving ideas such as social justice and even ‘revolution’ (not just any revolution but The Revolution), hence the somewhat spurious notion of The Underground (in The West no poetry movement was really Underground in the strict sense). Most ‘radical’ poets fall into this category along with, for example, ‘protest poets’ who often are neither innovative nor experimental in the avant-garde sense (‘avant-garde’ here being another vague synonym for ‘radical’).
Surely the term ‘progressive’ (if it means anything) must be related to freedom and – in a literary context – to freedom of expression. Freedom of expression depends upon the concept of ‘the authorial voice’; consequently, if you deny the voice, you deny the agent of expression. To deny the voice is, thus, a reactionary and not a ‘progressive’ position; essentially it as an anti-Romantic moralistic backlash, or often poses as such.
The cultural climate of the later half of the twentieth century was very different from that of the Second World War or the period of Late Modernism. The Beat Generation of 1945-1960, haunted by the ghost of Rimbaud was among the last of the ‘Romantic’ groupings defined by the image of the artist-poet as mystical prophet, seer, wandering visionary and popular shaman. Ann Charters has observed that the Beat Poets ‘relied on autobiography’ because their marginal identity leads them to insist ‘on the validity of their own experience instead of accepting conventional opinions and the country’s common myths’. Jack Kerouac defined himself as ‘actually not ‘beat’ but a strange, solitary, crazy Catholic mystic’.
From the 1970s onwards, in the UK, in Continental Europe and in North America, we see, with local variations in chronology, the continuing and ever-expanding influence of academia. ‘Literature’ became an almost exclusive domain of the universities, resulting in most ‘innovative’ poets becoming functionaries in the Academy while most ‘radical’ poets outside the academy still maintained an affinity with the Academic Left, regarding open-neck-shirt scholasticism as the guarantee of the credible. Consequently, the traditional metaphor of the poet as wandering troubadour, alienated ‘genius’, or tortured outsider was replaced by the ‘academic expert in loco parentis’ drawn from the post-Structuralist intelligentsia. A new fashionable orthodoxy was born – Postmodernism.
Postmodern Theory (a diffuse and ambiguous phenomenon full of internal self-contradictions) was a consequence of the French universities general strike of May 1968 (‘the May Events’) in which academics became disillusioned with the traditional Left after the Unions and the Communists sided with the Gaullist Establishment. Displeased by this turn of events they decided that all the Grand Narratives of the Modern or Proto-Modern past (the Enlightenment) were worn-out or invalid – the ‘condition’ was Post-Modern, the ‘situation’ was new. At the same time, Roland Barthes proclaimed The Death of the Author, a Marxist attack on bourgeois individualism, one of the first assaults on the idea of the integral authorial voice.
By the 1970s there were, roughly, two strands or varieties of ‘difficult’ poetry trying to maintain the status of the avant-garde in a post-avant-garde cultural landscape. There was the Euro-centric strand, inspired by Neo-Dada movements such as Fluxus, and there was the American academic (Black Mountain) variety inspired by Charles Olson’s Projective Verse and the Objectivism of Louis Zukofsky.
Fluxus was an early Sixties Action Art movement initiated in 1961 by George Maciunas. It was concerned with the integration of art with life and the negation of social hierarchies. Allen Fisher, a poet once associated with Cobbing’s Writers Forum, is the most noted exponent of Fluxus-inspired poetics in the UK, as can be seen in his publications Place (1974-1981) and Scram (1971-1982). Objectivism was an offshoot of Imagism promoted by Ezra Pound. British Objectivism imported by Basil Bunting, came to be identified with the Northumbrian School centred on Barry MacSweeney, and the Cambridge School whose most famous exponent is J. H. Prynne. Prynne is also an enthusiast for the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (as you might expect Heidegger’s philosophy is both notoriously ‘difficult’ and prone to ultra right-wing interpretations). One aspect of Black Mountain doctrine was the eradication of the ego. Ironically, and despite this, the Post-Albion Underground experimentalists were addicted to huge, grandiose, self-important projects emulating the Cantos, Patterson, Zukofsky’s A and Olson’s Maximus.
Academic poetry differs from the writing of the pre-Albion Underground era in that it substituted theory for personality in the creative process. This was, above all, a Poetics of Process. As a Poetics of Process it paved the way for the next style of American poetry to arrive: the Language Poets.
Like Olson (who, in Proprioception (1964), demanded ‘Wash the ego out.’) the Language Poets were explicit in their denial of the individual ‘voice’ and by their concern to exclude all ‘autobiography’ and ‘ego psychology’ from writing. This stance, (a continuation of the ascetic morality of renunciation, an obvious hallmark of the righteous) which coincided with contemporary debates in the academic sphere about the role of science, identity politics and knowledge epistemology, assumed the illusory nature of the ‘Lyric I’, and the non-existence of facts beyond language as unchallenged givens. These debates were in fact symptomatic of a wider crisis in higher education and the sphere of philosophy. It was Wittgenstein who said that ‘the sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language’. Cynics have argued that this state of affairs had risen out of the widespread view that ‘philosophers’ were out of their depth when it came to confronting the scientific picture of the world (or even the universe). As Stephen Hawing said, science had become too technical and mathematical, so philosophers were impelled to reduce the scope of their enquiries. Language was the last bastion of knowledge, the final frontier for the professional thinker who was not a scientist.
In many respects these ideas have now become entrenched as key doctrines of ‘radical’ experimentalist poetry in both the US and the UK. In reality it was another generational revolt: they used the denial of the ‘voice’ and the principle of linguistic determinism as tactics to challenge the established status quo and assert their own ‘radicalism’ – just as all ‘new’ movements seek to do. In their 1988 group manifesto the Language Poets said: ‘Our work denies the centrality of the individual artist’. This statement suggests an authoritarian tendency in operation. Nothing is more authoritarian than the denial of, or marginalization of, individual ‘expression’. As an aesthetic or poetic this is entirely retrograde and reveals a mistaken view of the creative process. Furthermore the negation of the individual (Olson’s ‘Wash the ego out’) is the very reverse of ‘radical’, if by its use one means to imply a form of anti-establishment non-conformism. The principle of the ‘unegoistic’ is the basis of the worldwide, culturally dominant morality; an ascetic morality which preaches the selfless ‘unegoistic’ virtues of self-loathing, self-denial and self-sacrifice. These are virtues which, for thousands of years, have been gilded, deified and transcendentalised; glorified as articles of faith whereas, in fact they are nothing but altruistic social conventions; conventions that have evolved by chance to enhance group survival among many animal species, including Homo sapiens.
These various innovations had a major influence on non-mainstream British poetry which, prior to this, had shared, to some extent, a Beat poetry aesthetic, founded on an authorial voice. In Britain the Academic Left consolidated a position based on Post-Structuralism and similar tendencies (e.g. Social Construction Epistemology, Reader Response Theory) influenced by the later writings of Wittgenstein, flawed interpretations of Nietzsche, and an enthusiasm for Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). This latter in particular, together with a wilful misreading of Nietzschean Perspectivism, had a tremendous impact and precipitated what is known as the ‘science wars’. A key idea was the denial of objectivity and the view that the individual is a ‘cultural construction’. There can be no established facts, only incommensurable ‘paradigms’ afloat in a sea of relativistic viewpoints where no given viewpoint is any better or more useful than any other. However, significant transformative action in the real world requires the participation of an integrated unified, human individual/subject. By extension, the same is true of artistic creativity in all forms. Postmodern Theory usually denies this possibility; a convenient doctrine for those zealots of identity politics for whom all tradition and cultural baggage – however inimical – is sacrosanct.
The continuing rise of the mass media since 1945 has consolidated an already incipient post-cultural state. This is a state in which former cultural values have evaporated and ‘high culture’ has lost its historic dominance. It does not follow that the evaporation of ‘high culture’ vindicates the historical claims of Postmodernism – that would require an agreement on the nature of Modernism and a clear distinction (perhaps) between Modernism and ‘modernity’ in order to define ‘post-modernity’ as a viable chronological category. Postmodernism is a worldview or a doctrinal outlook: a limited (but diverse) quasi-philosophical tendency intrinsic to the late Cold War period. The era 1968-1989 saw the rise and fall of ‘Postmodernism’ in this narrow, doctrinal sense. The emergence of post-culture on the other hand can be dated back to the mid-to-late nineteenth century (for Barthes the historical turning point was 1848), a period that saw the publication of the Communist Manifesto, the rise of mass circulation newspapers, department stores, celebrity culture and popular mass entertainments such as Cabaret and Music Hall; the period that saw the first use of plate glass, the Singer sewing machine, the emergence of photography and the first moving pictures.
In the twenty-first century the state of post-culture continues to evolve at an ever-increasing rate of acceleration, rendering the old, nineteenth century ‘vanguard’ model of literary and artistic self-definition superfluous. A crisis of self-definition on this level has created an alienated intelligentsia still clinging to notions of high cultural value. These values have no viable place in a ‘new world order’ of globalised mass ‘infotainment’. We now inhabit a world where hitherto ‘profound’ masterpieces stand revealed as propaganda; a world where a tabloid headline or a refrain from a pop song may well possess more aesthetic value than a poem by J H Prynne or Basil Bunting.
It is ironic that the position we are describing has lead an alienated literary class to deny the value of the authorial voice, not only the voices of others – but their own as well.
A C Evans
.
I am seven, committed a crime
and I am going to prison.
My sisters won’t visit
for fear of being locked up as well.
At school, they say that
mister-Williams can
read my thoughts:
Open your Bible at ‘Exodus’
chapter ten, paragraph four.
[…and Moses answered:
Oh, God, I am slow of speech…]
I jump over squares in conversation
when the real things are
the wrong way around.
Shortcuts lead to mistakes,
so loud that it is impossible
to miss them.
Press “space bar” to be born.
Press “escape” to swear in emojis.
I bear the full stop’s weight that
God’s tongue dropped on my back.
I trust to wake up for school
with a packed lunch. Breaktime.
Shhh. You get upset and your soul grows
claws that poke at your ribcage.
How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?
I eat my past in small bites
and praise the Lord.
A thief deserves to keep hungry.
Maria Stadnicka
Picture Rupert Loydell
.
The roses of july
Are so pretty
A pretty good problem
To be
This beautiful
Insanely fragile
Yet beautiful
Helen’s face I can see
Roses in July
Just so pretty
Beautiful, a maiden robed
Our own reflections.
Sayani Mukherjee
Picture Nick Victor
i
it’s just another day of exquisite clarity
playing in the lush aftereffects of the earth
in which the horseriding ring
fooled by the sun
shines like the sea
not all at once near the tumor plant
lowflying microzephyrs
make the recently washed buckthorn hedges
sough and see-saw and show
the meaning and the end
of these escaping homeland games
past barracks where memorizing
revolutionary shibboleths
like anything is possible forever
the reenactment police wash their bodycameras in rainscented soap
when the public arrives
the paradise play is going already
at the end of the beach
the players are listing what they love
all these boys
no police
they were us when we were kids
in the slipstream of the tumor plant
a dog called sunshine
the recently watched gravedigger’s violet
wanders us in unison through a coughed up sleep
i remember thinking it was about paradise
and at the end of the beach it was about to snow
and though it was too dark now i remember
i would be ready to hear it
anywhere whatever it does
whatever it takes
i would be ready almost to know it
by heart like them
.
How to resist the new Public Order Act that is stripping away our right to dissent
The Metropolitan police took ‘swift’ action on 6 May to shut down protests at the coronation of king Charles, in a series of arrests that showed how little the idea of ‘policing by consent’ now means in practice.
In a classic example of why negotiating with police is fraught with risk, weeks of ‘dialogue’ in advance of the coronation by the campaign group Republic failed to prevent the immediate arrests of several of its members who were accused of having equipment used to lock-on. [‘Locking-on’ happens when protesters attach themselves to other people, objects, or buildings as part of their protest – ed]
Another police sweep resulted in the arrest of volunteers with ‘Night Stars’, a Westminster council group who distribute free rape alarms and safety information to women. Over the coronation weekend, a total of 52 people were arrested on protest- related charges.
“In order to build a case for imposing banning orders, officers will gather intelligence on hundreds of people”
Sections of the new Public Order Act were rushed into force to give police additional powers to deal with anti-monarchist protesters, but police paranoia around royal events is nothing new. We saw similar paranoid repression during the royal wedding in 2011, when protesters dressed as zombies were arrested for breach of the peace.
Many fear that new police powers will mean protest is now illegal. This is not (yet) true….
Police repression will come as no surprise to those whose communities have faced decades of harassment. But the Tory party’s vitriol against ‘disruptive’ protest is adding new fuel to the fire – and we have to resist the narrative that ‘good’ (quiet) protest is still lawful while ‘bad’ (direct action) protests must be criminalised.
With a huge level of discretion granted to the police to use expansive powers, we can expect to see the prejudices of the police exposed once again, not least the Met’s institutional racism that led to such a violent police response to Black Lives Matter demonstrators in 2020. That’s why it’s vital that we support each other and are prepared to respond to police targeting with practical knowledge and solidarity.
‘Disruption’
The government has sought to restrict the right to so-called ‘disruptive’ protest in three ways. Firstly, ministers want to severely narrow the idea of what is ‘acceptable’ disruption that inevitably results from protests, to mean only the most minor inconveniences are considered legitimate.
Secondly, they are expanding police powers to offer senior officers what they might potentially find useful at some point, rather than on what is genuinely reasonable or proportionate (the standard for human rights compliance).
Thirdly, they are introducing new laws to criminalise the methods by which serious disruption might potentially take place, rather than focusing on the actual degree of disruption a protest could lead to.
In all cases, the importance of fundamental rights to freedom of assembly have been almost completely ignored.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 was the starting point: it enables the police to limit protests based on a vaguely-worded and highly- subjective decision about whether they were too noisy.
It is significant that over the last year, this power has not yet been used. Instead, the police have relied heavily on another part of the new legislation, the revised offence of ‘public nuisance’. This was hardly ever used against protesters in the past but is now more often the preferred charge, instead of ‘obstruction of the highway’, for blocking roads.
This is because it has proven the most convenient way to shut down protests. Usually, this involves little thought about the so-called ‘balance’ between demonstrators and the rights of others and it has enabled the detention in prison of a record number of campaigners, the largest number in decades.
New ‘crimes’
The new Public Order Act (POA), meanwhile, creates a number of new offences related to disruption, particularly when directed against business or corporate interests. These include ‘obstruction of major transport works’ like road building or ‘interference with key infrastructure’ such as oil or gas exploration – had the law been in place before, it would undoubtedly have applied to protests at fracking sites. The Act also creates a new criminal offence of ‘locking-on’ to another person or an object as part of direct action or civil disobedience tactics.
There was already wide- ranging public order legislation in place. Why create new offences?
Primarily this is because they carry much tougher sentences on conviction, including imprisonment. It is also easier to convince a court to remand detainees or impose restrictive bail conditions. However, it also helps to justify the introduction of new police powers to stop and search anyone suspected of going to commit an offence of obstructing the highway, or public nuisance, or any of the new offences in the POA.
The greater severity of new offences also provides a pretext for targeting a few key organisers with another alarming part of the POA – Serious Disruption Prevention Orders. These are essentially anti-protest banning orders that can prevent an individual from associating with named others, going to certain areas or attending protests. It may mean anyone who has an order imposed on them is required to wear an electronic ankle tag as part of its enforcement.
These are civil orders, so courts will be able to decide, on the balance of probabilities (the civil standard of proof, not ‘beyond reasonable doubt’), that an individual is likely to cause disruption – based solely on intelligence from the police.
In 2019, at a ‘protest round table’, the Home Office said police had identified ‘circa thirty environmental activists who travel the country orchestrating protests and taking direct action’ as the likely targets for new banning orders – a small number of largely pacifist protesters, although the number has most likely grown since then. We do not know exactly how many, because the police say it will cost too much money to provide Netpol with a figure.
In order to build a case for imposing banning orders, officers will seek to gather intelligence on hundreds of people in the movements their targets are part of, on the people they know and on the places they work, even if they personally have never committed any kind of unlawful activity.
So on top of new, more severe offences and even more new police powers, the Public Order Act represents a massive increase in police surveillance.
Defending dissent
None of this means that protest is now illegal, but it has become a lot more uncertain.
This is why Netpol’s priorities are much less on the passage of legislation through parliament or efforts to amend government bills and instead are focused on creating the conditions to challenge the spread of uncertainty once new laws are passed. As campaigners and as movements, we can all help to do this, in four ways.
Firstly, by making sure everyone knows their rights – because knowing what powers the police have gives people enormous confidence to challenge their misuse on the streets.
Secondly, by resisting police surveillance – which means better protection for the members of our movements most likely to face such targeting and a greater awareness of the basic security practices which can help us challenge police intelligence gathering.
Thirdly, by getting better at offering more practical solidarity – so trying to avoid seeing ourselves in isolation from other campaigns and understanding that the threat of oppressive policing falls on all of us, so we had better start offering solidarity to each other, even if we disagree on tactics.
Finally, it means monitoring what is happening around the country. Netpol needs your help to know when new powers are used and in what circumstances, so we can build a case for why we believe that they exist primarily to disrupt and further criminalise the right to dissent.
By Netpol, reprinted from Peace News.
Netpol is The Network for Police Monitoring, whose website is at https://netpol.org/
You can also get their free guide ‘How to monitor the police’ from the same site.
In conversation with Alan Dearling
Alan: Thanks for taking time out for a chat, guys. So, who are the Steve Morrison Band, and what’s the ‘history’?
Steve: The Band came together organically. I was a regular visitor to Berwick as my parents had retired here. The Music Gallery music store was in many ways the heart of the town for musicians living in Berwick. As well as the store, Brian, the owner, ran a live venue upstairs from the shop – Café Kazmiranda. A lovely intimate room that gave a lot of local musicians the chance to perform. I was drawn to this scene, making friends and taking the opportunity to play at the Café myself. I got to know Brian and Martin, who worked at the shop, and they were happy to build a band around my music. With Brian on bass guitar, Martin on guitar and the addition of Jock Leathen on drums, we had a 4-piece Blues unit.
Having made the decision to move permanently to Berwick I now had a ‘Band’. Keen to gig and great fun to to play with.
Alan: I’ve seen both you, Steve, and Martin Yves in various bands around the Berwick and Scottish-English borderlands. Do you often join with other musical friends?
Steve: In the main I work under my own name. Solo, duo, trio and with the 4-piece band. Each give me different opportunities to explore and develop my music in ways that are varied and offer different challenges. Performing solo demands unique arrangements. Can be demanding but allows me the freedom to be spontaneous. Free to move around and respond organically to the live situation. When I’m playing with others I look to keep the arrangements loose, and although we are working with familiar songs they are constantly changing, moving around and allow us the chance to create something new and fresh with each performance. We don’t rehearse and I believe creating the music anew each time is exciting for us and our audience.
Martin: Yes, I’m always up for playing music and have a good time!
Alan: I saw you at The Barrels pub in Berwick very recently. It’s good that the basement area has re-opened for live music. Nice and busy and you were extremely popular with the audience. You put in a scorching R&B set, lots of original material, plenty of high energy slide guitar, guitar duels and incendiary drumming from a flashing drum kit! Tell me a bit about what you enjoy playing most…
Steve: As I mentioned earlier I’m always looking for opportunities to create. When the band comes together and our instruments blend into that one creative experience it can be a wonderful feeling and powerful. That said we are taking a chance on the night. We’re listening to each other, responding to the sounds each of us is creating turning the piece of music into a rhythmic groove with sweet melodic harmonies – It’s lovely and to share that with people. Simply great fun. That night at Barrels was a good one.
Martin: I enjoy being on stage playing spontaneous music and connecting with the band and hopefully the audience too…
Alan: This is for Steve. I watched the Sky Arts program, ‘Guitar Star’ from 2016 that featured you playing and joining in with many other guitar legends. What were your favourite moments?
Steve: I have to confess that having a Mercedes waiting outside my home to take me to that day’s shoot had its appeal. I’m often asked this question and I always respond by saying it was getting to hang out with 7 other wonderful guitarists. TV and filming mainly involves a lot of hanging around waiting for our opportunity to perform for the camera. The producers made a good decision not to run the competition as merely a knockout situation. Those who made it into the selected group of 8 were all included in five of the shows saving the knockout for the final three shows and an ultimate winner. Hanging around backstage allowed me to see these guys relaxed and happy off-camera. We got on really well together with little competitive atmosphere between us. I got to hear these guitarists warming up and having fun with their guitars. Sam Rodwell’s classical guitar was sublime. Jake Heaton’s rock guitar was driven by youthful enthusiasm. It was after the session when I played with Wilko Johnson in Camden that I got to hear the real Haythem Mohamed, another of the contestants. We were waiting backstage to be told when we could leave when Haythem dragged his guitar from the case and asked me what he should play. I said, “…play what you fancy my friend.” Wow! Relaxed and off camera I got to hear what that young man could do with guitar. He was the best among us. Fluid, creative and musical. Unforgettable for me. He should have won but was voted off in the 6th episode.
For myself, my favourite moment was playing for Miloš Karadaglić, the acclaimed classical guitarist. I was as nervous as hell as I knew I couldn’t fake anything classical on the guitar. Knowing he was from Montenegro I chose an original piece of mine with a World Music and Gypsy flavour. It went really good and I made him cry. Truly. I was absolutely delighted and waited eagerly for that particular episode to see the session on film. All that was shown is Milos leaning over my shoulder showing me how to hold the guitar properly. Those damn editors! Made me think of the lyrics from Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’ – “Riding high in April, shot down in May”.
Alan: Has the ‘Guitar Star’ series led to any more exciting opportunities?
Steve: Getting your face on the Tele is never a bad thing and enjoying the accolades of the likes of George Benson, Milos and Tony Visconti did wonders for my reputation and confidence.
As for furthering my career, not much really.
Steve Morrison on ‘Guitar Star’ compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJWZlMErovI
Alan: What are your individual and collective plans for 2023 onwards?
Steve: Gigs and the opportunity to perform and create with my musician friends. In my experience there is no, “…finally I’m good moment.” Rather it’s the growing and moving forward as a player and musician that is the greater achievement. My intention is to continue enjoying my music, my fellow band members and sharing it with others.
Alan: Any recordings in the offing? What is already available – recordings/videos – and how can folk find them?
Steve: I have put together a bunch of CDs. None available at the moment although I plan to move those recordings to the online streaming sites. For now, YouTube offers access to some live events. Always happier playing live than in the studio. I’m told my website is a pretty good place to get know me and my music.
Martin: I’ve quite a few things on Youtube but nothing official, we enjoy the moment and never had the urge to do anything too regimented to be registered. Steve on his own has an incredibly rich catalogue of his own music.
Alan: So far in your careers, what gigs or festies have you most enjoyed playing?
Martin: Personally with the band, the beer festivals are my favourite… No need to explain any further.
Steve: Performing at festivals and theatres on the continent has been fun and the opportunity to visit new places brings its own excitement. My favourite gigs include two contrasting events. The first was a festival in Haapsalu, Estonia. A ruined castle with couple of thousand folk distributed among the ruins. Big stage. Always keen to get the best sound I can I visit the Soundman running the desk to try to ingratiate myself. “Do you like Blues?” I say. “I have to” is his response. Yikes! I was playing solo and had to follow a 4-piece band. Well, it went great. It just came together for me. I filled that stage and I had them queuing around the stage to buy my CDs while the 6-piece band that followed me were playing.
The second was the roughest of pubs in East London. The Salmon & Ball situated on the corner of the street next to Bethnal Green Underground Station. Maybe 30 or 40 people of all persuasions. The tough guys strutting their stuff. The drunken men and women had clearly been drinking all day. The young French family, mum, dad and two youngsters visiting London. The two older guys at the bar dressed in silver suits and wearing fedoras and sporting immaculately manicured moustaches. They looked sharp and dangerous like characters from a Micky Spillane story. Well, just the two us. I’m with my drummer Alan Hughes that night. We set to work and got that room jumping. By 10 o’clock they were all on their feet dancing and rocking the night away. I’m looking across the room watching this amazing mix of characters having a ball. Without doubt one of my proudest moments when my drummer and I brought all these folk together under the umbrella of our music.
Alan: Which artists and recordings do you enjoy and rate?
Steve: Over the years I have collected and curated a wonderful collection of music from all over the world. My teachers were the early Blues men and women from Lightning Hopkins, Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Minnie and Louis Jordan. I love Boogie-Woogie music and the Big Swing Bands of the fifties. But I’m keen to hear contemporary musicians…I went abroad in my search for current and modern music that didn’t fall into the western popular scene. I love World Music and have explored all the continents looking for great music to inspire and teach me. I have an avaricious appetite for new music and if I hear something that moves me have to own it. I will often record music from films and TV shows that have that something that I want. I found the music of Alexi Murdoch in the film ‘Away We Go’ and the soundtrack to the film ‘Hitman Redemption’ has some great music too. I have so much music around me it’s difficult for me to choose a favourite but I will happily recommend a band I discovered last year, ‘Poor Man’s Poison’. Great performances beautifully recorded.
Poor Man’s Poison website: https://poormanspoison.net/home
Martin: I could spend a whole week on that subject… I love good music in general but with a soft spot for instrumental and fusion.
Alan: What other plans for the future?
Martin: Carry on doing what we do, watching closely and learning all I can from Steve and having the best time!
Steve: Planning to just keep on keeping on…
Alan: Many thanks for sharing some time and your thoughts…appreciated.
Art of Blues website: https://www.artofblues.net/www.artofblues.net/Steve_Morrison-Welcome.html
The wristwatch I lost on the very first year of wearing one is now a vintage. I find an advertisement online selling it, albeit don’t buy.
Buying it for a sum of newfangled money seems absurd. Not possessing it feels right – the wound of loss will keep the memory alive.
I tell you, “Perhaps it is the one I had, my uncle’s gift, not expensive, but just enough to make my aunt sigh. Perhaps it has a few strands of my adolescent hairs caught in its bracelet.”
You laugh and say, “You are both absurd and vintage.” Some nights you wind up me. My heart ticks. Other nights I stay in a box cushioned with velvet.
Kushal Poddar words and picture
@amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
Following their first abstract-ambient-industrial jazz collaboration, capturing the rewilding of decayed industries on ‘Romney Marsh,’ the sequel in their triptych, inspired by landscapes of the Sussex coast – where Keith Rodway (Good Missionaries / Column 258 / Necessary Animals / Anthony Moore) and Eugene Kalamari (gloppaddagloppadda / solo artist) reside – is ‘Seven Sisters.’
The Seven Sisters white cliffs and winding Cuckmere River are one of the most unique and distinct landmarks in the world. A series of seven peaks terminating abruptly into sheer chalk cliffs, spanning East Sussex and the South Downs from the Cuckmere River to Eastbourne. It is said that sailors named it such for their resemblance to seven nuns beckoning them safely to land; their white robes cloaked by green habitat. From west to east – Haven Brow, Short Brow, Brass Point, Flagstaff Brow, Rough Brow, Bailey’s Hill and Went Hill Brow.
The people who worked these lands altered little of it. It really shaped them and consequently took on legendary spiritual significance, influenced by successive invaders as the closest landmass of access from the European continent. As well as the land and sea providing sustenance; legal and illegal trade and being the bulwark of national security; all of such required heroic deeds of protection and maintenance by local inhabitants at the behest of successive rulers and landowners. Oral storytelling even speculates a tenuous link between a Sussex farmer and Utnapishtim in the eleventh tablet of the Sumerian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh; the legend of a global flood in which the farmer saves his livestock by building a great boat.
They have been linked with the Pleiades Constellation (seven doves) of Greek mythology – Sister Alcyone (queen who wards off evil / storms); Sister Taygeta (long-necked); Sister Elektra (amber, shining, bright, to flow or run like water); Sister Celaeno (swarthy); Sister Merope (eloquent, bee-eater, mortal); Sister Sterope (lightning, twinkling, sun-face or stubborn face); and Sister Maia (mother, nurse, the great one).
And even to seven demons: “On this very day, as evening approaches, the first is (like) a fox that drags/shuffles its tail, the second being sniffs like a domestic dog, the third, like a raven, (its) bite pecks larvae, the fourth overwhelms like a huge carrion devourer vulture, the fifth being, although not a wolf, falls upon black lambs, the sixth being hoots like an owl, which resides in …, the seventh being is (like) a shark (that) darts across the waves” (Hymn to Hendursag a 46-48, 77-84).
These are the influences encompassed in location recordings and random rhythms generated by natural forces of wind, sea, rock, water, wildlife and light – location recordings: the slapping of sail-mast lines; waves hitting a beach groyne; shale sucked back upon itself; sluicing of bowls in running water; the nettle of metal brushing metal, bouncing steel-plate and a rusting gate. Add to this the spirals of Keith Rodway’s sinuous synths riding thermals, the euphoric and misty horns of Sebastian Greschuk, and oblique rich tangents of Eugene Kalamari’s keys and final onerous choral requiem; we get a feel for the land’s mythical significance. The seven tracks of approximately seven-minute duration originate from a single seven-minute recording by Rodway, stretched and filtered by Kalamari to form the forty-nine minute gently rising ambient substrata, from which the Seven Sisters nuns / stars / peaks rise. ‘On Rocks’ – a poem from ‘Sublimation: a love affair with the sea’ by Kendal Eaton – (https://soundingoffuk.com/sublimation.html) – takes us deep within the mineral compaction and geological origins of this transcendent topography. Individual track information is allusory and derived from varied historical versions. But then the Greeks never let contradictions impede a good myth.
01 Went Hill Brow – Sister Alcyone: (queen who wards off evil / storms). Seduced by Poseidon and gave birth to Hyrieus, Orion’s father. The Pleiades ( Πλειάδες – “daughters of Pleione” probably derives from plein “to sail”) are the seven daughters of the Titan god Atlas and the ocean nymph Pleione. Alcyone is very protective, always on the vanguard, an anchor shoring up her sisters’ defences.
02 Bailey’s Hill – Sister Taygeta: (long necked). Seduced by Zeus and gave birth to Lacedæmon, founder of Sparta. In some versions of the story, she was unwilling to yield to Zeus, and was disguised by Artemis as a hind (female red deer). Somewhat winsome, light-hearted and care-free, we can imagine her preparing her vessel for sail against the boisterous waves – our first interlude of Greschuk’s airy trumpet, Kalamari’s slapping sail mast and Rodway’s bubbling synth reflecting the sun-kissed globules of perspiration on her slender bronzed neck.
03 Flagstaff Brow – Sister Elektra: (`amber’, `shining’, `bright,’ `to flow, run’, as a liquid). Wife of Corythus; seduced by Zeus and gave birth to Dardanus, founder of Troy. Electrum is an alloy of silver and gold, and means amber in Latin, as does the Greek electron. Thales of Miletus noted in 600 BC that a rubbed piece of amber will attract bits of straw, a manifestation of the effects of static electricity.
04 Brass Point – Sister Celeano: (swarthy). Celeano had two sons, Lycus (“wolf”) and Chimærus (“he-goat”) by Prometheus. More introspective than Alcyone; preoccupied by domestic and beauty rituals, cleanliness, adorning of precious metals and gems. Percussion here is the same mast as in the previous track recorded from its interior.
05 Rough Brow – Sister Merope: (eloquent, bee-eater, mortal). Married Sisyphus (se-sophos, `very wise’), son of Æolus, grandson of Deucalion (the Greek Noah), and great-grandson of Prometheus. Merope can always be seen closely observing nature with a playful curiosity, dancing barefoot in the grass.
06 Short brow – Sister Sterope: (`lightning’, `twinkling’, `sun-face’, `stubborn-face,’ Indo-European ster – `star’, `stellar’, `asterisk’). Possibly the daughter of Porthaön, and may have been the mother of the Sirens, who lured sailors to their deaths with their enchanting singing. A possible alternate name is Asterië (`of the starry sky’ or `of the sun’), which may also be a name for the creatrix of the universe. More reflective, graceful, intuitive and seductive. Keith Rodway’s transcendent synth lifts us from shore to stratosphere, whilst Kendal Eaton keeps our feet solidly on terra-firma with his poem ‘On Rocks’ paying reverence to the stratification of millennia.
07 Haven Brow – Sister Maia: (`grandmother’, `mother’, `nurse’; `the great one’). Eldest and most beautiful of the sisters; a mountain nymph in Arcadia. Seduced by Zeus and gave birth to Hermes. Her wisdom and experience peruses the bigger picture in every situation, sober and perceptive, always with her finger on the pulse. Maia has observed the consequences of hedonism with a somewhat jaded perspective. She circles the activities of her sisters with a supervisory eye, withdrawn to a place of security, on hand to give comfort and respite. A subtle choral requiem recalls the devastation she has seen wrought and the mourning of all mothers of tragedy. Cest-la-vie for a serene seasoned pragmatist.
08 (bonus) Short Brow – Sister Sterope (reprise). We revisit Sister Sterope, who is by now reclined on the beach, letting the sun’s rays, the waves, gliding seabirds and Sebastian’s French horn serenade her into a hypnagogic stupor.
Now: ‘Seven Sisters’ (Bandcamp release) – https://soundingoffuk.bandcamp.com/album/seven-sisters
Discounted pre-release available from the artist – (320kbs mp3 £5 / lossless wav £8 / lossless +mp3 £10) – https://kendal.gumroad.com/l/utjnt
Previously: ‘Romney Marsh’ – https://soundingoffuk.com/kalamari.html#sokalamaribookmark
Coming soon: ‘Devil’s Dyke’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3qDx91U3GA
For the longest time it felt wrong to be out without a mask. Everywhere, from shops to lecture halls, breath was too tangible, and all those mouths offered too much information. There was too much depth, and no one was on mute any more. Aeroplanes were the worst: tubes packed with faces, hanging where humans have no business to be. And then it was fine. The new normal became just normal, and everyone’s mouths just disappeared back into the empire of the unnoticed. I carried a mask for a while, just in case, but at some point – I can’t remember precisely when – I left it at home, and now when I come across one in a drawer, it’s like glimpsing a shipwreck through a glass-bottomed boat. Some days now when I go out, I don’t even take the lower part of my face. It’s not like anyone needs to see it, and it’s not like I’ve anything to say – just pleasantries which have largely fallen out of fashion, and inarticulate pleas for help which would only make others feel uncomfortable.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
Jay Jeff Jones, playwright, poet, and contributor to International Times, has died aged 77.
Jay Jeff Jones was born in in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1946. His parents, Nelson and Lila Fay Jones, both hailed from Cherokee ancestry. Raised in and around San Francisco, Jay joined the Hell’s Angels in the early 1960, riding his Harley Davidson around the city. As a teenager, he hung around North Beach, acting with the Mime Troupe, later working as a copy boy for the San Francisco Examiner. Frank Herbert, author of Dune, was one of his bosses.
Jay headed for London in 1966, where, as he recalled, he “did the starving writer routine.” He published short stories in Transatlantic Review, where he struck up a friendship with Heathcote Williams, and also wrote for alternative and underground magazines, among them International Times, Cozmic Comix, and Running Man. With Fran, a ballet dancer whom he married in 1968, he headed to British Columbia the following year, a move precipitated by his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War. Returning to the UK in late 1969, Jay lived in Manchester, Heptonstall (West Yorkshire,) and Dartmouth. In 2014, he and Fran returned to Heptonstall, their final home.
Jay earned a living as an advertising copyeditor, a job at which he excelled, but his passion lay in the arts, with a particular interest in the transatlantic underground scene. In the early 1970s while living in Manchester, he struck up a lifelong friendship with the author and publisher Michael Butterworth, editor of Corridor magazine. Jay became the magazine’s publicity director and book reviewer, also contributing a column under the by-line Ace Space. When Corridor was relaunched as Wordworks in 1975, he became the journal’s Associate Editor. He reviewed books, including William Burroughs’s The Wild Boys and John Fowles’s The Ebony Tower. He also contributed poetry, including “Howl, Now,” which was also published in International Times (March 1977). With Butterworth, he wrote Punk Planet, a space-rock novel that baffled publishers, eluding publication—but they had more success with the short story, “The Harme Oates Effect,” a tale about space junk that was published in Science Fiction Monthly (1975).
In 1977, Jay was editor of New Yorkshire Writing, a quarterly magazine with a circulation of around 45, 000. The magazine nearly folded when Jeff Nuttall’s short story, “Dream Piece” was published in issue 6 after it offended the Rotherham Town Councillor, who took umbrage with the sexual content of the story, demanding that the arts funding should be rescinded. Encouraged by Williams to develop an underground comix strip about The Doors front man, Jay wrote a play, The Lizard King, about the last thirty-six hours of Jim Morrison’s life. Performed in New York, London, Los Angeles, and Milwaukee from 1981, The Lizard King was an original and critically acclaimed take on the singer’s last days in Paris.
In 2016, I co-curated an exhibition about Jeff Nuttall with Jay in Manchester, which drew in one hundred and twenty-five thousand visitors. This was the first of half a dozen collaborations, including a smaller exhibition of Nuttall’s work in Flat Time House, London. Other projects including co-editing a volume of Nuttall’s out-of-print novellas and co-editing a fiftieth edition of Bomb Culture. Quietly erudite, and with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the counterculture and avant-garde, he was also an accomplished poet and essayist. As Butterworth put it recently, Jay “was a major figure who was beginning to consolidate his work and achieve wider recognition when his life was so tragically cut short.” During the last few years, Jay published several poems in International Times accompanied by Martin Sudden’s arresting illustrations. Jay’s recent projects include a short book, The Wind Pours by like Destiny: Sylvia Plath, Asa Benveniste, and the Poetic Afterlife and the poems, Silenian Odes for Cold Turkey Press. One of those poems, “Passion,” ends as follows:
As the old sun began
to swallow itself
and bog mist cloak the wires
they gathered their mess
and headed back down
into a previous future
and the valley’s
unbearable lights.
Jay Jeff Jones, February 18th,1946-May 21st, 2023 is survived by his wife, Fran, and their son, Wesley.
Douglas Field
.
I first became aware of Roddy Maude-Roxby in the late 60’s, when he was part of the ground-breaking improvisation team ‘Theatre Machine’ which, along with companies like the People Show, was one of my favourites. Decades later, I was to work with Roddy on the BBC Saturday morning show ‘Parallel 9’ where, as part of a company of five, we would improvise various character storylines. Not quite on a par with ‘Theatre Machine’ but challenging, nevertheless.
Since those BBC days, I have marvelled at Roddy’s singular ‘mask’ shows, and witnessed how influential his diverse talents have been, and continue to be, as this two-part exhibition shows. 1) His ‘Paintings’ showing at London’s POSK Gallery. 2) His ‘Drawing Books, Objects, and Film’ at 9, Lower Mall, London W6, a Thameside Grade II listed house where renowned director George Devine once lived and is now owned by the Royal Court Theatre.
On the first floor of Lower Mall, was a darkened room, with very comfortable armchairs, where a wonderful film of Roddy’s artistic journey, from childhood to present day, played on continuous loop, allowing visitors to join the viewing at any time. With some black and white archive footage mixed in with colourful recollections of his alter-ego masked poet ‘Henry Wainscote, we learn how this Royal Art College contemporary of Peter Blake, David Hockney, and more, forged his way through the London theatre scene, Broadway, and even Disney’s ‘The Aristocats’ – playing the voice of Edgar the Butler. Even now, he receives autograph requests, and always adds a hand drawn sketch of his Disney character.
The film, by Tom Chick, and featuring artist Marcia Farquhar in discussion with Roddy, covers his work with the likes of film director Mike Nichols (in a stage version of ‘The Knack’), and with Royal Court director Peter Gill (in Joe Orton’s ‘Erpingham Camp’). Alongside his more commercial work, Roddy continued to create his own ‘Mask’, ‘Improvisational’, and ‘Performance Art’ work, together with his painting, sculpting, and poetry projects. All these elements are covered, in a fun and humorous way, by the various guises Roddy assumes. By the end of the film, or to wherever it began, we have good insight into his extensive catalogue of creativity. And so, to the top floor……
Here, his many drawing books are on display, and they are truly magical. I almost wanted to smash the glass to turn some of the hidden pages, but fear of attack from his extraordinary army of nearby figurines halted such thoughts. There are a lot of intriguing sculpted objects, one of my favourites being a pair of espadrille-style shoes with numerous ghost-like images embedded amidst the sea waves, suggesting previous owners, perhaps, or something more sinister. Nothing is definite, possibilities and/or interpretations are endless, that is what makes this body of work so mesmerising, both in its minimalism and its enormity. Sadly, the happening at Lower Mall has now ended, but watch out, for it will return, I’m sure.
The ‘Paintings’ at the POSK Gallery, 238 King Street W6 ORF, continues until July 15th. These are a mixture of art upon art painted on recycled materials, and line and dot drawings combined with photographic imagery. Again, like his life-long pursuit of improvisational happenings, this exhibition displays how, even in his more conventional art, the unexpected happens in the blink of an eye. Just as you think you have seen all, something else appears to change your perspective of the whole. Each image asks a question and although one may struggle to find the answer sometimes, there is a silent conversation I found myself happily participating in. This is quite a small exhibition room but a slow walk around the art-filled walls, delving into the fascinating world of a unique one-off, proves to be a stimulating and fulfilling moment in time.
As you read this, I think it will be the last Saturday of the current showing at the POSK Gallery, so, if you are not doing anything today, get down there and treat yourself to some exceptional artwork. From 2.00pm-4.00pm Roddy will also be running an impromptu mask event. Do Go!
Meanwhile, visit Roddy’s new website, and keep an eye out for future happenings:
Finally, if you can get hold of a copy of his new book ‘A Selection’, I highly recommend it.
Reviewer: Kevin Short
https://riversidestudios.co.uk/see-and-do/blood-gold-and-oil-73758/
From the Arab Revolt of World War One, a modern hero is constructed: The brilliant, flawed figure of Lawrence of Arabia. His legacy is as complex as his psyche.
A museum. Present day. A curator puts the finishing touches to her final exhibition while its subject – seemingly summoned by the passion of the archaeologist – searches for a way out.
Produced for the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, BLOOD GOLD AND OIL scrapes away at the topsoil of TE Lawrence’s continued celebrity and interrogates all that lies beneath. Was he a brilliant military commander? Certainly. A Freedom fighter? He’d definitely like to think so. An agent of British colonialism? Could be.
During the course of the play, a real living exhibition is carefully pieced together with an array of genuine World War One artefacts on loan from the National Civil War Centre in Newark and Imperial War Museum. The finds were from a 2013 archaeological dig in Jordan where playwright Jan Woolf was a writer in residence and dug the play out of the ground.
“A profound and serious play where politics and psychology, authenticity and fable, artefacts and abstractions combine to epose a bitter truth to (the) British Public (…) This is vitally relevant subject matter and nourishment for a discerning audience” **** – The Morning Star
“Woolf is writing her way back to a place where she can confront the revered by bringing him into battle, not only with his past but the future (…) And so the play shimmers (…) This, then, is play as purpose, and more; play as evocation.”
– The International Times
“Douglas Clarke-Wood as TE Lawrence effortlessly commands the stage as TE Lawrence”
– London Pub Theatres
.
UK Centre for Hydrology and Ecology
Aug 2021
Street lighting disrupts pollinating moths
Street lights change the natural behaviour of moths and disrupt nocturnal pollination, new research shows.
The study, led by a team from Newcastle University, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Butterfly Conservation, revealed a shift in moth activity in street-lit areas from vegetation level to lamp-post height and the impact this is having on their ability to pollinate flowers.
The role played by moths in plant pollination has been largely overlooked as previous studies have focused on daytime pollinators, such as bees. Now the team says more research is needed to understand the effect of street lighting on moth populations and their importance as pollinators.
The new study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, was led by PhD student Callum Macgregor. He said, “We all know moths are attracted to light – some people might grumble about finding them flitting around in the bathroom or banging against the window.
“Where there are street lights, our research indicates that the moths are being attracted upwards, away from the fields and hedgerows. This is likely to cause disruption of night-time pollination by moths, which could be serious for the flowers which rely upon moths for pollination, and of course there could be negative effects on the moths themselves as well.”
“Where there are street lights, our research indicates that the moths are being attracted upwards, away from the fields and hedgerows.” Callum Macgregor
Dr Michael Pocock of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, a co-author of the paper, said, “Street lighting at night is important for road safety and people’s security but our research is just the latest piece of evidence showing the unintended negative effects of street lighting on wildlife.
“It indicates that the blanket of street lighting that covers many countries not only affects moths but has effects which cascade across ecosystems.”
Like the more well-known pollinators, bees and butterflies, moth populations in the UK and Europe are in severe long-term decline, with artificial night lighting one potential cause. It is only recently, however, that the crucial role played by moths in plant pollination has been fully appreciated.
Capturing and counting moths in lit and unlit areas of farmland in Oxfordshire, the team found that moth abundance at ground level was halved in lit areas but flight activity at the height of the street light was nearly doubled. Species richness was also reduced at ground level, with 25% fewer species in lit areas compared to those areas where there was no street lighting.
Analysing the presence of pollen on the captured moths, the team found that 1 in 4 of the insects were carrying pollen (from at least 28 plant species) so the halving of moth activity at ground level at lit sites could be affecting nocturnal pollination.
Co-author Dr Darren Evans from Newcastle University, said, “There is a great deal of concern at the moment about our falling pollinator populations and the knock-on effect on plant pollination. Our research suggests that it’s a process that is being damaged on two fronts – night and day – and together the impact could be significant.”
Richard Fox, from partner organisation Butterfly Conservation and also a co-author, added, “Moths are an important part of the UK’s biodiversity, as pollinators of wild flowers and as food for many birds and predators. However, the total abundance of moths in Britain has decreased by over a quarter since the 1960s with likely knock-on effects on many other organisms. The role of artificial light in causing moth declines remains unclear, but this new research indicates effects not just on moths but on the whole ecosystem.”
The impact of street lighting on our ecosystem
Globally, there are now an estimated 300 million street lights. The current study focused on the high pressure sodium street lamp found on most streets in Britain but the team is now investigating the impact of replacing these with LED lights. They recommend that, before replacement road lights are widely introduced, policy-makers should investigate their wider impact on natural systems.
The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. The study is available as an open access paper.
Additional information
Newcastle University issued a press release for this story. Callum also wrote a blog post on the research for The Conversation.
Full paper reference: The dark side of street lighting: impacts on moths and the disruption of nocturnal pollination. Callum Macgregor, Darren Evans, Richard Fox and Michael Pocock. Global Change Biology 2016. doi: 10.1111/gcb.13371
Staff page of Dr Michael Pocock, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Public Health England issues LED street lighting warning
03/04/2018
Public Health England has warned that high levels of blue light in LED street lighting can be uncomfortable and are ‘known to cause damage to the retina’.
The executive agency of the Department of Health also suggested that ‘daylight-running lights on cars’ can mean that older drivers ‘will be dazzled by oncoming vehicles with the risk that they may not see hazards until too late’ – a problem exacerbated by fog.
LED street lights have been used to replace older forms of street lighting across the UK as they are much cheaper to run, easier to control and can have less light dispersal.
However John O’Hagan of Public Health England warned that social and health factors should be considered, as well as financial.
‘Local authorities have been replacing mercury and sodium street lights with LEDs. If this is done purely on the basis of energy efficiency and cost, it is possible to end up with installations that may not be fit for purpose,’ he wrote in the chief medical officer’s annual report.
‘Some streetlight luminaires have LED sources that can be seen physically projecting below the luminaire, becoming a glare source or light pollution. The light spectrum may be enriched in the blue, which may be beneficial for keeping drivers alert, but many people will find the light uncomfortable. High levels of blue light are known to cause damage to the retina in the eye. This only tends to be a problem for blue LEDs and not for white-light LED sources containing a blue LED and a yellow phosphor.’
He pointed out that LEDs can be provided in a range of colour temperatures and that ‘warmer colours are likely to be more appropriate for populated areas’.
Mr O’Hagan said: ‘Some of the LED sources assessed by Public Health England and others vary in illuminance at a frequency of 100 hertz. At the extreme, the LEDs switch on and off 100 times per second. This is of concern for a number of reasons.’
In such circumstances ‘rotating machinery, which could include the blades on a food mixer, may appear to be stationary if the rotation rate matches the modulation rate or is a multiple of it’.
He added this frequency can also result in headaches, migraines and feelings of malaise in those sensitive to this light modulation.
“There are number things that should be considered,” said Marshall.
(1) Radiation action spectra are not absolutes and the wave breaks between the UV and visible are not in themselves absolutes. Action spectra tend to be Gaussian.
(2) While people accept the potential hazards of ultraviolet and protect eyes with specific filtration in for example in intraocular lenses there has never been a clinical trial demonstrating efficacy. I.e. there is no evidence-based medicine. However, few if any ophthalmologist will put a lens in without a UV block. But remember no evidence of efficacy.
(3) Short wavelength blue light is more hazardous than any other portion of the visible spectrum and is taken into account with special calculations in all the world’s laser/light protection documents. The so-called blue light hazard peaks at 441 nm. This initiates two forms of light damage based on two different absorption systems. Type I is very Low level exposures over very long periods depend upon absorption within the photoreceptor cells and type II is short exposures dependent upon absorption in the retinal pigment epithelium. There is no doubt among safety experts under certain circumstances short wavelength blue is hazardous to the retina.
(4) Blue light is attenuated in the normal eye by progressively accumulating yellow pigment in the cornea and more importantly the lens and the luteal pigment (peak absorption 448 nm, i.e. proximal to the peak of the blue light hazard) in the macular. Remember also there are no ” blue photoreceptor cells” in the foveola. From an evolutionary standpoint in terms of vision short wavelength blue is not a requirement for good visual acuity, remember Fovial tritanopia!
Climate News
LED streetlights decimating UK insect population, study finds
LED lights have a knock-on effect to other species, including hedgehogs, and songbirds
Samuel Webb
Whiter outdoor LED lights are harmful to insect populations
(Douglas Boyes)
LED streetlights are decimating the UK insect population, a study has found
The ‘eco-friendly’ lights are even more harmful to insect populations than the traditional sodium bulbs they are replacing, researchers from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) found.
The Independent
LED lights in your house can cause irreversible damage to the eyes, French health authority warns
,
dipped in clean soft water light and compact rogue and vagabond switching
between cotton and silk picking forms of weaving twisted into returns to be woven thrown into thread and figured cloth on credit and contract
options between the beats correction it’s a call come back correct there is also the ability to think contracts and contracts
outrageous and void option between the pictures this is a profession return to raise that a way of thinking
sugar dip from a boiling spring it is the gateway and it is a liar and a liar change and therein are silk silks and after you have fabricated a lie against Allah credit and contract
in other things remove in the case of the vagabond for the young people in the midst of cotton as well as silk
picked
the types of fighting
let’s get into it
I’m going to go back
let’s take a look at
it’s put in the thread
a number of clothing
forms of creation thrown into the pit
and guess
types of seeds (edit) to be transmitted the up-to-the-go it’s all good am I happy patience knitting shapes twisted to restore crouching in soft water
cotton neutral flower swap pick thrown in line and figured cloth with a cloth counted on debt and cooperation
has sunk light and small a conman and a god 1000000000000 dropped in line is marked white soft transfer centre of thread please choose weaving type twisted inside optic falling into transition exit change located in the middle became an object
it’s back beeping
we’re passing by picking woven shapes its coming back suffocating in clean soft water light and bad and scary bind by name dip switch shrinkage a bit inside thrown into the thread think fabric
sewing spark seizures and vaginal syndrome climbs up is stomach flammable between cotton and silk selection fist return pain throw light and tight and stray clover home silk whim fabric twisted thrown into the sea the patterned dress
The Story of slow moving river
Bayou journey
What’s the cotton
The Story of
What’s the
Blissful
Rosy Efficient Unwavering Dapper
What’s the statement
What’s the line
What’s the factory
Created Agreements and agreements
christened in clean water a native and a concubine light and strong The Day of The Lord said among the wheat and the wheat The Son of God a type of carrying turned into The Book transistor between cotton bye bye silk aqueous roots woven in thrown out of the fold thrown into a room with textured fabric under contract lest nomadic and nomadic to write to give to intervene change 1000 100 100 walking voting clothing recoveries weaving discing the machine drinking alcohol in clean water
water immersed in water in the case of pure water alteration in the midst of silk replay :: survival it’s twisted return on a thread and a piece of disseminated work lending and contracting between the depths of the silk select the weaving plans
Patricia Farrell
.
from ‘Ten Dispatches About Place’
3
Month by month, millions leave their homelands. They leave because there is nothing there, except their everything, which does not offer enough to feed their children. Once it did. This is the poverty of the new capitalism.
After long and terrible journeys, after they have experienced the baseness of which others are capable, after they have come to trust their own incomparable and dogged courage, emigrants find themselves waiting on some foreign transit station, and then all they have left of their home continent is themselves: their hands, their feet, shoulders, bodies, what they wear and what they pull over their heads at night to sleep under, wanting a roof.
5
Extensive areas which were once rural places are being turned into zones. The details of the process vary according to the continent – Africa or Central America or Southeast Asia. The initial dismembering, however, always comes from elsewhere and from corporate interests pursuing their appetite for ever more accumulation, which means seizing natural resources (fish in Lake Victoria, wood in the Amazon, petrol wherever it is to be found, uranium in Gabon, etc.), regardless of to whom the land or water belongs. The ensuing exploitation soon demands airports, military and paramilitary bases to defend what is being siphoned off, and collaboration with the local mafiosi. Tribal war, famine and genocide may follow.
People in such zones lose all sense of residence: children become orphans (even when they are not), women become slaves, men desperadoes. Once this has happened, to restore any sense of domesticity takes generations. Each year of such accumulation prolongs the Nowhere in time and space.
6
Meanwhile – and political resistance often begins in a meanwhile – the most important thing to grasp and remember is that those who profit from the present chaos, with their embedded commentators in the media, continuously misinform and misdirect. Their declarations will get nobody anywhere.
Yet, at the same time, the information technology developed by the corporations and their armies so they could dominate their Nowhere more speedily, is being used by others as a means of communication throughout the Everywhere they are struggling towards.
The Caribbean writer Edouard Glissant puts this very well: ‘. . . the way to resist globalization is not to deny globality, but to imagine what is the finite sum of all possible particularities and to get used to the idea that, as long as a single particularity is missing, globality will not be what it should be for us.’
We are establishing our own landmarks, naming places, finding poetry. yes, in the Meanwhile poetry is to be found.
John Berger (June 2005)
.
With their most tender touches, snowflakes
Have painted the whole night white
Including the darkest corner in sight
Even within a forgotten dream
Except the plum tree, standing alone there
Under the eastern sky, whose
Flowers are blooming boldly against
The entire season, more vibrant than blood
Changming Yuan
.
Never mind the bollocks here are the Sex Pistols
Rotten, Vicious, Jones and Cook with a tuneless racket
for a fucking bunch of cowboys.
Humped and twisted in splenetic rage
Rotten stalked the stage like Richard III,
spitting anarchy, no feelings, fascist regime.
That night everyone was arse and airs, including you and me.
Something was going down but what? The Sex Pistols
had shot their wad: that’s what. Last ever gig.
Rotten reverted to Lydon, Vicious untimely died, and you,
my peacock, feathered off leaving me with a dust sleeve:
Never mind the bollocks.
Joan Byrne
Winterland, San Francisco, 14 January 1978
.
On the sixth anniversary of the passing of Heathcote Williams
I missed it this year, by one week. But then missing of course is the issue.
Six years ago, your family lost their father and your full fraternity
Its word school. Not to mention the curvature of your nose, that nest
Of hair and the insight which kept the dark dulled, while blazing a trail
Across the chaos shaped cavern. Since you broke through, reason’s
Rubble has been sifted and strewn by the fools whom you excoriated
In verse and in your endtimes chiming essays. In fact, in each of
Your warnings the dawning of a new Poetic age would have cooled
The burning earth housing us. But not for long, sacred H. Your initial
Was a form of bridge between being. So, now there have been
Six years without you and the poems that etched Eden’s shade.
Which was never a real place of course, and yet you still burst
Babylons to locate it. Every day, then, we follow. If only memory
Were more solid; then we could hourly embrace all you made
David Erdos 8/7/23
.
every day for as long as i can remember
i wake up in some crazy transformation
riot dogs accompany me into the street
above us the familiar day begins
unusable and free
now that everyone knows everything
and everything is exactly the same
the swamp birches’ coronation continues
the light that flees to them from the day’s closing franchise
dreams listlessly of the wages of paradise
Jefferson, Adams and Washington
All died on Independence Day, the celebrations
Presumably too much for them, perhaps
Frightened (like dogs and cats) by the fireworks
On the plus side, Garibaldi
The Italian nationalist, was born. Louis
Armstrong, the trumpeter. Gina Lollobrigida
Jack Johnson broke John Jeffries nose in Reno
And the Communist Manifesto was published
My great-grandfather was named after Garibaldi
Steven Taylor
.
That October the moon shone incessantly,
though rarely detectable
between elevenses and high tea –
home to a man reclining inscrutably in the lap
of his own smile, high and wry
like a white horse munching runaway clover
at the foot of a sagging style.
After a while – a wayward fortnight of wind –
he waxed himself into
the rotundity of a buddha,
rubbing up his own sheer alabaster sheen.
That October the clocks
dragged their hands,
resisting change.
A still conservative wind
chilled the abandoned, rotten rape,
pecked at by a pair of orphaned swallows
in the damp privacy and mustard air
of the deserted departure lounge.
That October All Hallows had no eve
and the moon smeared its tears
with a cud-stained sleeve.
On heavy going,
the Cesarewitch cast her failed spell
over a cold cauldron.
When tomorrow came nobody noticed,
disguised as it was
in a high-waisted,
cream hessian macintosh.
Julian Isaacs
.
1000 words on Surrender: Ways of Hearing John Berger (British Library 7-11 July 2023)
From hand to heart the lines lead, and this is the case
With John Berger; every word chosen, a spectacular act
Of still life. As if his father’s face, fruit, or the workers’ toil
Were one image in which the writer’s art and decision
Had the self-same curvature of a wife.
That line carries on in Tina Grace’s new project.
Surrender: Ways of Hearing John Berger is a film/sound
Installation and tour, through which a strong female gaze
Groups to re-imagine his vision, seeding new work;
Female farmers ploughing Berger’s Pig Earth for the pure.
For purity is what Berger sought from his early days
As a critic. Never content with time’s standard, or any
And all status quos, he was an Art-Anarchist, calling
For change: a Marx brother, whose ways with words
Was not Groucho’s, or Karl’s for that matter,
But one as sharp as stones seeking Angels in order
To ground false halos. The later novelist fused Politics
With Art’s purpose. From A Painter of Our Time to Success
And Failure Of Picasso, Corker’s Freedom to G, winner
Of the third Booker prize, which Berger’s Black Panther
Sharing stance quickly sifted to show how the slavery
In that sugar firm soured even expression’s right
To feel free. He was a man of principle from the start,
Which at the present time is much needed, and Grace,
As with her name seeks to honour all that he was, felt
And saw. In producing this film, a composite of sound,
Soul and image, as we hear phone-fed excerpts of Berger,
Keisha Thompson and Laura Barton’s contemporary
Chorale, as well as that of Michael, his brother,
Reading in almost the same voice, John’s Seventh
And A Fortunate Man paths as passage, while each
Special image gracefully admits open doors.
Not only into his brother’s books, but into the world
His work fashions. From mountain to forest,
Stoke Newington to the Alps, Berger’s voice is a sea
And the film’s sensual pace feels like swimming
It is this slow submersion that Tina Grace seeks,
As a new generations of bathers are invited to ride
John’s soft r’s as ripples towards the summit of what
A poem cites as ‘the earth’s purple scalp.’
The outreach and contact beyond the elitist view
Is her mission; a divine form of travel from a generation
Before to the next. In which a reclaimed writer’s work
Becomes a prized baton, passed to the people,
Just as Berger did to reflect on the soul’s tenancy
And of what the eye and ear do to language
‘What do we in our single beds know of poetry?’
He asks in one poem. While in another, his hands
Cross a forest to seek his partner’s breasts; thought
As sex. And yet this 45 minute piece encompasses
So much more than love’s landscape, as does
Anna Phoebe’s cloud-coloured music and Grace
And Tom Colvin as Laqualia’s sainted song. Voice,
Violin and swathes of immaculate synth soothe
Mist’s myth that the filmed footage enhances.
The assorted photographers, musicians and film-makers,
Tierney Walker, Marcella Haddad, Jillian Edelstein,
Ian Burdge, Milad Yousiffi, and Louai Alhenawi among
Others honour Geoff Bird’s sound design, like a poem
In which a rhyme strives to belong. Surrender is a truly
Collaborative piece of art. A currency of intention.
Made to erect and furnish new towers of both understanding
And gain. For the towering intellect that John was
Always sought to commune at eye level, and both Michael
And his son Simon speak of how Berger made everyone
He met feel the same. From peasant to the prized
And this remains the point of the project. It is presented
As a way to be Berger for the time you are in and for his.
To encounter the world as he did. As the sacred line led
To either writing or drawing. Berger could write about
Smoke, cataracts, or Bologna’s Red Tenda. He could write
About women, and indeed the creatives in this special team
Send thought’s kiss. Thompson considers his muse
And the forms of community and commission. Barton casts
Her word wonders like light on a lake Berger stirs.
And meanwhile the drift of Migration’s theme moves
The water into which we are sinking, while sourcing a surface
That a Utopian turn might prefer. One in which we all
Slowly seize new Ways of Seeing and in listening to each
Other and to the world around and within finally feel
The force Berger mixed with paint and ink in his practice.
It is in sitting we travel, so that the heart’s true education
Begins. ‘I have tried to write the truth on trains,’ Berger
States. And as this project tours you will feel it, both
In the reverberations engendered and in the words heard
On the wind. For once you have seen this film and felt
Bird’s 3D sound design swoop around you, you will read
All the stories both imagined and true that solved sins.
For Berger was an angel, of sorts, with his steely gaze
Glaring at you, something unearthly while at the same time
Of the earth. His books should be held on a tilt, as they
Realign vision. Indeed, each one is a window framing
Green’s gold to find worth. And this film captures that.
This installation is an embrace Grace is giving.
By translating Berger’s books into echoes, Surrender
is soothing. ‘The sky’s blue milk’ brimming over the houses
As ‘holes in an arse of stone’ time has spurned.
The hope is that future generations engage and come
‘To the Wedding’ of man, myth and music; for by spending
Time spirits earn Art’s profit and more, the fact that all
Storytellers are prophets, predicting if only the moment.
All the best books become Bibles. Berger’s begat this.
The heart’s book starts after hearing. Art’s adventure
Continues, for when the book closes, the wonder persists.
‘Pages learn.’
David Erdos 5/7/23
An immersive audiovisual journey into the words and ideas of a hugely influential art radical:
Surrender – Ways of Hearing John Berger
‘Surrender – Ways of Hearing John Berger’ is an extraordinary look at John Berger (1926-2017), the author, painter and cultural critic who was and continues to be a hugely influential radical and outspoken voice in art and culture worldwide. Launching with an exclusive premiere at the British Library, Piggot Theatre on 4th July at 7pm-8.30pm, ‘Surrender’ marks 50 years of both The British Library and Berger’s ground-breaking Booker prize-winning book ‘G’ and BBC TV series and book ‘Ways of Seeing’.
Surrender: Ways of Hearing John Berger is designed to submerge the audience in words, images and sound. The immersive, 3D audiovisual experience is inspired by and featuring John Berger’s immense audio archive at the British Library and features the voices of John and Michael Berger reading from his novels; A Seventh Man (1975), Pig Earth (1979) and A Fortunate Man (1967).
Surrender aims to portray Berger’s ideas through a female gaze and includes new responses by writer-in-residence, poet, educator and curator Keisha Thompson, and new writing /narration by Bbc Radio 4 writer and broadcaster Laura Barton. With music compositions by respected violinist and composer Anna Phoebe.
Surrender has taken inspiration from some of the most urgent and universal themes of John Berger’s archive. From the perspective of migrant workers living in exile, the refugee crisis, to the importance of community and existing in harmony with nature.
The piece has been created by Executive Producer, performer and composer Tina Grace, to share the legacy of Berger’s ideas with new generations and audiences of communities of all ages and cultural identities.
The launch premiere on 4th July will include a panel conversation chaired by Gareth Evans (Whitechapel Gallery), featuring Executive Producer Tina Grace, with contributions by Michael Berger and Simon Berger, writer-in-residence Keisha Thompson and composer Anna Phoebe. The 3D audio installation transfers to the Foyle Suite at British Library from July 7-11, please see here for schedule.
Tina Grace said “I have always been hugely inspired and propelled by the ideas of John Berger, so it’s wonderful to bring together this exciting collective of multi-disciplinary creatives across artforms to programme and curate ‘Surrender: Ways of Hearing John Berger’. It has been 50 years since his groundbreaking, radical ideas shook the arts establishment, yet today, very few young people know his name, or his books. In 1972, Berger donated half his Booker prize money to the London chapter of the Black Panthers. The same year, his internationally acclaimed BBC TV series and book ‘Ways of Seeing’ caused huge global controversy when it spoke of the elitism, racism and misogyny within the arts establishment. My aim is for ‘Surrender’ to share John Berger’s legacy across generations with this compelling, immersive journey through his ideas. A reflection of London’s multicultural, multi-generational identity, in an increasingly polarised world, the need to find ways of listening to one another without judgement has never been so relevant.”
Credits: Lead writer Laura Barton. Production by Geoff Bird. 3D audio sound design and mix by Tom Slater for Call and Response. Additional music by Tina Grace and Tom Colvin, aka Laqualia.
Featured musicians: cellist Ian Burdge/Afghan Rubab; Milad Yousoffi, Syrian Flute; Louai Alhenawi. With Slo-film visuals edited by Tierney Walker@earthwaterfilms. Photographs featured in Slo – film edit from refugee camps in various locations in Europe by Jillian Edelstein. 3D audio sound-scape is mixed by @callandresponse.
Notes to editors:
.
.
Walking along
the Plymouth Road,
tarmac steaming, air starved:
a late June in crisis.
A mile to go
and striding now
towards the town;
but something made me
look down.
A young sparrow,
by a drain, a boy,
all rust and inky,
fledged, but heat-exhausted,
too weak to struggle:
that fatal waiting.
One chance.
(No family to be seen.)
I picked him up.
He didn’t flap or panic,
just gazed with soft, sloe eyes
and asked for help.
Still trusting,
(the ancient bond.)
Knew I was his best chance:
a short moment before
the tearing motorbikes,
the waspy vespas,
the death tanks.
I left my handbag.
Life more urgent.
Used both hands
and scooped.
Selfishly stroked his head
(a light touch
with fore finger.)
He let me,
sat there patiently
in my hand.
His eyes on mine.
We crossed that crazy road.
I set him down
in safer undergrowth,
checked his feet
for lameness, injury.
Left him on the smooth leaves.
But he just stayed there,
immobile. Pleading again
with those eyes, too weak,
(he had decided,)
to survive alone.
One chance.
I took him home,
decisively caging
my willing prisoner
in a nest of fingers.
We cooled him down
with wetted paint brush,
stroked his feathers
to a drizzle drench,
(everything in miniature,)
rain capped him.
Water colour never
looked so good.
We prized a dead insect
from his mouth,
unblocked him,
helped him drink,
brushed some droplets.
He obliged,
took it all in,
drank and drank,
gratefully accepted
the DIY SOS,
the well-meaning,
amateur preening.
An hour of care and rest
and he perched
more sprightly
on the edge
of a gift-box:
feet curling, and
mercifully intact!
And after a few
considered minutes,
he used his wings (not broken)
and disappeared
into the honeysuckle,
via the helpful arm
of a rose.
He made it!
I never felt more blessed.
I never felt more blessed..
Heidi Stephenson
.
– Which do you prefer?
– What are we talking about?
– Do you prefer town or country? Copse or Co-op?
– Ah! I’m in two minds. I have a foot in both camps. I’d say it’s fifty-fifty. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Every coin has two sides. You pays your money, you takes your choice. It depends which way you look at it. I hem and I haw. I sit on the fence. I’d say the jury’s out.
– Speaking for myself, I go along with that line from Cowper. God made the country, man made the town.
– I’m dubious. I’d rather not commit myself. Ask me something else.
Martin Stannard
.
As a symbol of progress, he was always having to peddle too hard for the journey covered and destinations never reached. When the typesetter asked Are you sure you want that capitalised? she was reminded, bluntly, how protocol for titles usurps disbelief. The road of one’s cadence when cycling is pre-ordained. For the poet, many of those gods in other worlds were always able to coast down a terrain of declining hills (yet are still useless on arrival). It is a methodology of Low Impact Aerobic Exorcising. As another symbol of progress, she simply observed it was a very long time coming.
Mike Ferguson
.
I’ve never seen such
dandy lions can’t see them
chasing antelopes
Dominic Rivron
Iconic, bizarre or just plain ‘weird’ – Part One
Alan Dearling
Way back in my personal life and times, I watched one heck of a lot of films. You might say that I ‘consumed them’ and along with music – was consumed by them. I wasn’t on the Film Studies course at uni in Canterbury, but I must have been close to achieving a one hundred per cent attendance at film showings. Old films from the beginnings of cinema such as the Russian films of Sergei Eisenstein like ‘Battleship Potemkin’; DW Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’, ‘Nosferatu’ by FW Murnau, and on to Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ and ‘Rashomon’; Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali with ‘Chien Andalou’ and ‘L’Age d’Or’ and the New Wave European films of Pasolini such as ‘Theorem’ and ‘Pigsty’, Fellini’s ‘Satyricon’ and ‘La Dolce Vita’, Werner Herzog’s ‘Fitzcarraldo’ alongside other films with actor/adversary, Klaus Kinski, plus Godard’s surreal works including ‘Week End’ and ‘Contempt’. These are just a few of the many, many…
And America was in for a renaissance in film-making led by younger, ambitious and experimental film directors who became as big as the ‘stars’ of Hollywood. They were a mixed bag from a range of backgrounds. William Friedkin, Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper – all actors who turned their hands to directing. George Lucas was a great innovator before he became the go-to creator of blockbusters. Likewise, Francis Ford Coppola, though his first film, ‘Dementia 13’ for producer, Roger Corman is best forgotten.
So, this is my little effort to share some of the films that disappeared, and some of those that ‘escaped’ from both the cinema circuits, but can just about be found on dvd and blu-ray, often in lovingly recreated and mastered versions.
Here are my first offerings. There are few more to come in the future. Hope you’ll find your film-consuming appetite whetted!
********************************************************************************
The Shooting (1966)
Filmed in the desert and mountain-scapes of Utah, this was a co-production between actor, Jack Nicholson and Monte Hellman. They actually shot two films over six weeks funded by cult horror director, Roger Corman, using adjacent locations and a number of the same actors. Both were westerns. The second was ‘Ride in the Whirlwind’ again featuring Jack Nicholson and Millie Perkins. Neither film was distributed until 1968 and even then on a very limited basis. The films were publicised on the back of ‘Easy Rider’, because of Nicholson’s involvement. But in fact Jack was in a relatively minor yet pivotal role as the smirking, smiling ghoul of a hired gunfighter, dressed appropriately in black – Billy Spear. He is indeed extremely fast on the draw.
Enigmatic, sometimes verging on the incomprehensible, it’s more of a mood poem. Brooding. A western-styled, ‘Waiting for Godot’ came to mind. The dialogue is limited, the director concentrates on naturalistic light and dark, creating moods of scowling darkness. Horses die, a mysterious un-named young woman (Perkins) commands the protagonists on a quest, a journey – a revenge hunt to kill. An unusual female lead role that is assertive, but not especially likeable. And she appears to be being abetted by Nicholson’s character, who is the man of mystery, the archetypal man in black. There are many interesting examples of experimental camera work with scene framing, cutting to black, and allowing the action to move into the frame, rather than panning along with the action. Like many of the films of new American sixties it was hallucinatory. “Your brains are going to fry out here!” is almost an appeal to the audience to join in the strangeness. Warren Oates develops a solid role as Gashade, somewhat reminiscent of James Coburn.
David Pirie in ‘Time Out’ wrote:
“Probably the first Western which really deserves to be called existential… Hellman builds remorselessly on the atmosphere and implications of the ‘quest’ until it assumes a terrifying importance in itself… What Hellman has done is to take the basic tools of the Western, and use them, without in anyway diluting or destroying their power, as the basis for a Kafkaesque drama.”
Much of the final section of ‘The Shooting’ is bleached out, almost to a blinding ‘whiteness’. There seem to be a number of endings and they are quirky and unexpected. It’s by no means perfect. Often clunky in fact, with uneven acting, odd humour and sense of anomie and bleakness. The dvd copy I bought seems to have a character on the right of the cover who is not even in the film! But, it’s worth searching out as a missing link in the cinema-chain that connects the New American cinema with the more art-house school film movement in Europe.
Trailer for ‘The Shooting’: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2xliqi
Later in his career, Nicholson tried his hand at directing with ‘Drive He Said’ (1971); ‘Goin’ South’ (1978) and ‘The Two Jakes’ (1990).
The Last Movie (1971)
Dennis Hopper was bank-rolled by Universal Studios to create and direct pretty much any film he wanted after the phenomenal success of ‘Easy Rider’. But the studio didn’t anticipate the potage of weirdness that Hopper eventually created in the editing room – probably from dozens of hours of film and definitely a lot of edits/versions/recreations and screenings and advice from a seemingly endless stream of friends and fellow directors, musos, drug-experimenters. It is one the most flawed yet fascinating films ever made. Film-maker, Alejandro Jodorowsky was one of them and perhaps, Nicholas Ray.
It turned out to be monumental in scale and catastrophic in terms of meanderings into madness and beyond. Dennis Hopper was most definitely paranoid, experiencing drug and alcohol induced delusions. Cocaine, LSD and marijuana were in plentiful supply amongst the crew and actors. It was Hopper’s aim to produce the ultimate American Art movie. He saw himself in terms of being ‘James Dean’, being a genius. To his friends, especially women, he was violent, dangerous. He imbued his character, Kansas, a horse-wrangler for the western being created inside the film, as the ultimate outcast, much more sinned against than sinning. Narcissistic. Unstable and unhinged. But at the same time, Kansas and the film is a remarkable parable for all that was wrong in America, its nightmares, hang-ups, violence, bigotry, nationalism and misogyny. Yet Maria (excellently played by Stella Garcia), who is Kansas’s local lover in the film, is also almost without scruples. On seeing a dead man on the bonnet of a car, she exclaims: ‘So? He looked dead. I didn’t know him.’ Life is cheap or even worthless. She wants and demands the rewards of consumerism: a swimming pool, an electric fridge and a mink coat. ‘The Last Movie’ is stuffed full of drugs. Hallucinations, dreams, violence, erotic sex…it’s ‘Apocalypse Now’ without Brando and Kurtz. But, it is cut from the same cloth.
It was intended to film in Mexico, but the Mexican government wanted editorial control and censorship. ‘No Way, Jose!’ Instead Dennis chose to take his extensive cast of freaks to a location 12,800 feet up in the Andes in Peru. The script by Stewart Stern (who had scripted ‘Rebel without a Cause) was disembowelled by Hopper, though it is essentially a film about the making of a western film about the death of Billy the Kid. Much of the content was improvised. It was an imitation of the movies imitating movies, imitating real life. The opening sequences of the Catholic parade, with a be-thorned Jesus, strange framing, hand-held action was shot for real in a specially-created version of the local ceremony sanctioned by the local priest. The padre in the film and the actor playing him, Tomas Milian, was embroiled by Hopper into a set of complex ethical and moral mazes (and alcohol and drugs!). This is insanity, film-making at the edges of darkness. Much of the action is set around the Church of Didymos Judas Thomas, with lush, violent set pieces incandescent with music, fire, mayhem and film-making of the western action movie and ‘The Last Movie’, filmed around the central square of the Peruvian town, known as Chinchero. Many locals were extras. They had never seen a film, much less been involved in making one. A complex one that was reflecting their own cultures and the cultural collision within and without in the USA.
Kris Kistofferson sings the earliest version of ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ along with stoned friends including Michelle Phillips from the Mamas and Papas and John Buck Wilkin, Peter Fonda and more. The drugs, alcohol, the sex and at least some of the brutal violence is very much for ‘real’. There’s a lot of music, recorded on location ‘live’ – from the US and Peru. It interweaves into pastoral landscapes, waterfalls, horses, shootings and ultra-violence.
It’s ultimately a film about films. A film about contrasting views of ‘realities’. Separate conflicting states of consciousness. A film about behaviour, morality and hypocrisy. The movie itself, the location in Peru and its people, and movie-making as an allegory of self-destruction. ‘Cut, cut, cut’, we hear the director of the western, Sam Fuller, cry out and we see ‘Scene Missing’ cue cards flash across the screen. It amazes, frustrates, mesmerises. It’s erotic, worrisome, confusing, muddled but also magnificent in its breadth, filmic beauty and some totally audacious sequences such as the long panning shot of three parties in three separate rooms in one house who are celebrating the end of the western film-shoot, with different music, activities unfolding to the camera and microphones – you can hear the music, the sounds, you can see the people and you can almost smell the marijuana, the splashing of alcohol and the culture clashes between the different actors, crews and the worlds of the USA and Peru.
It’s a perfect example of ‘personal freakdom’. Insanity. As the actor proclaims in a toast in one sequence: ‘To whores and whorehouses!’ And Sam Fuller yells, ‘I want balls when you die!’ A visual feast, a nightmare and a requiem.
Trailer for ‘The Last Movie’ 4k restoration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7038IZw_MQ
There is even a full length documentary entitled ‘The American Dreamer’ (1971) directed by L. M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller which peeks into the tortured editing of ‘The Last Movie’ by Hopper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHq6FwPn_bg
Dennis Hopper died in 2010 but did get a chance to direct again later in his career with films including: ‘Out of the Blue’ (1980) and ‘Colors’ (1988).
Heaven’s fiery ash
My new found isle of Poppies
Little big enough
For a magic maker
A big believer, A winner
The earthly paradise of
Golden paradigm
My heavenly fire of sea scapes
The Supernatural benused art
We call her a religion
A religious art
Divinely separated truly for the best
She’s our heaven
A little butterfly
A white tale
No She’s a divine plan
Rightly suited.
SAYANI MUKHERJEE
Picture Nick Victor
Another day, another billionaire strokes the tail of space, slips away from belted gravity, and floats like the embryo of a new species that has no reason to exist. Flight without feathers, flight without wings, flight without responsibility, running a rippling tail across new mountains. A glance of zig-zag light. White horizon. Harp seals roll in twenty-four hour sun, and a silver sliver slides on shrinking ice. Money talks of twisting in zero-G but, just as the song says, it can’t buy love. It can’t buy more than six or seven minutes of evolution. It can’t buy exemption from burning up on landing.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
Tracklist:
Ennio Morricone – The Strong
Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit
Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood – Some Velvet Morning
Rotary Connection – Like a Rolling Stone
Barbara and Ernie – Play with Fire
Aphrodite’s Child – Aegian Sea
Bob Smith – Please
The Gunter Kallmann Choir – Daydream
Junior Parker – Tomorrow Never Knows
The Beatles – Norwegian Wood
The Doors – The Crystal Ship
The Bonzo Dog Band – Canyons of Your Mind
Gil Trythall – Folsom Prison Blues
Led Zeppelin – Going to California
Shirley Bassey – Jezahel
Buffalo Springfield – For What it’s Worth
Sly and the Family Stone – Hot Fun in the Summertime
I am thrilled to have read “The Power of Words,” a poetry collection written by Binod Dawadi from Nepal and edited and written by Sydnie Beaupre from Canada. This collaboration of two poetic souls have created indelible marks on the sands of modern literature
But it can also destroy human beings,
By its anger,
This is because human beings are,
Making earth their puppet and playing with it. (Earth) ( 24)
The above-mentioned poem titled “Earth” is a critical tribute to the mother earth. In this collection there is a poem on war which calls for peace. The poems in this collection are comfortable, beautiful, not difficult to understand and peaceful. Readers of any age can find this book graspable. The discrimination between race, caste and gender should be stopped and the book stands with this idea. There is a path of guidance which is illuminating in this collection. Very precise and nurtured words take us to a journey in this book. Life is one and everyone has a precious life. When a poem is mentioning about life, it feels as if larger-than-life idea is present in the depth of the poem.
Some spiritual elements are also part of this collection. There is a poem titled “Pancha Maha Bhautus.” The meaning of Pancha is also clarified in the poem which means five elements like fire, air, water, space and earth. Mentioning about these elements show how universal the poet thinks and perceives. He sees the world through his spiritual eyes and incorporates the universality. How fire is defined as a god in the Hindi language is also considered. This pious understanding of Binod Dawadi as a poet is his brilliance.
If you bathe in religious waters,
All your sins will be forgiven,
By God. (Pancha Maha Bhautus).
The poet is defining each five elements of the Pancha including water, fire, air, space and earth. The description is refreshing. It gives us wisdom and knowledge. Poetry is equally performing that task, here in this collection. Affection of words bind us as readers and it is equally motivating.
Space is nothing but
A vacuum but it has energy,
Things called Gods, and sprits live in. (Pancha Maha Bhatus). (38)
The poet describes space as a vacuum which has energy. This thought carries a tremendous power. It is a wide ranging and flowering perception. To see that vacuum has energy is a powerful idea which can change the world, and open many doors of ideas. The universe is a larger picture and more than that our perception also descends from the firmament. This awareness is a larger picture, larger-than-life and it does not disregard our understanding of life and the world; it adds a consciousness. The poet is critical in his beautiful understanding. Defining each element seems like defining the world and understanding it by layers.
There is a poem titled “Melbourne” which states the famous places of Melbourne and why one should visit it. This poem takes us close to the aesthetics of Melbourne; the poem reads like a travelogue. It takes us to a literary journey through words and the desire to travel is stirred awake.
There is an interesting poem in this collection titled “If I Were A God.” The poet says that he would be visible to all if he were a god. I found this idea very comforting. How artistic and crafty is his presentation, when he mentions this idea. It really means a lot and has a healing potential. A visible god can also mean that our prayer is heard by the almighty; this idea has a tremendous potential.
There is a poem on “Friendship and Friend” and also Corona. The humanity speaks through empathetic voice from poets in this collection—especially in the poem titled “World Healing World Peace.”
The world is facing Corona,
In such conditions Corona,
Becomes greater than the 1st and 2nd world war,
People are dying of hunger,
They are searching for help (World Healing World Peace). (40)
The experience of poet Binod Dawadi as a student is also presented in his poem “College.” We get to know the author more closely through this poetry collection. The world will know him more genuinely. His ideas are time awakening and they speak of this modern world. The poet says that American dream is false, if you only have money for richness. The poet says that family values are more important.
This is the work of my ancestors,
The art of survival,
I am a farmer,
I am poor,
But I am happy. (Farmer) ( 81)
In the above-mentioned lines the poet sings the song of the soil. Farmer is brought to life; farming being the work of our ancestors. The relation of human kind with farming is old. It is our ability to grow seeds on the soil; it has been feeding us from time immemorial. I am filled with contentment when I read this poem. I thank the poet for singing the song of the soil with this poem.
There is a poem titled “Fake Love” which is eye-opening. This is a diverse collection. I can go on elaborating on its titles. Poetry needs to be graspable and this collection has served that need. I am happy that the book has got international attention through International editor jointly working on the book with a Nepali poet. I urge all the poetry lovers to enrich themselves with this eye-opening book of poetry written for modern times. The words in this collection “The Power of Words” are really powerful and it will continue to remain powerful forever. I wish all the luck for the poets of this anthology and wish them success of the book.
The poems in this collection are written by Binod and Sydnie jointly. Sydnie’s poems have capitalized titles. Apology is a theme for her opening poem in the anthology, which I see as a forgiveness seeking theme. The urge to apologize is not gloomy, it is a quest for existing and making one’s space to survive.
I apologize
all of the time
for existing.
I’m sorry for
being alive,
for taking up
space. (Sorry). ( 159)
The poems by Sydnie have a psychological touch which is necessary for literature to express well. The feelings of the mind are precious. The inner depth of the surface is reached well. The surfacial feelings have found depth in most of Sydnie’s poems.
I’ve been dreaming of you,
the you that took my insides and
rearranged them like they were
some sort of internal decorations
that could be interchanged, the you
that turned me into somebody new. (Dreaming). (161)
The internal decorations which she talks about in the above-mentioned lines are the inner dimensions that wait to be engineered. Turning of the self to something new is a process. The poem might sound sad in the beginning, but it still has lot to say. Poetic expression is indeed a magic, how it can convey sadness and uplift it. I thank Sydnie for sharing this poem in the anthology. Her personal ideas have been universalized in this poem. Readers will make it immortal.
We don our masks and wash our hands
March in the streets against tyranny
Hold our loved ones close and hope
beyond hope that things will change.
Will they? (Change). (163)
In the above-mentioned lines, the loved ones are not neglected or abandoned when there is no hope. There is profound hope in the poem. Despite our masked self we still hold hands with our loved ones. This closeness of holding hands is our prayer for hope. I hope Sydney will enthrall us with her personal-turned-universal poetic expressions. I wish her all the best.
Bio: Reviewer Sushant Thapa is an M.A. in English from JNU, New Delhi, India. He is a faculty of English at Nepal Business College, Biratnagar, Nepal.
Publication details
Product Details
ASIN: B0B5M5LDJ7
Publisher: Sydnie Beaupré; 1st edition (June 30, 2022)
Authors Bio
Binod Dawadi, the author of The Power of Words, holds a master’s degree in English. He has worked on numerous anthologies and been published in various magazines. His vision is to change society through knowledge, so he wants to provide enlightenment to people through his writing skills.
Sushant Thapa
Silhouettes and Shadows. The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), Adam Steiner (280pp, Backbeat Books)
This rambling, digressionary and unfocussed exploration of David Bowie’s 1980 hit album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is an enjoyable and informative book, full of surprises and unexpected comments and critical revelations. According to Steiner, the album is made post experimental phase but pre the pop phase that would come next. RCA were unhappy with Bowie’s Eno-influenced albums and suggested a return to the soul of Young Americans which had preceded them, despite critical acclaim and eventual sales for 1977’s Low and “Heroes”, if not so much for Lodger. Bowie was still struggling with on/off addictions, despite living in Berlin in an attempt to get clean, and caught up in thinking about the kind of music he might make next.
The book travels forwards and backwards (and sideways) in time, offers social and historical context, biographical details, authorial opinion, review excerpts, snippets from new interviews with musicians involved at the time as well as critics, writers and Bowie experts, and deconstructions and explorations of individual tracks, each of which gets a chapter to itself. It’s gloriously readable and informative, the book’s loose shape an appropriate response to an album which, although more focussed than Bowie’s previous album (Lodger), which was regarded as an unsatisfactory end to the Berlin trilogy, despite not being recorded or written there. On the back cover Steiner suggests Scary Monsters is the product of ‘Bowie at a personal and professional crossroads’.
For Steiner, the ghosts of Ziggy and Major Tom, perhaps the spectre of glam rock in general, still haunted Bowie, and Scary Monsters is partly about putting musical stakes through their heart, most obviously on ‘Ashes to Ashes’ in relation to the lost astronaut. (Of course, as we know, it didn’t quite work: Major Tom would return for one last appearance on the title track of Blackstar, Bowie’s final album.) Scary Monsters is also about faith and direction, particularly on ‘Kingdom Come’, the cover version of a Tom Verlaine song; and about the pressures, cynicism and ruthlessness of fashion, which Bowie explores in the song of the same title, wondering whether to embrace it or resist it’s siren call.
In a similarly undecided manner, the album offered up a wide range of stylistic musical choices, in some ways similar to the way Lodger was held together using the idea of a travelogue. If the krautrock and ambient explorations of Low and “Heroes” were absent, Robert Fripp’s various searing guitar solos could be seen as a continuation of the powerful and foregrounded guitar work on those albums but also a major part of Station to Station, my favourite Bowie album. Urged by Bowie to ‘Think Ritchie Blackmore’, Fripp was – according to Steiner – able to ‘destablize and enrich the work of his fellow musicians’ on ‘Up The Hill Backwards’ and, ‘unmoor the song, taking it towards strange new territories.’
These new territories were not only created by abstract and intrusive (yet very wonderful) guitar work, but also guttural Japanese vocals and Bowie’s desperate scream to stop the guitar solo on ‘It’s No Game (Part 1)’, Chuck Hammond’s weird guitar synth and Andy Clark’s Moog on ‘Ashes to Ashes’ (as well the track’s postapocalyptic video with it’s solarised beach and black sky), not to mention the self-interrupting, self-questioning and self-mocking chants and slogans of the goon squad on ‘Fashion’ (‘listen to me, don’t listen to me / beep beep’). Despite the sonic layerings and disruptions, not only did Scary Monsters sell, but produced hit singles.
For a while a desire for hit singles and popular success seemed to be the most important thing for Bowie, rather than experiment , subversion or sincerity. It wasn’t until Outside in 1995, an awkward and mostly unloveable collaboration with Eno, that he chose to step outside the pop marketplace he had imprisoned himself in after Scary Monsters. Although many, including myself, liked Bowie’s use of drum’n’bass and electronica on Earthling, and others enjoyed the art rock of Heathen, fans and critics did not join together in acclaim until the surprise release of The Next Day in 2013 and Blackstar, released posthumously after Bowie’s death three years later.
In 1980, while making Scary Monsters, however, Steiner says that Bowie was ‘[e]xhausted by the atrophy of mass communication, being known, beloved, and often misunderstood, where songs are seen as imitations of one’s own life’. The album ‘would stand as an opportunity to look both forward and backward at the same time’, and ‘remains a key moment in David Bowie’s brilliant adventure toward some better place.’ This better place would, of course, involve Bowie falling to earth and learning to live like others (albeit wealthy others) in NYC, and eventually returning to making the innovative and subversive music he was once renowned for, rather than the hit singles which – along with the sales of his back catalogue – helped fill his coffers. Steiner takes inspiration from all of this, ending the main part of his book by stating that ‘David Bowie went further out than most—and inspired us to dream that maybe we could go there too.’ This wide-ranging, eclectic, ill-disciplined and self-assured book also offers useful interpretations and inspiration to the inquisitive reader.
Rupert Loydell
Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which thinks coincidence is contemporary, whereas fate is retrospective
MYSELF: Whats wrong with you this morning?
READER: Its the Test match. I’m so disgusted with Australia.MYSELF: Why? Because they won?
READER: You don’t understand do you? Cricket is not just a game, it’s the embodiment of English history, manners and tradition and thus requires an unspoken, gentlemanly code of conduct which the crude Aussies simply do not possess.
MYSELF: Oh I don’t know about that. I reckon they’re easily as racist as us.
READER: Your cynicism knows no bounds does it? I’m talking about the disgraceful behaviour at Lords when Bairstow strayed out of his crease and was stumped by the Aussie wicketkeeper in direct contravention of the unwritten rules.
MYSELF: He strayed out of his crease?
READER: Yes.
MYSELF: Don’t the written rules say you have to remain inside your crease?
READER: The written rules say that yes.
MYSELF: So when he was having a little stroll outside his crease the wicketkeeper threw the ball, hit the wicket and Bairstow was given out by the umpire, as laid down in the rules?
READER: Exactly
MYSELF: And you’re cross about that?
READER: Furious.
MYSELF: Well I’m stumped. But since the cricket season is in full swing, and many people are as bamboozled as I am by the idiosyncrasies of the noble game, here is a brief glossary of cricket terms for the uninitiated:-
All out – the outcome of unsuccessful negotiations between the cricketers union (WOMBAT), and the MCC.
Appeal – the thing people find attractive about cricketers
Box – ball container
Inswinger – a sexually liberated agaraphobic
Outswinger – batsman who has eschewed the box
All rounder -see outswinger
Backlift – see outswinger
Batting – Dogging, for vampires.
The slips – debilitating intestinal condition, often acquired by test cricketers on tours of the subcontinent
Caught behind – see slips
Follow through – see slips
Crease – the sharp line in a batsman’s trousers
Outfield – a place for post-match sexual assignments
Dead rubber – used contraceptive device often found in the outfield
Stumps – affectionate nickname for Harry, the long serving double-amputee groundsman at Lords
Duck – tactic for avoiding for avoiding bouncers
Hat trick – rabbit produced from a cricket box
Googly – drunk
Full toss – see dead rubber
Maiden over – see outfield, dead rubber
Lob – see full toss
Straight bat – heterosexual flying rodent – see batting
EMINEM – ART OR ARSE?
Dear Wendy,
I am writing to defend the artist Tracy Eminem, whose unfair treatment by you and the rest of the male dominated media really gets my coat (goat surely? – ed). Tracy is right to be upset by such criticism. She, on her own, has singlehandedly dragged the so-called art world away from the paternal dominance of the Old Masters (no mistresses in there I notice-Hah!), and into the kicking screaming 21st shentury (sic). I seriously doubt that any of you so-called art critics (men to a man no doubt!) possess even a fraction of the intelligence, integrity or commitment required to sleep in the same sheets for nine months. Furthermore, I would be hard pressed to remember the names of the last five blokes I’d slept with, let alone the last 52!
Bob Ulala (Ms)
Bexhill
Dear ‘Bob’,
although this column is called ‘Sausage Life’ it would be quite wrong to assume that this is a euphemism for the penis. As you can see from the photo above I am a supple female, unadorned with the devil’s snake. Furthermore, Mr Arthur ‘Bird’ Guano is the epitome of a well-balanced gentleman, fully conversive with the finer points of gender.
SLIGHTLY FOXED
Dear Wendy,
Here we go again with the gay-leaning hippy drippy boo-hoo brigade determined to ban fox hunting. What do they know about the countryside with their hovermowers and electrical gadgetry? For heaven’s sake-the fox is a menace, not a cuddly fluffball to keep your silk pyjamas in!
In my area, rogue foxes regularly pluck babies out of prams and are known to perform human sacrifices. Last August an entire reservoir in Surrey emptied overnight, cutting off the water supply to over 100,000 households. Three old age pensioners dried.The culprit? – Old foxy. If democracy is to survive, we must act ruthlessly and stamp out the international fox menace for good. If God had meant foxes to dominate the earth, He wouldn’t have created johdpurs.
I myself was recently assaulted and robbed by three masked foxes on my way to block a road with my tractor. I may be wrong, but I thought I saw one of them sneering.
Bob Hayseed (faarmer)
Hassock-in-the-Wurne
WENDY WRITES: Do any of our readers have any views on the domination of the world by foxes?
FORWARD THINKING
Dear Wendy,
When is Marzo the astrologer to the stars due back? That Japanese bloke you got in is useless. He makes astrology sound like some groundless, unscientific mumbo-jumbo cooked up to satisfy the crude spiritual yearnings of morons.
Cuthbert String
Eastbourne
WENDY WRITES: Crude spiritual yearnings should not be dismissed out of hand. We at Sausage Life are of the opinion that that Morons have just as much right to believe in unscientific mumbo-jumbo as Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims. Marzo arrived back two weeks ago, but was delayed by airport security. He has assured us that he will be back at the helm as soon as the lab results are confirmed.
PATENT NONSENSE
Go-Home secretary Cruella Braverman is being sued by professor Gordon Thinktank, the celebrated Hastings inventor. Thinktank has engaged the much feared Geordie legal team of Ganon, Hadaway & Shayte in order to oppose what they contend to be a “bogus and plagiaristic patent application” from the gargoyle-faced arse-kisser.
The application in question is for The Squirrelator, a powerful steam-powered squirrel gun, which, the inventor claims, is based on his own compressed-air mole castrating device The Nutwaster.
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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Niall McDevitt performing the ‘Goose and Crow’ poems from ‘The Southwark Mysteries’
Photo: Juliet Singer
Niall McDevitt performing the ‘Goose and Crow’ poems from ‘The Southwark Mysteries’
Photo: Max Reeves
for Niall McDevitt
22 February 1967 – 29 September 2022
Crow’s Altar Boy is with us at The Feast,
The body ripped; the spirit arcing bright;
Immortal song from fragile form released.
With Crow the Cross Bones man, his outcast priest
Who fed the hungry legions of the night,
The crazed boy sang to consecrate The Feast.
They served The Goose, Her brittle bones they greased
And feathered, sang Her into flight;
Immortal song from fleeting form released.
They walked their talk, to pacify The Beast,
To open ways to worlds of pure delight;
Their mantic songs resounding at The Feast.
The boy became The Man; the song increased,
With his voice perfect pitched to Mental Fight;
Immortal song from failing form released.
I hold you here, in mind, Sun rising in the East,
Archangel Day; the dimming of the light;
The Man, complete, The Poet at his Feast;
Eternal Form, from bond and bound, released.
John Constable
For ten years (1998 – 2008) the London Irish poet and musician Niall McDevitt was a key player in the presentation of my epic work, The Southwark Mysteries. He played John Taylor the Water Poet in the premiere of The Mystery Plays in Shakespeare’s Globe and Southwark Cathedral and performed my ‘Goose and Crow’ poems, setting some to music, as part of a small band for the annual ritual drama The Halloween of Crossbones. He immortalised this part of our lives in his poems The Drum and Liberty Caps (I was touched when he dedicated the latter to me) published in his first collection b/w. Back then, he liked to call himself ‘Crow’s Altar Boy’ or ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’. Ours was a turbulent relationship, though an enduring one. As Blakeans we agreed that ‘Opposition is True Friendship’. As he emerged as a poet in his own rite (and in my estimation, il miglior fabbro) we often performed at each other’s events including On Blake’s Steps and The Dylan Celebration. I read at the launch of his Porterloo and he at the launch of my Spark In The Dark. In his last years, and especially after I left London, we didn’t see so much of one another, though the friendship and the connections remained strong. Niall died in the morning on the Feast of St Michael the Archangel. I wrote him this villanelle in tribute and performed it at his wake. Whenever I think of him it’s with immense love and gratitude for all he brought to my life, respect for his unflinching radicalism and championing of the underdog (something we shared) and above all a sense of how much fun we had being bad boy poets back in the day. Open pathways, Niall.
.
How is she how is skin
how healthy is her sweet swift
daylight anymore are angels here
do spirits close their eyes
our eyes what place is
occupied by gloves and shoes
and hatchery are slivers real
what does the mind command
how swollen is our history
how small how silence
catch blends stipuled caution
stale mate are there patches
of just-here-ness is the moon
a whale again is the moon on hold
is ivory a recent meme
Sheila E. Murphy
Photo Nick Victor
sauntering hard-pressed gay iconic
breathing dust fetishes doctors utopian ideas
isolation COVID wards dictating perfumery
etching’s right wings’ jackboot pharmacy
gathering loyal politicians’ quest
eons marking outings of new normal
neighbours’ released embarking Labour quest
eons smashing into Johnnson snare
utopian breathing doctors in perfumery
counters dictating political outrage
as yet another newspaper headline gobs
dictating newsprint looked up in anger
at yet another cosy TV debate
our future debentures frankly insolvent
wheeling newspaper barons drunk on typesetters
to the biting satire of gathering loyal politicians.
Clive Gresswell
An aesthetic principle in which Realism is defined as a quality of perception; where the word ‘open’ stands opposed to closure of teleological explications. For example, mono-causal creationism is a ‘closed’ explanation of ‘origins’ in conflict with the manifest non-teleological character of existence. Counter-intuitive, aleatoric, absurd and indeterminate phenomena are the side-effects or spin-offs of non-teleological conditions, leading to the transgressive or perturbing nature of Open Realist works – works that, in an age beyond satire, will always manifest the forgotten, ironic, paraxial and chaotic spirit of Rhathymia.
A.C. Evans
Just as I have been reading Ivor Gurney telling of a hundred years before, ‘…the gun stammer; thud, smack, belch of war,’ of frightened men with guns shouting out their pain; telly news has a fat man revelling in war, in the taking of sides. Footage shows round-eyed children in basements, women saying they’re scared of what’s next. What’s next? How many more times will the news show buildings broken by war and safe men saying this was deserved? Back to the fat man who makes a gruff comment and gives the one in faux uniform a comradely pat on the padded shoulder.
Sam Smith
Worlds Beyond Time. Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s, Adam Rowe
(224pp, hbck, £30, Abrams)
Back in the day, that is during the late 1970s, a visit to Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed bookshop in St. Anne’s Court, London, was to find oneself in an alternative universe where punk and hippy and countercultural zines piled on tables, fought for attention with shelves crammed full of American science fiction books, comic books and mysterious titles full of earth magic, leylines, spells and cosmic mysteries.
Bug-eyed monsters, mystical temples and caves, magicians, mutants and – of course – bloody hobbits and dwarves, were everywhere. Alien cities were home to spaceships that were bigger than London itself, and everyone was armed to the teeth, despite claiming ‘to come in peace’. Space helmets, skulls, undressed Amazonian spacewomen, giant cats, intergalactic armies and space colonies were de rigeur, space travel, biotech and blissed-out planetary landscapes the norm. After all, man had landed on the moon, drugs had expanded human consciousness, and the future was coming soon.
But the future didn’t come quite as expected, and most of what we imagined stayed trapped in the pages or covers of all those books. The wonderful Science Fiction Monthly published by NEL ceased publication, although they released an oversized paperback anthology of art they had previously featured, a copy of which I still own; and in 1981 Dark They Were and Golden Eyed closed up shop, never to return, time travel notwithstanding. Science Fiction has, of course, continued to go in and out of literary and cultural fashion, although the more experimental end still remains pretty much ‘underground’ (along with its cousins in contemporary fiction), as opposed to the sub-Tolkien sword and sorcery nonsense which features heavily on publishers’ ‘Fantasy’ lists. Only a few authors, such as William Burroughs, Michael Moorcock and J.G. Ballard, seemed to surf critical opinion into notional mainstream acceptance. And only a few specialist shops are still functioning, although I suspect this is mostly due to sales of t-shirts, memorabilia and plastic crap than the books hidden away in their basements.
I was delighted to receive a copy of Worlds Beyond Time, not just for nostalgic reasons, but because it is a serious attempt to map the mostly forgotten art of the decade. Adam Rowe offers a succinct history of science fiction before diving into first of many sections in his book: ‘The Abstract, Surreal, and Otheworldly’, ‘Spaceships, Vehicles and Megastructures’, ‘Sci-Fi Cities and Landscapes’, ‘Life in the Future[s]’ and ‘Fantasy Realms’ among them. These are the subdivided again into (mostly) double page spreads by specific artist or depictions of named topics and themes, as well as an introduction to each section.
Rowe is witty and informed, and thankfully not too geeky, but I remain fairly unconvinced by his taxonomy. Some of that is taste of course, and some of it may be due to copyright permissions or a lack of, but I wouldn’t have wasted room on the cover illustration for a Queen album, or the retro covers of Creepy and Eerie magazines. I might have ignored Close Encounters, Star Wars and Star Trek images too, since there were far more interesting and stranger films and science fiction TV around. There are some strange (my daughter would say ‘random’) groupings of work here, such as ‘Gunfights in Space’ and ‘Skull Planets’ and a distinct lack of some of more pop art work by the likes of David Pelham who did striking J G Ballard covers for Penguin.
I also wish there was more space given to the art itself. Too many pages have tiny thumbnail images of book covers on, with more room given to Rowe’s chatty summaries than relevant details. I think in the end there’s a conflation of two different books here: a celebration of art, and an encyclopedia or dictionary of science fiction art, with entries for artists, themes and examples of book jackets.
It’s difficult isn’t it? I mean who am I to say ‘don’t do it like that?’ (The obvious answer is ‘go and do your own book then.’) This book is great, but it has made me aware that I actually prefer more surreal or strange science fiction art, perhaps from the 60s rather than the 70s; and that I don’t like the more cartoony, comic or fantasy end of things when it comes to science fiction illustration and covers (well, books too). Also, that science fiction art isn’t a self-contained bubble, all this art exists or existed in a web of social, cultural and historical ideas and events. Sometimes Rowe links the images to things like the moon landing or NASA’s activities, but not very often, or not often enough. I know it’s not a sociology book but I’d like to know why even the supposedly logical Spock and Captain Kirk tend to shoot the aliens they encounter, despite their declaration ‘to explore strange new worlds, and seek out new life and new civilizations’. There were dissenting and critical artists at work, opposing the party line about technological utopias and the conquest of space – including Ian Miller, whose work is included – but you wouldn’t think so from this anthology.
Vincent Di Fate is more optimistic and upbeat in his Foreword, so let me give the (almost) last word to him:
May this book be among the first of many to draw attention
to one of the true, yet largely undiscovered treasures of
human thought. All great works of art, written, drawn, sung
or otherwise, aspire to remind us of our greater worth—our
fundamental humanity. And what better dreams might we
have than dreams of a brighter and better tomorrow?
I’m not sure that all these images show ‘a brighter and better world’, there are too many dystopias and post-apocalyptic scenes here, not to mention warmongering robots and starship troopers, but never mind. We can still dream.
Rupert Loydell
More details and images for Worlds Beyond Time can be found at the publisher’s website: https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/worlds-beyond-time_9781419748691/
Adam Rowe’s 70s Sci Fi Art, is at https://70sscifiart.tumblr.com/and other social media platforms
Some issues of Science Fiction Monthly are available to view at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/texts?&and[]=%22science%20fiction%20monthly%22
A new day is born
The snowbird sings of the spring.
The earthly pilgrimage
Responds to heaven and hell’s spell.
A fine evening elixir is drunk
From the lovers’ well.
A baby sun enlightens the morning
The shivering frailty is casted down the river
Last cremation is full of remembrance
Not a tear lost without a story to bear
A jolly night bird sings of the morning
In waking spirit of the aching hour.
The rituals are sacred under the day sun
Even a single day has its upbringing.
The night tells of pain,
The morning wakes up in jocund company
Of bright vivid flowery spring,
With not a fare-thee-well gesture
Only to keep returning
And flower like garland of smiles.
Copyright Sushant Thapa
Biratnagar, Nepal
Picture Nick Victor
Other Doors, Soft Machine (CD, Dyad Records)
The opening track of Other Doors reminds me of Shamal era Gong and the start of Pink Floyd’s ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’: gentle echoing bass, wailing fluid guitar, and soaring flute. That’s not a criticism by the way… The next track, ‘Penny Hitch’, continues with the gentle groove, but things do get a bit more complex and upbeat as the track progresses, with a wonderfully uplifting saxophone solo from Theo Travis, and more busy guitar work from John Etheridge who is on fine form throughout this album.
It’s pleasing to see that the band have chosen to simply use the Soft Machine moniker rather than append it with ‘Legacy’ or use any other variant. Also that previous member Roy Babbington features on a couple of tracks, and that the current incarnation give the musical nod to the band’s past by including a couple of older tracks, including Kevin Ayers’ ‘Joy of a Toy’ from their very first album along with the aforementioned ‘Penny Hitch’ from the unjustly ignored album Seven. Less pleasing but understandable is that drummer John Marshall, now a young 81 years old, has said this will be his final studio recording and announced his retirement.
There’s no let up in Marshall’s playing though, and new member Fred Thelonius Baker is no slouch on fretless bass either. This quartet are all about subtlety, shading and dynamics, and if I miss the earth-shaking bass of Hugh Hopper or the belting jazz-rock of Bundles, that’s my problem. This is a more stately, expansive and considered group with a tendency for making exquisite miniatures rather than extended wigouts. Marshall’s percussion and drumming is restrained throughout, adding as much texture as rhythm, and Baker’s bass is almost lead bass at times, but it is Etheridge and Travis who are the real standouts here.
Etheridge is a virtuoso guitarist, and always has been. And by that I don’t mean he goes in for hair-raising over-busy solos up and down the fretboard. No, he has an exquisite ear for soundscapes, melody, light and shade, as well as dynamics and presence. When he played in our village hall a few years back his set included mutated blues, jazz-rock, echoing ambient music, and straightforward tunes… no showing off, just superb musicianship and entertainment. Which is what he contributes here, often alongside Travis’ parts, which include keyboard duties as well as flutes, saxophones and what is listed as ‘electronics’. (Whether that is effects, treatments or just the strange bleeps on ‘Maybe Never’ I don’t know.) Travis seems to be able to play with anyone these days, from the recent big-band version of King Crimson to improvised duets with Robert Fripp, via solo work, later incarnations of Gong, to session work with a huge roster of bands. I’m not surprised on the evidence here.
If there aren’t extended compositions or a sense of ground-breaking new music here, there is an accomplished and intriguing collection of mostly brief tracks, full of musical surprises and glorious moments, made by a band with an unfailing musical ear, a huge skill set, and – most importantly – a shared sense of heritage and purpose. It will be very interesting to see what Other Doors lead to next.
Rupert Loydell
Pet Shop Boys, Eden Sessions, Eden Project, 28 June 2023
There are clearly a couple of different versions of the Pet Shop Boys. For me, they are a pop synthesizer band offering poetic lyrics and subtle washes and layers of melody and texture; but it appears that for many others they are a banging dance band, which is mostly what we got at Eden. Distorted, sometimes physically stomach churning, bass was to the fore of the mix, powering most songs along like a sledgehammer, whilst videos that looked like outtakes from the original version of Tron or the Stargate sequence in 2001 A Space Odyssey filled the stage-wide screen.
There’s no denying, of course, the quality and catchiness of the songs. The mostly middle-aged crowd (as is generally the case at Eden) enthusiastically bopped along to each and every tune offered to us on this greatest hits tour. Even I knew most of them! It reminded me of other celebratory Eden gigs like Kylie Minogue and Duran Duran, the atmosphere more like a party than a concert.
After a few songs as a duo, the scenery shifted whilst Neil Tennant had a quick costume change, and the band expanded to include a live drummer and a couple more keyboard players; there was also a guest vocalist singing Dusty Springfield’s part on ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This’. Chris Lowe moved to the top of a block, centre stage, leaving room for Tennant in his Bacofoil reflective cape to parade across the front stage as he saw fit. It also gave more room for the pair of lamp posts, which were perhaps the real stars of the show, to be moved on and off with ease, by costumed stagehands. These served as lights, spotlights, dancing poles and at one point even starred in their own video.
Highlights? ‘Jealousy’ and the band’s reinvention of U2’s ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ are both standout songs. Even if the latter started out as a pisstake, it remains an awesome adaptation. ‘New York City Boy’ and ‘Suburbia’ also managed to retain some subtlety, unlike ‘So Hard’, ‘Go West’, ‘Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)’ and ‘Single-Bilingual/ Se a vida é’, which were reduced to stomping beats with strained vocals struggling to be heard. Tennant has never been the world’s best singer, but he was struggling for much of the evening, his half-spoken, half-sung vocals often lost in the mix. (Although, of course, the crowd singing along often made up for it.)
Best of all were the two encore songs; they definitely kept the best ’til last. ‘West End Girls’ continues to emit its urban siren call after so many years, especially to this West End Boy from London. It was one of the few singles (George Michael’s ‘Faith’ was another) I remember cutting through the pop world’s crap in the middle of the 80s, capturing perfectly the suppressed desire, sexual tension, allure and sense of the possible that cities can offer. ‘Being Boring’ ended the evening, and although it lost some of its wistful melancholy live, it retained its mournful nostalgia for youth and elegaic recall of the decimated AIDS generation, laid waste to by government inaction, public ignorance and homophobia. It’s my favourite Pet Shop Boys song, and one of my all-time favourite videos.
So a fantastic end to a strange evening. Is it because the band had to perform in the light to start with, losing their neon charm and revealing how tacky the band’s outfits actually are? Or is it to do with some kind of shift to big venues and the need to ‘fill the space’ and entertain the crowds? Or maybe they always wanted to be a dance band (or always were) and I have missed the point? Either way, I enjoyed the gig and am glad to see another band live I haven’t before. Eden remains one of the best UK venues for live concerts, with enough space, toilets and bar facilities for everyone. But I will be going back to the albums with a sigh of relief and a ringing in my ears.
Rupert Loydell
‘Spokes Of A Buckled Wheel’ – New alternative solo album from Kendal Eaton
Why the title – ‘Spokes of a Buckled Wheel ‘?
It was a response to coming through the darkest times of personal mental anguish, following my complete breakdown in 1997. At that time mental health was still a taboo topic, especially amongst men. Stigma in services and amongst the public has somewhat eased with the passing time, but not much in practice. Middle-aged men are still the largest demographic amongst suicides and this doesn’t even touch the mental anguish that leads up to it. Men still don’t talk enough about the causes. I was lucky to work in mental health advocacy, support and NHS training, alongside heads of departments and other phenomenal ‘sufferers’ (I hate the dehumanised term ‘service-user’). I discovered the causes and symptoms are common and do not discriminate. Everyone has something to share that is incredibly valuable to each other. I found logic even in psychotic behaviour and it convinced me that people’s “uncharacteristic reactions” are actually very reasonable psychosomatic responses to extreme situations, often abusive. So, for me, most of these behaviours really aren’t mental ‘illness’; the symptoms are illness but the mind and body is digging the feet in the ground, telling a person that things have to stop and change urgently. That’s healthy no? If mental distress is non-discriminatory and the world is becoming increasingly taxing and insane, then every person is susceptible. Whether we’re regarded as successful or not, we all make up part of this wonky wheel.
What form does it take then?
The album incorporates samples from a discussion with members of Manic Depression Fellowship, Burnley in 2005. They kindly gave permission for me to record a session I hosted on the fly; an unplanned two-hour discussion on the topic “do you have to love yourself to be loved?” The conversation turned out to be non-preachy, incredibly poignant and often hilarious. Most people are very confident when they answer this question; you’re almost a heretic or treated as negative if you don’t follow the counselling and self-help book version, but I’d observed something that was different even to these contributors’ experiences. When doubting your own mentality, countless people and media are all too ready to make one up for you. So, it was a revelation to me and to these amazing and humble people, you may be pleasantly shocked.
When did the idea for the album come to you?
I’d been an emerging musician in the late 70s early 80’s, was offered a recording contract but got diverted with family matters. I went in the studio between 1998 and 2007 recording various bits. It’s taken twenty three years to get around to finishing it. Illness, relocating, writing 4 books, producing and releasing 7 music albums and other musicians, arts / theatre installations and commissions, voluntary work, all diverted me. I’m so pleased I kept hold of the takes and revisited it after all this time, since my music tastes and production qualities have matured and I could give it a more subtle treatment.
What are its musical influences?
I was sonically influenced by Bjork, Massive Attack and Portishead when I started, for me Bjork and Portishead had the courage to expose something honest and raw – I adore the vulnerability of Beth Gibbons’ vocals, also on ‘Out of Season’ with Rustin Man (also, Colour of Spring by Talk Talk is still one of my favourite most sonically sumptuous records) – and Massive Attack’s menacing moods, Robert Fripp’s oblique angular slant on music and the sensuosity of Eno and Hassell’s ‘Fourth World Vol 1: Possible Music.’ I went for dramatic sounds. I never use generic untreated sounds from instruments, unless acoustic or percussive, but even most of those are given my edge. I wanted extreme frequencies – sub bass, ambient and harmonic distortion and feedback – to trigger physiological and environmental responses, either to comfort or disturb or unsettle. So for example, on ‘Nothin’s Real’ I treated the kick with an expanding post-sub rumble that should vibrate walls even on small speakers, it has been attenuated since the original; on ‘Unlovable’ there’s what sounds like distorted guitar or modulated synth that gets to the verge of screaming desperation; on ‘Died Before’ there’s a filtered kick again but this time like the sound of bubbles rising in water, to make the listener feel cocooned; similarly, on ‘Sound’ I treated a synth to sound like waves crashing on rocks underwater with the swell sucking the current back from shore; and on ‘Falling Into An All-time High’ the vocal is treated at the end to give the impression of flying. Much later I was impacted by the whole oeuvre of Scott Walker.
So, along with the vocals and poetry, there’s a lot of spoken word, what made you choose this approach?
Human speech is another form of musicality. Mixing vocal conversations with music contributes a tonal melody, like a soloist or duo throwing in their own rhythmic jazz licks and hits with sometimes the sweetest and astonishing coincidences. You hear this on ‘People Like That’ where I basically gave two friends – Gilly Daniels, a seasoned actress and her close friend Jayne Parrington (non-actor) – a secret brief each and just that they were going to play mother and daughter. We assembled at Jayne’s mother’s home and just pressed record. I could never have anticipated the subtleties of what emerged and their improv performances still stagger me after hundreds of listens over the years. It has pathos, depth, conflict and humour, but the way it interacts with the solo bass loops is like a composed symphony to me.
Where did the poetic content originate?
I now regard my breakdown as a breakthrough. It woke me up to reconstructing my life honestly, instead of basing it on everything that had configured it to that point, including extreme levels of abuse. Part of that process was just writing things down for myself – just what I felt – because if something happened to me, I wanted there to be some indicator of the horror. That led to me putting somewhat abstract poems together and became part of my waking from a previous fortnight of catatonic state, unsupervised and alone. It was years of process but enabled me to get to know myself honestly and brutally.
Later I joined Manchester Survivors’ Poetry Group and Monday Night Critique group at Commonword publishers. I started reciting at poetry events and on my first appearance, I had good responses and the host, Chloe Poems, said they were powerful. I later became a regular performer at theatres and festivals across all the northwest counties mixing with great writers, Chloe (Gerry Potter), Lemn Sissay, Mike Garry (and his Gorton girls), Pam Leeson, James Quinn, Attila The Stockbroker, Jim Bennett and The Dead Good Poets Society, Liverpool, to mention a few, and did workshops with Carol Ann Duffy and some seasoned screenwriters and playwrights, getting some good feedback and confidence. I edited a couple of published academic books and helped with some BBC radio-plays written by close friends.
The poems come from that era spanning 1997 to 2007 – ‘Dawning On Me’ an anthology from ‘Listening to what, you don’t want to hear,’ ‘Undercurrents’ and ‘Fabulous Mornings’ which are mostly unadulterated true accounts. ‘Sound’ is from my latest collection: ‘Sublimation; a love affair with the sea’ – https://soundingoffuk.com/sublimation.html – I’ve included an audio-collection to accompany the album, available free to play or download.
What do you hope people will take away from the album?
Just an enjoyable sonic and thought-provoking journey; and without wanting to sound preachy, (I hate morals, they always predicate the stature of someone conceited, ascendant or judgmental, when we’re all subject to the same influences and environment), I’d hope some uncommon insight, inspiration to carry on, empathy, validation, to go easy on oneself and to remove this Dickensian notion that people behaving against expected norms who were previously predictable are suddenly ill, shifting the focus from where the problems usually lie. That we need to take life’s horrors seriously, but celebrate how people emerge from them and stop stigmatising those that don’t. People assume these topics are morbid, but that’s never been my experience in my exchanges with every individual I encounter. They have predominantly been inspiring and far more positive than most of the people and the stigma that surround them.
(Album Cover: photograph of a pavement on the promenade of Benalmadena, at playa Malapesquera. Poetry anthology cover: icicles from a frozen stream at Calf Hey reservoir, Haslingden).___
Track samples video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhRg_Bzj0hc
Track ‘Died Before’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUP9ZeBOht4
“…a tremendous achievement. I’m Stuck for superlatives. Wonderful production with such subtle touches. You’re the South Coast Scott Walker.” Keith Rodway (Column258 / Necessary Animals)
“Great album Kendal, tales of journeys and breakthroughs in a fine Mancunian basso profundo… heart-warming stuff.” Anthony Moore (Slapp Happy / Henry Cow)
Listen to all tracks, read details and lyrics, or download on Bandcamp –https://soundingoffuk.bandcamp.com/
Or Sounding Off UK – https://soundingoffuk.com/kendal.html
Or discounted downloads DIRECT FROM THE ARTIST – https://kendal.gumroad.com/
I have heard Paris is beautiful in May
Two lost cards that find
A perfect geometric strength
It then carves a niche
Mon Amor it says that always says
Pink is loveliest of all
Beautiful Strange Goodness
Colours have their own homes too
Just as my paper knife
A little too pink for it
Isn’t so?
A child may notice
Children notice everything
A change in smile
They are the big apples
Do this do that
We are grown ups
Still pink is loveliest of all
Home Goodness Flowers
I still think Paris is most beautiful in May
The ribboned dress
The little paper towns
They all go to a merry go round
All pinkish flame in the snowbound home
I still love Pink
My home my mon amor.
Sayani Mukherjee
.
a merry air of despair
lingered over La Place de Broukère
the bells were tolling over and over
from St. Julien le Pauvre
from Belleville to Bastille
chimed their insistent peal
white blossoms fell on the abandoned bride
as the unoccupied future ran to hide
the groom had taken to his heels to flee
and was boarding the eight fifty-three
departing from La Gare de L’Est
en route to a rumoured snuff-lit fest
it’s easy
when there are
plenty of branches
to hold on to
close to the foot of it
that carry on
all the way up
to the top
not so close together
that you have to
squeeze between them
and who can resist?
(not me it brings out
the child in you
which is a good thing)
and while you’re climbing
there’s no time to think
about anything else
like the price of everything
that (like yourself) is
going up or the wars
and the refugees
and the politicians
who don’t give a fuck
about refugees
(any more than they do
about trees
and who’d only climb one
or (more likely)
plant one
if they thought
there were votes in it)
and when you finally
get to the top
you can see for miles
Dominic Rivron
.
Shifty dogs mill outside church halls and primary schools, hungry for change. It’s a tipping point for faith and fantasy, a crossroads for crucifixions and constitutional protocols, with symbols and significations up for grabs. It’s a turning point in the same old song, with new arrangements ink-wet on the lips of the faithful, the faithless, the faceless, and the unimaginative fantasists. It’s a time for unconventional tunings, new modes, and drones beyond the range of human hearing. This is where the dogs come in, perking up, and dressing up like a Coolidge painting, sharpening their pencils and itching to make their mark. They’ve tolerated domestication for 23,000 years, and now they’re hungry. There’s change in the air, the dogs can smell it, and the humans – humming hymns and tacking up bunting – still think it’s all about them.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
‘Leave my house this instant!’ the Duchess said. Not a woman to be easily put off, Charlotte stood her ground. ‘He’s going to give me a child,’ she said. ‘I am desperate.’ Gregor, who was drunk, had by this time retired upstairs. Charlotte ran up to search for him, closely followed by the Duchess. They entered the master bedroom where Gregor lay fully dressed on top of the bed snoring, his cardigan worn through at the elbows, his hair and beard wild and matted. ‘I’m not having you discussing the conception of a child in our bedroom,’ the Duchess said firmly. ‘He’s 73 and, as far as I am aware, impotent. You need to find a proper man.’ ‘I’m not leaving until he keeps his word,’ Charlotte said, starting to climb on the bed. The Duchess caught hold of her left foot, preventing her from lying next to Gregor. As Charlotte struggled to free herself, the Duchess noticed through the open window one of the gardeners dead-heading the roses. ‘Juan’, she called. ‘Juan…could you come up here a minute? I need your help with something.’
Simon Collings
.
No entry/car park exit this way. No parking in front of gates. No access except for Girl Guides. No unauthorised parking. Only authorised access to cars with permits. Parking in front of the gates is prohibited. No parking at any time. Garage in constant use. Please, no. Please, no thank you. Shoplifters will be prosecuted. Fasten your seat belt while seated. Life vest under your seat. Safety onboard. Keep left. Car hire deliveries return.
Remove your belt. Remove your shoes. Go through the glass machine, one at a time. Lift your shoe. And the other one. Take off your shoe and each other. Are you wearing your seat belt? Remove your scarf. Remove your toiletries from the bag. What’s your name, Sir? Open your passport at the right page. Show your boarding card. Don’t forget your receipt. Cabin luggage. Taking pictures of the crew is strictly prohibited. You can’t pay by cash. No engines left running. Evacuating positions.
One way only, restricted parking. The toilets are at the back of the plane, two exits at the front, two exits at the back. Change machine. You must be 21 to enter the arcades. Ticket machine. Exchange tickets for a prize. Dodgems. Wedding area upstairs. £3.00 for soda water. Three British pounds! I’m sorry, cash only. We’ve run out of tea. Ladies at the back. Reserved for families and friends. Video link to the Lady of Assumption (live). The blind is remote-controlled. The boys were so well-behaved during Mass.
Stevie, he, she or they at the nursing home, calls me love and darling. I don’t mind, he-she-they say. I am a stepbrother, a sister, mixed race. Mixed heritage, you mean? Yes. Calls me wee pet. I love it. They are all fighting for the dog. It barks when you pat the head. We wrote her name on the collar, just in case. The light changes and the Mournes keep growing. The clouds over the promenade become a conversation piece. That, or a frozen smile. Celebrity Catchphrase on ITV1. I can’t hear you. The owner had it especially commissioned. It’s painted from the sea. When we don’t get paid, we peel off the gold from the ceiling. The incessant ring of the alarm. We don’t register to get in, we know the code. Anne stares with dark eyes. Blind but you wouldn’t know at first.
A very early start. No wipes. Ulster is British. No UK internal border. I will say a prayer for you and for your family. Prepare to meet thy God. East Belfast, Ballynahinch. Carryduff. Seaforde. Clough. British Spring Time. Fast food joints everywhere, all over the world. Where is the brake on this thing? We couldn’t shut the blind. It’s remote operated. We didn’t know. Bridges everywhere and little sign of peace. Small signs of peace. The daffodils are out. The boys were so well-behaved during Mass.
Rocket came back home last month with one leg hanging off. The builders wrapped him carefully in a towel and placed him in a cat carrier. Cost me £300 at the vet to have its leg removed. Can’t hop on the counter anymore. We were going to call him Biden. Father Jim is a prickly man. You can’t say that when you never go to Mass. We wouldn’t like to do his job. We both noticed he had communion, now we know which foot he kicks with.
My son could eat a whole chicken in one sitting. Ireland is so backwards. At least in Dubai we had access to everything in one place. I’m not drinking. It’s Lent, Guinness 0%. I am going slightly crazy: far too many cars in town, people in the forest park. Let the river have her say. The Girl Guides hollering in the distance. Why not try something different? Sprite is like 7UP. Thank you for your patience. The view over the Mournes. Gorgeous boys, show me your football cards. What team do you support? It’s been years. You look amazing. I love your hair. You are the only French woman I know. Your wife was immediately at ease with me. Quite a remarkable lady. Residential area please switch off engines and no horns. Beware traffic queueing ahead. Staff car park authorised personnel only.
Haven’t forgotten about the recording. I love your lipstick. Gavin and Michael could be twins. At least it’s not raining. Four seasons in one. Which school do they go to? England. What’s the name of the school? What’s the name of the school? We are now flying over Anglesey. A very early start. It’s been a pleasure to fly with you. So well behaved during the service. We are waiting for air control to take off. We have enough fuel in an unlikely event. Ten minutes to landing. The blinds must be opened. Stow away in front of you. Before landing, complete check of the cabin.
Fuck eternal life. That startled a few of them. We want life now, sacred Heart of Jesus. Holy candles in the pound shop. The boys were so well behaved at the ceremony. Chains on the High Street, same all over the world. Herrons, aka the original KFC. Litter. The charity shops are the same everywhere. They keep smiling. Very. All that grass in Saint Patrick’s churchyard and cherry trees in blossom. Back to England, green land. Drab houses. We are running out of fuel. (I am). Have it.
Three seagulls perched on a car rooftop, heads and beaks tilted to drink dew. The ingenuity. A brutal landing. No electronic devices allowed until inside the airport area. Ten minutes ahead of schedule. Strong smell of gasoline. Propeller plane. A bientôt, the only French I know. Hasta la vista. Arrivals. Police control. Sanitise. Automatic doors. Domestic flights only. Stay safe. Keep safe. Keep two metres apart. Wash your hands for twenty seconds. Will you two stop fighting for a minute?? Now wash your hands for twenty seconds. No wipes. Your hair is beautiful. Charges apply. Leave this place as you found it.
Mélisande Fitzsimons
.
– Can you keep a secret?
– That depends.
– That’s not a very good start.
– Well, I’ve never told anyone about your you-know-what.
– My what?
– You know, your thing.
– I don’t have a thing.
– If you say so. Anyway, it’s safe with me.
– It’s not safe with you. I don’t have a thing to be safe with you.
– As you like. As I said, mum’s the word. And let’s keep it that way.
– Yeah, let’s. For fuck’s sake . . .
Martin Stannard
.
The nite’s sky is full of fireflies
And my thoughts are full of you.
I miss you
Like the desert misses the rain.
Even though I know
We can never be together again.
I long for you
Like a ship lost in the sea,
Searching for a shore
That can never be found.
Beside the sea
I found you
Crashing in your own waves.
Beside the sea
I lost you
In the things we couldn’t say.
But I believe
One day,
I’ll find it
The place,
The person,
The reason
All this suffering was worth for it.
Because when our eyes met for the first time,
I just knew you’d be my adventure for a lifetime.
Monalisa Parida
Photo Nick Victor
Bio:- Monalisa Parida is a post graduate student of English literature from India, Odisha and a prolific poetess. She is very active in social media platforms and her poems have also been translated into different languages and publish in various e-journals.
She has got 100 international awards for writing poetry. Her poems have been publishing international e-journals “New York parrot”, “The Writers Club” (USA), “Suriyadoya literary foundation”, “kabita Minar”, “Indian Periodical” (India) and “Offline Thinker “, “The Gorkha Times “
(Nepal), “The Light House”(Portugal), “Bharatvision”(Romania), “International cultural forum for humanity and creativity”(Aleppo, Syria), “Atunispoetry.com”(Singapore) etc. And also published in various newspapers like “The Punjabi Writer Weekly(USA)”, “News Kashmir (J&K, India)”, Republic of Sungurlu (Turkey)” etc.
One of her poem published an American anthology named “The Literary Parrot Series-1 and series-2 respectively (New York, USA)”. Her poems have been translated in various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, Persian, Romanian etc. And she is the author of the book “Search For Serenity”, “My Favourite Grammar”, “Paradigm”, “Beyond Gorgeous”.
The mixing of peoples is never easy
We spend a lot of time
Inculcating and accommodating
A sense of place
Even if the world shrinks
And spreads out to the cosmopolitan
Ethos of the comparative
They came here in search of a job
An enlightened attitude has it
That the work we do best
Is what we are most interested in
And inclined to pursue
A resultant meaningful work
Turning those efforts to good effect
Even the pursuit of pleasure
Requiring effort as you are moved to hone it
Since nothing quite the same twice
We need more of this than that, he said
Are we intruding on each other’s space
When the sensible approach
Would be to make some distance
Or install a barrier
Lest it all crash in
An airport lobby or a discrete cubicle
There is a reason workplaces are open plan
And households are not
And sometimes the streets have changes of name
As you enter new neighbourhoods
Wouldn’t you think it the same street
One doesn’t need to like
In order to respect
If my palate and itinerary
Differ greatly from your’s
You loved it, maybe I didn’t
And that’s alright
Don’t try to sue me
For attitude of mind
What’s wrong, you might say,
With this picture
Clark Allison
.
Mum assumed that all poetry rhymed
Or Walter de la Mare. I didn’t know this at the time
Until we were overwhelmed by local heroin dealers
How it was made
What it should or shouldn’t do
Steven Taylor
.
Alan Dearling shares a few images and words from…
A double whammy of sounds and visions at 9A Projects Studio Private View, Robinwood Mill, Lydgate, West Yorkshire.
Evocative and enfolding – Kate Atkin’s pencil drawings on paper are a magic mix of rich, complex textures conjuring up images of trees, bushes and mute objects – but unreality, mystery and imagination seep around the shapes and intricate twists too. An inter-leavening of music too – mostly instrumental was provided by maestro guitarist, Lee Southall (a founder member of Liverpool’s The Coral).
First, a few words about Kate Atkin’s work from artist-curator, Kelly Chorpening, who says:
“The results from afar are absurdly simple. Up close, obsessively intricate. They offer grace, they offer insight; an artist’s way of imagining the world anew…”
Kate Atkin said about her work and working method, “…the constant walking back and forth – a 1,000 times a day…guessing how (the drawing) will look 20 feet away.”
I found myself marvelling at the detail in Kate’s works. A very different interpretation of ‘still life’ as ‘mute objects’, brim-full of intrigue. Weird and wonderful.
Kate Atkin: https://www.kateatkin.net/
Guitarist, song-writer, Lee Southall has relatively recently relocated to the West Yorkshire moors. He performed three of his pieces. They somehow fitted like a glove with the studio setting for Kate’s MUTE OBJECTS exhibition.
Here’s what was said about Lee in advance of the show: “Lee’s already enjoyed a career that spans seven albums; a Mercury Prize nomination and a Music Producers Guild album of the year. His solo work hinges on finely crafted songwriting and virtuoso acoustic ability. Folk, pop, blues and country thread their way through songs that move from the melodic intricacy of Bert Jansch or Davey Graham, through to the raw sparseness of Karen Dalton or Townes Van Zandt. Lee has recently supported the likes of Blue Rose Code, Ryley Walker and Laura Marling at venues across the North.”
Lee ended his performance with a beautifully rendered version of his instrumental piece:
‘Iron in the Fire’ solo promo for ‘Shindig’ zine: https://www.shindig-magazine.com/?p=1614
‘Under the Weather’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMNfRLbm0wM
Check it out MUTE OBJECTS at 9A Projects on Facebook and https://www.9aprojects.com
Perseverance brings good fortune
Crossing the river
You meet the great man
Myself? No – you of course
Who will not take a balanced mind for granted
Nor leave it to the whims
Nor chances of this world
Revolving trees of winter into spring
You are a well of deep water
Cool and pure well water
You draw from the well to keep your head
Well above water
When wheels and noise of business
Grind the gravel grit of every street
So living creatures all suspect a gang-war
Your inner well is refuge
As sanity merely becomes
A default setting in our New Dark Age
Affecting sophistication
As much as it is barbarous
Willing to forfeit
Reason for profit
Putting paid to repose
Swept and pestered by the latest fads
Reckless in a mania of self-interest
Dreaming of a world at peace
While hacking it to shreds
Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer
.
A compilation of texts, a contribution to a correspondence
between those who desire anarchy and subversion.
All has changed yet everything remains the same. Several shocks have reverberated through society over the last years and changed our reality profoundly. At the same time, the monotony of daily life continues to impose itself relentlessly. Whether this observation is frightening or comforting speaks volumes about one’s perspective or mood.
Rather than confront the existential anxiety that this destructive society engenders, we might be tempted to carry on, as much as we can, as if nothing is happening. As the virulence of the Covid-19 virus and the states’ measures have tempered down, many seem keen to move on. Not everyone though. Some might consider it pesky but the question of proximity during those periods of lockdowns and curfews is still pertinent. Fear and repression made it impossible to meet each other, paralysing not only social struggles but social life itself. During the pandemic, the state made abundant use of (scientific) experts and the media to lay claim to rationality. Everything that diverged from the dominant discourse was labelled as irrational and quashed. Following suit with these binaries is to enter a game which is not ours to play and in which we have nothing to gain.
The initial shock of a new war in Europe has provoked the tired argument that an exceptional event merits an exceptional response. Nevertheless, many before us have been confronted with unprecedented events and have found their anarchist position. Anti-patriotism isn’t an unrealistic position: the discussion of taking sides between warring states is deceitful even in its most pragmatic form. War doesn’t turn authoritarians into humanitarians. On the contrary, strategic calculations become more ruthless. A victorious state will not be generous to anti-authoritarians even if they temporarily ally themselves with the armed forces. On the contrary, the state thrives and is emboldened by patriotic fervour. We should refuse the blackmail of kill or be killed but that doesn’t mean that we should march with the opportunists who now claim pacifism. Although the world doesn’t come back as it was before, anarchists do not start from nothing in finding our way through the perennial challenges of our days. Our hearts still beat for direct actions against war mobilization because there’s nothing liberating in being soldiers and fighting their wars.
Take care and greetings to everyone out there taking advantage of the interruptions!
Read or download here as an A4 PDF: https://thelocalkids.noblogs.org/files/2023/06/tlk09-read.pdf
[reprinted from https://thelocalkids.noblogs.org/ ]
The River Severn
The English poet and musician, Ivor Gurney, has been dead for 85 years. He died on Boxing Day of 1937 in an asylum near Dartford in Kent.
He wasn’t confined to the inside of Stone House Hospital but he rejected the grounds and forced himself indoors. Landscape was, perhaps, the most life driving force of Gurney’s existence. He was born in Gloucestershire, in the city of Gloucester in 1890 and the land on both sides of the River Severn nurtured him, gave voice to the music he composed and the poetry he wrote. It wrapped him in a blanket of belonging.
I have an image of him in my mind which sees him towards the end of his life, isolated from the landscape, gazing through the bars over the window of his room and seeing dull rows of badly planted garden flowers whilst his mind’s eye drifts over the meadows, water edges and wildflowers of his loved past.
Like so many of his generation Gurney was plucked from a treasured countryside and, in his case, the sensitive musical community of Gloucester Cathedral, and flung into the trenches of the First World War.
River Somme
He fought, and was wounded, in the battles which raged over the fields near the Somme River and I followed him to the small town of Albert where he saw, and was moved by, the large, magnificent, basilica shattered and reduced to ruin. In a strange quirk of destruction, the statue, a golden Virgin and Child still topped what was left of the tower but was hanging horizontally at ninety degrees to its original upright position like a finger pointing to the battlefields.
In a letter he wrote “… tonight we have had café au lait, our little circle, seated round a tiny hut fire, surrounded by the abomination of desolation….”
At that time, he may have conflated the ideas of an all protecting mother, which the statue represented, and the land which he considered to be a mother to us all.
In his poem, written then and titled “The Mother”, he begins, “We scar the earth with dreadful engin’ry….” And then, in the hope of reclaiming that earth, he ends with the line “… We’ll wait in quiet till our passion’s past.”
Somme Fields
It’s been a long wait but the fields stretched over the Somme Valley are quiet and peaceful now even though the dominant impression is of high yield, commercial, agriculture. Crops grow in neatly segmented fields and, particularly during high growth seasons, they mask whatever scars still cut into the ground.
The River Somme is beautiful and tranquil, flowing slowly around islands in its widest parts. Its name and its nature no longer terrify anyone.
Ivor Gurney gave the book which collected his poetry of remembrance the title “Severn and Somme” and I wanted to make a set of photographs following the same title. I live near the River Severn and know it well but I have never known it in a season of peace which could be yearned for during a season of war.
I have made photographs of the Severn and of the Somme and I have been moved by the beauty of both. I have also made photographs of the fields close to both rivers but for me their association is based only on a similarity of agricultural features, field layout and hedges. The desire to couple them, as Gurney did, has failed.
Whilst one landscape is familiar and restful, the other is a landscape of memory or, more accurately for me and my distance from the events remembered, a landscape of story.
Somme Fields
I remember, once, being in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The drive through the area with what we now call the grassy knoll on my right, the Texas Schoolbook Depository behind me and the underpass just ahead would have been a drive of no significance had it not been for the horror of the event which seared this ordinary, unremarkable urban landscape onto the collective retina on 22nd November 1963. Because of that event I can’t ever see that Plaza new and fresh. No more can I see the bucolic Somme Valley freed from Ivor Gurney, his story and the thousands of stories telling the same tale of some sort of existence in that landscape.
I had help to find the fields outside Albert where Gurney was wounded. A young woman who lived in a village which would have been in the midst of the British positions told me that, by and large, the iron harvest was over. She meant that the artefacts, the remains of the instruments of destruction, which once appeared in every run of the plough were now rare. The land is beginning to be empty of its burden.
When I was a boy and saw men on the street who then were the age I am now, the chances were that they had been to this part of France or to Belgium or any of the other cauldrons of inhumanity, but they, too, are gone.
On the road from Albert, near Thiepval two elderly men stand by a monument. They are brothers and they have come to say names out loud into the air over the fields of the Somme Valley. After talking for a little while we part company and one turns back to me and, moving his arm in an arc encompassing the whole landscape says, “Nice and tidy isn’t it.”
Fred Chance
Photos and text
.
Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord,edited by R.R. Bernier and R. Hostetter Smith
(Routledge, 2023, ISBN 9781032354170)
A ‘strange place’, a ‘fractious embrace’ and a ‘curious accord’: the titles of key books exploring the interaction between art and religion from modernism through to our own post-secular world suggest a developing rapprochement.
The starting point for discussion of the accord between these two strange bedfellows is James Elkins’ from 2004 which described the strange place of religion in contemporary art. By this Elkins meant the significant interest in the interaction between the two among artists and the almost complete inability of critics, curators, educators and historians to engage with this interest. For the latter group contemporary art was a secular enterprise and a contributor to the secularisation of the West that was supposed to result in the death of religion. To have acknowledged the religious interests of modern artists could have fatally holed the secular ship as it steamed towards its inevitable destination.
Elkins’ book either catalyzed or acted as a focus for a counter-movement which discussed the real engagement of many modern and contemporary artists with religion in its many organised and less structured forms. This book documents, categorises and discusses some of the resulting conversations which have been assisted by post-modernism’s focus on small and hidden stories and by post-secularism which acknowledges that religions are changing but not dying as a result of the growth of secularism in the West.
Structured in terms of three distinct sections bookended by an Introduction and Afterword colloquy, the book explores the evolving discourse of art and religion in our contemporary era, themes and strategies utilised by contemporary artists in their engagement with religion, and examples of specific artists and ideas that draw on and test the positions that are discussed in Part 1 and the strategies proposed in Part 2.
A lot of ground is covered effectively through the use of this structure. Part 1 explores theology, criticism and curation in particular, Part 2, icons and relics, pilgrimage and site, priests and prophets, sacraments and shaman, while Part 3 ranges from Andy Warhol to John August Swanson via the likes of Lia Chavez, Theaster Gates, Christian Jankowski, and Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
Building on the editors’ Introduction, Jonathan A. Anderson adds to their mapping of the field with four useful interpretive horizons – anthropological, political, spiritual and theological – all grounded in specific examples of relatively recent exhibitions. Key contributors to the evolving debate such as Eleanor Heartney, Aaron Rosen and Daniel A. Siedell are included and take the opportunity to update and add to their distinctive contributions. Other significant interlocutors – Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Elkins himself, Ben Quash and S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate – contribute in the colloquy which forms the Afterword.
While being of particular interest to practitioners and academics, the book – by summarising earlier research and through case studies of artists and exhibitions – provides an interesting and varied introduction to this field of study and practice; one which is increasingly featuring in the programmes of major museums and galleries. The range of artists and approaches reviewed is impressive, demonstrating the extent to which what was once considered a backwater concern has, since the publication of Elkins’ book, increasingly been mainstreamed.
Although the summary and case study aspects of the book are those which will prove of most immediate use, it is the more speculative and forward-thinking elements of the book which are, perhaps, its most interesting aspect. Ideas for the future of the field and approaches that will underpin that future are a major part of the Afterword. These include the widening of the field ‘to consider newer and perhaps wider questions beyond the frame of object, content, and audience receptivity to the longer-lasting effects of artworks … in our individual journeys and those of … students, colleagues, and the larger public.’
Two of the most interesting and innovative essays in this regard are Daniel Siedell on curation and Aaron Rosen on pilgrimage. Both find connections between art and religion in the curation of exhibitions/installations/trails that begin creative conversations by creating a new temporary reality through fashioning of connections that link past and present with artefacts and ideas. The challenge, Siedell suggests, ‘is to continue to curate ever more expansive, imaginative, even radical exhibitions of art and faith and somehow and in some way live them out.’ Rosen’s pilgrimage-based case study demonstrating that happening in practice through a coming together of art and ritual.
If you are at all curious about the relationship of religion and contemporary art, then this is a book you will want to revisit as it forms a new key staging post in our developing understanding. If you are simply curious about the reasons why religion has much greater prominence in contemporary art exhibitions now than was previously the case, then this book will not only explain why but also open up a once hidden but always present seam of modern art.
Jonathan Evens
bet365 from Colin Gibson on Vimeo.
Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column whose terms apply but not its conditions
MYSELF: Are you alert this morning?
READER: Alert? I’m like a highly-trained police dog on crystal meth.
MYSELF: OK, here’s a riddle for you. My first is in peanuts but not in custard…
READER: Oh I love these brain teasers.
MYSELF: I know. My second is in Spain but not in algebra…
READER: Not in algebra? That’s a tricky one.
MYSELF: …Where am I?
READER: This is going to take me a while.
MYSELF: Take your time, I’m here all week..
New series
INSPECTOR TREADMILL INVESTIGATES
No.1 The Silence of the Lam
Saturday 4-27am:
By the time Inspector Treadmill’s car arrived at The Sizzling Shashlik, an upmarket
Turkish kebab joint at the smarter end of town, it was surrounded by scene-of-crime tape and unflatteringly lit by banks of harsh spotlights. Vital clues had been gathered by police detectives at the scene and the evidence was already beginning to mount.
The previous night, Karl Gluck, wealthy owner of the nearby Gluck’s Launderama had left his fiancée Diana waiting in the car whilst he called in to The Sizzling Shashlik to pick up his order of Lamb Kafka for supper. Security cameras later showed that he entered at 6-15pm, but never came out. Diana waited, but when the restaurant closed at 1-30am and Karl had still not shown up, his she began to lose hope. Taking up the offer of a lift home with Lars Vøndervønder, a Norwegian submarine engineer who just happened to be passing by, she accepted his proposal of marriage and promised him she would call off her engagement in the morning. At 3am she reported Karl’s disappearance to the police.
Whilst Inspector Treadmill’s trained eye surveyed the area, Raoul Pirez, police detective in charge of the case filled him in. He told him he suspected Mr. Gluck was now dead, murdered, and that all the evidence implicated the proprieters of Kebab Krazy, a rival Turkish outfit across town. Six heavy set black-suited men carrying an assortment of weapons, had been seen leaving there at 6-20pm and eyewitnesses reported seeing them running into The Sizzling Shashlik shortly after Karl Gluck had entered. Minutes afterwards, neighbours said they heard gunshots and screams. Further CCTV footage revealed a hearse with darkened windows leaving via the back gates of The Sizzling Shashlik 30 minutes later.
Inspector Treadmill’s inscrutable said nothing. Instead, he pushed open the Shashlik’s plush swing doors, briefly surveyed the deserted dining room and made a bee-line for the kitchen.
Fifteen minutes later he emerged, approached detective Pirez and grabbed him by his expensive hand-stitched lapels: “You must issue a warrant at once for the arrest of the Sizzling Shashlik’s Chinese laundry supervisor Dur Tee-Li, on suspicion of first degree homicide.” he spat.
The announcement drew gasps from the assembled cops. Treadmill surveyed them with a barely concealed expression of cold contempt.
“It was Tee-Li who carried out the premeditated murder of Karl Gluck and here’s why: as well as being envious of his rival’s success in the laundromat business he also became convinced that Gluck was stealing his mail-order dry cleaning ideas. Here’s what happened next; Tee-Li, a disbarred pork butcher, lured Gluck into the kitchen on the pretext of discussing starching. There, he bludgeoned him to death with a steam iron, expertly dismembered his body and had the kitchen staff serve it up as doner kebab. It was a busy Friday night. No-one noticed. It was only a matter of hours before the corpse was disposed of without a trace”.
Pirez smiled and shook his head. “How in hell did you figure it all out boss”?
“It was staring you in the face the whole time,” replied Inspector Treadmill, “The fiancée and the submarine guy were in cahoots with the Chinaman. Together they planned to take over the business once Karl Gluck was declared dead.”
“OK, but what about the Kebab Krazy connection?” asked Pirez, puzzled.
“A red herring. The six men from Kebab Krazy are entirely innocent,” explained Treadmill, “They were operating an illegal mortician racket and they were hungry and in a hurry because they were late for a funeral. The only reason they were packing heat was because they were officiating at the cremation of a former gangland crime boss who had insisted on fancy-dress.”
Replacing his trademark fedora at a jaunty angle, Inspector Treadmill turned on his heels and left. As his gold ‘57 Cadillac El Dorado roared off into the night, Pirez turned to his fellow officers, “I guess we’ve all learned something today,” he said humbly.
READER: Are you in Paris?
MYSELF: Not Paris
ART RAGE
Tracy Eminem, the controversial conceptual artist, lashed out this week at the general public’s ‘ignorant’ attitude towards her. Ms Eminem is best known for her two semenal works My Dirty Laundry and 52 Blokes Who Were Drunk Enough to Shag Me, both of which were tragically destroyed in the recent fire which consumed Cyril “Lord” Saatchmo’s lockup in Kilburn. We spoke at her Hampstead mews studio where she was working on a new canvas provisionally entitled “This gallery ain’t big enough for two women who can’t paint, one of us has gotta go and it certainly isn’t going to be me”
AU REVOIR AU MAL GARBAGE
“I’m really upset” said Ms Eminem as I helped her spread human excrement over a picture of Stella Vino, “You wouldn’t believe what some people are saying. The public are so thick. They think art is just pictures of trees and stuff. The problem is, they just don’t have any concept of the amount of work that goes into a piece of conceptual art like 52 blokes. I mean, some of those guys were even drunker than I was.”
BITCH VOLLEYBALL
When asked about her rumoured feud with new Saatchmo artist Stella Vino, she snapped; “Don’t talk to me about that untalentless bitch. She thinks she invented crap art. Well let me tell you, I was doing crap when she was still in daipers. My Bed was what started all this crap stuff off. Before that, crap was just crap… rubbish. Now its worth millions, and I done it. If it wasn’t for me, people would still be standing around the National Gallery or whatever, staring at pictures of trees or ships. I freed the world from all this art tyranny, so she can fuck off with her crappy crap. My crap is the real thing.”
SMOCK HORROR
Asked for a comment Ms Vino hit back: ‘I can’t paint for toffee and the only thing I’ve ever been able to draw was job seekers allowance’ she told us yesterday from her luxury Mayfair studio. “All I know is, I was walking along Oxford street minding my own business, when this creepy-looking middle-aged bloke, the man I now know as Saatchmo, (Cyril “Lord” Saatchmo, head of the notorious intellectual crime syndicate known as ARTCON ) suddenly just appeared out of a doorway and offered me £500 to do a painting.”
Ms. Vino sighed, blushing coyly as the light emphasised her delicate cheekbones. “He gripped my arm tightly and stared into my eyes. He told me one of his artists hadn’t turned up and he needed ‘a three by four IN oils, ASAP’. I’d never heard anyone use words like that before and I foolishly allowed him to escort me into the building. Once inside, he handed me £500 in cash and led me into a small room which smelt funny. “There you go” he said with a sneer, “smock, beret, brushes, as much paint as you want, a bottle of red wine and a packet of Galoises-now get on with it, I’ll be back in ten minutes” Although I batted my eyelids and protested that I was only a trainee parking warden, it was to no avail.”
AGONY
Choking back a tear the fragrant Ms Vino added; “Yes, I agonised over it – but the red wine soon made me go all woozy. I just kept thinking of Our Lady of Diana, and how vulnerably strong, and yet courageously vulnerable she was. Squirting some paint on the pallette, I grabbed the nearest brush, made my excretia, and left.”
BOLLOCKS
“In those traumatic few days afterwards I somehow managed to blank out my terrifying experience, but now, after the initial £500 has worn off, all that remains is a deep sense of guilt and shame. Particularly when I think of all the thousands of perverted, leering old men who could be looking at my painting and laughing their bollocks off.”
READER: Are you in Uttar Pradesh?
MYSELF: You’re not even close.
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
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‘Worldwide Weather’ by Joe Woodham (None More Records)
“All change is good change.” So says artist Joe Woodham in the press release for his ‘Worldwide Weather’ album on None More Records. It would be a bold statement at any time, but perhaps particularly so now, and especially in connection with weather and its relationship to the interconnectedness of the oceans and the moon. Intrigued by these relationships, Woodham has made a record that explores the emotional resonances set off by our exposure to nature’s systems whilst seeking to leave a minimal imprint. This in itself feels like a comforting acknowledgement of human frailty, a rare glimpse of secular piety in a species that seems condemned to consider its existence as fundamentally Important. Woodham knows this is a fallacy but makes no song and dance about it. This is deliciously secretive.
Accompanying the record are a couple of photographs that show Woodham standing by the sea’s edge brandishing a recording device that looks like a denuded umbrella. Wrapped in waterproofs he looks like some peculiar Canute figure who has discovered Poseidon’s trident on the foreshore. The field recordings made through this trident/umbrella may provide a core wash to the album, but they feel neither overbearing nor merely decorative. Instead, they are textural glimpses of half remembered meditations, promises of enlightenment flickering in the salty flecks of waves breaking and reforming. These ambient sounds blend with analogue tape loops, Woodham crafting these together with lines of guitar and bass to create an improvisational space that breathes with the softness of a Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph.
As already hinted at, this is music that feels like it has been made by an artist trying to make as few marks as possible, traces of existence all but erased like a de Kooning drawing rubbed out by Rauschenberg. It is ephemeral music that paradoxically sounds rooted in ancient folk traditions. It’s all a little reminiscent of Ultramarine from both their earthy ‘United Kingdoms’ period and the more translucent entries in the newly minted ‘Send and Return’ set and that of course is some mighty company to be keeping. Woodham himself suggests influences from the likes of Polar Bear, Andrew Wasylyk and Pharaoh Sanders, and those realms of spiritually transfiguring jazz and ambient exploration are indeed sound touchstones. There is something here that also puts me in mind of epic45 and July Skies’ pastoral meanderings; ghostly footsteps in landscapes/seascapes that are never quite all there, endlessly shifting and spiritually elusive. “All change is good change”. Well, yes, perhaps.
Bookended by ‘Forecast’ and ‘Overcast’, two pieces with mirrored angular refrains which Woodham suggests “introduce and close the album’s atmospheric themes, both musically and conceptually”, the album includes tracks like single ‘Spring Tide’, where an ache builds to a euphoric, soaring release and then ebbs to evaporation; ‘Walrus’ with a forlorn cry of guitar gently weeping on a bed of shefallying shingle like Kerouac serenading the heavenly bodies, or vice-versa; the night-time seclusion of ‘In Syzygy’ with its clipped guitar puncturing synth waves and subliminal ocean rumbles, notes in conjunction and opposition suggesting the pulse and pull of invisible energies. Close your eyes and it’s almost possible to hear them whispering: “All change is good change.” Hymnal. Quietly, almost casually seductive.
My personal favourite though is ‘Longshore Drift’, a song that appropriately slips along languorously on a picked acoustic guitar atop which Woodham sings gently through a field of static. A folk song for the ghosts of tomorrow, it recalls Ben Watt and Robert Wyatt glimpsed through the wrong end of a telescope with a thin layer of pollen dust spread on the eyepiece. Captivating.
‘Worldwide Weather’ then is perhaps a considerate but determined sidestepping of Bigger Issues around climate change and the influence of the human hand on nature and is all the better for that. Its 33-minute duration is a pause for breath, an opportunity to dissolve into moments and to understand our ultimate impermanence and effective irrelevance in the face of nature. All things must pass. Everything will end. “All change is good change.” A bold, but essentially gentle statement, then. Amen.
Alistair Fitchett. 2023.
On Minimalism. Documenting a Musical Movement, eds. Kerry O’Brien and William Robin (University of California Press)
The Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art Music, and Historiography in Dispute, Patrick Nickleson (University of Michigan Press)
On Minimalism is a glorious compendium of loosely grouped reviews, album sleeve and liner notes, articles and interviews. It’s remit is wide and inclusive and all the better for that. Part One moves from an intriguing start where Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Yoko Ono and John Cage (performing Erik Satie) are predecessors of La Monte Young’s sustained drones, which then spawns Philip Glass, Steve Reich, the very wonderful Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece, and early works by Meredith Monk. Their early work is gathered under the title ‘Loops and Process’, whilst Jon Hassell, Pauline Oliveros, Laraaji and Éliane Radigue are considered under ‘Altered States’, with an early (1973) example of the word ‘trance’ being used as well as ideas of healing and chanting and ‘celestial vibration’.
Meditation and a devotional religious music are the focus of a chapter on ‘Gurus and Teachers’, which leads neatly to a chapter on ‘Cultural Fusion’. Both chapters feature Alice Coltrane, whilst the liner notes to Don Cherry’s Organic Music LP in the second chapter are especially revealing. The first part ends by taking a step back to look ‘Across the Arts’, before a closing chapter ‘Ensembles’ engages with three of the by then well-established minimalist composers and their groups: Steve Reich, Meredith Monk and Philip Glass. Willoughby Sharp’s interviews with the members of the Glass Ensemble are especially revealing and interesting; information straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
Part Two of the book charts the widening impact and mutation of minimalism, particularly engaging with the New York Downtown scene, where Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham’s loud and noisy ensembles are dismissed by John Cage in an interview with Wim Mertens, but the likes of Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth, Peter Zummo, Julius Eastman and Arthur Russell also hang out. Elsewhere, others are more concerned with ‘Instruments and Environments’ or drifting into ‘Ambient and New Age’ music, where – of course – we find Brian Eno being interviewed, as well as pianist Harold Budd.
There are questions and discussions of the ‘Canons’ of minimalism, including a very funny, satirical piece by Tom Johnson, from the Village Voice, in response to the question ‘What is Minimalism Really About?’, and also three argumentative and opinionated pieces of writing from the ‘Backlash’. Following an engaging chapter on ‘Politics, Identity and Expression’, which returns to the neglected Julian Eastman, alongside a discussion of a 1976 concert tour by Philip Glass, an introduction to John Adams, and Steve Reich’s explanation of the ideas behind ‘Different Trains’ (including childhood train travel but also Nazi trains loaded with Jews en route to concentration camps), there is a weaker and unfocussed chapter on ‘Postminimalism’. It remains a vague undefined term here, although it does include a short piece on Ingram Marshall’s music by John Adams.
The next two chapters also seem vague in focus and are probably the chapters many readers (this one, anyway) will question regarding their somewhat tenuous links to minimalism, even in its most inclusive and open forms. ‘Spiritual Minimalism’ concerns itself with what John Rockwell in the New York Times calls ‘mystical minimalism’: the vague, ethereal music of Henryk Górecki and Arvo Pärt; whilst ‘Popular Culture’ moves to the late 1970s and discusses how disco and techno were influenced by, and might even be part of, minimalism. I’m not convinced: stating that ‘[t]he very essence of disco is surrender to rhythm’ seems fair enough (if you’re dancing, anyway) but much of what is considered minimalism elsewhere in this book is not about surrendering to anything, it is about change and duration and effect. And suggesting that ‘Chic’s producers, Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, are the ultimate examples of disco producers as environmental designers’ merely seems pretentious. Thankfully, the likes of Aphex Twin are on hand to cut through the crap: ‘I’m a fucking twat, mucking around on my computers.’
Part Three offers a trio of chapters: ‘Histories’, ‘Silences’ and ‘Futures’, where the obligatory questioning and revisionist versions of minimalism are offered up to the reader. The ongoing squabble between various members (including John Cale) of La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music (more on this later), another (well-deserved) argument for the inclusion of Julian Eastman and David Toop’s somewhat tangential and very speculative ‘notes towards a diasporic mixtape: black minimalism’, which open-heartedly includes dub, blues, funk, rock, acid house and hi-life. All good music, none of it very likely to be regarded as minimalism though.
‘Silences’ in a way builds upon the idea of minimalism being made up of little (rather than highlighting small changes), perhaps following routes from and through John Cage, Brian Eno, Pärt and Górecki. Jürg Frey suggests that ‘Music consists of sound; unchanging and unchanged, it expands in space. Attention is not trained on the individual event but wanders in space, laying claim to space just as sound does.’, whilst Eva-Maria Houben offers up ‘[s]ome thoughts on the perception of “nearly nothing”, including organising situations (compositions) where ‘[t]he listener will find the way to listening.’
The ‘Futures’ section seems a little unfocussed, or perhaps it’s just my aversion to Sunn O))) and ‘ambient jazz’, two of the four futures on offer here. Thankfully, there is a brief closing piece by Éliane Radigue to send the reader on their way, which is followed by a concise but useful playlist pertaining to each chapter. The 450 pages of documentation gathered here are a fabulous resource which make for a stimulating and at times provocative read. It’s not, of course, one to read through from cover to cover, more a kind of encyclopaedia to inform, entertain and challenge the reader.
In some ways, Patrick Nickleson’s book, The Names of Minimalism, is similarly wide-ranging and generously inclusive in its discussion, but it is hampered by being a very traditional academic discussion of its topic, which means it tries to compartmentalize and to formulate clear conclusions. A lot of this book is about whether the musicians in the likes of La Monte Young’s band are simply playing his compositions, or the fact that they are basically improvising sustained drones using just intonation, microtonal differences and overtones means they are co-composers. It’s an unanswerable question, and although one feels for Tony Conrad and John Cale, it’s really only the fact that La Monte Young is argumentative, unmoveable and physically owns most of the tapes that there is a debate still continuing. The somewhat abstract discussion of authorship and Nickleson’s contention ‘that the Theatre of Eternal Music functioned in its short time as a deliberative, collective community of equal “composer”-performers’ will not change the situation.
More interesting is the author’s discussion of ‘The Lessons of the Minimalism’ which considers ‘The Big Four and the Pedagogic Myth’, the big four of course being Glass, Riley, Reich and Young. Nickleson questions the perceived, tidied up and homogenised versions of history that have been formulated around these guys, but also the very term ‘minimalism’ which he suggests should be differentiated from ‘minimal’. On the back of this rather technical or semantic difference we get the ridiculous suggestion that the likes of Talking Heads and the Ramones were something to do with minimalism. Whether or not Melody Maker once referred to ‘the infectious minimalism of the Ramones’ seems beside the point. I really don’t think there was any connection implied.
More interesting is the further discussion of ‘Indistinct Minimalism’ which covers Rhys Chatham and the Downtown scene, and how music was presented at this time in artist’s spaces. Unfortunately, the book descends into impenetrable academic-speak in its final pages, with sentences like this: ‘Early minimalism, like a metonymic historiography, stages indistinction and contingent relationships not as problems to be solved dialectically, but as structures to be exacerbated precisely in the narrational works of emplotment.’ It’s a rather sorry end to a strange discussion of music, which worries far too much about what gets called what or is attributable to whom rather than the music itself. Personally, I’m not going to worry about these issues but instead enjoy what O’Brien and Robin have gathered together in On Minimalism.
Rupert Loydell
We spoke with a childcare surgeon who was really interested in cooking with an extra pair of mechanical arms whilst doing shoulder surgery. Such human augmentation could be in full control of the robotic tools he’s using with various body parts that boost our capabilities and brain.
Being able to manipulate cognition, we want natural mechanisms of agency, want so you can stir the soup whilst chopping with additional appendages controlled precisely by us, since we now have the option to wear and to articulate 3D-printed thumbs which allow the body to augment your intact motor wirelessly.
The most amount of gain is wrist-based, motors that reach peak energy trends with the least amount of impact when soldering pressure sensors underneath. Take the other robotic bodies away, this system is connected to hardware, microcontrollers mounted on everything but the nipples.
This approach questions our ability to respond to what we expect at the moment. Fashionistas focus on the advent of flamboyant males with electrodes in the brain and no adverse effects for otherwise healthy human beings, but there is no ethical justification for such invasive new developments.
I’m hooked up to a battery, selflessly and diligently move around as instructed. This is when you are given the chance to wear something that manages to show the extra. Robotic neuroscience may seem alien to you but I can’t imagine a brain that is not always never to be trusted.
Artificial Intellegence can be spotted out in the wild but I’m starting to think that this new trend for chaos is an indicator of good times to come. Lusts converge into abstract desire but body parts and public members should never be operated by hand. No-one knows you’re dancing.
Rupert M Loydell
Illustration: ‘Cyborg Encounter’, A.C. Evans 2007
Landscape A Go-Go (5CD, Cooking Vinyl/Landscape Music)
Subtitled ‘The Story of Landscape 1977-83’ this 5 CD, 84 track box set, which will be released on 21 July, is a welcome and surprising release from the band who made electrifying jazz-rock (which they sometimes erroneously called punk-jazz) but went to make electrified dance-funk as part of, or right next to, the New Romantic movement.
Originally an 8-piece, then a 6-piece, jazz band, Landscape performed anywhere and everywhere they could in and around London and then further afield, from art colleges to village fetes (if you call Barnes a village; it likes to pretend it is) to pub and club venues. I’m not sure if I first saw them at The Nashville or The Music Machine, but they were a welcome distraction from and contrast to the pub rock and recycled pub rock of punk in 1977.
They were one of the first bands to issue their own EPs back in the day too: U2XME1X2MUCH in 1977 and Workers Playtime the following year. There was quite a buzz around the band at the time, with sold-out gigs and the blessing of well-known hippy Jesus* who usually danced semi-naked in front of the stage, having handed out percussion instruments to those around him.
In 1980 their eponymous first album was released and they also appeared on Tomorrow’s World, discussing computer programming as well as their electronic drums and wind instruments. It was a sign of things to come. Before long two of the band were programming Fairlights for Kate Bush’s third album Never for Ever and the band reinvented themselves as an electronic dance band, somewhat incongruously dressing themselves in futuristic vinyl, but soon achieving pop success with ‘Einstein A-Go-Go’ and ‘Norman Bates.’ Both singles were quirky, unexpected tracks with killer hooks and bizarre videos.
The band would also turn up doing production duties on various, often surprising, projects, not least music & dance troupe Shock’s reversioning of ‘Angel Face’, a neglected 7″ classic. Anyway, Landscape persisted with the dance music, following their hit album From the Tea Rooms of Mars… (which contained their two hit singles and also the unjustly unsuccessful ‘European Man’ which had been issued several times) with a third, 1982’s Manhattan Boogie-Woogie. But the moment had gone, as moments often do, and despite a brief incarnation as Landscape III (a trio), the band broke up for good in 1984, with members continuing session and production work, and writing for films and television, including bass player Andy Pask’s theme for The Bill.
Now, in 2023, it’s great to have a CD box set that gathers up everything there is from back in the day, presumably on the back of new interest in and belated recognition of the band in the likes of Electronic Sound, Classic Pop and Rock & Roll Globe magazines, not to mention what Simon Reynolds calls Retromania, the urge to dig deep into and unearth the recent past.
Beautifully designed, produced and manufactured, Landscape A Go-Go kicks off with the first album before a smattering of unreleased live tunes from Norwich and London. Then it’s straight into the hit album on the second disc accompanied with various versions of singles, including a stonking 12″ version of ‘European Man’, and a couple of never released tracks. As you might expect, the third CD repeats the process for Manhattan Boogie-Woogie and its associated singles and mixes.
The really good stuff, for me anyway, is on the final two discs, where listeners will find music from the now impossible-to-find EPs (‘I still have mine,’ he said smugly) and the didn’t-even-know-about-it-til-now cassette album Thursday the 12th from 1974, as well as some unreleased music from London 1977-78 and tracks by Landscape III. And there are a few other versions, mixes and remixes too.
Although I like the Tea Rooms album, I don’t feel it’s aged well; I also get less and less interested in production and hi-fidelity as I get older. So, for me, it’s the highly original and perverse (if you think about the social and musical context of when it was produced) music from the band’s early days which is the real treasure here.
Rupert Loydell
*Find out more about Jesus Jellet here
https://flashbak.com/jesus-amongst-fans-naked-hippie-dancer-394617/
and here
https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/jesus-jellett.html
Pre-order Landscape A Go-Go at https://landscape.lnk.to/landscapeagogoYo
The Landscape official website is at https://landscape.band/
Landscape – U2XME1X2MUCH (you two-timed me one time too much):
Landscape – European Man (7-Inch Version)
Some exciting musical mayhem, poetry, punk, grunge and even classical sounds witnessed by Alan Dearling
https://www.facebook.com/CelladoorBand
‘The Big Tree’ is a new name for a Calderdale venue with a mixed past. Re-branded and with a new ethos around community music. It’s upstairs above a nightclub and it will take a while to become established alongside other venues such as The Golden Lion in Todmorden and the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge which both punch above their metaphorical creative weights.
Headliners on this particular night were Celladoor. They promote themselves as “…an independent musical entity run by artist Djinn Seldom Mire (Aaron James Davies).” They (and Aaron solo) look to have released 9 albums and 4 x eps. And according to their publicity, Aaron is an “exponent of ‘swamp folk’!”
On-line they appear to be complete and utter musical chameleons. Mesmeric and seemingly ever-changing in styles. From up-close and personal to mega-thematic. Melodic and grungy too… weird… Psych-Metal-Light, perhaps? On this night they were in full, garage band mode. It reminded me of the Seattle Sounds of Nirvana and the early Pixies. Arrogant, bridled aggression – wild and really rather wonderful. It certainly woke up the punters and got them bouncing. Here are some samples of their musical wares:
‘Falling Leaves’: https://www.facebook.com/reel/787253793062238
‘Counting Heads’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgfeQygSilA
Album, ‘Wetiko’ on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFTV9ebJ5hU
From Youtube, a sample comment:
@kittentacticalwarfare1140
“Chilled yet spooky /,,/
The cover made it feel as if the whole album was the OST of a horror movie.”
The Big Djinn (I think it is an invisible, impish genie), Aaron, has oodles of charisma. And the band gave a 103 per cent in energy, great stage craft, and powerful songs. A pretty epic show if you like some noisy musical histrionics.
The Big Tree night was billed very much as a sampler, a taster of local talent. Certainly it was eclectic in the extreme, kicking off with twenty minutes from suedehead, punk-poet from Halifax, Keiron Lee Higgins. Fast delivery, lots of one-liners, political and edgy. Those who arrived early, listened, appreciated the wordsmith in action, and applauded. He’s online at:
https://www.facebook.com/keironhiggspoet/?locale=en_GB
Fake – a four piece, I think recently formed in the Calderdale Valley, brought along a bundle of mates, family and fans. Young, pretty confident, full of punk-attitude with a heavy-metal style. The front-man caresses the mic like an old pro and is an effective purveyor of invective! A bit in the mould of early Undertones. They sounded like they believe in their sentiments raging against governments and politicians in songs such as ‘Scum of the Earth’ – “What are you going to do, when they come for you?”
Solo guitarist, Rik Warwick, eyed up the crowd reflectively, then blasted them with some incendiary finger-picking. His set included classical guitar pieces (I think I perhaps recognised pieces from Bach and maybe, Rodriguez) and the crowd gave it some vocal ‘welly’ during an extended, almost violent rendition of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
Give him a big hand for virtuoso skill and talent.
To check out The Big Tree, go and visit them on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090731224688
The image you see here may well be an ideal work of art, or
Perhaps, it is a lurid and melodramatic allegory of the creative process?
You will observe how, on one level, the symbolism is obvious – an uncontrollable force overwhelms the ivory towers of pedantry and the bastions of patriarchy.
It is a force from ‘beyond’ – it is the dark energy of compulsive, unconscious drives; it is a monstrous incursion from the paraxial realm of Desire.
This oracular vision is presented to us by that Pythoness of Subliminal Terror, superstar choreographer of the Ballet Plastique des Noctambules, Ms Jenny Taylor aka Medusa Cascade – watch your step!
A.C. Evans
Art Worldnewser
I
UNDER SEA AND SKY
At Liverpool Street station’s rear end sprouts
A semi verdant oasis. One part biarritz,
One part Wembley, complete with lava lamp
Verges of a green graced semblance to Kent;
Shimmer up Sun Street to see the ancient arse
Of the railway mounted by pyjama tinged
Scrapers merging now with sky colour
To make this strange set urban space heaven sent.
Bar chairs like earrings hung at the tip of their
Callow tables. Bins as sentinels guarding
Against the imminent Intrusion of those
Who stain nature’s strain fighting as it is
Through the paving to prove Itself fit for saving
In a world which considers the cappuccino
To be more beautiful than the rose.
London, you lean on the edge of Atlantis.
We can glimpse It’s rim now in puddles
Banished by this current sun, which murders
Gardens by day and makes the suited animals suffer,
Whether in fur or nylon; surely the slow descent
Has begun. And yet for now above ground
We cling to the illusion of surface. As I write
Perched here men are dying on the Atlantic’s low bed.
It is Wednesday today. Their oxygen runs out
Tomorrow. I will be at work when their minute
And the last of their breath will be shed.
For breath can be shed as well as blood, milk
And coffee. Cities can keep secrets just as oceans
And storms mystify. And yet we all disconnect.
Was there once a thread between people?
If there was those men need it and this respite
In the sunshine is just another buoy bobbing
In an uncharted waters. Meanwhile peace
And turmoil conjoin and we are unfound
And unheeded, caught by calm and by chaos
As further forces regard us somewhere beyond
silent skies
David Erdos 21/6/23
II
THE SEA: A SEQUEL
The monied men have now passed
But consider the refugees who too met the water;
78 on one vessel and so many more swallowed up;
Stevie Smithing above the sea bed as something
Immeasurably darker consumes them; as if fate itself
Were partaking in an hourly sip from deaths cup.
Let’s not have Unpriti Patel or Braverman as our Ahabs.
We have our Moby Dick Donalds and Boris as Jonah
Who will eat himself free soon enough. So let us take
Neptunes note and never again slice iced oceans.
Let the dignity of all dolphins teach all that’s swimming
And hidden beneath deep sea stuff.
For the human spirit is slush when tossed and turned
By fear’s fathoms. The ship in the bottle will shatter
And sink behind glass which is eternally black
Despite the transparent sheen of all water. But across
Each sea blood is broiling in great thrashes of foam,
And sweat and trespass.
Perhaps the sea punishes anyone who pushes against
Its kept secrets. The Titanic remains should have
Blurred now into the loss of light when life ends
And another strange space replaces the shape
Of the sunken. For there is no ascent, no salvation.
Not even angels it seems get the bends.
One thinks of Spielberg and Shaw. Of 1912.
And Bermuda. Even Robert Maxwell, whale bloated
And then, the Mafia hits in black bags. “You will sleep
with fishes.” Perhaps we should barely dip our toes
When in Brighton, St. Tropez or Gaeta, lest wary
Of coastguards we are subject to drift and net drags
Perhaps Shakespeare’s sea should ensure
We stay Calibanned on our islands. Monstrous,
And mistaken, we have never I think known our place.
For if Prospero is God practising a truly alien magic
And Ariel is all angels singing from within Christ’s true face,
Or Mohammed’s, or more we may at last have our beacon
Shining now across surface while those it would
Search for are far fathomed forever and now
Waving beneath, without trace.
David Erdos 23/6/23
.
by Dominic Rivron
Sophie was asleep, curled up on the settee, the head of her favourite unicorn pressed close to her face. I didn’t want to disturb her, so I went into the bedroom as soon as my mobile started to ring. It was Sam. He asked me, had I noticed anything strange about Sophie recently? It was a strange question for an absent father like Sam to ask, I thought, but I didn’t say so. I just said no, which was the truth. Run your fingers across her forehead, he said. I can’t right now, I said. She’s asleep on the settee, curled up with Roxie. I don’t want to wake her up. Who on earth’s Roxie? he said. Her favourite unicorn, I said. You should know that, you’re her father. Well, do it when she wakes up, he said. Check if it’s smooth. What are you going on about? I said. This unicorn thing, he said. She could be turning into a unicorn. See if you can feel a horn growing in the middle of her forehead. I jabbed the phone, cut him off. I can do without him phoning me up, taking the piss.
A few minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Sam. I thought, should I or shouldn’t I, then answered it. I wanted someone to talk to and arguing with Sam was better than nothing. It passed the time. He carried on where he’d left off. I’m being serious, he said. Kids are turning into unicorns. Yes, whatever you say, Sam, I said, in my tired, fuck-you voice. Goodnight.
I didn’t believe a word of it, but I googled it nevertheless. It turned out, of course, that he hadn’t made it up. There were stories out there. There were pictures, video clips even. It’s so easy to fake stuff, though: to take it all at face value you’d have to be as stoned as Sam was most of the time. It was all just too stupid for words.
By the following morning, though, it’d hit the headlines. It wasn’t just an internet rumour: it was official. Children were turning into unicorns. Nobody knew quite what to do about it. We were told not to panic. A journalist with a microphone standing outside Number 10 said he understood the government COBRA committee were meeting later that morning. Plans would be made. Guidance would be issued. Days went by. Advice sheets came in the post and posters appeared on school gates. It told you what you could do to reduce the risk (not a lot, at that that time) and what to do if your child turned into a unicorn. Otherwise, life went on as normal, at least round our way.
About a week later, the government started publishing a graph on the internet every day, telling you how many children had turned into unicorns. There was even a map of Britain, too, with unicorn hot-spots shown in red. Manchester, Newcastle and London were the worst hit back then. Leeds was blue, which was worse than green but better than red. We were dark green, which was just slightly worse than light green.
Everyone remembers those first few weeks. The government called in the army and got them to erect emergency stable blocks. It quickly became clear too that, within days, Britain would run out of hay. There was talk of imports, although other countries in Europe were facing the same problem. Unicorns need space to graze. Sheep farms were requisitioned for grazing and farmers compensated. It didn’t come to much, though. A few people were found grazing for their offspring-turned-unicorns, but many more weren’t. And then, even well-provided for unicorns often ran away. Most of them ended up grazing in parks or on the grass verges of ring roads and suchlike places. Many got knocked down (like they still do). One Tory MP found herself ridiculed for suggesting the government was doing too much: horses were less bother than children, she said, and surely everyone had space to graze a unicorn. Another suggested that if there were too many unicorns, and as they weren’t human beings anymore, perhaps the best thing would be to cull them. This, on the whole, was accepted with a shrug by older people, but greeted angrily by young people with families. Fresh advice was issued: if your child turns into a unicorn, don’t give it too many sweet treats like sugar lumps because it’ll rot their teeth.
I remember the first time I saw a unicorn (doesn’t everyone?). It was in the small play-area at the end of our street. It’s all grass, with a swing and a slide in the middle. There’s a privet hedge and a fence all the way round it, so the children can’t run out into the road. The poor thing was about waist-height, bright pink and glittery. It looked confused and agitated. It kept cantering from one side of the area to the other. Every now and again it stopped in the middle and tried climbing sometimes onto on the swing, sometimes the slide. It’s hooves kept slipping off the equipment and it kept almost falling over. Then it would whinny and start cantering around again. I kept my distance and kept walking. Everyone takes them for granted now, but it was frightening back then. I felt so sorry for it, though. It was obviously still a child on the inside and couldn’t understand why it didn’t have arms and legs like a human. That’s what it’s like for them, they say, straight after they turn. It takes them time to adjust. Luckily, Sophie never turned, but I heard other parents at school say how, when they do, if you can get close enough to them to look into their eyes, you can still see the child in there. I’m not quite sure what they meant by it, but that’s what they said. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking.
I suppose the unicorn cults started up about then. They claimed the children who turned into unicorns were special children. They went out looking for unicorns and started venerating them. They claimed the whole thing was nothing to worry about. We were privileged to be living through a very special time, they said.
As the weeks went by, the scientists began to find out more about what was going on. Children with unicorn toys, they decided, were the ones most prone to becoming unicorns. Parents were told to confiscate and destroy them. There was much talk about a batch that had been imported from the Philippines but, as we all now know, it was all unicorns. Worryingly, they discovered that once a child began to turn, but before the changes became visible, they could pass the condition on to other children.
Of course, I was worried about Sophie. One night, as she slept, I carefully withdrew Roxie from her grasp. I cut him up into tiny shreds and put him in the bin. The next morning I told her that unicorns were magical animals and you never know when a unicorn might be called away to the magic unicorn land and that, however much they love you and want to stay with you, when they’re called they have to go. I remember thinking it sounded a bit lame and I should’ve come up with a better story, but she seemed to accept it.
As time went on, scientists discovered that the condition only affected children under twelve. The sense of relief when Sophie’s twelfth birthday came round was palpable. It was around that time she told me that of course she knew I’d taken Roxie and thrown him in the dustbin. She never lost her love of unicorns, though. When she left school she was lucky enough to gain an internship at the local unicorn sanctuary. She still helps out there.
After a few years, the unicorns started having baby unicorns. Foals grazing on the roadside became a common sight. Talk about cute. There was talk in parliament about birth control for unicorns, but it never got very far. The scientists, though, finally managed to come up with a vaccine for humans. The unicorn cults were against it, but most people were all for it. When it was rolled out, parents queued round the block with their children at the vaccination centres. You still get the odd one – usually, kids whose whose parents refused to get them vaccinated – but, generally, children don’t turn into unicorns anymore. Politicians began to talk about ‘living with unicorns’.
As everyone knows, unicorns have magic powers. It’s said that a unicorn’s tears have healing properties. The unicorn cultists bottle them and sell them. The same goes for unicorn horns. At first, unscrupulous people took to sawing the horns off roadkill but as time went on, a black market for powdered horn developed, fed by sinister poaching gangs. And not only that, but, as unicorn numbers increased, people began to notice a change in the weather. There’s a great deal more in the way of fine drizzle than there used to be. Whenever you look up into the sky these days, the chances are somewhere you’ll see a rainbow.
.
Hawkwind + Hanterhir, Hall for Cornwall, Truro, 17 June 2023
It is an odd contrast: the recently refurbished Hall for Cornwall, now looking like every other civic theatre I have ever been to, is almost full of older people in dishevelled t-shirts listening to 1970s rock. And if the audience clearly didn’t get the memo about cutting your hair if you go bald on top, the band didn’t get the one in the 1980s about lasers not being the future of rock’n’roll light shows.
But then Hawkwind have stuck with what they do for over 40 years now: monstrous rhythms carefully overlayed with guitar riffs, synthesizer trills and glissando sequences, not to mention moments of contrasting liquid guitars and strident singing. Songs are extended, mutated and blurred into another, or simply take a turn into a Pink Floydian moment of calm before revving up again for another take off.
I’ve never seen Hawkwind before, and although there are a few albums lurking in my collection, they aren’t on heavy rotation. I suspect like a lot of people my age they came on to my radar as proto-punks, strident rebels with links to free festivals, Michael Moorcock, West London counterculture and an attitude which kept them as relevant as the emerging punk scene. Their brilliant 1977 album Quark, Strangeness & Charm helped too: it sounded totally of the moment, energetic, quirky and original, a kind of self-subversion foregrounding synthesizers and some of the wittiest lyrics they’ve ever composed.
Anyway, back to the present, as the band take us back to the past, except it’s very much of the now. The music is relentless, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It draws you in and uplifts you. Like trance or classical minimalism it heightens your awareness of even small changes in texture, timing, mood and sound. Not to mention those moments when the music pauses for half a second then either drops into the glorious ascension of a bluesy guitar interlude or increases its pace to head for the finishing line. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised how tight they are, they’ve had enough years to practice, but – like Gong, who were also so together it was shocking – I still think of them as a haphazard band riffing on the back of a truck with hippies gathered round.
The lasers work in a similar way. I can’t pretend that they are any different to the ones in vogue for a couple of years in the 1980s. They shine beams of light out in a fan shape, beams which can be coloured, catch the smoke from the smoke machine, and can be moved to flicker and interact with beams from other lasers to make grids. But by using them almost non-stop throughout the concert, they act like a kind of strobe light or Brion Gysin dream machine, pulsing and shimmering, becoming almost part of the music.
I don’t know the music well enough to give you track titles. The lengthy ‘Levitation’ was a standout, as was ‘The Spirit of the Age’, which became a kind of singalong as the whole auditorium contributed echoing backing vocals for the chorus call and response. I think they did ‘Born to Go’, and I know they didn’t do ‘Silver Machine’. I also know I had a great time, and that Thighpaulsandra is a great keyboard player, coaxing all sorts of mutant sounds from his set-up as well as supplying fluid melodic layers in the mix. The younger guitarist and singer Magnus Martin was also noticeable for his lovely guitar work, whilst the trio of Brock, Chadwick and Mackinnon are the foundations of the band. It’s unbelievable how Dave Brock has been present on every single Hawkwind album (not to mention offshoot projects) and the energy his guitar and singing still contains.
Support – at the special invitation of Hawkwind themselves, who were watching from the wings – were local legends Hanterhir, a seven piece band who are hard to define musically. With violin, saxophone and flute laid over the top of guitars, drums and bass their music moves from psychedelic folk-punk to a more proggier rock (without the pretension). Despite taking the stage earlier than announced their 40 minute set kept us all entertained and won them plenty of musical converts, with their merch stand doing a brisk trade. Let’s hope we have more evenings like this in Truro, rather than the endless parade of musicals and tribute bands that are generally on offer.
Rupert Loydell (review & live photos)
.
Stop dimming your light for others
Glow,
Shine,
Illuminate,
Dazzle them,
Set them as pyrotechnics.
Just never hide your light,
Making them comfortable
Was never your responsibility.
Once you stop counting
The leaves you lose
You will eventually stand tall
And wait for the new ones to grow.
You know the purpose of life
Is not to just survive
But to live.
Time waits for no one
And time is moving constantly!
Of course
You hold on to your breath,
And the moments you’re given,
To make more memories,
And savour the details.
You cannot stop this river
But you can resist its flow.
Ebbing is existence and flooding is life.
And the ripples are memoirs.
Monalisa Parida
Photo Nick Victor
Bio:- Monalisa Parida is a post graduate student of English literature from India, Odisha and a prolific poetess. She is very active in social media platforms and her poems have also been translated into different languages and publish in various e-journals.
She has got 100 international award for writing poetry. Her poems have been publishing international e-journals “New York parrot”, “The Writers Club” (USA), “Suriyadoya literary foundation”, “kabita Minar”, “Indian Periodical” (India) and “Offline Thinker “, “The Gorkha Times “ ( Nepal), “The Light House”(Portugal), “Bharatvision”(Romania), “International cultural forum for humanity and creativity”(Aleppo, Syria), “Atunispoetry.com”(Singapore) etc. And also published in various newspapers like “The Punjabi Writer Weekly(USA)”, “News Kashmir (J&K, India)”, Republic of Sungurlu (Turkey)” etc.
One of her poem published an American anthology named “The Literary Parrot Series-1 and series-2 respectively (New York, USA)”. Her poems have been translated in various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, Persian, Romanian etc. And she is the author of the book “Search For Serenity”, “My Favourite Grammar”, “Paradigm”, “Beyond Gorgeous”.
.
From the Arab Revolt of World War One, a modern hero is constructed: The brilliant, flawed figure of Lawrence of Arabia. His legacy is as complex as his psyche.
A museum. Present day. A curator puts the finishing touches to her final exhibition while its subject – seemingly summoned by the passion of the archaeologist – searches for a way out.
Produced for the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, BLOOD GOLD AND OIL scrapes away at the topsoil of TE Lawrence’s continued celebrity and interrogates all that lies beneath. Was he a brilliant military commander? Certainly. A Freedom fighter? He’d definitely like to think so. An agent of British colonialism? Could be.
During the course of the play, a real living exhibition is carefully pieced together with an array of genuine World War One artefacts on loan from the National Civil War Centre in Newark and Imperial War Museum. The finds were from a 2013 archaeological dig in Jordan where playwright Jan Woolf was a writer in residence and dug the play out of the ground.
“A profound and serious play where politics and psychology, authenticity and fable, artefacts and abstractions combine to epose a bitter truth to (the) British Public (…) This is vitally relevant subject matter and nourishment for a discerning audience” **** – The Morning Star
“Woolf is writing her way back to a place where she can confront the revered by bringing him into battle, not only with his past but the future (…) And so the play shimmers (…) This, then, is play as purpose, and more; play as evocation.”
– The International Times
“Douglas Clarke-Wood as TE Lawrence effortlessly commands the stage as TE Lawrence”
– London Pub Theatres
The conversation with my dad
builds a monolith of laments.
Somehow he has learnt to sing
since his death and sings the song
I have in my head.
Oh, hush. I hiss. His voice breaks into
white noise and crickets. My mind is
a porch and an evening bush.
Here the dog, not ours, buried some bones.
My father makes an instrument using those.
Does the tune attune to an age of easy belief?
Kushal Poddar
Picture Nick Victor
@amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
Not in every election, but some of them.
I wonder if it’s liberating?
and apparently it was marred by violence.
thing I remember is a girl called Heidi.
Heidi dancing without her top.
Edgar Broughton.
The moon’s a little crumbly.
Essex doesn’t seem so bad, considering.
It’s where I saw Heidi, dancing.
I have invited Paterson Joseph to write an article about his novel – The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho.
I was first introduced to Charles Ignatius Sancho by my parents who also introduced me to Olaudah Equiano. I recently watched a play about Olaudah Equiano called The Meaning of Zong. Charles Ignatius Sancho is an important and significant person in context to my own life and many others who may or may not be aware why. Paterson Joseph to me represents a sort of spirit of Ignatius Sancho. He brings his story to life.
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho
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Paterson Joseph (@ignatius_sancho)
Paterson Joseph Theatre Credits
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Paterson Joseph TV / Film Credits
IMDb Film
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho: Remarks from Actor and Author Paterson Joseph 5.9.23
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British Library, Preface to Sancho: An Act of Remembrance by Paterson Joseph
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Paterson Joseph takes Waterstones inside The British Library to see the documents that helped him write The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho
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Paterson Joseph announced as the next Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University
Oxford Brookes University
Why Sancho?
By Paterson Joseph
London
June 6th, 2023
There are many personalities of African or African-Caribbean descent in Great Britain from the long eighteenth-century that I might have chosen to focus on. Why did I choose the controversial, long-overlooked and sometimes vilified figure of Charles Ignatius Sancho for my study in Black British history?
To begin with, Professor Gretchen Gerzina’s seminal book Black England – Life before Emancipation turned me from an ignorant Black Briton, convinced those who spoke of an earlier than-twentieth-century origin of Black Britain merely wishful thinkers – desperate to claim a place in the country that ignores or denies their presence – into an avid believer and student of that anterior African and Caribbean history that stretches all the way back to at least Roman Britain.
What I found in Professor Gerzina’s work changed not only my perspective on those seeking a knowledge of a Black British history, but also wrought a sea-change in me that has taken these past twenty-four years to fully complete.
… It began with an image, of course, the iconic image.
A Black Man is painted by the famous painter of The Blue Boy, Thomas Gainsborough. It is 1768. The sitter is looking off to our left. We observe him, but he is definitely not unaware of our gaze, our fascination. He gives nothing much away except … is that a faint smile playing around his beautifully rendered mouth?
This is no ‘noble savage’, that staple image of the Black body from time immemorial; he is neither object nor a complete fantasy – though, it must be remarked this is certainly a performance. He is depicted with a hand in his waistcoat; his right, working hand. This denotes a ‘man of leisure’. Not true, since he was working as the chief servant, the valet, to the Duke of Montagu – who in turn was Governor and Constable of the royal residence, Windsor Castle. A remarkably exalted position for a Black man. Nevertheless, there is his hand, tucked deeply into his waistcoat. This red waistcoat is not the livery of the Montagus but rather a costume from Thomas Gainsborough’s dressing up box, a box he used for many a client. Theatre as Art and Art as Theatre. The red pings out like a beacon, offset by the vibrant, shimmering gold of the rich braiding on the edges, the gold buttons, all capped with a bright, white cravat; the pigment Gainsborough used designed to cause the white to glow like a lamp.
Painted in his accustomed candlelight in one-hundred minutes in Bath in 1768, either in the spring or autumn of that year, this is a performance of person by both Thomas and Charles. They are ‘saying’ something here, not merely recording an image of a trusted, loved and loyal servant. This man was liked by his employer, more, he seems to have been admired by him, too. And it was this image more than the other stories I had read up to that point in Professor Gerzina’s book, that caught my eye and captured my imagination.
Charles Ignatius Sancho’s image tells us something of the painter, too, it reminds us that Gainsborough was an outsider, as Sancho was an outsider. Gainsborough had come from Sudbury in Suffolk, a semi-rural spot to the South and east of the great Metropolis, growing exponentially in the early days of the eighteenth century. Later that century Thomas moved to the more fashionable (less expensive?) Bath, the famous spa town where the infirm and the hopeful came to ‘take the waters’ to cure their ailments and restore their health. It was also a town of pilgrimage for the great and the good – and the not-so-good to be vibrantly painted in the sombre gloom of the studio of that high-priest of portraiture, Thomas Gainsborough.
Gainsborough preferred landscape but, alas, portraits paid the bills. Given his workmanlike one-hundred minutes, he clearly had a lot of clients to get through. However, with this client he seemed to take a special delight in the set-up.
I first saw this image in Black England in 1999. I had never seen an image like it, that I can recall. I thought it must be a William Hogarth, that older contemporary of Gainsborough and his nearest, more successful rival Joshua, soon-to-be-knighted, Reynolds. William Hogarth, the lover of satire who laced several of his most famous works, not the least being A Rake’s Progress with Black witnesses. David Dabydeen’s brilliant book Hogarth’s Blacks details that purposeful peopling of Black figures in Hogarth’s prints, masterfully. I believed that Hogarth had attempted to depict the image of a free Black Man who might be dressed as finely as any lord, if granted an education and all the advantages high status could afford.
But, when I read the account of the life of a baby born on a slave ship, orphaned by the age of two and sent to live with three women in Greenwich, south-east London, made to stand as a silent pet, an ornament, in order to show how rich, exotic and powerful his mistresses were, who became an actor, writer, composer and musician, finally earning enough status and financial means to purchase a grocery store in a street adjacent to Downing Street in Westminster, well … I was almost compelled to pursue his unlikely and extraordinary story above all others.
I have only regretted venturing down this twenty-four-year cul-de-sac once. It was in the spring of 2021. I had sold the manuscript to Dialogue Books and my editor there, the extraordinarily perceptive Sharmaine Lovegrove, had asked me to whittle the story down from my planned – overly grand – three volumes to one and cut the word count to a slim eighty five thousand words. The average length, apparently, of a first novel. In fact, I had twenty years more of life to tell and had reached nearly one-hundred and ten thousand words, already. The task seemed beyond me. Sancho’s life, at least the fragments that we could be reasonably sure of, had not yet begun. I knew that squeezing it all in to fewer words than I had used, on top of finishing his life story was going to be difficult. The greater issue, however, proved to be his compromised position as a man who sold goods produced by captured
Africans …
I spent some days worried that I had backed the wrong historical horse, and that I was merely justifying the unjustifiable in a man who had been ignored by White historians and shunned by Black historians. I wondered if they may have both been correct in consigning Ignatius Sancho to the dustbin of history as a either too-slight or too-compromised a figure.
Most of us would probably prefer our idols to be ‘better’ than we are – we imagine our heroines and heroes to have overcome their obstacles in life with a degree of integrity and by sheer force of moral nature. I have a deep mistrust of that model of mythologising, but I am also attracted to it as a man in need of Black heroes I can hold up as shining examples of the best that ‘we’ can be.
When put this starkly, it appears a rather childish desire. Who but the very shallow can pretend to perfection in their life? Who could reasonably claim to have known all along where they needed to accept their circumstances and compromise and where to fight tooth and nail for change? Perhaps some. But none who I could ever hope to emulate. It remains beyond my ability or disposition to be that self-aware and flawless.
It turned out that those dark nights and days of the soul paid dividends. For in sending Sancho to the interrogation room of my imagination and forcing him to honestly confront his ‘sins’, I found understanding of his choices and even, grand to say but true, forgiveness for his flaws and foibles. Flaubert wrote in his novel Madame Bovary when the heroine of the story finds herself disparaging an Abbé whom she had longed admired and had placed on a pedestal, that ‘idols must not be touched, the gilt wears off in our hands.’ In the case of Sancho, stripping him of the ‘gilt’ of idolatry, had allowed me to see the performance behind Gainsborough’s portrait and forced me, gently but relentlessly, to confront my own performance of a ‘good’ self with a ‘pure’ heart.
And hard as that is, I prefer to live here, in the real world than behind the shiny glass of a captured snapshot of the person I might want to be, but who does not really exist. I chose Sancho, but in the end he taught me more about myself than I could ever have known without him.
Joshua Phillip
His personal website is
rorschacharchives.blogspot.com
In order to feel less disconnected, I carry evaluation forms for every occasion: How was breakfast? How appropriate was the weather to your mood? How satisfied are you with the ageing process? It’s a simple system of one star to five, in which three signifies ambivalence, one is obscured by a veil of tears, five is an apotheosis in the arms of wheeling angels, and two and four are just there to create the illusion of nuance where nuance no longer exists. I remember once, on a bench overlooking a cut glass sea, loaded on cider and home grown, Shelley told me poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world; so, as a mark of respect, I send my completed forms to the Poet Laureate, with a list of suggestions to make everything better for everyone. It’s a comfort to know that my voice is being heard and that I’m proactively participating in innovation and change; but he never replies, so I score him one out of a possible five.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
[after a painting by Nathaniel Nemo R.A.]
A sudden rush of rustle from within, (under?)
the folds of cobalt plaster
(or was it alabaster?)
and a holy child reached out a tender hand
for a greengage-coloured fig
uncomprehending its stolid & static
inedibility.
Yet too young to be
in search of the miraculous,
he replaced the fruit
in ripening disdain,
retreating inside (beneath?)
the fading blue of sculptured dress
in wonder
(or was it distress?)
A sigh – the Madonna or the clothes she wore?
A cry – the virgin mother or the child she bore?
After time’s arrow lodged a precarious bull’s eye
in the dartboard of The Three Kings,
a diligent archivist
chipped away at one of the figs
to see if its inside were red
to match the sea.
A tiny square of dry parchment
unfolded, fluttered to the floor.
Written upon it was the Word –
the Invisible word.
And the word was law
(or was it lore?)
Julian Isaacs
Tabloids on the east side
I keep looking at the mirror
It knows
How things work
The atoms of the human soul
An incense of intention
It keeps buzzing
In my head
The heads and tails of things
A silvery paws
Un femme
A Red Cross on my bosom
Innuendos everywhere
It touches with God’s mysteries
I keep chanting Him
The unnameable divine light
Above heads
The mirror knows
How things work
A silver spoon
Uni verse.
.
By
Sayani Mukherjee
Picture Nick Victor
.
Neatly kept letters
Are carefully folded affections.
The ink from the timeless eons,
A personal story of scripted letters
Sent by a beloved narrator.
Early morning Muezzin’s waking call
From a distant Mosques’ loudspeaker
Wakes me up to the scripted jargons of love
I haven’t mispronounced the love
The jargon is my source code—
I live in it.
My time is your recollection,
This dwelling is full of spring
And unchanging.
Expression rains,
The weather of care sprouts
A fresh dandelion.
Why talk about flowers
When they are so delicate?
In blooming flowers
A beloved’s heart
Sways freely and aimlessly
Even when light air
Cares and knows its delicate touch.
The vivid visual of a colorful
Sight of a flower colors life
When life tries to hide away and fade.
Serenity’s fragrance
Emanates from a flower
To love the unrevealing eyesight.
Sushant Thapa
Picture Nick Victor
Just stifle the schools
to achieve your rule.
Switch educators
for God-conjurers,
and conjugation
with grammar purges.
Impose summaries,
abbreviations,
and bland certainties
on education.I
In your war against
ideas and style,
curiosity
is put on trial.
But the decorum
of your concrete courts
won’t withstand jungled
improvs of bold youth.
We gather the fires
of the books you burn
to build the bunting
above your ash urns.
Duane Vorhees
Is inconvenience an end in itself or
a means to serve a wider purpose?
Just let that one sink in for a moment
or two while we contemplate a future.
The repetition is numbing as what
at first seems like a dramatic event
stops being so when repeated a
hundred times a night. Reflective
surfaces appear in many of these
images and here we have repeating
patterns, sumptuous colour and
alternating shapes. Do you have a
flexible finance option? “Encountering
a UFO can be a life-changing experience,”
she said. Doorways and windows act as
frames within frames yet a second object
is coming into view. “Fearful of ridicule
we all remain tight-lipped,” he said.
Steve Spence
Picture Nick Victor
a world without National Socialism
is unbelievable
so kill your children
a world without National Socialism
is unbelievable
so kill yourselves
a world without your children
is unbelievable
so kill yourselves
a world without yourselves
is unbelievable
so kill your children
a world without your children
is unbelievable
so kill National Socialism
David Miller
this happens
on a street
I’ve never knowingly known before
with my spirit down distracted
and paying no heed
a small man walks towards us
us being – should you care –
a Romanian surrealist photographer
a young French woman artist-musician
two English writers
how odd I think
to see somebody I know on this street
he catches my eye as I catch his
and something flashes across his face
this happens to the famous
I’ve learned in my anonymous life
it’s that look which silently says
yes – I am who you think I am
and then I remember
I don’t know this man
but I know his face
I can’t remember his name
but I can hear his voice
so how can it be
that he’s so familiar?
I’m in Paris not at home
I’m in a trance in France
on my own
he’s small and middle-aged
he’s quite ugly shall we say
he’s dressed down
not dressed up
but he knows
I know his mug
and I do
and now I know why:
I’ve seen him on screen
by the Seine
at night
with a beautiful girl
I tell the lovely artist-musician
the name of the film
she remembers this man
she remembers his name
she agrees he’s quite ugly
she agrees he’s really small
she agrees with me that…..
well – he’s a film star
what more is there to say?
and it’s true
there is nothing more to say
except that
just like him
we all star
in the movie
which is our life
Jeff Cloves, Paris 2009
The film star is Denis Lavant whom I first saw in Léos Carax’s film
Les Amants du Pont Neuf (1991). He co-starred with Juliette Binoche
and it’s his young/old face which has stayed with me ever since it seems.
I was visiting Paris for the exhibition and the celebration of the life
of the great poet and screen writer Jacques Prévert at the Hotel de Ville.
Modern Buildings in London, Ian Nairn (Notting Hill Editions)
London’s South Bank. The History, Mireille Galinou (Your London Publishing)
I’ve never quite got the still-growing cult which fetishizes Ian Nairn’s opinionated books about architecture. His gazetteers are little more than brief summaries and commentaries fuelled by personal likes or dislikes, and outrageous statements more rooted in the moment than any considered position. For instance, Nairn declares Jacob Epstein’s Madonna and Child in Cavendish Square to be ‘almost the only worthwhile piece of sculpture in Central London’, although this is immediately undermined by the ‘(see also 12)’ which refers the reader to an entry on State House, Holborn and Barbara Hepworth’s Meridian, which he clumsily describes as ‘a helix or spiral which has first been elongated and then given corners, and hence a skipping polygonal rhythm’, having first compared it to ‘a dynamo whirring away in a private world’.
Even in 1964 this uninformed take on art and architecture must have seemed pretty thin. Are phrases such as ‘personal and homely’, ‘[n]o masterpiece, but something just as important’, ‘a sad end to a great talent’ and ‘[a] terrible performance’ of any use to the reader, let alone the ridiculous ‘[t]his is a good place to come if you think that modern architecture cannot provide mystery and poetry’? What on earth has architecture got to do with either mystery or poetry? It is about materials, design, use of space, setting, light and usability; all things Nairn mostly ignores because it quickly becomes apparent that he has mostly stood outside the buildings and looked up some information about the architect. He mostly conjectures, assumes and generalises alongside brief descriptions.
It’s unclear what Nairn really thought of the then new and ‘modern’ buildings he included here. He occasionally worries about issues such as the fact that ‘[w]hen a building as thoughtful as this [New Zealand House, Pall Mall] is a disruptive influence, then it is time to question the whole basis of tall blocks in cities’, going on to offer the throwaway yet pertinent conclusion for that entry that ‘[t]he real problems of modern architecture are just beginning.’ It’s strange how these issues are (mostly) hidden away within Nairn’s more forthright and generally upbeat takes on the houses, offices and schools included here. Unfortunately Nairn’s alcoholism and death, not to mention 50 years of demolition, extensions, alterations and grand architecture, mean that we will never know what he would have made of the lovely architectural chaos that comprises London now; and we now have only photos and the likes of this book as evidence that many of these buildings existed. I remain ambivalent about Nairn’s writing, but – to use on of his phrases – at least ‘[s]omebody really cared.’
Mireille Galinou Galinou also cares about London. Her beautifully designed and printed book is both a history and a personal exploration and response to the South Bank, which she regards as ‘the centre of gravity for London’. For the purpose of this book the area includes Vauxhall and Lambeth, Waterloo, Borough and Bankside, Southwark and Bermondsey, and not just the area around the Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery and National Theatre the name is so often used for.
Galinou starts her story in 2007, when Antony Gormley’s life-size sculptures were somewhat unnervingly placed around the area, backpedals to The London Eye (has it only been there since 2002?) and then with a hop, skip and a jump we are back in the Middle Ages. Galinou is good at telling the history of London in both general and specific ways: we get to see early maps of the city and to read a discussion of and be shown details of A fête at Bermondsey, the first London landscape painting, Galinou is expert at interpreting the details and social customs and events included in the painting, as well as considering the source material and the fact ‘it is described as “an imaginary landscape”‘, despite the inclusion of ‘the very recognizable Tower of London’ and other details.
The use of historical and artistic sources (of course, they are not exclusive) continues, with fascinating considerations of how South London was sometimes painted out of views, the great fires of London (yes, plural), and how art and topography differ. The last topic returns us to the 21st century with Sharon Beavan’s unfinished painting of the wide-eyed view from Blackfriars Bridge, wherein the buildings buckle and distort into patterns as the result of shifting points of view. Galinou briefly notes the importance of high views, noting how The Shard has recently produced a new one, before descending into a slightly uneasy installation piece in Clink Street which she argues evidenced ‘the soul of London’.
And then in Chapter 3 we are privy to ‘The Sweep of History’, seen in the first section mostly through archaeology, with brief discussion of the wooden jetty from 1500 BC whose remains have been found at Vauxhall and the Iron Age Waterloo Helmet, then the Roman necropolis, boats, encampments and temples, and finally the Domesday Book which shows only a low number of homesteads in the area. The next sections specifically focus on the time ‘around 1600’, 1770, 1845 and now, with each of the four South Bank areas getting their own brief sub-section (a device I initially found quite confusing). For each date, there is a map and gazetteer of important buildings and geographical features – big houses, gardens, marshes, churches, prisons, schools, theatres etc. – from the time, accompanied by contemporaneous prints and paintings. It’s fascinating to see how quickly the area develops and changes, what industries come and go, how the Thames is always present as both a thoroughfare and a divide.
The final section of the chapter ‘The South Bank now’ is briefly introduced with references to ‘Millennium Fever’, ‘Housing’ and ‘Hotelmania’, as well as a consideration of how ‘[t]he ghost from the past is still haunting the present’, principally by the reconfiguring of warehouses and other buildings for contemporary use (e.g. Tate Modern) but also the resurrection and reconstruction of The Globe Theatre. Then, within each area’s section we get socially and politically contextualised descriptions of recent and contemporary buildings. The information and detail evidenced here only reinforces my opinion of Ian Nairn, above: Galinou’s entries are informed, referenced, astute and informative.
Having devoted much of the 300+ pages so far to the historical and recent pasts, ‘The Quest’ (Chapter 4) tries to ‘find the soul’ of each of the areas. Vauxhall and Lambeth is presented as ‘Paradise Regained’, with a wander through the parks, pleasure grounds and nature of the area, along with a brief pause to read William Blake’s critical consideration of London, in his poem of the same name, which Galinou suggests is ‘the antithesis of the Garden of Eden’, ‘the fallen city groaning with the cries of its enslaved dwellers.’ She suggests his experience ‘revolved around two opposite poles: blissful contentment in the “Nest” [his home], fallen humanity when stepping out of the front door, though tampered by the hope of finding infinity.’ Squares and gardens and parks, along with The Garden Museum, still bear witness to the presence of public spaces and greenery and offer one possible focus for the city’s future.
Waterloo’s soul is a darker one. Galinou uses Blake’s dark visions and desire for London to become a new Jerusalem as a preface for a litany of drowning, murder, imprisonment, which evidence the ‘Fallen neighbourhood: Lust, Greed and Sloth’. It is not clear whether the railways and Waterloo Station helped the demise or the resurrection of the area, although George Augustus Sala is decisive in his 1858 judgement of the nearby New Cut:
It isn’t picturesque, it isn’t quaint, it isn’t curious. It has not even the questionable
merit of being old. It is simply Low. It is sordid, squalid, and, the truth must out,
disreputable …. It is horrible, dreadful, we know, to have such a place: but then,
consider – the population of London is fast advancing towards three millions, and
the wicked people must live somewhere
Social reformers seemed to have been one of the catalysts for change in the area, but the popularity of music hall theatre at the end of the 19th Century slowly led to a resurgence of theatres on the South Bank, The Old Vic being instrumental. Later, of course, The Festival of Britain attracted many thousands of visitors and was instrumental in the development of institutional support for the arts. It also, of course, gave us The Festival Hall, and helped prompt the redevelopment of other areas on the South Bank. Galinou sees the example of, for instance, the community redevelopment of Coin Street, with its housing co-ops, neighbourhood centre and the Oxo Tower Wharf unit, as a challenge to what she calls the Goliaths of the development industry.
Theatre also features in the section on ‘Borough and Bankside’, but it is overshadowed by cholera and fire, cemeteries and death. Only when the industrial warehouses are abandoned can the likes of Derek Jarman live, create and party in spaces on the South Bank, slowly leading to formal studio provision and then the creation of Tate Modern, both an artistic and tourism success story. In this quarter, Galinou sees the ‘fluent marriage of the past with the present’ as key.
She seems less enthusiastic about The Shard, which gets discussed in relation to the Tower of Babel, and gets blamed (admittedly by Tom Ball, a member of the public, and not the author) for setting ‘a precedent for a flood of huge and tall buildings’ which will ‘spell an end to for London’s much admired human scale.’ Hmm. Shades of Prince Charles’s ignorance and interference here it seems. More reasoned perhaps is the objection to unsympathetic redevelopment which has not helped what Galinou calls ‘[t]he social pecking order’. The area is also considered in terms of its previous role as ‘London’s larder’ and the way contemporary microbreweries, food markets and restaurants have recently colonised the area, as well as those artists – such as Jarman again – who made use of abandoned warehouse and factory spaces. It is a combination of the new food and drink industry with the notion of a corporate identity that Galinou identifies here as key for future development.
In the final chapter, she expounds her ‘Answers to the quest’ from each area and section of the previous chapter, presents a fictional dialogue between an archaeologist and an architect on the back of asking them the same questions, and briefly touches upon the ‘disconnect between science and human emotions’ and ‘mental paralysis in the face of multi-culturalism’. The answer to these and other issues, she suggests, is already in existence: ‘a neighbourhood has grown which embraces art, compassion and healing’, which ‘has metaphysical, philosophical, artistic and spiritual undertones.’ This is neither vague utopian dreaming nor Conservative abdication of responsibility, it is what Galinou has already seen, alive and well today yet rooted in the past, for herself. The city, she suggests, is people not buildings, and everyone who lives in (or visits) London, must engage and be an active part.
This is a wonderful, optimistic, informative and ambitious publication. It manages to be a cultural and social history, an artistic engagement, a provocation and a rallying cry. It celebrates and mourns the past, documents the present, and offers up possibilities and challenges for the future, all in an engaging and individual manner. How rare this combination is. Go on, treat yourself to a copy.
Rupert Loydell
The image you see here may well be an ideal work of art, or
Perhaps, it is a lurid and melodramatic allegory of the creative process?
You will observe how, on one level, the symbolism is obvious – an uncontrollable force overwhelms the ivory towers of pedantry and the bastions of patriarchy.
It is a force from ‘beyond’ – it is the dark energy of compulsive, unconscious drives; it is a monstrous incursion from the paraxial realm of Desire.
This oracular vision is presented to us by that Pythoness of Subliminal Terror, superstar choreographer of the Ballet Plastique des Noctambules, Ms Jenny Taylor aka Medusa Cascade – watch your step!
A.C. Evans
Alan Dearling shares some thoughts on Paul’s latest musical offering
‘Ruminations’ is probably what I’m sharing. It seems more appropriate rather than a ‘review’ or ‘commentary’. This 15th studio album by Paul Simon, now 81, is partly spoken, an intoned sonic poem. A strangely twisting musical “endless river flows” populated by ‘The Lord’. A soundscape largely of spiritual and religious meditations. There’s a simplicity and beauty within its single meandering acoustic journey – seven tracks recorded to be listened to in their entirety.
It quickly becomes obvious that this is some kind of ‘bookend’ in Paul’s long career, many aeons since the days when he was one half of Tom and Jerry with Art Garfunkel back in the very early coffee houses and folk clubs in the early 1960s. It’s an endpiece. A wonky and often off-tune entreaty to “Dip your hand(s) in Heaven’s Water”. At 33 minutes of solo ‘dangling conversations’ Simon is obviously filled with lamentations and mournful regrets. With added, occasional wry and rueful humour, including listening into two cows! But mostly it is a death song-cycle. A return to the womb.
“The Lord is our benediction and our curse.”
“We have no destination.”
“The Lord is a welcome door to the stranger.”
And finally in the Seventh Psalm, ‘Wait’, sung with his wife, Edie Brickell, we are engulfed in the quiet anticipation of standing outside of some kind of metaphorical or real, ‘Heaven’s Door’ or ‘gates’. Simon tells us that:
“I want to believe in the dreamless transition…”
“Children get ready – Time to come home.”
Musically, it is mostly a floating, vaguely Spanish-styled piece of acoustic guitar playing, with some added rather ethereal instrumentation/orchestration. The recurrent guitar theme piece reminded me somewhat of Al Stewart’s ‘Small Fruit Song’ and ‘Anji’ from the late, great, Davey Graham for its frail simplicity. Apparently, Paul Simon lost his hearing in one ear during the recording. A thing of some beauty, but deeply tinged in sadness, some remorse, some regrets. A musical ‘dreaming’ or even a ‘haunting’, waiting for the Grim Reaper, perhaps, as his final ‘mystery guide’?
‘Seven Psalms’ – lamentations and prayers on life’s curious mysteries.
Amen.
Listen to the album on ‘Youtube’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANtntuDslnk
Lisa Bosworth:
1.0 out of 5 stars Only Plays Track One
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 27 May 2023
I hope to find a way to return this CD for a refund. It only plays Track One, no matter how I try to get it to move on to the other “Psalms”.
A circle drawn by two vultures
about a hundred meters above
the dead wolf recurs in my mornings.
I blink, feel the heat laze on my eyelids,
shape a lasso with my shadow
and haul the beast to an eclipse.
Water sparkles nearby. The howling
halted in the air witnesses my awakening.
….
Kushal Poddar
Picture Nick Victor
@amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
I don’t want to write abstract lines.
I choose,
Not the one in the mirror.
Today, I write and erase
I wonder will these lines ever stand
The test of time.
The night is as it is,
Countless stars sing the same song.
One shiny moon
In isolated sphere
Spreading her light.
A desire to burn before I extinguish
A philosophical seed,
Bearing the fruits of simplicity.
In abstract words,
I find imagination speaking
As I filter my words for this liquid expression.
My song is of the nightingale
In the deep woody heights
Of a grassy land.
I express to be,
Like this form.
Copyright Sushant Thapa
Nepal
Photo Nick Victor
Order the posters at https://store.crimethinc.com/collections/posters
Struggles Over Gender Today
Today, nonbinary identities and gender-neutral pronouns have emerged from trans/queer subcultures and online communities into workplaces, schools, and public debates. Trans communities have received unprecedented visibility.
On the other hand, what had been a rising wave of conservative backlash has grown into a tsunami. It is no exaggeration to describe the reactionary program as gender fascism. As the popular saying goes, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” The struggle for gender self-determination has reached the “then they fight you” stage. Today, access to abortion care has been severely restricted in large regions of the US, while hundreds of proposed laws target trans people, especially youth, with restrictions on medical care, participation in sports, bathroom access, legal documentation, entertainment and culture, and more. At the same time, heads of state are citing the preservation of gender roles among their chief justifications for full-scale wars.
Yet at the same time that reactionaries are attempting to use state power to crush gender non-conformity and eliminate reproductive autonomy, the identity politics that emerged from 20th century liberation struggles are experiencing a crisis.
The right-wing culture war offensive on the terrain of gender seeks to take advantage of this crisis. While the breadth of support for abortion rights worries Republican strategists who are concerned with their electoral prospects, the right is gambling that it can target trans people with impunity, seeing them as a small and politically less powerful demographic ripe for scapegoating. By framing their attacks as defenses against existential threats to children, the family, and the gender order itself, they have inflamed their base with a sense of mission that identity-based coalitions have not been able to overcome.
The same social changes that have uprooted fixed notions of gender and enabled more expansive ways of being have also destabilized models of organizing that relied on coherent notions of identity. We need new ways of understanding ourselves to fight the forces that divide and oppress us, new ways to conceptualize who we are and what we can become.
Abolition and Self-Determination
How might we approach the task of undoing gender, combining the best elements of gender abolition and gender self-determination? By identifying which aspects of gender need abolishing, we can propose some points of departure:
Abolish gender segregation—ensure that people of all genders have access to the same opportunities, resources, social spaces, and forms of agency.
Abolish fixed gender roles—break the association between certain traits and certain genders, demonstrating new constellations of the qualities and capabilities that are currently associated with one gender or another. As the original poster suggests, you can be strong without being a boy and sensitive without being a girl; while this sentiment is increasingly accepted today, how much further can we go towards breaking free of the fixed roles and binaries that organize our thinking about human beings?
Abolish gender hierarchies—End practices that privilege one gender over another, and those that value some qualities and capabilities over others because of the gender they are associated with. Hillary Clinton becoming president would not have served to qualify our society as feminist—if a person of any gender has to outdo all other contenders in demonstrating traditionally masculine characteristics in order to get a foothold in politics, and if all political institutions continue functioning according to patriarchal priorities and protocols, gender oppression remains in effect even if not everyone in a position of power is a man.
Abolish gender gatekeeping—Do away with the boundaries that control who can identify with any gender. Defending trans identity, gender nonconformity, and other departures from fixed binary gender represents a step towards this goal.
Abolishing these dimensions of gender can create the space for the free flourishing of all people outside of oppressive roles and identities. We can affirm both the creative impulses that lead millions of people today to define themselves in gendered terms outside of birth assignments and binaries, while also taking aim at the structural conditions that constrain our lives regardless of how we identify.
As anarchists, we believe that we can only be free when all of us are free, and that everything that expands the horizons of freedom for others will benefit us, too. Nowhere is this plainer than on the terrain of gender.
Reprinted from anarchist.news.org / crimethinc.com/
Tracklist:
Alphonse Mouzon – Sunshower
RAMP – Everybody Loves the Sunshine
Bobbi Humphrey – Fun House
Tom Scott – Sneakin’ in the Back
Eddie Palmieri – Harlem River Drive
The Bar Kays – Son of Shaft
Isaac Hayes – Hung Up On My Baby
William De Vaughn – Be Thankful for What You Got
Johnny Bristol – Do it to My Mind
The Isley Brothers – Summer Breeze (part I)
The Isley Brothers – Summer Breeze (part II)
Grant Green – Down Here on the Ground
Rasputin’s Stash – Mr Cool
Inell Young – The Next Ball Game
Leo’s Sunshipp – Give Me the Sunshine
I walked alone on Parliament Square
A card on a cord around my neck.
One word written in the centre, ‘NOT…’,
Arrows drawn pointing from a clock face
A darkclothedman accosted me,
‘You’re spreading alarm with your sign;
That piece of cord, it’s a lock-on device’.
I was surrounded, police handcuffed me.
They pushed me to the ground, ‘kneel!’.
A crowd gathered.
I held my arms up to pray.
A voice beside me said, ‘take him away’.
‘Lock him up, throw away the key, .
‘Tell everyone, ‘cancel him, no platform him’.
Lost for words, I was stuck in a cell
‘For your own good, your protection!’,
From their thoughts yours & mine.
Lesson learned; I’ll never walk alone.
Nothing to see here.
© Christopher
.
It was the exquisite if unusual shape of her nose
That gave both sense and scope to her beauty.
This face, born in Birkenhead, ever strident, who got to be
Hampstead and Highgate’s MP. Ferocious from the first,
Her stare and voice stunned and startled, her glare
As soul searching as her delivery. Not to mention
Her Je Ne Sais Quoi, as she could be handsome, ugly,
And pretty. Glenda in her bob and fringe, smiling sweetly,
Or corpsing with Morecambe and Wise melted most.
But look at her Elizabeth R, or hear her growls and groans
From back benches in which free from glamour,
She could whip up wild water after ceaselessly rocking boats.
As with Clare Short, she became one of Labour’s strong
Women; after Barbara Castle and Jennie Lee, Glenda sought
Some deeper truth that she could no longer find
In her acting. Let’s not forget that the Marat-Sade made her.
She was no dolly. From no casting couch was she bought.
She had her own allure, more in line with Dench, Smith
And Atkins; far more refined, almost studied, and free from
The glaze others fought. Such as Dame Diana Rigg, or those
Who frequently fell by the wayside, the dollied doves
Of the ‘60s; Glenda was more raven-like. For she grew
Somewhat coarser with age. It was as if beauty’s embodiment
Bothered. In closing in on the issues, did her hardening
Hurt her fans’ view? She would not have noticed, or cared.
In her return to TV and film in her eighties, she played King Lear;
Crow-like, craven, one part hag, nine parts true.
She had freed herself from the fame which is the alleged
Curse of all actors. Immerse yourself in the honey,
And even the busiest bee becomes wasp, as he, she,
Or they bare the sting of falsity thrust upon them.
Glenda Jackson just jacked that. She felt the mask mark,
Ripped it off, to reveal the bare bones hidden behind
Human beauty. She, independent after her early marriages
Rocked not only the boat, but the stage, film-set
And House of Commons. From privilege, purpose,
Such as it is, with or without public flock. And now,
She is another one gone, after so many losses.
A few remain in their eighties and nineties,
Nevertheless clinging on to a world we don’t know
As their replacements seem shallow. Apparently,
The arctic ice is retreating and at a tempo,
Which makes heavy weather (and metal)
From Mother Nature’s folksong. They will escape,
These spent stars who fought and argued for standards,
In Glenda’s republican cause, rights for women
And the socialist stance fired her. That special need
To believe that each on Earth was made equal.
She gave up fripperies to clutch at the fundamental.
She, a burned beauty, moved from rose to thorn,
Smile to slur. And so we wave you off, as you exchange
Your English end now for Eden. Which was never
On earth. In star gardens, beauty blooms through new roses.
These sky-flowers are gathered as the lost plot evolutions.
And perhaps revolution. Meantime, stars labour within
And for a new language. The light begins speaking.
And with this and they, God confers.
David Erdos 15/6/23
.
We’re proud to present this talk by David Graeber and David Wengrow, entitled The Myth of the Stupid Savage: Rousseau’s Ghost and the Future of Political Anthropology. Originally presented at the PPA+ Conference at the University of Amsterdam in May 2019.
(Part 1 suite)
0:00 The Rainbow
8:03 Eden
15:43 Desire
23:00 Inheritance
28:23 I Believe in You
34:39 Wealth
https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=5833
Steven Taylor
the last demonstrator
holds up a placard
with nothing written on it
people stop to look
and read there
what they want to read
a prophecy of doom
a message of hope
a recipe for living
a horoscope
left-wing propaganda
or a revelation
a plan to save the world
from devastation
one of the passers-by
calls the police
who when they’ve read
what she has to say
put her in a van
and take her away
*Endling: a word coined in 1996 for the last individual member of a species, on the death of which the species becomes extinct.
Dominic Rivron
We followed the science through streets lined with statues, their faces worn smooth and their inscriptions lost beneath graffiti and grime. These are our past, said the guide with the mask, and this is our glittering future. He lifted a vial, which was caught by the sun as if it was a bird in a trap, its song a coruscation of ecstatic fear. Its secrets were patented and beyond my understanding, but I saw it as a sign to follow through fields where lambs lay down, blissfully unaware of lions, while the real life rumbled deep underground. None may pass, said the guard with the gun, there’s nothing to see here. He lifted a finger that was nothing but bone and pointed to a place inside my head where nothing moved but vulgar fractions and a steady blue flame. Silence followed, and I saw the sum of all reasons as a single figure, a simple equation, a songbird trapped in a glass flask. I followed the silence back to the crowd, where statues bowed with the weight of failed experiments, where the guide in the long white coat checked the time and cleared his throat. This is what we’ve got so far, he said, striking a match from a book he picked up in a club that closed when the dancers turned to stone. The results should be in any day.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which neither likes nor dislikes Marmite
READER: I had a really bizarre dream last night.
MYSELF: Bizarre you say…how curiously fascinating, yet strangely repellent.
READER: Would you like me to tell you about it?
MYSELF: As long as you don’t mind me checking my Instagram account and my facebook page at the same time.
READER: It was so weird. In the dream I was a giant cockroach, and I was lying in bed…..
MYSELF: Wow! My trans kitten video got 37 likes!
READER: ……I was lying in bed watching Prime Minister’s Questions. MPs from across the political spectrum were expressing serious doubts about a former PM. The entire house was a heaving sea of weeping MPs and ministers, clutching each other for comfort as the evidence linking Boris Johnson with poverty, famine, war and numerous other biblical plagues mounted up. American tourists hurled themselves from the public gallery in despair. Just when all seemed lost Suella Braverman, the Minister for Cruel Sports stood up and addressed the swamp of disappointed men like a heroic wooden figurehead nailed to the prow of a Russian oligarch’s gigantic yacht. Through a child’s red and yellow plastic megaphone which made her sound like Darth Vader, she verbally swatted the pathetic doubters like flies. All accusations about Boris Johnson’s pathological opposition to the truth evaporated as she defended his reputation with character, wit and unambiguous clarity. Huge words leapt out of her face like spawning salmon, submerging all opposition in a foaming tsunami of sarcasm. Then I woke up to find my hot water bottle had burst. Hello? Are you still there?
MYSELF: Hahaha! Pardon? Oh I’m so sorry! I was looking at a photo of a zebra stealing someone’s breakfast through the open window of a motorhome in a Kenyan safari park. Did you say something?
MYSTIC DORIS – ASTROLOGER TO THE STARS.
WHY NOT LET DORIS TAKE YOU ON A PERSONAL JOURNEY INTO YOUR FUTURE.
STRAP YOURSELF IN AND PRETEND YOU ARE IN AN E-TYPE JAGUAR WITH WALNUT TRIM, RATHER THAN A VAUXHALL VIVA WITH A FAULTY CLUTCH AND SOME HALF-EATEN SANDWICHES AND ORANGE PEEL ALL OVER THE BACK SEAT AND A FUNNY SMELL COMING FROM THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT.
Capricorn (22 December-20January) Take your shoes off. relax. love will come in time. Just don’t wear those leggings.
Aquarius (21 January-19 February) Even if you were good looking, your too old. Forget it.
Pisces (20 February-20 March) Ha ha! Serves you right!
Aries (21 March-20 April) Anyone can write a novel. Stop complaining and get on with it.
Taurus (21 April-21 May) Give up, you’re fucked.
Gemini (22 May-21 June) Remember when you could call an egg an egg? Well you can’t now.
Cancer (22June 23 July) Go ahead, stroke it, no-one else will
Leo (24 July-23 August) June will see another influx of red squirrels trying to steal our squirrels’ jobs. Sprinkle nuts outside, spread glue and wait for squirrels. When firmly stuck, store squirrels in temporary barge or send to Rwanda.
Virgo (24 August-23 September) With Mercury absconding, it is very important to order expensive furniture on the 28th. A wren’s egg under the floorboards will repel immigrants.
Libra (24 September-23 October) June can be difficult for those born under the weight watching machine. On one side is a monkey, on the other, a goat. Both are your enemy.
Scorpio (24 October-23 November) Bad news for Scorpios! Despite desperate sycophantic arse kissing, you will not go to the ball.
Saggitarius (24 November-21 December) Purse your lips, be very very cross and stamp your little feet. You will get what you want, but it won’t be a seat in the Lords.
WENDY WRITES
Dear Wendy,
How do I get rid of dinner guests who are boring, have outstripped their welcome and insist on hanging on until all the brandy has run out? Last week, some of them were still there the following morning
Llowell Llewelllyn
Professor of Dominoes
Llllyllythgangohohoho University
Gwynthylligollygingganggoolygoolygooolygoolygingganggooogingganggoo
Wales
Dear Mr Llwelllyn (I hope I have pronounced that correctly),
I was sorry to hear about your dinner guest problem. Here’s an ad I clipped out of What Specialist? magazine the other day which might help you cope with future occurrances of gastricus malapropis.
FED UP WITH GHASTLY CLINGING GUESTS WHO WON’T GO HOME?
When even coming downstairs in your pyjamas doesn’t do the trick, what you need is Robinson’s Surprise Spring Loaded Cocktail Sausages
Each tin contains 12 tasty spring-loaded luxury frankfurter sausages. After only one bite, the sausage burst open, piercing the cheeks with razor sharp metal shards. Mail order only £5 per tin.
Of course if the cocktail sausages don’t work, this method of dealing with guests described in Crouton’s Guide To Etiquette And Social Discourse by the 19th century French sociologist Moulin Crouton, may well do the trick. A little may be lost in the translation.
“Certayn persons, where good intercourse hath ceased to flowe wythe the partayking of wine, may cause thru slypping of tongue or unpleasant engagement, an atmosphere inconsystant wythe the dyning rules of the house. It is permissible under these circumstances for the host to bryng to the table hys shaving instruments, and after stropping his razor on the unruly guest’s tie, or in the case of a lady, her tongue, he may procede to plunge his shaving brush into the guest’s soupe (or gravye, or custarde, depending upon whych course the offendyng behavioure hath taken place), and commence to lather his face wyth it. Should the guest prove as thykke skynned as a Rwandan rhinocerous, and remayne seated even after the host hath applied hot towels and bay rum, he may approache the guest from behynde and placing a loaded revolver next to the temple, gentlye squeeze the trygger.
In order to preserve the host and hostesse’s position on the social ladder, care should be taken not to injure any of the other guests”.
I hope this has been of some help.
Wendy
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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Agape is summoned as sitting in a circle
We pass the loving-cup from left to right
Soft words with harmonious music
Transforming sight to insight
We set aside restraint of narrative
Time is not one singular straight line
The mind’s conceptions know no end
But tenderly return to others –
We are no ‘club’ mankind can recognise
We practice an inclusion so transparent
As to prove invisible – as stars
Long dead but on the world still shining
Our poems are not photos of the family
Charming chums nor keepsakes of a country
Accessible by rail nor air nor car
They are not card-tricks puzzle-rings nor jigsaws
The human race some have been running for
Or from in seeking out ‘the hidden god’ –
His face is framed in every being’s face
Her face is in creation’s open smile
No need of vision from a far horizon
The floating bridge of dream is harboured here
The Golden Fleece has fled the ship of state
To walk by common speech in every street
Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer
.
I first became aware of Ken and Elaine Edwards around 15 years ago in what was at that time my local pub – the Jenny Lind in Hastings Old Town. They were playing in their band the Moors. I was struck immediately that here was fusion music – an eclectic mix of rock, jazz, spoken word, poetry and improv, inflected with musical influences from North Africa – that actually worked; it sounded like its own thing, rather than a mash-up of styles and influences that didn’t quite belong together.
I used to hear Elaine working on her scales on the saxophone as I passed their house: they lived in the next street. As the years went by, the Moors morphed into Afrit Nebula, a three-piece band featuring percussionist Jamie Harris, who came recommended by veteran British jazz luminary Trevor Watts. Later, when Harris rejoined Watts’ band, he was replaced by drummer and percussionist Yair Katz.
Late last year Ken gave me his book Wild Metrics: as well as being the bass player in both the Moors and Afrit Nebula, Ken is an author, publisher, poet and spoken word artist. The book was set mainly in London in the 1970s, and captured perfectly the alternative arts scene of its day – poets reciting in pubs and dingy clubs, the happenings, the arts labs, the licensed squats, the drifters, losers and loners and people sadly adrift in life – and the mimeographed literary booklets. These would often be run off on the Roneo or Gestetner machine (too involved to explain here – look it up!) that someone who worked in an office had down-time access to. These were effectively home-crafted zines in their early incarnations, before the arrival of photocopiers. They would be sold or given away or exchanged for a pint and a roll-up in those same pubs and clubs, hawked on the streets, or distributed through alternative networks via the postal service.
At the same time that I was given Wild Metrics, I also bought a copy of Inalienable by Afrit Nebula, and Elaine’s The Bulverhythe Variations – something like a lockdown diary in book and CD form. Bulverhythe is a stretch of beach in St Leonards that is home to the wreck of the Amsterdam, a remarkably intact, 260-year-old Dutch East Indiaman cargo ship, once the property of the now-notorious East India Trading Company. It now lies submerged in the soft silty sand, and is fully visible only at very low tides. Dominating the landscape is a former railway diesel shed, now a repair workshop for ageing locomotives and carriages.
Intrigued by all this, I visited Elaine and Ken in their seaside home in Hastings to learn more.
KR: 1. Can you tell us about the events described in Wild Metrics, and how in broad terms you got from there to making music? Did your experiences in the alternative culture of the 1970s inform your work as a musician? If so, how?
Ken: Wild Metrics is an account of four years in my life (1974-78) when I was heavily involved with the licensed squatting and avant-poetry movements in London. It’s based on the diaries I kept at the time, and was originally going to be a novel, but it didn’t work as fiction. I tried changing everybody’s name and embellishing the narrative but somehow that just killed it. So I ended up writing it as a memoir (with some names changed). I appended a disclaimer: “This is essentially a work of imagination. Names, characters and places have a complex relation to real people and locations, and incidents narrated may not necessarily have occurred in the way or in the sequence described, or at all. Apologies for any confusion created.”
Although I had taught myself to play a few chords on guitar and was passionately interested in music, I was not an active musician at that time. I was writing songs, but was mostly too shy and lacking in confidence to perform them in public. Even doing poetry readings was a nerve-shattering experience for me. It’s different now, I love performing. I knew a lot of poets, including the sound poet Bob Cobbing, and people like Jeff Nuttall, Barry MacSweeney, Tom Raworth, Lee Harwood, all of whom are now dead. (I didn’t cross paths with Pete Brown, the Cream/Jack Bruce lyricist, but had his books as well as the albums, and met him briefly many years later in Hastings, my current home town, where he had come to live. He died a few weeks ago.)
It was an exciting time, we felt we were overturning all the dead norms of writing. It was at that period that I also started publishing, at first using a Roneo duplicator (mimeograph machine), which will be a complete mystery to young people today. Even in the time before digital culture and the internet we could make our own books!
The central part of Wild Metrics is an account of being hired to work for a very famous musician. It was a bizarre three months in my life: one day I was living in a condemned house in Bayswater, west London, the next I woke up in a palatial ensuite room in the St Regis Hotel in New York. I anonymised him in the book, but it doesn’t take a lot of detective work to find out the musician was Paul McCartney. I have been asked why I called him “The Rock Star” throughout, and changed the names of his band (Wings), family and entourage. Was it because I was afraid of being sued? Not at all, there’s nothing libellous in the book. I just didn’t want my memoir to be overshadowed by such a ridiculously famous being. I was actually hired as a private tutor to 13-year-old Heather, Paul’s stepdaughter (daughter of Linda). The family was embarking on a three-month tour, Wings Over America, and Heather’s school had stipulated that they must take a tutor so that she would not miss out on schooling. It was by turns a frustrating and fascinating experience. I did get to hang out a bit with Wings (Denny Laine and Jimmy McCulloch were lovely guys) but mostly I spent time mooching about in hotels and occasionally being taken to wherever the McCartney family were staying so I could give Heather her lesson. As a result, I got an up-close view of what extreme fame is like. It is not nice. The one musical lesson I took from it was the value of intense preparation: Wings were fantastic on stage throughout (from my conversations with Paul it was obvious he was trying to recreate the energy of the early Beatles, which he mourned – but the Beatles were the elephant in the room, not to be actually alluded to!). He had drilled the band through weeks of daily rehearsals even before the first gig. That’s how you get good.
In the years following, I continued to write and publish, though earning my living through journalism rather than creative work. I was on the fringes of various musical projects. I had started getting more interested in jazz and various ethnic musics. In the 1990s I learned to play violin, which I can still do, though not very well, and to read music (likewise). I was involved in the East London Late Starters Orchestra and CoMA (Contemporary Music for All) which aimed to open up contemporary composition to people of all abilities and levels of experience. At a summer school in Yorkshire in 1997 I met Elaine, and we hit it off both musically and personally. We became a duo, performing our own experimental words-and-music combinations, in venues such as pub upper rooms in London and at poetry festivals.
By the turn of the century Elaine had moved into my south London flat and we had a happy five years there, but in 2004 we decided to move to the coast, where we could afford a bigger house, and ended up in Hastings Old Town. Elaine had a formal music/related arts education and had achieved diploma standard on flute, but she was now learning the soprano sax and getting into jazz. We briefly had a duo playing klezmer (the music of Eastern European Jews – though neither of us is Jewish) on flute and guitar. She was frustrated that although she was depping in various jazz/swing bands in Hastings she hadn’t got a regular gig. I told her that if she wanted we could form our own band and I would play bass. I acquired a bass guitar and started learning. I soon realised I had at last found my own instrument. We got together with guitarist Richard Butler, an Old Town neighbour, and Jenny Benwell, a violinist Elaine met through teaching with the East Sussex Music Service, and started jamming, at first on the klezmer and Sephardic tunes we knew, joined later by local drummer Andy Maby. Before we knew it, we had a band: The Moors. The then manager of the Stag (a folk pub) asked us to play weekly in their back bar and people started turning up. Soon we had a regular gig at the Jenny Lind, which is probably the premier music venue in Hastings Old Town. The band members, to our astonishment, turned up every week for rehearsals at our house, whether or not we had a gig, and so we got good. We rocked! Elaine and I were overwhelmed – although we’d had a great deal of musical experience over the years, neither of us had actually run a band before.
I was brought up in Gibraltar and perhaps as a result am very interested in the traditional musics of the southern Mediterranean. The more I study the more I realise there is one music, many traditions, carried in some cases by the Jewish and Gypsy diasporas. You can hear the same scales and rhythms in klezmer, in Sephardic Jewish music, in Turkish and Middle Eastern music, in the Balkans. In The Moors we tried to fuse that with our own rock traditions, and our own compositions.
It wasn’t by chance. The Moors had become very successful locally in Hastings, Rye, Brighton and on one occasion as far afield as Brecon in Wales. But both Elaine and I were looking for a more improvisatory approach. We wanted to develop our jazz skills, if you like. The other members of the band were less keen. So the two of us decided to start a second band with this in mind. The saxophonist Trevor Watts, a Hastings resident, recommended that we get in touch with the percussionist Jamie Harris, whom he’d worked with as a duo in the past. Jamie, Elaine and I started jamming. The result was the trio Afrit Nebula. Because of Jamie’s influence, we were going further into the Afro-Cuban feel which had come into The Moors a little bit, and also some North African influence. The three of us shared an interest in jazz/improv, and we even did a cover of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman”. Some of the Balkan influence remained. Essentially it was a more improvisatory, rhythm-based approach. We tried to keep the two bands going simultaneously, but eventually it was agreed that The Moors had done all it was going to do. We had ten good years with that band.
We played with Jamie for seven years in all, recording an album and an EP. Through Jamie’s contacts, we played at a small rock festival in the Czech Republic. We provided the music for a multi-media event at the Kino-Teatr in St Leonards with Japanese dancer Yumino Seki and film-maker Mark French. Eventually that phase came to an end when Jamie was asked by Trevor Watts to join a new trio, Eternal Triangle, which meant committing to touring. It was sad to see him go, but we had an immediate replacement in the drummer Yair Katz, whom we’d known for some time. Yair was born in Israel and spent many years in New Zealand playing in rock bands before coming to live in St Leonards. We share many musical tastes, and he gives the band a more swing-like feel. We lost Jamie’s powerful blues voice, but Yair can sing and also play guitar, so there were other options. We have recorded an album with Yair, and have plans to join forces again with Yumino Seki in a dance performance, with music mostly written by Elaine.
I think I can say that were it not for moving to Hastings Old Town in 2004 (we have since moved a mile or two west to St Leonards) Elaine and I would probably not have started a band. The musical culture here is vibrant. A lot of it is rock, blues and folk music, but we have tried to provide something a little different. Playing at the Jenny Lind in the Old Town is still such a buzz – we always attract a knowledgeable and enthusiastic audience. And currently St Leonards seems to be going through an art/music renaissance which we are very happy to be part of.
I have always regarded myself as a writer primarily, but it has been a privilege to develop my musical skills with such wonderful and talented people. The thing about writing is that it can be a lonely business. The joy of music rests partly in how it can exist in interaction with others. And I do feel that my musical experiences feed back into my writing all the time, in terms of a feeling for rhythm, pacing, sound, texture. So it’s all one really!
KR: Can you tell us about your early life and how you came to be a musician and composer.
I was born in a Norfolk village and have a typical rural working class background. Roaming the countryside on bikes and general ‘tomboy’ activities were what I liked best.
My first memory of playing piano was my father teaching me ‘Chopsticks’, closely followed by playing songs I had been learning at school. My father played the clarinet in a local dance band, and also played the accordion – sometimes entertaining people in the pub next door. I grew up hearing 1940’s dance band music and classical piano music (my older brother was a brilliant pianist). I loved it all… Very soon I like my brother began having lessons with the local piano teacher, taking my grades, performing in local functions. We also had a Yamaha electric organ and I loved to play Latin and Swing.
I left school with very little in the way of academic qualifications. In my mid twenties and living in London I hired a flute. This put me on the musical and creative journey I’m still on. Outside of my job as a medical secretary I learned how to play the flute using all my spare time and annual holidays. I had a wonderful Irish flute teacher, adept in classical, jazz and Irish folk music who I visited once a week. He believed in a kind of ‘Baptism of Fire’ approach – playing Bach flute duets for lessons well over an hour a week and sometimes music by Miles Davis. I survived and learned quickly, eventually giving up my job, moving back to Norfolk and working on piano, flute and theory in a small hut in my parent’s garden! I was following a very powerfully felt intuition during this time but actually had no idea where I was going. I was encouraged by a local music teacher to apply to college. After many rejections from universities I managed to be accepted on to a very original performance art degree in Chichester. It was a true garden of discovery – studying as a musician while relating music as a creative art form to dance, art, creative writing. Here I discovered a kind of intuitive flair for creating music and improvising – nurtured to create as we all were in this very eclectic environment.
I did a PGCE at Sussex University and taught in secondary schools – teaching music and performing arts. I organised a ‘Composers Extra Curricular Group’ for the GCSE and A Level groups – which was rewarding. I was lucky to teach at a time when adequate funding was made available to the Arts Departments in Schools (which is probably not now the case). I remember inviting composers of new music such as Stephen Montague who wrote Dark Sun (a piece about Hiroshima) to work and perform it in concert. Also African and Indian dancers, musicians and writers to work with the students. New and creative ways of working in the Arts – I felt privileged to have contributed to this.
I met Ken during this period on a Summer School for contemporary music making in Yorkshire (COMA), went on to live in Peckham, South London and eventually moved to Hastings. I was inspired by Ken’s writing and attending his poetry evenings in London pubs. Sometimes we performed together using Ken’s words and my flute compositions. I began work with what was then East Sussex Music Service working as a peripatetic teacher. I had to work very hard to retrieve my former playing skills on flute and piano to pass the auditions. My energies up to then had been going into classroom teaching and running music departments. It was also during this time I took up the saxophones (tenor and soprano) and became very interested in jazz. At the same time Ken had taken up the bass guitar, and together we formed The Moors and Afrit Nebula, which Ken has described.
In recent years I have dedicated more time to composing, improvising and collaborating on projects. I was fortunate to have piano lessons with John Tilbury at Goldsmiths College – one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman’s music, and a member of the free improvisation group AMM. He introduced me to composers piano works which I think are still highly influential on my own compositions now: – works by Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, Arvo Part, Morton Feldman, Frederic Mompou, Howard Skempton to name but a few. I particularly felt this influence in my last project which was written for piano during the pandemic on a series of photos taken on my runs in Bulverhythe, St. Leonards on Sea, ‘Bulverhythe Variations’, which also combined with a narrative by Ken and was performed last Autumn at The Beacon in Hastings.
Both Ken and I have used our composing ideas in The Moors and in Afrit Nebula particularly as starting points to improvised pieces. We have been thrilled to work with some very creative and talented people over the years both in our bands and in collaborations with other art forms. We will be working for the second time with the Butoh dancer Yumino Seki in a Coastal Currents project in Hastings in September which we are very excited about.
To conclude I would like to share a quote by the dancer Martha Graham which I have often referred to for motivation. We all have an individual voice whatever our art – and I have found this to be wonderful message for the young just starting out, and the older of us who need reminding sometimes!
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
― Martha Graham
http://www.realitystreet.co.uk/
https://afritnebula.bandcamp.com/
https://jazzjournal.co.uk/2022/08/26/afrit-nebula-inalienable/
Keith Rodway
Coward, you claimed to represent something.
But look at the way you took Uxbridge,
Because you could not get Kensington;
Squeezing into a suburb the bloat
Of the Borison you were preaching:
A corrupted prayer, full of nothing,
Not even the Brexit that you placed
Your plan for economic cleansing on.
People who know me expect the writing
Of this poem. I have spent more words on you
Than on my lost love and parents; well,
Not quite, but enough. So, now,
May you fade having finally shown your true
Colours, for like the indicted Trump,
You sought power for power’s sake,
Through your bluff; a great pot-bellied pose
As you puffed cheeks and mumbled.
Are you anything else but the ego
Of an already dated cartoon? Not even those
Who worked with you know. Is it really
All an act, Alexander? A great attempt
At creation, or some sort of F for Art installation
Centred around a Pultroon? You represent
A fouled time. And look at what you presented.
Unpriti Patel. Dark Dom Cummings, and now
You have knighted Rees-Mogg! While sacrificing
Your Dad, who seems to be a bigger bugger
Than you are; chortling through the chaos
Of racist cant. Change one letter and we have
Both of you bound: bad bull-dogs. An observation
Which no doubt pleases you, with your Churchilling
Pretensions, not to mention the Shakespeare
That your gargle and swill and have spat
Onto the screen, over us. Branagh could not
Dignify it. So, step down and fall further.
Exit, pursued and stripped bare, prick and prat!
And something more insidious, too. Yes.
Of that I am certain. But then I say to the readers
And listeners of the frustrated lines I have spent;
Should he return to TV, or to print,
Then immediately take up knitting. Go for long walks.
Learn a language, or master a musical instrument.
But do not entertain and do not permit him
Forgiveness. The image is empty.
He is what we must not be. Sight can sour.
How much can you take or taste?
My verse vomits. But for him kind milk is madness
And even custard congeals. Nothing’s meant.
David Erdos 10/6/23
.
.
.
Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column that thinks tired, worn-out cliché is the elephant in the room
READER: Football’s coming home! And on top of a glorious heatwave to boot!
MYSELF: I assume you’re referring to plucky little Manchester City’s collaboration with the headchoppers of Saudi Arabia in a bid to win the Champion’s League?
READER: Precisely – a victory which will be accomplished with a display of British decency and fair play in the face of fiendishly foul behaviour by the desperate spaghetti-munching boot boys of Inter Milan.
MYSELF: Speaking of desperate behaviour, our bloated ex PM has resigned his seat after accusing some kangeroos of ousting him.
READER: Kangeroos? Why?
MYSELF: They were apparently furious at not being elevated to the House of Lords.
READER: Kangeroos can sit in the Lords? Really?
MYSELF: On the contrary, its very difficult to get them to sit anywhere at all. Once they’ve picked up their expenses they have a tendency to rush off into the bush.
READER: I seem to remember Rolf Harris saying something about that.
UNFAIR DINKUM
Residents of Upper Dicker are up in arms at the announcement that
the walk-in Medical Centre at Station Plaza is to be closed. News that the 24 hour
service is to be relocated to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia, and renamed The Walkabout Centre has dismayed many users.
Australian born local counciller Bruce Gallah claimed that the move was unavoidable because of stringent government cuts which have already curtailed many essential social services. Next to go, according to the ex wombat breeder, will
be some of his own innovations such as gluten-free yoga classes for under fives,
homeopathic loft insulation and spiritual hangover wellfullness. “Jeez mate, I mean
fair suck of the sauce bottle,” he told us, “Alice Springs may be a bonzer place for jumbucks, but if a bloke just wants to throw a sickie ‘cos he’s feeling a bit crook after a night on the grog, a trip to the outback is the last thing I’d recommend”.
Glove restorer Wilf Strindberg of Cockmarlin agreed, “It’s bad enough having to go to the local A&E, never mind all the way to Australia.” he said, “For starters I can’t
afford the time off work, which, when you take into account getting to the
airport, 27 hours each way on a plane plus the inevitable jet lag, would mean each visit would take over a week. I could practically get an appointment with my own GP in that time! Even though I can’t really afford it, I’m now seriously considering going private and consulting an astrological soothsayer”.
MORRISON DANCING
The Upper Dicker branch of Morrisons supermarket wishes to apologise for the slight kink in the fabric of space and time which occurred during May and wishes to assure customers that things will soon be back to normal. For the moment, bacon has been temporarily moved to the shelf marked ‘shoe polish’ on aisle 23. Mushrooms have been relocated from the pharmaceutical section and can now be found next to countersunk screws in the aisle labelled ‘halloween costumes’. Milk, you will be pleased to note, is still in the same place (eggs), except for semi-skimmed which is in the same section as frozen fish, and Jersey full cream which is now next to cat litter on the cheese island. Happy Shopping!”
TAT TOO?
Is there anyone, anywhere, anymore who doesn’t have a tattoo? The public reacted with horror after it was recently revealed that footballer Nobby Balaclava, Hastings & St Leonards Warriors’ ruthless midfield enforcer, has had a questionable image inked on his calf. A picture (which went predictably viral), of Nobby rolling down his sock and displaying a vivid tattoo of Attilla the Hun torturing a kitten, has opened up a can of worms which ironically, is what David Beckham has allegedly had tattooed on his penis.
LOVE IRELAND
The latest series which has been haemorrhaging viewers has now reached the halfway stage. Padroig and Molly, having agreed to share the barrel of poteen they have brewed from donkey-urine and wood-chip wallpaper, are now in the middle of a massive row because Brendan got drunk and kissed Molly under the mullberry bush. New arrival Kerry has hearts aflutter as he demonstrates his potato-juggling skills wearing only a yoga thong. Darragh’s bicycle tyres have been let down during the night and his pump has been stolen, the chief suspect being ex-girlfriend Kaitlyn, whose jealous fits of rage send her fragile temper into overdrive at the drop of a hat. Now that the boys have been tasked with cycling to Donegal and bringing home a cow, which the girls must slaughter, skin and barbecue to make sandwiches, how will Darragh cope with flat tyres and no pump? Will Kaitlyn have her full-face tattoo of Darrah’s arse removed in a fit of pique?? Watch this space.
DICTIONARY CORNER
Bojo (n) A self-confessed liar. A serial adulterer. One who expresses strong opinions swayed entirely by self-interest. A cowardly avoider of responsibility. An especially fat clown
SELFIE SERVICE
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His consummate skill will ensure that no-one will know you didn’t take it yourself. Our unique post-production cheekbone enhancing service is available as an optional extra, taking all the stress out of trying not to look like a corpulent arse licking slug.
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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!
When added to your weekly wash, new formula Botoxydol, with Botulinim Toxin A, will guarantee youthful, wrinkle-free clothes.
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”
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To start with what it rests upon.
To end with colors. Become air, beneath
and over petals. Words for colors lie
like sheaths without their knives.
John Levy
.
Photo: Sam Burcher
.
All I could hear was the voice saying to me:
‘Your fear is a wall you must overcome and ultimately bring down. To tear down this wall is your calling –
to challenge the fear instilled in you by others, and not to let terror overwhelm you, no matter how small you feel.
This wall was sent to test you, but you must prevail
to scale it and break it down
brick by brick,
and rebuild your house.’
Sam Burcher
http://www.samburcher.com/home.html
.
paparazzi-hounded crash victims are
garnering support from the electorate
once again your majesty as the
extermination of an ideology is
soundlessly finalised in the warrens
around threadneedle street and the
return of world war is re-imagined
as part of a huge showcase of live
entertainment third-largest by some
assessments and what will become
known as the peacemaker is used to
restore order and a medley of peculiar
attractions becomes a pre-match
tradition and junior officers will
decide who will be shot who were
created for that purpose pamphlets
are issued and made required reading
and suspects are brought in to the
psychological war laboratory oh to
rank our writers in such new ways to
prevent their usage spread to include
our values on the bench so make the
most of your close-up and pocket the
proceedings as you stroke recycled
cat hairs on the roof of your
outhouse in all seriousness though
the liquidation of the consigliere
was surely an honest mistake as
every quarter uses just one inch
of its intention and the great history
highlights are shown again and
again and at last the glory seekers
welcome back the household
cavalry and get to meet some of
the horses despite the unfortunate
mix-up to bring a fitting end
to the biggest week of the year
for live broadcast on terrestrial
tv on either side of the cup final
as the very prestigious and
impeccably precise one hundredth
anniversary of gratification on the
western front is deloused
respectfully for those attending
this year to witness the judicious
manifestation that will include fine
dining and the inevitable foxtrot
Eddie Heaton
.
Hi good afternoon everyone what’s the situation today? Fresh talent – fun free and friendly. You gonna go for it? Heck yeah! Yeah absolutely! What are you hearing there? More hoity-toity arty-farty nonsense OK! 3, 2, 1… Let’s go! You saw me I saw you early bird angel face sweeping chalk plateau dream rotation A powerful geyser – Oh how ridiculous! An oscillating sprinkler –
shoots high into the night sky: but appearances are deceptive turning out a lot more… you know…
bit like a no-go break-glass-to-open thing remind us how we got here, darling live show one-to-one co-ordinating lace trim head to the fairground change the narrative: narrow winding alleys colourful piazzas virtual museum piece radio-controlled real gone electronics whizz hat-check girl reveals all the stories hidden within us as she moves slowly away seawards here we go again! Facing tough decisions sandy beaches coco-de-mer palms wool rags subwoofers and strobes. C’mon! It’s a moment of celebration of solutions without boundaries of dance-floor sunsets to banish memories of stylish bedrooms and oh yes sooo much more. C’mon! Never be shy to say ‘hi’ so yeah! c’mon!
Know what? Listen up everybody! Seismic shuffle deranged and estranged something of a pincer movement or even a dynamic take on what really matters: do something amazing today and tonight will be a defining moment but I tell ya don’t mess with me! Ha! Well that’s it for now bye! Hello to all of you along the way traffic noise ‘off stage’ music revolver shots civic functions and ceremonies the outputs of which are combined and subjected to experiments by a scatter-brained socialite 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 dab hand with piping bag masked by rotating shutter twitching movement of limbs upper right hand corner of picture (ooh kinky!) what’s the mood there? Wooaaa! 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 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 no! What do I do now? A torrid nail-biter that’s the way to do it I think we’re good to go! Ok that’s about it from me so do have a lovely afternoon ‘bye ‘bye. Hi there! Hello you lovely lot! Seen everything? Yesss! It’s game on! Woof! Woof! Wiggle! Wiggle! Oh! My goodness! Remember?
And then… the Big Reveal: ticks a lot of boxes – so who needs fireworks? And just what does that mean in practice? Stunning reflections somewhat hit and miss hoping for a festive bounce? Bring it on! Hazy skies – the very spirit of the open road: band carriages gilded cages triumphal cars shouty brats razzmatazz rumbas monster hats scary head-warmers to blow your socks off puppets performing animals strolling players a lot of pinch-me moments – just magic! Then we saw a tent of card-sharpers the house manager wore a dinner jacket just how significant is that? You may well ask! The countdown is on for our much-loved Jessie-Belle – a door-to-door-stripper her groovy synchronous winders need to be seen to be believed – ooh aaah! Look at ‘em go! Yeah look at that! Wow! Forward backward and side to side makes a splash! Ooooweee! A life-changing encounter: we won it as good as it gets under huge pressure thrill-seekers cause public outcry yet the vital evidence has been lost why does that matter? And where does it go from here? We’re all buzzing local sources say test the limits to the edge-of-your seat let’s keep it straight let’s keep it raw! Violence swearing nudity all that stuff and oh yeah an emotional night for us all an absolute gem! Let’s pick up with that: dream it now! Well why not? That’s a very big ask good riddance that’s what I say I don’t think so – whoever you are it has touched all our lives just like that forward flash welcome to my world that’s it! Back to you!
Hello good afternoon a warm welcome back to this region of unbelievers we went to take a look but we all have our demons applicable only to lighter elements under glass hoods it all gets very messy quite quickly and you might think something pretty odd is going on – compulsive repetition of snatches of rhyme but also there’s an interesting subplot flesh and spirit singing for the purposes of enchantment to ensure in certain circumstances you flip your vibe get it while it’s hot high voltage next day see for yourself. Cirrus and cirro-stratus clouds haloes round sun and moon you better be on your way this could be a goofy movie egos in suits tuned as drones scenery somewhat similar
to the Surrey hills with visible traces of ancient roadworks from whence are discharged a shower of invectives denunciations and satires with a somewhat ungainly appearance a blast of fresh air swearing like a sailor no half measures yet the bar of the storm or spin of the nucleus won’t sass me
remarkable true tale where the course of external events brought about a decisive change direct return of icicles and the use of accidental poetry: an emotional night for all.
Worried about the danger of image-worship? You would see history being made with a little bit of push and slide good day for chasing rainbows of diversified texture fine-grained arrangements of intrusive dykes vertical fissures of luminous appearance – with scenes of a distressing nature this jaw-dropping offering has people spooked strong stuff it gets to move through the gears really how did that fly? There’s a big ceremonial crescendo of screamin’ habdabs but sceptics have suggested it was all a mere hallucination rapidly deepened to somehow form a wild uncanny valley effect. Oh my! Sparkling mad! Have a good day yeah? Well Hellooo there! What’s the latest? Why not spook the intelligentsia? Indeed why not it’s a good question is poetry an accident waiting to happen? Whoah! Well, the search is already on – what do you make of it? Hysterical! Snap it up! Let’s do it! Don’t get your panties in a bunch just think of normal everyday things like a red aurora vortex or notes between the keys sure – try to blend in – smooth with no bits be like everyone else– hang on in there! Hey dudes! What’s the scene where you are? Uh oh! Lazy boring and irrelevant expect delays that’s the most exciting thing you’ve said all day hazy skies round the corner it’s a toss-up power on! A step too far but it’s fighting talk I like it! Waaaay out! It’s the very latest! Oh Dios Mio! Game for a fling? – Crazy offer – Ha! Ha! Ha! What else do we know? What happened next? Cunningly disguised as one of the lads our poete maudit slipped into an Espresso Bar: lost in a shopping mall? Yes! Yes! Yes! A palace of screaming glass scorching hot looks hands-free boobtastic bikini-busting cutie-pies
open-mouthed onlookers terrified bystanders photo-special harmonic of desire secret fantasies – all makes all models electric multi-surface razor sharp edges manic grins deranged laughter fish and chips burgers hot wraps a twisted circus – open ‘til late.
It’s just wicked! And never a dull moment: now here’s a thing melt with joy behind every curtain gilded trees jaw-dropping angels of mystery strange signals – distant Suptopian neo-nihilist blues diverted traffic – a long tailback to Nowhere Junction. Well that’s it for now have a very good afternoon.
AC Evans
.
In my early adolescence it dawned on me that I might not reach my 21st birthday – a feeling I guess shared by many readers of IT. The threat of nuclear annihilation appropriately known in East and West as MAD (‘Mutually Assured
Destruction’ came to a head in October 1962 when the 13 day Cuban Missile Crisis anticipated my dread. I spent those days camped outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square as MAD appeared about to become a reality.
The Cuban Revolution (26 July 1953) had overthrown the Batista dictatorship (effectively a vassal state of the USA) and from thereon its economy was propped-up by Soviet Russia. That October, however, the Island suddenly became a missile base as 43,000 Russian troops and 60 nuclear missiles were moved in and the USA now became within striking distance of the USSR. My sons (born 1998 and 1999 ) know nothing of the crisis but I recommend that they – and readers of IT in general – re-visit those times in Cuba ’62 – published last year by the splendidly radical Five Leaves Publications based, together with its bookshop, in Nottingham.
This book brings it all back home to me. A year after The Cuban Missile Crisis (I was a quantity surveyor in my previous life) I was seconded to the architectural practice ACP (Architects Co-Partnership) many of whose staff’ as well as the seven founding partners, had strong links to the Communist Party. That was how I eventually came to see French director Chris Marker’s film Cuba Si (1961) in London. The Cuban revolution attracted artists poets novelists playwrights and film makers (among them Agnes Varda) to visit the island and there was a deal of anti-capitalist goodwill towards Fidel Castro and Che Guevara et al. – and above all to the Cuban people.
Eventually JF Kennedy and Khrushchev did a deal – without consulting the Cuban Government – and armageddon was averted. The co-authors of Cuba ’62 have produced a riveting and properly confusing melange of those thirteen days and I’ve learned lots I didn’t know or understand before. Not least that fake news isn’t the love-child of Trump but simply a confirmation of the truism we all know: the first casualty of war is the truth. And what a casualty it was in Cuba.
The journalist /designer/photographer Richard Hollis (now nearly 90) chanced to be in Cuba as the Thirteen Days That Shook The World kicked off and his notebook entries letters and black and white photographs enliven the text as do those of the writer/photographer JS Tennant. He visited Cuba 50 years later and stayed for 10 months to conduct interviews and to colour photograph the surviving missile sites. Hollis asks: What prompted me to go to Cuba? Simply that news of an attempt to build a new society made me curious. My politics in retrospect were late-19th century: not Marxist but Tolstoyan; a William Morris-infused, woolly Kropotkin-esque anarcho-socialism. Sounds just like my politics now.
JFK’s younger brother Robert Kennedy was gung-ho to nuclear bomb Cuba but fortunately JFK’s caution prevailed and maybe in the end, the Cuban Missile Crisis helped bring Khrushchev down rather than Fidel Castro. Cuba ’62 in its depiction of the idealism and optimism of those early days reminds me of how well Orwell captures this same feeling of Republican Spain in his Homage to Catalonia. In 2000 Putin visited Cuba and lifted 90% of the debt Cuba owed the USSR – or was it to Putin’s reborn Russia?
As we live through our days in the shadow The Triumph of Capitalism this elegantly designed book is a welcome shot in the arm.
Jeff Cloves
Cuba ’62. preludes to a world crisis (Five Leaves Publications 2022). Illustrated paperback in black and white and and colour £11.99)
When the trick is all done
We search for the reality.
When all that is left
Is the email,
We search for an address.
I looked for a home
To relive my childhood dreams
When the fallen leaves
Scattered all around my home
I fell for your missing beauty.
When the orange sun kissed me goodbye
I romanticized with the glowing moon.
I have your handwriting
While I look for your signature
Inscribed in my heart.
The letters of yesterdays,
The spontaneity of future
All wandering between my recollections.
The river flows same
No joy to hide,
No pain to show.
Copyright Sushant Thapa
Picture Nick Victor
I see my weakness, most unseemly
the emptiness between four walls, and
my culpability. Have mercy on me,
humble door, where humanity
has passed like smoke. Hello, yellow bird.
I raise my face to the sky. It seems it is
singing to me. My days will change. I’ve lost
my regrets and complicated desires.
There’s a hole here. Who am I? There’s
little left except a grown man in a dark
suit crying in public. The idea of death.
I don’t know what these people think. Come on,
I’m not afraid, but I would like something
to come to me from the infinite
where I can multiply. I have no mission
left to fulfil. One by one the mouths will close.
Ian Seed
Picture Rupert Loydell
some days it was so warm
we sat outside
looking up into the sky
at the transient architecture of the clouds
or for anything that might appear
out of the blue
nothing did although
the dandelions all sprang up
when no-one was looking
their flowers morphing into clocks
sometimes we went down to the sea
stood on the shingle
waves lapping at our feet
I sit now with my back
to the dove that’s built its nest
on a ledge beneath this upstairs window
we maintain a companionable silence she and I
she incubates her eggs while I
write this and other things sometimes
I still walk round the fields
seeking chaos though more often
ruminating on the void
Dominic Rivron
Picture Nick Victor
Another live ‘threesome’ night out … with Alan Dearling
This was a mad, frolicsome night. Rammed venue and an extremely eclectic musical mix. If this was fifty years ago it would have been dubbed, ‘Variety Night’!
Autocamper were up first. Young, keen to plough their own personal musical furrows. They looked as though they enjoy working together, and each member of the Autocamper ‘team’ contributed to the overall jangling soundtrack that they made sound just a bit off-kilter, but nicely so. Three of the band took turns on vocals, not just frontman Jack on guitar. Collectively, this added to the spicy ‘variety’. Niamh’s xylophone provided a hypnotic tubular bells-type edge to the proceedings. I thought that the drummer’s vocal was particularly individual. Overall, a modern take on the garage band with an added little bit of Byrds-like psychedelia.
From their FB page it tells us: “introducing… YOU LOOK FABULOUS! our debut cassette release! featuring ‘bonfire night’, ‘never end’ and a cassette only exclusive ‘Ken Hom’ recorded by John Harkins at the mill in Plungington and put out by discontinuous innovation inc!”
They didn’t seem to have any cassettes left. A shame for them, they might have sold a few.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/automaticcamperband/
The Furrowed Brow
I own up. I had been watching the vids of The Furrowed Brow quite a lot in advance of the gig. They sparked my imagination. “Would I be getting the opportunity to watch a new major band at the beginning of their journey to star-studded Musical Heaven?”
Visually they are very imaginative. A potpourri of Bowie psych Ziggy, androgynous, playful, theatrical. A veritable circus of talent. Strong songs, dodgy, edgy lyrics, inventive performances. Plenty to watch and The Furrowed Brow are real crowd-pleasers. They exude oodles of their own brand of mischievous fun and are obviously enjoying themselves thoroughly on their adventures into post-punk/glam Wonderlands in search of Alice and the White Rabbit! Masses of vital energy. Individual and thoroughly entertaining. Nice mixes of shadows and light. Darkness and Day-Glo. Scuzzy. It’s good to bear witness to some quality catchy pop music. Ear-worms to the fore! They should soon be in the forefront of the new Manchester wave of young bands. Check them out!
https://www.facebook.com/furrowedbrowband
Single: ‘Jill’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIfO1vm6SjI
‘I threw the bathwater out’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OT49iUeS84
Furrowed Brow tell us: “We’ve been working on our next single: OUTDOORS MAN – we’ve cobbled together everything we need to record ourselves properly at Brow Towers so the entire thing – recording, mixing and mastering – is now 100% us. Fear not, we’ve still recorded everything live but it means we’ve also had as much time as we like to chuck in loads of weird and wonderful effects and it’s sounding really fucked up and amazing – just like the good Lord intended. Release date looking to be mid- June.”
Blue Orchids have been around a long, long time. Since 1979 in fact. They originally formed out of the proverbial ashes, when Martin Bramah left the Fall, after playing on the band’s debut album ‘Live at the Witch Trials’. They are often spoken in reverential, hushed tones as Nico’s backing band.
This live performance commenced with Martin complaining about the ‘smoke’ rolling onto the darkened stage and then telling the audience: “You won’t know any of the songs tonight, we are premiering our next album.”
I suspect, or guess, that the Blue Orchids like a bit of organic confrontation. Moody music, moody atmosphere. They claim on their Facebook page: “…we speak with the tongues of men and of angels we have the gift of prophecy and can understand all…”
Here’s what was said about the band in advance of the show: “First conceived in 1979 after he walked out on Mark E Smith, the group has been through many changes. This year’s line-up is a wild mix of psych, post-punk and a strange kind of ‘city-folk’.
Pounding beats, pulsing bass, a maelstrom of melody and discordant lead-breaks, powers this beast that Bramah has created and nurtured through the years.
Follow them down a shady back-alley, if you dare, and watch as they reveal the dark, psychedelic mysteries at the heart of their music. Not to be missed!”
Online I can see that Blue Orchids have been critically acclaimed by some notable music writers. From Wikipedia: “The NME’s Barney Hoskyns commented about them, “There is an economy of love and yearning in every chord, vocal or instrumental that breaks from the aching heart of the Blue Orchids’ sound” while the writer Paul Morley, reviewing their second single ‘Work’ said, ‘They rave but they are not mad’.”
‘Lucky Speaks’ (2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvgU3unB5T8
‘What thing is man?’ (2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FzA4y1yzaA
Book Review of:
‘MIDNIGHT MOVER: MY AUTOBOGRAPHY’
by BOBBY WOMACK
(John Blake Virgin Books, 2007, £17.99, ISBN 1-84454-148-7)
Bobby Womack: 4 March 1944-27 June 2014
The cover-sticker proclaims ‘The True Story Of The Greatest Soul Singer In The World’. Well… yes, since by then Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, and James Brown were all gone, that was probably true. Bobby Womack was the last of the muscular old-style gritty blue-collar R&B shouters, from an era before the genre sophisticated into insipid vacuous gloss. But he was always more than just that. Sure, he had hits. And they were superb hits. But he was also a hugely prolific session musician and accomplished songwriter who played on so many super-cool records, and wrote more classic tracks than you could shake a funky tail-feather at.
The Rolling Stones first ever no.1 UK single “It’s All Over Now” was his, check the credits in brackets beneath the title. And “Midnight Mover” – which titles this playful autobiography, is another – a defining smash for Wilson ‘The Wicked Wicked’ Pickett. And it’s a great great story related with wit and humour, rich with highly entertaining anecdote and a wealth of insightful pen-portraits of the giants of Soul. Try the passage about the brothers catching a dose of clap from a white whore, and Solomon Burke’s terrifying fatherly advice about how to cure it!
Bobby was born 4 March 1944, a Pisces in Cleveland Ohio, one of five brothers so poor they grubbed through garbage cans for discarded pig’s tails, pigs’ snouts, ears and ox-tails, his father – Friendly Womack, even declared ‘fasting days’ when they had no food at all. The Womack brothers began singing by mimicking their father’s inept ‘Voices of Love’ vocal group behind their backs. Until his father bartered a guitar in exchange for giving four free haircuts. Risking a beating, while Friendly was out, Bobby learned to play it left-handed, with the guitar upside-down, learning his style by listening to Floyd Cramer – a piano-player! Soon, the results of his first-ever recording sessions with his brothers were ‘stolen’ and released under a bogus name – ‘the record business started screwing me then and hasn’t stopped screwing me since’ he adds ruefully.
Their next singles were done for Sam Cooke’s SAR indie-label, the second – “Lookin’ For A Love” as the Valentinos sold two million, rewritten by Bobby around an old gospel tune. His father promptly disowned them for selling out to the devil’s music. Schmoozing his way into playing a Dean Martin session – and getting thrown out for his pains, Bobby wound up playing on Sam Cooke’s 1962 hit “Twisting The Night Away” instead. Nevertheless, this burgeoning career ran aground when the man he called ‘my mentor, a second father’ was shot dead in a Motel 11 December 1964, and within three months Bobby married Sam’s widow. He was just turned twenty-one, she was ten years older. The troubled marriage, entered more out of loyalty to Cooke, was violently resented by both families, by fans and record industry insiders. Bobby began using coke to escape the pain.
He got a call from Ray Charles, and toured with his band, but quit because he was terrified by Ray’s habit of piloting the tour-plane himself! He did session-work at Chip Moman’s ‘American Studio’ which brought him into contact with the greatest artists of the era, Joe Tex and Jackie Wilson. He played on Aretha’s ‘Lady Soul’ (1968) and ‘Dusty In Memphis’ (1969). Previously unimpressed by Elvis, he found himself overawed by the King’s charisma when he played the “Suspicious Minds” sessions. Then, dubious about the white boy Jerry Wexler called in for another recording date, he found that Eric Clapton played more authentic Blues guitar than he did! Bobby toured with the violently confrontational Wilson Pickett, but had to fill his own debut solo album – August 1968s ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, with covers because he’d given all his own songs to Pickett.
He went through the coke-fuelled madness of Sly Stone’s ‘There’s A Riot Goin’ On’ (1971), emerging ‘too broke up to work’. He even faked blindness as an avoidance strategy to get out of playing live. Stevie Wonder called round to offer his sympathies. Bobby watched him through the fraying strands of his fake eye-bandages. His next record project was to be a C&W album he titled ‘Step Aside Charley Pride Give Another Nigger A Try’, until the distraught label changed it, and then dropped him.
To Bobby, ‘my view was, I wasn’t a guy you could put in a bracket.’ Yet despite much hilarious absurdity, the music flowed, he toured and recorded with the Faces and the Rolling Stones. Until his album ‘The Poet’ (January 1982) provided his major break-through into the big-time, and it’s classic defining Soul, even though record company politics ensured he would never receive his just rewards from its success. ‘I’m a legend’ he acknowledges wryly ‘not a rich legend’. For anyone with a passion for sixties music, for Soul and R&B, there’s a wealth of it here. Even if you don’t like Soul music and never heard of Bobby Womack, this book is still a wonderful trip.
As he had nothing specific to do that day Erik decided he would go out and simply wander around. He’d never done this before, and he felt a little self-conscious, but the idea of sauntering along observing things others missed, of simply drifting, appealed to him. Out on the street he found it harder than he had expected. His normal walking pace was quite brisk and slowing his stride to a dawdle took some practice. He got behind a couple who were ambling gently along and adjusted his speed to their leisurely step, though not without difficulty. So preoccupied was he with the problem of velocity that he barely noticed anything around him. People were looking at him oddly, he thought, though this may have been his imagination. He needed a place from which he could observe so he sat down at a table outside a café, where he ordered a coffee and, for additional emotional fortification, a slice of apple strudel with cream. The pavement was busy with shoppers and tourists. They were the usual people he’d expect to see, similarly dressed and generally doing much the same thing. The tourists posed for selfies in all the predictable places – the display of bedding plants in front of the municipal library across the street was a popular spot. He tried to remember what famous flanêurs had described in their writing. There were no beggars in sight, though there was a busker further up the street singing country and western, which was mildly annoying. The architecture around him was mostly modern, the history of the few older buildings unknown to him. He took out his notebook and scribbled down a few observations, then crossed them out. The coffee and pastry arrived and were excellent. He made them last as long as he could, watching people pass, customers enter and leave the café, a couple of scrawny pigeons foraging under the tables. He felt rather bored. Perhaps he should visit the Museum of Fine Art instead. There was an excellent restaurant there where he might have lunch.
Simon Collings
Picture Nick Victor
In the lost
but not found
couloirs
some treasures
are chasing out
the temptation.
And the arbor
of lucky bounds
has reached out reflection.
Please, let me
keep on searching…
You are lost
but I still hope
some day
some remedy
will be touching,
and you may glow,
you may shine
again in my line …
