He Who Lives by the Tusk ...

 

 

I.

 

As a matter of fact, I'm not what some would term an elephantophile. 

 

For whilst I wouldn't describe them as pig-tailed monsters, they're a bit too big and grey for my tastes and do sometimes possess a look in their long-lashed, colour-blind eyes that makes me uncomfortable. And don't mention those appalling feet and toenails!   

 

Putting these things aside, however, I have nothing against them and in the unlikely event an elephant should wander into my backgarden, I would happily give them a sticky bun to eat (providing they were careful not to tread on the cat). 

 

 

II. 

 

In contrast, I would not be so considerate of those involved in the illegal ivory trade. 

 

For if you wish to speak of monsters, then look no further than those who participate in the slaughter of African elephants and threaten them as a species with extinction. No wonder Joseph Conrad described the ivory business as the vilest trade that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.

 

It's chilling to recall that during the 1980s, 75,000 African elephants were killed annually for the ivory trade and their population was reduced in number from around 1.3 million to 600,000. 

 

Even more horrifying and depressing is the fact that the trade continues today, if on a reduced scale; approximately 20,000 elephants are now killed by poachers each year in Africa - more than the number of elephants being born - and the population now stands at around 415,000 individuals (to which one can add the remaining 50,000 Asian elephants).         

 

Of course there are other threats to the survival of the elephant, such as habitat destruction, the enclosure of farmland, and global warming. But poaching remains a real issue and there is an increasing demand for ivory in China and the Far East, where it is used for luxury items no one really needs.    

 

Apparently, ivory which is seized by the authorities is eventually destroyed, either by crushing or incineration, and this is believed to deter the poaching of elephants for their tusks, suppress the illegal trade in ivory, and foster public support for the conservation of elephants.

 

Whether that's true or not, I don't know (one might imagine it would simply push up the price), but over twenty countries have adopted this policy, including Kenya, which held the first high-profile ivory burning event in 1989, as well as the largest, in 2016, when 105 tonnes of ivory went up in flames. 

 

If it were up to me, rather than destroy the ivory I'd manufacture crosses and spikes from the material on which to crucify the bodies and impale the severed heads of poachers. I'm sure this savagely ironic method would prove a more effective deterrent and be something that the elephants would approve of in their ancient wisdom. 

 

For he who lives by the tusk must surely die by the tusk ...        

 

 

On D. H. Lawrence and Circus Elephants

The people watched and wondered, 

and seemed to resent the mystery that lies in beasts. [1]

 

 

I.

 

Put two men in a ring and there's a fight on. Add some performing animals to the mix and you have a very different type of spectacle: circus. 

 

Circus is a form of popuar entertainment involving men and beasts that, in its modern form, developed in England in the mid-18th century. Although there were travelling zoological exhibitions and clowns and acrobats before this time, it was the combination of these elements within the confines of a circular arena that was unique, and for this we can thank Philip Astley [2]. 

   

For some people, the star of the circus is the ringmaster; for others, it's the trapeze artists, or the showgirls on horseback wearing their sparkling costumes and feathers. But for D. H. Lawrence, the figures which seemed to best capture his imagination were the elephants. 

 

 

II. 

 

As far as I know, Lawrence never saw elephants in the wild; only captive beasts at London Zoo in 1911 [3]; ceremonial creatures taking part in a Buddhist festival in Ceylon in 1922 [4]; and trained elephants at a circus in Toulon (France), where he went with Frieda in December 1928. 

 

Whilst the magnificent tusker elephants in Kandy certainly left their impression on Lawrence (and his poetry), it's the much shorter series of verses - or pansies - that he wrote about the circus elephants that I wish to discuss here. 

 

These verses are:

 

 

Elephants in the circus [5]

 

Elephants in the circus

have aeons of weariness round their eyes

Yet they sit up

and show vast bellies to the children.

 

 

Elephants plodding [6]

 

Plod! Plod!

And what ages of time

the worn arches of their spines support!

 

 

On the drum [7]

 

The huge old female on the drum

shuffles gingerly round

and smiles; the vastness of her elephant antiquity

is amused.

 

 

Two performing elephants [8]

 

He stands with his forefeet on the drum

and the other, the old one, the pallid hoary female

must creep her great bulk beneath the bridge of him.

 

On her knees, in utmost caution

all agog, and curling up her trunk

she edges through without upsetting him.

Triumph! the ancient pig-tailed monster!

 

When her trick is to climb over him

with what shadow-like slow carefulness

she skims him, sensitive

as shadows from the ages gone and perished

in touching him, and planting her round feet.

 

While the wispy, modern children, half-afraid

watch silent. The looming of the hoary, far-gone ages

is too much for them. 

 

 

III. 

 

What these verses suggest is that elephants not only look old and worn out - their saggy, wrinkled skin doesn't help with this - but belong to a prehistoric world or time gone by, as if they were relics or living fossils, who have nothing more to offer than entertainment value (and ivory). 

 

It's often assumed by stupid people that animals that predate man and haven't physically changed much for thousands (if not millions) of years are somehow less evolved than us, or have reached an evolutionary dead end and are thus deserving of no place in the modern world. 

 

But whilst it's true that most species of proboscidean are extinct - and the future's not looking hopeful for the remaining elephants that do roam the Earth in ever-dwindling numbers - this mistaken line of thought is simply an example of anthropocentric conceit. Elephants are as evolved as us and belong as much to the world today as we do.    

 

I'm surprised Lawrence doesn't see this. And disappointed that he suggests performing elephants are having fun. For whilst I'm not an expert in elephant psychology and welfare, I very much doubt they enjoy exposing their vast bellies or find it amusing to balance on a ball or drum. Nor - I imagine - do they want to plod or shuffle around a ring, or crawl on their knees in utmost caution.  

 

Does anyone really imagine that the strange postures and poses they are forced to take up - "showing the pink soles of their feet / and curling their precious live trunks" [9] - come naturally? Or that training doesn't involve cruelty and the brutal use of bull-hooks, whips, and electric prods?  

 

And let's not even mention the physical and emotional abuse these poor creatures are subjected to when they are not in the spotlight; confined and chained for hours on end, or transported from town to town in the back of trucks and boxcars. 

 

Obviously Lawrence was writing a hundred years ago and so can't be expected to share a contemporary view of zoos and circuses in terms of so-called animal rights. But it is strange that a writer who was acutely sensitive to animals in all their wild otherness or mystery - and who hated the attempt by mankind to impose its will over the natural world - should have not been angered or outraged by the indecent sight of an elephant performing on command. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'When I went to the circus', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 386. Click here to read in full online.

 

[2] Philip Astley (1742-1814) staged a show at an ampitheatre in London in 1768, featuring trick horseback riding and music. He later added other acts which quickly became associated with the circus, a term coined by Astley's rival, Charles Dibdin, who opened The Royal Circus in London in 1772.

      Readers who are interested, can find more details and a brief history of circus on the website of the National Fairground and Circus Archive (part of the Special Collections and Archive Division of the University of Sheffield Library): click here. 

 

[3] In a letter written to his girlfriend at the time, Louie Burrows, on 9 May 1911, Lawrence is excited by the prospect of her visiting at the weekend (if only for a day) and he proposes taking her to London Zoo, where, he says, he has never been (but presumably wanted to go). See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 266. 

      Whether they did go, is uncertain. But if they did visit, they surely called in at the Elephant-House, to see one of the Zoo's main attractions. Readers who are interested to know what other creatures were on display in 1911 might like to consult the illustrated official guide to the London Zoological Society's gardens in Regent's Park, by P. Chalmers Mitchell, published in that year: click here.   

[4] In the Spring of 1922, the Lawrence's spent six weeks in Ceylon. On arrival, they witnessed the Pera-hera (or Festival of the Tooth); a night-time procession involving savage music and devil dancers, as well as huge tusker elephants dressed in gorgeous apparel. Lawrence was impressed, particularly by the latter stepping forth to the beat of a tom-tom and illuminated by torch-light, and he wrote a powerful poem entitled 'Elephant' shortly afterwards which was published in the English Review (April 1923).

      See D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 338-43. Alternatively, to read 'Elephant' online, click here. 

      My recent post on Lawrence's time in Ceylon can be read by clicking here.  

[5] D. H. Lawrence, The Poems I. 369.

[6] D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, I. 370.

[7] D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, I. 370.

[8] D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, I. 370. 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'When I went to the circus', The Poems, I. 386.

 

For a sister post to this one in which I discuss Lawrence's poem 'The elephant is slow to mate', click here.

Is the Elephant Slow to Mate?

And what ages of time

the worn arches of their spines support! [1]

 

I. 

 

D. H. Lawrence wrote several poems featuring elephants, one of which makes the claim that they are, as a species, slow to mate: 

 

 

The elephant, the huge old beast 

    is slow to mate; 

he finds a female, they show no haste 

    they wait 

 

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts 

    slowly, slowly to rouse 

as they loiter along the river-beds 

    and drink and browse 

 

and dash in panic through the brake 

    of forest with the herd, 

and sleep in massive silence, and wake 

      together, without a word. 

 

So slowly the great hot elephant hearts 

   grow full of desire, 

and the great beasts mate in secret at last, 

    hiding their fire. 

 

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts 

    so they know at last 

how to wait for the loneliest of feasts 

    for the full repast. 

 

They do not snatch, they do not tear; 

    their massive blood 

moves as the moon-tides, near, more near 

    till they touch in flood. [2]

 

 

It's a lovely poem. 

 

But is what it says about the mating habits of the elephant true, or is Lawrence simply constructing another of what Amit Chaudhuri identifies as a dummy creature [3]; i.e., one which fits nicely into his own philosophy, but has little or no relation to natural history or mammalian biology? 

 

Unfortunately for those who like to believe that Lawrence has an uncanny insight into the essence of animals (and plants), I think it's the latter. That is to say, I don't think this verse tells us much about the love lives of actual elephants - and what it does tell us is misleading. 

 

For the fact is elephants - despite their huge size and weight - are not slow to mate and have been successfully fucking and evolving for tens of millions of years (i.e., long before there were any human beings to watch and wax lyrical about their sexual habits).

 

 

II. 

 

As is so often the case, the facts about most things - including elephant sexual behaviour - are at least as interesting as the musings of a poet. And so, for the record ...

 

Adult male elephants enter a state of amour fou known as musth when searching for a mate; massively increased testosterone levels produce highly aggressive behaviour and this helps them not only see off or gain dominance over potential love rivals, but increases their chance of reproductive success with the ladies (musth enables females to determine the condition of the male, as weak or injured males cannot cut the mustard).    

 

As for female elephants, they have their own recurring periods of sexual madness when they are receptive to male advances. When on heat, they release pheromones in their urine and vaginal secretions, signalling their fertility and the fact they are ready and willing to be mounted. (Males will often collect a chemical sample from a potential mate with their trunks and analyse such with their vomeronasal organ.) 

 

Elephants are polygynous by nature; i.e., they subscribe to a mating system in which one male lives and breeds with multiple females (although each female only mates with a single male). And once a bull elephant has his harem, he will jealously guard it, thereby ensuring paternity of any offspring that result from union with the cows. 

 

Although Lawrence suggests elephants mate in secret, actually, for young females, the attentions of a large older bull can be intimidating, so her relatives will often stay nearby to provide support and reassurance. The deed itself - i.e., of copulation - lasts for less than a minute and does not involve any pelvic thrusting by the male, whose penis has a remarkable degree of independent mobility. 

 

Having ejaculated, the male's sperm then have to swim six feet in order to encounter and penetrate an egg. If all goes well and one manages this mammoth task (no pun intended), then two years later a baby elephant will be born into the world (and as an endangered species - thanks to poaching and habitat destruction - that's an increasingly rare and vital event).          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Elephants plodding', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 370.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The elephant is slow to mate', The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 403-04.  

[3] See Amit Chaudhuri, D. H. Lawrence and ‘Difference’: Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present, (Oxford University Press, 2003). 

      Amongst other things, Chaudhuri demonstrates how - contrary to the conventional view - Lawrence as a poet is not a simple-minded nature lover concerned with understanding the beauty and essence of real animals, but, rather, in artificially constructing creatures in and on his own terms. In other words, he recreates and imitates various birds and beasts for his own artistic and philosophical amusement, assembling a menagerie of textual mannequins.

 

 

For a sister post to this one on D. H. Lawrence and circus elephants, click here. 

The Last of the Groupies: In Memory of Nancy Spungen

Nancy Spungen (1958-1978)

 

What d'you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with 

a society that abandons her and treats her like trash? 

You get what you fucking deserve!

I. 

 

It might be argued that Nancy Spungen was the last of the great American groupies [1]. 

 

For whilst there were - and probably still are - many young girls happy to starfuck their way to notoriety post-Nancy, I can't think of any by name and in the #MeToo era even the term groupie now seems dated and problematic.

 

Similarly, whilst the rock 'n' roll circus continued after the Sex Pistols imploded in 1978 - the year of Miss Spungen's death - it has never really recovered from the blow dealt it by punk and I'm pretty sure that when cultural historians look back a hundred years from now, rock's golden age will be identified as lasting from the mid-1950s until the end of the '70s (i.e., from Elvis to Sid Vicious). 

 

 

II. 

 

It would be wrong to pretend that Nancy was simply a nice Jewish girl at heart. Because, whilst she was indeed Jewish and raised in a respectable middle-class home, she wasn't composed of sugar and spice, so much as madness and spite and all things vice [2]. 

 

An emotionally disturbed infant and young child, prone to screaming fits and violent behaviour, Nancy was already prescribed barbiturates at just a few months of age in an attempt to pacify her [3]. Finally, at fifteen, having attempted suicide the year before, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

 

An obviously bright girl, Nancy excelled at elementary school, but made few friends. At age eleven, however, she was expelled due to repeated absenteeism. She had also by this age threatened to kill her babysitter with a pair of scissors and attacked her shrink after being accused of simply wanting attention and this also caused the school authorities some concern.  

 

Nevertheless, Nancy graduated from high school in April 1974 and was accepted into the University of Colorado. Unfortunately, after being twice arrested - firstly for purchasing marijuana from an undercover police officer and then for being discovered in possession of stolen property - her student life was cut short. Indeed, it was only on condition that she leave the state of Colorado and agree to parental supervision that Nancy avoided jail. 

 

At seventeen, Nancy left home and moved to New York City. Here she supported herself by whatever means she could; a little bit of freelance music journalism, some temporary work at a clothes store, stripping, and prostitution. She also decided she wanted to become a groupie and began to follow various rock bands, including Aerosmith, The New York Dolls, and the Ramones [4].

 

In 1977, Nancy flew to London with The Heartbreakers and decided she wanted to get herself a Sex Pistol. Initialy she had set her sights on Rotten, but when he showed no interest, she turned her attention to Sid. And so began a fateful eighteen-month relationship that came to a bloody end at the Chelsea Hotel in October 1978; one I have written of elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here.   

 

Nancy was buried in the King David Memorial Park in Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Deborah, published a memoir in 1983 with a title taken from a poem by Vicious: I Don't Want to Live This Life [5]. 

 

Whilst often still demonised by those who should know better (and, in many cases, didn't know her), Nancy Spungen has cemented her place within popular culture and I do think, over forty years since her death (aged just twenty), we might retrospectively view her with a little more kindness.  

         

 

Notes

 

[1] For an earlier post on groupies - those muses with dirty faces - click here.

 

[2] Having said that, I don't think Nancy deserved the epiphet Nauseating placed before her name, no matter how unpleasant she may have seemed. For whilst even his fellow band members may have found her behaviour objectionable, there's no doubting that Sid was besotted with Nancy, describing her as an intelligent and humorous woman who possessed not only beautiful eyes, but the most beautiful wet pussy in the world - and a fab taste in clothes. 

      Ultimately, perhaps being nauseating is preferable to being nice anyway; certainly when one recalls that the latter derives from the Latin nescius, meaning unknowing, ignorant, foolish - terms which cannot be applied to the streetwise Miss Spungen. 

 

[3] Although no brain damage was recorded at the time of her birth, one wonders if the fact Nancy had emerged into the world bright blue due to oxygen deprivation played a part in her later mental health problems; after all, no one likes to be strangled by their own umbilical cord (or carry an unconscious memory of such). 

 

[4] When I say follow, I of course mean rather more than this; Nancy supplied numerous rock stars with drugs and sexual favours. Before meeting Sid, she had slept with many of those on the New York scene at that time; David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, Syl Sylvain, Jerry Nolan, Richard Hell, Iggy Pop ... et al. 

 

[5] Those who are interested can listen to Deborah Spungen talk about her daughter, her book, her memories of Sid Vicious, etc. in a 42-minute radio interview (23 Nov 1983): available on YouTube: click here.  

 

 

Muses with Dirty Faces: In Praise of the Groupie

 

Four of the GTOs looking fabulous and freaky in 1969
Photo by Ed Caraeff / Morgan Media / Getty Images

 

 

I. 

 

Are groupies still a thing in the era of #MeToo, or are they now an extinct species of young female fan who voluntarily performed sexual services in order to demonstrate their devotion to the rock gods they worshipped and followed on tour ...? [1]  

 

 

II.

 

Although the term originated in the music scene of the 1960s, the phenomenon itself was much older and wider. Indeed, some argue that Mary Magdalene was the mother of all groupies, travelling with Jesus and his gang of disciples known as the Apostles, happy to show her support in whatever way was asked of her [2]. 

 

But it's the groupies of the 1960s and '70s who are best remembered and who, in their day, were almost as famous as the musicians they fucked [3]. 

 

Girls such as Pamela Des Barres [4], 'Sweet' Connie Hamzy [5], Cynthia 'Plaster Caster' Albritton [6], and Barbara 'The Butter Queen' Cope [7], were certainly not regular girlfriends - although they were sometimes regarded as surrogates - but they were much more than ordinary fans; if they weren't expecting engagement rings, neither were they interested in simply collecting autographs or having a one night stand. 

 

The groupies wanted to be an integral part of the scene; as vital in their own way as roadies, able to access all areas and legitimately declare: I'm with the band and I kind of admire them for that - as well as their declaration of agency: these girls did not regard themselves as victims or as being exploited; they knew what they wanted, what they were doing, what the rewards and dangers of a rock 'n' roll lifestyle were. 

 

Having said that, there was a very obvious power imbalance (or inequality) built into the rock star-groupie relationship and so questions of agency and consent do arise and remain complex and problematic. 

 

And this is particularly so when it comes to the so-called baby groupies - i.e., underage girls such as Sable Starr [8] and Lori Mattix [9]. The latter was only fourteen when she (allegedly) lost her virginity to David Bowie and not much older when she began her illicit affair with Led Zepplin's Jimmy Page, the couple seen here at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco in LA, in 1972:    

 

 

      

Notes

 

[1] I'm certainly not the first to ask this question; see, for example, Thea De Gallier's article 'I wouldn't want this for anybody's daughter': will #MeToo mean the end of the rock 'n' roll groupie?' in The Guardian (15 Mar 2018): click here. 

      It's hard to imagine in an age when allegations of inappropriate behaviour and sexual misconduct are made at the drop of a hat and issues around consent and male entitlement are widely discussed, that the wild Bacchanalian excesses of the 1960s and '70s would be tolerated now. 

 

[2] In the Gnostic texts, Mary Magdalene's uniquely close relationship with Jesus is often emphasised. In the Gospel of Philip, for example, she is described as a companion to the latter, whom he would openly kiss on the mouth. This has led some scholars to conclude that there was a sexual component to their relationship. 

      The portrayal of Mary as a promiscuous woman or prostitute began in 591 when Pope Gregory I conflated her with Mary of Bethany (Luke 10:39) and the unnamed sinful woman who anointed Jesus's feet in Luke 7:36-50. This view of her has persisted in popular culture, giving rise to the idea of Mary as the original groupie. 

      See: Pamela Des Barres, Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon (1996), who develops the idea that a groupie is to a rock band as Mary Magdalene was to Jesus.

 

[3] This is evidenced by the fact that the February 1969 edition of Rolling Stone was devoted to the topic of groupies and that Time magazine also published an article on the girls of rock, discussing their manners and morals. The documentary film, Groupies (dir. Ron Dorfman and Peter Nevard) was released the following year. 

 

[4] Pamela Des Barres (b. 1948) is an American groupie, writer, musician, and actress. She is best known for her 1987 memoir, I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, which details her experiences in the Los Angeles rock music scene of the 1960s and 1970s. She was also a member of the experimental all-girl group - composed of groupies - the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously). 

 

[5] 'Sweet' Connie Hamzy, aka Connie Flowers (1955-2021), was an American groupie who claimed to have had sex with numerous rock musicians and that she was propositioned by Bill Clinton in 1984, when he was the governor of Arkansas. 

 

[6] Cynthia Plaster Caster, born Cynthia Albritton (1947-2022), was an American groupie and visual artist notorious for creating plaster casts of the erect penises belonging to her famous lovers. She began this unusual practice with the assistance of rock stars in 1968, but later included the cocks of filmmakers and other artists, producing 50 phallic works in all. 

 

[7] Barbara Cope (1950-2018) was an American groupie, known in the late 1960s and early 1970s as The Butter Queen, due to her penchant for using butter as lubricant during her sexual encounters with rock stars. Cope claimed to have visited 52 major cities in the United States while following bands, and travelled to 11 different countries with them. She retired from groupie life in 1972, having had sex (again according to her own account) with around 2,000 musicians. 

 

[8] Sable Starr (1957-2009), often described as the queen of the groupie scene in LA during the early 1970s, was also (due to her age) one of the so-called baby groupies; she lost her virginity to a guitarist when she was twelve. In an interview in 1973, she claimed to be acquainted with many famous rock stars, including Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and Marc Bolan. At 16 she met Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls and went to live with him in NYC. This did not turn out well. Later, she had a affair with Richard Hell, befriended Nancy Spungen, and participated in the local punk rock scene, but by the early 1980s her groupie days were over.    

 

[9] Lori Mattix (b. 1958), sometimes known as Lori Maddox, or Lori Lightning, is a former American child model and baby groupie of the 1970s. In an interview in 2015, she claimed to have been fucked by Bowie, Jagger, and Jimmy Page whilst she was underage. True or not, she had begun frequenting clubs on Sunset Strip with her friend Sable Starr whe she was 13 and her story has been widely discussed by commentators keen to highlight the sexual exploitation of minors within the music industry.   

 

Further reading (for those who are interested): 

Kathryn Bromwich, 'Groupies revisited: the women with triple-A access to the 60s', The Observer (15 Nov 2015): click here. 

 

Craig McLean, 'Good time girl: memories of super groupie Pamela Des Barres', The Observer (6 May 2018): click here. 

 

 

And for a follow up post to this one, on Nancy Spungen - last of the great American groupies - click here.

Tropics Not Really My Line: D. H. Lawrence's Letters from Ceylon

So long Ceylon - and tell the Buddha to stand up!

Image: thedigitalpilgrimage.wordpress.com

 

I. 

 

On or about this day in 1922, D. H. Lawrence set sail for Australia, having spent six weeks in Ceylon - a place which he was glad to have seen, but which, due to the heat, a tummy bug, the unbearable sense of the prehistoric past, and the fact that the Buddha sat cross-legged in front of temples that reminded him of decked up pigsties, he really didn't care for, as the following passage from a letter written to Lady Cynthia Asquith makes clear:

 

"Here we are on ship again [...] I did not like Ceylon - at least I liked looking at it - but not to live in. The east is not for me - the sensusous spiritual voluptuousness, the curious sensitiveness of the naked people, their black, bottomless, hopeless eyes - and the heads of elephants and buffaloes poking out of primeval mud - the queer noise of the tall metallic palm-trees: ach! - altogether the tropics have something of the world before the flood - hot dark mud and the life inherent in it: makes me feel rather sick." [1]

Watching a native festival and night-time procession attended by the Prince of Wales certainly made an impression on Lawrence, with its "huge elephants, great flares of coconut torches [...] savage music and devil dancers" [2], but it was entirely alien to him and, mostly, he was conscious of the fact that it was impossible as a white European to ever truly return to a dark, far-off past wherein insects and people swarmed. 

 

Similarly, he was aware that eastern religion wasn't his cup of tea either: "I don't believe in Buddha - hate him in fact - his rat-hole temples and his rat-hole religion." [3] 

 

 

II.

 

Funny enough, the trip to Ceylon had started so well. After an excellent 15-day voyage with perfect weather, Lawrence and Frieda landed at Colombo on the 13th of March, where they were met by their American friend Earl Brewster - then an ardent student of Buddhism - and travelled the next day to Kandy. 

 

Despite the soaring temperature and high humidity, Lawrence was hopeful of learning to love the tropics. Ten days after arrival, he wrote to his sister Emily:

 

"We have been in the bungalow a week. It is about a mile or mile and a half from Kandy, looking down on the lake: very lovely. It stands uphill among a sort of half wild estate [...] almost like the jungle. We sit on the verandahs and watch the chipmunks and chameleons and lizards and tropical birds among the trees and bamboos [...] It is very hot in the sun - we have sun helmets and white suits - but quite pleasant sitting still. If one moves one sweats. [...] It is rather fascinating, but I don't now how long we shall stay." [4]

 

He closes the letter:   

 

"One doesn't do much here, I tell you - though Brewster goes every day to the Temple to learn the sacred language of the Buddhists - Pali. I wish you could see it all - it is most strange and fascinating. But even at night you sweat if you walk a few yards." [5]

 

 

III. 

 

The heat - my God the heat! - was clearly problematic for Lawrence; as was the sense of malaise and his inability to work. It quickly dawned on him that he would never feel at home - or even himself - in Ceylon and his hostility towards the natives, the local wildlife, tropical fruit, and Buddhism intensified by the day, as these extracts from seven of his letters written from Ceylon demonstrate:

  

"One realises how very barbaric the substratum of Buddhism is. I shrewdly suspect that high-flownness of Buddhism altogether exists mostly on paper: and that its denial of the soul makes it always rather barren, even if philosophically etc. more perfect. In short, after a slight contact, I draw back and don't like it." [6]

 

"Here it is monstrous hot, like being in a hot bell-glass. I don't like it a bit. I don't like the east. It makes me feel sick in my stomach: seems sort of unmanly." [7]

"This is the hottest month in Ceylon - and the heavens are white hot from 10 till 6. The bungalow is outside Kandy on a hill among trees [...] birds shriek and pop and cackle out of the jungle, creatures jerk and bounce about. [...] The east, the bit I've seen, seems silly. I don't like it one bit. I don't like the silly dark people [...] or their hideous little Buddha temples, like decked up pigsties - nor anything. I just don't like it. It's better to see it on the cinema: you get the whole effect, without the effort and the sense of nausea." [8]

 

"Here the heat is terrific - and I hate the tropics. It is beautiful, in a lush, tangled, towsled, lousy sort of way. The natives too are quite good looking, dark-skinned and erect. But something about it all just makes me sick - there is something smooth and boneless, and a smell of cocoanut oil and sickly fruits - that I can't bear. I loathe the tropical fruits, except pineapples, and those I can't digest: because my inside has never hurt me so much in all my 36 years as in these three weeks." [9]  

 

"No, the east doesn't get me at all. Its boneless suavity, and the thick, choky feel of tropical forest, and the metallic sense of palms and the horrid noises of the birds and creatures, who hammer and clang and rattle and cackle and explode all the livelong day, and run little machines all the livelong night; and the scents that make me feel sick, the perpetual nauseous overtone of cocoanut and cocoanut fibre and oil, the sort of tropical sweetness which to me suggests an undertang of blood, hot blood, and thin sweat: the undertaste of blood and sweat in the nauseous tropical fruits; the nasty faces and yellow robes of the Buddhist monks, the little vulgar dens of the temples: all this makes up Ceylon to me, and all this I cannot bear. [10]

 

"Ceylon is very interesting to look at, but would be deadly to live in [...] I nearly sweated myself into the grave [...] I am glad I came. I am glad I looked at this corner of the east. Then one has no more illusions about it. From a cinematograph point of view it can be fascinating: the dark, tangled jungle, the terrific sun that makes like a bell-jar of heat, like a prison over you: the palm-trees and the noise and the sullenness of the forest: and then the natives, naked, dark, in all shades of darkness [...] suave, smooth, in their way beautiful. But curiously enough, the magnetism is all negative, everything seems magnetically to be repelling one. You never for a second feel at one with anything: always this curious black tropical hostileness, this underneath gloom [...] the sense of apathy, black, dark empty apathy, as if nothing ever could matter, not really, not in our sense of the word: and the feeling that there is a lid down over everything. [...] Queer it is, so different from what I expected. I am glad to have experienced it: but would die if I had to stay. I am glad to have seen something at least of these Oriental millions, and of this vaunted Buddhism. The last is to me a barren, dead affair: and the teeming millions don't seem to me as if they would ever do much, unless it were something wicked." [11]

 

"It has been lovely to see Ceylon. But I feel the east is not for me. It seems to me the life drains away from one here. [...] One could quite easily sink into a kind of apathy, like a lotus on a muddy pond, indifferent to anything. And that apparently is the lure of the east: this peculiar stagnant apathy where one doesn't bother about a thing, but drifts on from minute to minute. [...]

     By the way I detest Buddha, upon slight contact: affects me like a mud pool that has no bottom to it. One learns to value what one actually knows and possesses, and to have a wholesome indifference to strange gods. Anyhow these little rat-hole Buddhist temples turn my stomach." [12]

 

IV.

There are many things that one might comment on here: for example, Lawrence's sense of white privilege and cultural superiority. As John Worthen notes, the letters from Ceylon illustrate how quickly Lawrence could turn to "colonial and racist explanations" [13] to justify his own feelings of bitter disappointment and estrangement - or even make sense of a stomach upset.

 

More surprising, perhaps, is Lawrence's suggesting that, rather than travel to faraway and profoundly foreign lands, one is better off staying in Blighty and watching a travel film at the local cinema - or that dark gods and exotic creatures aren't all that he thought they were. As Worthen says, such a "fantastic reversal of almost everything he had been saying and thinking for the last seven years [...] is a useful reminder not only of his contradictoriness, but of how divided he was" [14].    

What I really want to discuss, however, is Lawrence's hatred of Buddhism, a religion which, in his view - typical of the period in which he wrote - was a form of ascetic idealism; one that encouraged an introspective quietism, or non-engagement with the world (as perfectly illustrated by the representation of the Buddha as a fat seated figure) ... [15]

 

 

V.

 

By his own admission, Lawrence much prefered Hinduism to Buddhism and thought more highly of Jesus on his Cross than Buddha seated beneath his Bo Tree. But how much he actually knew about Buddhism is debatable; there is no evidence that he ever studied its central texts with the same enthusiasm that he read works of theosophy, for example. 

 

According to Gerald Doherty, Lawrence probably acquired his knowledge of Buddhism indirectly from three sources: the philosophical musings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the esoteric teachings of Mme. Blavatsky, and from semi-popular 19th-century books on the subject [16]. 

 

From Nietzsche, Lawrence would have picked up the idea of Buddhism as ultimately a form of decadence. It might be a religion beyond good and evil, but it's also a religion of fatigue and decline. From the studies written by English colonial types who had spent a good deal of time in India or Ceylon, Lawrence would have absorbed the belief that underneath its ethical sophistication, Buddhism was a primitive (and inferior) form of religion compared to Christianity. 

 

But it was only when in Ceylon that Lawrence really seems to have developed a visceral (and aesthetic) hostility towards Buddhism: now the latter is holy nihilism pure and simple; "a vulgar temple of serenity built over an empty hole in space" [17].     

 

In one of his final essays, Lawrence places the Buddha alongside Plato and Christ as one of the grand idealists responsible for destroying the vital relationship between men and women, as well as the (equally vital) relationship mankind has with other forms of life and, indeed, the cosmos itself:

 

"Buddha, Plato, Jesus, they were all three utter pessimists as regards life, teaching that the only happiness lay in abstracting oneself from life, the daily, yearly, seasonal life of birth and death and fruition, and in living in the 'immutable' or eternal spirit. But now, after almost three thousand years, now [...] we realise that such abstraction is neither bliss nor liberation, but nullity. It brings null inertia. And the great saviours and teachers only cut us off from life. It was the tragic excursus." [18]

 

I think this is a profound insight on Lawrences part - one which can be placed alongside his more humorous conclusion that travel is a splendid lesson in disillusion ... [19] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1-3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith  (30 April 1922), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 233-34.

 

[4-5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Emily King (24 March 1922), Letters, IV 215, 216.

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Robert Pratt Barlow (30 March 1922), Letters, IV 218.  

[7] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Robert Mountsier (3 April 1922), Letters, IV 220.

[8] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mary Cannan (3 April 1922), Letters IV 221.

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mary Canaan (5 April 1922), Letters IV 224.

[10] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mabel Dodge Sterne (10 April 1922), Letters IV 225.

     

[11] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Robert Mountsier (16 April 1922), Letters IV 227. 

 

[12] D. H. Lawrence, letter to S. S. Koteliansky (17 April 1922), Letters IV 228.

 

[13-14] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 265. 

[15] David Ellis warns us that it would be dangerous to "place too much emphasis on any one statement" made by Lawrence in his letters, "when his attitudes were always so highly volatile and full of contradictions". But, on the other and, he admits that it would be mistaken to "ignore how extreme Lawrence could be in the declaration of his opinions" or fail to take him seriously. 

      See David Ellis, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game 1922-1930, (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 18.

[16] Gerald Doherty, 'The Nirvana Dimension: D. H. Lawrence's Quarrel with Buddhism', D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 15, No. 1/2 (Spring-Summer 1982), pp. 51-2. Click here to access on JSTOR. 

[17] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mabel Dodge Sterne (10 April 1922), Letters IV 226. 

[18] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover", ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 330-31. 

[19] I have discussed this remark (also from one of Lawrence's letters) in an earlier post: click here.  

 

 

Why I Still Love My Cassette Pet

(EMI Records, 1980)

 

 

Consisting of seven original tracks written by Malcolm McLaren and the trio of Ants he'd persuaded to abandon Adam and form a new group under his management [1] - plus a joyous cover of the Bloom-Mercer classic, 'Fools Rush In' - Your Cassette Pet [2] is 20-minutes of pop perfection that sounds as brilliant and as bonkers now as it did back in the day.

 

Essentially, Your Cassette Pet is a mixtape manifesto setting out McLaren's idio-romantic vision for music and fashion in a post-punk world. Ideas (and fantasies) vocalised by 14-year-old Annabella Lwin, include: 

 

(i) underage sex and rape play (Louis Quatorze) -

(ii) societal breakdown and gold fetishism (Gold He Said) -

(iii) extraterrestrial birth and macrosomia (I Want My Baby On Mars / Giant Sized Baby Thing) -

(iv) suicide as an eroticised practice of joy (Sexy Eiffel Towers) -

(v) queer primitivism coupled to new technology (Uomo Sex Al Apache / Radio G-String).

 

There is nothing else quite like it, athough some of the songs on Kings of the Wild Frontier - released in the same month and year as Your Cassette Pet (Nov 1980) - arguably come close and contain some of the same inspired madness, and I have always admired Adam for not only learning from his mentor McLaren, but, making the latter's ideas very much his own.

 

It's disappointing, therefore, that Your Cassette Pet isn't more widely - and more fondly - remembered. 

 

The reaction of Vim Renault, for example, is typical: in a reflection on Punk Girl Diaries, she describes Your Cassette Pet as a "remarkable release", before then informing us that "with the hindsight of 2020 attitudes to child exploitation", it becomes obvious that McLaren wrote the "back-of-the-envelope sexualised lyrics" for sleazy and commercially frivolous reasons: 

 

"At the time, I thought it was bold and I admired Annabella Lwin. But they weren't her words - they were the words of a narcissistic old perv." [3]  

 

Whilst I'm pretty sure the last line would have made Malcolm laugh, it's disappointing (to say the least) that Ms Renault feels this way and has come over all Mary Whitehouse in her old age; from being the cause of moral outrage to one who, with hindsight, has become the voice of such. 

 

Perhaps it might help her to think more favourably of McLaren as a lyricist if she were to be informed that, far from being written in a hurried manner, several of the songs had a history pre-dating the formation of Bow Wow Wow, when Malcolm was drifting round Paris in the post-Pistols period and trying to find funding for a new film company that would produce movies combining pop and porn, by and for a young generation that he termed the sex gang children [4].

 

And perhaps it might help Ms Renault to understand the wider (socio-political) context that McLaren's thinking had grown out of in the late '60s and early '70s; a time when radical theorists, such as Michel Foucault, were convinced that even underage teens should be allowed (and encouraged) to express themselves sexually [5].

 

Although in his biography of McLaren, Paul Gorman repeatedly indicates his unease with (and distase for) such a countercultural conceit, he considers the matter in an insightful manner and what he writes is worth quoting here (at length and in closing), not least for Ms Renault's benefit:

 

"Unlike David Bowie, Johnny Thunders and other rock stars whose sexual exploits with such young groupies as Lori Maddox and Sable Starr are well documented, McLaren derived no sexual pleasure from, and was not interested in engaging in, sexual acts with underage teens. By nature he was more of a romantic than a libertine, though it is true that he had cultivated a prurient view of sexual matters, largely as a result of his strange upbringing. His promotion of liberating young desires sprang from radical political grounding; not only had the Situationists propagated the idea [...] but the European and American underground press of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which informed his worldview, had brimmed with such views [...]

      McLaren's point was that true power in popular, and in particular music, culture resided with youth, not preening performers in their twenties or self-indulgent, middle-aged music-biz hacks, and that the sexual and social potential of young people outstripped that of any of the rock stars of the era [...] McLaren constantly referred to record company executives as 'child molesters' in that they corrupted and stifled fans' desires with a forced diet of corporate gloop." [6]    

 

Notes

 

[1] Matthew Ashman (guitarist), Dave Barbarossa (drums) and Leigh Gorman (bass) - along with 13-year-old Annabella Lwin on vocals - were brought together as Bow Wow Wow by McLaren, who not only managed them, but styled them and provided song lyrics and ideas.   

 

[2] Bow Wow Wow, Your Cassette Pet (EMI Records, 1980), a debut mini-album available only on tape, (therefore making it ineligible for the UK albums chart): click here to play in full.

      Your Cassette Pet came in a flip-top box designed by Jamie Reid and was originally to be sold alongside a magazine, Chicken, containing song lyrics, band photographs, features on fashion, consumer technology, and pornography for the under-12s. Perhaps not surprisingly, EMI got cold feet and when Bow Wow Wow's next single - 'W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)' - failed to chart, the record company dropped them like a hot potato.

        

[3] Vim Renault, 'Bow Wow Wow - Your Cassette Pet' (7 Jan 2020) on punkgirldiaries.com: click here.

 

[4] 'Sexy Eiffel Towers', for example, was written by McLaren for a proposed musical about  three 15-year-old girls to be called The Adventures of Melody, Lyric & Tune. The script for this film eventually merged with that of another project, The Mile High Club, that will ring a bell with fans of Bow Wow Wow, as a song of that title appeared on their 1982 EP The Last of the Mohicans (RCA Records).  

      The phrase, 'sex gang children' - which Malcolm borrowed from William Burroughs - can be heard in the 'Mile High Club' track. Interestingly, Boy George - who briefly performed with Bow Wow Wow under the name Lieutenant Lush - considered using this as the name of his group before going with Culture Club.

 

[5] For Foucault and many other intellectuals in the 1970s, the suggestion that children - particularly over the age of twelve - were unable to consent to sexual relations, either with one another or with adults, was itself an unacceptable form of abuse, restricting their right to freedom and decision making via the use of contractual law introduced into the amorous realm. Children, he said, should be fully empowered to find pleasure in any way they liked. 

      I have written on this subject in a post published last year (9 Jan 2021) on TTA: click here. 

 

[6] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 437. 

      As Gorman goes on to note, McLaren's primary concern, as ever, was simply to provoke people and create a storm of moral outrage: "McLaren knew that banging on about teenage sex was an effective means of causing a stir." [438]

 

 

Chrysopoeia 3: No More Gas, Just Gold He Said - Gold on My Head!

Do you love Annabella? 

Gold is what she holds.

 

 

I. 

 

Having confronted the perceived greyness of English culture with nihilistic blackness during the punk period, McLaren and Westwood dramatically changed tactics (and shop design) during their pirate phase: now gold was the colour by which to challenge the three things they hated most: puritanism, provincialism, and poverty.  

 

Just to be clear: by the latter, we refer to a certain spiritual condition; to individuals bereft of ideas, imagination and a sense of adventure, rather than those without money for the gas meter; to individuals whose vision of a post-punk future involved either wearing raincoats and moaning about being on the dole, or adopting a gothic persona and pretending to be one of the undead.  

 

Contra this model of either bleak or morbid miserabilism, Malcolm and Vivienne offered a new romanticism that was all about sun, gold, and piracy ...

 

 

II. 

 

Thus it was that Seditionaries gave way to Worlds End and Malcolm's new group, Bow Wow Wow, was fronted not by a spiky-haired, pale-faced punk with green-teeth, but by an exotic-looking, 14-year-old girl called Annabella, who informed us that she didn't care about having no money, because she had gold in her hair. 

 

And, besides, thanks to TEK technology, sang Annabella, she could steal the songs she loved to listen to by illegally taping them off the radio: "No silver, no copper / Cassette on my shoulder / I'm richer than Richard III / I don't need to work" [1].

  

The idea that you can look rich and feel powerful - without having any money - is an interesting one, rooted in both the concept of a natural (or savage) nobility and dandyism. It suggests that what matters most is not what you have in your wallet, but how you walk, talk, and present yourself; a combination of style, swagger and attitude. 

 

And it's always important to be reminded that, for Malcolm, punk was about fighting for the right not to work - Cos work, is not the golden rule - and I happily endorse his suggestion that the unemployed be issued roller skates and paid in gold dust [2].  

 

 

Jordan wearing a golden outfit from the 

Worlds End Pirate Collection (A/W 1981)

Image reworked from a photo by Michael Costiff

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the Bow Wow Wow song 'Gold He Said', which originally featured on the 8-track mini-album Your Cassette Pet (EMI Records, 1980). Whilst Dave Barbarossa, Leigh Gorman and Matthew Ashman came up with the music, it was McLaren - a uniquely gifted lyricist - who came up with the words. Click here to play. 

[2] This is something that all those dreary left-leaning punks who earnestly believed themselves to be part of a drab socialist revolution never understood. I would have loved to have been paid in gold dust when I was signing on during the 1980s - far more exciting than having to cash a giro at the post office every fortnight. I'm a little surprised, therefore, that Paul Gorman dismisses Malcolm's proposal as preposterous (though maybe he's a fan of Absurdism and means that in a good way); see The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 456. 

      Finally, note that the line quoted in italics is a lyric (again written by McLaren) from the second Bow Wow Wow single 'W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)', (EMI Records, 1981): click here to play the extended version. 

Chrysopoeia 2: Volpone (He's the Fox - the Fox with the Golden Brush)

Aubrey Beardsley:  

Volpone Adoring His Treasures (1898)

 

Good morning to the day; and next, my gold: 

Open the shrine, that I may see my Saint.

 

 

I. 

 

Ben Jonson's brilliant comic play Volpone (1606) opens with a very famous scene of gold veneration that is worth reproducing in full:

 

 

A ROOM IN VOLPONE'S HOUSE. ENTER VOLPONE AND MOSCA. 

 

VOLPONE: 

 

Good morning to the day; and next, my gold: 

Open the shrine, that I may see my Saint. 

 

MOSCA WITHDRAWS THE CURTAIN REVEALING PILES OF GOLD, PLATE, JEWELS, ETC.

 

Hail the world's soul, and mine! More glad than is 

The teeming earth to see the long'd-for sun 

Peep through the horns of the celestial Ram, 

Am I, to view thy splendour darkening his; 

That lying here, amongst my other hoards, 

Shew'st like a flame by night; or like the day 

Struck out of chaos, when all darkness fled 

Unto the centre. O thou son of Sol, 

But brighter than thy father, let me kiss, 

With adoration, thee, and every relick 

Of sacred treasure, in this blessed room. 

Well did wise poets, by thy glorious name, 

Title that age which they would have the best; 

Thou being the best of things: and far transcending 

All style of joy, in children, parents, friends, 

Or any other waking dream on earth: 

Thy looks when they to Venus did ascribe, 

They should have given her twenty thousand Cupids; 

Such are thy beauties and our loves! 

Dear saint, Riches, the dumb god, that giv'st all men tongues; 

That canst do nought, and yet mak'st men do all things; 

The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot, 

Is made worth heaven. Thou art virtue, fame, 

Honour, and all things else. Who can get thee, 

He shall be noble, valiant, honest, wise - [1]

 

 

II. 

 

There are many things I love about this speech: for one thing, Volpone's is a profoundly cynical and materialist philosophy, which imagines even the anima mundi in chemical-elemental (non-spritual) terms. This is to immediately challenge all those idealistic thinkers from Plato to Hegel who identified the world-soul as a force of vital intelligence which is accesible to (because self-identical with) human reason.

 

The Gnostics may, like Volpone, have also posited gold as the essence of all that exists, but for them this was alchemical allegory; for them, gold was not a metal gifted to mankind from beyond the stars in an age before life itself, it was rather the Light Soul to be contrasted with the dead matter within which it is imprisoned. 

 

Gold may have been recognised as the noblest of all noble metals - and their origin - but it is still regarded with contempt by those whose real concern is with the inner gold (i.e. the spark of divinity) within each of us. Volpone may use religious language - open the shrine that I may see my saint - but he does so mockingly, that is, in a knowingly idolatrous manner. 

 

And when Volpone expresses a desire to kiss his gold, we are reminded that there is also an erotic aspect to his gold fetish. However, unlike Auric Goldfinger - whose case we discussed here - Volpone doesn't desire gold in a perverse manner and, ultimately, I don't think he is guilty of either greed or lust; what he does, in fact, is exploit the vices of others. 

 

For as he confesses to his man-servant, confidant, and fellow-schemer, Mosca: "I glory more in the cunning purchase of my wealth / Than in the glad possession ..."

This line is crucial, I think, in understanding Volpone's character - and my attraction to him; for he reminds me of the Embezzler, played by Malcolm McLaren in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980); a man who enjoys manipulating events, exploiting the gullible, and defrauding the rich. Yes, he wishes to generate cash from chaos, but it's the swindle itself that most excites his imagination. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting from Ben Jonson's Volpone as found freely online as a Project Gutenberg eBook: click here.