Euphoria Contra Ecstasy

Killing Joke: Euphoria (2015)  

Screenshot from the official video

And then the clouds break / A ray of sunlight, gloria!  

As if a promise / Some strange kind of euphoria [1]

 

 

I. 

 

When I was young, one of the key words in my vocabulary was the Ancient Greek term ἔκστασις (ékstasis), which refers to a psycho-spiritual sense of release; the ecstatic individual is one who has found a way to literally step outside of their own self and become part of something greater (some might characterise this as the nowness of the moment; some might speak of God).  

 

Ecstasy, therefore, is an altered - some would insist higher - state of consciousness and many who have experienced it speak of an intensely pleasurable experience, whether resulting from sexual activity, drug use, or religious devotion [2]. The desire for a temporary loss of self and loss of control is, it seems, rooted in a fundamental human instinct - one which Freud memorably termed der Todestrieb [3].     

 

And it's at this point I'd like to say something about another Ancient Greek term - εὐφορία - or, as we write it in English, euphoria  ...

 

 

II.  

  

It's because I think Freud is right to identify a death drive and because I believe the wilful desire to experience ecstasy is rooted in this drive (and is thus, from a Nietzschean perspective, décadent), that I now avoid speaking of ékstasis and favour euphoria, which, I would argue, is an expression of man's most vital self.   

 

In other words, euphoria is a sense of physical wellbeing that encourages us to stay true to the earth, whilst ecstasy, involving as it does an element of transcendence and a stepping out of reality, is a dangerous first step on the path to heaven; euphoria is tied to Dionysian joy [4], but ecstasy terminates in the kind of religious rapture [5] longed for by Christians and other afterworldsmen [6].  

 

 

III. 

By way of providing an example, let us turn to two contrasting scenes in D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow (1915) ...  

 

In the first of these, we witness the heavily pregnant Anna Brangwen dancing naked in her bedroom and this, I would say, is a scene of euphoria; one that celebrates the fertile female body in all its gravid beauty:

 

"Big with child as she was, she danced there in the bedroom by herself, lifting her hands and her body to the Unseen [...]

      [...] She danced in secret, and her soul rose in bliss [7] [...] she took off her clothes and danced in the pride of her bigness [8].   

 

In the second scene, which comes in the following chapter (VII), we are told how her husband, Will, is driven to the point of ecstasy by Lincoln Cathedral:

 

"When he saw the cathedral in the distance [...] his heart leapt. It was the sign in heaven, it was the Spirit hovering like a dove [...] He turned his glowing, ecstatic face to her, his mouth opened with a strange, ecstatic grin." [9]    

 

It's not that Will is an objectophile - though he clearly has certain tendencies in that direction - his real desire is to escape mortal existence and become one with the Infinite in timeless ecstasy. No wonder Anna "resented his transports and ecstasies" [10] and longs to leave the cathedral and be back under the open sky.

 

And no wonder she turns to the gargolyes, which save her "from being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps on into the Infinite" [11] and help her to bring Will back down to earth with a bump.  

 

In brief: Anna's Dionysian euphoria triumphs over Will's Christian ecstasy ...

 

He still loves Lincoln Cathedral, but, after Anna has effectively disillusioned him by mocking his desire to consummate his love, even Will recognises there is life outside the church; that there are birds singing in the garden; flowers growing in the fields. 

 

And these things induce a sense of joy and wellbeing that was free and careless and "at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that he was glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral" [12]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

And on a cold and grey November morn, when all the autumn leaves have fallen and "I can hear the magpies laugh" [13], all it takes is a momentary break in the clouds and a ray of sunlight and I too feel strangely euphoric ...     

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the Killing Joke single 'Euphoria', released from the album Pylon (Spinefarm Records / Universal Music Group, 2015): click here to play. The melodic character and almost choral quality of this track reminds me of the songs on Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (E.G. Records / Virgin Records, 1986), which is certainly one of my favourite Killing Joke albums.  

      

[2] I'm not suggesting these are the only ways to induce ecstasy; other methods might include physical activities such as yoga, dancing, or working out at the gym. Others find quiet meditation in which they concentrate on their breathing does the trick.

 

[3] Freud defines the death drive as the will possessed by organic life forms to return to an inanimate state. It is the opposing (although complementary) force to the life instinct, Eros, which drives self-preservation and reproduction. Both drives belong to the same libidinal economy. See his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). 

      Here, I will argue that whilst the desire to experience ecstasy is rooted in the death drive, euphoria is an expression of man's most vital self.   

 

[4] For Nietzsche, the story of Dionysus is form of thanksgiving and an affirmation of life; the promise that it will be eternally reborn (this in stark contrast to the figure of the Crucified, who counts as an objection to life and a curse upon it). 

 

[5] Rapture is derived from the Latin term raptus, meaning to seize and carry off; one is literally swept up with ecstasy and transported to another (better and more perfect) world. This is why certain evangelical Christians in the United States use this term as their great eschatological watchword. 

      For these religious fanatics, the Rapture is an end-times event when all Christian believers (including the resurrected dead) will rise in the clouds, to meet the Lord their God. Although this is a relatively recent theological development - first arising in the 1830s - the origin of the term can be traced back to the Bible which uses the Greek word ἁρπάζω (harpazo); see 1 Thessalonians, 4:13-18, where a gathering of the elect in Heaven is described after the Second Coming of Christ.     

 

[6] This term - Hinterweltler in the original German - is a coinage of Nietzsche's and refers to those lunatics who focus their hopes and values on a transcendental realm that one enters at death, thereby devaluing earthly life. 

     For Zarathustra, it was suffering and impotence which created the idea of an afterworld and whilst it may seem attractive to many, it is, he says, a humiliation to believe in such heavenly nonsense. He teaches men to listen rather to the voice of the healthy body and stay true to the earth. 

      See the section entitled 'Of the Afterworldsmen', in Part One of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 58-61. 

 

[7] Although the term bliss was later appropriated by those who like to imagine the spiritual delights of heaven, it was originally an Old English word (with a Proto-Germanic root) simply meaning joy in the mundane sense. 

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 169-170. I discuss this scene - much loved by maiesiophiles everywhere - in the post 'On Dirty Dancing and the Virtue of Female Narcissism 2: The Case of Anna Brangwen' (30 July 2017) - click here - and again in a post titled 'Maiesiophilia' (8 Dec 2022): click here.   

       

[9] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow ... p. 186.  

 

[10] Ibid., p. 188. 

 

[11] Ibid., p. 189. I discuss this scene at greater length in the post titled 'Believe in the Ruins: Reflections of a Gargoyle on the Great Fire of Notre-Dame de Paris' (16 April 2019): click here.  

 

[12] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow ... p. 191.  

 

[13] Killing Joke, 'Euphoria' (2015), as cited in note 1 above.  

 

(Re)turn to Red

Fig. 1 Killing Joke: Turn to Red  

(Malicious Damage, 1979) [1] 

Cover design by Mike Coles [2] 

 

 

It's amazing how certain songs and certain images can stay with you for many years after you first encountered them. 

 

Take, for example, the debut EP by Killing Joke with a sleeve design by Mike Coles (fig. 1). It's over forty-five years since its release and yet whenever there's a red sunrise - as there was this morning over Harold Hill (fig 2): 

  

 

Fig. 2 I Wonder Who Chose the Colour Scheme ... 

Photo by Stephen Alexander 

 

 

- it's not shepherds that I think of, but the track 'Turn to Red' that begins to play in my head (even though, ironically, the song twice informs us that the sky is turning grey). 

 

And it's Mike Coles's Mr Punch figure [3] that I look to see dancing across the rooftops; which, I suppose evidences the power of his design, as recognised by Russ Bestley: 

 

"One mark of a great designer in the field of music graphics is in the way that the audio and visual become almost inseparable - you can't listen to the music without picturing the cover artwork, and vice versa." [4].

 

Bestley, in fact, is a huge admirer of Coles's work: more so than me, to be honest; I'm far more of a Jamie Reid fan and punk purist [5]. 

 

Having said that, I agree with Bestley that Coles's images for Killing Joke set the scene for the music; that you can almost hear the band's "dark, raw power when you look at their early record covers" [6], including the Turn to Red EP, which nicely combines collage with drawing and photography set against a flat red background [7].

 

And, coincidently, it was Mike Coles's Turn to Red design that influenced me when asked a couple of months ago by Catherine Brown to come up with an image to promote her walking tour of Hampstead, following in the footsteps of D. H. Lawrence, as part of this year's Being Human Festival [8]. 

 

I hope - should he ever see the image (fig. 3) - that it makes Mr Coles smile ... 

 

 

  

Fig. 3 Turning Hampstead Red with D. H. Lawrence (2025) 

Stephen Alexander (in the manner of Mike Coles)

 

Notes

 

[1] The Killing Joke EP Turn to Red was released in a 10" format by Malicious Damage on 26 October, 1979. It had two tracks - 'Nervous System' and 'Turn to Red' - on the A-side and just one track on the B-side; 'Are You Receiving?'. 

      It was then re-released on 14 December of that year in a 7" and 12" format by Island Records, with an additional track; a dub remix of the title track called 'Almost Red'.   

      The title track, featuring a closed groove so that the word red is repeated endlessly (or at least until you lift the needle of the record), can be played by clicking here. And for the remastered 2020 version, with a video by Mike Coles, click here.

 

[2] Mike Coles can be found on Facebook: click here. Or visit the Malicious Damage website: click here. Coles's artwork is also available to buy from the Flood Gallery: click here. Finally, readers may be interested in Coles's book; Forty Years in the Wilderness: A Graphic Voyage of Art, Design & Stubborn Independence (Malicious Damage, 2016), which traces a pictorial history of his work under the Malicious Damage  label, including the record sleeves, posters and flyers promoting Killing Joke. 

      Historian of punk and post-punk graphic design, Russ Bestley, writes of this book: 

      "Part autobiography, part personal reflection, part celebration, this publication may lead to a critical reappraisal of the designer's work alongside more widely acknowledged contemporaries, though such considerations are far from being a driving force for the project, and the title ironically sums up Coles' attitude towards independent and autonomous production." 

      See Bestley, 'I wonder who chose the colour scheme, it's very nice …': Mike Coles, Malicious Damage and Forty Years in the Wilderness', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Issue 3, (Sept. 2016), pp. 311-328. The essay, which I shall refer to throughout the post, can be downloaded as a Word doc from the UAL research depository: click here.

 

[3] Coles already had a long interest in the traditional British puppet character of Mr Punch and the latter would become a key figure in his work: "'Mr Punch was something that fascinated me before Malicious Damage or Killing Joke. That drawing from the first single was done in 1977 after I'd been to the Punch & Judy festival in Covent Garden'". 

      Mike Coles, quoted by Russ Bestley in the above cited essay, from email correspondence of 18 August, 2016.

 

[4] Russ Bestley, as cited in note 2 above.

 

[5] Whilst Coles is to be respected as an image-maker who developed his own unique aesthetic, for me, he strays just a little too far from what I would consider a punk visual style. And indeed, by his own admission, he "'never took much notice of all the punk stuff'" and "'never really felt a part of the punk movement'". He was more influenced by "'Victorian freak show stuff'" than the Situationists. Quoted by Russ Bestley in the above cited essay, from email correspondence of 14 August, 2016.   

 

[6] Russ Bestley, as cited in note 2 above.  

 

[7] Readers might be interested to know that along with the hand-drawn image of Mr Punch and the picture of two smiling figures taken from a toothpaste ad, the cover features a (high-contrast) photo of Centre Point (which remains a London landmark to this day).   

 

[8] The Being Human festival is an annual celebration of the humanities led by the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, working in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. 

      Each November they put on hundreds of free public events across the UK in the hope that they might garner support for the continued study of art, literature, history, and philosophy, etc. by demonstrating the value and relevance of such disciplines; the humanities, it is argued, enable us to understand and fully appreciate what it means to be human. For further information, click here.  

      Dr Brown's Hampstead walk took place on 8 November, 2025 (11:00 - 13:00): click here. It will be noted that it was decided to use an alternative (inferior and far less humorous) image to advertise the talk for reasons unknown.    

 

 

Temporal Reflections Whilst Sitting in My Back Garden

Sitting in the back garden in 1967 and 2025

 

 

I.

 

The debate as to whether we inhabit time, move through time, or if, indeed, time moves through us, remains a fascinating one for both philosophers and physicists alike. 

 

I suppose it ultimately all comes down to how one interprets the nature of time and its relationship to space. If, for example, one thinks of space-time as a single 4-dimensional continuum, then we obviously dwell within it and experience it as fundamental to our being.

 

But if, on the other hand, one likes to conceive of time in a more classical sense as something distinct from the spacial geometry of the universe, then it becomes possible to think of ourselves as objects that are simply carried along from past to to future via the present as if in a fast-flowing temporal stream. 

 

Personally, I'm quite interested in the so-called block model of time that proposes all moments exist simultaneously. According to this model, the idea of moving in a linear and unidirectional manner through time is dismissed as an illusion of consciousness [1].    

 

 

II. 

 

As I confessed in a post published a while back [2], whilst, paradoxically, I have a minimal sense of identity on the one hand, I've always possessed a strong sense of temporal self-continuity, and have never really bought into the idea of there being seven distinct ages into which a single life might be neatly divided up. 

 

Like the Killing Joke frontman, Jaz Coleman, time means nothing to me, and whether something happened fifty-eight years ago or yesterday, is a matter of indifference; even without shutting my eyes, I can still think the thoughts and experience the feelings I had as a child without making an imaginative journey back in time [3]. 

 

In part, this is perhaps helped by the fact that my spatial coordinates and the objects of my universe - my frames of reference - have remained (relatively) fixed and stable as the images above illustrate [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This block theory, also known as eternalism, in which past, present and future, all exist simultaneously should not be confused with presentism, according to which only a perpetual present exists and therefore has ontological primacy. 

      Nor should it be mistaken for the growing block theory of time, according to which an ever-expanding past and present exist, but the future doesn't; in other words, whilst the present becomes the past and therefore adds to the total history of the world, the present does not precede any future. This model is said to confirm the popular understanding of time in which the past is fixed, the future unreal, and the present constantly changing.     

 

[2] The post to which I refer was titled 'Being is Time: Life in the Present Perfect Continuous' (5 Oct 2022): click here. 

 

[3] I'm paraphrasing from the Killing Joke song 'Slipstream', from the album Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions, (Noise Records, 1990): click here. 

 

[4] I'm aware, of course, that time passes (and does so at the same pace) regardless of whether one constantly travels all around the world or sits in the same spot for almost sixty years; that time dilation is related to factors such as gravity rather than the physical location and stationary nature of the subject and that we grow old not matter what we do or don't do.     

 

 

Festina Lente: Or How An Artist Can Learn to Be Quick Even When Standing Still

Festina lente - a design by the famous Renaissance period 

printer and publisher Aldus Manutius, featuring a dolphin 

curled round an anchor

I.

 

A recent post on the politics of accelerationism contra slowness - click here - seems to have caused a degree of confusion amongst one or two readers. 

 

So, just to be clear: whilst suggesting that it might restore a degree of sovereignty to hop off the bus headed nowhere fast and take it easy while the world goes crazy [1], I'm not advocating a politics or a philosophy of inertia. 

 

For inertia not only implies unmoving but also unchanging and my thinking is closely tied to an idea of difference and becoming, not remaining essentially the same or having a fixed identity. 

 

Further, I'm of the view that quickness has nothing to do with running around like a headless chicken; that one can, as Deleuze and Guattari point out, "be quick, even when standing still" [2], just as one can journey in intensity without travelling round the globe like a tourist.

 

 

II.

 

Of course, this isn't a particularly new idea. 

 

One might recall the Classical Latin adage: festina lente, meaning make haste slowly [3]; a saying which has been adopted as a personal motto by everyone from Roman emperors to American sports coaches, via members of the Medici family and the Cuban Communist Party.  

 

Lovers of Shakespeare will know that the Bard frequently alluded to this idea in his work; as did the 17th century French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine in his famous fable (adapted from Aesop's original) concerning a hare and tortoise (the latter being praised for his wisdom in hastening slowly).   

 

My only concern with this is that moralists see making haste slowly as a matter of policy; i.e. a form of prudent conduct that protects one from making mistakes and as someone who values error and imperfection and failure - who sees these things as crucial to the making of challenging art, for example - that's problematic (to say the least).     

 

 

III.

 

And so I return to Deleuze and Guattari, because their rhizomatic idea of being quick, even whilst standing still, is not one that can be used to negate the creation of radically new art ...

 

According to the above, a painting, for example, is an assemblage of lines, shapes, colours, textures, and movements that "produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture" [4]. In other words, just as it's formed from different material elements, so too is it made up of different speeds and comparative rates of flow.      

   

And sometimes, these things converge on a plane of consistency [5] - but that's not to say the composition is ever perfect or free from error; nor that the artist who, purely out of habit and convention, signs their name on the work has succeeded and can now sit back and admire their own canvas. 

 

A painting is never really finished and whilst I can sympathise with artists who are often gripped with the urge to destroy their own pictures, I have never really understood those who place their canvases in golden frames and are genuinely pleased to see them hanging on a gallery wall.    

 

If an artist wishes to be quick, even when standing still, then, according to Deleuze and Guattari, they must learn to paint to the nth degree and that means (amongst other things) making maps not just preliminary drawings, and coming and going from the middle where things pick up speed, rather than attempting to start from the beginning and finish at the end (something that implies a false conception of movement) [6].  

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referencing here a lyric from the Killing Joke song 'Kings and Queens', released as a single from the album Night Time (E.G. Records, 1985).

 

[2] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988), p. 24. 

[3]  This Latin phrase is translated from the Classical Greek σπεῦδε βραδέως (speûde bradéōs). 

[4] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus ... p. 4. 

[5] In art, composition refers to the arrangement and organisation of various elements within a work to create a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing whole. 

      But by a plane of consistency, Deleuze and Guattari refer to something that opposes this and which consists only in the "relations of speed and slowness between unformed elements" [ATP 507]; there is no finality or unification. A plane of consistency, therefore, doesn't aim to produce aesthetic pleasure, so much as open up a zone of indeterminacy and a continuum of intensity upon which new thoughts and feelings can unfold and interact without being constrained by pre-existing ideas and emotions. 

      In sum: it's a kind of virtual realm of infinite possibilities. See the post dated 23 May 2013 in which I discuss this and related ideas with reference to Deleuze and Guattari's fourth and final book together, What Is Philosophy? - click here. 

 

[6] See Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus ... pp. 24-25.

Joy is Deeper Than the Heart's Agony: On Nietzsche and the Concept of Confelicity

A young Nietzsche looking joyful in 1869

Image via The Mindless Philosopher 

 

"The lowest animal can imagine the pain of others.

 But to imagine the joy of others and to rejoice at it is the greatest privilege of the highest animals ..." [1]

 

 

Many English-speakers know the meaning of the German term Schadenfreude. 

 

But very few know the antonymic term Mitfreude, coined by Nietzsche in 1878, and referring to the feeling of joy felt when learning of the happiness or good fortune of others [2].

 

Interestingly, Nietzsche also contrasts Mitfreude with Mitleid (pity) - and even Mitgefühl (compassion) - viewing an ethic of shared joy rather than shared suffering as more noble (and less Christian).    

 

It is shared happiness, not shared pain, he argues, from which bonds of friendship best develop [3] and allow for a future democracy of joyful exuberance to develop [4].  

 

 

Notes

 

The phrase used in the title of this post - 'Joy is deeper than the heart's agony' - is from section 8 of 'The Intoxicated Song', found in part 4 of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[1] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, volume 2, part 1, section 62. 

      I am consulting R. J. Hollingdale's translation from the 1986 Cambridge University Press edition of this work, p. 228, but I have slightly modified it. 

 

[2] Usually, in English, we use the term confelicity to describe this feeling, although this is not a word one hears very often.

[3] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, I. 9. 499.

 

[4] It might surprise some readers to discover that Nietzsche writes of such a future democracy; one that will create and guarantee as much independence as possible and which is in stark contrast to the model of liberal democracy founded upon a mixture of fear and herd morality (i.e., modern humanism). See Human, All Too Human, II. 2. 293. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Killing Joke, 'We Have Joy', from the album Revelations (E.G. Records, 1982): click here for the 2005 digitally remastered version. 

 

This post is for my frenemy Síomón Solomon. 

In Memory of Geordie Walker and Keith Levene

Geordie Walker (1958-2023) and Keith Levene (1957-2022) [1]

 

November, it appears, is a mortally dangerous time of year for post-punk guitarists ... 

 

For last year, on the 11th of November, Keith Levene died (aged 65); and yesterday, on the 26th of this month, Geordie Walker passed away (aged 64). 

I'm not going to pretend that I have any great fascination for musicians; always banging on about their instruments and different playing and recording techniques, they are, as Malcolm used to say, amongst the least interesting people to be around.

 

However, Levene - as a member of Public Image Ltd. - and Walker - as a member of Killing Joke - did produce some of the most exciting and bewitching guitar sounds ever heard and I was a huge fan of their work in the late 1970s and early-mid '80s [2]. 

 

So, it was with a certain sadness that I heard about Keith dying last year and, similarly, I was sorry to wake up to the news of Geordie's death this morning. I never met either of them, but their music has significantly shaped (what is commonly referred to as) the soundtrack of my life and for that I'm grateful to both.       

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] The black and white screenshot of Geordie Walker is taken from the video directed by Peter Care for the Killing Joke single 'Love Like Blood' (1985); the black and white screenshot of Keith Levene is taken from the video directed by Don Letts for the Public Image Ltd. single 'Public Image' (1978).

 

[2] See the post dated 1 Sept 2023 for my memories of Killing Joke: click here.   

Memories of Killing Joke (1984 - 1987)

Killing Joke in their mid-80s splendour

(L-R: Geordie Walker / Paul Raven / Jaz Coleman / Paul Ferguson) 

 

A correspondent writes: 

I got the impression from a recent post [1] that you were something of a Killing Joke fan back in the mid-1980s and I was hoping you might expand on this - did you, for example, ever see them live in this period, when, in my view, they were at their very best? 

 

Well, as a matter of fact, I did see them live on at least three occasions; as attested to by the following entries in the Von Hell Diaries (1980-89) ...

   

 

Sunday 1 Jan 1984

Hammersmith Palais: felt a bit like a hippie event with people sitting on the floor. Having said that, there were some fantastic looking individuals amongst the assembled freaks and morons. The support band were the March Violets: who were shit. An inferior Sisters of Mercy (who are also shit, by the way). Is there something in the water in Leeds?

      There was also a young male stripper prior to Killing Joke making their entrance on to the stage. All the punks began to pogo as if on cue (to the latter, not the former). To be honest, the set got a bit dull half-way through; I suspect that all gigs are at their best in the first ten minutes with the initial release of energy. 

      Mostly, the group played old songs and I was a bit miffed that they didn't play any of my favourite tracks from Fire Dances (although they did do a rousing version of 'The Gathering' as an encore). Jaz Coleman [2] is a captivating performer. The rest of the band are essentially just solid musicians (albeit ones who look the part and know how to create a magnificent noise). 

 

 

Sunday 3 February 1985

 

Off with Andy [3] to see Killing Joke at the Hammersmith Palais once again ...

      Lots of punks out and about on the streets of West London - and lots of police to keep 'em in line. Felt like a mug having to queue up for tickets. Met Kirk [4] inside as arranged, though he fucked off to watch the show from the balcony with some video director friend of his. A couple of support bands: Heist and Pale Fountains; neither of whom were much cop. Killing Joke came on to all the usual fanfare - and Gary Glitter's 'Leader of the Gang'. 

      The set was made up of tracks from the new album - Night Time - and the first two albums (nothing from Revelations or Fire Dances). Became separated from Andy and made my way to the front. Got so hot that I seriously thought I was going to spontaneously combust (though probably sweating too much for that). Brilliant night: almost tempted to describe it as a (neo-pagan) religious experience - song, dance, and Dionysian frenzy. Even Andy enjoyed it (I think).   

 

 

Sunday 28 September 1986

 

Back to the Hammersmith Palais for what seems to be becoming an annual event in the company of Killing Joke. Not a bad show, but nowhere near as good as last year. It also felt like a much shorter set; one which opened with 'Twilight of the Mortal' and closed with 'Wardance'.  

      Most - if not all - of the songs were from the first, fifth and (yet to be released) sixth album. The new tracks sounded great - and Jazz looked amusingly grotesque as he blew kisses to his brothers and sisters - but the performance never really took off. And so, I went home feeling a little disappointed.      

 

 

Finally, it might also interest my correspondent (and other readers) to know that I once met Jaz Coleman, at Abbey Road Studios:

 

 

Friday 7 August 1987

 

Lee Ellen [5] rang this morning: she said if I got over to Virgin by 1 o'clock, then she'd take me with her to the studio where Killing Joke were recording and introduce me to Jaz Coleman (having reassured him that I wasn't some lunatic fan). 

      Jaz was much smaller in person than expected and had strangely feminine hands, with long, slim fingers. He also dressed in a disconcertingly conventional manner. Geordie, the good-looking guitarist, was there, but the rest of the band, apparently, had been fired.

      Jaz played tapes of the new material (just the music - no vocals); sounded good (quasi-symphonic). He said the new album would be called Outside the Gate - which is a great title [6] - and that it would bring the Killing Joke project to perfection. After completing it, he planned to emigrate to New Zealand. 

      Mr. Coleman also took great pride in showing me parts of a book he'd been working on for eight years and we talked, very briefly, about D. H. Lawrence's Apocalypse (which he liked) and Yeats's Vision (which he didn't like). 

      Before leaving, Jaz expressed his desire to converse at greater length one day and I very much look forward to that (should such a day ever in fact arrive) [7].   

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm guessing the post referred to was 'Musical Memories' (30 Aug 2023): click here - although I do mention Jaz Coleman and Killing Joke in several other posts on Torpedo the Ark. 

 

[2] Jaz Coleman; lead singer with post-punk British band Killing Joke.

 

[3] Andy Greenfield; friend and, at this time, a Ph.D student at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington.

 

[4] Kirk Field; friend and, at this time, lead singer and lyricist with the band Delicious Poison. 

 

[5] Lee Ellen Newman; friend and, at this time, Deputy Head of Press at Virgin.  

 

[6] In fact, I thought this was such a great title that I later borrowed it for my Ph.D - although the phrase outside the gate can be found in Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence, and is also often used in occult circles.

 

[7] It hasn't so far. 

 

 

Although there were bootleg audio recordings made of all three gigs discussed above and these are now available on YouTube, they are of such poor quality that they don't give a fair representation of just how good a live band Killing Joke were (and to diehard fans still are). Readers are therefore invited to click here to watch a performance recorded live in Munich, at the Alalabamahalle, on 25 March 1985, for broadcast on German TV.     

 

Musical Memories

(E. G. Records, 1983)

 

 

It's amazing just how strongly certain songs from forty years ago still continue to resonate. For example, the Killing Joke single 'Let's All Go', released from the album Fire Dances in the summer of '83, still makes me want to take the future in my hands and find that feeling somewhere [1].

 

I'm not sure why that is, but I don't think it's simply related to the power of the music or the brilliance of the band. In fact, research indicates that most people tend to privilege songs from their adolescence and early adulthood and that this isn't merely nostalgia. 

 

Rather, the musical connections that become entangled with life experiences during this period will trigger vivid memories and strong emotions long into old age and - because these memories and emotions will for the most part be positive - this makes one happy in the present (not just yearn for the past). 

 

Interestingly, psychologists speak of a musical reminiscence bump - something that refers to the fact that people tend to disproportionately recall memories from between the ages 10 to 30 years old, which is precisely when many novel and self-defining experiences become deeply encoded in the brain and when people are most fascinated with pop culture and busy constructing the soundtrack of their lives [2].

 

This music-related reminiscence bump has been found to peak around age fourteen; songs popular at this age seem to evoke the most memories overall. For me, that would be the songs of the Sex Pistols in 1977. However, I would argue that the songs that I loved aged ten (in 1973) - such as those by Gary Glitter - and aged twenty (in 1983) - such as those by Killing Joke - mean just as much and are as closely linked to happy memories, happy days.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The joyous track, 'Let's All Go (to the Fire Dances)', by English post-punk band Killing Joke, was released as the sole single from their 1983 studio album Fire Dances, on 7" and 12" vinyl by E.G. Records in June 1983. It reached number 51 in the UK Singles Chart and was the band's first single to be accompanied by a music video which can be viewed on YouTube by clicking here. 

      Fire Dances - the fourth and, in some ways, my favourite Killing Joke album, was released the following month (also on E. G. Records). It was first to feature new bass player Paul Raven, was critically well-received, and reached number 29 in the UK Albums Chart.   

 

[2] The reminiscence bump was identified through the study of autobiographical memory and the subsequent plotting of the age of encoding of memories to form the lifespan retrieval curve (i.e., the graph that represents the number of autobiographical memories encoded at various ages during an individual's life span). Not surprisingly, after the reminiscence bump flattens out, we tend to remember less and less vividly. 

 

 

Loony Tunes

Clockwise from top left: 

Haywire Mac / Napoleon XIV / Jaz Coleman / Siouxsie Sioux

 

 

There are almost as many songs about being mad or going insane as there are about falling in love; so many in fact, that attempting to compile a full and definitive list of such would probably drive you crazy. This, therefore, is simply a short post in which I discuss a few of my favourite songs on the subject. 

 

I'm not saying they're the best four songs ever recorded to do with madness, but they are the ones that have most struck a chord with me. Note that they're arranged by release date and not in order of preference.

 

 

'Aint We Crazy?' by Harry McClintock (aka Haywire Mac) (Victor, 1928): click here to play.

 

"Ain't we crazy, ain't we crazy / This is the way we pass the time away  

Ain't we crazy, ain't we crazy / We're going to sing this song all night today."

 

Malcolm McLaren dedicated his 1983 album Duck Rock to Haywire Mac and insisted that I get hold of Hallelujah! I'm a Bum, (Rounder Records, 1981), a remastered compilation of some of McClintock's greatest songs - including 'Ain't We Crazy?' and 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain', for which he is probably best remembered today [1].

 

'Ain't We Crazy?' is a type of nonsense song, in which the singer is the kind of anti-Socratic hero whom Roland Barthes celebrates; i.e., a figure who abolishes within himself all fear of being branded a madman via an amusing disregard for that old spectre: logical contradiction [2]:

 

It was midnight on the ocean, not a streetcar was in sight 

And the sun was shining brightly, for it rained all day that night 

'Twas a summer night in winter, and the rain was snowing fast

And a barefoot boy with shoes on stood a-sitting in the grass.

 

Such a man, as Barthes says, would be the mockery of our society, which subscribes to a psychology of consistency and says firmly that you can't have your cake and eat it. 

 

 

'They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!', single by Napoleon XIV (Warner Bros. Records, 1966): click here to play.

 

"They're coming to take me away, ha-ha! / They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-ha! 

To the funny farm / Where life is beautiful all the time ..."

 

Written and performed by Jerry Samuels (aka Napoleon XIV), this curious record was an instant smash in the US and UK and I loved to sing it to amuse myself and entertain friends as a child [3].

 

However, I very much doubt it would be made, released, or played today, living as we are in an era that is far more sensitive to issues surrounding mental health. Indeed, even at the time several radio stations stopped playing the song in response to complaints about its content. Predictably, the BBC also refused to play the record.  

The joke reveal at the end of the song is that it is not a departed lover who has caused the song's narrator to lose his mind, but a runaway dog ... 

 

 

'Happy House', by Siouxsie and the Banshees, single release from the album Kaleidoscope (Polydor, 1980): click here to play.

 

"This is the happy house / We're happy here in the happy house [...] 

It's safe and calm if you sing along ..." 

 

I was never a big Banshees fan, but I used to love to hear this song on the radio back in the day and as it was a Top 20 hit - peaking at number 17 in the UK Singles Chart - one heard it fairly often.    

 

I assumed at the time that the title was a synonym for an insane asylum - like funny farm, or loony bin - but later read in an interview with Siouxsie - who wrote the song with Steve Severin [4] - that, actually, it refers to a conventional family setting; to home, sweet home and the madness that unfolds therein beneath the veneer of normality and domestic bliss. 

 

It's interesting to note that the follow-up single, 'Christine' (released in May 1980 and also taken from Kaleidoscope), again dealt with the theme of madness; the lyrics being inspired by the story of a woman who reportedly had 22 different (often conflicting) personalities [5] - which explains why she is referred to in the song as a banana split lady (i.e., it has nothing to do with her having a sweet tooth).

 

 

'Madness', by Killing Joke, track 6 on the album What's THIS For ...! (E. G. / Polydor Records, 1981): click here to play the 2005 digitally remastered version.  

 

"This is madness / This is madness / This is madness / This is madness / This is madness ..." 

 

This track, despite the title, isn't actually about madness in general, but, rather, about Christianity as a very specific form of religious mania; the product of sick minds in which there is a need to believe in a dead God and life itself is interpreted as a sin. 

 

It is, if I'm honest, quite a challenging listen and will appeal only to a few. But then, as Nietzsche might say, to appreciate this track, the listener must be honest to the point of hardness so as to be able to endure the seriousness and intensity of Jaz Coleman's passion [6].

 

Th-th-th-th-that's all folks! [7]

Notes

 

[1] One of the very earliest posts on Torpedo the Ark - 5 May 2013 - was on Haywire Mac and his hobo vision of an earthly paradise (i.e., the Big Rock Candy Mountain): click here. 

 

[2] See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, (Hill and Wang, 1998), p. 3.

 

[3] The song was re-released in 1973, when I was ten-years-old, and that's probably when I remember it from - not 1966, when I was still singing nursery rhymes. However, I was a fan of at least one pop song released in that year; 'Yellow Submarine' by the Beatles.

 

[4] Guitarist John McGeoch (previously of Magazine) and drummer Budgie (previously of the Slits) also play no small part in creating the distinctive and atmospheric (post-punk) sound that makes this track so unforgettable.

 

[5] Christine Sizemore (née Costner) was an American woman who, in the 1950s, was diagnosed with what was then termed multiple personality disorder, but which is now known as dissociative identity disorder. Her case was depicted in the book The Three Faces of Eve (1957), written by her psychiatrists, Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley. The film of the that name, directed by Nunally Johnson and starring Joanne Woodward, was based on this work. Readers interested in hearing the track 'Christine', by Siouxsie and the Banshees, can click here. 

 

[6] I'm paraphrasing from Nietzsche's Preface to The Anti-Christ (1888).

 

[7] I have borrowed this closing phrase and title for the post from the animated short film series produced by Warner Bros. between the years 1930 and 1969, starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, et al. 

      Readers might be interested to know that the famous Loony Tunes theme was actually based on a crazy-sounding love song written in 1937 by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin entitled 'The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down': click here for the version by the American jazz pianist and bandleader Eddy Duchin, with Lew Sherwood on vocals. And for an additional treat, courtesy of Larry David, click here.

 

Being is Time: Life in the Present Perfect Continuous

Image credit: UCLA / Horvath Lab

 

Somewhat paradoxically, whilst having a minimal sense of self on the one hand, I've always possessed a strong sense of self-continuity through time on the other, and have never really bought into the Shakespearean idea of there being seven distinct ages into which a single life might be neatly divided up [1].

 

Thus, when someone asked in relation to a recent post adapted from the Von Hell Diaries [click here] whether it made me sad to realise that forty years had passed since the events described on 3 October 1982 - or frightened to think that I would soon be passing from middle age to old age - I had to say no, not really.

 

For like Jaz Coleman, time means nothing to me, and whether something happened forty years ago or yesterday, it's all the same to me [2]. I am that unity of past, present and future. That is to say, I understand time not just as something that can be measured by the ticking of a clock, but as fundamental to our being. Indeed, one might even say that being is time.     

 

And unlike the Killing Joke frontman, I don't even have to shut my eyes in order to remember childhood thoughts and feelings; for I still think those thoughts and experience those feelings. In other words, because I live in what might be termed by a grammarian as the present perfect continuous, I've no need to make an imaginative journey back in time, or to dream.      

 

But aren't you worried that you're just stuck in the past?, asks the same interrogator.

 

Again, the answer is not really. 

 

In fact, I'm more concerned - as a philosopher - with the consequences of privileging the present [3] and having a vulgar conception of time in which the past is denigrated as that which we must move on from and leave behind, as if no longer important, when, in fact, not only does the past inform the present, but it awaits us in the future too [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm thinking here of the famous monologue in Act II, Scene VII of Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It (1623) which opens with the line "All the world's a stage". However, I'm aware of the fact that this division of human life into a series of stages was a commonplace of art and literature and not something invented by the Bard of Avon. Whilst ancient authors tended to think in terms of three or four such stages, medieval writers liked to think in terms of seven for theological reasons.   

 

[2] I'm quoting from the Killing Joke song 'Slipstream', from the album Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions, (Noise Records, 1990): click here. The track was written by Jaz Coleman, Geordie Walker and Martin Atkins. Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group.

 

[3] I am increasingly sympathetic to thinkers such as Heidegger and Derrida who are concerned that the understanding of Being in the metaphysical tradition is dominated by an ontological primacy of the present; i.e., that the present is viewed as more real or immediate than the past or future, with the former seen as merely the 'no-longer-now' and the latter as merely the 'not-yet-now'. 

      This tradition has run all the way from Aristotle to Hegel and beyond; see, for example, Lawrence's 1919 Preface to his New Poems (1918), in which he writes of the incarnate Now as supreme over and above the before and after and of the quivering present as the very quick of Time. For Lawrence, the past and future are mere abstractions from the present; a crystallised remembrance and a crystallised aspiration.

      Lawrence's preface can be found as Appendix I to The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 645-649.      

 

[4] I think Heidegger refers to this ontological baggage in Being and Time (1927) as Gewesenheit (i.e., our been-ness).

 

 

On the Rise and Fall of Because

Image adapted from the sleeve to the Killing Joke album 

What's THIS for ...! (E.G. / Polydor Records, 1981) [1]

 

"He shall fall down into the pit called Because,

and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason." [2]

 

 

I. 

 

Although the Age of Reason didn't really establish itself until a few hundred years later, it was already assembling its vocabulary in the late 14th-century, including that crucial term because, which enters into English at this date modelled on the French phrase par cause. 

 

It's one of those words that people who love the abstract concept of causality - i.e., the capacity of a to determine b - often use to close down further discussion: There's no point arguing because the facts clearly demonstrate ... 

 

Because is thus the ultimate explanation - the metaphysical answer to the equally metaphysical question why? - and it has become implicit in the logic and structure of everyday language. Indeed, one might even, like Nietzsche, suggest that it betrays the presence of God within language ... [3]

 

 

II.

 

However, those of us who have long been anticipating the fall of because - by which we mean the overcoming of metaphysics, rather than the abolition of reason - are amused by a recent development in the English speaking world that has got some grammar nazis upset ... 

 

For it seems that because is now being used in an ironic manner by the young to convey a certain vagueness about the exact reasons for anything. Thus, whereas traditionally, because is a subordinating conjunction which connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other, now it's being used as a preposition (i.e. placed before nouns, verbs, adjectives, and interjections). 

 

And this new usage, not yet widespread but increasingly common - because social media - in some sense subverts the word's old grammatical function and authority, exposing the fact that we realise there's nothing we can really refer back to as a causal agent or fixed and final explanation of the world's chaos and mystery; i.e., that we know our rationale is often - like God - just a linguistic fiction that we hold on to because convenient and because comforting [4].   

 

As Megan Garber writes in The Atlantic, the word because hasn't fallen so much as exploded; it can now be used however the speaker chooses to use it, limited only by the confines of their own imagination: "So we get [...] people using 'because' not just to explain, but also to criticize, and sensationalize, and ironize [...]" [5]

 

 

 

III.     

 

So, what does all this signify exactly? That we're living in a post-Nietzschean (and post-Derridean) universe? Or that the Aeon of Horus has arrived as Aleister Crowley announced? 

Possibly. 

 

Or it could just mean that a generation who have grown up texting and tweeting are so lazy (and self-absorbed) that they can't be bothered to finish their thoughts and sentences, or waste time providing long and complex explanations: because emoji and the will to abbreviate ...?   

 

Notes

 

[1] The Killing Joke album What's THIS for ...! (1981) is one of the great post-punk albums and the opening track of Side A - 'The Fall of Because' - is a personal favourite. I'm assuming they took the title of the song from a line by Aleister Crowley (see note 2 below). Click here to listen to the 2005 digitally remastered version provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group.    

 

[2] Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (1909), II. 27. See also III. 20, where Crowley actually uses the phrase 'fall of because'.

      For those who don't know, this work - often referred to by enthusiasts with the Classical Latin title Liber AL vel Legis - is the central sacred text of Crowley's new religion (Thelema). According to Crowley, it was dictated to him by a supernatural being who called himself Aiwass, speaking through his new wife, Rose Edith Kelly, during their honeymoon in Egypt, in 1904. 

      With publication of this text, Crowley announced the arrival of a new phase in the spiritual evolution of mankind, to be known as the Aeon of Horus. The key teaching of the book - and this new age - is: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, meaning that adherents of Thelema should seek out and follow their own singular path in life (like a star). 

      As for what Crowley means by the fall of because, I suspect he's simply indicating that the Age of Horus is post-Enlightenment and thus open to the possibility that there are more things in heaven and earth than are understood within the framework of modern science, or Western reason.       

 

[3] See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, where he famously writes in the chapter entitled 'Reason in Philosophy' (5): "I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar ..."

       For Nietzsche, our faith in causal relationships (as a form of agency) is based upon a number of mistaken beliefs and correcting these four great errors will play a significant part in what he terms the revaluation of all values. 

      The reason, says Nietzsche, that we like to think events have causes (and actions have actors behind them), is because it's reassuring. Further, to trace something unknown (and thus threatening) back to something we can explain and make familiar is empowering. Essentially, we look to find ourselves in everything (even in God). See the chapter entitled 'The Four Great Errors', in Twilight of the Idols.   

   

[4] See note 3 above.

 

[5] Megan Garber, 'English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet', The Atlantic (19 Nov 2013): click here to read online. Readers interested in this topic might also like the post entitled 'Because and effect' (21 July 2014) by Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman on their Grammarphobia blog: click here.