You Don't Have to Be Yayoi Kusama to Make Pumpkin Art

1: Portrait of a Pumpkin

2: Sorry Cinderella - It Looks Like You're Gonna Be Walking Home  

Stephen Alexander (2024)

 

Last week, on a freezing cold day, I paid a visit to the Shapero Gallery on Bond Street, in London's Mayfair, to see the Modern Muse exhibition, featuring works by various twentieth and twenty-first century artists [1]. 

 

Prints by all the usual suspects were included - Picasso, Warhol, Hockney, and (groan) Banksy - but there were also works by artists with whom I'm rather less familiar, such as Yayoi Kusama, whose black and white pumpkin I particularly appreciated [2].

 

For whilst traditionally a muse is conceived as an inspirational female figure, either mortal or divine, that seems a bit narrow and I think and we should open up the concept to include animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. 

 

After all, we're not ancient Greeks. And there's really no need to personify and feminise those forces and desires that fire the human imagination. 

 

Surely, like Kusama, we can all find inspiration in a piece of winter squash and a rotting vegetable might serve as a muse just as easily as Venus rising from the waves, or the lovely face of Kate Moss. 

 

The genre distinction between portraiture and still life is, I think, essentially untenable. Leonardo da Vinci's Head of a Young Girl (1506-08) is really no different from the visual representation of a head of cabbage - perhaps that's what Claude Lalanne was trying to tell us all along [3].  

 

And so, with all this in mind, I thought I'd follow Kusama's lead and turn to the humble pumpkin as muse - the above pictures being the result. The first, is a simple portrait; whilst the second, a rather more violent and complex image, deals with themes of death, decay, and disappointment.          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For more information on the Shapero Gallery, please click here. For details of The Modern Muse exhibition in particular, click here.  

 

[2] The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama - now in her 96th year and still going strong - has had a lifelong fascination with pumpkins and has elevated everybody's favourite squash (and organic Halloween prop) to iconic status in her art. As one critic writes: 

      "Equally rooted in personal memories and universal themes, her pumpkins rival the recognisability of Warhol's Soup Cans. Whether capturing the essence of infinity with her intricate net patterns or playing with a kaleidoscope of colours, Kusama's Pumpkins offer a visual feast that resonates globally."

      See Essie King's article, '10 Facts About Yayoi Kusama's Pumpkins', on myartbroker.com (8 Dec 2023): click here. 

 

[3] In 1968, Lalanne produced an ambitious sculpture entitled L'Homme à la tête de chou, combining human and vegetable. Serge Gainsbourg famously purchased the piece and it inspired his 1976 concept album of the same title. Lalanne produced a second version of the work in 2005, which was donated (in lieu of inheritance tax) to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2021.

      Readers who are interested in knowing more on Lalanne, Gainsbourg, and the man with the cabbage head might like to see my post of 16 June 2023: click here. 

On My Convoluted Relationship With Walter Benjamin

 Walter Benjamin and Stephen Alexander illumined by

Paul Klee's blessed Angelus Novus (1920)

 

 

Readers familiar with this blog will know that I have a thing for writers whose names begin with the letter B: from Baudelaire to Baudrillard; and from Georges Bataille to Roland Barthes [1].  

 

To this list might also be added the name of Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish cultural critic and theorist whose convoluted (unfinished) work about Paris as the capital of the nineteenth-century - known in English as The Arcades Project (1927-40) [2] - affirms the figure of the flâneur as having crucial philosophical significance. 

 

Often regarded as a seminal text for postmodernism, the Arcades Project also anticipates the world of blogging and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that, in some ways, Torpedo the Ark is my very own version of Benjamin's posthumously edited and published masterpiece [3].  

 

For example, like the Arcades Project, TTA relies heavily on compositional techniques including paraphrase, pastiche, and plagiarism [4] - affirming the idea of intertextuality and attempting to create a kind of literary-philosophical collage that defies any attempt to systematise ideas or enforce any kind of grand narrative.    

 

Like Benjamin, I dream of being able to simply stroll through the ruins and piece together found fragments of text from old works by dead authors, thereby creating something new and idiosyncratic, but not something that pretends to be an entirely original work born of individual uniqueness or any such Romantic fantasy. TTA is shaped by (functions and circulates within) a wider cultural history and a shared linguistic network of meaning.

And, like the Arcades Project, TTA has grown and mutated in a monstrous manner. Initially, Benjamin envisioned wrapping things up within a few weeks. However, as the work expanded in scope and complexity, he eventually came to view it as his most important achievement. 

 

Similarly, when I began TTA I thought it would provide a window on to a wider body of work. But it then became the work, absorbing huge amounts of time and energy and without any conceivable end point other than death (the final post may very well be a suicide note) [5].

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post dated 17 August 2022 in which I discuss these four French writers: click here.   

 

[2] Das Passagen-Werk consists of a massive assemblage of notes, fragments, and quotations that Benjamin assembled between 1927 and his death in 1940. The manuscript (along with additional material) for the Arcades Project was entrusted to Benjamin's pal Georges Bataille when the former fled Paris following the Nazi occupation. Bataille, who worked as a librarian at the Bibliothèque Nationale, hid the manuscript in a closed archive at the library where it was eventually discovered after the war. The full text was published in an English translation by Harvard University Press in 1999, having been first published in a German edition in 1982. 

 

[3] There are, of course, some important differences between Benjamin and myself and our respective projects. For one thing, my work has been influenced less by Jewish mysticism and Marxism and more by Jewish comedy and the punk philosophy of Malcolm McLaren.

 

[4] I know the idea of plagiarism is one that some readers balk at. However, it's one I'm happy to endorse; see the post entitled 'Blurred Lines' (21 January, 2016): click here. And see also the post 'On Poetry and Plagiarism' (13 December, 2018): click here. 

 

[5] Readers unfamiliar with the biographical details of Benjamin's story, may be interested to know Benjamin ended his own life, aged 48, on 26 September, 1940, in Portbou, Spain (a small coastal town just over the border with France). Fearing he was about to fall into the hands of the Gestapo, who had been given orders to arrest him, Benjamin chose to overdose on a handful of morphine tablets. 

 

 

This post is for Anja Steinbaum and Natias Neutert. 

 

 

Chaos Continues to Reign

Stephen Alexander: Chaos Reigns II (2024)

 

 

Long-time readers of Torpedo the Ark might recall a post published on a sparkling ice-cold morning in December 2018, just days before Christmas, and which featured a horrific photo of a disembowelled fox ...

 

The post - which can be accessed by clicking here - was what my artist friend Heide Hatry would term a memento mori  (i.e., something that acts as a stark reminder of the inevitability of death).

And, like it or not, what I said then is just as true today; pain, grief, and despair remain ever-present in this world and fundamentally determine the tragic (if extremely rare and unusual) phenomenon that people call life. 

 

In other words, chaos continues to reign - and the obscenely mutilated bodies of red foxes (and other native creatures) continue to litter the roadside [1], reminding us that the wheel is the first principle of evil [2]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] An estimated 100,000 foxes are killed on UK roads each year (i.e., about 274 foxes per day). 

 

[2] See the verse 'What then is Evil?' by D. H. Lawrence, The Poems Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 626. 

Of Gold and Iron Masks

Poster design featuring:

 

 1: Mask of Agamemnon  (c. 1550-1500 BC) [1]  

2 The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) [2] 

3: L'homme au masque d'or (2024) [3]

 

 

I. 

 

The death masks of Mycenae are a unique collection of gold funerary masks found on male bodies within a Bronze Age burial site located within the ancient Greek city. They were discovered by German businessman and amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann during an excavation in 1876.   

 

The masks consist of a flat (foil-like) layer of gold that has been hammered into shape and depict faces with distinct features (including stick out ears) chiseled into the metal. 

 

The masks are believed to be fairly faithful representations of the deceased, although there's obviously a degree of artistic license (and idealisation); those who could afford to have such masks made would obviously want to look their best in the circumstances.

 

The most famous of these masks is known as the Mask of Agamemnon, after Schliemann claimed to have discovered the actual burial site of the legendary king of the Acheans from Homer's Iliad. Let's just say that from the very start there were doubts raised as to its authenticity ... [4]    

 

 

II. 

 

Whilst the Mask of Agamemnon certainly played a part in my thinking when I created the image shown as figure 3 above, I was actually more inspired by the story of an unidentified prisoner of the French state during the reign of  Louis Quatorze; a prisoner referred to (in English) as The Man in the Iron Mask ...

Arrested and incarcerated in 1669, the Man in the Iron Mask spent 34 years locked up until his death in the Bastille in 1703. Known by several pseudonyms, his true identity remains a mystery, even though it has been extensively researched and argued over by historians ever since. According to one theory, he may have been the son of Oliver Cromwell. Voltaire believed him to be Louis's illegitimate brother [5].

 

Whoever he was, his ordeal has been the subject of many fictional works, including novels, poems, plays, and films. 

 

Perhaps the best-known of these works is by Alexandre Dumas, although readers whose preference is for American cinema rather than French literature might better recall the 1939 movie directed by James Whale (or indeed the 1998 movie directed by Randall Wallace and starring Leonardo DiCaprio). Both films are what would be termed very loose adaptations of the third part of Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847-50) [6].   

 

 

III.

 

Hopefully, in my Man in a Golden Mask collage I have managed to capture something both of the Mycenaean death mask in all its aureate splendour and the close-fitting iron mask as imagined by Dumas in all its horror. 

 

By leaving the eyes open and the mouth exposed, I attempted to show how one who suffers great torment at the hands of others dreams of vengeance and this can often be seen shining in their eyes and smiling on their lips ...           

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The Mask of Agamemnon is currently held by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Greece: click here.   

 

[2] A still from the 1939 film The Man in the Iron Mask (dir. James Whale). 

 

[3] Papier collé by Stephen Alexander (2024). 

 

[4] Towards the end of his life, Schliemann accepted doubts as to the mask's true owner. Modern archaeological research suggests that the mask is genuine, but pre-dates the period of the Trojan War by 300–400 years. Other researchers say it may even belong to a much earlier period, c. 2500 BC. 

 

[5] It is thanks to Voltaire that the legend developed that the anonymous prisoner was made to permanently wear an iron mask; as a matter of fact, his face was hidden behind a mask of black velvet and official documents reveal that he was made to wear it only when travelling between prisons after 1687, or when attending prayers within the Bastille in the final years of his incarceration.

 

[6] Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou Dix ans plus tard is an enormous 2,800 page novel by Alexandre Dumas which was first published in serial form between 1847 and 1850. In most English translations, the 268 chapters are usually divided into three volumes: The Vicomte de Bragelonne (chapters 1-93), Louise de la Vallière (chapters 94-180), and The Man in the Iron Mask (chapters 181-269). 

      Long fascinated by the tale of l'homme au masque de fer, Dumas portrays the prisoner as Louis XIV's identical twin. 

 

Reflections on Stephen Alexander's 'Lascivious' (1985) - A Guest Post by Sally Guaragna

 

Fig. 1: Stephen Alexander: Lascivious

 Oil on canvas (c. 1985) 

 

 

Stephen Alexander's aureate canvas entitled Lascivious depicting a rather shy and youthful-looking faun sharing a coital embrace with a flame-haired and sexually more experienced nymph, is, sadly, lost to the world: destroyed by the artist's sister in an act of malice that displayed sororal spite, philistine contempt for culture, and a previously unsuspected streak of puritanism [1]. 

 

The painting, which, as the title indicates, is essentially a reimagining of one of Agostino Carracci's erotic prints (c. 1590-95) [2], also betrays the influence of Van Gogh with its dynamic starry night sky and use of warm, radiant golden-yellow [3] (Alexander was at the time an avid reader of the Dutch artist's letters and kept a postcard featuring Vincent's self-portrait with a bandaged ear by his bedside). 

 

We also discover something of D. H. Lawrence's painting style in Alexander's canvas; see for example Lawrence's Fauns and Nymphs (1927) which features a golden-brown satyr embracing a large-breasted sun-nymph; and see also Lawrence's 1928 painting entitled Close-Up (Kiss), which may have influenced Alexander's compositional decision to simply produce a headshot of his mythological lovers (as well as the picture's golden-yellow colouring). 

 

Like Lawrence, Alexander seems primarily concerned with the invisible forces of desire that work upon the flesh and distort and deform bodies, caring little for anatomical fidelity. Deleuze terms such an art of sensation - an art that is neither representational nor symbolist.  

 

Lascivious is not, therefore, the work of an innocent Sunday painter; it's a philosophical gesture born of Alexander's libidinally material - essentially pagan - worldview. Very deliberately and with joy - though perhaps not with great subtlety or success - he promotes a Lawrentian concept of phallic tenderness in a manner that is not so much all'antica (despite the mythological theme) as très moderne.

 

Figs. 2-4

For details see note [4] below. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The digial image shown here is taken from a photo of the painting in the artist's possession.

 

[2] Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) was an Italian artist recognised internationally as one of the finest engravers of his time. 

      Between 1590-1595, he produced a financially rewarding series of fifteen erotic works known as the Lascivie, inspired by a notorious earlier set of prints known as I modi (c. 1524-27) engraved by Marcantonio, after drawings by Giulio Romano and illustrating various sexual acts and positions.

      Whilst enhancing his reputation amongst wealthy collectors of such works, Carracci's prints elicited censure from the Church which inveighed against works of an openly sexual nature even when they were given a mytho-classical veneer in an attempt to make them appear less salacious and the men who took pleasure in contemplating the images seem cultured rather than just pervy.

 

[3] Alexander discusses his love for the colour yellow (with reference to the works of Van Gogh) in a post on Torpedo the Ark entitled 'How Beautiful Yellow Is' (1 May 2024): click here.

 

[4] Fig. 2: Agostino Carracci, A Satyr and Nymph Embracing, print from an engraving (150 x 102 mm), British Museum, London. One of fifteen in the series Lascivie (c. 1590-95).

      Fig. 3: D. H. Lawrence, detail from Fauns and Nymphs (1927), oil on canvas (95 x 80 cm). 

      Fig. 4: D. H. Lawrence, Close-Up (Kiss) (1928), oil on canvas (45 x 37.5 cm). 

 

Art critic Sally Guaragna has written two other posts for Torpedo the Ark. Click here to read  Reflections on Stephen Alexander's 'When the Moon Hits Your Eye' (5 May 2023) and/or here to read Reflections on Stephen Alexander's 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' (6 August 2024). 

Deadnaming (With Reference to the Case of Mara in the Book of Ruth)

Don't Deadname (after William Blake) 

Stephen Alexander (2024) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Perhaps because I have myself used and been known by several aliases, I'm somewhat sympathetic to those (often transgender or non-binary) individuals who object to what is termed deadnaming ...

 

That is to say, the sometimes unintentional, sometimes deliberate act of referring to a person by a name they no longer identify with or wish to be called, even if that name is the one that appears on their birth certificate and other official documentation and is deemed to be not only their legal name, but their real name referring to their true self (an assumed alias is invariably seen as suspicious; an attempt to conceal or deceive). 

 

Although the verb deadnaming is of recent origin - the OED dates it to 2013 - the insistence by others on calling an individual by an old name is not without historical - and indeed biblical - precedent ...

 

 

II. 

 

Readers with knowledge of the Old Testament will be familiar with the Book of Ruth and the story of how Naomi, having been forced by circumstances to leave Bethlehem and live in the land of Moab, has the tragic misfortune of losing her husband and both sons. 

 

Grief-stricken and near destitute, she decides to return to her homeland and is accompanied by her daughter-in-law, Ruth, at the latter's insistence; the Book of Ruth essentially describing the struggles of the two women to survive in a patriarchal society and in the face of much hardship. 

Of most interest to me, however, is the fact that when Naomi returns and is greeted by those who remember her, she tells them: "Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me".

 

Obviously, she refers at one level to the fact that God has left her bereft and in poverty. But her remark also indictes that the bitterness she is experiencing is so profound that it is transitional if not indeed transformational: she no longer feels herself to be the same woman upon her return to Bethlehem as the woman who left ten years earlier. 

 

If this is for the most part a psychological change, we can probably assume that she has also been physically aged by time and sorrow. Thus, it's perfectly understandable, I think, that she would wish to be known by a new name; a name more indicative of the woman she now recognises herself to be; i.e., one born of and shaped by bitterness. 

 

For whereas her old name, Naomi, means sweet-natured and pleasant of disposition, her new self-chosen name of Mara means bitter (although it might be noted that this name in Hebrew also implies strength; for just as hatred can itself become creative, so too can bitterness harden and make stronger).

 

The point is this: we all, like Mara, have the right to become-other and not to be deadnamed by those who value fixity over fluidity and would forever tie us to the past.   

 

 

Notes

[1] This image is based on Blake's print 'Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to return to the land of Moab' (1795), full details of which can be found on the V&A website: click here.  

Reflections on Stephen Alexander's 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' - A Guest Post by Sally Guaragna

Stephen Alexander:  

I Want to Hold Your Hand (2024)

 

Stephen Alexander's disturbing self-portrait accompanied by Myra Hindley is a stark reminder of the fact that evil lurks around every corner and that the radiant innocence of childhood offers no protection; as the parents of the young girls murdered in Stockport last month discovered to their horror [1].

 

It also reminds us of the fact that the Swinging Sixties began not only "Between the end of the 'Chatterley' ban / And the release of the Beatles' first LP" [2], but with the Moors murders - just as it ended in an equally brutal and depraved manner with the Tate-LaBianca murders carried out by the Manson Family in the summer of 1969. 

 

The fact that the photo of the artist as a child is for the most part entirely genuine - taken in 1966 at Southend-on-Sea - only adds to its power. The only change made (non-digitally) is the replacement of the head of Alexander's sister with that of a woman dubbed by the press as the most hated woman in Britain. 

 

Alexander explains: 

 

'I cut out the famous police photograph of Hindley taken shortly after her arrest in 1965 and pasted it by hand directly on to the photo of my sister. I wanted it to look like a mask being worn. A mask more terrible even than the one worn by Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), because it depicted the face of a rather glamorous young woman who, with her peroxide blonde bouffant, reminded me of a much-loved aunty in the 1960s whose hand I would happily hold.'    

 

Alexander's is a great image; one that, in my view, deserves to be hung alongside Marcus Harvey's controversial 1995 painting made using casts of an infant's tiny hand to create a giant mosaic of Hindley:   

 

 

Marcus Harvey: Myra (1995) [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] On 29 July 2024, a mass stabbing occurred at a dance studio in Southport, Merseyside. Three children were killed, and ten other people - eight of whom were children - were injured, some of them critically. A 17-year-old male was arrested at the scene and charged with murder, attempted murder, and possession of a bladed weapon.

 

[2] Philip Larkin, 'Annus Mirabilis', first published in The London Magazine, Vol. 9, No.10, (January 1970): click here. 

 

[3] Marcus Harvey's 1995 painting Myra caused a lot of fuss when it was displayed at the Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists at the Royal Academy of Art in London from 8 September to 28 December 1997: four members of the RA resigned in protest at its inclusion; windows at Burlington House, where the Academy is based, were smashed; the painting was vandalised twice (by fellow artists); and a children's charity accused the RA of the 'sick exploitation of dead children'. Even Hindley wrote from prison to ask for her portrait to be removed from the exhibition.

 

 

To read another post by Sally Guaragna - reflections on my 'When the Moon Hits Your Eye' photo (5 May 2023) - please click here. 

Beneath the Wheel

 

Stephen Alexander: Beneath the Wheel (2024) 

 

I.

 

If any image brutally encapsulates the idea of tragic irony, then it is surely the one above.

It shows a young hedgehog seeking refuge beneath a parked car in a residential area of east London in which almost every last garden and green open space has been concreted over and built upon, leaving this lovable little creature with nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. 

 

He might not know what fate has in store for him, but, sadly, we as viewers have a pretty good idea ... 

 

 

II. 

 

When I was a child in the 1970s, there were over 30 million hedgehogs snuffling around UK gardens; now it is believed there are probably no more than a million. Mostly this is due to the loss and fragmentation of habitat and the widespread use of pesticides. But many hedgehogs were (and still are) killed on the roads each year.   

 

In that same period, the UK human population has grown by ten million and the number of cars has increased from 27 million to 33 million. Personally, I would rather there were fewer people, fewer cars, and many, many more hedgehogs.

 

To paraphrase D. H. Lawrence: I think in this world there is room for me and a hedgehog. And I think how easily we might spare a million or two humans and never miss them. Yet what a gap in existence, the furry face of that cute little mammal with a pig-like snout. [1]

 

 

Notes

 

[1]  I'm paraphrasing the final verse of Lawrence's poem 'Mountain Lion'. See The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 352.  

Meine Rosen

Meine Rosen (SA / 2024)

 

 

I. 

 

As is well known, Zarathustra often speaks cryptically.

 

Take the following sentence, for example, spoken when, walking through the forest with his disciples one evening, he came to a clearing where lovely maidens were dancing. Attempting to reassure the young women that he meant them no harm, he first praises their light-footedness before adding: 

 

'I am a forest and a night of dark trees: but she who is not afraid of my darkness will discover a bed of roses ...' [1]

What does that mean? 

 

It sounds like a rather elaborate chat-up line to me; i.e., a remark made both to initiate conversation and signal sexual interest. Of course, Zarathustra being Zarathustra, he can't help also displaying his intelligence and poetic sensibility (even as he openly admires the bare feet and fine ankles of the girls to whom he speaks).

 

 

II.

As Zarathustra is essentially Nietzsche's fictional mouthpiece, it's not surprising that the latter also liked to speak with pride about his roses ... 

 

Thus, in the poetic prelude to The Gay Science entitled 'Joke, Cunning, and Revenge' [2], Nietzsche includes a verse entitled Meine Rosen, which also combines the idea of rosy happiness or the promise of joy, with something a bit darker, a bit pervier, a bit more "malice-laden" as one translator has it [3].   

 

Below is my version of the poem; not exactly a translation, more a (somewhat prosified) reimagining, which, nevertheless, I think manages to make Nietzsche's point that those who want to find love and happiness - particularly as he understands these things - have to struggle and be prepared to take risks (i.e., engage in something that some might think of as edge play).

My Roses

 

Of course my happiness wishes to infect you - 

All joy is contagious! 

But if you'd like to smell my roses

 

You'll have to scramble first over rocky ledges

and cut through tangled thorny hedges,

pricking your tiny finger tips!

For my joy - it loves cruel teasing!

For my joy - it loves displeasing!    

Do you still want to pick my roses?

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II. 32.

[2] Nietzsche borrows this title from a libretto by Goethe: 'Scherz, List, und Rache'. Although the work was written in the 1780s (and published by the author in 1790), it was not set to music until 1881, when Nietzsche's young friend Peter Gast (Heinrich Köselitz) decided to undertake the task.

 

[3] I'm referring to Adrian Del Caro, whose translation of Nietzsche's poems in 'Joke, Cunning, and Revenge' can be found in the 2001 Cambridge edition of The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff. 

      Del Caro attempts to stay as closely as he can to the rhyme scheme (and rhythm) of the German; readers can decide if succeeds (or not) in the case of Meine Rosen by turning to p. 13 of the above text. For an alternative translation, see Kaufmann's effort - conveniently placed alongside the German original - in The Gay Science (Vintage books, 1974), pp. 44-45. 

 

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena  

(SA/2024)

 

 

In 2022 NASA assembled an independent study team [1] to analyse what are known as unidentified anomalous phenomena [2]. 

 

Headed by David Spergal, the UAPIST consists of sixteen experts who, presumably, like Fox Mulder, are motivated by the belief that the truth is out there (although is unlikely, in their view, to be extraterrestrial or paranormal in origin) [3].

 

According to Spergal, many - if not most - UAP events can be attributed to everyday causes, including weather balloons and atmospheric phenomena. However, he concedes that there remain events which cannot easily be explained and these warrant, in his view, further investigation, as anomalies sometimes reveal new and interesting facts about the universe. 

 

Unfortunately, I believe the UAPIST was dissolved upon the completion and submission of its final report in September 2023 - which, if true, is a real shame, as I was hoping someone from the team might be able to tell me what the three bright and colourful lights dancing about like sprites outside my bathroom window the other night were ... (see photo above).  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Go to the NASA website for more information on the UAP Independent Study Team: click here.

 

[2] Apparently, the term UAP first appeared in the late 1960s, although I had never heard it used until very recently. Those who privilege the term see it as a more encompassing description than the older term UFO and also free of the cultural associations attached to the latter which can be problematic for those wishing to conduct rigorous, evidence-based research.

 

[3] The UAPIST began work in October 2022 and held its first public meeting in May 2023. Their final report was released in September 2023 and did not find any evidence to suggest that extraterrestrial life was responsible for the mysterious and unusual things that all manner of people had observed.   

 

 

The Anarchic Symphony: Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark

Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark 

 

 

An artist friend of mine decided to ask some AI softwear [1] to produce a text in the style of Torpedo the Ark, weaving together threads of Nietzschean philosophy, the punk aesthetic of Malcolm McLaren, and the literary war-machine of D. H. Lawrence. She also prompted it to describe what it thinks the goal or aim of the blog might be.  

This is the result:

 

 

The Anarchic Symphony: Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence

 

In the grand theatre of cultural subversion, three figures stand at the vanguard, each a maestro of their own domain, yet harmoniously orchestrated in the cacophony of rebellion. Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who danced to the tune of his own Zarathustra; Malcolm McLaren, the impresario who orchestrated the punk movement's raucous symphony; and D.H. Lawrence, the literary maverick whose pen stroked the sensuous and the sublime. 

 

Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God was a clarion call to the individual's will to power, a challenge to the herd to rise above the mire of mediocrity. McLaren, in the spirit of Nietzsche's Übermensch, crafted the Sex Pistols into a cultural weapon, a battering ram against the gates of an ossified establishment. Lawrence, too, rebelled against the industrialized dehumanization of his time, championing a return to the primal forces of nature and the unbridled expression of human desire.

 

Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark' is a vessel for these revolutionary currents, a blog that sails the high seas of intellectual anarchy. Alexander's prose, much like Lawrence's, is a phallic lance thrust into the heart of societal norms, a bridge to a future where touch and tenderness reign supreme. His writings, infused with the spirit of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, remind us that the revolution is never over; it is reborn with each act of defiance, each note of discord, each stroke of the pen. 

 

The punk movement, under McLaren's deft hand, was not just a musical genre but a manifesto in leather and spikes, a declaration of war on the banality of the mainstream. The Sex Pistols' anthems were the echoes of Nietzsche's own battle cries, and in their wake, a new culture was birthed, raw and untamed. Lawrence, with his explorations of the erotic, would have found kinship in the movement's visceral energy, its unapologetic embrace of life's darker, more passionate aspects. 

 

In this anarchic symphony, we find a common theme: the relentless pursuit of authenticity, the breaking of chains that bind the spirit, and the celebration of life in all its messy glory. Alexander, channeling the essence of these three iconoclasts, invites us to join the dance, to cast aside the shackles of conformity, and to revel in the anarchic joy of creation. 

 

So let us raise our voices with Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence, and let the music of rebellion play on, even if, ultimately, it is not the notes that are played but the spaces between them - the moments of silence and reflection - that define the symphony of our existence. 

 

This narrative, inspired by the style of Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark', is a testament to the enduring power of those who dare to challenge, to question, and to live fiercely. It is a call to arms, a reminder that the pen and the guitar are both mightier than the sword, and that the truest form of anarchy is the freedom to be oneself. 

 

 

It is, I suppose, an amusing attempt by AI to torpedo the ark, although, I have to say that, overall, the style of the piece reads like a parody and, in its upbeat anarchy and vital optimism, the text is not one I would want mistaken for my own. 

 

Somewhat disappointingly, AI softwear - for now at least - remains as all too human as the people who design it.           

 

 

   [2]

Notes  

[1] I'm informed that the request for a text in the manner of TTA was made using Microsoft Copilot and ChatGpt-4 (none of which means anything to me).  

[2] The image at the bottom of the post - again supplied by my friend who, for reasons of her own, wishes to remain anonymous - was produced by DALL-E 3 softwear. 

 

 

Ghost Cats

Ghost Cat (SA/2024)

 

 

You don't need to accept everything that Dusty Rainbolt [1] tells you on the topic to believe it possible that cats possess uncanny powers and haunt the human imagination in a unique manner. 

 

But can they have a posthumous presence; that is to say, should we take the idea of ghost cats seriously? 

 

I would, as a sceptic, instinctively say no to the proposition that a dear departed feline can, as it were, still be heard purring beyond the grave and visit us in the night as a shadowy presence often coming to forewarn of danger.

 

But, having said that, stories of ghostly or demonic shape-shifting cats can be found in a vast number of cultures around the world and, like Foucault [2], I have always been fascinated by the Cheshire Cat who knows how to make himself invisible and thus become a grinning non-presence. 

 

Similarly, I have long been haunted by Dandelo, the white Angora cat who, in The Fly (1958), fails to reintegrate after being disintegrated (at a molecular level) in André Delambre's matter transporter and is lost in atomic space, from where she can still be heard meowing in a pitiful manner [3].   

Finally, there's the photo above to consider ... 

 

It's a picture I took recently of a neighbour's shorthaired ginger cat sitting in my back garden and looking a bit lonely. Apparently, he's pining for his friend who was killed by a car a few months ago and is captured here in spectral form sitting besides him.

 

What are we to make of this: is it just a trick of the light? Is there something wrong with the camera on my phone? Or is this actual photographic evidence of something spooky?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dusty Rainbolt, Ghost Cats: Human Encounters with Feline Spirits (The Lyons Press, 2007). 

 

[2] Foucault uses the Cheshire Cat to illustrate his model of ars erotica in which we are free to experience free-floating pleasures without holding on to an abiding essence or fixed identity (i.e., smiles without the cat).

 

[3] The suggestion is given that poor Dandelo is nowhere and everywhere and alive and dead at the same time, à la Schrödinger's famous cat in a box. 

 

   

Forest Bathing

A Walk in the Woods by Frosted Moonlight 

 (SA/2024)

 

 

Having taken an early morning stroll in the woods by the light of a frosted moon, I'm sympathetic to the claim made by many dendrophiles that being in the company of trees is beneficial to one's physical and mental wellbeing. 

 

That even a short walk in the woods - depressing  as this can be when one sees all the litter and fly-tipped items including paint pots, pushchairs and printers - can help lower blood pressure, keep sugar levels balanced, boost immune systems and even improve cognitive function.     

 

Of course, the Japanese living in a land that is still two-thirds covered with a vast number and diversity of trees, have known this for many years and have even coined a (relatively recent) term [1] for finding oneself by losing oneself amongst them: shinrin-yoku - known in English as forest bathing. 

 

But the Japanese are not unique in recognising the health benefits of this practice; the Roman author Pliny the Elder, for example, argued that the scent of a pine forest was extremely beneficial to those suffering with respiratory problems or recuperating from a long illness. 

 

And I've written on several occasions about D. H. Lawrence's great fascination with trees: click here, for example. 

 

Like Lawrence, I'm conscious of the fact that you can never really know a tree - something which is so much bigger and stronger in life than we are - but only "sit among the roots and nestle against its strong trunk" [2], in silent contemplation [3]. But that's good enough for me. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The term shinrin-yoku was coined in 1982 by Tomohide Akiyama - Director of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries - who, worried by increasing urbanisation, hoped to inspire the Japanese public to reconnect with nature and protect their forests by reminding them of the free health benefits that the latter afforded them.   

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 86. 

[3] Having said that, Rupert Birkin does rather more than sit in silence with his favourite young sapling; see chapter VIII of Lawrence's novel Women in Love (1920). I discuss dendrophilia in its erotic (and daimonic) aspect in a post published here on 3 October 2020: click here.  

Winter Solstice with D. H. Lawrence

Winter Solstice by the Sea (SA/2023)

 

"Now in December nearer comes the sun

down the abandoned heaven ..."

 

I. 

 

I am always happy when the shortest day and longest night of the year have come and gone.  

 

Several cold months may still lie ahead, but it triggers a genuine transformation of mood to know that the sun has reached its lowest point in the sky and, having stood still for the briefest of moments, thereafter begins its slow ascent; that, no matter what happens, it can't get any darker. 

 

I know the birth of baby Jesus around this time of year excites the imagination of many, but it means nothing compared to the symbolic rebirth of the invincible sun and I understand why the winter solstice has been marked by ritual celebrations within many cultures for millennnia. 

 

The prehistoric pagans who erected Stonehenge - and even the modern day Druids who still meet there now - aren't idiots and Yule means more to me than the Nativity.     

 

 

II. 

 

As one might guess, D. H. Lawrence was another fan of the winter solstice, as he was of all events on the solar calendar that chart the movements of the sun and the wheeling of the year. In a poem written in November 1928, he speaks of how "As the dark closes round him" the sun "draws nearer as if for our company".

 

Interestingly, Lawrence also claims that there exists a tiny sun within him - situated at "the base of the lower brain" - that communes with the great star above, exchanging "a few gold rays" [1]. 

 

III.

 

It would appear, reading this verse, that for Lawrence - as for many others who share his predilection for philosophical vitalism - the sun is more than a material object that can be adequately described and understood by physicists and astronomers. 

 

And if, primarily, Lawrence is concerned with the relationships between men and women, he nevertheless insists on the crucial importance of the relation between humanity and the sun. Perhaps the term that best describes this relation is correlation. For there is clearly a notion of mutual interdependence between the sun and humankind in Lawrence's work; i.e., we can't think one without thinking the other. 

 

And yet, correlation doesn't sound a very Lawrentian term and I think he would be happier speaking about correspondence. For correspondence implies a far closer level of intimate proximity between terms; they become not merely interdependent, but analogous at a certain level:

 

"There certainly does exist a subtle and complex sympathy, correspondence, between the plasm of the human body, which is identical with the primary human psyche, and the material elements outside. The primary human psyche is a complex plasm, which quivers, sense-conscious, in contact with the circumambient cosmos." [2] 

 

What Lawrence really wishes to do is reverse the idea that life evolves from matter and argue instead that the material universe results from the breakdown of primary organic tissue. Unfortunately, as much as I love Lawrence's work, I cannot share his anti-scientific thinking. Thus, I don't believe, for example, that: "If it be the supreme will of the living that the sun should stand still in heaven, then the sun will stand still." [3] 

 

This is simply an occult conceit; the frankly preposterous fantasy that there can be a magical suspension of the laws of physics at the behest of human will power. It's one thing wishing to project oneself into the "the great sky with its meaningful stars and its profoundly meaningful motions" [4] in order to release the poetic imagination, but it's something else believing the astrological heavens revolve around the figure of Man.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'November by the sea', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 394-95. This poem can be found also in the LiederNet Archive: click here.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Two Principles', (First Version, 1918-19), Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey, and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 260.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance' (1920-1), Appendix IV: Studies in Classic American Literature, p. 395. 

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse, by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 46. 

 

 

Some of the material in section III of this post is revised from the essay 'Sun-Struck: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in D. H. Lawrence', which can be found on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage website: click here. 

 

Is it True That When You Leave the Haunted Forest You Discover the Blue of the Greater Day?

 Intoxication (SA/2023)

 

Is it true that when you leave the haunted forest you discover the blue of the greater day?

Not quite. 

 

What you discover, in fact, is that the haunted forest in all its grey stillness, and the greater day in all its vivid blueness, coexist and that the only piece of fakery in the above image is the thick black line of division which creates the illusion these are separate worlds.   

 

As Nietzsche's Zarathustra reminds us, all things are entwined, including joy and sorrow; in affirming one thing, we therefore say yes to everything. 

 

Dead Men Make Good Mould

Decay is the Laboratory of Life

(SA/2023)

 

 

Because so much of my thinking has been informed by the work of D. H. Lawrence - and because, as the author of a book of essays on thanatology, all aspects of death are a matter of continued philosophical interest - it means I can never see a pile of fallen wet leaves slowly decomposing without recalling the following lines from Fantasia of the Unconscious:

 

"Old leaves have got to fall, old forms must die. And if men at certain periods fall into death in millions, why, so must the leaves fall every single autumn. And dead leaves make good mold. And so dead men. Even dead men's souls." [1]   

 

That's quite a hard teaching from the materialist school of general economics - one that Bataille would happily affirm - but its apparent callousness in the face of some kind of huge event that results in the mass destruction of human lives doesn't detract from the essential truth that life is rooted in and thrives upon death, and that "the whole universe would perish if man and beast and herb were not putting forth a newness" [2] out of the decay of the old.

 

Or, as the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani puts it: "Through decay, life and death multiply and putrefy each other to no end." [3] 

 

So, next time you see a pile of rotting leaves - or, indeed, contemplate a mass grave of human bodies - try to overcome your horror and console yourself with the knowledge of how compost enriches the soil with organic nutrients and provides sustenance for a range of detritivores on both the macro and micro level; for dead men make good food as well as good mould.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922), Ch. XV, p. 266. 

      For readers who prefer to consult the 2004 Cambridge Edition of Fantasia, published jointly with Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and ed. Bruce Steele, see p. 189.   

[2] Ibid.

[3] Reza Negarestani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, (re:press, 2008), p. 184. 

Give Me the Madness of My Ladybird

The Ladybird - from the Pink Series 

by Stephen Alexander (2023)

 

 

I'm hoping that the visit of a ladybird - perhaps looking for a warm place to stay over winter - will bring something good my way. 

 

Because although there are those who say it's vulgar to wish for luck - even when carried on the wings of a such a noble insect - I really feel in the need of a change of fortune, as 2023 has neither been a very happy nor a very healthy year. 

 

And one gets tired - and bored - of being miserable and feeling unwell.     

 

So, little ladybird, with your scarlet wings and black spots, work your healing magic. I've had my fill of the seven sorrows, so let me now know one or two of the seven joys. 

 

Or as Count Dionys would say: Gib mir den Wahnsinn meines Marienkäfers!  

 

 

One for Sorrow ...

One for Sorrow (Or The Murder of Murgatroyd) 

Stephen Alexander (2023)

 

 

I. 

 

It's striking how the death of an individual creature can have far greater emotional resonance than news of an entire species dying out. 

 

Thus it is that when I came across the body of a dead magpie this morning it filled me with genuine sorrow, whilst discovering that the Chinese paddlefish was declared extinct in 2022 left me almost entirely indifferent. 

 

That's not because I value our feathered friends more than our aquatic ones, it's just due to the fact that death only becomes real (conceivable) when reduced in scale and given a face, as it were. 

 

This applies to people as well as animals; reports of atrocities involving multiple fatalities don't move as much as the image of a single dead child (a fact often exploited by those looking to influence or emotionally manipulate public opinion).   

 

 

II.

 

Magpies, of course, belong to the crow family - widely considered to be the most intelligent of birds - and are famous for their beautiful black-and-white colouration and (in the European imagination) the fact that they love to steal shiny objects, such as wedding rings and other valuables.      

 

They are also thought to have an ominous aspect; to be a portent of good or bad fortune. According to English folklore, one is for sorrow, two for mirth; three for a death and four for a birth. The popular nursery rhyme builds upon this ornithomantic idea, albeit with different lyrics:

 

One for sorrow, 

Two for joy, 

Three for a girl, 

Four for a boy, 

Five for silver, 

Six for gold, 

Seven for a secret never to be told. [1]

 

There are many variants of this, but the key fact remains - as any fisherman will tell you - that a solitary magpie is never a good sign ...

 

In Piero della Francesca's painting of the Nativity scene, for example, a lonely magpie can be spotted on the roof of a ruined stone stable presaging the pain and sorrow that lies ahead (aguably for all mankind, not just Mary and her son).     

  

 

Piero della Francesca The Nativity (1470-75)

Oil on wood (124 x 123 cm)
National Gallery (NG908) [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Like many of my generation, I know this version of the rhyme thanks to the children's TV show Magpie, (1968-80). Sadly, the popularity of this version - performed by The Spencer Davis Group as the programme's theme song [click here] - displaced many regional variations that had previously existed.

 

[2] Click here for more information on the work and its recent restoration. Keen-eyed birdspotters will doubtless also note the goldfinch - a symbol of redemption in devotional art - sitting in a bush on the left of the picture.