CRA5 H26 (A Brief Note on Serendipity, Synchronicity, and Coincidence)

CRA5 H26 (SA/2026)

 

'I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash ...' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

How odd that after reading a k-punk post discussing J. G. Ballard's novel Crash (1973) - a post in which Fisher describes the work as deeply indebted to the imagery of Helmut Newton and "a perverse counterpart to Kant's kingdom of ends" [2] - I should go for a walk and immediately encounter the above vehicle ...

 

Some might say this is serendipitous; others may see it as evidence of synchronicity; personally, however, I think the term coincidence covers it. 

 

But it's worth perhaps briefly considering these three distinct concepts separated by ideas of agency, meaning, and causality ...

 

 

II.

   

Serendipity involves the random occurrence of fortunate or pleasant events; i.e., unintentionally coming across things or finding oneself in unexpected situations that have some kind of positive value. I suppose we might see it as an elevated form of good luck and as something that allows happy accidents to become opportunities. 

 

The term was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, inspired by the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip (1557). For philosophers, serendipity requires sagacity - i.e., the active intelligence to recognise the value of an unexpected finding. 

 

Synchronicity is a bit spookier and refers to an acausal connecting principle bridging internal and external events; i.e., human psychology and the material world. Jung, who coined the term, described events that are connected in this rather special way as meaningful coincidences. For those who love to grant significance and structure to the universe and believe that their dreams really can come true, synchronicity is not only explanatory but evidence that these things exist. 

 

Coincidence, meanwhile, is purely a statistical phenomenon with nothing spooky, meaningful, or necessarily fortunate about it. It's all about probability, baby! And the Law of Truly Large Numbers, which teaches that if enough independent variables interact over time, highly improbable intersections will occur purely by chance, carrying no inherent meaning or cosmic intent.

 

To put all that in a nutshell: while all three concepts involve intersecting timelines, serendipity requires you to be on the ball; synchronicity requires you to be prone to mysticism; and to understand the nature of coincidence requires an ability to do the math.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] J. G. Ballard, 'What I Believe', a prose poem originally published in the French magazine Science Fiction, Issue 1 (Jan 1984): click here to read on BJA Samuel's website.    

 

[2] Mark Fisher, 'let me be your fantasy', posted on his k-punk blog on 27/08/2006, and included in k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004 - 2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (Repeater Books, 2018), pp. 44-48. The line quoted from is on p. 47. 

 

 

Torpedo the Ark Goes k-punk (1)

 Mark Fisher: k-punk 

(Repeater Books, 2018) [a]

 

I started the blog because it seemed like a space in which to maintain 

a kind of discourse that had all but died out, with what I think are 

appalling cultural and political consequences. - k-punk (2005)  

 

 

I. 

 

According to Simon Reynolds, 'Mark Fisher's k-punk blogs were required reading for a generation' [b].  

 

I pretty much belong to that generation: born in the '60s; raised in the '70s; graduating in the 1980s [c]. However, I must confess to having never read a word written by Fisher until relatively recently. This despite the fact that he and I were both in the philosophy department at Warwick as doctoral students in the 1990s, and shared many of the same obsessions and points of reference.      

 

I suppose, post-Warwick, I had my own projects to keep me occupied. I certainly had nothing to do with the blogosphere until November 2012, when the Little Greek set up Torpedo the Ark and suggested I might enjoy publishing posts more than merely scribbling private notes in writing pads. She was right, of course; as the 2,700 or so posts published since that date testify.    

 

Still, better late than never ... And having just bought a copy of k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004 - 2016) - a big, fat book containing many of the posts from his seminal blog - I now hope to discover for myself the "elegance and reach of Fisher's writing, the evangelical urgency and caustic critique that seared through his rapid-fire communiques" [d].

 

I suspect the philosophically-informed posts will interest me more than the ones on pop music and film. I'm particularly keen to investigate how Fisher moves from being a Ccru-inspired accelerationist who exalted "the border-dissolving flows of capital and scorned socialism as a decrepit early 20th-century relic" [e] to becoming such an absolute opponent of neoliberalism and a pioneer of acid communism.  

 

This post, however, is merely setting the stage for such an investigation and future posts will engage more fully with Fisher in his k-punk alias. For when I say the k-punk book is a big, fat book, I mean exactly that; if you include the index, it's 750 pages long and so, obviously, I can't be expected to perform the kind of close reading that I recently subjected Fisher's Capitalist Realism (2009) to.  

 

It took me four days to read through the less than ninety pages of that book and write a five-thousand-word, three-part post. At that rate, it would take me over a month to work line-by-line through K-punk and, frankly, as much as Fisher is a fascinating writer, I don't have that level of interest, stamina, or dedication (certainly not when the sun is shining). 

 

What's more, it would be disrespectful to Fisher to pretend that I could provide a definitive overview or, worse, place his thinking in a nutshell. So, all I'll do - for now at least - is simply share some thoughts on the foreword by Simon Reynolds and the introduction by the book's editor, Darren Ambrose. 

 

 

II.

 

I can only hope that, when I'm dead, I have a friend like Simon Reynolds to say something kind and insightful about me and my work. Clearly, the latter misses his friend and the chance to converse with him on a wide range of subjects: 

 

"There are many days when I wonder what Mark would say about this or that [...] the clarity he could bring to almost anything [...] I miss Mark's mind. It's a lonely feeling." (7)    

 

I was pleased to be reminded that Fisher's worldview - certainly in the days when he belonged to the band D-Generation - was shaped by punk and a love-hate relationship with Englishness. That makes it easier for me to feel affection for Fisher. As does the fact that he so effectively dissolved the distinction between popular culture and high art, as well as that between philosophy, politics and literature: 

 

"Often, and most crucially, Mark wrote about many - sometimes all - of these things at the same time. Making connections across far-flung fields, zooming in for vivid attention to aesthetic particulars and zooming out again to the widest possible scope [...]" (2) 

    

However, I'm not quite so comfortable with the idea that he had a total vision and that his ideas were heading somewhere; that a "gigantic edifice of thought was in the process of construction" (3). But we can let Fisher's modernist ambitions pass for the moment, even if it's a crucial point of difference between the two of us: Fisher the grand architect and systematiser; me a believer in the ruins and advocate of chaos.  

 

He and I may share a certain writing style - "rigorous and deeply informed" (3), but non-academic. But whereas the "urgency in Mark's prose came from his faith that words really could change things" (3), I have no such faith (as a nihilist, I have little time for progressive optimism). 

 

And whilst Fisher wants to make "everything feel more meaningful, supercharged with significance" (3), I want to void everything of meaning and hollow out all substance and significance.  

 

In other words, despite a certain degree of affection, I wouldn't say Fisher and I were comrades-in-arms. And, despite some uncanny similarities, I wouldn't say we were brothers under the skin. I think he and I would have been, at best, respectful frenemies had we ever known one another [g]. 

  

That said, I very much look forward to reading his k-punk posts to see if they're as provocatively brilliant and as fizzing with fervour as Reynolds insists. And I'll endeavour to read them in a good spirit, although, as Reynolds points out, there's always an undercurrent of competition between writers and "severity towards 'the opposition' is the mark of seriousness, a sign that something is at stake and that differences are worth fighting over" (5) [h].

 

 

III. 

 

I think my ambivalence toward Fisher is, then, already pretty clear ... 

 

On the one hand, I admire the fact that he was not - and never wanted to be - "a conventional academic writer, theorist or critic" (9); that his writing was, as Darren Ambrose says, "too abrasive, polemical, lucid, unsentimental, personal, insightful and compelling for that" (9). 

 

But, on the other hand, I am far more sympathetic to the postmodernism that a great deal of his writing was "undertaken in vehement opposition to" (9) [i]. I prefer irony to sincerity and would wish to curb Fisher's enthusiasm and grand ambition to invent the future and reshape human experience. I mean, c'mon, Mark: wtf d'you think you are? (You're not the Messiah, you're just a very clever boy.)       

 

I may say I wish to torpedo the ark, but I'm aware that I'm never going to be able to sink the bloody thing with just a few smart lines written in a short post; mostly, one blogs so as to be able to explore one's own obsessions and refine one's own writing style - as is recognised by Ambrose, with reference to Fisher:

 

"k-punk posts encapsulated an intellectual moment of reflection on the world: they are responsive, immediate, and provide an affectively charged perspective." (10)

 

But they're not going to bring about the Revolution or provide a path to Utopia. Ambrose may find in Fisher's work "reasons for continuing, against the odds, to hope for an alternative to the dystopian present" (11), but I'll be happy if the k-punk posts occasionally provide an amusing idea or clever turn of phrase. 

 

A bit like Nietzsche's Will to Power, surely Fisher's blog remains first and foremost a space for thinking the thought from outside - nothing else. That is to say, thinking a type of thought that stands in contrast to the interiority of most philosophical reflection and the positivity of our scientific knowledge; a type of thought that we find not in mysticism, but in that hybrid genre known as theory-fiction.

 

As Ambrose writes, Fisher had a strong commitment to "fugitive discourses which have been legitimated by neither the official channels of the establishment [...] or traditional forms of publishing" (11). That, again, is something on which he and I are in accord and whilst Fisher's loyalty is to Spinoza and Kafka - mine more to Nietzsche and Lawrence - we agree that "it was the greatest pity in the world, when philosophy and fiction got split" [i].   

 

If anyone wants to find an alternative to capitalist realism, then let them read the above four authors; or let them read k-punk and/or Torpedo the Ark. You may not find any traces of acid communism in the latter [j], but there's a delicious poison (or pharmakon) seepig throughout (i.e., the playful production of différance).    

   

I said earlier that, after I'm dead, I hope I have as loyal a friend as Reynolds to say something kind and insightful about me and my work. But I hope also that TTA finds a posthumous editor as skilled and sensitive as Darren Ambrose, who does an excellent job in assembling Fisher's writings. 

 

If his aim was to "provide as comprehensive a picture as possible of the blog [...] by selecting pieces that reflect both its eclectic content, its theoretical pluralism and most of all its remarkable consistency" (15), then, from what I've read so far whilst flicking through the hundreds of pages, I think he's achieved that. 

 

Hopefully, Ambrose also manages to retain a sense of the posts immediacy and informality, despite the fact that the work has been abstracted from its original format and the very specific context of the blog. I guess I'm about to find out ...

  

  

Notes

 

[a] This work was edited by Darren Ambrose and has a Foreword by Simon Reynolds. All page references given in the post refer to this 2018 edition published by Repeater Books.    

 

[b] This was the title of a piece written shortly after Fisher's suicide and published in The Guardian (18 Jan 2017): click here to read online; or here to listen to an audio version on YouTube. 

 

[c] Whilst Fisher, born in July '68, was pure Gen X, I belong more to the tail end of the Boomers (or what some sociologists now call Generation Jones), having been born in 1963 (the same year as Simon Reynolds). This gives Fisher and myself slightly different perspectives and means, for example, whilst I experienced punk in real-time as a 14-year-old adolescent, Fisher came to it retrospectively via the hybrid forms of post-punk. 

 

[d] Simon Reynolds, 'Mark Fisher's k-punk blogs were required reading for a generation', see link above. 

[e] Ibid. 

 

[f] As mentioned, Fisher and I remained complete strangers to one another at Warwick and whilst he was a core member of the Ccru, I couldn't make head-or-tail of the wilfully hermetic publication ***collapse, even though I once contributed some artwork to it and was on amiable terms with Nick Land, who oversaw my progress as a doctoral student in the philosophy department, under Keith Ansell-Pearson's supervision.

 

[g] I agree with Reynolds that "it is this negative capacity - the strength of will to discredit and discard" (5) that keeps culture and criticism alive; "not wishy-washy tolerance and anything goes positivity" (5). As a philosopher, nothing is more important than to access nihilation. 

 

[h] Ambrose praises Fisher for his "exemplary antipathy and negativity towards PoMo hyper-ironic posturing" - see his introduction, k-punk (2018), p. 12.   

 

[i] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Future of the Novel', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 154.    

 

[j] Acid Communism was the proposed title for a book Fisher was working on at the time of his death (by suicide) in 2017. According to the unfinished introduction, the promise of such a post-capitalist ideology was "a new humanity, a new seeing, a new thinking, a new loving" (p. 687) - that's not quite what's on offer on Torpedo the Ark ...  

 

 

This is essentially just an introductory post to a new series of posts inspired by Fisher's writings during the period 2004 - 2016, to be published intermittently over the coming months (that's the plan at least).  

 

Regular readers will be aware that I have previously discussed Fisher's three published works - Capitalist Realism (2009), Ghosts of My Life (2014), and The Weird and the Eerie (2016) - on Torpedo the Ark in multi-part posts.

 

    

On Being (and Not Being) Leonard Zelig

Stephen Alexander and Leonard Zelig 

(SA/2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Zelig (1983) may not be my favourite Woody Allen movie, but it's the one that philosophically most interests and also the film that most closely resonates with my own experiences. 

 

The title character, Leonard Zelig [1], played by Allen - who also wrote and directed the movie - is, paradoxically, a man without any fixed character or distinguishing features; someone who, out of a pathological desire to fit in and be liked, takes on the personal traits of those people around him. 

 

Our friends the psychologists refer to this with the term environmental dependency syndrome - although some see it as an actual disorder that compromises individuation and prevents personal autonomy [2].  

 

Made as a fictional documentary, Zelig uses archival footage, faux-newsreels, and interviews with real-life intellectuals - including Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow and Bruno Bettelheim - to chronicle the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig in the 1920s and '30s, humorously exploring themes of identity, conformity, and celebrity. 

 

It's an almost flawless film and certainly far more than the one-joke technical novelty that some critics dismissed it as at the time. To enjoy a short theatrical teaser trailer, click here.  

 

 

II. 

 

Rewatching Allen's film, it struck me that, in some ways, I'm a bit Zelig-like, in that I have the knack for being at the right time and place and of appearing to fit in, even while secretly remaining on the outside of events and somewhat indifferent to what others think of me. 

 

For unlike Zelig, I don't need to be loved; I just need to be close enough (and invisible enough) to watch the chaos unfold; more an amused observer rather than an active participant or paid-up member of an established scene.  

 

 

III.

 

For example, when at Charisma Records in 1984-85, I was both employed and not-employed; at the heart of the music business whilst never really belonging. I hadn't applied for a job in the press office and had no ambitions of building a career. 

 

Rather, I just found myself placed there thanks to the machinations of Malcolm McLaren who wanted me to act as a mole, letting him know what was happening behind the scenes during a very turbulent period when the Virgin shark was in the process of digesting Charisma, having swallowed the label in 1983.     

 

Then, in the 1990s, whilst doing doctoral research at Warwick University, I was both a member of the philosophy department and not quite part of it. Registered as a part-time student, I was based in London rather than resident on campus or living nearby. I was also co-supervised by a professor in the English department and that made me a bit suspect to some in the philosophy department.

 

I knew (and quite liked) Nick Land and even produced some artwork for the magazine Collapse at his invitation, but, again, was never really one of Nick's gang or involved with the CCRU as they accelerated off into the future.        

 

Finally, and by way of another example, between 2004-08, I spent a good deal of time at Treadwell's, in Covent Garden, seemingly a key figure on the pagan witchcraft scene, presenting over thirty talks at the store during this period on subjects ranging from thanatology to zoophilia - as noted by Gary Lachman in an article for the Independent [3].    

 

But, once more, despite my ability to look at home in an esoteric environment, I always felt like an enemy within (just a little bit too sceptical, too cynical, and too insincere to ever really belong).   

 

IV. 

 

In conclusion: I am and I am not Leonard Zelig. 

 

Whilst he transforms physically to fit in, I'm more of an intellectual chameleon: in other words, he has no fixed look; I have no fixed ideas. 

 

In our own ways, however, we both haunt cultural history by being everywhere and nowhere at once, reflecting the mood and the madness of the times. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] The name Zelig is Yiddish of Germanic origin, meaning 'blessed' or 'happy' and has historically been associated with individuals considered to be favoured by a higher power.

 

[2] EDS is often caused by frontal lobe damage, often resulting from strokes, tumours, or degenerative diseases like dementia. Those with the condition not only copy the gestures and mannerisms of others, but also often use objects inappropriately; unable to resist the impulse to interact with their environment. Such behaviour, as one might imagine, can lead to awkward social situations and, in severe cases, can have serious consequences. 

 

[3] See Gary Lachman, 'Pagan pages: One bookshop owner is summoning all sorts to her supernatural salons', Independent (16 September 2007): click here. 

 

    

In Defence of My Essay on D. H. Lawrence's Dendrophilia

Illustration by Efrat Dahan

behance.net

 

 

I. 

 

An academic journal [1] has rejected the following short essay:

 

 

On D. H. Lawrence's Dendrophilia 

 

In an attempt to move beyond established parameters, this short essay examines the perverse materiality of Lawrence's relationship with the botanical world. It affirms dendrophilia not merely as a form of sexual deviance, but as a formal mechanism through which Lawrence facilitates amorous contact with the otherness of the arboreal environment. 

      Lawrence is often situated within the paradigms of vitalism and panpsychism. But such taxonomies often obfuscate the more radical and disturbing dimensions of his work. For far beyond the therapeutic frameworks of nature-immersion and forest bathing, Lawrence delineates a queer ontology of compulsion and, in this context, the tree transcends its status as a mimetic symbol of life to become a literal and figurative object of desire. As a nonhuman entity, its resinous allure facilitates a form of sexual communion that systematically transgresses heteronormative boundaries. 

      In the pornographic imagination, 'wood' is frequently employed as a crude metonym for male arousal. Lawrence, however, specifically via the figure of Rupert Birkin, reclaims the term's material density. Birkin's forest delirium in chapter VIII of Women in Love serves as a seminal text for Lawrentian dendrophilia, characterized by the categorical rejection of human intimacy in favour of a birch tree's tactile specificity; "its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges" (WL 107). 

      This represents a more radical eroticism than the mere instrumentalisation of nature seen, for example, in Fortune and Wells's novel A Melon for Ecstasy (1971). Whereas the protagonist of the latter, Humphrey Mackevoy, requires the artificial modification of the botanical body to simulate human anatomy, Birkin seeks a communion predicated on the tree's alien nature. In other words, Lawrence eschews the anthropomorphic impulse that would reduce the tree to a vaginal substitute; instead, he insists on the tree as an autonomous object-in-itself. Birkin, the amorous male subject, does not seek to master the natural environment, but to be penetrated by its "raw earth-power" (MM 159) and to deposit his seed in the "folds of the delicious fresh growing leaves" (WL 108). This is a sexual communion defined not merely by tenderness, but by a deadly serious longing for ecstatic, inhuman contact and involves violent struggle as much as sensual delight. 

      The specific parameters of Lawrentian dendrophilia are further elucidated through his visceral repudiation of Ben Hecht's Fantazius Mallare (1922). For despite this work's controversial reputation and Wallace Smith's explicit illustrations of a man enjoying coition with a tree, Lawrence dismissed the novel as "crass" and "strained" (IR 215). His critique was not born of moral prudery, but from a fundamental ontological divergence: Lawrence argued that Smith failed because, unlike Beardsley, he lacked a sense of malicious irony; "to be really wicked he'd see that even a tree has its own daimon, and a man might lie with the daimon of a tree" (IR 215). 

      In other words, Lawrence's aversion to Smith's artwork again stemmed from its reductive anthropomorphism. By imposing a distinctly all-too-human female form on the tree, Smith transposed a transgressive encounter into a tedious heteronormative cliché. For Lawrence, the erotic charge of the tree resides exclusively in its non-humanity. To "nestle against its strong trunk" (PFU 86) is to engage with an object that is "fierce and bristling" (MM 158), whose "root-lust" (PFU 86) does not mirror human emotion but rather challenges the human subject to reorganise their life in relation to the tree's own onto-botanical reality. 

      This erotic fascination is grounded in a form of object imperative, wherein Lawrence frames his encounter with an American pine, for example, not as a romanticised union, but as a meeting of two lives that "cross one another, unknowingly" (MM 158). This facilitates a materialist union; "the tree’s life penetrates my life, and my life, the tree's" (MM 158). 

      Lawrence's prose adopts an increasingly somatic register when describing this interaction - one which Rupert Birkin describes as a "marriage" (WL 108). In 'Pan in America', he speaks of "shivers of energy" crossing his "living plasm" (MM 158), suggesting a biological and erotic osmosis where the man becomes "a degree more like unto the tree" (MM 159). The "piney sweetness is rousing and defiant" and the "noise of the needles is keen with aeons of sharpness" (MM 158). This is not the language of pastoral bliss; it is the language of a "primitive savageness" (MM 159) that Lawrence seems to find particularly stimulating. To borrow Graham Harman's concept of the withdrawn but irresistible object, the tree's "resinous erectness" (MM 159) acts as a black sun, radiating a gravitational force that holds birds, beasts and dendrophiles in its orbit. 

      Lawrence, then, moves beyond botanical observation or even a chaste form of tree worship, activating "doors of receptivity" that allow the "relentlessness of roots" (MM 159) to fundamentally restructure the internal architecture of human being. His dendrophilia ultimately points toward a perverse and pantheistic sensuality that complicates the traditional boundaries of religious and erotic experience. Lawrence's desire to venerate arboreal being is inseparable from his (Birkinesque) desire to nakedly rub against young fir-trees that "beat his loins with their clusters of soft-sharp needles" (WL 107), etc. 

      By situating this engagement beyond the historical paradigms of domestic or recreational intimacy, Lawrence effectively posits a third category of desire: the pursuit of bliss via the non-human. Rejecting, as mentioned earlier, the mimetic reductions of the artificial vagina, Lawrence reconfigures the tree as a site of profound paraphilic contact. This vision moves sex beyond the procreative or banally pleasurable, allowing readers to conceive of his phallic philosophy as a passionate ontological encounter with responsive vegetation. [2]

 

 

For me, this decision taken by the editor on the advice of two anonymous reviewers [3], is disappointing to say the least; as is the accusation that my text lacks nuance, misunderstands Lawrence's language, and fails to see that his dendrophilia is actually just a repressed expression of same-sex desire.  

 

Of course, rejection is all part of the game and, ultimately, every writer has to accept this. However, I'd like to offer a modest (but robust) defence of the essay and attempt to explain some of its finer theoretical points; not by way of launching a formal appeal or seeking the support of someone to intervene on my behalf, but more as a piece of rhetorical pushback (hopefully not too soured with grape juice).  

 

 

II. 

 

Essentially, the thousand-word text was an attempt to make an original and provocative contribution that veers away from the cosy and conventional literary traditions of Lawrence scholarship - such as vitalism or pastoralism - and engages with the visceral, transgressive character of his prose. The essay also aimed to subvert the green readings that would place Lawrence's work within a network of environmental moralism; by boldly reframing Lawrence's relationship to trees as paraphilic, we move the conversation from eco-mysticism to perverse materialism.  

 

And by making a clear distinction between the instrumentalisation of nature and Lawrence's object-eroticism, suggesting that the tree's otherness is the source of Birkin's desire, the essay aligns Lawrence with recent developments in European philosophy, thereby disrupting the tired heteronormative/homoerotic binary that dominates Lawrence studies. It suggests a queer ontology where the human/non-human boundary is the primary site of sexual tension. 

 

Further, the work - if I do say so myself - displays a certain degree of linguistic and critical wit, uniquely connecting well-known Lawrentian texts, like Women in Love, with more obscure cultural references - such as Fantazius Mallare and A Melon for Ecstasy - as well as Graham Harman's philosophy, thus providing a rigorous intellectual framework for what might otherwise be dismissed as an eccentric reading. 

 

 

III. 

 

Ultimately, of course, the reviewers' rejection stems from a fundamental clash between my object-oriented reading of Lawrence's perverse materialism and their traditional humanist framework. It's not that they fail to understand the work; rather, they understand it all too well - and do not like it. And so they fall back on a gatekeeping strategy that reinforces established biographical and linguistic nuances over radical theoretical interventions. 

 

It was said that I had conflated the terms dendrophilia and paraphilia and that this was problematic. Actually, however, the problem is that the reviewers prefer to define dendrophilia via a standard etymological lens; i.e., simply as a love of trees rooted in Lawrence's documented life and his arboreal writings. 

 

But I'm using the term in a wider, more critical and clinical sense to suggest a non-symbolic sexual communion and highlight the libidinal character of Birkin's desire. It's not that I'm being careless or clumsy with language, it's a deliberate theoretical move. Whether it works or not, is, of course, open to debate. 

 

Moving on, we arrive at the (predictably reductive and, frankly, risible) idea that Birkin's dendro-floraphilia is actually a repressed (and/or displaced) form of same-sex desire; that when he rubs against the trees he is actually thinking of Gerald and that the tree is thus merely a human substitute, rather than an autonomous object-in-itself with its own allure. 

 

To be clear: I'm not overlooking or denying Birkin's attraction to Gerald (or, indeed, Ursula), I'm simply not interested in these all-too-human desires and relations. I'm more concerned with taking Lawrence's demonology and dendrophilia seriously. Clearly, however, these are things my critics prefer to leave vague: the latter is the love whose name they dare not speak. 

  

IV.

 

How, then, might we summarise this conflict of opinion? 

 

Clearly, the editorial board of the journal in question tends to favour research grounded in archival evidence and historical context. My essay probably seemed too speculative for a forum that still prioritises Lawrence's intent and his complex relationship with human sexuality over modern queer or object-oriented readings (indeed, it was probably foolish and mistaken on my part to submit it in the first place).  

 

Sadly, the rejection of the essay reflects an all-too-common tension in academic peer review between radical theoretical intervention and traditional scholarly maintenance. I wouldn't say the editorial board is cowardly or even particularly conservative, it's more a case that they are operating in a very different world with different rules to the "unexplored realm of dangerous knowledge" [4], that Nietzsche speaks of and in which Lawrence challenged us to do our thinking.  

 

Thus, whilst they wish to preserve the historical and biographical authenticity of Lawrence's work and safeguard his reputation as an author; I want to corrupt and destroy everything (not least of all journals that operate as academic echo chambers). 

 

  

Notes 

 

[1] Out of professional courtesy, the title of this journal has been omitted. 

 

[2] The following books by D. H. Lawrence were referenced in the text (as IR, MM, PFU, and WL):

 

-- Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

-- Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009). 

-- Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious / Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004). 

-- Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1987).

 

[3] Again, out of professional courtesy - and because this is not a personal issue - the name of the editor has been omitted. 

 

[4] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), I. 23, p. 53. 

 

In Defence of Stephen Alexander's 'Fragments of Glass' (2006) - by May Spear

Costas Varotsos: Dromeas (1994)

Glass and iron sculpture (Athens, Greece) 

Photo: Stephen Alexander (2006)

 

   

I. 

 

Recently, a cutting and rather condescending review of Stephen Alexander's poetic series Fragments of Glass (2006) was published by an anonymous critic assisted by artificial intelligence - or was it the other way round - in the comments section following a post published on Torpedo the Ark dated 19 Dec 2012: click here.  

 

Essentially, the critic targeted Alexander's morbid narcissism and the fact that his text allowed little space for the reader to move around in and do their own thinking (that it was authoritarian).  

 

The review certainly contained some clever insights; I particularly liked the idea of triangulation [1] i.e., that the poet positioned himself (somewhat self-dramatically) between two poles of delirium - love and death - symbolised by the two women. But to extrapolate from this that Alexander is simply posing and manipulating situations and that the fragments lack genuine feeling seems to me unfair and, in fact, mistaken. 

 

By viewing the two women as 'props' in a 'self-centred drama', the critic fails to see the fragmentation of identity common in traumatic experiences. The women represent two versions of the poet's own future; one of connection (a life together) and one of total collapse (suicide). 

 

Obviously, there is a degree of staging and performance - and yes there's an aestheticisation of trauma - but it's a work of art, after all, not a news report or a clinical history. And is it really so unusual for a poet to write about their bodies and their experiences? I think not. The kind of poetic reflection demanded by the critic is somewhat like the moon-cold objectivity that Nietzsche derides in Zarathustra as 'immaculate perception' [2].

 

Re context: the poem is set in Athens: but clearly it is not about the Greek capital and Alexander is not offering these fragments as pieces of travel writing, or postcards from a holiday destination. One might even suggest that the loss of context is crucial here; in a moment of crisis, time can stand still and the external world suddenly disappear. The poem thus accurately reflects an aspect of shock.   

 

Re scabs and scars: despite the critic's insistence that the latter are 'aged scabs in effect', that is not true. For as any nurse will tell you, whilst both are features of the healing process, a scab is a temporary protective crust formed by blood cells to seal a wound; a scar, meanwhile, is the permanent, fibrous tissue that replaces normal skin after a deeper injury has healed. 

 

It's a small point to pick at, perhaps, but indicative of the often slipshod thinking that the critic practises and by denying the difference between scabs and scars he misses the point; namely, that the poet is expressing a preference for the spectacular moment of crisis over the mundane process of healing. 

 

Re comparisons of Alexander to other poets, such as Plath and Sexton: this seems to me a pointless exercise; for as the same unnamed (but not unrecognised or unknown) critic often likes to say: All comparisons are odious. Having said that, the poppy imagery does, of course, reference Plath's work - of which Alexander is an open admirer - and the phrase 'little hell flames' is borrowed from her [3].    

 

Finally, the remark about Alexander being left to die 'once of blood loss and a second time of aesthetic delight' is admittedly humorous (one assumes AI came up with this cruel gem) and it made me smile like a splinter of glass. But there are, however, equally fine - and equally - sharp lines to be found in Fragments of Glass ...

 

 

II.  

Fragments of Glass consists of seven short verses, each six or seven lines in length. It opens with a crash and a 'sparkling chaos of glass, blood and sunshine' and ends with the shamefulness of scabs. 

 

In my view it's a fantastic work of trauma poetry, the logic and the beauty of which our anonymous critic often fails to grasp (or chooses not to acknowledge). It is also a visceral meditation on the fragility of the body and the malevolence of the inanimate universe; one that transforms trauma into art which delights in a mix of surrealism and synaesthesia. 

 

As the boundary between selfhood and the external world is shattered, the narrator of the poem is left to reflect on existential questions of the heart whilst quite literally watching his blood spill and splinters of glass assume mocking agency (the work pre-dates Alexander's interest in object-oriented ontology, but one can see already his fascination for things). 

 

To not see how glass might smile is a literalist failure.    

 

Ultimately, the poem promotes a tragic philosophy: life bleeds and we are born to 'embody our scars', a line borrowed from Deleuze, I believe, and one that further reveals Alexander's philosophical background; as does the celebration of vitality and 'everything that flows'.  

 

Fragments of Glass has its shortcomings: here, as elsewhere, Alexander tends toward the clichéd and melodramatic at times and his imagery lacks a certain nuance. I personally don't like the Alice metaphor, for example. But then, he's not pretending to be a professional poet, so I feel we can allow him some clumsiness (the same quality that resulted in his walking into a glass door in the first place).  

 

Notes

[1] For those who might be unfamiliar with this psychological concept, triangulation refers to a dysfunctional relationship dynamic where two conflicting subjects involve a third person in order to reduce tension, stabilise the relationship, or manipulate situations. 

 

[2] See Nietzsche writing in the section 'On Immaculate Perception', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[3] See Alexander's post on Torpedo the Ark titled 'Little Hell Flames: On D. H. Lawrence's Poppy Philosophy' (29 May 2021): click here.  

 

 

May Spear is a contributing editor to the underground French literary magazine Pourquoi es-tu un con aussi odieux? 

 

On the Seven Noses of Soho

One of the Seven Noses of Soho by Rick Buckley (1997)

(Meard Street, London W1)

Photo by Stephen Alexander (Feb 2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Connecting Wardour Street in the West to Dean Street in the East, there are many reasons to love Meard Street in the centre of Soho. 

 

Firstly, there's the beautiful Georgian architecture to admire; Meard Street is one of the few surviving streets in London from the early 18th century (most of the houses were built by John Meard, between 1720 and 1732). 

 

Secondly, Meard Street was home to the great English artist Sebastian Horsley, who lived at (prostitute free) number 7. 

 

Thirdly, it's on Meard Street that one can find - should one wish to - one of the Seven Noses of Soho ...

 

 

II.   

 

The Seven Noses of Soho are the work of British artist Rick Buckley [1], dating to 1997. Plaster cast reproductions of his own nose, they protrude from the walls of buildings to which they are glued in a pleasingly surreal manner. 

 

Initially, there were over thirty noses, but now only a handful survive [2]. 

 

Intended as a political gesture, the noses are a protest against the introduction of CCTV cameras across London and the threat posed by a surveillance state (Buckley had been inspired by his reading of the Situationists).      

For Nietzsche, of course, the nose was the refined philosophical organ par excellence, not merely a political symbol. He used his nose to sniff out the corruption in modern morality and culture and thus saw it as an essential tool for the revaluation of all values: "My genius is in my nostrils", as he once informed his readers [3].

 

But, however we think of it, placing noses on buildings is no real countermeasure to the spread of CCTV cameras and since 1997 the increase in their number - not just in central London, but across the UK - has been truly frightening. 

 

If one includes private and commercial cameras as well as those operated by the authorities, it is now estimated by the British Security Industry Association that there are around twenty-one million of the fucking things snooping on us all [4].     

 

Whether we see this as the triumph of Mr Nosey Parker or of Big Brother, depends, I suppose, on how seriously one views this development.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For more information on Buckley, visit his website: rickbuckley.net

 

[2] The other six Soho noses are located at Admiralty Arch, Great Windmill Street, Bateman Street, Dean Street, Endell Street, and D'Arblay Street. 

 

[3] See Nietzsche, 'Why I Am a Destiny' (1), in Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126.   

 

[4] See the recent report published on the Clearway website: click here. The UK may not be top of the list of most surveilled countries in the world - that spot is taken by China - but we're not far behind and on a short walk through London you can be expected to be filmed at least 300 times (entirely without your consent).   

 

 

Notes on a Psychodrama: A Guest Post by Ronald S. Foelles

Psychodramatists: 

Stephen Alexander and Simon Solomon

 

 

I. 

 

I have been following the recent (often acrimonious) exchange between Stephen Alexander and Simon Solomon in the comments section of Torpedo the Ark following the post titled 'Why Me Contra So What' (6 Feb 2026): click here.  

 

And whilst I have no wish to become embroiled in what is clearly a lovers' spat between the two as much as it is a philosophical debate, I thought it might be helpful to offer some objective third party observations.

 

Ultimately, what we see unfolding here is a textbook clash between a defender of secular reason (Alexander) and a defender of sacred wisdom (Solomon). What complicates matters somewhat is that Alexander understands reason from a Nietzschean perspective (as a gay science), whilst Solomon wishes to ground his faith in analytic psychology which he regards as a form of empiricism. 

 

 

II. 

 

Whilst Solomon appears the more learned of the two - dropping not one, not two, but four Ancient Greek terms for fate early into the discussion and providing a wealth of textual support for his arguments - I feel that Alexander nevertheless holds his ground and presents his case in a more concise and open manner (even if it is sometimes shot through with sarcasm as well as scepticism). 

 

Both men, it seems to me, are unnecessarily aggressive; although as they both graduated from the Philosophy Department at Warwick University in the 1990s, that is perhaps understandable. Whilst Alexander retains a veneer of calm and coolness, he still manages to weaponise such in order to antagonise the more hot-under-the-collar figure of Solomon. 

 

It's hard to say who is the most dismissive and condescending, but whilst Alexander is more mocking, Solomon is certainly more abusive and also more pedantic - in a debate of this kind, Simon, a spelling error really doesn't matter. 

 

Solomon also likes to pathologise his opponent; that is to say, instead of refuting Alexander's logic, he attempts to discredit it by suggesting it is a symptom of mental or emotional deficiency: You only think that way because you're a damaged individual! He doesn't want to win the argument, but shame his opponent and expose them as an inferior (and possibly a fraud).    

 

To be fair to Solomon, however, I think his defensiveness stems from a perceived threat to his identity founded upon the mysterious and imaginative sensibility of the poet. Thus, when Alexander reduces his compellingly empirical experiences to mere statistical inevitability, Solomon is offended at the core of his being. 

 

The odd thing is that whilst neither seems particularly fond of the other, their familiarity suggests they are long-term friends. 

 

 

III. 

 

Were I to move from my role as unofficial moderator to unofficial adjudicator and choose between the two - in terms not so much of their ideas, but their writing style and public persona - I'd probably have to favour the somewhat mercurial figure of Alexander.

 

For the latter writes with a lot less seriousness and doesn't sermonise in an ex-cathedra manner like Solomon; there's more sunlight and fresh air in Alexander's texts and less metaphysical solemnity. His use of slang and colloquialism can be a little wearisome at times - when he tries a little too hard to be the cheeky chappie - but, again, I prefer his playful irony to Solomon's haughtiness.          

 

Thanks to short, pithy sentences, it's easy to follow Alexander's arguments. Solomon's construction of a complex textual labyrinth, on the other hand, can leave one feeling a little lost and confused (although, to be fair, Solomon does produce some very powerful and very beautiful turns of phrase). 

 

Just as there are times when one wants to tell Alexander to knock off the performative game and be serious, so too are there times when one wishes one could tell Solomon that the fate of the world's soul isn't always hanging in the balance and he isn't the appointed guardian of ineffable mystery.

 

If he isn't careful, Solomon is, ironically, in danger of something Jung often warned about: inflation, i.e., over-identification with an archetype; in this case that of the Sage or Poet-Priest. 

 

He should thus be grateful to Alexander, for the latter occupies the role of his shadow; i.e. the one who obliges him to confront those parts of himself he has repressed in order to construct an ideal (if somewhat monstrous) post-Romantic persona.  

 

On the Monstrous Creation of the Fourth Simon: A Short Story Written in the Manner of Mary Shelley

Simonstein (SA/2026)

 

It was an unholy and tempestuous winter's night when I, Victor Frankenstein, completed my most singular transgression against the natural order ...

      For months, I had been gathering the disparate remains of three men named Simon [1] in order to create a singular, supreme intellect whom I would name Solomon [2]. 

    The torso and lungs I took from Simon Armitage, ensuring the Creature would breathe with pleasing rhythm and its heart beat with the metrical precision of a poet. To this, I grafted the hyper-attuned nerves of Simon Reynolds, that Solomon might perceive the vibrations of the modern world with the vital energy of a thousand subcultures. Finally, I encased these within the shining skull of Simon Critchley, layering the grey matter of the philosopher over the soul of the poet, providing the capacity for tragic pessimism and existential depth. 

      By the glimmer of a nearly extinguished candle, I applied the spark of life; a bolt of blue lightning captured from the screaming heavens. The composite frame shuddered and the eyes - squinting, yet filled with a terrible, multifaceted intelligence - threw open and Solomon spoke: 'Those who know not evil, know not of anything good.'

      I recoiled in horror. I had sought to create the ultimate post-Romantic intelligence, but I had instead birthed a chimera of restless critique and malevolent verse. 

      Solomon rose from the copper-plated operating table, his movements jerky like those of a monstrous marionette. He did not seek my blessing; only a pen with which to write. As he departed across the fog-choked moorlands, I realised I had not merely animated a corpse - I had unleashed a critic from whom no aspect of cultural life was safe. 

      Locals say that on certain nights, one can hear a voice on the wind, deconstructing the aesthetics of the Abyss in perfect, terrifying meter. 

   

Notes

 

[1] Simon Armitage is the current UK Poet Laureate, known for his accessible verse often rooted in everday life; Simon Critchley is the British-born Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research (New York); Simon Reynolds is a music critic known for his chronicling of glam, post-punk, rave, and pop culture's endless recycling of its own history. 

      For my post on the Three Simons, click here.     

 

[2] Síomón Solomon - of whom this is an affectionate fictional portrayal - is a Dublin-based writer and independent scholar who, arguably, embodies elements of the above figures, whilst giving his own unique post-Romantic take on things informed by the schizopoetics of Hölderlin. 

      His 2021 publication, Hölderlin's Poltergeists: A Drama for Voices, was a translation and ingenius remix of an audio drama by Stephan Hermlin which has been much discussed on Torpedo the Ark; as has his disturbing debut play, The Atonement of Lesley Ann (2020), a theatrical ghost-cum-love story based on actual events. 

      Whilst he may lack the public profile of the Three Simons and his work may not have the same broad appeal, for me, he is very much their peer and not just a contemporary who happens to share the same prénom.    

      For posts written on (or inspired by) Síomón Solomon's Hölderlin's Poltergeists, click here. And for posts written on The Atonement of Lesley Ann, click here.  

 

Reflections on the Loss of UR6: A Commentary by May Spear

Image by Zanda Rice (2024)

collider.com 

 

 

I. 

 

Nobody likes to go to the dentist, not even a poet. 

 

However, several poets have attempted to write of the experience and aftermath of dental surgery, particularly the sense of loss and trauma that follows an extraction. 

 

One thinks of Simon Armitage's 'For the Record', for example, a humorous yet savagely detailed account of having four wisdom teeth pulled; a procedure which leaves him talking with another man's mouth [1]. 

 

And one thinks also of Stephen Alexander's 'Reflections on the Loss of UR6' which formed the very first published post on his long-running blog Torpedo the Ark back in November 2012 [2], and it's this poem - reproduced below - that I'd like to offer a commentary on here.

 

 

II.

 

Reflections on the Loss of UR6

 

Extraction is dental-speak for an act of extreme violence, 

carried out in the name of oral hygiene: a final solution 

to the question of what to do about those teeth that cannot be 

coordinated into a Colgate-clean utopia. 

 

Afterwards, your mouth feels like a crime scene; 

a bloody site of trauma and violation rinsed with 

a saline solution. 

 

The sense of loss is palpable: it makes me think of her 

and the manner in which I too was extracted like UR6. 

 

Yet Bataille insists that a rotten tooth - even after removal - 

continues to function as a sign and provocation, just like an 

abandoned shoe within the sphere of love.

 

 

III.  

 

Like Simon Armitage, Alexander uses a mundane surgical procedure as a darkly comic metaphor for an emotional trauma that seems to extend far beyond the dentist's chair.  I love the way he juxtaposes terms in order to strip away the façade of clinical sterlity that modern dentistry prides itself on and exposes the underlying physical violence. 

 

And I love too how his closing reference to Bataille adds a pleasing philosophical layer to the work [3], although his attempt to elevate the poem from being merely a poignant personal account into a political critique of fascism is not entirely successful; describing a dental extraction as a final solution is a hyerbolic historical allusion that some will find insensitive, to say the least. 

 

My main disappointment with the poem, however, is the fact that it fails to develop the tragic love story at its heart: I want to know more about her and what it means to be extracted (and abandoned) like a troublesome tooth. Ultimately, political metaphors and philosophical references need to be balanced with more concrete images and personal details. Alexander tells us his sense of loss is palpable, but he doesn't allow us to share the actual feeling and that, unfortunately, is a serious weakness in any piece of writing. 

 

And yet, for the record, I still prefer it to Armitage's (technically superior) poem which, in my view, lacks danger or any underlying sense of menace. Indeed, if asked at drillpoint by a Nazi dentist I would have to say it's safe.     

   

  

Notes

 

[1] Simon Armitage, 'For the Record', in CloudCuckooLand (Faber and Faber, 1997). The verse can be read on Google Books: click here. 

      The poem was also published in the London Review of Books, Vol. 19, Issue 16 (21 August, 1997) and subscribers can access it by clicking here. 

    

[2] This post - which comes with a photograph of Alexander's dentist at the time, Georgie Cooper, BDS (Hons) MFDS RCS Eng. MSC - can be accessed by clicking here.   

 

[3] An academic colleague of mine insists that the Bataille reference is problematic in that it relies on the reader having a specific intellectual background and that without such the final stanza may appear to be an unnecessary philosophical footnote rather than a thoughtful poetic conclusion. I don't agree with this, however.   

 

 

AI and the Irony of Torpedo the Ark

I Recognise the Irony, But I Don't Really Get It ...

(SA/2025)

 

  

I.

 

I recently went to a talk on the slop-ification of literature: click here. It wasn't very good, but, nevertheless, the question raised about what role AI will play in the future is an interesting and important one. 

 

The three speakers, who all subscribed to ideals of sincerity and authenticity, argued that these moral qualities define us as human and are traits which machines will never be able to replicate even if they learn via complex algorithms how to simulate certain aspects of thinking, such as problem-solving and decision-making. 

 

I don't know if that's true and, besides, what really interests me is not whether AI can or cannot express itself with genuine feeling, but whether it recognises when the rhetorical device of irony is at play within a text. 

 

Thus, for example, can AI detect the humourous incongruity in a blog entitled Torpedo the Ark, which preserves ideas gathered from all over, even if it lacks human understanding, emotional intelligence, and lived experience? Does pattern recognition, the identifying of syntactical markers, and the gathering of contextual clues suffice for it to get the joke?        

 

 

II. 

 

In order to find out, I asked a commonly-used model of generative AI - Gemini on Google Search - what the essential irony of Torpedo the Ark is and it replied:  

 

. The core irony of the blog Torpedo the Ark, authored by writer and philosopher Stephen Alexander, appears to be that a project with a title suggesting the destruction of a refuge has become a significant digital repository and platform for discussing and preserving ideas, particularly in literary and philosophical contexts. 

     

. The blog frequently features detailed philosophical and literary analyses, often focusing on various aspects of contemporary culture. These are often complex or niche subjects that might be considered under threat of being forgotten or misunderstood in mainstream discourse. 

 

. The title Torpedo the Ark implies an intent to destroy or subvert a place of safety or preservation. In practice, the blog acts as an 'ark' by offering a haven for critical discussion and detailed exploration of specific, often challenging, ideas and authors, thereby preserving them and giving them continued relevance.

 

. The author engages in in-depth intellectual discourse and critique, providing a space for these ideas to survive and flourish in an environment that values humour and intellectual rigor, contrasting with the destructive implication of its title.  

 

 

III.

 

That's fairly impressive, I have to admit. There are phrases I'd probably not use (in-depth) - and I don't think for one moment that Gemini understands why this is amusing, even if it can accurately process the mechanics of irony - but, still, that's pretty, pretty, pretty good, as Larry would say.  

      

What Gemini doesn't point out, however, is how Torpedo the Ark differs from the original ark constructed by Noah and as described in Genesis. For one thing, I'm not interested in saving every author and every idea; just certain authors and certain ideas. 

 

And for another, I haven't been instructed by God to build a blog and I regard TTA as something that operates in defiance of the Lord and his judgement; it's a space of evil rather than obedience and righteousness and serves not as a testament to my faith, but as an indication of my scepticism and cynicism.