On Luck

Lucky, lucky, lucky me!

Even though I haven't a dime,

I laugh and play in a carefree way

And I have a wonderful time.

Within the dualistic theology of Christianity things have only two possible origins; either they come from God, or they are rooted in evil.

What's interesting is just how many things Satan is given credit for; not just mortal sin and witchcraft, but music, dance and detail. Indeed, some Christians even insist that luck is diabolical in origin - the luck of the devil - and therefore not something to be wished for or invoked.

Unfortunately, their explanation for this rests on a mistaken piece of etymology. For the word luck is not derived from the word Lucifer. Lucifer is an Old English term derived from Latin and means light-bearing; luck is a late Middle English word rooted in German and Dutch and refers to chance and good fortune.

Of course, Christians don't like either of these things; chance implies that there are events outside of God's control and when you like to conceive of your deity as omnipotent - overseeing the throw of every dice and the toss of every coin - that's not something you can accept.

And good fortune, they would argue, is not quite the same as receiving God's blessing; indeed, it seems suspiciously close to a pagan notion of fate and rekindles memories of an ancient goddess known for her fickleness and willingness to reward even the undeserving.     

As D. H. Lawrence pointed out, monotheistic followers of the Abrahamic religions - Jews, Christians, and Muslims - hate pagan gods, but they more than hate the great pagan goddesses, whom they curse and call vile names.

Though, having said that, Lawrence himself accuses Lady Luck of being vulgar and rejects the gifts that she may bring his way. But that's because he retains a strict puritanical streak in his nature and believes in working hard and earning his just rewards; ultimately, there can be no rocking horse winners in his world.  

The Buddha was another misery guts on this question, insisting that all things must have a cause - be it material or spiritual in nature - and that events never occur at random or by chance alone. Like Lawrence, he thinks that there's something base and shameful about making a living from gambling and seemingly relying on luck. Karma, the notion of moral causality, is of course central within Buddhism.

Still, I'm not a Buddhist. Nor a Christian; nor even much of a Lawrentian any longer, so can cheerfully confess to loving the idea of luck. It's crucial, I think, to live with a certain gay insouciance; to laugh at the sun and to wish on the moon, shaking hands with every passing chimney sweep.

For when you realise that life's a chuckle, Lady Luck'll smile upon you ...


Musical bonus: Lucky, Lucky, Lucky Me - one of the greatest songs ever written, by Milton Berle and Buddy Arnold, performed by Evelyn Knight with the Ray Charles Singers, (Decca, 1950). 

From the Land of Cockaigne to the Big Rock Candy Mountains

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Land of Cockaigne (1567) 

Oil on panel (52 x 78 cm) 

First conceived in the imagination of medieval peasants and poets, Cockaigne is an immanent utopia wherein all desires are realised, sensual pleasures of every description readily available, and the daily restrictions placed upon one's freedom by priests and feudal masters are abolished - whilst they get their comeuppance at last.

Heaven might await the virtuous in some posthumous future, but Cockaigne was the collective dream of an earthly paradise - now/here, rather than nowhere - that encouraged the cardinal sins of lust, gluttony and idleness, thereby challenging the teaching that the good life had to involve constant toil on the one hand and abstinence on the other.       

At it's most carnivalesque, Cockaigne was said to be a topsy-turvy place in which the weather was always mild and even when it did rain, it rained custard; there were rivers of the finest wine flowing freely and ready-roasted pigs wandered about with carving knives conveniently placed in their back. According to some accounts, there was even a fountain of youth. Nobody works and yet nobody ever goes hungry.   

This idea of Cockaigne spread throughout Europe, with some interesting national variations; central to the Italian version, for example, which can be found in Boccaccio's Decameron (1353), is a mountain made of Parmesan cheese - which was handy for the people who lived there and spent the entire day preparing and eating pasta dishes.  

Of course, as with the appropriation of anarchic and amoral folk tales and their literary reworking as so-called fairy tales, eventually the myth of Cockaigne was taken up by the prigs and pedagogues of the emerging bourgeoisie and they turned it a fable condemning gluttony and sloth. Bruegel's depiction of Luilekkerland and its hedonistic inhabitants seen above, is intended as a warning against the spiritual emptiness that follows when we fall into a life of sin; whilst comic, it certainly isn't intended as a celebration of Cockaigne.

However, every now and again the idea resurfaces. In Haywire Mac's hobo-punk classic The Big Rock Candy Mountains (1928), for example, which beautifully sets out an American bum's vision of Cockaigne:

A far away land that's fair and bright, where the handouts grow on bushes and you can sleep out every night; a land where the cops all have wooden legs, the bulldogs have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs; a land where you never need change your socks and the little streams of alcohol come trickling down the rocks; there's a lake of stew, and of whiskey too - you can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe - a land where there ain't no short-handled shovels, axes, saws or picks and they hung the jerk who invented work. 

One might ask if a dream of a better life in a land of plenty isn't the primary factor at work within the ongoing migrant crisis; they cross the seas in little boats having mistaken Europe for Cockaigne ...

See: Herman Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne, trans. Diane Webb, (Columbia University Press, 2001). 

For an earlier post on The Big Rock Candy Mountains, click here. 

Rutiluphilia (Reflections on Redheads)

Emma Hack: 'The Redhead' 

from the series Beautiful Women (2013)

emmahackartist.com.au 

Naturally red hair is an uncommon condition, even amongst the native peoples of north-western Europe, such as the Celts, in whom it occurs more frequently. In Ireland, for example, the most redheaded nation on earth, no more than 10% of the population are blessed in this manner, although over 1-in-3 carry the recessive ginger gene variant.

Whilst red hair is associated with other physical characteristics - such as fair (often freckled) skin and light (often green) coloured eyes - so too is it rich with cultural significance and subject to both positive and negative stereotyping.

Redheaded women, for example, are said to be fiery of temper and sharp of tongue.

But they are also regarded as morally suspect and bestial in nature, which is why, for example, during the Christian Middle Ages red hair in combination with green eyes was taken as a sure sign of a witch, a werewolf, a vampire - or a Jew. Such fear and mistrust of redheads - particularly in fatal combination with antisemitism - led to their persecution as heretics during the Spanish Inquisition. 

Not surprisingly, red-haired women also feature in the pornographic imagination as unusually passionate and promiscuous. Perhaps this is due to the vividness of their colouring; or perhaps it's their sensitivity to ultraviolet light and other forms of stimulation that makes such vixens of them.

Or perhaps all such ethno-sexual stereotyping is just nonsense ...     

Lose This Skin: Thoughts on Theodore Roethke's Epidermal Macabre

Juan de Valverde de Hamusco: 

La anatomia del corpo humano (1556)

According to D. H. Lawrence, Whitman was the great American poet-pioneer; the first to smash the old moral conception of man in which the body is conceived as but a shoddy and temporary container for some kind of ghostly essence; the first to seize the soul by the scruff of the neck and insist on her corporeal nature.   

This, for Lawrence, is crucial because he believes that the key to achieving what the Greeks termed εὐδαιμονία is "remaining inside your own skin, and living inside your own skin, and not pretending you're any bigger than you are."

Nietzsche also insists that man's self-overcoming does not correspond to the rapturous possibility of transcendence. The overman is not more spiritual, but more animal; complete with teeth, guts and genitals and all those things which idealists are embarrassed by and hope to see shrivel away. 

So, what's a reader of Lawrence and Nietzsche to make of the following poem by Theodore Roethke:


Epidermal Macabre

Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes -
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood's obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.

Initially, one is triggered - as people now like to say - by the narrator's physical self-loathing and his desire to make an ecstatic break from his own biology, conceived in terms of clothing that conceals true being in all its naked immateriality and innocence.

However, even the narrator - and, for convenience's sake, let's call him Roethke - recognises that such mad metaphysical exhibitionism in which one strips oneself of flesh and bone until one effectively becomes untouchable, invisible, and non-existent, is indelicate; i.e. not only insensitive, but also slightly indecent.

Further, whilst Roethke's hatred for his epidermal dress and the rags of his own anatomy is so profound that he considers willingly dispensing not only with his modesty but all vital feeling, he's honest enough to acknowledge that in death there's no liberation of the soul. All that remains is a decomposing corpse; that incarnadine and carnal ghost that refuses to disappear into thin air.

Noble spirit, Roethke concedes, is entirely dependent upon - is an epiphenomenal effect of - base matter. And just as truth needs to be concealed behind lies and illusions in order to remain true, spirit needs to be wrapped in flesh.

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Whitman', in Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 161. 

Theodore Roethke, 'Epidermal Macabre', from the debut collection Open House (1941). See The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, (Anchor Books, 1975).

Musical bonus: The Clash, 'Lose This Skin', from the album Sandinista! (CBS, 1980); written and with vocals by Tymon Dogg: click here. 


Thanks to Simon Solomon for suggesting a post on this poem.

The Four Drakes: Part 2: Nick and Gabrielle

Drake is an Old English surname, derived from the Anglo-Saxon term for serpent, draca, and thus etymologically related to dragon (and not to the word for a male duck). There have been a number of illustrious individuals by the name of Drake, including Sir Francis Drake and the comic entertainer Charlie Drake, both of whom we discussed in part one of this post: click here. 

Below, I wish to discuss a famous pair of siblings by the name of Drake, beginning with the younger brother ... 

Nick Drake (1948 - 1974): First the Day after Tomorrow Must Dawn for Me

Posh singer-songwriter and musician, Nick Drake, is a fine example of what Nietzsche terms a posthumous individual - i.e., one who only comes into their own and finds fame once they're dead.   

The prodigiously talented Drake signed to Island Records whilst studying English literature at Cambridge, releasing his debut album - Five Leaves Left - in 1969. By 1972, he had recorded two more albums - Bryter Layter and Pink Moon - neither of which sold more than 5000 copies on initial release.

The fact that he was extremely reluctant to promote the material by playing live and giving interviews to the music press, obviously didn't help matters. But one suspects that such reticence was more due to the chronic shyness and depression from which he suffered than any desire to create a mystique about his own person. 

After the failure of his third album, Drake retreated to his parents home and, aged 26, he took an overdose of amitriptyline pills, a prescribed anti-depressant. A verdict of suicide was given and although this has been challenged by some who knew him, his sister Gabrielle prefers to believe he made a conscious decision to end his life, rather than consider his death the result of a tragic mistake.

Five years later, the release of a retrospective album entitled Fruit Tree (1979) triggered a critical reappraisal of his work and by the mid-1980s artists including Robert Smith and David Sylvian were naming Drake as an important influence. Thirty years later, and he's now sold over two-and-a-half million records in the UK and US markets.

Gabrielle Drake (1944 - ): Serious Glamour 

To be honest, Nick Drake is no more my cup of tea than Charlie Drake; though again, that's in no way to deny or denigrate his obvious talent and intelligence. He's just too much of an introspective hippie for my tastes (Nick - not Charlie).

But his older sister on the other hand, Gabrielle - now there's someone I have always loved to see on screen; be it as the purple-wigged Moonbase commander Lt. Gay Ellis in UFO (1970-71), or as motel boss Nicola Freeman in Crossroads (1985-87). Her appearance in a 1967 episode of The Avengers as Angora and, a decade later, as Penny the schoolteacher in an episode of The New Avengers, is also worthy of note and something for which I'm grateful.

I'm grateful too for the fact that, unlike some actresses, Gabrielle was always happy when young to get her kit off and not above appearing in a number of seventies sexploitation films, including Au Pair Girls (dir. Val Guest, 1972), in which she has a leading role as Randi Lindstrom (that's right, ha-ha! she's Danish).

Perhaps of more interest to my more literary-minded readers will be the fact that she also appeared as a passenger (sacrifice) in a short film entitled Crash! (dir. Harley Cokeliss) and based on a story in J. G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition. The movie also featured the author talking about ideas that he would later develop into one of the great twentieth-century novels. As one critic rightly noted, the presence of Miss Drake brought serious glamour to urban alienation.

Finally, it needs to be said that Gabrielle has worked tirelessly to ensure her brother's name and music live on and it's clear that, rather touchingly, she remains his biggest fan. In 2014, she published a memoir of her brother and in 2018 she collected a Hall of Fame Folk Award on his behalf.

I wish she were my sister ...

Notes

The Avengers episode mentioned above was from Season 5 and entitled 'The Hidden Tiger' (first shown in the UK on 3 March 1967); The New Avengers episode was 'Dead Men are Dangerous' (first shown in the UK on 8 Sept 1977). 

To visit the official website of the estate of Nick Drake, please click here.

To visit the Gabrielle Drake fansite on Facebook, click here. 

The Four Drakes: Part 1: Francis and Charlie

Drake is an Old English surname, derived from the Anglo-Saxon term for serpent, draca, and thus etymologically related to dragon (and not to the word for a male duck). There have been a number of illustrious individuals by the name of Drake, including ...

Sir Francis Drake (c.1540 - 1596): Sic parvis magna 

Potato-loving, tobacco-smoking Sir Francis Drake was an Elizabethan privateer and explorer who circumnavigated the world, plundering it as he went and claiming various lands for the Crown, including what is now California.

He also famously defeated the Spanish Armada - having first finished a game of bowls -  securing his status as a national hero; although in the current climate of politico-moral correctness this is now open to revision (not least because Drake was one of the first British slave traders). 

Even before 1588, Spanish mariners regarded Drake with a mixture of fear and loathing; they believed him to be in league with the Devil and to possess a magic mirror that allowed him to locate the position of all the ships at sea.

After his death, in 1596, Drake was buried at sea, inside a lead coffin and wearing a full suit of armour perhaps in the hope this might protect him from demons sent to retrieve his soul.

Charlie Drake (1925 - 2006): Hello, my darlings!

Diminutive entertainer, Charlie Drake, is one of those strange, disconcerting comic figures - like Marty Feldman - who continues to haunt my imagination.

Watching him on TV as a child, I always felt repulsed rather than amused by the squeaky voice, sweating red-face, and little iggy-piggy eyes.

Perhaps if he'd been part of the Carry On gang I'd've found him more amenable. But, as a solo performer, overly-reliant upon slapstick, an annoying catchphrase (often addressed to the breasts of a female co-star), and an ingratiating persona, he was just too much for me.      

That's not, of course, to deny his brilliance as a writer and performer; it's simply to say he wasn't my cup of tea - although I admire the fact he gambled away most of the money he had made in his heyday and spent the rest on glamorous young women, whisky, and fast cars. When he died, Drake bequeathed just £5000 from an estimated £5 million fortune.

I also like the fact that - despite suffering with depression throughout his career, like his close friend Tony Hancock - Drake was philosophical about his loss of star status as he got older and transformed, as one critic notes, from an innocent-looking cherub into a faintly malevolent goblin; for there's nothing worse than a bitter and resentful clown. 

Note: readers interested in part two of this post on Nick and Gabrielle Drake, should click here.

Say Hello Then!

Portrait of the Artist Aged 3

(pris juste après une coupe de cheveux)

When I was very young, one of my favourite things to do was stand on the wall at the front of my house and say hello to adult passers-by, be they next-door-neighbours or complete strangers.

In those days, very few people had a car and so there was ample opportunity to initiate contact, even if it was just with the postman, milkman, or the rag-and-bone man, who used to come round on a horse and cart, ringing a bell.

(In those days too, of course, there was no pathological fear of paedophiles and no neurotic concern with health and safety and children of all ages - shocking as it now seems - played outside, unsupervised and without protective clothing.)

One might read my attempt to engage with the world as an innocent sign of friendliness; tinged perhaps with a degree of childhood cheekiness.

But, looking back, I think it betrayed a certain provocative aggression; for if the passer-by failed to respond to my initial greeting, I would quickly issue a second demand that they do so: Say hello then!

Ultimately, it was more a challenge than a greeting ... I didn't want to destroy the passer-by - as I did as an anarchic teenage punk - but I did want to put them on the spot, thus causing a degree of discomfort or irritation.

It wasn't so much that I cared about having my presence acknowledged; but I wanted to remind them that they existed in a world with others and had therefore an ethical obligation to be polite and friendly; that no one had the right to pass by in silence on the other side of the road.

Even today, if I'm honest, I find it shockingly rude when someone sits next to me on a plane, for example, and doesn't nod, smile, or say hello. I understand there's an issue of reserve amongst the English, but, sadly, this is often just used as an excuse to cover up bad manners and social ineptitude.

One of the things I really miss about living in Spain is the fact that everyone says hola!


Afterthought

It might be argued, I suppose, that Torpedo the Ark is just another platform from which to address strangers and that I'm still essentially playing the same childhood game of ethical provocation. And I have to confess that I quite like this idea of continuity with - and loyalty to - my very young self. 

Why I'm a Sex Pistol Rather Than a Clash City Rocker

A Seditionaries Destroy shirt 

McLaren and Westwood (1977) 
Victoria and Albert Museum Collection

According to Mick Jones, speaking in an interview with GQ in 2011, there were two types of punk: those who wanted to destroy and those who wanted to create ...

Clearly, the Sex Pistols wanted to destroy; they announced the fact on their first single and on the shirts that Uncle Malcolm and Auntie Vivienne designed for them. They were into chaos, not music. And when asked what he intended to do about the rapid post-War decline of the UK, I'll always remember with a smile Steve Jones saying: Make it worse.

Like Nietzsche, the Sex Pistols wanted to consummate nihilism by accelerating the process; to kick over that which was already rotten and threatening to fall; to go still further in the schizonomadic direction of decoding and deterritorialization. Certainly for McLaren, the most revolutionary of strategies was to unleash all kinds of forces and flows and push things to the extreme, which is to say, their exterior and absolute limit. 

The Sex Pistols, we might say, are rock 'n' roll's anarchic promise brought to fulfilment; and they are also the exterminating angels who came to destroy rock 'n' roll once and for all, exposing its complicity with capital and the manner in which the music business ultimately serves to keep young people under control.

Their final great act was not their astonishing self-immolation on stage at the Winterland, but the destruction of their own legend in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle - a project that incriminates everyone, including the fans.  

The Clash, in contrast, were typical type two punks: "trying to create something better for everybody", as Mick Jones says. Social justice warriors with zips and safety pins; or nice middle-class boys pretending to be outlaws, as Sebastian Horsley memorably described them.

The problem is that those who speak about initiating a new wave, often secretly wish to shore up the old order and establish successful careers within it. Thus it was, for example, that for all their anti-American posturing and talk of phoney Beatlemania having bitten the dust, the Clash were desperate to make it big in the US and soon fell into all the usual rock star clichés. Indeed, they even ended up opening for the Who at Shea Stadium:

And all the young punks looked from Joe to Roger and from Mick to Pete; but already it was impossible to say which was which ...

Finally, in 2003, the surviving members of the Clash were all present and correct to meekly accept with gratitude their induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of fame - an institution which Rotten amusingly branded a piss-stain on humanity.

Of course, it's true that - eventually - we have our fill of destruction and must turn again to the task of creation; that once all the old forms are shattered and all the old icons toppled, we need to find a new way of living beneath the open sky. Only an idiot mistakes the ruins as an end goal.

But - and it's an important but - we should be extremely wary of those idealists who appear overly keen to start building the New Jerusalem; especially when using the same old tools and materials.   

Notes

To read the interview with Mick Jones, by Alex Pappademas, in GQ (2 Nov 2011): click here. 

To watch the Sex Pistols performing Anarchy in the UK during their final show (Winterland, San Francisco, 14 Jan 1978), click here. They tweak the lyrics, but the message remains the same: Destroy. 

To watch a 7 min promo film for the Clash Live at Shea Stadium album (Epic, 2008), click here. The actual show took place on 13 Oct 1982. 

For Sebastian Horsley's take on the difference between the Sex Pistols and the Clash, click here. 

Notes on the Be Real Campaign

berealcampaign.co.uk

I.

The Be Real Campaign - which has developed out of a global marketing campaign by Unilever for a range of toiletries sold under the brand name Dove and in partnership with the YMCA - is determined to change attitudes to body image and help all of us put real health above appearance.

According to their website, low body confidence is something that affects everyone; impacting upon our physical and mental well-being and preventing us from achieving all of the wonderful things we would be capable of if only we were more body confident.

In order to bring about real change, the campaign calls upon businesses, advertisers, and the media to act responsibly and embrace real diversity, positively portraying different body shapes and sizes drawn from all ages, genders and ethnicities.

Individuals are also encouraged to take back control and sign a pledge in which they promise to help create a body confident nation by no longer editing their photos on social media. They also, of course, agree to submit their details to the Be Real Campaign.

II.

I suppose it'll be pretty obvious to most readers that I won't be signing this pledge. Indeed, I philosophically oppose the aims of this campaign and the language of politico-moral correctness and authenticity upon which it relies.

What is confidence, ultimately, but a mixture of faith and narcissism? And what's the point of being healthy if you look like shit? As for Dove's idea of the real, do they not know that - somewhat ironically - it's objectifying and betrays a death instinct?

Our individuality and our agency is a type of artifice; something styled within culture. To become-human is to challenge real being (understood in essentialist terms) and enhance our thingness; our uniqueness as a species rests on the fact that we are more than a mere piece of nature and that we have invented each gesture.

I may, as a Nietzschean, be interested in ways of overcoming our humanity as presently conceived, but I certainly don't want us to fall back into a pre-human condition lacking in style, complexity and virtuality - no matter how real it may be ...

I'm Pretty Vacant - But I'm Not Sure I Belong to the Blank Generation

Virgin Records (1977)

I.

I remember listening to a run down of the charts in the summer of 1977; anxiously waiting to press record on my cassette player when Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols finally blasted out and hoping against hope that Tony Blackburn wouldn't ruin things by inanely talking over the greatest ever intro to a pop song; an intro that, if you like, consummated my love affair with punk.

Released on July 1st, Pretty Vacant was the band's third single and, unlike God Save the Queen, you could actually listen to it on the radio, despite Rotten's aggressive phrasing of the term vacant, sung repeatedly in the chorus with a strong emphasis on the second syllable. Indeed, you could even watch the official promo video, directed by Mike Mansfield, on Top of the Pops.


II.

According to Malcolm, Pretty Vacant was written at his instigation and directly inspired by Richard Hell's Blank Generation (which was itself a punk re-imagining of Bob McFadden's and Rod McKuen's 1959 single The Beat Generation).

Just as Rotten - by Hell's own admission - pushed the nihilistic persona that he'd originally developed in a more extreme direction, so is Pretty Vacant a far more provocative kettle of fish than its American counterpart. The latter is clever and vaguely amusing, but it lacks something in comparison. One can imagine Steve Jones hearing Blank Generation and crying out for it to be given some bollocks.

Perhaps the difference (and, for me, the problem) is that Hell allows himself the option of opting out of his own lifestyle - he can take it or leave it - but the Sex Pistols have no choice but to affirm the beauty of their own emptiness without caring what anyone thinks of this.

Is it a class thing, a cultural thing, or something else? Interestingly, Hell has spoken about the chauvinism of British punks who would sneer at the American bands and insist on the UK origins of the movement.

Whatever it is, there's something crucially different between the two songs. When one listens to Blank Generation one feels that one is listening to Hell's private vision or personal experience; it's basically a poem set to music. Pretty Vacant, by comparison, is a call to arms that genuinely articulates the feelings of a generation. And, whilst there's humour in both songs, it's more crudely sarcastic than cleverly ironic in the latter.

Ultimately, you don't need to have read Blake, Rimbaud and Burroughs to understand the Sex Pistols; you just need a mistrust of hippies, an eye for fashion, and an instinct for chaos. 

Play:

Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols: click here. 

Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Voidoids: click here.