The Hopi Indian Series: Indian Time

Indian Time (SA/2024)

 

 

I. 

 

Writing in the 1930s and '40s, linguist Benjamin Whorf argued that the Hopi conceptualise time very differently from white Americans and that this difference was basically linguistic in nature; i.e., that it correlated with certain grammatical differences between English and the Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi.

 

Whorf claims that the Hopi have "no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions" that refer directly to what we call time, concluding that they therefore possess "no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at equal rate, out of a future, through the present, into a past" [a].

 

I would have thought that's a fairly uncontroversial thing to say, but, apparently, it gave rise to a debate within academic circles known as the Hopi time controversy. 

 

Whilst for theorists this may revolve around the complex question of linguistic relativity, it is usually understood by the lay person to simply address the issue of whether or not a redskin can ever be enslaved to the clock in the same way as those with pale faces. 

 

I suspect it's because this becomes an ethno-racial question - and not merely a grammatical one - that controversy creeps in. At any rate, during the 1960s Whorf's work increasingly fell out of favour amongst linguists and anthropologists and when in 1983 Ekkehart Malotki published his massive 600-page study on the concept of time in the Hopi language, it seemed that Whorf's work was refuted once and for all [b].  

 

 

II.

 

Now, I'm not a linguistics expert and don't speak a word of Hopi. 

 

Nor am I particularly concerned to restore Whorf's reputation, although it might be noted that the concept of linguistic relativity was revived in the 1990s when Malotki's own study was subjected to criticism from those who did not consider his work to have invalidated Whorf's claims.

 

As a Lawrentian, however, Whorf's work continues to resonate sympathetically; for he's basically repeating what Lawrence observed during his stay in New Mexico in the 1920s, when he came into contact with Native Americans and expressed an interest in their religious beliefs and understanding of the universe. 

 

And so, without wishing to sound like a New Age hippie who subscribes to any myth so long as it seems to reveal the supposed limitations of Western thought, I'd like to take a closer look at what Lawrence wrote, thereby challenging the Kantian idea that time and space are universal categories underlying all human thought. 

 

For despite what Malotki says, it seems clear that not everyone is as clock-observant and time-obsessed as the Germans, for example.   

 

 

III. 

In Mornings in Mexico [c], Lawrence describes the white man as "some sort of extraordinary white monkey, that, by cunning, has learnt lots of semi-magical secrets of the universe, and made himself boss of the show" [36]. 

 

And one of these secrets is the secret of time:

 

"Now to a Mexican and an Indian, time is a vague, foggy reality. There are only three times [...] in the morning, in the afternoon, in the night. There is even no mid-day and no evening. 

      But to the white monkey, horrible to relate there are exact spots of time, such as five o'clock, half-past nine. The day is a horrible puzzle of exact spots of time." [36]

 

The white monkey, says Lawrence, has a perverse passion for exactitude; for time is money and every second counts. And he insists that everyone should be as enslaved to the clock as he is; always fretting about what happened yesterday or anxious about what might happen the day after tomorrow; living and dying to the same monotonous rhythm: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock ... 

But, according to Lawrence, the Native American is essentially different from us: "The Indian is not in line with us. He's not coming our way. His whole being is going a different way from ours." [61]

 

Again, I don't know how true that is, but there are times, like today, when I admire Lawrence's attempt to learn something from the Indian and appreciate what he calls in Apocalypse [d] the "pagan manner of thought" [96] which allows the mind to "move in cycles, or to flit here and there" [97].

 

Challenging the Western concept of time, Lawrence writes:

"Our idea of time as a continuity in an eternal straight line has crippled our consciousness cruelly. The pagan conception of time as moving in cycles is much freer, it allows movements upwards and downwards, and allows for a complete change of the state of mind, at any moment. One cycle finished, we can drop or rise to another level, and be in a new world at once. But by our time-continuum method, we have to trail wearily on over another ridge." [97]

Anyway, I have to stop here: it's dinner time ... 

Notes

 

[a] Benjamin Lee Whorf, 'An American Indian model of the Universe', in Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, ed. John B. Carroll (The Technology Press of MIT, 1956), pp. 57-64. Lines quoted are on p. 57. The essay was written c.1936.  

 

[b] Ekkehart Malotki is a German-American linguist, known for his extensive work on the Hopi language and culture and his refutation of the claim (some might say myth) that the Hopi have no concept of time. 

      Malotki published two large volumes, the first in German; Hopi-Raum: Eine sprachwissenschaftliche Analyse der Raumvorstellungen in der Hopi-Sprache (Gunter Narr Verlag, 1983), and the second in English; Hopi Time: A Linguistic Analysis of the Temporal Concepts in the Hopi Language (Mouton Publishers, 1986). 

      This latter work provided hundreds of examples of Hopi words and grammatical forms referring to temporal relations and Malotki demonstrated that the Hopi do, in fact, conceptualize time as structured in terms of an ego-centered spatial progression from past, through present into the future, despite what some - including, as we shall see, D. H. Lawrence - choose to believe and despite not having any word in their native tongue that exactly corresponds to the English noun 'time'.  

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, Mornings and Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.  

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980). Page numbers given in the post refer to this edition. 

 

 

To read other posts in the Hopi Indian series, click here and/or here.

 

 

The Hopi Indian Series: Kachina Dolls

Hopi Kachina dolls (aka Katsina figures)

Bowers Museum (Santa Ana, California) 

For more info click here. 

 

 

I.

 

As torpedophiles will know, I'm a big fan of all types of doll: from wooden dolls to rag dolls; sex dolls to voodoo dolls. But I think my favourite dolls at the moment are Hopi kachina dolls - once described by Paul Éluard as the most beautiful things in the world [1] ...

 

 

II. 

 

Typically carved from the root of the cottonwood tree and traditionally given to young girls (and new brides) of the Hopi tribe, kachina dolls represent the immortal beings - the katsinam - that control various aspects of the natural world, such as rainfall, and act as messengers between humans and the spirit world.  

 

Whilst, invariably, these fabulous-looking dolls are now sold as examples of Native American folk art to the public, they still, I think, retain something of their powerful magic - although they obviously do not speak to us as they do to the Hopi, for whom they are sacred objects with more than merey a decorative function or an aesthetic charm.

 

Having said that, it should be pointed out that the figures only began to take on a more naturalistic look and have a professional finish once white Americans began to take an interest in buying and collecting them during the twentieth-century. I'm not quite sure what it tells us about the Hopi, or the transformative effects of the free market, but an attention to detail was only shown once there was money to be made.

Elders of the Tribe may not have been very happy at first, but even they were impressed that as the carvings became more extravagant and consumer demand went up, prices also rose significantly. From once selling for a few cents by the roadside, some kachina dolls carved by those recognised as genuine artists can now fetch up to $10,000.

 

So, having said earlier they still retain something of their powerful magic, let me now qualify that by adding that this could simply be the allure of commercial value; i.e., more capitalist authenticity than religious authenticity.   

 

Notes

 

[1] Paul Éluard writing in a letter to his wife in late May 1927. See Lettres à Gala (Gallimard, 1984), p. 22. A bilingual (English/French) edition ed. Pierre Dreyfus, trans. Jesse Browner, was published by Paragon House in 1989.  

      The Surrealists, of course, were well-known for their love of work produced by indigenous peoples (or what was known at the time as primitive art).

 

 

To read other posts in the Hopi Indian series, click here and/or here.  

 

 

The Hopi Indian Series: Snake Dance

Hopi Snake Dance (Oraibi, Arizona)

Photo by George Wharton James (1898)

 

 

The most celebrated of traditional ceremonies amongst the Hopi is the annual Snake Dance, during which performers handle live snakes. 

 

Never one to miss out, in August 1924 D. H. Lawrence travelled the seventy miles or so from his home in Taos, New Mexico, to the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona in order to enjoy the spectacle, which he first described in a brief satirical sketch written on the journey home. 

 

He later wrote a revised - more serious, more philosophical - version of the essay, of which he was particularly proud. 

 

Here, I would like to comment on both texts, beginning with the first of these, entitled 'Just Back from the Snake Dance', which appeared in Laughing Horse (September 1924), and then discussing 'The Hopi Snake Dance', which was first published in Theatre Arts Monthly (December 1924) [a].   

 

 

Just Back from the Snake Dance 

This short piece opens with Lawrence asking himself a rhetorical question that we have probably all asked ourselves at one time or other: Why on earth does one bother to go to such events ...?

 

For not only does it involve a bumpy car journey, but Hopi country, declares Lawrence, is hideous - "a clayey pale-grey desert with death-grey mesas, sticking up like broken pieces of ancient, dry, grey bread." [185] 

 

Lawrence is not overly impressed with the pueblos either; little grey houses mostly in a state of "disheartening ruin" [185]. 

 

Nor does he think much of the spectators who have come in their black motor cars to watch: "Americans of all sorts" [185], including women in trousers and a "negress in a low-cut black blouse and a black sailor hat" [185] who seems to catch his eye in particular.  

 

Not that, according to Lawrence in this account, there is much to see: 

 

"No drums. No pageantry. A hollow muttering. And then one of the snake priests hopping slowly round with the neck of a pale, bird-like snake nipped between his teeth, while six elder priests dusted the six younger, snake-adorned priests with prayer feathers, on the shoulders, hopping behind like a children's game." [186]

 

That doesn't sound great, although things do liven up a little as several more snakes of different size and species are introduced into proceedings, including rattle snakes. Lawrence writes:

 

"When all the snakes had had their little ride in a man's mouth [...] they were all gathered, like a lot of wet silk stockings [...] and let to wriggle all together for a minute [...] Then - hey presto! - they were snatched up like fallen washing, and two priests ran away with them westward, down the mesa, to set them free among the rocks, at the snake-shrine (so called)." [186]

 

And that was it; the show - and Lawrence calls it a show, regarding the snake dance as little more than a circus performance put on for the amusement of white Americans - was over, and he can't decide which were the more harmless; the nice clean snakes or the long-haired Indians. 

 

His disappointment with the latter - muttering queer gibberish, dangling snakes, and selling "clumsy home-made trinkets" [187] - is matched only by his obvious contempt for those who come to have a fun day out at the former's expense, knowing nothing and caring less about the Hopi's religiosity.      

 

 

The Hopi Snake Dance

 

As mentioned, Lawrence is far more thoughtful - and far less dismissive - in this essay on the Hopi Snake Dance than in his earlier piece. Here, to his credit, he attempts to understand it from the religious perspective of the Hopi, rather than "the angle of culture" [80], or simply as a crude form of public entertainment.  

 

And Lawrence rightly acknowledges that the snake dance is actually the culmination of more than a week's preparation and that there were other ritual activities taking place during this time:

 

"They say that the twelve officiating men of the snake clan of the tribe have for nine days been hunting snakes in the rocks. They have been performing the mysteries for nine days, in the kiva, and for two days they have fasted completely. All these days, they have tended the snakes, washed them with repeated lustrations, soothed them, and exchanged spirits with them." [84]

 

Lawrence describes the Hopi as a "dark-faced, short, stocky, thickly-built" [80] people, who have chosen to make their home in a "parched grey country of snakes and eagles, pitched up against the sky" [80]. 

 

And he identifies their religion as a form of animism in which all things - objects, places, plants creatures - are in some sense alive, although they are separate and distinct and do not share One Spirit: "There is no oneness, no sympathetic identifying oneself with the rest." [81-82]

    

Like Lawrence, I'm attracted to this idea - particularly in its impersonal aspect and the fact there is no dualist division into spirit (or mind) and matter. And like Lawrence, I rather admire the fact that the Hopi have retained a gentleness of heart, despite being faced with the challenging task of surving in a world that is "all rock and eagles, sand and snakes and wind and sun" [83]. 

 

When the snake-priests start to do their thing, Lawrence again comments on their physicality; they are all "heavily built, rather short, with heavy but shapely flesh, and rather straight sides [...] They have an archaic squareness, and a sensuous heaviness" [85-86].

 

This, combined with the "wild silence of concentration" [86] that is typical of the Native American, briefly cancels the "white-faced flippancy" [86] of the spectators. Well, that's true for a few seconds at least; until their impatience gets the better of them. Anxious as they are to see the snakes, they quickly get bored with the dancing and chanting and mummery. 

 

And soon enough, there were plenty of snakes on show:

 

"Snake after snake had been carried round [...] dangling by the neck from the mouth of one young priest or another [...] some very large rattle-snakes [...] two or three handsome bull-snakes, and some racers, whip-snakes." [90]

 

Lawrence seems to admire the bodies of the snakes as much as he does the bodies of the men; "one was struck by their clean, slim length of snake nudity" [90]. 

 

But most of all, amidst all the crudity and sensationalism - "which comes chiefly out of the crowd's desire for thrills [92] - he admires the courage of the snake-priests; "one cannot help pausing in reverence before the delicate, anointed bravery" [92-93] of those who commune with serpents and immerse themselves in the mystery of the latter. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Both of these texts can be found in D. H. Lawrence, Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009):  'The Hopi Snake Dance', pp. 77-94 and 'Just Back from the Snake Dance', pp. 183-187. All page numbers given in this post refer to this Cambridge edition.

 

 

To read other posts in the Hopi Indian series, click here and/or here.    

Get Off Your Knees and Hear the Insect Prayer: Notes on the Ant People

Get Off Your Knees and Hear the Insect Prayer

 

I. 

 

When I came across a reference the other day to the Ant People, I immediately thought of the Adam and the Ants slogan: Ant Music for Sex People: Sex Music for Ant People [1]. 

 

I had long believed that this line simply referred to those whom the cultural commentator Peter York once described as the "'extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars'" [2] - i.e., those who used to hang around Sex - and, secondly, to those who were hardcore fans of Adam and the Ants.

I now discover, however, that existing long before Adam and Marco ever walked through the doors of 430 King's Road, were a legendary race of highly advanced beings (possibly of extraterrestrial origin) known as the Ant People, and venerated by the Hopi Indians; a tribe of Native Americans who have lived on the high arid mesas of northern Arizona for thousands of years [3]. 

 

 

II. 

 

According to Hopi legend, in times of global catastrophe, it was the Anu Sinom, or Ant People, who come to their rescue and offered them sanctuary in underground caves, which essentially formed a natural network of subterranean prayer chambers, or what the Hopi call kivas (a word which etymologically means beautiful dwelling place).      

 

No wonder then that the Hopi refer to the Ant People with their elongated skulls, almond-shaped eyes, tiny waists, and long skinny arms and legs, as their friends: Anu-naki.  

 

And one can only hope that if members of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are correct in their dire predictions of a coming eco-apocalypse, that we palefaces will have some benevolent insects come to our rescue (although I doubt it and don't think we deserve such).    

 

Notes

 

[1] This line is a refrain in the Adam and the Ants track 'Don't Be Square (Be There)', found on the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS Records, 1980): click here.   

[2] Peter York, writing in an article entitled 'Them', Harpers & Queen (October 1976), quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. 

[3] See Gary A. David, 'The Ant People of the Hopi' (13 October, 2013) on the website Ancient Origins: click here.

 

 

Reflections on the Lovely Lady Christabel

Lorrie Millington: Lady Christabel (1983)

 

 

I.

 

I have to admit, my knowledge of the English Romantic poet Coleridge is fairly limited; I know he was pals with Wordsworth; I know he helped introduce the English-speaking world to German idealism; and I know he was fond of opium. 

 

If pushed, I suppose I would also admit to knowing he was an influential literary critic and dreamed at one time of establishing an egalitarian community on pantisocratic lines. 

 

Oh, and I know of course that he's the author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Kubla Khan (completed in 1797, but not published until 1816). 

 

However, it's the long narrative poem Christabel that fascinates me at the moment and which I would like to briefly reflect on here ... 

 

II.

 

Christabel consists of two parts; the first writen in 1797 and the second in 1800. [1]

 

The story concerns a central female character - Christabel - who one day goes into the woods to pray by a large oak tree. There, she encounters a strange young woman named Geraldine, who claims to have been abducted from her home by men on horseback. 

Sympathetic to Geraldine's plight, she takes her home with her and they spend the night together, sharing a bed (this despite a number of supernatural signs that Christabel might have been well-advised to take as warnings). 

Whilst Christabel remains somewhat enchanted by Geraldine, she gradually begins to realise the latter's malign (possibly inhuman) nature. Her father, however, is completely enthralled by the latter and orders a grand procession to celebrate her rescue.

 

Somewhat frustratingly, that's where the (unfinished) poem stops; it appears that Coleridge couldn't quite make up his mind about how to end it.    

 

III.

 

This poem appeals to me for its queer gothic character, founded upon a number of perverse and supernatural elements, and I'm not surprised to learn that Shelley and Byron were both obsessed with Christabel. If it gave the former nightmares, the latter was delighted by its sapphic undertones (the relationship between Christabel and Geraldine is implicitly sexual).   

 

Other writers who have fallen under the poem's spell include Edgar Allan Poe [2], Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [3], Renée Vivien [4], and A.S. Byatt, who names a fictional romantic poet Christabel in her award-winning novel Possession (1990).  

 

Unsurprisingly, Christabel also became favourite reading amongst feminists; the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, for example, named her daughter in honour of the poem's eponymous heroine (though she might have been more appropriately named Geraldine in my view) [5].   

 

 

IV.

Finally, a brief note on the image used to illustrate this post ...

Initially, I was going to reproduce Julia Margaret Cameron's 1866 photograph named after Coleridge's poem and depicting the titular character [6]. 

But then I remembered that in an old photo album kept in a box in the attic, I still had a picture sent to me by the artist, model, dancer, and writer Lorrie Millington [7] over forty years ago, of a mannequin named Lady Christabel with whom she shared a house in Leeds. 

 

In the summer of 1984, I began writing a 20,000 word novella entitled 'The Girl in the Mystery Castle', about Miss Millington and her relationship with the lovely Lady Christabel and it has always been my intention to one day complete this tale.

 

However, as this now seems very unlikely, I have decided to share the photo here ...

 

If one looks closely enough, one will see that Christabel is wearing a wig that has been braided pirate style and has an Apache war stripe painted across her nose, the reason being that Lorrie and I were both Ant People back in the early-mid '80s.   

 

Notes

 

[1] Coleridge planned on adding three further parts, but these were never completed. The work was published in a pamphlet in 1816, alongside Kubla Khan and another poem, The Pains of Sleep (written 1803). Christabel can be read on the Poetry Foundation website: click here. 

 

[2] Poe's poem 'The Sleeper' (1831) is said to be inspired by Christabel. It can be read on the Poetry Foundation website: click here.

 

[3] Le Fanu based the character of Mircalla, the Countess Karnstein, on Geraldine. See my post of 13 April 2020 on the topic of vampiric lesbianism in which I discuss Le Fanu's novella Carmilla (1872): click here.  

[4] Vivien's 1904 novel L'Etre Double, a lesbian romance, was also inspired by Coleridge's poem Christabel. See my post of 9 October 2013 in praise of sapphic decadence in which I discuss the work of Renée Vivien: click here.

 

[5] I'm not a fan of the militant idealism and the terrorist tactics advocated by Pankhurst, which invariably collapse into the black hole of fascism. See the post dated 17 February 2024 on suffragettes and the BUF: click here. 

 

[6] For more details and to view the photograph, please visit the Met Museum website: click here. And for a post dated 23 June 2023 written with reference to Cameron's photography, click here.  

 

[7] For a post dated 18 April 2015 written in memory of Lorrie Millington, 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.  

Memories of Summer '84: Charisma

Just another day in the press office at Charisma Records 

for Jazz and Lee Ellen (1984)

 

 

Entry from The Von Hell Diaries Tuesday 7 August 1984

By the time I got into Charisma this morning, Lee Ellen was already freaking out because Malcolm had cancelled three cover-interviews [1]. As she tried to re-arrange things, I was sent over to McLaren's office on Denmark Street with two cheques: the first for £5000 (a video fee) and the second for £20,000 (advance against the next album). 

 

I had also been given a letter, marked private and confidential, that I was instructed to hand personally to Malcolm. Unfortunately, there was no one in to receive either the letter or the cheques when I got to Moulin Rouge. However, on the way out I bumped into Malcolm and we both went up to his first floor office.

 

Clearly, the contents of the letter were not to his liking. And when Carrolle [2] arrived, he told her she couldn't have the half-day agreed, but would have to type up an immediate reply, which I was to then take back to Charisma. While they worked on the letter, I chatted with Andrea [3] who, by this time, had also arrived at the office. 

 

As well as the letter, Malcolm also gave me three tape cassettes and a small box containing 'valuable jewellery' that he wanted to have couriered to Nick Egan [4] in New York without the US customs knowing anything about it. I was told to wrap the things up carefully and if anyone asked at Charisma what the package contained I should tell them it was a rubber fish. 

 

For security, I was put in a cab by Carrolle - even though the walk from Denmark Street to Wardour Street is literally only a few minutes via Soho Square.              

 

Later, Lee Ellen called me and said I should meet her at 6 o'clock at the Soho Brasserie on Old Compton Street, where Malcolm was going to give an interview to someone from Time Out. Had a fun night chatting, eating sausages, and drinking Black Russians. The Melody Maker journalist Colin Irwin joined us - he's clearly in love with Lee Ellen, but then, to be fair, who isn't?

 

The terrible trio - Glen Colson, Jock Scott, and Keith Allen [5] - also briefly came over. Not sure I'm a fan of the latter; a bit too aggessive for my tastes, so glad when he and his pals headed off to the Wag Club. 

 

Found it ironic that, interview over, Talcy Macly of all people should tell me he's never seen anyone as pale as I am. He asked Lee Ellen what she'd being doing to me. 

 

He also advised that I needed to 'calm down' a little, saying that he'd never want to rob a bank with me as I made him a nervous wreck. 'Listen Jazz boy', he said, 'you've got to learn how to make people feel comfortable. Be a bit more cunning; don't show so much enthusiasm'. Having acted as my mentor-cum-career's advisor, he then launched into a long (but fascinating) monologue about Oscar Wilde. 

 

With regret, I left in time to catch the last tube back to Chiswick. Lee Ellen told me the next day that Malcolm kept her up until 2am with his stories and his complaints that pictures from a recent photo session had made him look like Michael Bentine. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lee Ellen Newman was the Press Officer at Charisma Records, a label founded in 1969 by Tony Stratton Smith and home to a few old hippies, such as Genesis, but also the label to which Malcolm McLaren was signed.

[2] Carrolle Payne was McLaren's Personal Assistant at Moulin Rouge (25, Denmark Steet). 

  

[3] Andrea Linz was a talented fashion student and McLaren's girlfriend and muse at the time. 

 

[4] Nick Egan is a visual artist and graphic designer who collaborated with Mclaren on many projects in the early and mid-1980s. 

 

[5] Glen Colson was a music publicist associated with Charisma Records; Jock Scott was a popular performance poet (about whom I published a post on 18 April 2016 in his memory - click here); Keith Allen was associated at this time with a group of British comic actors known as the Comic Strip. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Malcolm McLaren, 'Madam Butterfly (un bel di vedremo)', single released from the album Fans (Charisma Records, 1984) on 20 August 1984: click here. Video directed by Terence Donovan.

 

 

For further memories of the summer of 1984, click here and/or here.    

 

Memories of Summer '84: Stringfellows

Bev Hillier photographed in the office at Just Seventeen 

(Soho, 1984)

 

Entry from The Von Hell Diaries Wednesday 11 July 1984 

 

As I had nothing better to do and nowhere else to go, I spent the afternoon hanging around Soho ... 

 

Crossed paths with Adam Ant and Marco Pirroni on Wardour Street. I was tempted to say hello, but didn't. After all, what can one say without immediately adopting the position of a fan? 

 

Called in to see Lee Ellen at Charisma [1]. She was going to a party at Stringfellows [2] to celebrate the launch of Music Box [3] and invited me along. 

 

Can't say I was particularly impressed by the venue or the crowd and, alarmed by the bar prices, felt every inch the society boy on social security ... [4] 

 

Dave Vanian and Rat Scabies from the Damned were there; as was Feargal Sharkey and Midge Ure. Couldn't decide if I was in pop star heaven or pop star hell and wasn't sure they'd know either. 

 

Was more impressed by the Amazonian-like cocktail waitresses; tall, leggy blondes wearing tutus and skimpy leotards. At some point, one of them squeezed the square-padded shoulders of my jacket and said: 'Are they real?' 

 

I suppose she was just trying to be funny, but it seemed a bit cheeky at the time and I couldn't help thinking that one might squeeze her breasts and ask the same. 

 

Before leaving, I made small talk with the photographer Neil Matthews and the video director Tim Pope. I like the former: not sure about the latter; friendly, but don't really know him. 

 

Also stopped to say hello to Bev Hillier, the features assistant at Just Seventeen, who I have always had something of a crush on. 

 

She looked sexy dressed in a stripy sailor outfit, but told me she hoped one day to meet a rich man who would take her away from everything, as she didn't want to still be on the party circuit and working all hours for a magazine when aged forty. 

 

Made me wonder on the way home if anyone is ever really happy with their job (with their life)?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lee Ellen Newman was the Press Officer at Charisma Records, a label founded in 1969 by Tony Stratton Smith and home to a few old hippies, such as Genesis, but also the label to which Malcolm McLaren was signed. 

 

[2] Music Box was a pioneering pan-European 24-hour cable and satellite television channel operated by Thorn EMI and Virgin Vision. It broadcast from 29 March 1984 to 30 January 1987, before the world decided that what it really wanted to watch was MTV. 

 

[3] Stringfellows was a London nightclub opened by Peter Stringfellow in 1980. A venue at which the rich and famous loved to party throughout the 1980s and early-1990s. 

 

[4] An amusing phrase taken from a song entitled 'The Suit' found on the album Metal Box (Virgin Records 1979), by Public Image Ltd. Click here.

 

 

For further memories of the summer of 1984, please click here and/or here.  

 

Memories of Summer '84: Emmerdale

Lorrie Millington taking a photo of me taking a photo of her 

as we walk in the West Yorkshire countryside

(8 June 1984)

 

 

Entry From The Von Hell Diaries: Friday 8 June 1984

 

Had arranged to go to the seaside with Miss Millington [1]. 

 

She was supposed to come round at 9.30 this morning, but, perhaps not all that surprisingly, there was still no sign of her two hours later: not pleased. 

 

Went over to her place in the afternoon to find out what had gone wrong. She said she had no money to go anywhere. Which is fair enough and she did seem genuinely sorry. It was decided we'd go for a bus ride instead into the West Yorkshire countryside.

 

So, on to the 655 Leeds-Bradford bus, alighting near a village called Esholt, which, apparently, is where they film Emmerdale Farm. 

 

First thing Lorrie wanted to do was take a piss: which she proceeded to do in the middle of a field, laughing. We'd both brought cameras in order to take some pictures of the day, but, unfortunately, I didn't think to record this slightly pervy pastoral scene. 

 

Lots of sheep and cows to look at. And lots of chickens running around (not least of all because Lorrie found it fun to chase them). Bought ice-creams in a village shop, then found a nice spot to lie in the sun and canoodle. 

 

On the bus home Lorrie decided to stick a match up her nose to make herself sneeze; not something I've seen anyone do before. 

 

Back at Bedlam [2], we ate some chips and frolicked on the bed. After which, I walked Miss Millington home. If not quite a perfect day of the kind imagined by Lou Reed - no sangria in the park - it had still been a happy one and I was glad I'd spent it with her.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lorrie Millington: artist, model, dancer, writer; see the post dated 18 April 2015 written in her memory: click here. 

 

[2] Bedlam was the name of the house in the Burley area of Leeds that I lived in with friends Kirk Field and August Finer. See the post dated 9 April 2019: click here. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Lou Reed, 'Perfect Day', from the album Transformer (RCA, 1972): click here.

 

 

For further memories of the summer of 1984, click here and/or here.   

 

Johnny Rotten as an Abject Antihero (2)

Johnny Rotten as an Abject Antihero 

(SA/2024)

 

 

I. 

 

Following publication of a recent post on Johnny Rotten as an abject antihero, a young woman writes from France to accuse me of body shaming the former Sex Pistol: 

 

'If he wasn't larger-bodied than you and many others in our fatphobic society find acceptable, then I very much doubt you'd feel at liberty to ridicule Lydon and subject him to such unfair criticism.' 

 

Whilst I'd accept there's an element of truth in this, I think it misses the point of the post, which - as the opening reference to Julia Kristeva indicates - was essentially concerned with the state of abjection and what an abject individual may have to teach us, rather than with Rotten's weight per se (although his obesity obviously plays a role here). 

 

Perhaps I might offer a few further remarks in an attempt to clarify ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In critical theory, to be an abject individual is to exist outside of social expectations and moral standards in a manner that doesn't only challenge but unsettles conventional notions of identity. One isn't so much inhuman, as abhuman (i.e., not-quite-human and seemingly caught up in the process of becoming-monstrous). 

 

For Julia Kristeva, this can easily induce horror, particularly when one is confronted by an intrusion of corporeal reality into the symbolic order [1] - such as seeing Rotten on stage now whilst remembering him on stage back in the day. 

 

Being forced to face the abject truth is an inherently traumatic experience; like being asked to look at the decomposing corpse of a loved one. It's deeply disturbing and I understand how it can manifest in the desire not merely to look away, but do away with the abject subject. 

 

Learning how to accept others in their otherness - particularly when that otherness strikes us as repulsive - is to adopt what Roland Barthes describes as a politics of pure liberalism: I am a liberal in order not to be a killer [2]. 

 

 

III. 

 

The irony is that whereas in his punk period Lydon was merely pretending to be Rotten and a social outsider, he has now become truly abject. 

 

And yet, as I suggested at the close of the post we're referring to here, perhaps we should be grateful to him for this; for mightn't it be the case that Rotten, in his very abjectness, draws us unto him and not only grants us a perversely-morbid pleasure of some kind, but exemplifies a Christ-like level of passion by which we might all learn something important ...? 

 

I think so. 

 

And thus, I wasn't so much subjecting Rotten to 'unfair criticism', as my correspondent suggests, rather I was trying to find a way to view him in a positive light; recalling, for example, Jean Genet's insistence that it is only via a becoming-abject that the individual can achieve an existentialist form of sainthood (something that might appeal to the son of Irish Catholics who self-righteously believes himself to be the voice of Truth). 

 

 

IV. 

 

Ultimately, why Rotten does what he does now in the manner he chooses, is, I suppose, only something he can explain. 

 

Perhaps his speaking tour is not simply a commercial venture, but a method of public mourning; i.e., a form of catharsis via which he can express all his anger, sorrow, regret, etc. 

 

And perhaps his karaoke rendition of 'Anarchy in the UK', in which he invites the audience to clap and sing along as if they were the elderly residents of a care home, can be seen as a piece of abject performance art in which old ideals (such as artistic integrity) are devalued once and for all.

 

Or perhaps he's just become what he is (and what he formerly despised) ... 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (Columbia University Press, 1982). 

 

[2] Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (Papermac, 1995), p. 117. My italics.