Requiem pour un con (Was Jacques Prévert a Jerk?)

Jacques Prévert: Je ne suis pas un con!

 

 

I. 

 

One of the idiomatic expressions that I hate most is: It takes one to know one. 

 

Used by someone who wishes to point out that what they're accused of being is something which also characterises the accuser, it seems a particularly lame form of comeback; the sort of childish retort that only an individual lacking in wit or intelligence would say.    

 

However, I have to admit that when I first read the title of Michel Houellebecq's short piece 'Jacques Prévert is a jerk' [a] this was the first thing that came to mind, and, having now read the text, I'm still not convinced this is a fair thing to call one of France's most celebrated poets and screenwriters. 

 

 

II. 

 

Just to be clear: I'm not a devoted reader of M. Prévert, nor particularly knowledgeable about his life. But I do like some of the verses in Paroles (1946), particularly 'Déjeuner du matin' - Il a mis le café / Dans la tasse ...etc. [b] 

 

That certain intellectuals often looked down on Prévert (and his sentimentalité as they saw it) only makes me admire him a little bit more. As does the fact that he infuriated André Breton, by describing him as the high priest or pope of Surrealism after the latter expelled him from the group for not taking art seriously enough.    

 

Further, Prévert should be admired for writing against the collaborationist Vichy government during the War years, helping Jewish friends, and relaying messages for members of the Resistance, whilst never belonging to any political party himself, or feeling the need to posture like some of his contemporaries who trumpeted their own activities and commitments.    

 

 

III.

 

So, what exactly is Houllebecq's problem with Prévert? 

 

Well, in a nutshell, he seems to resent the latter's enormous success and blame him for the "repulsive poetic realism" which "continues to wreak havoc" upon French cinema. 

 

Houellebecq writes:

 

"Jacques Prévert is someone whose poems you learn at school. It turns out that he loved flowers, birds, the neighbourhoods of old Paris, etc. He felt that love blossomed in an atmosphere of freedom [...] He wore a cap and smoked Gauloises [...] Also, he was the one who wrote the screenplay for Quai des brumes, Portes de la nuit, etc. He also wrote the screenplay for Les Enfants du paradis, considered to be his masterpiece. All of these are so many good reasons for hating Jacques Prévert - especially if you read the scripts that Antonin Artaud was writing at the same time, which were never filmed."       

 

Nor does Houellebecq care for the optimism which Prévert displays in his work; "faith in the future, and a certain amount of bullshit" which is, he says, boundlessly stupid and nauseating at times. Better off, he suggests, embracing Emil Cioran's pessimism. 

 

Push comes to shove, I don't disagree with this, but that needn't prevent one from listening to Yves Montand sing 'Les Feuilles mortes'. For as even Houellebecq concedes, we all need something to relax to ...    

 

And if Prévert's lyrics are a bit sickly sweet and his pun-ridden poetry mediocre - "so much so that one sometimes feels a sort of shame when reading it" - surely that just makes him a bad writer, not necessarily un con as Houellebecq says. However, the latter is insistent on this point and so I shall give him the last word:     

"If Prévert is a bad poet, this is mainly because his vision of the world is commonplace, superficial and false. It was already false in his own time; today its inanity is so glaring that the entire work seems to be the expansion of one gigantic cliché. On the philosophical and political level, Jacques Prévert is above all a libertarian; in other words, basically an idiot."

Notes

 

[a] This text by Michel Houellebecq was first published as 'Jacques Prévert est un con' in Lettres françaises, No. 22 (July 1992). I am using the English translation by Andrew Brown that appears in Interventions 2020, (Polity Press, 2022), pp. 1-3, even though I'm not entirely happy with the translation of the French term con with the (American-sounding) word jerk. 

 

[b] The English version of this poem, 'Breakfast', can be found in Jacques Prévert, Paroles, trans. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, (City Lights Publishers, 2001). Or click here to read on hellopoetry.com 

 

 

Musical bonus number one: Serge Gainsbourg, 'La Chanson de Prévert', from the album L'Étonnant Serge Gainsbourg (1961).       One of Gainsbourg's most popular songs, it was inspired by 'Les Feuilles mortes', written by Jacques Prévert and Joseph Kosma, for the film Les Portes de la nuit (dir. Marcel Carné, 1946). Click here for the 2014 remastered version.

 

Musical bonus number two: Serge Gainsbourg, 'Requiem pour un con', released as a single in 1968 from the soundtrack to the film Le Pacha (dir. Georges Lautner, 1968), it caused a good deal of fuss at the time, with censors judging the lyrics obscene and scandalous. 

      There's no reason to imagine that the track was inspired by Jacques Prévert, but the title of Michel Houellebecq's critique of the latter obvioulsy makes one think of this song. Click here for the original '68 version and/or here for the 1991 remix.    

 

 

Ce billet a été écrit avec l'aide de Sophie Stas à qui je suis reconnaissant. 

 

 

Les filles sucettes

Les filles sucettes: 

Barbie Gaye, Millie Small, and France Gall

I. 

 

My Boy Lollipop is a somewhat irritating song first recorded in 1956 by 14-year-old American singer Barbie Gaye, as a kind of R&B shuffle: click here.

 

The version that is better known today, however, was the one released in 1964 by 16-year-old Jamaican singer Millie Small, and which has a bluebeat ska rhythm: click here. 

 

Whereas Barbie Gaye's single was only a minor hit, Millie's reached number two in the charts in both the UK and US and sold over seven million copies worldwide.   

 

 

II. 

 

Whether Serge Gainsbourg was inspired by the above to compose his own paean to the lollipop and the girls who like to suck them, I don't know. But Les sucettes, famously recorded by France Gall in 1966 - a year after she'd won the Eurovision Song Contest with another Gainsbourg ditty (Poupée de cire, poupée de son) - was a far superior - and far more sexually suggestive - number.

 

For although Les sucettes was seemingly just a simple yé-yé style song about a young girl, Annie, who likes aniseed flavoured lollipops, Gainsbourg makes it fairly obvious via his lyrical inventiveness that the song is about fellatio; that's not barley sugar she's swallowing. 

 

Mlle. Gall, despite being eighteen at the time - so somewhat older than either Barbie Gaye or Millie Small - insisted that she was entirely unaware of this fact. She had sung it, she said, avec une innocence dont je suis fier, and later confessed to feeling betrayed by those around her who had been complicit in her humiliation. 

 

However, although she refused to sing Les sucettes after discovering its (not so) secret meaning, she continued to work with Gainsbourg, who wrote several of her most memorable - if increasingly odd - songs, including Teenie Weenie Boppie, which was about a deadly LSD trip involving Mick Jagger.   

 

Readers who click here can enjoy a music video for Les sucettes directed by Jean-Christophe Averty for the TV show Au risque de vous plaire, which features phallic-shaped lollipops, intercut with various young women suggestively sucking on them [1].

 

Alternatively, readers who click here can watch the song being performed as a touching - if slightly pervy - duet by an angelic France Gall and a diabolic Serge Gainsbourg [2].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A remastered version of the video for Les sucettes was made in 2017. The following year, HMGS created a short looped film with material edited from this video, emphasising the oral-erotic aspect of the song, and uploaded it to coup.com: click here.

 

[2] Gainsbourg later recorded his own version of Les sucettes with a slightly psychedelic arrangement (by Arthur Greenslade), which can be found on the album Jane Birkin / Serge Gainsbourg (1969): click here. 

 

 

Auðumbla: The Primeval Cow of Norse Mythology

Nicolai Abildgaard: Ymer dier koen Ødhumbla (c. 1777)

National Gallery of Denmark [Statens Museum for Kunst]

 

Readers might be interested to know that it's not just bear cubs and sinful human beings that require licking into shape [1]. 

 

According to Norse mythology, even the forefather of the gods was given form by the tongue of a primeval cow, Auðumbla, who, over a three day period, licked away at a salty-tasting block of ice until the figure of Búri came forth; fair of feature and mighty of build [2]. 

As if that weren't enough, Auðumbla also suckled the primordial frost giant Ymir with her milk, which flowed like four rivers from her udders (the first part of her name is thought to attest to the richness of this milk). 

 

Auðumbla is thus the mother of all; licking the Æsir into being and nourishing the jötnar. In her cowy mystery, antagonists are united and all contradictions contained. 

 

In the beginning, we might say, wasn't the Word, but a Moo ...

 

Notes

 

[1] See my recent post on being licked into shape by bears, cats, and virtuous women - click here. 

[2] The existence of Auðumbla is attested in the 13th century text composed by Icelander Snorri Sturluson known as the Prose Edda. Modern scholars have shown how her story probably derives from an earlier body of Germanic mythology and can ultimately be placed within a wider context of religious mythology concerning sacred cows, such as Kamadhenu, who is worshipped by Hindus. Readers interested in this topic might like to see a post published back in December 2017: click here.

 

On Being Licked into Shape by Bears, Cats, and Virtuous Women

 

'Bears couple in the beginning of winter, and not after the fashion of other quadrupeds; for both animals lie down and embrace each other. The female then retires by herself to a separate den, and there brings forth on the thirtieth day, mostly five young ones. When first born, they are shapeless masses of white flesh, a little larger than mice; their claws alone being prominent. 

The mother then licks them gradually into proper shape.' 

 

- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, 8. 54

 

I.

 

Because cats have psychic ablities, they know when we are feeling out of sorts and will sometimes seek to comfort their human companions. Thus it is that my cat has recently taken to not just sitting or lying on me and touching my nose with hers, but incorporating me into her grooming cycle. 

 

Sensing that I'm physically and mentally at a low ebb after more than 2,300 days of caring for my mother without a break or any assistance, I feel she is literally attempting to lick me back into shape and not merely demonstrating her affection or attempting to strengthen the bond between us.

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, this idiomatic expression arose from the endearing belief held in medieval Europe that bear cubs were born as formless lumps of flesh and had to be licked by their mothers into their kyndely ursine shape. 

 

Whilst such an idea can be traced back to the writings of the great Roman author Pliny the Elder (who cheerfully discussed it as fact in his Naturalis historia), the first mention of this belief in English is in The Pylgremage of the Sowle, a 15th-century (part prose) translation of the 14th-century French verse composition Le Pèlerinage de l’Âme, by Guillaume de Deguileville.     

 

In this text, the narrator asks his guardian angel why a devout woman is licking a deformed pilgrim. The angel replies that, just like baby bears, human beings - thanks to original sin - are also born imperfect and so need to be licked into shape by the tongue of one who knows the Word of God; otherwise they remain, as the French say, ours mal léché. 

 

But I think I'd rather that - i.e., rather retain something of the Old Adam with all his flaws and failings - than be licked into moral perfection - and submission - by a virtuous woman.        

 

 

Nietzsche Popped My Cherry: Reflections on Heidegger's Hymen

Artwork by Wesley Johnson

 

The hymen is neither consummation nor virginity, neither the veil nor unveiling, 

neither the inside nor the outside. It is that which stands between; 

the intimate binding middle that brings together two bodies whilst holding them apart.

 

 

Someone from Wisconsin - America's dairyland - who, when not making cheese, likes to read European philosophy and listen to old school punk rock, suggests with reference to a recent post that perhaps what Heidegger means by the phrase Nietzsche hat mich kaputt gemacht is that Nietzsche was the one who took his philosophical innocence or purity - his virginity, if you will - and that the phrase might productively be read in relation to Derrida's thinking on the hymen [1].      

 

That seems to me to be a clever and helpful insight. And I do like the idea of Heidegger being broken by Nietzsche in the sense of being fucked and fucked hard (or fucked up and fucked over). One can't help recalling Deleuze's interpretation of the history of philosophy in terms of penetrating (and being penetrated by) those authors who move us most (something that ultimately results in monstrous offspring) [2].

 

The key thing is that inspiration comes not from above, but from behind and below and that there is no immaculate conception; there is, rather, pain, violence, bloodshed ... Philosophy is not an ideal love of wisdom, but a perverse form of libidinal materialism. 

 

Heidegger isn't merely stimulated by Nietzsche's ideas, he's ravished and broken by the insistence with which Nietzsche imposes himself; Nietzsche infiltrates, inseminates, and impregnates. Which is why Zarathustra's instruction to his followers to lose him and find themselves, isn't so easy. Once the hymen has been torn - and one's virginity is lost in the very act that proves its existence - there's no going back; one is fatally wedded to Nietzsche for life.      

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Unfortunately, my knowledge of Derrida is very limited; as far as I understand it, hymen indicates both proximity and separation; i.e., the relation and the difference between two bodies. But what this tells us - or how we are supposed to think la logique de l'hymen in relation to the Nietzsche/Heidegger relationship - I'm not quite sure. 

      For Derrida's description of the hymen as a kind of mediating space, see 'The Double Session', in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 210-215 

 

[2] See Deleuze, 'Letter to a Harsh Critic', in Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin, (Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 6. 

D. H. Lawrence and the Ache for Being

DHL Ultimate Hunger Support 

(SA/2022)

 

 

D. H. Lawrence is particularly scornful of Walt Whitman's claim to be he who aches with amorous love for everyone and everything. Better, he says, to have an actual belly-ache, which is at least localised and easily relieved via a visit to the lavatory [1].   

 

So imagine my suprise when I recently came across a verse in which Lawrence writes of an ache for being, which he describes as the ultimate hunger [2]. Written several years prior to the essay on Whitman, one might have thought Lawrence would have remembered this line about ontological craving and perhaps cut poor old Whitman a bit of slack.

 

For whilst there is certainly something ridiculous in the thought of the good gray poet having blue balls (epididymal hypertension) as the result of his amorous idealism, so too is there something equally ridiculous in Lawrence's feeling starved of being and longing to eat his full, as it were, in the fourth dimension, going beyond the bounds of daily existence and surpassing himself [3].  

 

Better he hungered for a hot dog or hamburger, which is at least something specific and which you can get your teeth into ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Whitman', Studies in Classic American Literature (Final Version, 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 148-61. I discuss this essay in a post published on 27 March 2019: click here.

      See also Lawrence's essay 'The Novel', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 177-190, where he writes: 

 

"If, in Plato's Dialogues, somebody had suddenly stood on his head and given smooth Plato a kick in the wind, and set the whole school in an uproar, then Plato would have been put into a much truer relation to the universe. Or if, in the midst of the Timaeus, Plato had only paused to say: 'And now, my dear Cleon - (or whoever it was) - I have a belly-ache, and must retreat to the privy: this too is part of the Eternal Idea of man,' then we would never need have fallen so low as Freud." [181]

     

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Manifesto', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 218.

 

[3] Aware that readers might have some trouble understanding what he means by this, Lawrence attempts to explain: 

      

"It is the major part of being, this having surpassed oneself,

this having touched the edge of the beyond, and perished, yet not perished."

 

After that, says Lawrence, we become unique and move in even greater freedom than the angels; "conditioned only by our own pure single being" and looking neither to the past nor future, but living in the nowness of the moment. See 'Manifesto', in The Poems, sections VI-VII, pp. 218-220.

 

 

For a related post to this one - on the verb to be - click here.   

Nietzsche Broke Me

maierfiles.myspreadshop.at

 

 

Heidegger's intriguing late confession, as reported by his student Hans-Georg Gadamer, that Nietzsche hat mich kaputt gemacht is usually translated into English as Nietzsche broke me. 

 

It's a straightforward if not entirely satisfactory translation. And still the meaning of the sentence remains unclear; what does it signify to be broken by someone? More precisely, what does Heidegger mean when he says he's been broken by Nietzsche?

 

Does he mean, for example, that reading and thinking with and against Nietzsche in an intense and prolonged manner has left him feeling exhausted, even shattered? That's possible. Nietzsche, of course, even drove himself into a state of mental and physical collapse by pursuing his own philosophy and attemping to revalue all values. 

 

Or does he mean he's ultimately been unable to overcome or surpass Nietzsche; is this Heidegger submitting or quietly conceding defeat? Again, that's possible. As one commentator says: "Heidegger never loses Nietzsche, never 'locates' him, never shakes free of him, because Nietzsche never releases his grip on Heidegger." [1]

 

But, on the other hand, maybe Heidegger means that it was Nietzsche who enabled him to find his own voice and to shine with his own light (for the silence is also broken and so is the new day) - i.e., that it was his confrontation with Nietzsche in the mid-late 1930s which helped him make a shift in his thinking away from Being and Time (and National Socialism).

 

Interestingly, the German word kaputt - which we use in English (though spell with just the one 't')  - derives from the French term être capot, which figuratively means to lose, or to be ruined, but which, more literally, means to have a bonnet pulled over your eyes, leaving you confused and unable to see. 

 

So perhaps that's what Heidegger meant when he said that Nietzsche left him feeling kaputt - not broken, or beaten, exhausted or destroyed, but hoodwinked (blinded, deceived, misled ...).   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] David Farrell Krell, 'Heidegger's Reading of Nietzsche: Confrontation and Encounter', Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Oct 1983), pp. 271-282. Line quoted is on p. 271.       

      As Krell goes on to say: "That is fortunate. The tempestuous encounter with Nietzsche prevents Heidegger from becoming what so many interpreters have taken him to be, namely, a bloodless shade of Hegel." [271]

Thanks to Maria Thanassa and Sophie Stas for their help with this post. 

 

For a follow up post - Nietzsche Popped My Cherry - click here.

Reflections on the Verb to Be

To stamp Becoming with the character of Being - 

that is the supreme will to power ... Nietzsche

 

 

I've seen it said that fascism begins with the verb to be. And, in fact, I may even have used the phrase myself in order to conclude a past post with a polemical punch line [1]. Whether it's true or not is, of course, debatable.  

 

However, it's certainly the case that false (and often pernicious) beliefs derive from mistaken values that are rooted in language rather than any underlying reality; something that Nietzsche demonstrates in his writings on metaphor and grammar (the latter defined as the presence of God within language) [2].   

 

Thus it is that I'm extremely wary of anyone who in wishing to declare their existence or express their identity asserts: I am (X,Y, or Z) in an ontologically sincere manner (i.e., unaware of the game they're playing). 

 

And I really loathe that Broadway musical number composed by Jerry Herman and famously recorded by Gloria Gaynor - I Am What I Am [3] - and which has since become a global gay anthem, regrettably reinforcing (the paradox and irony of) queer essentialism and the even more regrettable consequences that follow from the belief that sexual identities are innate and come with certain immutable characteristics or necessary attributes.

 

I can't help thinking that such idealism gives rise to all kinds of reductive, reified, discriminatory, and extremist ideologies - which returns us to where we began: fascism begins with the verb to be. Which is unfortunate, particularly if D. H. Lawrence is right and Hamlet's question is still the one that preoccupies us and the ache for being remains the ultimate hunger [4].  

 

Still, as every good ascetic will tell you, there's no need to heed every ache and pain and surrender to every yearning; I seem to recall that Aleister Crowley once adopted the admirable practice of cutting his arm with a razor every time he said 'I' and took false pride in this word [5]. 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Actually, it was the recently published post of 1 August 2022 - 'Dead Dreams Fly Flags' - click here. 

 

[2] See Twilight of the Idols, where Nietzsche writes: "I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar." Walter Kaufmann's translation of this text can be found in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Penguin, 1982), p. 483. 

 

[3] 'I Am What I Am' was a song featured in Jerry Herman's Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles (1983). It was recorded by disco queen Gloria Gaynor and released as single in the same year, quickly becoming one of her biggest hits. The song also appears on the 1984 album I Am Gloria Gaynor (Silver Blue Records). Click here to watch Ms Gaynor perform a live version of the song at an awards ceremony in Germany in December 1984.

 

[4] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Manifesto', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 218. 

[5] In 1920, Crowley and followers moved to Sicily and founded a community that would operate on the principles set out in The Book of the Law. The Abbey of Thelema, as it was known, was basically a restored farmhouse, not far from the beach and next to the ruins of an ancient Roman temple. Here, daily rituals were performed and all social conventions abandoned. Any one who used the word 'I' was obliged, like the Great Beast himself, to self-administer a cut on their forearm with a razor blade. It's possible that this practice was inspired by Crowley's reading of Nietzsche and that his hope was that Thelemites might resurrect the greater intelligence of the body, which does not speak its selfhood, but, rather, physically enacts or performs it. 

      See 'Of the Despisers of the Body', in Part One of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

Dead Dreams Fly Flags

 

Daniel Quasar's Progress Pride Flag juxtaposed to form a swastika 

and Jamie Reid's cover for the Bow Wow Wow single W.O.R.K.

(N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)

 

 

I have to admit, I'm rather ambivalent about posh English actor turned political activist and free speech campaigner Laurence Fox. For whilst I don't particularly wish to decolonise and diversify, pull down statues or take the knee, neither do I worry about reclaiming British history and culture, or care if certain idiots wish to declare their pronouns or virtue signal on social media.

 

Having said that, the provocative image he recently tweeted of a swastika made from four LGBTQ+ Progress Pride flags certainly captured my attention, reminding me as it did of Jamie Reid's final piece of work produced in collaboration with Malcolm McLaren; namely, the vividly coloured sleeve for Bow Wow Wow's 1981 single 'W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)'. 

 

As can be seen in the image above, Reid used lyrics from the song to form a swastika, a symbol he and McLaren often co-opted not just for shock value, but to also critique the zen fascism peddled by the record companies. It's a fantastic sleeve which stands alongside any of those produced during the Sex Pistols period. 

 

Obviously the image of a swastika made from Pride flags is going to be highly offensive to some (and misinterpreted by many). Flags of all description are magical objects and their denigration or misuse often causes outrage and sometimes leads to violence - although, as a vexiphobe, I find displays of love and loyalty to a coloured rag depressing. 

 

I've said it before and I'll doubtless say it again on this blog: the obsession with identity and identity politics is the problem today and just as I hate those who wrap themselves in a flag, so too do I despise those who take pride in new forms of essentialism. For fascism begins with the verb to be ... 

 

 

Note: for a related post to this one - on why I'm suspicious of Pride - click here. 

 

          

Insouciance Über Insecticide (Another Moth Post)

 

'I've always preferred moths to butterflies. They aren’t flashy or cocky; they mind their own business 

and just try to blend in with their surroundings and live their lives. 

They don't want to be seen, and that's something I can relate to.' 

- Kayla Krantz, The OCD Games (2020)

 

 

I. 

 

And so ends National Moth Week; an annual (and global) event designed to celebrate 'the beauty, life cycles, and habitats of moths' and to collect much needed data about these fascinating (mostly nocturnal) creatures, which are among the most diverse and successful of all organisms, ranging in size from as tiny as the head of a pin to as large as an adult human hand.

 

I have to admit that I didn't officially register to participate in the event. However, I did take some photos of the moths in my backgarden, including the one above (don't ask me what species it is, as I've no idea, but it was about an inch big and reminded me of the moths I used to regularly encounter as a child, but which now, sadly, are hardly ever to be seen). 

 

 

II. 

 

Readers familiar with this blog will know that I've written before in praise of moths and why they appeal to me more than butterflies, which, in evolutionary terms, they long predate (some moth fossils have been found that are thought to be 190 million years old); they just seem to me so much more punk rock in comparison to the latter. 

Readers might also recall that I recently published a post on the necessity of killing carpet moths, in which I adopted a Lawrentian argument to justify why it was the right thing to do to reach for the insecticide in order to safeguard one's clothes and home furnishings from the hungry mouths of moth larvae. 

 

Some readers will be pleased to know, however, that, in the end - even though I bought a spray - I didn't have the hardness of soul needed to use it. Ultimately, it transpires that moths mean more to me than even a relatively expensive pure new wool carpet: I simply don't care if they eat holes in it.

 

Insouciance über insecticide!

 

 

Welcome to Essex (Notes on the Dagenham Idol)

Michael Landy: Welcome to Essex (2021)

Ink on paper

 

 

I. 

 

By referring to my stay in Essex as exile, I may, perhaps, have given the impression that this ancient county - once home to Anglo-Saxon kings and fields of bright yellow cowslip - is the kind of place that one is only ever banished to involuntarily.

 

But that's obviously not true and it would be grossly unfair to portray Essex in the same negative and stereotypical manner that it is often portrayed in popular culture. It may not be the garden of England, but it's far more than merely the dumping ground of London and I'd still rather spend the day in Southend than St. Ives.

 

One artist who has done more than most to explore and celebrate the history and culture of Essex - and to challenge the pernicious myths and snobbery that this county seems to inspire - is Michael Landy ...  

 

 

II.  

 

Born and raised in Essex, Landy rose to prominence as one of the Young British Artists in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But it was his performance piece Break Down (2001) which really brought him to the attention of a public more easily impressed by the showmanship of Damien Hirst and his pickled shark, or Tracy Emin's unmade bed.

 

In 2021, a new exhibition of work - Michael Landy's Welcome to Essex [1] - was born of his love for the county and featuring (amongst other things) his reimagining of the Dagenham Idol; a naked figure made of pine wood, unearthed in Dagenham in 1922, but thought to date to the Late Neolithic period or early Bronze Age [2].

 

Landy's idol is cast in bronze, but finished with gold leaf in order to give it a more ostentatious look, thereby challenging (or perhaps simply reinforcing and perpetuating) the stereotype which thinks brash and blingy is the only aesthetic appreciated by the good people of Essex, when they also like cheap and cheerful.     

 

 

Michael Landy: Essex Idol (2021)

bronze, with 24ct gold 

thomasdanegallery.com

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Michael Landy's Welcome to Essex was a free exhibition at the Firstsight (an art space and community hub in Colchester), which ran from 26 June until 5 September, 2021. Click here for further details. A short documentary film about the work and Landy's perspective on Essex can be found on YouTube: click here. See also the interview with Landy and another Essex-based artist, Elsa James, on artfund.org: click here.   

 

[2] The Dagenham Idol was found in marshland close to the north bank of the River Thames, during excavation for new sewer pipes. Eighteen inches in height, the armless figure of indeterminate sex, was buried in a layer of peat ten feet below ground level, next to the skeleton of a deer. Carbon dated to around 2250 BC, it is one of the earliest representations of the human form found anywhere in Europe.       

      Anyone interested in seeing (and paying homage) to the Idol, should visit Valance House Museum, in Dagenham, where it has been on indefinite loan (from Colchester Castle Museum) since 2010. Or, if more convenient, there's a copy of the work residing in the Museum of London. 

 

Last Clown Standing

Last Clown Standing (SA/2022)

 

 

There's a certain irony in the fact that the only soft toy to have survived from my childhood is the one I never really cared for and used to treat with astonishing violence: an 18" clown figure with a rubber painted face and a harlequin style outfit. 

 

It wasn't that I was scared of clowns, although coulrophobia is, apparently, a fairly common fear and many people - particularly young children - find clowns disturbing.*     

 

In fact, I was enchanted by the sad little clown (or pierrot), who turned the roller displaying captions and credits at the opening and closing of Camberwick Green and was a big fan of the Joker as played by Cesar Romero in Batman. 

 

But, for some reason, I was never very fond of my clown companion, although I now have a new-found respect for his endurance, outliving a much-loved Teddy Bear and even a hard-bodied Action Man.   

I suppose it's a case of he who laughs loudest lasts the longest.

 

 

* Note: if this phobia is mostly related to their bizarre - sometimes grotesque - appearance, the unpredictable behaviour of clowns can also be unsettling; no one likes to be invited to smell a flower only to have water squirted in their face.  

 

 

How Things Protect Us From the Void: Some Further Thoughts with Reference to the Work of Michael Landy

Exhibition leaflet produced by Artangel

 

 

I'm still distressed about the material disappearance of my childhood, which I wrote about here. 

 

Someone commented that the above post reveals me to be both superficial and sentimental and suggested that I abandon the world of things and learn to cultivate spiritual peace and happiness; "when you discover inner fulfilment, then you realise just how ridiculous it is to cry over spilt milk or lost teddy bears and school reports".   

Someone else, rather more sympathetic, wrote to remind me of the case of Michael Landy, the Young British Artist who, in February 2001, famously destroyed all of his possessions in a performance piece he entitled Break Down: 

 

"Perhaps, ultimately, we all need to find the courage to destabilise our lives and stand naked, as it were, in the middle of an emptiness or void, so as to feel ourselves 'on the verge of being drawn into its terrible depth'" [1]. 

 

Perhaps ...

 

However, it's interesting to recall when thinking back to the above work by Landy, that he couldn't resist cataloguing the thousands of items he had acquired during his lifetime, thereby essentially reducing them not to nothingness, but to information [2]. 

 

Thus, arguably, he didn't quite let go and stand naked etc. 

 

And, of course, it was his decision to destroy his things, whereas, in my case, I had no say or control over the destruction of those things close to my heart. And nor do I have a detailed inventory of all the toys, games, and other treasures that my mother binned and my sister took and gave to her own children (without my knowledge or consent). 

 

And so, whilst I do kind of admire Landy for gathering together all of his things - including his clothes, stamp collection, artworks, and car - and sytematically smashing, shredding, and pulverising the lot (with the help of several assistants) in a laborious two-week orgy of destruction [3], I don't draw any real solace from his work and still insist that we need things to ground us in being and stop us becoming ghosts. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] My correspondent is quoting Yoko Ogawa, writing in The Memory Police, trans. Stephen Snyder, (Vintage, 2020), p. 14.  

[2] The philosopher Byung-Chul Han would perhaps view this as anticipating precisely what is happening today in the digital age, when things vanish from the actual world only to circulate forever as Undinge in the virtual realm, not as memories, but as data. See his work Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022).

[3] This act of artistic potlatch took place at an empty store space on Oxford Street and attracted around 45,000 visitors. It produced nearly six tonnes of waste material, which was either recycled or sent to the rubbish dump. Nothing was exhibited or sold by Landy and he made no money directly from the event, although he did of course gain a huge amount of publicity and establish his name as an artist of note. 

      To watch a 16 minute video documenting the event, posted on YouTube by the London-based arts organisation Artangel, who - along with The Times newspaper - commissioned Break Down, click here. 

 

 

How Things Protect Us From the Void

Pupils at Bosworth Junior School (Harold Hill) c. 1972

 

Rather like Sebastian Horsley, I have always been happy to have my existence confirmed by official documentation: police files, medical reports, tax returns, etc. are, as he says, for many of us, our "only claim on immortality" [1].

So you can imagine my distress when I discovered that my mother and/or sister acting as self-appointed memory police had thrown away my school reports, neatly handwritten by my teachers in royal blue fountain pen ink at the end of each year and offering an assessment not only my academic ability (limited), but character (flawed) [2].  

 

It is, as I say, not simply that these things had sentimental value; they had also existential import and their disappearance from the world matters to me more even than the disappearance of the schools themselves or the disappearance of old school friends.

 

Of course, my mother and/or sister didn't simply dispose of my school reports; toys, games, letters, and assorted treasures from the past that had helped ground me in being, were all brutally shoved into bin bags. 

 

In the name of tidying up and making space, all traces of my childhood which I had lovingly sought to preserve, were casually eliminated; "replaced by an emptiness that would not be filled" [3] ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), p. 102. 

[2] From memory, I can recall that the consensus seemed to be that whilst I was capable of producing good work, I was too easily distracted, too chatty, and too keen to amuse my fellow pupils by playing the class clown. No doubt they would simply stamp the letters ADHD on the reports were they written today.  

[3] Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police, trans. Stephen Snyder, (Vintage, 2020), p. 14. 

 

 

For further remarks on this subject, with reference to the work of Michael Landy, click here.

When Even the Flies Leave You Alone: Ernest Becker's 'The Denial of Death' as Interpreted by Sebastian Horsley

 

The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else. - EB

It's only death; it's not the end of the world, is it? - SH

 

 

As a thanatologist, I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I still haven't got round to fully reading Ernest Becker's seminal - and Pulitzer Prize winning - text The Denial of Death (1973); a psychological and philosophical examination of how mankind has attempted to deal with (and disguise) the fate that awaits. 

All forms of human culture and civilisation, argues Becker, constitute an elaborate defence mechanism against biological reality. That's what we, as symbolic animals, are extremely good at; defiantly creating a world of meaning which allows us to transcend the fact that we end up as worm food or a few pounds of ash.

 

Becker seems to find this ability heroic, but that's not the term I'd use. For a fantasy of immortality remains just that and, ultimately, no life matters and no great work will be remembered. 

 

In other words, in the grand scheme of things, there is no grand scheme and Becker's privileging of religious illusion in which our animal and mortal nature is given spiritual significance - over what he dismisses as hedonistic pursuits and petty concerns - is just conventional moral prejudice [1]. 

 

It's surprising, therefore, that Sebastian Horsley - a man who loved taking drugs and admired those who delighted in their own triviality - should claim that no book, before or since, has had such a powerful effect on him as The Denial of Death. 

 

I'm not sure, however, that Horsley carefully follows the thread of Becker's argument. Does the latter, for example, really want us to admit that we are merely "doomed and defecating creatures"? [2] I don't think so. His project is founded upon man's dual nature as he understands it and wishes to affirm that we are so much more than simply animals that eat, shit, and die. 

 

One can also see from the quotations above, that Becker and Horsley have a radically different attitude towards death; the former's existential anxiety is amusingly negated by the latter's dandyesque insouciance and flippancy.

 

And, finally, I very much doubt that Becker would endorse Horsley's scatological and masturbatory attempt at terror management: 

 

"I was so affected by [The Denial of Death] that I felt I had to respond. [...] So I locked myself into my own flat, stripped myself naked and sat there listening to Beethoven's Ninth. After a few hours I defecated in a neat pile on the floor and scooped it up in my hands. Running it through my fingers, like a gardener assessing the friability of the soil, I examined it. It was slimy as wet clay.

      It would do. I used my shit to swipe the word MAN on my chest, and then PIG on the walls. Then I covered the rest of my body in ordure until no flesh was visible. Beethoven swelled through the room. I sat there musing. Sex, I decided, returning to a favourite subject, was interesting. But not as important as excretion. [...] My philosophical insight gave me a hard on. I had a wank to quieten the imperious urge." [3]

 

Horsley remains, so he tells us, lying on the floor, eating and sleeping amid his bodily waste, for three whole days, until he finally felt able to crow like a cock on his own dunghill:

 

"When the whiff got a bit too much - it was high summer - I opened the patio door. I was a little concerned about the neighbours. And slightly worried that my landlords [...] would stage one of their impromptu checks. But I needn't have worried. Even the flies left me alone." [4]     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In an essay on The Denial of Death, Daniel Podgorski comes to a similar conclusion and describes reading Becker's celebrated work as an unexpectedly disappointing experience. For concealed behind "the parade of theorists and the solid analytical prose" is an "old-fashioned, moralizing, pessimistic set of theses: that humanity is in denial of mortality because of a 'necessary' denial of the human body and reality; that humanity can only exorcise the dread of death by embracing blind faith and rooting out 'aberrant' thoughts and behaviors; and that death can only be truly faced by those who approach the study of humanity and society through a (reductive) structuralist lens".

      Like Podgorski, I think all three of these notions deserve to be critically examined and that, upon such an examination, they reveal themselves as misguided and false.  

      Podgorski's essay - 'The Denial of Life: A Critique of Pessimism, Pathologization, and Structuralism in Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death' - can be found on The Gemsbok (22 Oct 2019): click here.

 

[2] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), p. 94. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Ibid., pp. 94-95.  

Get It On and Punk It Up With Marc Bolan

Marc Bolan with Dave Vanian of the Damned 

and Siouxsie Sioux in 1977

 

According to Sebastian Horsley, Marc Bolan was super-plastic profound:

 

"A curious hybrid of dandy and poseur, street urchin and visionary. The mass of contradictions could be held together only by the unifying power of art. The only real philosophy he had was that a human being was an art form in itself. He was entirely his own creation: A creature lovingly constructed from the materials of his imagination. He was important for being trivial yet deep, poppy yet interesting - all the things I came to love in one person." [1]

However, whilst this loving description is undoutedly true, I have to admit that back in the day - i.e., the 1970s - I was never a great Bolan fan and when I stomped around the bedroom wearing my sister's platform boots, I was pretending to be a member of Sweet or Slade, not T. Rex. 

 

As was also the case with David Bowie, I was just a little too young - and perhaps a little too straight - to fully appreciate the queer sophisticated pop genius of Bolan and his "gorgeously nonsensical and deliciouly fey lyrics" [2]. 

 

And so, although I remember listening to his songs on the radio and used to love watching him on TV, it was Gary Glitter's poster which hung on my wall and Gary Glitter's singles I used to buy with my pocket money at the local record store. 

Only retrospectively, can I now see that I should've given my heart to this East London boy who, unlike many of his peers, embraced punk rock and was - again unlike many of his peers - embraced by the younger punk generation, as the photos above illustrate [3]. 

 

Whether Bolan genuinely loved the so-called New Wave, or simply wanted to ride along on it as he had once ridden a white swan in order to sustain his own career, I don't know. But I like to think this one-time hippie folk musician who became a glam superstar was more of a punk at heart than many might imagine [4].

 

Sadly, we never really got to find out, because Bolan was killed in a car crash on 16 September, 1977, aged 29.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), pp. 29-30. 

      Horsley borrows the title for his autobiography from the T. Rex single released 30 May 1977 (from the album of the same name released 11 March 1977 on EMI). Click here to enjoy a performance of this song on the children's TV show Get It Together, presented by Roy North (sans Basil Brush).

 

[2] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, p. 27. 

 

[3] There are also photos of Bolan with the Ramones and Billy Idol - and, speaking of the latter, Generation X performed their debut single, 'Your Generation', on the final episode of Bolan's own TV show Marc (broadcast 28 September 1977): click here.  

[4] This is further evidenced by the fact that he chose the Damned to support him on a short tour in March 1977, which began at City Hall, Newcastle (10/03) and ended at the Locarno, Portsmouth (20/03), where the Damned joined Bolan and T. Rex on stage to perform 'Get It On' as an encore.    

How Do I Understand the Flies?

Joe Strummer, lead singer of the Clash, looking pensive and posing a question 

that has intrigued punks, philosophers and entomologists alike

 

I. 

 

Someone writes to say that my Insectopunk post was misleading insofar as I "neglected to mention the true character and importance of punk as a socio-political movement, primarily concerned with fighting for freedom and defending truth - not simply with writing inane songs about bugs". 

 

They close their criticism by suggesting that I should "stop listening to arty pop-punk bands and try the real thing, i.e., the only band that matters - the Clash".       

 

 

II.

 

Such idealism is always amusing and often, as in this case, betrays a mix of ignorance and naivety. 

 

Firstly, let us remind ourselves that this (hyperbolic and hubristic) tag line - the only band that matters - was one coined by American musician Gary Lucas [1] whilst employed as a copywriter in the creative services department at CBS Records. Although widely adopted by fans and journalists, one suspects it was something the band always felt secretly embarrassed by; a boast impossible to live up to and impossible to live down.

 

Secondly, it appears my overearnest correspondent has forgotten (or is unaware of the fact) that the Clash also wrote and performed a song about insects; the never officially released How Do I Understand the Flies? [2]. 

 

In this short ditty, Joe doesn't bemoan the state of the nation, but simply expresses his bemusement (and irritation) with the flies buzzing round his head in his basement bedroom, thereby preventing him from sleeping: 

 

In the summer ... the flies buzzing round my head / Every night, I don't understand the flies buzzing round my head.

 

It's not the greatest song in the world and by the end of 1976 it had been dropped from the band's live set and subsequently forgotten about. 

 

As a cultural entomologist, however, I'm really happy to know this song exists and I like to imagine that Strummer was having an existentialist moment inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre who was also troubled by flies - and insects generally [3] - as this passage from Les Mots nicely illustrates: 

 

"I go to the window, I spot a fly under the curtain, I corner it in a muslin trap and move a murderous forefinger toward it. [...] Since I'm refused a man's destiny, I'll be the destiny of a fly. I don't rush matters, I'm letting it have time enough to become aware of the giant bending over it. I move my finger forward, the fly bursts, I'm foiled! Good God, I shouldn't have killed it! It was the only being in all creation that feared me; I no longer mean anything to anyone. I, the insecticide, take the victim's place and become an insect myself. I'm a fly, I've always been one. This time I've touched bottom." [4]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lucas discusses this in a short 2013 interview available on YouTube: click here.  

[2] This song - also known as 'For the Flies', or simply 'Flies', was written in the summer of 1976 and first performed at the Screen on the Green on 29 August 1976. Click here to listen to a bootleg recording made at the Roundhouse on 5 September 1976. 

[3] Indeed, for Sartre, all nature was de trop - an undifferetiated and threatening substratum of non-human and inhuman existence for which he feels not only contempt but a visceral disgust, as readers of La Nausée will recall. 

      For an interesting essay on this, see Shannon Mussett, 'Nature as Threat and Escape in the Philosophies of Sartre and Beauvoir', in The Sartrean Mind, ed. Matthew C. Eshleman and Constance L. Mui, (Routledge, 2020), pp. 515-527. Click here to read this essay online.

 

[4] Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words, trans. Bernard Frechtman, (George Braziller, New York, 1964), p. 247.   

 

 

This post is for KV who kindly reminded me of this little known song by the Clash and for Sophie Stas, the patron saint of flies.