In Memory of James Garner

James Garner (1928 - 2014) 

as Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files

The Rockford Files is one of those '70s American TV shows that everyone who remembers it, remembers it fondly. Just as I'm sure the lead actor, James Garner, who, sadly, died yesterday, will also be remembered fondly by family, friends, and fans alike. 

The thing with Garner was that he was both very good-looking and a very good actor, capable of playing both comedic roles and more serious parts with the same grace and charm, whether on the small screen or the silver screen (he was one of the first Hollywood stars to move between the two). 

Among his many movie roles, that of Flt. Lt. Robert Hendley, known as the Scrounger, in The Great Escape (1963), is a personal favourite. But, it's primarily as the LA-based private investigator Jim Rockford that Garner most impressed himself upon my young imagination: I liked the way he dressed in sports jackets and open-necked shirts; I liked the equally casual manner in which he approached his work and handled the cops; I liked the fact he lived in a trailer on the beach; and I liked his lawyer and on/off girlfriend Beth Davenport (played by Gretchen Corbett).

Thanks to syndication, DVD, and YouTube, it's easy to still enjoy episodes and to delight in the show's fantastic theme tune (composed by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter), as well as Garner's great performance. The man had style - and that's the highest you can say of anyone. 

 

Geoff Dyer

Photo by Matt Stuart (2011)

geoffdyer.com

Someone - not quite a friend, but not, I think, someone motivated by any real enmity either - writes to tell me what is wrong with this blog and why it fails to find an audience of any size: It's too random, he says, too much made up of bits and pieces that lack any coherent theme or continuity.  

This, of course, is not untrue, but it somewhat misses the point; i.e. that I'm very deliberately subscribing to a fragmented method of writing which encompasses as wide a range of concerns and interests as possible, all of which are assembled in a single space, but without being coordinated or synthesized into any kind of unity or whole. Obviously, such a non-systematic (and anti-systematic) approach is indebted to several of the writers I love the most, including Nietzsche, Baudrillard, and Roland Barthes. 

Geoff Dyer understands: for he shares in this love of the fragmented and whimsical and has built a successful non-career by following wherever his imagination and his desire has taken him, producing a variety of original works, without any regard for a target audience, that speak of his admirable (and enviable) freedom as a writer. 

By learning how to loiter, as Dyer says, on the margins of everything, "unhindered by specialisms ... and the rigours of imposed method", one becomes not merely a man of letters, but a homotextual - i.e., one whose life is virtually synonymous with their writing.

I might not particularly care for all of his books, or share all of his passions or opinions; I might even find him something of a fraud. But, in Dyer, I recognise a degree of kinship and so can't help feeling a little friendly and fraternal towards him - whilst not entirely sure this would be reciprocated ...

Note: Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels, two collections of essays, and several genre-defying books. The line quoted is from his Introduction to Anglo-English Attitudes: Essays, Reviews, Misadventures 1984-99, (Abacus, 2004), p. 4. 

Post 333: Invocation of Choronzon

Club Choronzon 333, by deadguy333

www.deviantart.com

According to Pythagoras, three is the first genuine number - as well as the first natural number and first male number. It is also the noblest of all figures, as it uniquely equals the sum of all the numbers before it. 

Even if we might challenge its authenticity and its engendered high status, it nevertheless remains an important number within mathematics, philosophy, and many of the world's religions; think of the Christian Trinity, for example, composed of the consubstantial expressions Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (i.e. three distinct entities, but sharing one divine essence). 

Or, for that matter, think of what our friends in the neo-pagan community refer to as the Triple Goddess - i.e. three female figures portrayed as Maiden, Mother, and Crone symbolizing different stages in the female life cycle or phases of the moon, who are nevertheless aspects of a greater single deity. For like many other hypostatic idealists, including Christians and Platonists, neo-pagans share a profound belief in the fundamental unity of being. 

In other words, whilst the number three has a certain magic and mysticism to it (three's a charm, as they say), it's the number one and an instinctive hatred for plurality which ultimately determines the thinking and theology of the religiously-minded - including Jung and Robert Graves, who are responsible for much of what passes for goddess worship in the modern world.               

For those of us who loathe monotheism and metaphysical notions of synthesis, stability, and identity, however, the will to oneness is - to paraphrase Nietzsche - the one great folly, the one great lie, the one great intrinsic depravity which betrays a lust for revenge upon life; the latter understood as a demon of chaos and innumerable becomings and called by Crowley Choronzon, the Dweller in the Abyss, whose number is 333.

From Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z

Still from The Simpsons episode 19, season 7

© 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

It's amazing to observe how, after forty-odd years, the Planet of the Apes franchise continues to capture the imagination of a global movie-going audience. People, it seems, just can't get enough of those crazy sci-fi simians and militant monkeys. 

The latest cinematic installment, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, dir. Matt Reeves and starring Andy Serkis as Caesar, opened in the US a few days ago, immediately topping the box office and taking $73 million in it's first weekend. The film also received extremely positive reviews; not just for the stunning special effects, but also as a piece of well-crafted, intelligent story-telling. British audiences will be able to decide for themselves how successful or otherwise this sequel to the series reboot, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), is when it finally opens here tomorrow (July 17th). 

Sadly, however, I won't be going.

And the reason I won't be going is because, for me, as for many others, it's simply become impossible to view any of the great ape films without remembering the classic Simpsons episode which featured Troy McClure appearing in a musical adaptation of the original 1968 movie, mockingly entitled Stop the Planet of the Apes - I Want to Get Off!

Flashbacks of apes break-dancing to a brilliantly rewritten version of Falco's 1985 classic track, 'Let Me Rock You Amadeus', still result in tears of joy - and tears of joy streaming down one's face don't allow you to watch a clichéd, over-earnest and super-serious action thriller, which ultimately attempts to make monkeys of its audience as well as its lead actors. 
   

Notes: 

The Simpsons episode to which I refer - 'A Fish Called Selma' - was directed by Mark Kirkland, written by Jack Barth (before being revised by the usual in-house team), and guest starred Phil Hartman as Troy McClure. It originally aired on 24 March, 1996. 

The song 'Dr. Zaius' - one of the funniest musical numbers ever included in the show - was primarily written by George Meyer. The now classic line "from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z" in the final song of the musical was written by David Cohen.  

Thanks to Joe22c for uploading this clip on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/47069867   

That Queer Riviera Touch

Film poster by renowned Italian artist Arnaldo Putzu (1927 - 2012)

One of the films that made happy as a child was shown yesterday on Film4 - That Riviera Touch (1966), dir. Hugh Stewart, and starring Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise playing versions of themselves.

There is a plot, involving a jewel thief and a large sum of money won at a casino, but it's basically just the two English comics fooling around on the French Riviera and competing to win the affection of the beautiful Claudette, played by Canadian-born actress Suzanne Lloyd.

I have to confess, it didn't quite amuse as much as it did when first watched on TV in the 1970s, but it did still interest - particularly the ending, which is somewhat queer to say the least and openly hints towards the establishment of a ménage-à-trois of some kind. 

In other words, the two inseparable friends each get to get the girl; Claudette happily marries both men, thereby voluntarily committing an act of bigamy. In the final shot, Eric turns to the camera and says with a knowing smile: "We'll cross that hurdle when we get to it", seemingly referring to the question of who will first fuck the bride.

However, one couldn't help suspect - knowing the intimacy of the relationship between Eric and Ern - that they might be inclined not simply to share their new matrimonial duties in a cordial and civilized manner (one taking Mon-Weds, the other Thurs-Sat, leaving Sunday as a day of rest), but agree to pleasure Claudette simultaneously.  

Indeed, it's tempting to imagine that whilst all three are naked in the honeymoon suite, there might even be explicit sexual contact between the boys. This is not to suggest that all men are secretly tempted by the prospect of penetrating one another or aroused by the thought of hairy male legs, but it's amazing how often the presence of a woman - serving as an alibi of sorts - facilitates experimentation of a bi-curious character in such circumstances.       

And why not? For as Eric would say: They can't touch you for it. 

If You're Human and You Know It Clap Your Hands

According to some religious lunatic featured on a recent Dispatches report made for Channel 4, whilst the achievements of a good Muslim should be recognised, they should not receive a round of applause; for clapping, by diverting attention to the individual, robs God of the glory and praise which he alone deserves. It is thus a sound which pleases only the ears of Satan.

I have to admit, I've never thought of it like that before, but I've never much liked clapping either; both giving and receiving a show of appreciation in this manner always makes me a little ashamed. For whether one claps oneself like a trained seal hoping for a fish, or is the recipient of a doubtless generous and often warm hand, there's just something humiliating in such a socially sanctioned display of approval.

One wonders if people couldn't be encouraged to do something else: John Lennon once rather amusingly asked those in the expensive seats of a Royal Variety Performance at the Prince of Wales Theatre not to clap but simply rattle their jewellery instead. Unfortunately, this only provoked laughter (with which I also have problems) and, ironically, additional applause.

Like it or not, applause is simply too ancient and too universal a habit - too human, all too human, as Nietzsche would say - for either my opposition or that of the Taliban to really make much difference. As long as people have hands, they'll doubtless continue to scratch, fidget, and clap. Indeed, were they not taught to put their hands together in prayer, or given holy books to hold, merely in order to limit such activities ...?

Aspasia

Aspasia on the Pnyx, by Henry Holiday (1888) 

Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre

According to Nietzsche, great philosophers - like great artists - are sensual individuals full of excess vitality; lovers not just of the wisdom that resides in language, but of the truth located in bodies. Thus it's no surprise to discover that even old Socrates couldn't help being crazy with desire for Aspasia; the beautiful and accomplished courtesan who captured the heart of Pericles.

As a member of that class of women known as hetaerae, Aspasia enjoyed a level of independence and influence far above that of most other women in Greek society at this time. Renowned for her artistic and intellectual abilities, as well as her skills in the bedroom, she actively took part in symposia alongside male members of the social and political elite and her opinion was both highly respected and frequently sought out. Indeed, despite her somewhat illicit reputation, Plutarch informs us that many of these men even encouraged their wives to listen to her converse. 

Of course, she was not loved by all and Aspasia faced many personal and legal attacks from those envious of her fashion sense and her powerful position. She was accused, for example, of corrupting the young women of Athens due to her distinctive style and put on trial for impiety. Aristophanes even attempted to hold Aspasia responsible for the Peloponnesian War - labeling her the new Helen.

After Pericles died in 429 BC, Aspasia took up with Lysicles, an Athenian general. Unfortunately, little is known of her after this date. She is believed to have died shortly before the execution of her admirer Socrates in 399 BC.

Her name and her fame, however, have significantly lived on and not only does she appear in numerous works of modern art and literature, but, like Sappho, she is an important source of inspiration for many feminists, poets, and philosophers (both male and female).

An untimely figure, Aspasia both embodied and abolished all history in her person. She lived beyond judgement; accepting the abuse of those who spoke against her with stoicism and a wry smile. We can only ask: what's not to love about this astonishing woman?  

London Yawning: Lawrence and the Problem of Big City Boredom

Photo of a London hipster wearing red trousers posted 

by Monsieur Henri de Pantalon-Rouge on 15 Dec 2012

on the brilliant blog look at my fucking red trousers

In an article published in the Evening News on 3 September 1928, Lawrence writes of the queer horror for London that immediately grips his soul whenever he returns to the city:

"The strange, grey and uncanny, almost deathly sense of dullness is overwhelming. Of course you get over it after a while, and admit that you exaggerated. You get into the rhythm of London again, and you tell yourself that it is not dull. And yet you are haunted, all the time, sleeping or waking, with the uneasy feeling: It is dull! It is all dull! This life here is one vast complex of dullness! I am dull. I am being dulled. My spirit is being dulled! My life is dulling down to London dullness."  

One can't help wondering if this isn't simply a sign of weariness and ressentiment caused by early-middle age and rapidly failing health; Lawrence is, by this date, very ill with tuberculosis and has only a year-and-a-half left to live. When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. Or so they say. 

But, perhaps anticipating this response, Lawrence in part refutes it by denying that the sense of excitement and wonder which he used to experience when living in London has in any way faded, or deserted him with age: "True, I am now twenty years older. Yet I have not lost my sense of adventure. But now all the adventure seems to me crushed out of London."

And for this, Lawrence - like many a cyclist or pedestrian today - blames the traffic:

"The traffic is too heavy. It used to be going somewhere, on an adventure. Now it only rolls massively and overwhelmingly, going nowhere, only dully and enormously going. ... The traffic of London used to roar with the mystery of man's adventure on the seas of life ... Now it booms like monotonous, far-off guns ... crushing the earth, crushing out life, crushing everything dead."

Even the cheeky London red buses, says Lawrence, lack fun and crawl along routes which terminate in boredom. For what's to do, he asks, except drift about on your own, or meet up with friends in order to have fun and engage in meaningless conversation: "And the sense of abject futility in it all only deepens the sense of abject dullness ..."

Again, that's Lawrence speaking, but it could be a young friend of mine complaining from the heart of hip and happening Hackney earlier this week. 

I'm not sure what Zena would suggest in order to counter and overcome this urban ennui, but I'm pretty certain she'd not share Lawrence's solution which he arrived at in a related article, also first published in the London Evening News, which involves an ironic dandyism. In other words, for Lawrence, the cure for metropolitan dullness is to be found in humour and fashion.

He writes:

"In the ancient recipe, the three antidotes for dullness, or boredom are sleep, drink, and travel. It is rather feeble. From sleep you wake up, from drink you become sober, and from travel you come home again. And then where are you?"     

This is very true. And, sadly, it's also true that the sovereign solution of love has become an impossibility today, despite what Match.com might pretend. But we can still laugh and learn how to treat life as a good joke; not in a cynical, sarcastic, or spiteful manner - but in a gay and carefree fashion:

"That would freshen us up a lot. Our flippant world takes life with a stupid seriousness ... What a bore! 

      It is time we treated life as a joke again, as they did in the really great periods like the Renaissance. Then the young men swaggered down the street with one leg bright red, one leg bright yellow, doublet of puce velvet, and yellow feather in silk cap.

      Now that is the line to take. Start with externals ... and treat life as a good joke. If a dozen men would stroll down the Strand and Piccadilly tomorrow, wearing tight scarlet trousers fitting the leg, gay little orange-brown jackets and bright green hats, then the revolution against dullness which we need so much would have begun."

This, then, is my call (and challenge) to the organizers of and participants in the International D. H. Lawrence Conference which is coming to London in the summer of 2017 - dare to revolt into style like the young man pictured; get yer red trousers on!

Note: The lines by Lawrence are taken from 'Why I Don't Like Living in London' and 'Red Trousers', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 119-22 and pp. 135-38. 

Gandhi: Holy Fool and Hypocrite

It has been officially announced by government ministers on a visit to India that a statue of Gandhi is to be erected in Parliament Square. 

Obviously this shameful gesture is being made because Britain is keen to develop stronger commercial ties with one of the world's largest and fastest growing economies. But, according to the Chancellor, George Osborne, it's high-time Gandhi took his place in front of the Mother of Parliaments; his monument serving as an inspiration to people around the world and as a permanent reminder of the friendship between our two countries (this coming the day after a new £250m arms deal was signed). 

Gandhi might be thought of today as a peace-loving civil rights activist (thanks in no small part to Richard Attenborough's deceitful and sentimental 1982 film) - a saintly figure in a loincloth who courageously resisted violent imperialism - but this is a ludicrous caricature and his legacy is, arguably, a highly dubious one.      

Certainly it's worth remembering a few things about this shrewd but rather sinister and often cynical figure; a religious fanatic who wanted India to reject modernity and revert to a primitive 'spiritual' society; a holy fool who held bizarre views on sex, diet, and sleeping arrangements that were as much rooted in the puritanism of the late Victorian era as they were in ancient Hindu teachings.

           

For a start, Gandhi was initially a great supporter of the British Empire and an admirer of its power; he only changed his mind and called for Indian independence once he sensed the weakness of the latter and thus his own chance to succeed with a campaign of civil disobedience. During the First World War, for example, he joined a government campaign that encouraged Indians to enlist in the British Army. 

Similarly, when living in South Africa between the years 1893 and 1915, he supported the regime and its policy of racial segregation, merely petitioning for the increased rights of civilized Indian gentlemen like himself within the system. He certainly didn't advocate racial equality and did nothing for the black majority whom he referred to in his writings as kaffirs. 

Gandhi continued to express his attraction to (and flirtation with) powerful regimes during the Second World War, sending his dear friend Adolf Hitler a letter in which he expressed his conviction that the Führer was not the monster described by his enemies, but a brave and devoted nationalist obliged to commit unbecoming deeds. He openly called upon the British to Quit India in 1942, when they were critically and almost fatally weakened by their struggle with the fascist forces. In effect, therefore, Gandhi the pacifist allowed soldiers from the Imperial Japanese Army to do his fighting for him whilst he sat smiling at his spinning wheel.

Interestingly, as Christopher Hitchens notes, there was already in India at this time - and had been for decades - a strong alliance of secular leftists who had laid out the case and won the argument for Indian independence. Thus there was "never any need for an obscurantist religious figure to impose his ego on the process and both retard and distort it".

In a killer line, Hitchens concludes: "Just at the moment when what India most needed was a modern secular leader, it got a fakir and guru instead".

This is certainly regrettable, but, thanks to an assassin's bullet, at least Gandhi did not live to implement his Year Zero agenda which would surely have resulted in mass starvation and misery for tens of millions of people.   

     

That a British government - and a Conservative led government at that - should plan to erect a statue of this little weasel is deeply depressing.     

See: Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great, (Atlantic Books, 2008), pp. 184 and 183.

The Rainbow

 Joseph Anton Koch:  

Landschaft mit dem Dankopfer Noahs (1803)

 

Yesterday, a lovely rainbow across the skies of West London: even Hounslow was briefly redeemed by this trick of the light and band of faint iridescence colouring the heavens. But any joy is short-lived and, ultimately, there is always something threatening rather than hopeful in this mythological and meteorological phenomenon and one starts to feel oppressed. 

For despite symbolizing gay pride and the hope of social and political equality in the secular imagination, the appearance of a rainbow invariably takes us back to Genesis 9 and God's post-diluvian pledge to Noah and sons:

I now establish my covenant with you and your descendants and with every living creature: never again will all life be cut off by the waters; never again will be there a flood to destroy the earth. I have set my rainbow in the clouds and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and all life on earth. 

This is all very nice, though it might be thought too little, too late and hardly compensating for the global catastrophe caused by the very same loving Father who sent the rains for forty days and nights in the first place, ensuring that every living thing perished and was wiped from the face of the earth. It also provides significant wiggle-room; for in promising not to send another global flood, God carefully avoids promising not to exterminate life via some other means in the future. In effect, he is saying that whilst there'll be no more drownings or water torture, he doesn't promise not to one day burn the earth to a cinder.

The rainbow, however, doesn't exclusively remind us of the Old Testament deity playing his games of abuse. We also think of Lawrence's great novel of 1915 and particularly the closing passage in which Ursula sees the rainbow as the promise of a new day and a new evolution - though one which again noticeably follows an act of violent destruction:

"And the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face of the world's corruption were living still, that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration, that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle, corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven." 

- D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 458-59.

Why are those prone to genocidal fantasies so seduced by rainbows? Is such sentimentality inherent within the psychopathology of those who thrill to the thought of apocalypse and dream of utopia at any cost? 

Beware of the grand idealists who say creation of the new can only follow the total destruction of the old. And beware of those who place, chase, or even sing rainbows ...

Domesticity Kills

 Photo by Annabel Mehran from a fashion spread entitled 

'Last Words' in the 2013 Fiction Issue of Vice Magazine.

Styled by Annette Lamothe-Ramos. 

To be trapped between a rock and a hard place may sound like an unpleasant dilemma, but for the poet and philosopher it's infinitely preferable and far less dangerous than being caught between a cushion and a soft place. Or, as in poor Sylvia's case, a gas oven and a pile of dirty nappies.

It's unfortunate, but domesticity and parenthood invariably prove fatal to many an artist. For just as home-cooking makes fat and sharing a marital bed destroys desire, so all life's little comforts and the endless daily chores involved in keeping house and bringing up baby crush the spirit faster and more effectively than Domestos kills germs.   

I would seriously warn any younger readers of a sensitive and creative persuasion against performing any of the following activities on a regular and voluntary basis: hoovering the carpet, mowing the lawn, walking the dog, watering the plants, washing the dishes, making the bed, having kids, changing the curtains, wearing slippers, visiting parents, and shopping at Sainsbury's.    

Start by avoiding these things and, perhaps, you'll manage to preserve a little freedom and sanity and keep from slitting your wrists.

Good luck!

Reflections on the 2014 FIFA World Cup

2014 FIFA World Cup Official Logo

During certain periods, in certain societies, says Barthes, the theatre had a major social function; namely, it united the entire city within the joy of a shared experience and knowledge of its own passions. 

Today, it is sport - and one sport in particular, football - that in its own fashion performs this function. 

Football today, however, is a global phenomenon and obsession and it's no longer just a city which it brings together, or a nation, but, in a sense, the entire world - as we currently witness in Brazil at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Of course, just like the modern Olympic Games, the World Cup is a monstrous and insane corporate-media spectacle; one which is reportedly as rife with corruption off the field, as it is tainted by undignified behaviour on it (Suarez, really, what were you thinking?).

At best, the World Cup is merely posing as a noble sporting event with ancestral significance and only pretending to further the highest ideals of humanity. The opening ceremony - always carried out with great formality - fools no one and bores the spectators as much as it often bemuses the commentators. 

We all know football is now played by vain and greedy millionaires who are more concerned with selling their image rights and securing extremely lucrative sponsorship deals than with kicking a ball about and that the fans are treated as little more than a bovine source of revenue; the super-fat in their over-priced replica shirts supporting the super-fit for the entertainment and further enrichment of the super-wealthy.

And yet still we watch, still we care, and still we believe ... Such is the magic of the beautiful game. 

      

Pessimism (In Affirmation of the Oncoming Train)

Still from Broken Down Film (1985), by Osamu Tezuka 

For details visit: michaelspornanimation.com

Arguably, pessimism is not a philosophy as such, more a philosophical attitude or disposition; what we might term a style of thinking. 

Thus whilst there is no school of pessimism, there are nonetheless certain very great thinkers whom we regard as pessimists and between them they constitute a noble tradition within philosophy. For pessimism is ultimately a form of intellectual integrity; that is to say, a form of honesty, courage, and realism in the face of the universe as it is (inhuman, non-vital, and accelerating towards annihilation). 

The term pessimism was first used scornfully by priestly critics of Voltaire to characterize and condemn his satirical attack upon the optimistic view held by Leibniz and others that this world - as the creation of a loving deity - was the best of all possible worlds. If you believe this - and thereby make an implicit theological commitment to metaphysics - then of course you will find yourself in opposition to every form of impersonal negativity, such as pessimism, or, in its more aggressive form, nihilism.

But of course, there are different forms of pessimism, as Nietzsche was at pains to point out.

On the one hand, he writes of a romantic pessimism born of suffering and impoverishment, which he associates most closely with the work of Schopenhauer and Wagner. On the other hand, he writes of an altogether different kind of pessimism that is neo-classical and futuristic in character; a Dionysian pessimism which refuses to sit in judgement and says Yes to all that is evil, absurd and ugly - not out of perversity or wilful decadence, but out of strength and richness.

Nietzsche's greatest insight is surely this: tragedy is a form of affirmation and pessimism can be an expression of the greater health; something that gives wings to the spirit and welcomes the oncoming train.             

Thanks to Simon Thomas for suggesting this post.

Black Holes

Watercolour by Dan Bransfield

thebolditalic.com 

Twinkle, twinkle little mother how I loved you like no other -

shining like a star above and flowing sweet with milky love.

You gave and gave yourself away and laughed to see your children play.
But mother-suns can't burn eternal and so there comes a collapse maternal:

Upon the self they turn and fold, as hearts once warm grow bitter-cold

and offspring whom they once loved true become a source of food anew.

Thus what was a blood relation ends with wilful, dark negation; 

life once given is swallowed back, with malice by the mother-black. 

Stephen Alexander, The Circle of Fragments and Other Selected Verse, 

Blind Cupid Press (2010).    

Kidney Stones of the Soul

Thomas Hirschhorn: Resistance-Subjecter (2011) 

Gladstone Gallery, NY and Brussels

According to folk psychologist James Hillman, there are psychic crystallizations formed by material experience and memories which potentially cause blockages in the unconscious. 

I suppose we might think of these as kidney stones of the soul; equally discomforting, though perhaps far more hazardous to the health and well-being of the individual if they can't find a way to dissolve these deposits and release the energy they contain in a positive manner. 

Ultimately, if you don't learn how to piss the past away then you run the risk of ever-increased calcification; that is to say, if you obsessively keep looking back upon a life gone by, then, like Lot's wife, you'll turn into a pillar of salt - and that's never pleasant.    

All of which brings us to Thomas Hirschhorn's terrifying sculpture entitled Resistance-Subjecter (2011), in which a group of mannequins - bodies violently exploded or eaten away from within as evidenced by gaping wounds and cavities - are in a process of becoming-mineral.     

I'm aware that the politically-engaged and philosophically-informed Hirschhorn has his own very clear ideas concerning his work. As a Marxist, he's obviously concerned with what he would think of as the hard reality of things and this piece could, for example, be read in these terms. 

But, for me, this work is more than that and more than simply a rather banal reflection on the objectification and commodification of the human being within consumer capitalism as one critic suggests; more too than merely a warning about the corrosive effect of the gaze. 

Rather, it's a reminder to drink plenty of water and never allow tiny elements of the self to harden too much: love that which melts into innocence and forgetfulness; hate that which solidifies and endures.      

Notes: 

The above work by Thomas Hirschhorn can be viewed as part of The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture, an exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff at the Hayward Gallery, London (17 June - 14 September).

Thanks to Dr. Simon A. Thomas for the insight into James Hillman. 

 

These are a Few of My Favourite Things: Pop Singles (Top 40)

I have spoken elsewhere on the political and philosophical importance of lists, but we should not overlook the pleasure aspect: quite simply, lists make happy; they are fun (if sometimes tricky) to write and fun to read. 

So, here's a list of some of my favourite singles, assembled not in order of preference nor following a critical assessment of artistic value, but alphabetically by the name of the singer, group, or producer that I associate most closely with the track. 

For compiling lists should not be simply another excuse to exercise judgement and construct hierarchies. I love all of these records - not equally, but in any order that one might choose to play them and the only logic that links them is the fact that they continue to give pleasure and make me want to sing, dance, fuck, cry, or start a revolution. 

Six further points to note concerning the selection:

(1) I've chosen only records that were released from 1972 onwards; i.e. from the year when I bought my first 7" single: The Osmonds, Crazy Horses. Obviously, there's a bias towards songs from this and the following decade, but I've included one or two more recent tracks and I'm certainly not of the view that things were better when I was young than they are now - musically or in any way. 

(2) I've chosen only one single by any one artist. Obviously I could list several by those artists of whom I am especially fond, but I didn't want to do that.

(3) I have also limited the list to a top forty, which invariably means that some favourite songs and some favourite artists are absent.

(4) Although there are different genres of music represented on this chart (such as punk, disco and rap), I don't see why anyone would object to them all being referred to ultimately as forms of pop. I have no time for snobbery in this area. 

(5) The dates refer to the year of release as a single and not year of composition, or first appearance on an album.

(6) Finally, all these songs (with accompanying videos) can be found on YouTube if interested. Enjoy!


Abba, The Winner Takes It All (1980)
Adam and the Ants, Stand and Deliver (1981) 
Alex Guadino, ft. Crystal Waters, Destination Calabria (2007) 
Beyoncé, ft. Jay-Z, Crazy in Love (2003)
Black Eyed Peas, Pump It (2005)
Bow Wow Wow, C-30, C-60, C-90 - Go! (1980) 
Britney Spears, If U Seek Amy (2009)
The Creatures, Right Now (1983)
The Cure, Why Can't I Be You? (1987)
David Bowie, Life on Mars (1973)
Dead Kennedys, Holiday in Cambodia (1980)
Donna Summer, I Feel Love (1977)
The Darkness, I Believe in a Thing Called Love (2003)
Eminem, The Real Slim Shady (2000)
Fat Les, Vindaloo (1998)
Fugees, Ready or Not (1996)
Gary Glitter, I Love You Love Me Love (1973)
Iggy Azalea, Pussy (2011) 
Joy Division, Love Will Tear Us Apart (1980)
Kate Bush, Hounds of Love (1986)
Killing Joke, Adorations (1986)
Lady Gaga, Bad Romance (2009)
Malcolm McLaren, Double Dutch (1983)
Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)
The Osmonds, Crazy Horses (1972)
Public Image Ltd., Memories (1979)
Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)
Regina Spektor, Us (2004)
Sex Gang Children, Sebastiane (1983)
Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK (1976)
Slade, Cum on Feel the Noize (1973)
Soft Cell, Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (1982)
Sparks, This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us (1974)
The Specials, Ghost Town (1981)
Suzi Quatro, Devil Gate Drive (1974) 
Sweet, Block Buster (1973)
t.A.T.u., All the Things She Said, (2002)
The Undertones, My Perfect Cousin (1980)
Underworld, Born Slippy (1995)
X-Ray Spex, Identity (1978)

Who's That Girl?

Paul MacCarthy: That Girl (T.G. Awake), 2012-13

Photo: Copyright © Hauser and Wirth, 2014

If any artwork has ever solicited (and problematized) the viewer's gaze in a more challenging and slightly unnerving manner than Paul MacCarthy's That Girl (T.G. Awake) then, if I'm honest, I'm not sure I want to see it. 

Although not billed as the main attraction of the current Hayward exhibition on contemporary figurative sculpture, MacCarthy's hyperreal and clone-like figures - three silicone versions of the same girl sitting naked, legs apart, on glass-topped trestle tables - are nevertheless the stars of the show and, I think, deservedly so.

For whilst there might be issues of cynical exploitation and rather lazy porno-sensationalism, one ultimately comes away wanting to know more about the young woman who so courageously dared to expose herself in this manner and submit to the intensive, intimate, and extremely messy modelling process (as documented in the accompanying video T.G. Elyse (2011)).  

And this desire to name and to provide a personal history or biography - to effectively bring a dead object to life - is to experience what obsessed and tormented Pygmalion. Thus, in this way, MacCarthy achieves something extraordinary; he allows us to directly share in the primal (erotic) fantasy of art and to feel what he feels, not simply see what he sees.    

Notes: 

The above work by Paul MacCarthy can be viewed as part of The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture, an exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff at the Hayward Gallery, London (17 June - 7 September 2014).

That Girl is Elyse Poppers; a twenty-something American actress who has effectively become a muse to MacCarthy, having appeared in two of his films - Rebel Dabble Babble (2012) and WS (2013) - as well as in the work discussed above.  

The Little Dancer: Armed and Dangerous

Yinka Shonibare MBE: Girl Ballerina (2007) 

 Photo © Yinka Shonibare MBE / Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, NY 

and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Most people instantly recognise Degas's sculpture of The Little Dancer Aged-Fourteen (1880-81) with her hands held politely (somewhat nervously) behind her back as if tied; eyes closed and face lifted as though waiting to receive an unwelcome kiss from an ardent male admirer.

Originally sculpted in wax and fitted with a bodice, a tutu, and a pair of ballet shoes - not to mention a wig of real human hair tied with a ribbon - la petite danseuse was first cast in bronze in 1922, four years after the artist's death.

Since then, the numerous reproductions displayed in museums and galleries around the world have enchanted - or troubled, depending upon your perspective - generations of viewers and she has become an established figure not only in the image-repertoire of modern cultural history, but also in the popular and pornographic imagination; everyone loves her and Degas makes back stage johnnies of us all complicit in child prostitution, paedophilia and art.     

This pervy aspect of the sculpture has long been recognised. Indeed, when first shown in Paris at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition, the majority of critics were outraged; one described the Little Dancer as a fleur du mal who blossomed with precocious depravity and had a face which betrayed a wicked character, marked by the hateful promise of every vice; a promise that doubtless many of these hypocrites wished to hold her to.     

Certainly neither they nor anyone since has ever done much to free, as it were, the Little Dancer from the sexually objectifying gaze of the knowing male voyeur or would-be rapist, or to provide her with the means by which she might defend herself and accomplish her own liberty. Until, that is, two London-based artists, Ryan Gander and Yinka Shonibare MBE, decided to revisit and rework this piece each in a very wonderful manner by assigning independent and rebellious agency to the young girl.  

In Gander's work Come up on different streets, they both were streets of shame Or Absinth blurs my thoughts, I think we should be moving on (2009),  Degas's dancer has abandoned her plinth and escaped any glass display case that might have previously been used to imprison her and made her way to the window which she peers out of standing on tiptoes. She is thus, in the words of Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, "transformed from an object of desire into a figure enacting its own desires to explore the surrounding world".

In the earlier I don't blame you, or, When we made love you used to cry and I love you like the stars above and I'll love you 'til I die (2008), his bronze ballerina is seen taking a crafty cigarette break, having again stepped down from the pedestal on which in her earlier incarnation she stood for over eighty years, bored out of her mind. 
  
As much as I like these pieces by Gander, I have to express a preference ultimately for Shonibare's work entitled Girl Ballerina (2007), pictured above. Life-sized, as opposed to Degas's dancer who was diminished in stature, and looking tanned of skin and colourful of dress, there are two startling aspects to the sculpture.

Most immediately noticeable is the fact that she's headless, which, speaking from an acephalic philosophical perspective informed by Georges Bataille, is always a good sign; a girl who has escaped from her head finds herself unaware of prohibition and she makes others laugh with revolutionary joy due to the fact that she perfectly combines innocence with criminal irresponsibility.

This brings us to the second startling aspect; the fact that she holds a large gun behind her back and has her finger on the trigger - ready to shoot anyone who would violate her sovereignty or think of her as easy prey. Shonibare's ballerina does not passively conform to male desire or acquiesce in her own subordination; she is not a sexual naif, but more of a sex pistol: bang, bang she'll shoot you down ...


Notes: 

The above works by Ryan Gander and Yinka Shonibare MBE can be viewed as part of The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture, an exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff at the Hayward Gallery, London (17 June - 7 September 2014). 

The quotation from Ralph Rugoff is taken from his introductory essay to the book that accompanies the exhibition, The Human Factor, (Hayward Publishing, 2014), p. 12. 

Edwige Fenech (Queen of Italian Cinema)

According to her fans - of whom there are many, including Quentin Tarantino - Edwige Fenech is la piu bella donna del mondo and I wouldn't wish to dispute for one moment her obviously strong claim on this title, even if it remains highly contestable.

Born in French Algeria on Christmas Eve, 1948, to a Maltese father and a Sicilian mother, Miss Fenech made her name in the Italian film industry. Although she performed in various movies, she will be forever associated with the spaghetti sex comedies made in the 1970s, such as Ubalda, All Naked and Warm (dir. Mariano Laurenti, 1972) which established the commedia sexy all'italiana as a distinct genre.  

Miss Fenech also regularly starred in works of Italian pulp fiction or giallo during this period, including the Edgar Allan Poe inspired Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (dir. Sergio Martin, 1972).

Such works combined elements of the crime thriller with the horror film in a distinctly Italian manner, providing plenty of opportunity not only for excessive and often gruesome violence, but also a liberal exposure of female flesh. Typically, the plots would involve a psycho stalking and slaying numerous young women - usually when naked in the bathroom, or scantily clad in the bedroom. If a supernatural element could also be worked into the story then so much the better.       

Despite these rather trashy, somewhat sensational and heavily stylized elements, the films were often extremely well made with imaginative camerawork and daringly expressive soundtracks. And whilst clearly influenced by American film making and popular culture, they in turn influenced a generation of Hollywood directors; Tarantino again comes to mind as an obvious example and it's nice to note that Miss Fenech accepted the latter's personal offer as producer to appear briefly in Eli Roth's torture porn epic of 2007, Hostel Part II, as an art teacher. 

One hopes that Edwige will continue to grace the silver screen for many years to come, as she does our dreams, our memories, and our fantasies. 

On the Militant Virginity of Joan of Arc

A very beautiful digital painting of Joan of Arc 

by Mathie Ustern on deviant-art.com 

Beginning with True Love Waits in 1993 and the Silver Ring Thing in 1995, there have been any number of virginity pledge programmes impacting (for better or for worse) upon the sex lives of millions of young women all over the world. 

Mostly this has been an American phenomenon initiated by conservative Christian organizations and churches in the United States who fetishize a notion of moral purity which, strangely, can be compromised by what a girl may choose to do with her vagina in an extra-marital context.  

Obviously, this is not something I would support.

However, I am interested in the idea of what might be characterized as a militant form of virginity; i.e. one in which it is not female chastity which is the major concern per se, but female autonomy; one in which the girl does not pledge herself to daddy, to God, and a future husband, but rather commits to her own empowerment, demanding full rights over her own body (socially and politically as well sexually); one in which she gets to wield a sword like Joan of Arc, and not simply wear a wedding band.

As Andrea Dworkin points out, for women inspired by her legend, Joan is a hero "luminous with genius and courage, an emblem of possibility and potentiality consistently forbidden, obliterated, or denied by the rigid tyranny of sex-role imperatives or the outright humiliation of second-class citizenship".

And central to this was her virginity; she chose to make war, not love; to be free, not screwed into place.

That is to say, her virginity was not intended to signify her purity, or preciousness as a sexual commodity to be traded. Rather, it was "a self-conscious and militant repudiation of the common lot of the female with its intrinsic low status, which, then as now, appeared to have something to do with being fucked".

Dworkin continues:

"Joan wanted to be virtuous in the old sense, before the Christians got hold of it: virtuous meant brave, valiant. She incarnated virtue in its original meaning: strength or manliness. Her virginity was an essential element of her virility, her autonomy, her rebelliousness and intransigent self-definition. Virginity was freedom from the real meaning of being female; it was not just another style of being female. ... Unlike the feminine virgins who accepted the social subordination while exempting themselves from the sex on which it was premised, Joan rejected the status and the sex as one thing ... She refused to be fucked and she refused civil insignificance: and it was one refusal ... Her virginity was a radical renunciation of a civil worthlessness rooted in real sexual practice."

If I were a thirteen-year-old girl today, I like to think that I would have a poster of Joan of Arc above my bed rather than Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber and be proud of my virginity - not as something puerile and determined by men who secretly lust to take it, but as something active and indicative of resistance to all forms of phallocratic tyranny.


Note: The lines quoted from Andrea Dworkin can be found in Intercourse, (Basic Books, 2007), on pp. 104-06. 

Like a Virgin: Madame B. and Lady C.

Illustration of Gustave Flaubert and Mme. Bovary

from online arts and culture magazine Salon

http://www.salon.com/2005/08/21/flaubert/   

According to Andrea Dworkin, the modern era of rebellious married women who seek freedom via adultery and sexually transgressive acts begins with Madame Bovary (1856): she is the first in a long line of female characters for whom heroism consists in taking a lover and experiencing a genuine orgasm; i.e. in being fucked and fucked good.

But, somewhat paradoxically, Emma Bovary also redefines virginity as well as heroic rebellion. For according to Flaubert, a woman who has not been overwhelmed by sexual passion, not broken the law in order to be carnal - who has been fucked by a husband, but never been truly touched or transformed by her experiences in the marital bedroom - remains essentially a virgin and a type of slave who leads an unfulfilled life of domestic boredom and impoverished fantasy.

Of course, poor Emma's story ends tragically; she mistakes illicit romance for action in the real and wider social world and fucking becomes for her a "suicidal substitute for freedom", as Dworkin rightly notes. This, however, has not prevented a long line of writers finding inspiration in her sorry tale and inventing their own virgin wives whose only hope lies in what Lawrence describes as a phallic hunting out and which involves anal as well as vaginal penetration by the male.

In fact, it might be argued that Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is the ultimate example of this phallocentric and phallocratic fantasy in which a woman, if she is to be liberated, must be repeatedly stripped and penetrated (or pierced, as Lawrence writes - as if it were a knife or sword rather than a penis forcefully entering and occupying her body). 

Connie risks her life, but she is happy to die a poignant, marvellous death just so long as she is fucked; the one thing she really wants regardless of consequences and despite the fact that during her night of sensual passion she is almost unwilling, a little frightened, and obliged to be but a passive thing. 

It's over eighty-five years since Lawrence wrote his last and most notorious novel, but the model of female sexuality based upon a metaphysical virginity which he helped shape is one which continues to grip the pornographic imagination and continues to exercise a real effect over the lives of real women as an obscene form of categorical imperative.

As Dworkin writes: "no matter how much [women] have fucked ... no matter with what intensity or obsession or commitment or conviction (believing that sex is freedom) or passion or promiscuous abandon", it's never enough; these dumb bitches never learn! And so they must keep consenting to penetration, being desirable, looking hot (the pressure to do so being exerted across an ever greater age-range; from pre-pubescent girls to post-menopausal grandmothers).

Surely it's time to notice that whilst more girls and women are freer than ever to get fucked, they are still unable to share "a whole range of feelings, express a whole range of ideas, address [their] own experience with an honesty that is not pleasing to men, ask questions that discomfit and antagonize men in their dominance".      

And surely it's time to admit - without denying the great beauty and brilliance of their work - that dead male novelists, poets, and philosophers might not be best placed to help us all move forward into a world after the orgy.


Notes

See Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, (Basic Books, 2007). The lines quoted are on pp. 140, 151 and in the 1995 Preface, pp. xxxiii-iv.

See also D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), chapter sixteen. The italicized words are Lawrence's own.   

    

The Museum of Failed Products

 The Museum of Failed Products: Photo by Kelly K. Jones 

The Guardian, 15 June 2012

According to Oliver Burkeman, the vast majority of new consumer products - like new lifeforms - are destined to fail; to quickly and somewhat mysteriously be withdrawn from sale and so to vanish forever from the supermarket shelves back into the capitalist void.    

Or, more accurately, these thousands upon thousands of things - ranging from non-perishable food items and household goods to toiletries and innovations in pet care - find themselves stored for all eternity on the grey metal shelves of what has become known as the Museum of Failed Products. 

Operated by GfK and based in a business park outside the city of Ann Arbor in Michigan, the Museum of Failed Products is a place which at first makes you want to laugh and then, as the full horror of so much waste and failure hits home, makes you want to cry.

The Japanese have a phrase - mono no aware - which captures this bittersweet feeling, referring as it does to the pathos of things; i.e. to what we experience when confronted by the transient and tragicomic nature of existence and the futility of all human effort in the face of this.      

We can keep inventing, keep producing, and keep marketing new goods, but, ultimately, we too will end up being assigned a place on the shelves of the Museum of Failed Species. For just as the marketplace can do without yoghurt shampoo or breakfast cola, so too can the universe do without us.


Link: Oliver Burkeman's article in The Guardian that inspired this post can be found at: 
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/15/happiness-is-being-a-loser-burkeman

My thanks to Simon Thomas for initially bringing this article to my attention. 

Aly Buttons: On Her Lumpiness and Loveliness

Photo by Nina Lin (2011)

Not all young women can be stick thin like fashion models. But this doesn't mean that they can't be beautiful. 

This is a realization that alternative fashion and lolita lifestyle blogger Aly Buttons (aka Miss Lumpy) happily arrived at following a period during which, like many girls, she hated and starved her body in an attempt to conform to an ideal shape.     

The post in which she writes about this - about how her self-loathing gave way to self-acceptance - is open and honest, even if it's not entirely convincing (one suspects, for example, that she'd still like to drop a dress size if possible) and even if there are some things that one might find troubling as a feminist (her obvious need for male validation and boyfriend approval). 

    

Still, I don't want to be harsh or judgemental here; particularly with reference to this latter point. Perhaps we all need to see ourselves reflected in the adoring eyes of a lover and not just in our bedroom mirrors or as selfies on the screens of our i-Phones before we can truly feel beautiful and desirable. 

Maybe the fact that we're never absolutely self-contained or completely independent - that we need one another - is what makes us human. And this includes needing others to compliment us on our looks (our faces, our hair, our smiles, our make-up, our bodies, our clothes, our shoes, etc).

And so, Miss Lumpy, let me reassure you that there is no form of beauty more poignant than that which you model so wonderfully. The complex sweetness of your features - including the lily-white complexion and well-defined contours of your mouth - eclipse the most perfectly assembled of conventional faces. You have transformed your life into a work of art and a miracle of heroic survival. 

Yours is a beauty born of resistance to "so many physical and mental corsets, so many constraints, crushing denials, absurd restrictions, dogmas, heartbreaks, such sadism and asphyxiation, such conspiracies of silence and humiliation", that it signals a daring revolt into style. And for this, I admire you hugely - lumps and all.
           

Note: quotation from Amélie Nothomb, Fear and Trembling, trans. Adriana Hunter (Faber and Faber, 2004), p. 66.

Link: http://www.herlumpiness.com/2010/06/lumpy-gets-personal.html

These are a Few of My Favourite Things: Novels

I have spoken elsewhere on the political and philosophical importance of lists, but we should not overlook the pleasure aspect: quite simply, lists make happy; they are fun to write and fun to read.

So, here's a list of my thirteen favourite novels - assembled not in order of preference nor following a critical assessment of literary value, but alphabetically by author name. For compiling lists should not be simply another excuse to exercise judgement and construct hierarchies. I love all of these books, not equally, but in any order that one might care to suggest and the only logic that links them is the fact that they have continually given amorous pleasure. 

Two final points to note: Firstly, I've selected only a single title by any one author. Obviously I could list several by those writers, such as Lawrence, of whom I am especially fond, but I didn't want to do that. Secondly, I have given the titles of non-English books in translation, but shown the publication date for the original text.  

Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes, (1962)

J. G. Ballard, Crash, (1973)

Georges Bataille, The Story of the Eye, (1928)

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, (1847)

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, (1850)

Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island, (2005)

D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (1920)

Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star, (1977)

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, (1934)

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, (1955)

Amélie Nothomb, The Book of Proper Names, (2002)

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, (1870)  

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, (1890)