On the Woman in Hitler's Bathtub

Lee Miller in Hitler's Bathtub 

Photo by David E. Scherman, Munich, April 1945

Photo credit: Lee Miller Archives, 2015

Bathing scenes - particularly bathing scenes featuring an attractive young woman, nymph, or goddess - have a long history within the world of fine art. Like King David, we can all easily call to mind the image of Bathsheba at her toilette thanks to Rembrandt. And, thanks to François Boucher, we don't have merely to dream of Diana naked and displaying her divine attributes.     

Throughout the 19th century, the western pornographic imagination took on an increasingly exotic character and there were thousands of canvases produced depicting life inside the harem, or steam-filled Turkish bath. More modern artists, however, such as Degas, rejected the pretext of mythology or orientalism and preferred to paint contemporary bathers splashing about or towelling off (as if spied through a keyhole, as he voyeuristically confessed).           

The genre remained popular in avant-garde circles at the beginning of the 20th century too. Indeed, the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein was still referencing the subject and making his distinctive contribution to it in 1963. There's just something irresistible, it seems, about the combination of girls, soap, and running water ...

For me, however, the most powerful of all bathing images is one that does far more than affirm the slippery appeal of wet flesh. It's a photo of Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub, taken at the Führer's Munich apartment in April 1945 (just 24 hours before he blew his brains out in Berlin). 

Miller, an American fashion model who travelled to Paris in 1929 in order to become a photographer and hang out with the Surrealists, was one of only a tiny handful of female correspondents working alongside the Allied forces in Europe during the War. Attached to the 83rd Infantry Division of the US Army, Miller was in the thick of the action whilst recording events for the readers of Vogue: she was there when they landed on the beaches of Normandy; she was there as they entered Paris; and she was there, camera in hand, when they liberated Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps.     

Despite her distress, Miller nevertheless photographed survivors and photographed also the mounds of decomposing bodies piled up of those enemies of the Third Reich who didn't survive, but died from disease, malnourishment, brutal mistreatment and/or the Nazi policy of extermination through labour.   

After leaving Dachau, which was situated ten miles northwest of Munich, Miller accompanied GIs into the Bavarian capital, where they discovered Hitler's apartment. Always one to seize (and to stage) a unique photo opportunity, Miller stripped off and had herself pictured by fellow photographer David Scherman naked in the German leader's bath.

It remains a striking and unsettling image; the culmination of her work as a surrealist and photojournalist, combining humour and political defiance. Miller and Scherman deliberately placed the Heinrich Hoffmann portrait of Hitler on the tub as an amusing indicator of just where she was. They also just as deliberately placed the small sculpture by Rudolf Kaesbach in the bathroom in order to pass critical judgement on the Führer's kitsch-classical (nicht entarteten) taste in art.

And, finally - most crucially - in front of the tub, Miller set down her heavy boots covered with the filth from Dachau earlier that day; filth she has trodden with contempt into Hitler's pristine white bathmat. In this way, a beauty in the bathtub achieves her victory over a beast in the bunker ... 


Afternote

It would be nice to conclude this post with the thought that she who laughs last laughs the longest and that this iconic photo represents the idealistic triumph of aesthetics and humanity over fascist ideology. But, sadly, it would be somewhat disingenuous. 

For it's not so easy to forget traumatic experiences or erase horrific memories and so, long after the War, images from the camps - many of which she destroyed or hid away - continued to haunt Miller and she suffered from severe episodes of clinical depression, eventually giving up the darkroom in favour of the kitchen.  

No poetry after Auschwitz - and maybe no photography either - but there's always cookery ... 

On the Art of the Kiss 3: Man Ray

Man Ray: Le Baiser (1930)

The above photograph by Man Ray, featuring his lover, model and muse - the magnificent Lee Miller - kissing an unknown woman (sometimes identified by the mysterious name of Belbourne), is one that I like very much; elements of faux-lesbianism and frigidity always excite my interest more than passionate scenes between genuine lovers prone to emotional excess and that soulful look.

I also find the photogram below of great interest and, in a sense, just as exciting:

Man Ray: Le Baiser, ('Rayograph', 1922)

Also entitled The Kiss, this is one of Man Ray's earliest Rayograms; a technique in which he abandons the camera and experiments with image-making by bringing objects directly into contact with the surface of light-sensitive material, resulting in spooky-looking shadow images (variations in tone indicating the degree of transparency of the objects used).

To create this negative kiss, Man Ray combines the ghostly heads and hands of himself and his mistress at the time, Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse); an actress, model, nightclub chanteuse and artist in her own right, who perfectly personified the bohemian culture of Paris in the Twenties.

I suppose the question that arises and which intrigues me most is this: What did Radnitzky, the great American surrealist and son of a tailor, desire most; to fuck his models in the flesh, or capture their ephemeral beauty on film?

Either way, I greatly admire his avant-garde genius and envy him his way with the ladies. Man Ray is an amazing example of a creative, intelligent individual who devotes his life to the joy of erotic and artistic freedom. Insouciant, mais pas indifférent - as it says above his grave, I wish I had but a fraction of his talent, his courage, and his humour.       

On the Art of the Kiss 2: Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt: Der Kuß, 1907-08.

Oil and gold leaf on canvas, 180 cm x 180 cm.

Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna.

Almost everyone is surely familiar with Gustav Klimt's gilded Art Nouveau masterpiece, The Kiss. Indeed, when I was a student back in the 1980s, it was almost obligatory to have a poster reproduction on the wall, purchased from Athena and placed alongside a work by his more daring, fiercely talented young protégé, Egon Schiele, who stripped away the prettiness and coyness of Klimt's gold leaf.

Looking at it now, however, I have to confess to finding its dreamy symbolism and romantic idealism all a bit too hippyish for my tastes (Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair). And, annoyingly, one also can't help thinking of Joseph and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat - and one doesn't want to think of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber (or the tedious Hebrew scriptures upon which they based their musical) under any circumstances, but particularly when trying to discuss a work of erotic art rather than Christian rock. 

And, obviously, The Kiss is primarily an erotic painting; featuring as it does a pair of lovers lost in a moment of bliss, bodies entwined. But it's a subdued rather than scandalous eroticism, that lacks the perverted excess that belongs to the pornographic imagination and which characterised Klimt's notorious Faculty Paintings (1900-07), commissioned by the University of Vienna (none of which were ever displayed and all of which were destroyed by the retreating Nazi forces in 1945). 

It really is a lovely work, The Kiss; one that was enthusiastically received and which immediately found a buyer. But, in all honesty, it's simply not as challenging as some of his other great canvases. His public reputation damaged and his confidence severely shaken after the Vienna Ceiling Affair, Klimt was looking to win back favour and produce a successful picture; to demonstrate to himself, as well as his critics, that he wasn't too old, too nervous, or too stupid to do so.

Ultimately, The Kiss is a compromise; unlike the beautifully provocative Goldfish (1901-02), which mockingly invites his detractors to kiss his arse.

Today, retaining pride of place in the Belvedere Museum, Der Kuß is regarded as a national treasure by all proud Austrians, who boast it's not only more popular than Leonardo's Mona Lisa - and might even be more valuable if sold - but is a much bigger canvas to boot!        

On the Art of the Kiss 1: Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin: The Kiss (1901-04) 

Tate Collection (1953, Reference: NO6228) 

Pretty much everyone is familiar with Rodin's sculpture known in English as The Kiss. If they haven't seen the 1882 marble original in Paris at the Musée Rodin, they'll have seen the full-size version displayed at the Tate here in London. But what everyone mightn't know is that it commemorates Francesca da Rimini, the 13th-century Italian noblewoman and adulteress immortalised in Dante's Inferno, who copped off with her crippled husband's younger (and able-bodied) brother, Paolo. 

Observant viewers will note that Rodin doesn't actually allow the lovers' lips to touch, suggesting perhaps that they never consummated their affair (and that Le Baiser - a title supplied by the critics - is something of a misnomer). But this romantic idea isn't true. In fact, they carried on their illicit relationship for a full ten years before they were discovered (in flagrante delicto) and met their tragic fate at the hands of the cuckolded figure of Giovanni Malatesta.         

The sculpture's provocative combination of down and dirty eroticism - the male figure is clearly aroused in the original life-sized work - with high aesthetic idealism, secures it a permanent (if controversial) place within the history of Western art as well as the pornographic imagination. Rodin prided himself on depicting women, their bodies and their sexuality, in an active manner and Francesca is seen here as a willing partner in crime.

However, despite being a celebrated work, Rodin himself amusingly considered it as far from being a masterpiece; he described it privately as very traditional in style; little more than a large sculpted knick-knack that follows the usual formula.

And this remark - a kind of kiss this to popular opinion and conventional taste - makes me love him all the more.

Ken Dodd: How Tickled I'm Not

I don't know why, but I don't like - and have never liked - newly knighted comedian Ken Dodd. Or Doddy, as he's known; the self-proclaimed Squire of Knotty Ash and King of the super-creepy Diddy Men, waving his tickling stick about and rejoicing in his own personal merriment:

Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I possess / I thank the Lord that I've been blessed / With more than my share of happiness.

Dodd essentially belongs to that Mersyside music hall and variety tradition that also produced the spectacularly unfunny Arthur Askey and Tommy ("It's That Man Again") Handley.

But, rightly or wrongly, he's associated more in my mind with that depressing generation of Liverpudlians that dominated light entertainment in the era I was growing up; Jimmy Tarbuck, Cilla Black, Tom O'Connor, Stan Boardman ... Showbiz reactionaries who sentimentally pride themselves on their Scouse roots and humble origins, but love Margaret Thatcher and think the Royal Family do a marvellous job.

Great hair though. And, like Picasso, Doddy's a monster of artistic stamina. So there's something to admire and respect, despite the dodgy politics and sometimes equally dubious stage material.   

Flogging a Dead Horse (Notes on The Rocking Horse Winner)

Still from The Rocking Horse Winner (dir. Anthony Pelissier, 1949),

showing Valerie Hobson as Hester Grahame and the shadow of John Howard Davies 

as her son Paul upon his magical wooden steed

Having just re-read it, I was hoping to write something provocative on 'The Rocking Horse Winner', Lawrence's short story first published in the American fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar, in July 1926.

But, unfortunately, I've so far failed to even get out of the starting gate. Indeed, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that anyone attempting a new interpretation is likely to find themselves flogging a dead horse. For between them, the Freudian, Marxist, and Christian critics have done an effective job of foreclosing the text; they've nobbled it, so to speak.

For Freudians, Lawrence's story is simply a classic tale of Oedipal desire with scenes of sublimated masturbation thrown in for good measure; easy to understand by any one with a working knowledge of psychoanalysis. Hester's reliance on her young son to satisfy her needs, emotional and economic, rather than her hapless husband - and Paul's frantic attempts to do so - tragically arrest his development and lead to his premature death.     

For Marxists - less interested in sex and the libidinal unconscious and more concerned with class and the role of cash within a commodity theory of exchange - and for Christians - convinced that the love of money is the root of all evil - the tale is also very straightforward and easy to explain. For the former, capitalism dissolves the human bonds that tie us together; for the latter, all forms of materialism lead to sin.

I would like to find and to offer something more; something, for example, that allows us to relocate desire from the nursery and free it from its entrapment within the Oedipal triangle of Mummy-Daddy-Me; or something that allows us to conclude other than that greed is bad, luck is vulgar, and there's merely shit in the hearts of the bourgeoisie.

But Lawrence, who at other times goes out of his way to prove himself anti-Freudian, anti-Bolshevist, and anti-Christian, gives us so little else to work or play with in this story. He's so unambiguously opposed to wealth, success, and even good fortune - not to mention so openly contemptuous of Hester - that he can't help producing a tale that virtue signals its sympathies and its prejudices too clearly, too crudely (as, arguably, he does in much of his later fiction - including his notorious last novel).             


See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Rocking Horse Winner', in The Woman Who Rode away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Portrait of the Führer as a Young Artist (Or How Hitler Helps Us Counter Aesthetic Idealism)

 Adolf Hitler, Self-Portrait (detail), 1910

Hitler had a long and passionate relationship with painting; one that swung from the love and devotion of his early years as a would-be art student in Vienna where he produced hundreds of sketches and water colours, to his notorious rejection as Führer of almost all modern work as degenerate.

In Mein Kampf (1925), he confesses how his youthful ambition was not to become a great statesman, but, rather, a great artist. Indeed, even in the dark days of 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, Hitler told a somewhat bemused UK Ambassador: 'I'm an artist, not a politician. Once the Polish question is settled, I want to end my days as a painter.'      

Unfortunately, however, most of Hitler's pictures - whilst technically competent and not lacking in a certain charm - displayed only a mediocre and all-too-conventional talent; one that failed to convince the examiners of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, who twice rejected his application to enrol as a student (first in 1907 and again a year later).     
  
But some - particularly the faceless self-portrait above in which a 21-year-old Adolf sits on a stone bridge and dangles his feet over a colourful stream (possibly contemplating his own failure and growing sense of alienation and anonymity) - really have something intriguing and challenging about them.     

At any rate - and as Peter Beech, a freelance journalist and subeditor on the Culture and Review section of The Guardian (a paper not known for its Nazi sympathies) concedes - Hitler's work, whether we like it or not, isn't that bad. It's certainly superior to most of the outsider art produced by the criminal and/or criminally insane. Beech writes:

"I'm no expert, but I sense that the putdowns of the art world are overstated. Hitler's paintings are amateurish, but they certainly aren't an abomination - that came later. In fact, they're quite sweet. The man who dreamed up the death of the Jews proves to be a surprisingly dab hand at sunlight on stone walls. They show him nearly getting it right, or at least not getting it very wrong. This is much, much worse. Looking at these pictures, it's not enough to say they are something Hitler tossed off during his brief, early masquerade as a human being. The artist quite clearly has a grasp of a very nuanced and very human proposition: what is beautiful."
   
This, as Beech points out, is problematic - not least of all for those beautiful souls who think art has something important to teach us; that it's morally instructive and uplifting:

"What is the link now - if any - between aesthetics and morality? We all accept that our creatives needn't lead impeccable lives, but it's something else to admit that true monsters are capable of taste. ... Hitler's paintings, if we look at them, hard, should help us dismiss any lingering belief that we can learn in a moral sense from something that demonstrates technical accomplishment. They confirm, if we needed confirmation, that there has never been any relation between form and content, between what is pretty and what is right. ... If Hitler can do loveliness, then it has nothing to teach us. Beauty is simply beauty - and that's the truth."

Many have come to accept the banality of evil. But it's only a few as yet who admit also the superficiality of art. 


See: Peter Beech, 'Face it, Hitler's art isn't that bad', The Guardian, 29 April, 2009.

Why I Love Carry On Cruising

Kenneth Williams as First Officer Marjoribanks

There are many reasons to love Carry On Cruising (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1962), the sixth film in the series and first to be filmed in colour.

Firstly, it retains all the innocence and queer charm of the earlier black and white films and is essentially a finely balanced romantic comedy without too much sentiment or too much vulgarity; it's tender without being soft-centred, saucy without being smutty.   

Secondly, regular cast members - Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Connor - all deliver excellent (nicely restrained) performances; and, just as crucially, stand-in cast members Lance Percival and the lovely Dilys Laye also do fine jobs. The former, playing the ship's cook, occupies the part originally meant for Charles Hawtrey, dropped from the cast for demanding he be given top billing and a gold star on his dressing room door. The latter, playing a young woman looking for love whilst cruising the Mediterranean, replaced Joan Sims at short notice after she was unexpectedly taken ill just days before the commencement of filming.

Cruising also co-stars the magnificent Liz Fraser and - as I think we can all agree - any film or TV show with Liz Fraser is instantly improved, even if, sadly, not always worth watching. When she departs the series after Carry On Cabbie (1963), it's a real loss. Seeing her in her black underwear always makes happy (and nostalgic); she has the erotic charisma that Barbara Windsor in the later movies, for all her infectious giggling, completely lacks.                    

Someone else who always makes happy (though for very different reasons) is the diminutive, Australian-born character actress and funny-woman, Esma Cannon, here making her third of four appearances in the Carry On series. British cinema would not be British cinema without her and Miss Madderley is a very welcome passenger on board the Happy Wanderer. Her table tennis scene with Kenneth Williams is particularly pleasing.   

Finally, Cruising also contains a somewhat curious scene in which James and Williams discuss different schools of psychoanalysis. James, as Captain Crowther, declares himself to have always been a Freudian and too old to change; Williams, as First Officer Marjoribanks, quips in response that that's nothing to worry about or apologise for - just so long as one remains Jung at heart. 

It's not the greatest joke ever written. But it's inclusion in a film of this nature is surprising and a welcome relief from the more predictable double entendres, sight gags, and elements of slapstick.    

On the Keys to Happiness (and the Women Who Hold Them)

I hold the keys of eternal bliss; whatever shall be locked in this life shall be locked hereafter

 and whatever you loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven.

For some lovers, it's not enough to symbolically hold the key to their partners heart; they want a real key that brings with it real power and authority - and it's not the aforementioned organ that they wish to exercise control over either ...

The chastity belt was originally a device designed to be worn by women in order to prevent sexual activity and remove even the temptation to such. Today, however, modern versions are predominantly made for male wearers and used not by crusading knights, elderly husbands, or moral puritans obsessed by the thought of masturbation, but by submissives within the world of BDSM looking to heighten their erotic pleasure via games of genital tease, torture and orgasm denial.       

The use of a chastity device in a kinky context, be it a traditional belt or a more contemporary cage design, is of course consensual. But, once it's locked in place, it's the amorous subject alone who, as keyholder, is expected to call the shots and assert dominance over the wearer and their sexual behaviour. Only the keyholder may decide if, where, and when the chastened object might be released and allowed some degree of gratification; the latter having often been trained to quite literally come on command.     

Keyholders can, of course, be of any gender or sexuality. But, as most of those happily squeezing their genitals into chastity devices are heterosexual men looking to be enslaved by a cruel and beautiful mistress, it follows that most are female.

And, interestingly, many of these women enjoy carrying the little keys of happiness entrusted to them at all times; often wearing them on a necklace or bracelet, or, as in the picture above, tucked neatly and conveniently into a specially designed stocking top.      

(The point - for those who like things spelt out - is this: we none of us hold the keys to happiness in our own hands; we are all dependent upon others for our fulfilment.)

On the Peacock and the Gamekeeper

Peacock by go-bananas on deviantart.com

The literary imagination of the nineteenth-century was fascinated by the symbol of the peacock. Indeed, even the young D. H. Lawrence, writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, can't resist having one of these ornamental birds come screeching its way into his first novel  ...

The narrator, Cyril Beardsall, is sat one evening in an abandoned churchyard, chatting with his new acquaintance, Annable, the misanthropic (and misogynistic) local gamekeeper.

Although Annable is despised by the villagers and regarded as something of a devil, Cyril can't help confessing the erotic attraction he feels towards him; "his magnificent physique, his great vigour and vitality, and his swarthy, gloomy face drew me in". Cyril also likes the way that the older man treats him "as an affectionate father treats a delicate son", touching him on his shoulder or knee, as they sit discussing "the decline of the human race" into folly and corruption.        
 
Suddenly, a peacock came flapping out from behind the church and flew onto the marble figure of an angel that continued to guard a grave, even if it had long ceased caring for the poor parishioner buried therein:   

"The bird bent its voluptuous neck and peered about. Then it lifted up its head and yelled. The sound tore the dark sanctuary of twilight. ... Again the bird lifted its crested head and gave a cry, at the same time turning awkwardly on its ugly legs, so that it showed us the full wealth of its tail glimmering like a stream of coloured stars over the sunken face of the angel."

At first, Annable was silent and simply watched the peacock moving uneasily in the twilight. But then he exploded with unexpected and somewhat absurd misogynistic rage - especially considering the exuberant maleness that the large bird displayed: 

"'The proud fool! - look at it! Perched on an angel, too, as if it were a pedestal for vanity. That's the soul of a woman ... the very, very soul. Damn the thing, to perch on that old angel. I should like to wring its neck.'"

The peacock gave another loud cry; it seemed to Cyril to be stretching its beak at them in derision. Annable picked up a piece of earth and flung it at the bird, saying: "'Get out, you screeching devil!'" The peacock flew away, over the tombs and down the terraces.

"'Just look!'" said Annable, "'the miserable brute has dirtied that angel. A woman to the end, I tell you, all vanity and screech and defilement.'"

Now, it transpires that this contemptuous view of women is the result of a bad marriage experience; according to Annable, his wife manipulated him from the beginning and quickly turned him into an objectified plaything. Then she got bored and fell in love with a poet. Feeling he'd been shit upon and humiliated, he left and allowed the world to think him dead.

That doesn't sound very nice. But, ultimately, his ugly and resentful remarks on women - like those of Lawrence's other famous gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors, - are unpleasant, unfair, and unforgivable, whatever the unfortunate circumstances that gave rise to them.
 

See: D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).

In Praise of an Unnatural Death (and in the Hope of Dying on the Scaffold)

Unnatural Death by Ashkan Honarvar (2015)

Ultimately, to have done with the judgement of God means refusing to accept what medical professionals like to describe as death by natural causes. Which is to say, the all-too-predictable kind of death that results from illness, old age, or an internal malfunction of the body and its organs. 

One should - as a philosopher and anti-theist - always desire and seek out the opposite of this; i.e., the joy of an unnatural death, be it by accident, misadventure, homicide, suicide, or that mysterious non-category that is undetermined and which, for those enigmatic individuals who pride themselves on their ambiguity, must surely be the way to go.

Personally, I have always quite fancied the idea of being executed. It's not that I particularly want to be hanged, guillotined, gassed, electrocuted, given a lethal injection, or shot at dawn, but I do like the thought of enjoying a last meal before then facing an audience before whom one can display the noble virtues as I understand them; irony, indifference, and insouciance. 

I would like, in other words, to go to my death with the cool courage and stoicism of the dandy - and a ready quip on my lips that might cause even my executioner to smile (and serve also to annoy the po-faced authorities who demand seriousness and expect contrition in such circumstances). 

In a famous essay from 1927, Freud theorised gallows humour thusly:  

"The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure."

There are many examples; William Palmer, the notorious nineteenth-century murderer known as the Prince of Poisoners, is said to have climbed the gallows and placed a foot tentatively on the trapdoor before enquiring of the hangman: 'Is it safe?'

But I think my favourite story concerns Mussolini who, about to be shot by communist partisans, asked them to aim at his heart - before turning his face to one side and adding 'Don't ruin the profile.'

Cold Turkey and TV (How We're Betrayed by Tradition)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Boy
(looking as bored then as I feel today)

There are many traditions associated with Christmas; singing carols, decorating a tree, hanging up a stocking, kissing under the mistletoe, exchanging presents, etc.

But, for many people, the big day itself is ultimately reduced to a plate of cold turkey leftovers and zoning out in front of the TV: sic semper erat, et sic semper erit. Is it any wonder that suicide rates spike at this time of year?

The fact is, whether we like to admit it or not, traditions can be fatal: the mindlessly repetitive transmission of customs that no one really cares about and beliefs that no one considers truthful, from one generation to the next, is at last soul-destroying.

Far from sustaining a people within a living faith or culture, tradition becomes a substitute for such; an empty form, devoid of significance, whose meaning has long been forgotten. Nietzsche warned of the way that history can, at a certain point, become disadvantageous; the past starts to enforce its claims on the present regardless of the cost, preventing the birth of new thoughts and feelings and any future unfolding.

Etymologically, the word tradition warns us of the threat that it contains; for tradere means not only that which is delivered as a gift across time, but also that which betrays. We are exposed to danger by our own inheritance, as soon as we allow it to automatically determine who we are and how we live.

This is why we must challenge convention and all forms of doxa; why we must not simply show unquestioning love and loyalty to the past; why we must let the dead bury the dead (so that they don't bury us beneath the accumulated filth of ages).

And this is why, if you really want to have a merry Christmas, it takes more than pulling a cracker and wearing a paper hat round the dinner table ... 

All I Want for Christmas ...

All I Want for Christmas Is You

Ever since a young child, I have, as a rule, instinctively felt myself in visceral opposition to that which has mass popular appeal, or solicits universal critical consensus. But there are, thankfully, always exceptions to any rule - even one's own.

And perhaps the loveliest of all exceptions is that slice of immaculate pop magic conjured up by the American singer-songwriter Mariah Carey during the festive season of 1994.

It's not my absolute favourite Xmas song: that would be Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End), by The Darkness (2003), for reasons indicated elsewhere on this blog [click here]. And, obviously, I'm also very fond of Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody (1973), showcasing the unique genius of Noddy Holder.

But Mariah's is the best and gives the purest sense of festive joy. She is, as one critic has pointed out, a great philosopher of the human heart:

"Since 1994, the song has sold more than 14 million copies and made a reported $50 million in royalties. And besides making her some sweet seasonal cash, Carey's masterpiece is an incredible feat of philosophical subterfuge. Christmas is a time of material and affection-based excess, yet the song is narrowly focused on just one thing: getting to be with a specific person, e.g., you. It rejects the idea of love in general in favor of love in particular, simultaneously defying and defining pop-music conventions. With infinitely more economy of expression and undoubtedly catchier lyrics, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" is a sort of Hegelian dialectic of Christmastime desire, taking the conflicting notions of abundance and specificity and packaging them neatly into an earworm for the generations."
              

- Emma Green, 'All I Want for Christmas Is You: A Historical Dialectic', The Atlantic (23 Dec 2015).

Infrathin Erotica (Fragment from an Illicit Lover's Discourse)

 

The blissful feeling that the Illicit Lover experiences when he sits in a seat on the Tube vacated by a young woman and her body heat is transferred unto him is heightened by his knowledge that this is not merely a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, but an example also of Duchamp's ambiguous concept of the infrathin - a concept which refers to (amongst other things):

(i) those fleeting sensory experiences whose pleasure escapes any form of rational explanation  ...

(ii) that intangible fourth dimensional state that transcends mundane existence ... 

(iii) the almost imperceptible difference that exists between two seemingly identical objects ...  

Later, he notices how the perfume of the Prostitute marries with the scent of her flesh into an intoxicating cassolette. And he delights also in the way that her cigarette smoke smells of the mouth that exhales it (the same mouth that fellates him with such consummate ease).  

Carri on Sex Pistols (Comments on the Case of Joe Corré and His Bonfire of Punk)

Artwork by Jamie Reid 

(Virgin 1979)

I've been asked to comment on Joe Corré's decision to burn his valuable collection of Sex Pistols memorabilia on the River Thames last month in order to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Anarchy in the UK, whilst, at the same time protest punk's commercial co-option. Obviously, there was a good deal of vanity and a certain selfishness in the stunt which, from what I've seen of it, all looked a bit naff. And - who knows? - perhaps Henry Rollins is right to suggest that it should ultimately be interpreted as an act of revenge by an angry son left out of his father's will.

But, having said all this, the amount of scorn and vitriol directed towards Corré by aged, self-righteous punks - including, of course, that man-mountain of hypocrisy, Johnny Rotten (rightly identified as The Collaborator all those years ago) - is surely undeserved. For if a man wants to burn his own bondage trousers (and his own inheritance) that's really his own business and ultimately hurts no one. I'm not sure Malcolm would have found the whole thing hilarious, as Corré suggests, but I doubt it'll have him spinning in his grave either.

I suspect rather, that, were he still alive, what Mclaren would have done is remind us of his own ingenious and far more provocative attempt to expose and destroy the legend and the legacy of the Sex Pistols in the aftermath of the band's spectacular implosion, after Rotten flounced off in search of artistic integrity and a more mainstream career in the music business.

Ultimately, Never Mind the Bollocks was just another rock 'n' roll album; conventional in every regard. Obviously, there are some unbelievably powerful tracks. But I'm tempted to say now that the greatest thing about it is the title and Jamie Reid's artwork.

Similarly, the really interesting aspect of the Sex Pistols' story is the point at which they become more than just another corny 4/4 beat combo. And it starts when Malcolm conceives of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and begins the process of not only destroying everything - including the loyalty and expectation of their own followers - but anticipating precisely what would happen next; the assimilation and marketing of punk.

Julian Temple's film opens with Malcolm and Helen burning all traces of the band's existence in the hope that they might somehow prevent their posthumous exploitation in the form of either collectable artefacts to be showcased in museums and expensive art galleries, or cheap merchandise churned out for easy consumption by gullible fans. The same film later reveals the forlorn nature of this hope; if you like their pop music, you'll love their pop corn - it's pure punk!  

What I'm arguing, in short, is that Joseph Corré's rather feeble gesture was unnecessary; his father had alerted us in 1979 to fact that the Sex Pistols were by then no more than a brand name and that Bambi was already being butchered.         


Note: those interested in watching film of Corré's stunt should click here.

City All Over (Notes on Urban Wildlife)

Some creatures have always been happy living synanthropically alongside man and have long been residents of the city. Rats, pigeons, and cockroaches are three very obvious examples, drawn from three very different classes of animal. We may think of them as pests to be exterminated, but they think of us much more generously and not only survive but thrive in the urban environments we've constructed and gradually extended over the entire globe.     

Indeed, as our cities grow ever greater in size and areas of natural wilderness continue to shrink and disappear, more and more species are faced with the stark choice of either adapting to life within the concrete jungle, or face extinction. Some, obviously, aren't going to make it. But a surprising number of animals - large and small - are at least giving it a go and competing for food, space, and shelter alongside the more familiar magpies, foxes, squirrels, and stray cats.  

Unbelievably - but wonderfully - we can today find wild boar in the suburbs of Berlin, boa constrictors in Miami, baboons in Cape Town, big cats in Mumbai, and birds of prey in NYC. Even the Hollywood Hills are home to their very own mountain lion.      

What's amazing is the speed with which some creatures are getting the hang of things; learning to navigate the traffic or exploit the subway system; learning to communicate in new ways, thereby overcoming the problem of constant noise; learning to hunt by electric light; learning to exploit human waste as well as human kindness. It seems that, in some cases, we're not just witnessing radical adaptability and the acquirement of new transferable skills, but accelerated evolution; the creation of bolder, brighter, brand new urban species. 

All of which makes me happy and just a tiny bit hopeful for the future. I think everything that can be done to encourage and further this should be done; that we should welcome as many of our animal brethren in out of the cold as possible and allow them to enjoy the benefits of big city living.

Evening All: Reflections on the Case of PC Semple

Every now and then a story comes on the news that leaves me spluttering in the breakfast bowl; not so much in moral outrage, as amused disbelief. 

One such story is that of PC Gordon Semple, 59, who, tragically, was murdered by an Italian Lothario, Stefano Brizzi, with whom he'd arranged a sexual liaison via Grindr, the world's most popular gay dating app.

Details of the crime are sordid and shocking enough: the hapless bobby, who was simply looking for some sado-masochistic fun with a like-minded fellow, was strangled and dismembered. Over the course of the next few days, Brizzi attempted to dissolve the remains in an acid-filled bathtub - but not before cannibalising some of the tastier body parts (toothmarks were found by a forensic dentist on one of the policeman's ribs and puddles of human fat were discovered inside the poorly cleaned oven).      

As appalling and abhorrent as these details are, they aren't what made me choke on my cornflakes; this, rather, was caused by a victim impact statement read to the court by PC Semple's older brother, Ronald,  during Brizzi's trial at the Old Bailey.* In the statement, he said Gordon was a caring and gentle person, much loved by his family and friends, who were left devastated by news of his murder, blah, blah, blah.

So far, so platitudinous: but then he adds - preposterously - that his sibling deserved to be remembered by the community he served for over thirty years as a real-life Dixon of Dock Green ...!   

I have to say - with no disrespect to the deceased, his colleagues, his grieving family and friends, or members of the queer community - that's a bit rich ...

For not only does it reflect rather unfairly on the character played by Jack Warner who, as far as I recall, never once attended a drug-fuelled orgy, used his truncheon as a dildo, or indulged in his taste for hot, dirty, sleazy sex whilst still on duty, but it also falsely sanitizes and sanctifies the life of PC Semple, who, clearly, was a monster of depravity devoted to a life of kink and to finding love on the beat.       
     

Note: Brizzi was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment (instructed he'll serve a minimum of 24 years). 

The (Displaced) Task of the Translator 3: On the Limits of Zeitgeistiness - A Post by Simon Solomon

Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas)

As the late English poet and essayist Geoffrey Hill insisted, in railing against the problem of our post-Romantic (and/or post-modern) suggestibility, every voice worthy of the name will be organised, at least in part, by a sensibility that combines cultural receptivity and counter-cultural resistance, not to mention a creative misreading of similarly strong precursors. Though the exemplary genius of Hegel's world-historical individuals resided in the propensity of such figures to both suffer and amplify the spirit of their time, the transmissions of the artist - and Kenneth Goldsmith's own thesis depicts translation as indisputably artistic - are not merely barometers, pulse-fingering fashion statements, or 'expressive' of a socio-cultural milieu to which they might even be psychoanalytically reduced. If such zeitgeistiness has its claim, it surely also has its limits. Ultimately, while steeped in their age’s particular species of sadness, the most original artists are Janus-faced, both prophetic and nostalgic, and hence ultimately timeless. While it may be true that the machinic flows of technocapital will one day turn us all into its dehumanised vehicles, there is a (perhaps perverse) love in raging against the machine.

As it transpires, Goldsmith seems not to be wholly in earnest about the disappearance of the subject, when one considers the lingering humanism of his discussion of the musician’s practice of sampling and mixing, emphasising as it does the value of 'mindful recontextualization' in a way that makes him seem to want to have his displaced cake and eat it. I find Goldsmith’s depiction of such techniques of conscious transformation especially congenial in relation to my own emerging translation practice around poetic 'convocations', in which I assimilate fragments from other poetries, films and songs into 'baroque' versions of beloved originals. We can and do beg, borrow or steal from other sources in our work as hipsters, creators or long-suffering makers - and, in an accelerating climate of global exchange, licences and permissions cannot in any case always easily be sought - but should never forget Pound’s modernist credo to 'make it new'. The justification for literary theft is the hunger for innovation ...

Finally, some readers might worry more about the apparent submission of Goldsmith's vision of displaced authorship to a political quietism - the way in which, as he himself concedes, 'the displaced text's entwinement with the latest technology […] aligns it with nefarious capitalist tendencies'. Though his whole point is that what he charmingly calls the 'meatspace audience' is missing the point (since life is less and less 'live' - compulsively played out instead behind or by means of a contemporary surplus of devices, apps and screens), one might wonder if he is not so much throwing the translator’s baby out with the bathwater as electrocuting it in a tsunami of technobubbles.

The ominous promise of a new battened-down all-American protectionism across the pond notwithstanding, if globalised capital is essentially a machine that engenders economic, social and cultural flows, the most interesting individuals, and their art, tend to occur where history slows and condenses. Though Goldsmith's poetics of displacement - a vision that highlights the planet-circling journey undertaken by contemporary translation, and the media by which it is carried - is indebted to our culture of hyper-mobility, there is also (thankfully) a dark art of entrenchment. And it’s not going anywhere …

See: Kenneth Goldsmith, Against Translation: Displacement is the New Translation, (Jean Boîte Editions, 2016).

Note: Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas) is a poet, translator, critic and tutor. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He blogs at simonsolomon.ink and a full (non-abridged) version of his essay will shortly be made available here.  

Simon appears here as part of the Torpedo the Ark Gastautoren Programm. I am very grateful for his submission of a lengthy text that he kindly allowed me to edit into three separate posts for the sake of convenience. Part 1: Magical Realism without the Magic can be read by clicking here. Part 2: Microdramas of Displacement, can be read by clicking here.

The (Displaced) Task of the Translator 2: Microdramas of Displacement - A Post by Simon Solomon

Dede Koswara, aka the Human Tree Man

Image Source: thechive.com

While we may be culturally instructed by Kenneth Goldsmith's undoubted flair for mediating the technological imaginary (albeit in a way that is perhaps already somewhat well-rehearsed, and which is, for me, more originally evoked by the writings of Jean Baudrillard), I feel more moved as a poet by his microdramas of displacement from real life. In his collection of anecdotal horrors and subcutaneous wonders - including, for example, the poignant story of a buried bullet beneath a boy’s face, its impact site permanently cauterised by the heat of the missile, that 'remains comfortably embedded' for the rest of his natural existence - there is a strange rapture of estrangement or post-modern beauty.

What Goldsmith ultimately discloses by telling us the story of a tree that grew around a metal grate erected to protect it until it became, in his luminously lyrical language, 'the guardian of the grate, swallowing it whole, nestling it deep within its core', is a beguiling phenomenology of incorporation: notes towards how we learn to take in and 'live with' foreign matter that have obvious affinities with literary (re)composition. I wondered what Goldsmith might make of less successful manifestations of human embodiment - such as the Indonesian carpenter, Dede Koswara, whose monstrous condition, a fantastically rare skin disorder called Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia (aka ‘Tree Man Syndrome’), caused bark-like cutaneous horns to sprout from his hands and feet and led to him being shunned by his community as an accursed object.

While doubtless more than a sliver of Schadenfreude attaches to such cases, in picking up his own bâton and running with it, Goldsmith extends his project into an inter-disciplinary revisionist thesis, in which acid rain is rebranded as 'displaced weather', petroleum as 'displaced prehistory', the melting ice caps as 'displaced Ice Age' and the Great Pacific garbage patch (aka the Pacific trash vortex) as 'displaced geography'. If this is a schtick of sorts, it is a thrilling one - though thrilling, perhaps, in the manner of a totalitarian music. By contrast, the niceties and decencies of the translator’s traditional craft - its meticulous attunements to the minutiae of syntax, the localities of diction and the pathos of distance - are derisively likened by Goldsmith to the cult of ‘slow food’. To pursue such an obsolescent quest now, on Goldsmith's thesis, is to be a wilful reactionary (though possibly a reactionary who enjoys better digestion), indulging a 'bourgeois luxury', 'faux-nostalgia' and 'a boutique pursuit from a lost world'. The good faith of the translator, that suspiciously friendly idealist forever trying to meet people halfway, is ultimately rotten to the core.

Among a raft of concerns here, one might wonder what place authentic nostalgia - or just real history - could play in such Goldsmith's vision of our creative dispossession, since translation is inescapably also a tradition, not merely a metamorphic instrumentality. Perhaps, indeed, the translator, at their finest, is a kind of time-travelling cultural attaché, drawn back like the former English Laureate Ted Hughes to the shape-shifting mythology of the ancient world, retracing and reimagining their embedded civilisations to keep the culture’s collective unconscious awake.

In a way that stirs my desire to unsettle the strategic dualities of his thought, Goldsmith views displacement as a binary trader, harnessing what can be displaced and jettisoning what cannot, while eschewing what he calls the 'messy questions of morality, ethics and nuance' in favour of 'the craft of the kludge'. Leaving aside the manifold ways in which both literature and life are endlessly (if not necessarily) entangled in such varieties of disorder, I would be interested to learn more about those poetogenic entities the author thinks by implication might defy displacement - about what, in other words, might not get lost in translation ...


See: Kenneth Goldsmith, Against Translation: Displacement is the New Translation, (Jean Boîte Editions, 2016).

Note: Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas) is a poet, translator, critic and tutor. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He blogs at simonsolomon.ink and a full (non-abridged) version of his essay will shortly be made available here.  

Simon appears here as part of the Torpedo the Ark Gastautoren Programm. I am very grateful for his submission of a lengthy text that he kindly allowed me to edit into three separate posts for the sake of convenience. Part 1: Magical Realism without the Magic can be read by clicking here. Part 3: On the Limits of Zeitgeistiness (Or How to Have Your Displaced Cake and Eat It), can be read by clicking here.

The (Displaced) Task of the Translator 1: Magical Realism without the Magic - A Post by Simon Solomon

Kenneth Goldsmith 

Image Source: queensmob.com

Against Translation: Displacement is the New Translation.

So claims the title of an ambitious new essay by the New York poet, curator and cultural provocateur, Kenneth Goldsmith. Though its bipolar declaration reads at first glance as curiously equivocal, the author's ostensible desire to oppose a practice he also wishes to renew points rather to a wor(l)d that is no longer what it was. The traditional concept of translation, in a nutshell, is to be badly - which is to say unfaithfully - retranslated. In this usurper's charter, Goldsmith’s withering opening salvo is clearly designed both to antagonise the old guard and clear new interpretive ground:

'Translation is the ultimate humanist gesture. Polite and reasonable, it is an overly cautious bridge builder. Always asking for permission, it begs understanding and friendship. It is optimistic yet provisional, pinning all hopes on a harmonious outcome. In the end, it always fails, for the discourse it sets forth is inevitably off-register; translation is an approximation of discourse – and, in approximating, it produces a new discourse.'

Quaintly conscientious, yet quietly hobbled by its lack of ambition, the classical practice of translation invariably founders on its own tendency to generate novelty. Since such productions go with the territory, however, what the translator should accept - and indeed celebrate - is their activity's irrepressible affinity with the politics of displacement: its complicity, in effect, with wilful miscarriages of (poetic) justice.

Now translators are being everywhere reborn as the renegade children of technology, the utopian spirit of the digital networks is to be channelled and dispersed. In this virtual dispensation, we are all refugees. The new task of the translator, Goldsmith implies, is to embrace their occupation as emblematic of man’s indifference (if not inhumanity) to man, as their dislodged products, borderless and lawless, unapologetically expropriate themselves beyond bodies, identities and the moribund personality cult of the author.

Indeed, as a form of 'magical realism without the magic', displacement 'answers to no one' mainly because 'there's no one on the other end to take the call'. In a pivotal passage that points up Goldsmith’s indebtedness to the flâneur philosopher Walter Benjamin, he contends:

'Displacement is modernism for the twenty-first century, a child of montage, psychogeography, and the objet trouvé. Unlike much modernism, displacement doesn’t move toward disjunction; it trucks in wholes. Schooled in Photoshop and reared in cut-and-paste, the world is now our desktop. Drop-and-drag architecture: pick up something and plunk it somewhere; it soon becomes natural. Displacement is Duchamp for architecture. Frank Gehry is a master of architectural displacement; Bilbao - a fantasy displaced off a CAD screen - soon becomes a beloved Basque landmark.'

The dialogical conscience of translation has been superseded by a 'boundless annexing machine' that 'sucks indiscriminately' as a shameless infant on the flickering nipples of cosmopolitan culture - culture, it is clear, that has long since failed to serve as a mother. In a decontextualised economy of viral reproduction, it may take a (global) village to raise a child, though not necessarily a human one.

But this economy, for Goldsmith, is also an ecology, illimitably extending the transcendental dispossession of language while the relentlessly replicative online ecosystem recycles its resources 'in bizarre Frankensteinian artifacts', ranging from multi-sourced PDF pseudo-book assemblages to Hollywood blockbusters with Telugu subtitles. If this is all monstrously poetic, its analogues are indissociably political. What might darkly be called the datafication of the human is the contemporary modus of transnational technocapitalism, driven by the indifferent engines of its displacement apparatus that 'spits its subjects across the globe, redundantly segmenting and replicating them […] thereby minimizing chances for loss while increasing chances for totality'.

If the effect of this global dispersal is to orphan translation by ripping up its roots, re-routing its genealogies, puncturing its pedantries and saturating its markets - driving, in effect, its whole humane history over the cliff of technology - the happy outcome for Goldsmith is a 'playful anarchy' in which homophonic transformations (think van Rooten's delicious nonsense rendering of 'Humpty Dumpty / sat on a wall' as 'Un petit d'un petit / S'étonne aux Halles') become the irreverent gambits of a ludic poetics distinguished by its abandonment of all writerly ownership or privilege.

For those of us who might defiantly trumpet the tendency of the talented toward a strategic singularity, the ambition here would seem to go further than merely purging late-Romantic souls of their residual preciousness. Rather, the rules of the language game of translation are being dazzlingly rewritten - liberated (or deconsecrated) in a blizzard of technics.

See: Kenneth Goldsmith, Against Translation: Displacement is the New Translation, (Jean Boîte Editions, 2016).

Note: Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas) is a poet, translator, critic and tutor. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He blogs at simonsolomon.ink and a full (non-abridged) version of his essay will shortly be made available here.

Simon appears here as part of the Torpedo the Ark Gastautoren Programm. I am very grateful for his submission of a lengthy text that he kindly allowed me to edit into three separate posts for the sake of convenience. Part 2: Microdramas of Displacement can be read by clicking here. Part 3: On the Limits of Zeitgeistiness (Or How to Have Your Displaced Cake and Eat It), can be read by clicking here.

Reflections from a Sickbed

Having been obliged to take to my bed with the flu, thoughts turn quite naturally once more to questions of sickness and death - and, in particular, a growing concern with what will happen posthumously to my wretched corpse, that most accursed of all objects. 

Obviously, it will need to be disposed of. But this isn't a simple or straightforward matter; for there are numerous methods of getting rid of the inconvenient (rapidly decomposing) body and here's where the headaches begin for someone like me who, when faced with the blackmail of choice, instinctively chooses not to choose.

However, let us briefly consider some of the main options ...  

(1) Cremation

Cremation certainly has points in its favour and I like the idea of being reduced by flame back to basic chemical compounds. There's also something attractively anti-Christian about cremation; the thought of rising like a pagan phoenix from the ashes rather than resurrecting like an end time zombie ready to face Judgement Day appeals more to me as a Lawrentian. 

Having said that, there's enough Jewishness in my nature to feel profoundly uncomfortable with the thought of furnaces and tall, free-standing chimneys, etc. And then there's the problem of the left over ashes; either to be scattered to the four winds (sounds quite nice), or - horror! - housed inside some ghastly urn and stuck on top of the bookcase before eventually being knocked over by the cat. 

On balance then, I don't think I want to go up in smoke and be ground down to dust, thank you very much.

(2) Inhumation

Having rejected cremation, burial is left as the only major alternative and, all in all, I'm more than happy with the thought of being placed (or even thrown) into a hole in the ground and thence to push up daisies. But I don't want anything done that will retard the inevitable decomposition; no embalming, for example - and preferably no closed coffin or casket. I want naked exposure to the soil and to allow the worms and whatnot do their holy work as quickly as possible. And if wearing a mushroom death suit helps this along, then sign me up for one.

As for where I'm buried, I really don't care; though not at sea, obviously. I don't want any kind of service or religious ritual observed and would prefer an unmarked grave. However, if there is a stone, it should simply read curb your enthusiasm, which pretty much summarizes my philosophy. 

(3) Immurement / Preservation

Any form of posthumous immurement or attempt at artificial preservation is, for me at least, completely out of the question; the thought of being permanently enclosed in a tomb or mausoleum, mummified in bandages like an Egyptian pharaoh, deep frozen like James Bedford in a cryogenic chamber, stuffed like the English utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and put on display in a glass case, or letting that freaky German anatomist, Gunther von Hagens, pump my corpse full of curable polymers so that I might enjoy plastic immortality, fills me with a strange mixture of disgust and despair. 

I would, quite literally, rather be fed to the vultures (as in a Tibetan sky burial) ...                      

Corpus Delicti (With Reference to the Case of D. H. Lawrence)

Death is always an inconvenience. Not so much for the deceased; for trust me, corpses don't care. But for those who are left with the problem of disposal; be these grieving relatives, or fastidious killers hoping to cover up all traces of their victim and their crime.  

Fortunately, there are several long-accepted methods of disposal; including the top two, burial and burning. But even these ancient methods present problems. In the case of cremation, for example, there's the question of what to do with the ashes; stick 'em in a ghastly urn and put granny on the mantelpiece, or scatter them to the four winds and risk the unpleasant humiliation of having them blow back in one's face. 

The English novelist D. H. Lawrence was famously first buried in Vence, where he died in 1930, and then, five years later, exhumed and cremated on Frieda's orders by her Italian lover and third husband to be, Angelo Ravagli. 

As to what happened to Lawrence's ashes, this has become subject to confusion and controversy. Ravagli was supposed to transport them to the ranch in New Mexico, where a suitable shrine had been built. Frieda had even provided a lovely little vase. But it seems likely that Ravagli simply threw them away (possibly into the harbour at Marseilles) and then filled the urn with a handful of dust upon his return to America. 

Frieda never knew. As far as she was concerned, she'd brought Lawrence back to the place they'd been happiest and sealed his fate by mixing his ashes into a concrete block in order to prevent anyone from stealing them and, symbolically, to prevent him from wandering in death without her. 

Lawrence's biographer, John Worthen, suggests that Ravagli did Lawrence a favour by rescuing him from his wife's posthumous plans: 

"Lawrence may finally have managed to evade her ... and to finish his career solitary, free, unhoused, with no lid sealing him down or block containing him: scattered, perhaps into the estranging sea he had so often contemplated."

John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 418. 

Of Clowns and Catwomen

                                                                                                                

As everybody knows, there's an unwritten rule in the world of clowns that one must never copy the face make-up of another, thereby enabling each performer to retain their own unique identity.

In order to help ensure that this unwritten rule is followed and not accidentally infringed, some clowns voluntarily have their likeness painted onto a ceramic egg and registered with Clowns International. New clowns are able to consult the registry and avoid the potential embarrassment of looking like somebody else; one is tempted to say that face on egg thus prevents egg on face.

It's worth noting, however, that the registry is unofficial and Clowns International cannot enforce compliance; indeed, as far as I'm aware, you can't legally copyright a hairstyle, facial feature, or a way of applying make-up, no matter how individual or distinctive it may be. And neither - I believe - can you copyright a stage name, nickname, or any other type of alias.

I thought of this when reading recently about the punk icon, Soo Catwoman, who is desperately fighting a rearguard action to reclaim, protect and market her own extraordinary image - albeit forty years too late and after the young actress Judy Croll showed us all to brilliant effect in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle just how easy it is to steal and to simulate a look, no matter how original the original may be. 
  
For Soo, like many punks naively committed to notions of authenticity and the Real, it's terribly important that we not mistake Croll for her and she carefully points out the differences in facial bone, hairline and breast size, as if we should care about such anatomical details - we who care only for masks and cosmetics and the free-floating aspect of a persona as something to be performed (not essentialised or trademarked).

Interestingly, Soo also expresses her moral and maternal outrage over the fact that Croll was only fourteen and raises the spectre of child abuse by the filmmakers, thereby demonstrating her poor understanding of the Swindle as a provocative work of cinema, a crucial aspect of which is its brutal exposure of the inherently exploitative nature of the music industry which blithely trades in young flesh and talent.

Despite what she seems to believe, there's nothing degraded or inappropriate about the nudity or sexuality of a minor, nor indeed its representation in art; obscenity begins when this is commodified and prostituted by men in positions of power for their own perverse pleasure or financial gain: Mummy! Mummy! They've killed Bambi!

And so, I'm sorry if Julien Temple's film and Croll's appearance in it have caused Soo and her family great distress over the years, as she claims, but she needs to understand that most viewers either don't know who the fuck she is, or, if they do, don't care that a small role she turned down was eventually given to an actress happy to play the part.  


Note: those interested in knowing more about Soo Catwoman might like to visit her official website: click here.

Another Bloody Sunset (On Eternal Recurrence and the Snobbery of Photographers)

Die Ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen 
SA/2016

I hate people who take photography seriously; people who fuss over every aspect of their composition and have to employ all the latest technology; people who look down on those of us who enjoy simply taking snaps - including snaps of the sunset which, apparently, is not the done thing in the world of professional image making. Indeed, there's even a sneering acronym used in online chat forums: NABS - not another bloody sunset.

For me, there's something not only touching but philosophically interesting about the fact that, apart from a few superior types who like their cyclopic perception of the world to remain immaculate and claim to be unmoved by natural beauty or the wonder of events, people continue to look to the skies and attempt to capture, however naively or inadequately, the splendour of the rising or setting sun.

For I suspect that one of the things that enchants is the fact that just as no one steps twice into the same river, no sunset is ever witnessed more than once; it's an absolutely unique occurrence that only gives the illusion of an identical event happening over and over each day.

Nietzsche famously terms this the eternal recurrence of the same and, as Deleuze demonstrates in his radical interpretation of this concept, what returns is actually difference itself (paradoxical as this initially seems and contrary to what those commentators believe who write of return in terms of crushing certainty and fixed essence, rather than the very momentariness of the moment).  

The reason people will never tire of the sun and its effects and will never tire either of pictures, is because even the most clichéd of these images tell us something crucial; namely, that despite the experience of duration and continuity, there is no universal stability. 

Fatal Attraction: Notes on Hybristophilia

Jeremy Meeks: the model prisoner who stole a million hearts

Following a recent post on criminals and capital punishment [click here], I received two emails from concerned readers. The first expressed outrage and disappointment that I could write such reactionary rubbish:

"You Sir, are a disgrace and your views - even if endorsed by D. H. Lawrence - border on being no more than a crude form of neo-fascism."

The second sought to convince me that even the most dangerous of serial killers has a soul to be saved and that this can be accomplished not through harsh punishment, but through Love - and not just the redeeming love of Jesus, but the carnal affection of a good woman:

"As a trained sex therapist who has worked with many violent men, I know a lot of their anger stems from feelings of inadequacy and that these issues can best be dealt with in the bedroom, rather than the prison cell."     

These latter remarks got me thinking about hybristophilia; a paraphilia in which the amorous subject is attracted to individuals who have committed an illegal act or atrocity and sexually aroused by the thought of their misdeeds. Many high-profile felons receive explicit fan-mail, love letters, and indecent proposals from women who, for one reason or another, can't resist the dubious appeal of a bad boy - even at the risk to their own safety or future happiness.   

There's doubtless a number of reasons that might explain this phenomenon; some women want to share in the notoriety; some women want to nurture the inner child or find the hidden beauty within even the most bestial of souls; some women want to engage in a fantasy relationship that can never be consummated; others simply want to piss off their friends and family.

According to Sylvia Plath - who, admittedly, was a poet and not an evolutionary psychologist - every woman adores a fascist; the swaggering alpha male with a brute, brute heart. And, who knows, perhaps there's something in this; something which also helps to explain the eroticised male attraction to strong leaders and gangsters; a fatal attraction displayed, interestingly, even by sensitive artists and philosophers, whom one might have hoped would know better.

Thus Nietzsche, for example, getting all flustered over the thought of blonde beasts and his insistence that the criminal is actually a type of healthy human being made sick due to unfavourable circumstances ...