On the Question of Whether to Tuck or Not to Tuck

Larry David confronts a tucked in videographer (played by Mike Castle) 

about his sweater wearing tendencies in a season 11 episode of 

Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, 2021) 

 

 

I.

 

One of the disadvantages of living with a Greek woman who likes to cook and bake is that you inevitably end up eating more than you should of things that you probably shouldn't be eating in the first place and, as a result of that, one - just as inevitably - puts on weight.

 

Thus it was that my waist measurement ballooned from 32" to 34" and even 34" was beginning to feel tight.

 

Now, I don't really care about raised blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the threat of type 2 diabetes or any of the other health issues linked to obesity that doctors try to scare you with - but looking fat was not something I was prepared to accept ... And so, action had to be taken!

 

And, as a matter of fact, it proved quite easy to lose weight: eat less, eat healthier, and move more; it really is as simple as that. So now I'm back to having a 32" waist and can once more pass naked before a mirror without (too much) embarrassment and shame. 

 

 

II. 

 

Now, however, I have a new problem: the trousers bought a few months ago with a 34" waist keep slipping down unless I use a belt, which, unfortunately, I don't like wearing. 

 

To try and get around this, I have decided to tuck in my sweater; even though I have never been a natural tucker in of clothes and would drive my mother nuts when I was a child insisting that my shirt be pulled out and the cuffs and collars always left unbuttoned. I hated the idea of looking neat and tidy like a good little boy (is there, one wonders, a punk gene?).          

 

However, times change and people change and - to my surprise and amusement - I now discover that I like having my sweater tucked in! Indeed, I'm almost tempted to say that it is the more stylish option, depending of course on the type of sweater; it's material, its construction, its fit etc. You don't want to try and tuck a bulky jumper with a ribbed hem down your trousers as this does not result in a good look.

 

I used to think tucking in a sweater was always something of a fashion faux pas. But now I know it isn't; that it can create shape and help define one's waistline. 

 

 

III. 

 

And so now I watch a little differently the scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm in which Larry David gives a stylish young videographer a hard time about the fact he has tucked his sweater into his pants, asking him how long he's been doing it; do people comment on it; has he ever noticed other people doing it; were there other tuckers in his family, etc. [1] 

   

According to Larry, the only other person he's seen tucking in a sweater is James Mason (playing Humbert) in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation of Nabokov's darkly comic novel Lolita (1955) and he even treats us to dialogue from the movie: 

 

"Lolita, do you think I should tuck in my sweater? Does it look good? What would you do? What would you advise me? Would you advise me to tuck?" [2] 

 

It should be noted, however, that this scene and these lines are either misremembered or entirely invented by David for comic effect. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Curb Your Enthusiasm, 'What Have I Done? (season 11, episode 8), dir. Jeff Schaffer, written by Larry David and Jeff Schaffer (first aired 12 Dec 2021). The videographer is played by Mike Castle. The scene can be watched on YouTube by clicking here.   

 

[2] Dialogue from the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm cited and linked to above.  

 

 

An Open Letter to Simon Reynolds on Malcolm McLaren and the Art of Living Like a Hobo

Simon Reynolds and Stephen Alexander 

 

I.

 

Thank you for your remarks on a recent post entitled 'Destroy Success' (7 Nov 2025), in which you were either highlighting (without judgement) the paradoxical aspect of Malcolm McLaren's life and multifaceted career as an artist - the successful failure; the professional amateur; the bourgeois anarchist, the inside outsider, etc. - or you were making some kind of moral appraisal [1] and suggesting (without actually using the terms) that he was a fraud and a hypocrite.

 

I'd like to think you were doing the former and that any antipathy towards McLaren that you feel is nonethless born of love and an ongoing obsession with this fascinating figure: "Even now, despite all the reprehensible things he did and the suspicion that he helped misdirect a generation [...] I can't quite amputate McLaren from my consciousness." [2] 

 

I couldn't help wondering if perhaps you also begrudge the fact that, in his final years, Malcolm was paid large sums of money to give talks all over the world to people in business as well as the arts, travelling first class and staying in the best hotels, etc. But then, why would that be the case when you also give lectures and interviews on an international stage in your capacity as a hard-working pop-historian and pedagogue ...? 

 

 

II. 

 

Your main gripe seems to be that enjoying the rewards of such a lifestyle is further evidence of Mclaren's hypocrisy: "I mean, it's not exactly 'living like a hobo' ..." [3]

 

But, here again, I would disagree: for living like a hobo doesn't mean begging in the streets like a bum [4], anymore than being a punk means adopting a certain look or thinking one has to be angry and miserable all the time in order to be militant, like the po-faced political ascetics who would preserve the purity of the punk revolution. 

 

Whilst the etymology of the term hobo is uncertain, I like to imagine it could be an abbreviation of homeless bohemian, a description that could well be applied to McLaren who "cultivated the mannerisms and appearance of a bohemian outsider" [5] and whose life involved constant travel and a deliberate rejection of conventional work and societal norms; partly out of a desire for freedom and sometimes just for the fun of it. 

 

Malcolm may not have illegally hopped freight trains, but he rarely paid for his own travel - or even his own cigarettes! - and, just like a hobo, he was an extremely resourceful individual, flitting between London, Paris, and New York just as he had once flitted from art college to art college, living on his wits and other people's generosity. 

 

Above all, McLaren stayed true to the number one rule of the Hobo Code [6]: Decide your own life; don't let another person run or rule you. 

 

And one recalls, of course, that Duck Rock (1983) may have thanked many people for their collaboration on the project, but it was solely dedicated to Harry K. McClintock; better known by his hobo name, Haywire Mac, whose Hallelujah! I'm a Bum (1981) Malcolm insisted was crucial to an understanding of duck rock or hobo-punk as he conceived it and an album he made me buy in Collet's bookshop [7].  

 

 

III. 

 

In sum: living like a hobo is primarily about adopting a certain attitude and recognising the creative potential within failure - if I may return to this word. In a piece for The Guardian written two years before he died, McLaren wrote:

 

"I've always embraced failure as a noble pursuit. It allows you to be anti whatever anyone wants you to be, and to break all the rules. It was one of my tutors [...] when I was an art student, that really brought it home to me. He said that only by being willing to fail can you become fearless. He compared the role of an artist to that of being an alchemist or magician. And he thought the real magic was found in flamboyant, provocative failure rather than benign success. So that's what I've been striving for ever since." [8] 

 

McLaren's, therefore, is a very special understanding of failure; an artistic and philosophical understanding of the term. 

 

One is almost tempted to bring Samuel Beckett in at this point; for Beckett (as I'm sure you know) uses the symbolic figure of the tramp to explore various existential themes and informs us that what we learn from failure is not how to succeed in the future, but, at most, how to fail better [9]. Success, says Beckett, is not even an option; we are destined to fail - such is the tragic character of Dasein.

 

The fact that Beckett - like McLaren - affirms this and finds in it a source of darkly comic satisfaction, is something admirable I think. Nietzsche would call it a pessimism of strength [10] and he made it a central teaching of his Dionysian philosophy; a philosophy that, like McLaren's vision of punk, finds creative potential in destruction and flamboyant failure. 

 

McLaren had his successes - but he didn't chase or desire success. Indeed, if anything - and again to quote your own words Simon, if I may - he was thwarted by success [11]. His dream was always to go down in flames or sink beneath the waves [12].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to the claim made by Reynolds that Paul Gorman's excellent biography of McLaren failed to give a "moral appraisal of its subject". It was an allegation swiftly refuted by Gorman, who rightly pointed out that the primarly task of a biographer is to write a critically objective study, not pass judgement. 

     See: Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', a review of Paul Gorman's The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2021), in The London Review of Books, Vol. 44, No. 5 (10 March 2022), and see Paul Gorman's letter in response in the following issue (44. 6), dated 24 March 2022. Both can be read by clicking here.             

 

[2] Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', as cited and linked to above.   

 

[3] Simon Reynolds, comment on the TTA post 'Destroy Success' posted on 10 Nov 2025 at 16:56. Click here. 

 

[4] In the revised and expanded fourth edition of his The American Language (Alfred A. Knopf, 1937), H. L. Mencken argued that although commonly lumped together, tramps, hobos, and bums are actually distinct fron another. Both tramps and hobos like to travel around and lead an itinerant lifestyle, but the former try to avoid work preferring just to dream (and drink), whereas the latter, whilst enjoying some prolonged periods of unemployment, essentially want to work, albeit in a series of jobs with no desire to establish a long term career. As for the bum, according to Mencken, he neither wanders nor works.  Obviously, such a fixed and rigid classification is highly questionable.     

      

[5] Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', as cited and linked to in note 1 above.  

 

[6] A set of ethical guidelines known as the Hobo Code was created by a hobo union during its 1889 National Hobo Convention, in St. Louis, Missouri.  It consists of more than a dozen rules intended to govern the conduct of hobos nationwide and help dispel negative stereotypes associated with their lifestyle. These rules essentially boil down to: 1. Respect the law. 2. Help fellow hobos. 3. Protect Children. 3. Preserve the natural environment.

      The National Hobo Convention continues to be an annual event - held in Iowa since 1900 - where the Hobo Code is still recognised. Readers wishing to know more are encouraged to visit the Open Culture web page on the subject: click here.  

 

[7] Collet's was a bookshop (that also stocked selected records and tapes) founded by Eva Collet Reckitt in 1934. It was famous for selling radical and revolutionary publications, particularly those from Russia and Eastern Europe, and acted as a hub for left-leaning intellectuals. 

 

[8] Malcolm McLaren, 'This much I know', The Guardian (16 Nov 2008): click here. 

[9] See my post on Beckett's short prose work 'Worstward Ho!' (1983) and the idea of failure (11 Jun 2013): click here.   

 

[10] This phrase - Pessimismus der Stärke - can be found, for example, in Nietzsche's 1886 preface to The Birth of Tragedy (1871), where he describes it as a "predilection for what is hard, terrible, evil, problematic in existence", arising from strength and well-being rather than decadence or enfeebled instincts. 

      See 'Attempt at a Self-Criticism', in The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside, ed. Michael Tanner (Penguin Books, 1993), p. 3.    

 

[11] Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', as cited and linked to in note 1 above.  

 

[12] It is interesting to note that, etymologically, the term flamboyant that Malcolm used in relation to the kind of failure he aspired to, comes from the French and means 'flaming' or 'wavy'. 

  

 

A Post for Poppy Day

A remembrance poppy [1] 

 

 

One of the things I don't like about the poppy-wearing period in the UK [2] is that it has become overly politicised and increasingly something that feels invested with the bullying spirit of the mob. 

 

The writer Phineas Harper is entirely correct to say that red-poppy propaganda also elides the horror of conscription and thus contributes to a "collective amnesia that sanitises history" [3], disrespecting those who were coerced into military service (i.e., forced to fight and die for king and country). 

 

Further, it fails to acknowledge that many of those Brits killed during the Second World War, for example, were not members of the armed forces but civilians. 

 

In fact, along with the 384,000 soldiers killed in combat there was a civilian death toll of 70,000, "largely due to German bombing raids during the Blitz: 40,000 civilians died in the seven-month period between September 1940 and May 1941, almost half of them in London" [4].

 

Finally, like Harper - and as mentioned - I find that the tone of the national conversation around remembrance has significantly altered; less mournful and more jingoistic:   

 

"Remembrance should be a serious, sober, freely chosen tradition, not a cosmetic game of frogmarched performative allegiance. Staged patriotic fervour has nothing to do with sincerely honouring the memory of [the fallen ...] and, perversely, risks tipping remembrance into unreflective sabre-rattling bravado - glorifying war rather than mourning it." [5] 

 

In part, this drift from serious forms of remembrance into patriotic parody is due to the fact that those who actually experienced the horrors of the First World War are now dead and even those who lived during the period 1939-45 are now far fewer in number and any elderly ex-servicemen - as we used to call them before the Americanisation of our language [6] - who do dare to go against the official red poppy line are discreetly ignored or patronised on breakfast TV [7].  

 

Does this mean I'm a pacifist, or that I'm going to be pinning a white poppy on my lapel? 

 

No: I don't have a moral objection to war per se. But, for the reasons outlined above, I do find wearing a red poppy problematic. 

 

And, like D. H. Lawrence, I do detest the thought of war in the modern machine age; "a ghastly and blasphemous translation of ideas into engines, and men into cannon fodder" [8] and I wouldn't want to be seen to be lending support to this in any way.  

 

Notes

 

[1] Made by disabled ex-servicemen and sold in the UK and other Commonwealth countries in support of the Royal British Legion's Poppy Appeal, this artificial flower - inspired by the poem 'In Flanders Fields' (John McCrae, 1915) - is worn in memory of military personnel who died in war.   

 

[2] This period lasts from All Souls' Day (2 Nov) until either Armistice Day (11 Nov), or Remembrance Sunday if that happens to fall on a later date (12-14 Nov). 

 

[3] Phineas Harper, 'I wear a white poppy because Remembrance Day's staged fervour does little to honour my grandad', in The Guardian (8 Nov 2024): click here.  

 

[4] I'm quoting from the UK Parliament report into military casualties and the civillian death toll during the two World Wars, available online: click here.   

      

[5] Phineas Harper, The Guardian (8 Nov 2024): click link in note 2 above.   

 

[6] This is another thing that irritates me; the fact that commentators in the media and figures from various official bodies and institutions are increasingly using the term veteran, rather than the traditional British term ex-serviceman. 

      The irony of adopting an Americanism to refer to our former military personnel seems lost on them; one suggests that they click here to watch an amusing Sacha Baron Cohen sketch from Da Ali G Show, season 3, episode 2 (HBO, 2004).   

 

[7] I'm referring to the case of Alec Penstone, the 100-year-old ex-serviceman who appeared on Good Morning Britain (ITV, 7 Nov 2025) and who, when invited to give a message to viewers watching at home, said that the sacrifice made by his friends and comrades wasn't worth it as the country is in a worse state - with less freedom - now than when he fought for it. One of the interviewers, Adil Ray, clearly embarrassed by this, asked him 'What do you mean by that?' as if he had said the unsayable or was so old and senile that he didn't know what he was saying. To watch the interview on YouTube, click here.   

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 159.  

      Those who are interested in knowing more about Lawrence's rather romantic understanding of combat in the heroic age before it became an affair entirely of machines and abstraction - when men still possessed natural courage and fought up close and personal with their enemy and didn't kill from a distance by simply pulling a trigger or pressing a button - might like to see the post titled 'In Praise of Fighters: At the Gym and on the Battlefield with D. H. Lawrence' (18 Sept 2020): click here.  

On the Politics of the Smile

 And Still You Wear That Happy Face ...

 (SA/2025) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Whilst totalitarian regimes do not enforce happiness and demand that citizens always smile per se, they do, nevertheless, require outward displays of satisfaction and conformity and often clamp down on any signs of discontent or unhappiness. 

 

Thus it is that one doesn't see many frowns on the faces of those depicted in state controlled propaganda and public emotion at mass events is carefully stage managed. 

 

And this is as true of Disneyland as it is of Nazi Germany; of corporate-media spectacles, such as the Olympics opening ceremony, as it is of a worker's parade in Pyongyang. 

 

Mickey Mouse, Joseph Goebbels, Danny Boyle, and the Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, all know how to put on a good a show and make the people smile. 

 

In other words, they all understand the importance of exploiting what Freud calls the pleasure principle [2] and transforming what should be a natural expression of joy [3] into a regulatory facial mechanism that signals the correct response to power.

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, the smile can still, I think, be a counterfascist gesture; for as Baudrillard reminds us, there is the possibility of a sudden reversal even in a single ironic smile, "just as a single flash of denial in a slave effaces all the power and pleasure of the master" [4].

 

This is not to imply we can laugh all our troubles away, but to suggest that the more hegemonic the system, the greater is its vulnerability to even the smallest of set-backs or acts of defiance. Any challenge, even at a micropolitical level, represents a failure and threatens to quickly go viral; a total system requires complete control and demands absolute complicity. 

 

Thus, smiling - perhaps more with the eyes than the mouth - is still an important ability to possess. If one smiles with a mix of cheerful insouciance and philosophical indifference to the circumstances in which one finds oneself [5], then, who knows, perhaps others might smile back ...             

  

 

Notes

 

[1] The title of this image is taken from the lyrics written by Jello Biafra and John Greenway for 'California Über Alles"' (1979), the debut single by American punk band Dead Kennedys. The background artwork is a detail taken from the sleeve for the single, designed by Winston Smith. 

      The main image (allegedly) shows a woman wearing a smile mask intended to fight depression, taken in Budapest, 1937. The theory behind the mask, designed to force the wearer's mouth into a smile using mechanical devices like wires or medical tape, was that if people looked happier then they would feel happier. Unfortunately, if such masks were ever actually used, they proved to be ineffective and did nothing to reduce the high number of suicides in the city at that time. 

 

[2] For Freud, the Lustprinzip is the instinctive seeking of pleasure (and the avoidance of pain) in order to satisfy biological and psychological needs. In his 1921 work, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, however, he considered the possibility of something more primal and operating independently of a pleasure principle conceived in relation to the life instinct; something that he termed the death drive (Todestrieb).   

 

[3] Whilst it's true that in different cultures and societies smiling can convey emotions other other than joy and amusement - such as confusion and embarrassment, for example - there are no non-smiling peoples and evolutionary biologists have traced smiling back millions of years to our earliest ape ancestors.

      Interestingly, smiling may also be something that men do more than women and a common female complaint is being told to smile by male strangers, as this is seen as aggressive and controlling rather than born of concern for their happiness.     

 

[4] Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Farier Glaser (University of Michigan, 1994), p. 163.  

 

[5] It's important to note that I'm not asking for sincerity to be expressed in one's smile; nor do I want people to smile enthusiastically. I want them to smile in a manner similar to the Cheshire Cat, so that they become elusive and enigmatic (or imperceptible, as Deleuze and Guattari would say).  

 

 

Musical bonus: Nat King Cole 'Smile', recorded and released as a single in 1954, it can be found on the album Ballads of the Day (Capitol Records, 1956): click here. 

      Or for Jimmy Durante's version of 'Smile', originally found on his 1965 album Hello Young Lovers (Warner Bros.) and which famously features in the movie Joker (dir. Todd Phillips, 2019), click here.  

 

Destroy Success

Based on an original design by Jamie Reid (1979) [1] 

 

I. 

 

It's hard to believe that November next year is the 50th anniversary of the release of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' 

 

But there you go - time flies and soon, just like Malcolm, Vivienne, Jamie, Jordan, and poor old Sid pictured above, we'll all be brown bread. 

 

The funny thing about the Sex Pistols' debut single is that it ends with the instruction to get pissed, destroy, but it's never made quite clear who or what is to be destroyed other than the passer by [2] and, as a matter of fact, one has to wait until The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle to discover that success is the main target marked for destruction. 

 

This is anticipated in the magnificent statement released by McLaren on behalf of Glitterbest after the band fell apart at the end of their US tour:  

 

"The management is bored with managing a successful rock 'n' roll band. The group is bored with being a successful rock 'n' roll band. Burning venues and destroying record companies is more creative than making it." [3]  

 

A statement which caused much embarassment for the Virgin press officer asked to explain whether it was meant to be taken seriously.  

 

One recalls also McLaren's equally well-known line, often repeated in interviews, that it is "better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success" [4]. 

 

For Malcolm, these words essentially define punk rock and daring to fail was not just romantic and heroic, but the only way to create great art [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, McLaren wasn't the only one to despise the notion of success; the early 20th century English novelist D. H. Lawrence - whom I would characterise as the first Sex Pistol (seen as a provocative and amusing analogy by some, but I'm being perfectly serious) - also hated success ...   

 

In his final (and most controversial) novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), for example, the Lawrentian narrator sneers at the figure of the young Irish playwright Michaelis, who had a Mayfair apartment and "walked down Bond Street the image of a gentleman" [6]. 

  

Sir Clifford may admire and envy his success - "for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitch-goddess Success also" [7] - and even Connie may sleep with him, but we, as readers, are encouraged to find Mick contemptible (a bit doggy).    

 

Elsewhere, in his essays, Lawrence also makes clear his dislike for those who chase success - whether that's in the arts or in industry and the world of business. His mother may look down from heaven and feel chagrined at his lack of real success:

 

"that I don't make more money; that I am not really popular, like Michael Arlen, or really genteel, like Mr Galsworthy; that I have a bad reputation as an improper writer [...] that I don't make any real friends among the upper classes: that I don't really rise in the world, only drift about without any real status." [8] 

 

But Lawrence doesn't care; he has punk indifference to what others think of him - even his dead mother - and doesn't give a shit about getting on and becoming a great success in the eyes of the world. He thinks the bourgeois beastly - "especially the male of the species" [9] - hates the Oxford voice [10], and calls for a revolution "not to get the money / but to lose it all forever" [11]. 

 

And that's why, in part, I regard him as a Sex Pistol ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image is based on original artwork by Jamie Reid for a full page ad in the Melody Maker promoting the Sex Pistols single 'Something Else', released from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979). 

      It depicts a cartoon version of Sid Vicious, who provided the vocals for the track and who, unfortunately, had died three weeks prior to the single's release. Although I have removed most of the other text added to the design, I have left the slogan destroy success which McLaren and Reid had adopted as their strategy following the firing of Johnny Rotten. 

      The original image can be found in the V&A Jamie Reid Archive: click here.   

 

[2] See the post titled 'I Wanna Destroy the Passerby (Johnny Rotten as Good Samaritan)' dated 28 May, 2020: click here.  

 

[3] This statement, dated 20 January, 1978, is quoted from The Guardian archive: click here. 

 

[4] McLaren repeats this phrase in an interview with Amy Fleming published in The Guardian (10 August, 2009): click here.  

      See the post titled 'Better a Spectacular Failure ...' dated 5 June, 2013: click here. Note how McLaren's son Joe misremembers the line spoken by his father; replacing the word flamboyant with spectacular. 

[5] McLaren took to heart the words of one of his early lecturers at art school who told him that it was only by learning how to repeatedly fail that one would ever become an artist of any note: 'Don't think success will make you better artists.' 

      As McLaren's biographer notes: "The impact of this statement on McLaren was immediate and profound." And he quotes the latter saying: "'I realised that by understanding failure you were going to be able to improve your condition as an artist. Because you were not going to fear failure you were going to embrace it and, in so doing, maybe break the rules and by doing that, change the culture and, possibly by doing that, change life itself.'"  

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 48-49.  

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 21.

 

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Getting On', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 32.   

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'How beastly the bourgeois is', in The Poems Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 373. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Oxford voice', The Poems Vol. I., p. 376.

 

[11] D. H. Lawrence, 'O start a revolution', The Poems, Vol. I., p. 392. 

 

 

Straight Outta Kathmandu (Notes on Hip-Hop in Nepal)

Uniq Poet and Bluesss: Straight Outta Kathmandu (2019)

They 'hip to the hop like a black man do ...'

 

 

I. 

 

In one of D. H. Lawrence's most amusing and, in my view, most important articles, he complains about the way in which "two little white-haired English ladies" [1] staying in the room next to his at a hotel in Geneva, continually interrupt his contemplation of the world by transporting him off his balcony; "away from the glassy lake, the veiled mountains, the two men mowing, and the cherry-trees, away into the troubled ether of international politics" [2].   

 

His point being that he is "not allowed to sit like a dandelion on his own stem" [3] and muse over the things that directly concern him, or that are actually present. Why, he wonders, do so many modern people insist on talking about abstract ideas and caring about people they've never met and places they'll never visit, rather than live on the spot where they are ...? 

 

 

II.  

 

I was reminded of this at a recent SIG meeting [4] where the topic for discussion was hip-hop and youth culture in post-war Nepal ... 

 

Obviously, no one present had any direct experience or knowledge of the topic, but most had done the required reading beforehand [5] so conversation (of sorts) became possible and, despite what Lawrence says above, I found it quite interesting and took away four main points from the essay by Kritika Chettri:

 

(i) Globalisation needn't simply be read as a euphemism for Western imperialism; it is not just an attempt to impose cultural homogeneity, but can provide agency to local actors by exposing them to alien ideas, such as hip-hop, and new technologies. 

      

(ii) In Nepal, these local actors were at first the privileged urban youth based in Kathmandu who had the resources and opportunities to access the culture of hip-hop (its music and fashions). However, hip-hop soon spread like Maoist wildfire amongst the rural youth as well and took on a different character; one related to the folk culture and oral traditions of Nepal, but now in relation to global modernity. 

 

(iii) Hip-hop in Nepal allows for a reinterpretation of national political discourse, but from a different cultural perspective; it is, as Chettri writes, 'a ready vehicle for voicing youth concerns'. Nevertheless, the same old issues to do with class, caste, ethnicity, gender, etc., soon arise. 

 

(iv) Unfortunately, in Nepal as elsewhere, hip-hop remains a scene dominated by a lot of angry (and often misogynistic) young men and some of the language - not so much of delinquency, but of militant asceticism - is profoundly depressing. The author ponders (somewhat wistfully) at the end of her essay whether the introduction of more female rappers will bring about change and make Nepalese hip-hop a bit more progressive. 

      Personally, I doubt it; this is a country where, for example, arranged marriage (often with child brides) is still the norm and where there are still witch hunts in which elderly, usually lower caste women are beaten, tortured, force fed excrement, and sometimes burnt alive. I suspect it's therefore going to take more than spitting a few bars or busting some rhymes to change things anytime soon.              

 

  

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Insouciance', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 95.

 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] Ibid., p. 96. 

 

[4] The Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) is an informal collective operating out of the University of the Arts London (UAL), concerned with what we might briefly describe as the politics of style and offering resistance to temporal colonisation; i.e., the imposition of a perpetual present in which it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a future (or remember a past) that is radically different. I have published several SIG-themed posts here on Torpedo the Ark, which can be read by clicking here.

 

[5] Kritika Chettri, 'Straight Outta Kathmandu: Hip-hop and Youth Culture in Post-war Nepal', in Music, Subcultures and Migration, ed. Elke Weesjes and Matthew Worley (Routledge, 2024), pp. 203-216.  

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Straight Outta Kathmandu', by Uniq Poet and Bluesss (ft. MC Dave), taken from the album Blue Up High (2019): click here to play on YouTube.      

 

  

Kings Cross: Dense with Angels and Histories

 

Kings Cross, dense with angels and histories, 

there are cities beneath your pavements, cities behind your skies. 

Let me see! [1] 

 

I. 

 

King's Cross is a district straddling the London Boroughs of Camden and Islington, on either side of the Euston Road (a thoroughfare built in 1756, but originally called, rather unimaginatively, the New Road). 

 

The district was named after a large but ugly monument to George IV which stood from 1830 to 1845 where New Road, Gray's Inn Road, and Pentonville Road intersected - thus King's Cross - geddit?   

 

It's not an area I know well or feel at home in, but it does have a fascinating history as both a red light district and gateway to the North (and Hogwarts), home as it is to King's Cross station, beneath which lies the body of the Celtic warrior queen Boadicea [2].

 

 

II. 

 

Following an extensive programme of regeneration, King's Cross is today all hip and happening and popular with the usual suspects as well as the large student body based at Central St Martins college of art, in Granary Square; a public space which prides itself on being the canalside heart of King's Cross and boasts lots of bars, cafés, and restaurants, as well as a thousand choreographed fountains to delight those who like that sort of thing (often the same kind of people who like laser shows and fireworks).   

 

I don't know what the Romans who settled the area would have made of it all, but, since they invented the idea of panem et circenses to distract and amuse the masses, they may well have approved [3].     

 

This programme of urban renewal (and gentrification) followed many years of post-War (and post-industrial) decline. It was always a poor area, but had been a busy commercial district. By the 1980s, however, it was notorious for drug dealing and prostitution - although low rents and plenty of vacant buildings to squat also made it popular with artists and musicians; think Anthony Gormley and the Mutoid Waste Company [4] .   

 

Now, it's home to the Google UK headquarters [5]. And the British Library, who relocated next to St. Pancras station in 1997. Oh, and The Guardian. 

 

As for the old Gasworks, well, that's been demolished; although you can still view the iron skeleton of Gasholder 8, which has been transformed into an object of architectural and historic interest [6] - i.e., disempowered and robbed of its Victorian grandeur. 

 

Notes 

 

[1] In 2012, these lines from an unpublished long poem titled 'The Brill' written by Aiden Andrew Dun, were inscribed along one side of Granary Square, having originally been spray-painted on the walls of Battle Bridge just before it was demolished. Readers interested in knowing more can visit Dun's website by clicking here. 

 

[2] The claim that queen Boadicea - or Boudica, as people now like to say - is buried under Platform 9 at King's Cross station is, alas, one with no evidence to support it. The legend originated because the area is believed by some to have been the site of her final battle against the Romans in 61 AD.

      As for the station itself, I used to go there fairly often in the early-mid 1980s, travelling by train to Leeds. But I can't say I was particularly impressed; like Margaret Schlegel, the station with its great arches "shouldering between them an unlovely clock", had always suggested infinity and I'm something of an apeirophobe. I'm quoting, of course, from E. M. Forster's novel Howards End (1910), chapter 2.

 

[3] The phrase 'bread and circuses' originates from the writings of the Roman satirical poet Juvenal; see Satire X in Book IV of the Satires, lines 77-81. To read a translation by A. S. Kline (2001) published on poetryintranslation.com, click here.  

 

[4] Anthony Gormley - now Sir Anthony Gormley - is a British sculptor who, I believe, still has a large, light-filled studio in the King's Cross area (designed in collaboration with the architect David Chipperfield in 2001-03). 

      In the late 1980s, the Mutoid Waste Company - an art collective founded by Joe Rush and Robin Cooke in collaboration with Alan P. Scott and Joshua Bowler - moved into Battlebridge Road warehouse, where they built huge industrial sculptures out of scrap metal and held raves; they were evicted by police in 1989. 

 

[5] Or it soon will be at any rate: Google King's Cross is nearing completion and will form part of the so-called Knowledge Quarter in King's Cross Central. Providing over 861,000 square feet of office space for around 7,000 employees, it is the first building owned and designed by Google outside the US.  

 

[6] Stroll along the canal towpath from Granary Square and you'll come to Gasholder Park, featuring the wrought-iron frame of Gasholder 8; fully restored and relocated from the opposite bank of the canal. 

      A Grade II listed structure, Gasholder 8 was originally built in the 1850s and held over a million cubic feet of gas. It was the largest and proudest of nine such giants that once dominated the skyline of King's Cross. Now, it encases 'a sculpted canopy and lush circular lawn' and makes one feel a little forlorn.    

 

 

Musical bonus: 'King's Cross', by the Pet Shop Boys, from the album Actually (Parlophone Records, 1987), written by Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant. Click here to play on YouTube. 

 

    

This post is for Nina O’Reilly, a PhD researcher at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Her research "explores the changing fortunes of youth/sub/club/queer cultures in the King's Cross area" and opens up a wider conversation "about creative agency and access to the city", as well as the role of young people "as active producers of space, particularly in central London". 

      In addition, her work examines how heritage is shaped in cities, and the forms of destruction that are often unleashed in the name of regeneration whilst serving the interests of capital and real estate. 

      Her University of the Arts London profile page - from where I'm quoting - can be accessed by clicking here.     

I Have Seen the Dark Universe Yawning

It is better to laugh at man from inside the Void, 

than to weep for him without ...

 

 

I. 

 

Regular readers will know that I've recently been thinking about the philosophy of absence - click here - and the call of the void: click here.     

 

But the Great Nothing that has really captured my interest of late has nothing to do with subjective experience, but is, rather, a spherical region of space in the vicinity of the Boötes constellation, about 700 million light years from Earth, known as the Boötes Void ... 

 

 

II. 

 

To be fair, it's not quite a void, as it actually contains a number of galaxies. 

 

However, this number is small; just a few dozen and thus significantly fewer than the approximately 2,000 galaxies that one might expect to find in an area of space of comparable size.

 

And let's be clear, here: the Boötes Void, discovered in 1981 by Robert Kirshner [1], is an unimaginably large area of space, with a radius just shy of 330 million light years, or 62 megaparsecs as our astronomer friends would say [2]. 

 

That makes it one of the largest known voids in the visible universe [3] and some even like to think of it as a supervoid.  

 

 

III. 

 

Of course, size isn't everything and there are plenty of smaller voids to contend with and marvel at. In fact, voids constitute around 80% of the observable universe - and don't even mention black holes [4]. 

 

Scientists hope that by studying the Boötes Void they will be able to learn more about the dark energy that drove their formation as the universe expanded. Cosmic voids also conveniently allow for the study of elementary particles known as neutrinos that freely stream across them on a massive scale. 

 

For me, however, as a philosopher rather than an astrophysicist, why the Boötes Void and other such structures excite is because they reaffirm the inhuman scale and nature of the universe. 

 

D. H. Lawrence hated that modern science books made him "dizzy with the sense of illimitable space" [5]. It is, he says, "the disembodied mind alone" which thrills to the thought of the "hollow void of space, where lonely stars hang in isolation" [6]. 

 

But, for me, what this dizzying and profoundly pessimistic thought does is remind one that "Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity" [7]; i.e., a chance to think alien thoughts and to experience monstrous new feelings, that may or may not coincide with human interests. 

 

When one stares at the night sky and contemplates the fact that there exists a mind-independent reality which, "despite the presumptions of human narcissism, is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the 'values' and 'meanings' which we would drape over it in order to make it more hospitable" [8], one simply can't help smiling. 

 

Lawrence says it's astrology rather than astronomy that gives a marvellous sense of freedom and release [9], but I simply don't agree with that. 

 

For astrology, with its central teaching of as above, so below is an all too human practice that projects man on a cosmic scale. It is astronomy - and the speculatively material way of thinking that comes out of it - that truly provides "entry into another world, another kind of world, measured by another dimension" [10] and which reminds us that the universe "is not our or anyone's 'home', nor a particularly beneficent progenitor" [11].        

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Whilst the American astronomer Robert Kirshner and his team at the University of Michigan were surveying galactic redshifts in order to create a 3D map of the universe, they discovered a huge and largely empty region of space, which was originally called the Great Nothing, but which is now known as the Boötes Void. Due to its size and the fact that it does contain some galaxies, they knew it wasn't a black hole and comparisons with the molecular cloud Barnard 68 soon made clear it couldn't be a dark nebula either.

 

[2] A megaparsec (Mpc) is a unit of astronomical distance equal to one million parsecs, or roughly 3.26 million light-years. It is commonly used to measure the vast distances between galaxies and galaxy clusters, helping astronomers map the large-scale structure of the universe.

      To give some idea of how big a distance 62 Mpcs is, keep in mind that the nearest galaxy to our own - the Andromeda Galaxy - is less than 1 megaparsec away or about 2.5 million light years (i.e., 15 trillion miles). Or, if you want to think of it another way, we could fit billions of galaxies the size of the Milky Way into the Boötes Void. 

      Of course, Lawrentians hate to think this way, sharing (or imitating) their master's horror of large numbers (meganumerophobia): 

      "All this modern stuff about astronomy, stars, their distances and speeds and so on, talking of billions and trillions of miles and years and so forth: it is just occult. The mind is revelling in words, the intuition and instincts are just left out, or prostituted into a sort of ecstasy [...] that lies in absurd figures such as 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [...] figures which abound in modern scientific books on astronomy [...] It is all poppy-cock." 

      See D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 208. 

 

[3] It's important to understand that the portion of the universe we can see (even with the aid of technology) is strictly limited and that the total size of the universe is unknown; it's estimated to be at least 250 times larger than the observable universe, but may, in fact, be infinitely bigger. We're basically living in a bubble and have no real idea of what lies outside.   

 

[4] Spatial voids, of course, are fundamentally different from black holes; the lattrer are extremely dense and have powerful gravity, whilst the former are vast regions of space that are largely empty of galaxies and matter. In other words, whereas black holes are the densest objects in the universe, voids are the least dense regions, formed by the expansion of the universe.   

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 46.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

[7] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. xi.    

 

[8] Ibid.

 

[9] I've written about this in more detail in the post entitled 'I Would Like to Know the Stars Again: Reflections on Astronomy and Astrology in the Work of D. H. Lawrence' (28 March 2021): click here. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, p. 46. 

 

[11] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound, p. xi. 

 

 

Welcome to Harold Hill ...

Fig. 1 Welcome to Harold Hill ...

where even the local pub is in ruins

Some readers might recall a post from 2016 in which I described the sad (but all too common) fate that has befallen my local boozer [1]. The Pompadours had once been a Harold Hill landmark, but is now just another derelict pub boarded up and still - nine years later - awaiting demolition (see fig. 1 above). 

 

In that period, things have, if anything - and despite Havering Council's promises of regeneration [2] - gone from bad to worse and my local shopping precinct, Hilldene, is fast becoming an area where even the ghosts are scared to venture after dark [3]. 

 

The air smells of car fumes, cooking oil, and cannabis and even Bargain Town - a large discount store mostly selling things priced at just £1 - has gone out of business; as has the pet shop and F. Cooke's, one of London's oldest established pie & mash shops. 

 

Natwest shut their Harold Hill branch two years ago; Lloyds and the Halifax having previously abandoned the area. The local estate agency has also relocated and even one of the (multiple) charity shops has closed.  

 

Thank goodness the local flower shop and hairdressers remain, as well as small-scale versions of Sainsbury's, the Co-Op, and Iceland. Other than that - and a couple of newsagents - it's basically betting shops, dodgy-looking fast food outlets, and a games arcade (though even Funland may have just pulled its shutters down for good).

 

And over all this, English flags and Union Jacks still pathetically fly (see fig. 2 below) ... 

Fig. 2 Welcome to Harold Hill ... 

where even Bargain Town went out of business

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post 'Ghost Town' (7 November 2016): click here.

 

[2] According to Havering Council's website - click here - consultations with residents have been ongoing since 2016 to try and decide the future of Harold Hill and, in particular, the Farnham and Hilldene shopping area. 

      In 2021, the Council committed to significant investment to ensure that the latter 'continues to be a beacon for the neighbourhood and the whole community to enjoy' and residents should rest assured a single masterplan vision is being put into place.

 

[3] Evidence of gang activity and associated issues, such as drug dealing and violent crime, in certain areas of Harold Hill, is well-documented. Police and local authorities, whilst aware of the issues, seem powerless to do anything (other than hold community meetings in order to warn people that the streets aren't safe). In the last ten years there has been a 167% increase in incidents of knife crime in Havering and Harold Hill East is recognised as the most deprived area in the borough.   

 

Into the Valley of the Dolls

 

Cover of Glamour UK (2025) 

Photo by Carly Scott [1]

 

 

The so-called trans issue - i.e., the debate surrounding transgender rights and what place trans individuals should occupy in society - is one of those that will not go away: and, of course, nor should it go away for as long as trans people face discrimination and violence.

 

Some people clearly wish it were otherwise: clearly wish that trans people would shut up and go away; including some of those who should know better. 

 

Whether we should put J. K. Rowling in this category is debatable. I don't believe she's transphobic and think her concern is primarily to protect the rights and status of biological women. 

 

However, she's back in the news once more after slamming Glamour magazine's decision to feature nine trans women on the cover of an issue honouring 'Women of the Year' and one can't help wondering if the bee in Rowling's bonnet buzzes with a certain obsessiveness.     

 

Taking to X, she accuses the UK publication of suggesting to its young female readership that men can be better women than they are and that this has a very negative effect on their sense of self-worth. But that's quite an extreme reading. 

 

It could be that Glamour is simply making the point that not all women are born; some are self-made - i.e., that for some, their womanhood is not something determined by genes, but, rather, a set of constructed traits (some resulting from surgical procedures and hormone treatments; others involving the use of clothes, makeup and other forms of artifice). 

 

The fact that the trans women on the cover of Glamour happily accept the designation dolls [2] is a clue to this - and might even be seen as a concession to those who insist that trans women are not real women. 

 

Which, in a sense, they're not. 

 

But then, as friend of mine who takes his agalmatophilia very seriously said when looking at the above photograph: They're not even real dolls!  

  

Notes

 

[1] The nine trans women - or dolls - who appear on this cover (all wearing T-shirts by Conner Ives) work across fashion, music, publishing and activism: Munroe Bergdorf (model and author); Shon Faye (journalist and presenter); Maxine Heron (communications officer at the UK based charity Not a Phase); Mya Mehmi (DJ and musician); Munya (model); Ceval Omar (model); Bel Priestly (actor and TikTok creator); Dani St. James (chief executive at Not a Phase); Taira (model and writer). 

      The article, by Shon Faye, which includes interviews with the above, can be read online by clicking here. 

 

[2] Actually, one of the trans women interviewed by Shon Faye - the Japanese model Taira - does recognise that the term dolls to describe trans women might be problematic; especially as it enters into mainstream culture and is used by (cis) people who do not know its historical context as a term from Black and Latina queer ballroom culture in the 1980s. 

      She says of the slogan Protect the Dolls - first used by the American fashion designer Conner Ives and which has since been adopted by various celebrities as well as members of the LGBTQ community - that whilst it's a powerful line and may help raise positive awareness of the problems facing trans people - particularly feminine-looking trans women - it could also "encourage objectifying trans bodies" and become othering in and of itself. 

      I think Taira has a point: and it's interesting to discover from Faye's article that trans is the fifth most popular porn category searched for in the UK. It's ironic that it's often the same men who desire and sexually objectify trans women who call loudest for their removal from public life and subject them to abuse.