29 Jun 2024

Meine Rosen

Meine Rosen (SA / 2024)
 
 
I. 
 
As is well known, Zarathustra often speaks cryptically.
 
Take the following sentence, for example, spoken when, walking through the forest with his disciples one evening, he came to a clearing where lovely maidens were dancing. Attempting to reassure the young women that he meant them no harm, he first praises their light-footedness before adding: 
 
'I am a forest and a night of dark trees: but she who is not afraid of my darkness will discover a bed of roses ...' [1]

What does that mean? 
 
It sounds like a rather elaborate chat-up line to me; i.e., a remark made both to initiate conversation and signal sexual interest. Of course, Zarathustra being Zarathustra, he can't help also displaying his intelligence and poetic sensibility (even as he openly admires the bare feet and fine ankles of the girls to whom he speaks).
 
 
II.

As Zarathustra is essentially Nietzsche's fictional mouthpiece, it's not surprising that the latter also liked to speak with pride about his roses ... 
 
Thus, in the poetic prelude to The Gay Science entitled 'Joke, Cunning, and Revenge' [2], Nietzsche includes a verse entitled Meine Rosen, which also combines the idea of rosy happiness or the promise of joy, with something a bit darker, a bit pervier, a bit more "malice-laden" as one translator has it [3].   
 
Below is my version of the poem; not exactly a translation, more a (somewhat prosified) reimagining, which, nevertheless, I think manages to make Nietzsche's point that those who want to find love and happiness - particularly as he understands these things - have to struggle and be prepared to take risks (i.e., engage in something that some might think of as edge play).


My Roses
 
Of course my happiness wishes to infect you - 
All joy is contagious! 
But if you'd like to smell my roses
 
You'll have to scramble first over rocky ledges
and cut through tangled thorny hedges,
pricking your tiny finger tips!

For my joy - it loves cruel teasing!
For my joy - it loves displeasing!    
Do you still want to pick my roses?
 
 
Notes 
 
[1] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II. 32.

[2] Nietzsche borrows this title from a libretto by Goethe: 'Scherz, List, und Rache'. Although the work was written in the 1780s (and published by the author in 1790), it was not set to music until 1881, when Nietzsche's young friend Peter Gast (Heinrich Köselitz) decided to undertake the task.
 
[3] I'm referring to Adrian Del Caro, whose translation of Nietzsche's poems in 'Joke, Cunning, and Revenge' can be found in the 2001 Cambridge edition of The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff. 
      Del Caro attempts to stay as closely as he can to the rhyme scheme (and rhythm) of the German; readers can decide if succeeds (or not) in the case of Meine Rosen by turning to p. 13 of the above text. For an alternative translation, see Kaufmann's effort - conveniently placed alongside the German original - in The Gay Science (Vintage books, 1974), pp. 44-45. 
 

28 Jun 2024

What Was I Thinking? (28 June)

Images used for posts published on 28 June 
in 2018, 2022, and 2023
 
 
Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I'm STILL working on an 8000-word essay to do with the Sex Pistols (and now have a deadline looming into view) - it's almost a form of relaxation to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by. 
 
And so, let's make a jump to the left and a step to the right ... landing first of all in June 2018 for a post on the ultraviolence of chimps; then zipping forward to 2022 and a post on beatniks, before, finally, ending up in June of last year when it appears that the subject of glitch art was on my mind.

When I look back at old posts, I often want to significantly revise them (and in some cases even want to hit the delete button). But, as I feel relatively happy with all three of these posts, I offer them here pretty much as first published, with very little additional commentary. 
 
However, I have not reproduced the notes that came with them and readers who are interested in knowing more might care to consult the original posts and can do so by clicking on the titles.
 
 
 
Despite what idealistic chimp-lovers like to believe, ape society is not some kind of simian utopia or one long tea-party. Indeed, researchers have conceded that chimps are natural born killers who enjoy inflicting cruelty and engaging in acts of savage (often coordinated) violence as much as man. 
 
This overturns the belief that their aggression was a consequence of being forced to live in an ever-restricted space due to the destruction of their natural habitat. 
 
Until recently, primatologists would watch on as a group of males patrolling the forest battered the brains out of any outsider unfortunate enough to have strayed on to their patch and insist that it was a sign of human impact and social breakdown. But now they admit that grotesque acts of ultra-violence, including cannibalism, are how chimpanzees actually maintain their brutal social order. 
 
It seems that lethal violence is an evolved tactic or adaptive strategy that improves fitness amongst those animals with no qualms about using any means necessary to ensure their survival and group status by giving them increased access to food and reproductive opportunities. 
 
Thus, when I read an email sent to me which suggested that humans were uniquely evil animals who would benefit greatly by rediscovering their inner-ape, I had to smile. For some chimps would make even Danny Dyer's deadliest men look like choir boys in comparison. 
 
Having said that, it's worth noting that in the original Planet of the Apes film series chimpanzees - in comparison to war-like and savage gorillas - were portrayed as peace-loving intellectuals who specialised in the sciences.      
 
 
 
Did anyone ever actually describe themselves as a beatnik? Or was the term purely a media invention; a way of reducing members of the Beat Generation to a cool but cartoonish stereotype? 
 
That's the question I asked at the start of this post and, although it was written only two years ago, I really can't remember how I answered it - though I suspect that, like the term punk, it was not something that those involved in the scene cared for. 
 
Indeed, I seem to recall now that Ginsberg wrote to The New York Times in 1959, deploring the use of the word beatnik and that his pal Jack Kerouac wasn't pleased either to see their philosophy become just another fad. Both authors feared that a generation of illuminated hipsters, would be replaced by brainwashed fashionistas interested only in looking the part. 
 
Indeed, so exasperated was Kerouac by the popularity of the term that he declared to a reporter in 1969 (shortly before his death in October of that year): 'I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic.'
 
Like the punk generation, the beat generation was very much concerned with authenticity - but I ask you: Is there anything squarer than wanting to keep things real? 
 


Thanks in large part to Jews working in the American entertainment industry, a fair few words of Yiddish origin have been adopted by English-speakers: chutzpah, klutz, mensch, schlep, schmooze, shtick ... etc. But my favourite such word is the rather impish-sounding glitch, which first entered everyday English during the period of the Space Race (1955-1975). 
 
Whilst it now refers to a temporary technical issue or a short-lived fault in a system that eventually corrects itself, glitch is derived from a Yiddish word for that which slides, slithers, or causes one to slip or skid, which is interesting; might one refer to a patch of black ice as a glitch in the road? 
 
Apart from NASA engineers ad those working within the computing and electronics industries, the term glitch is also used by those in the world of art to refer to the contemporary practice of using errors for aesthetic purposes, either by corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. As well as glitch imagery and film, there is also glitch music (a genre of experimental electronic sound that many people simply call noise). 
 
Of course, whilst such 'errors' can be random effects, they are more often the result of deliberate manipulation and so not really errors at all. Numerous artists have posted online tutorials explaining the techniques they use to make their work and produce (pseudo) glitches on demand. 
 
Personally, however, I prefer real errors and genuine glitches to those distortions and deviations that are the result of intention. But, either way, you can end up with some amusing results, which is why glitch art is increasingly common in the world of design. And of course, there's even an app allowing those who like to edit their pics on social media to produce an instant glitch effect. 
 
Let's not pretend, however, that there's anything remotely subversive (or even all that original) about this phenomenon. Artists have played with light, sound, and colour and been aware that beauty often lies in small imperfections - that failure is often more instructive than benign success - long before the digital age or anyone was using the term glitch. 
 
Consider the case, for example, of the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, whose controversial images were lambasted by the critics  and jeered at by her contemporaries for being smudged, smeared, or out of focus, but which are now regarded as brilliantly ahead of their time. 
 
Error, we might say, was the hallmark of her style; Cameron deliberately left the flaws that others would have attempted to disguise or eliminate, affirming an art of imperfection and happy accident and rejecting the idea of photography as a scientific practice via which one aimed at a perfect representation of the world, or an accurate and precisely detailed rendering of the human subject. 
 
Using an extremely messy - and slippery - process that involved coating glass with an even layer of collodion, sensitising it with a bath of silver nitrate, and then exposing and developing the plate whilst still wet, Cameron was, arguably, the Cindy Sherman of her day and elements in her work are not only postmodern as some commentators claim, but distinctly glitchy
 

26 Jun 2024

Five Brief Notes on Rockism, Poptimism, and Authenticity (With Reference to Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols)

Cover by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols' single 'Silly Thing' 
released from the album The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle 
 (Virgin Records, 1979) [1]
 
 
I. 
 
Those elderly punks who maintain that Never Mind the Bollocks is the only true Sex Pistols album are clinging desperately to an ideal of authenticity that is central to what has become known as rockism.
 
 
II.
 
This neologism, coined in 1981 by the musician Pete Wyley, soon became a pejorative used enthusiastically by music journalists such as Paul Morley [2], who were sick and tired of the idealistic fantasy that rock music matters - and matters more than other genres of popular music - because the performers really mean it man and just 'one great rock show can change the world.' [3]
 
Perhaps my favourite definition of rockism was provided by the critic Kelefa Sanneh, in 2004: 
 
"Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher." [4]
 
 
III.
 
In contrast to the above, there are those think pop music - even at its most commercial and ephemeral - is just as worthy of serious consideration as hard and heavy rock. 
 
Now, whilst I wouldn't describe myself as a poptimist - and don't particularly worry about progressive values of inclusivity, etc. - my sympathies increasingly lie with those who prefer music that makes happy - makes you want to dance and singalong - to music that is overly earnest and makes miserable.
 
 
IV.
 
Funny enough, one of the reasons that Malcolm McLaren disliked Julien Temple's The Filth and the Fury (2000) was because in its downbeat revisionism it made the Sex Pistols' story seem a very sombre affair: 
 
"'I don't remember punk rock being like that. [...] I always remember it as a ticket to the carnival for a better life.'" [5]             
 
No wonder that The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle takes us to Rio de Janeiro and explores many different musical styles; from disco and punk pop to bawdy drinking songs. Whatever people like to think about McLaren, he was never one to take things too seriously.
 
 
V.
 
And yet, paradoxically perhaps, McLaren always retained a notion of authenticity; as something to be found beneath the ruins of culture in a similar manner that the beach is to be found beneath the paving stones. 
 
It's a non-ideal model of authenticity, however, invested with chaos and which, in his words, is dirty, horrible, and disgusting [6]
 
 
Notes
 
[1] The single version, released on 30 March 1979, features Steve Jones on vocals; the album version, however, recorded in the spring of 1978, has Paul Cook on vocals. Click here to play the former, which reached number 6 in the UK Singles Chart. Or click here to see the unique interpretation given to the song by Legs & Co. on Top of the Pops (BBC1 12 April 1979).  
 
[2] See Paul Morley's article 'Rockism - it's the new rockism', in The Guardian (25 May 2006): click here. Interestingly, Morley warns here that when poptimism simply becomes another form of proscriptive ideology, it's little different from rockism. 
      See also Michael Hann's article 'Is Poptimism Now As Blinkered As the Rockism It Replaced?' for The Quietus (11 May 2017): click here.
 
[3] I'm quoting a line by the character Dewey Finn, played by Jack Black, in School of Rock (dir. Ricard Linklater, 2003).   
 
[4] Kelefa Sanneh, 'The Rap Against Rockism', in The New York Times (31 Oct 2004): click here. Unfortunately, it's difficult to argue with Sanneh's claim that rockism is ultimately "related to older, more familiar prejudices" of racism, sexism, and homophobia.

[5] Malcolm McLaren speaking with Geoffrey McNab, 'Malcolm McLaren: Master and Servant', Independent (31 May 2002): click here. Cited by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable 2020), p. 718.  
 
[6] See the 1999 interview with Malcolm McLaren by Jefferson Hack; 'Another Malcolm McLaren Moment', in Another Magazine (7 May 2013): click here


22 Jun 2024

On Negative Capability

John Keats (1817) paraphrased by Stephen Alexander (2024)
 
 
I. 
 
In a letter written to his brothers George and Thomas, in December 1817 [1], the English Romantic poet Keats briefly mentions a concept of Negative Capability - an idea by which he privileges uncertainty, indecision, and the refusal to rush to judgement. 
 
The great writer, he says, is one who is happy to have his doubts and to consider the complexity of a question from multiple perspectives, rather than quickly make up his mind. One retains one's freedom and affirms one's liberalism - and one avoids the mark of Cain - by refusing to know for sure.
 
For to know decisively and with precision is to kill; it is not simply to exercise choice between ideas, but to cut all other possibilities dead in order to arrive at a single fixed position.
 
 
II. 
 
Obviously, Keats being Keats, for him negative capability was esentially tied to the pursuit of beauty, even if that resulted from - or resulted in - ambiguity and irrationalism. But the idea has since been appropriated and developed by other writers, including the Zen philosopher Byung-Chul Han, for example, who has written:  

"Negative potentiality is the ability to do nothing. The latter is, however, not identical with the inability to do something. It is not a negation of positive potential but a potential of its own. It enables spirit to engage in still, contemplative lingering, that is, deep attentiveness." [2]
 
As sympathetic to all this as I am, I would still like to stop procrastinating and finish writing that fucking Sex Pistols essay ...! [3]
 
 
Notes
 
[1] This letter - with explanatory notes - can be found on the George Mason University website: click here.
 
[2] Byung Chul-Han, Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2022), p. 82. 
 
[3] See the post entitled 'Procrastination' (14 June 2024): click here. This post is written in response to the comment left by Simon Solomon.  


19 Jun 2024

Reflections on a Plastic Penis

Plastic Penis Silhouette 
(SA 2024)
 
 
I. 
 
It's an amusing irony of the world we live in today that just as silicone sex dolls become ever-more life-like with their synthetic skins and other technosexual advances, actual flesh-and-blood human beings are becoming-plastic [1].
 
So, it was no great surprise to read this morning [2] that microplastics have been discovered in the male member for the first time - having already been found in the testes and semen - effectively turning the penis into an organic dildo. 
 
Now, you might have thought that would have certain advantages; perhaps enabling harder and longer-lasting erections, for example. But, as a matter of fact, the opposite is true and questions are now being raised (no pun intended) about the role of these tiny pollutants in erectile dysfunction and falling fertility rates.

The penis, as a vascular, spongy organ with high blood flow, is particularly vulnerable to contamination with microplastics, which we are continually breathing in and swallowing in our food and drink. First they get into the blood; then they lodge themselves in the smooth muscle tissue of the penis. 
 
Maybe they do or maybe they don't cause damage and lead to problems in the bedroom. But the fact is they shouldn't be there; although how we might remove them from the environment - and from our bodies - is a question no one knows the answer to.

 
II. 
 
Of course, D. H. Lawrence foresaw all this a hundred years ago: we should've listened, but we didn't.
 
One is reminded, for example, of a passage in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) in which Oliver Mellors protests against the becoming-machine of the human being - 'with India rubber tubing for guts' - and the manner in which technocapitalism is emasculating men and destroying both their virility and fertility; 'making mincemeat of the old Adam' and sucking the spunk out of each and every individual [3].
 

Notes

[1] I have written on this in earlier posts: see, for example, the post on RealDolls (17 July 2017); or this one on Living Dolls (10 Jan 2013).

[2] See Damian Carrington's report in The Guardian entitled 'Microplastic discovery in penises raises erectile dysfunction questions' (19 June 2024): click here
      The multi-authored scientific report that Carrington based his article on was published in the International Journal of Impotence Research (June 2024): click here for online access provided by Springer Nature.   

[3] See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 217. 


18 Jun 2024

In Praise of Interspecies Friendships

My new horse friend coming over to say hello 
(17 June 2024)
 
 
Whilst I'm alert to the danger of anthropomorphism and the denial of an animal's otherness, one of the things I very much encourage is the forming of interspecies friendships
 
Such friendships are mutually beneficial and I would suggest that human beings who have never bonded with an animal of some description have not only missed out on something, but lack something, that leaves them poorer in world than they would otherwise be. 
 
Those who maintain that we are entirely distinct from all other animals - closer to angels than we are to apes - are profoundly mistaken; standing in the presence of my new horse friend and communicating through the silent language of shared affection, reminds me that humans and animals cannot be essentially separated and form a continuous chain of being. 
 
It's not only because they can suffer as we suffer, but because they know joy and experience a wide range of other emotions, that they should be accorded the same kindness and respect that we like to be shown.   
 
 

14 Jun 2024

Procrastination

Statue of Pál Pató in Svodín, Slovakia [1]
 
 
You know when your procrastination is becoming serious when you choose to write a post on procrastination rather than work on the 8000-word essay you should be writing ... 
 
Procrastination is an ugly word for an ugly thing; the act of unnecessarily delaying or postponing something that needs to be done, despite knowing that there could be negative consequences for doing so. 
 
Apparently, it's quite a common thing, although until now I've never experienced it. Someone suggested that it's sign of an underlying mental health issue, such as depression, or possibly related to old age - which didn't really help. 
 
I tend to suspect that in my case, however, it's more due to the fact that after 13 years of writing nothing but fragments and short posts in a cheerful manner, the thought of composing a long and serious piece of scholarly research in a formal academic style no longer comes naturally and no longer appeals. 
  
Also, because the essay is on the Sex Pistols I can't help hearing the mocking words of Johnny Rotten at the beginning of 'No Fun' - A sociology lecture, with a bit of psychology ... etc. [2]
 
Having said that, I do want to write the essay - and I will write the essay! 
 
Just not today ...
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Pál Pató is a popular pipe-smoking character who appears in a poem by the 19th-century Hungarian poet (and liberal revolutionary) Sándor Petőfi and personifies procrastination. His catchphrase is: We've got time for that ...
 
[2] 'No Fun' is the B-side of 'Pretty Vacant', the third single released by the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here to play the remastered version as it appears on the 35th anniversary edition of Never Mind the Bollocks (Universal Music, 2012). Although not strictly relevant to the subject of this post, being left in a void of indecision and unable to act by procrastination is certainly no fun.    
 

13 Jun 2024

In Memory of Cat

Cat (June 2024)
 
 
I.
 
Mon chat est mort aujourd'hui
 
Unlike Nellie McKay, however, I didn't pour myself some gin; nor ponder whether she died from natural causes or, like Jesus, for my sins [1]
 
For whilst I loved her oh so much - and will miss her little kitty touch - such a question seems irrelevant (and a little inappropriate) in this case; her death was very much due to a combination of old age and illness and had nothing to do with substitutionary atonement. 

 
II.
 
Cat had been displaying many of the common signs of feline senescence - loss of appetite, restricted mobility, behavioural changes, etc. - for some time. I'm sure she knew she was getting older, although whether she had a concept of death and could instinctively sense that her own days were numbered, I don't know (and the science isn't certain on this point either).
 
But I think so: and believe she even made an effort to say goodbye. 
 
Her final hours were spent - contentedly I hope - in her favourite corner of the garden, in the sunshine, surrounded by the flowers ...
 
 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] I'm referring here to the Nellie McKay track 'Ding Dong' found on her brilliant debut album Get Away From Me (Columbia Records, 2004): click here to play.  


12 Jun 2024

A Thousand Kisses Say Goodbye (In Memory of Françoise Hardy)

Françoise Hardy (1944 - 2024)
Photo: Vittoriano Rastelli (1966)
 
 
The French singer-songwriter Françoise Hardy has died and all over the world fans like me are feeling a pain in their heart. 
 
Loved by everyone, she was a muse to many - including Serge Gainsbourg [1] and Malcolm McLaren [2] - and yet remained an intensely private person (by which I mean shy and unaffected by fame, rather than aloof and withdrawn). 
 
She will be remembered as an iconic and influential figure in the worlds of music and fashion; as someone who embodied the look of the former and the sound of the latter. 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] In 1968, Hardy recorded a track entitled 'Comment te dire adieu', an adaptation of the song 'It Hurts to Say Goodbye' written by Arnold Globe and Jack Gold, with new lyrics by Serge Gainsbourg. It was released as a single from an album of the same name (Disques Vogue, 1968). To play, click here.   
 
[2] In 1994, Hardy was (eventually) persuaded to participate by Malcolm McLaren on his album Paris. The track she performed on - 'Revenge of the Flowers' - was released as a single the following year (Vogue, 1995). To play, click here
 
 
Bonus: perhaps my favourite track by Hardy - and one that was written by her - 'Voilà', is taken from her seventh studio album Ma jeunesse fout le camp... (Disques Vogue, 1967): click here for a 2016 remastered version.   


10 Jun 2024

And I Wanna Live Yesterday Tomorrow

Malcolm McLaren Paris (1994)
 
'The only artist capable of rekindling the spark of hope in the past is the one who is 
firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe if the enemy is victorious.'
 
 
I.
 
Retrofuturism - born of the fact that capitalist realism makes tomorrow inconceivable - doesn't imagine future worlds that are projections from the present; it imagines future worlds that are reclaimed from the past. 
 
At first, this seems like fun. But there's a certain melancholic pessimism in concluding that since one can no longer look forward and dream of what might be, one is obliged to look back and (wistfully) recall what might have been. 
 
No wonder that the cultural theorist most often associated with this idea, Mark Fisher, topped himself.
 
However, for those who can bear it, retrofuturism's exploration of the tension between past and future - and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology - is a philosophically fascinating topic; one that, surprisingly, has quite a long history - certainly pre-dating Fisher's analysis - although its import as a concept has grown in recent years, perhaps as the present becomes ever-more unbearably dystopian. 
 
 
II.
 
Funny enough, although the word retrofuturism wasn't then part of my philosophical vocabulary, I first came across the idea in a song recorded by Malcolm McLaren in 1994, the last line of which is: And I wanna live yesterday tomorrow [1].
 
I remember thinking at the time that it was a nice, rather clever line - probably borrowed, I assumed, from one of those writers, like Walter Benjamin [2], who meant a great deal to McLaren, but I didn't reflect any further on it. 
 
However, thirty years later, and here we are ... The line has come back to haunt me and this paragraph from McLaren on reclaiming history (rather than just pissing on it) now seem to me of crucial importance: 
 
"The question I find most interesting is how you reclaim history. This is a very different thing from repackaging it. It's not about nostalgia, which is basically dead tissue. Living yesterday tomorrow should be about reclaiming history then reversing it into the future. If you can discover how to do that, you are probably doing everything an artist genuinely wishes to be involved in. One must aim to use certain disruptive practices to challenge the dominant cultural forms and relax the grip of authority." [3]
 
 
Notes
 
[1] The song I refer to is entitled 'Mon Dié Sénié' and can be found on McLaren's album Paris (1994): click here to play.
 
[2] See what Benjamin writes, for example, in the well-known essay 'On the Concept of History', in Selected Writings, Vol. 4., (Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 389-400. Composed of twenty numbered paragraphs, this short work by Benjamin is essentialy a critique of historicism.
 
[3] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman, in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2002), pp. 718-19.