State

"What do you think of the State?"
"I suppose it's a bit, or maybe a lot, like Santa Claus - a piece of make-believe which functions because we behave as though it were real."

Precipice

They built for themselves a precipice - how they did it I don't know, maybe they hacked it out of the rock -  only it turned out it seems there were too many of them there, and soon the pushing began.

Apparently Magnetic

A great and apparently magnetic substance appeared to which many were naturally drawn, and even if, as was the case, movement was subsequently somewhat restricted - and even greatly so - they seemed happy enough to have been drawn there. "Movement?! What need have we of movement?!" - someone might have said in response to questions as to their immobility. "And where would we go to anyway if not here?"

Art, Autobiographical

You demand that all art or at least all writing be autobiographical, autobiographical in the purest sense, unfalsified, there lies truth and all that . . . and so I'll try my best, have a go, but rather than go into too many details I'll try to distill a bit, reduce, which is to say elevate all this autobiographicising, all this seamless and remorseless selfhood to something like its essence - and noone could ask more or much more of me than that.

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I . . . me, me, me, me, me, me, me . . . 

There, it doesn't get much more distilled than that. You might argue it's a bit infantile, even all a bit monotonous when seen in such a light, but I'm sure it's just a question of the light.

Danger

There is a great danger this sentence will not reach its conclusion. Though I don't know, perhaps I exaggerated - maybe there was no danger.

Who Was 'Beethoven'?

Beethoven was deaf and so of course must have had someone else write his music for him, but who that someone was we may sadly never know. I suspect though that it was Mozart, who presumably faked his own death to escape his creditors and possibly also the murderous intent, real or imagined, of Salieri.

This you might argue is all a bit speculative, where is my proof, etc. My ears are my proof, and Beethoven, lest us not forget, didn't have any any -ears that is, in the practical sense. That is of course yes naturally he did have ears, but they were not practical.

Air

There was a balloon which was full of air - for which the air was naturally grateful - but then the ballon burst and it turned out the air didn't need it after all.

God's Non-Existence due to Manifestations of Evil within Time

One of the assumed arguments against the existence of what is referred to by 'God' is, it is an emotionally based one which cites the existence of evil or dreadful occurrences as said proofs - for instance the Nazi Holocaust or even some sinister phenomenon within the natural world. What 'God' stands for or signifies within this sphere of argument is an Ultimate Reality which is incarnate as absolute goodness, and because of its ultimate nature, its ultimate and undoubted triumph over evil.

The argument against God in this usage can go more or less that the level of evil in whatever instance used is so awful that ultimate truth, goodness, or God, cannot exist or else it would not have allowed such evil to prevail.

It is not to belittle the intensity of the pain that may lead to this philosophical reaction of God's absence but it should still be remembered that language must be examined in its own terms; the intellect must be true to itself and its forms; otherwise driven by these powerful even hysterical emotional needs and yearnings, intellect can be made to furnish and uphold very doubtful and dangerous ideas like virulent forms of state nationalism and its subsequent manifestations, from war to concentration camps.

And so back to the matter of this idea of the absence of the existence of absolute goodness and truth due to whatever temporal triumph of evil - and thankfully once true to language it can be resolved very quickly.

The very use of the word 'evil' and its usage is to inescapably accept that it exists within the framework or greater reality of 'Good.' Evil or some awful occurrence can be experienced as evil or awful only because of their being at odds with the goodness which the self feels and knows to be truth.

This all relates quite closely to a post Perversion as Truth, particuarly:

The very notion of perversion being 'true' is linguistically, and tautologically so, perverse, nonsensical. The idea of the language term "perversion" necessitates the idea of healthiness, truth, to which this perversion is contrary. It cannot exist autonomously without this standard to offset itself. It exists in relation to truth, which it is in defiance of, in perverse relation to.

And identically we can substitute evil for perversion. 'Evil' can only exist as a false domain within the framework of 'Goodness.'

Frankfurt, 1945

Capitalism and Capital

Poker is capitalism in something like its pure form - the only product being exchanged is money. And if a game of poker is indefinitely continued all the money will find its way progressively into fewer and fewer hands.

The idea of capital or money is that of a symbol that permits the flow of products of mutual benefit to peoples engaged in different, perhaps very different, activities, and inhabiting even very different parts of the planet. Originally the fundamental reality of money was of its being a precious metal, and the form or symbol into which it was moulded was a very secondary issue. And so one was in possession of something of intrinsic value, which for whatever reasons man commonly seems to regard as 'precious.' The individual within this system held a strong, stable position. Gold, for example, wasn't suddenly going to depreciate madly.

In time the secondary symbolic state of money has come to have prominence over the first - what it means more important than what it is - and now the existential reality or value of money is worthless, comprising paper or very unprecious metal, and the symbol is the fundamental truth - i.e. what the money means. So one is in possession of an ascribed value, rather than a thing in itself. Naturally this is an extremely powerful and potentially corruptible position for those in charge of the money at something like source, if inclined at all towards temptation, given the wholly symbolic nature of the money substance.

Another way of phrasing this is that if psychological realities like greed, love of power and dominion over others are indeed psychological realities, then we can expect pretty much as a matter of course the enormous temptation to corruption to find practical results. If however greed, love of power, etc are not psychological realities, then we have little to fear, and the possibility of the given scenarion little more than a conspiracy theory arising from an erroneous and cynical view of the landscape of human reality. However, most will agree such inner landscape is indeed real. And so, in the words of Josiah Charles Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920's:

The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight-of-hand that was ever invented. If you want to continue to be slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers continue to create money and control credit.

The utter defencelesness of the ordinary individual's position with modern money shown most spectacularly in Germany between the Great War and the rise of the Nazis, when inflation snowballed to the point where again the intrinsic worth became greater than the symbolic worth; ie the paper was worth more than the 'money'. The intrinsic unreality or worthlessness of the symbol became something close to absolute.

One might say money realised its own non-existence and so dissolved into nothingness, but at the expense of such elegance we probably have to rather consider the perennial activity of human manipulation, conscious and unconscious, intentional and error-strewn, where at the very least the Allied victors by their victory terms ensured the first German economic chaos.

Now in the comparatively cashless society the money relationship is even more abstract, where that which is symbolised doesn't even exist as a tangible symbol-object - i.e. cash - but almost purely as numbers on computer screens, and so the power dynamics in this system have become ever more centralised towards the bankers and creators of the money symbol.

And so is amply shown the danger of an economic system wholly in thrall to the fluctuations and manipulations of a symbol of no intrinsic substance. With today's crisis no crops are failing, plagues striking, etc. Just a purely mental substance depreciating in value in terms of itself, or/ and disappearing into unknown avenues. See poker analogy:

Poker is capitalism in something like its pure form - the only product being exchanged is money. And if a game of poker is indefinitely continued all the money will find its way progressively into fewer and fewer hands.

David Bowie Tracks

'Some Are' and 'The Subterraneans' both off the 'Low' album, Some Are a bonus track; 'The Bewlay Brothers' below off 'Hunky Dory'; and Sons of the Silent Age off 'Heroes'.

Gene Clark - Silver Raven

The La's - Looking Glass, Tears in the Rain, Man I'm Only Human, Timeless Melody, Looking Glass Live

'Tears in the Rain' only a very roughly recorded rehearsal, as unfortunately the genius that is Lee Mavers has had deep and strange issues with releasing his songs.

Dead Can Dance - Cantara, The Host of Seraphim

Progress

Perhaps the dominant ideology of the relatively modern era, its ambient background, is that of Progress, which could be described as the belief that the increased understanding and harnessing of matter automatically leads to a bettering of human life. That even though these immersions in matter would be ‘pure’ and unimpeded by ‘irrelevant’ ethical concerns - which interruptions would be alien to these scientific investigations - that life as a whole, including the ethical field, would also somehow benefit as a matter of course from the increased harnessing of matter. The manipulations of matter would be intrinsically ‘good’in their effect, even though unencumbered by concern with the good. As a consciously pronounced ideology the latter half of the nineteenth century was the apex of this doctrinal optimism, while as an applied ideology it has of course gained incrementally in the meantime, though as this consciously pronounced ideology it has tended to fade into the background, its relatively crude propaganda work done, and now existing in the silent background and probably all the more powerful for that. Progress as a thought moved beyond a position of conscious faith towards that of an unspoken omniscience. Materialism became effectively deified, a new and more total paganism, where the elements of nature are revered as a religious absolute.

So all in all, optimistic rationalists of the nineteenth century believed man was progressing towards a new Eden – hence Progress - that the pathways of materialism would of themselves lead there, while man’s ethical nature would also progress as a matter of inevitable course in the wake of and in tandem with this scientific progress.

Things like medical advances and improvements in methods of transport might seem to add irrefutable weight to such notions of inevitable progress but, simultaneous to these developments, scientists could place in the hands of the political powers ever progressive militaristic tools, from sub machine guns to tanks, poison gases, biological and nuclear weapons, etc., and the scientists could do this an easy conscience, without being seen, as might seem reasonable, as instruments of applied evil, the most useful of lackeys to the basest of people.

And why could the scientists go unmolested by these obvious accusations? Because matter in whatever form it is assembled must be good, since matter is unquestioningly good, and so such scientific work is at worst neutral - but even that is unfair, and instead the increasing understanding and harnessing of matter in whatever direction must be positively good, even though as said one could do one’s work without any considerations of the good. It is inferentially claimed that somehow the good infallibly introduces itself into the process of material investigation and manipulation without man having to concern himself at all with goodness. Goodness is intrinsic to matter and its manipulations, a kind of reverse Gnosticism.

Unsettlingly however, in the twentieth century this rational path to glory began to throw up some unexpected phenomena, such as World War One where, in western Europe, the very engine-room of modernity and Progress, instead of man’s rational perfecting of himself as had been optimistically envisaged, with the improved methods of transport obedient Western man was efficiently delivered in his millions to the desired destinations of organized slaughter, while the machine guns, poison gases, etc. did the efficient slaughtering of modern man in these millions.

The methods of transport naturally themselves evolved into ever more efficient militaristic tools as the immersion in matter progressed, from ships to planes, submarines, etc.

So, particularly after the first World War, this new god of progress with its supposed attendant rationalizing development of man must have begun to appear to some a slightly more dubious deity. One perhaps couldn’t, at least some might have felt, just abandon one’s conscience and expect Progress and its fruits to conveniently deliver up ever increasing measures of goodness as a natural by-product.

Unfortunately the scope of this piece has widened way beyond its initial intentions, but beyond the more violent and dramatic fields of applied science and war, Aldous Huxley in Brave New World had a look at where man in his uncritical surrender to the manipulations of matter might be heading, particularly in a future world of perfectly achieved social stability.

An important and obvious point made by Huxley was that these scientific manipulations are apt not to be so disinterested at all. In the emerging world of mass-production, in all its many forms, power would become ever more centrifugally focused on the mass-producers, and inevitably these ruling elites would direct the manipulations of matter in directions beneficial to the consolidation and expansion of their power; from the obvious militaristic fields to the fields of ‘public entertainment’ particularly stressed by Huxley, where man’s potentially free consciousness, a force correctly seen as inimical to the continued power of the ruling elites, would be harnessed and neutralised. By offering ‘mass-man’ a saturation diet of inane stress-relieving pleasures and false pictures of the world of reality, man would be a creature of delusion, inhabiting the simulated ‘reality’ served up to him; conditioned to love his own servitude – a servitude he would be entirely unaware of. This would be effected both consciously by the ruling elites but also by means of the inner logic of progress.

HG Wells for one felt betrayed and insulted by Huxley’s future vision, equating as it clearly did with a disbelief in the deity of Progress to whom, or rather which, Wells like the great majority bowed down - regardless of whether or not they were conscious of the bowing down.

[ Months, perhaps even a year or two later . . .  I obviously got fed up with this essay that snowballed beyond what I intended, and so never even got to the kernel of the piece that got me writing in the first place. And the initial kernel hopefully follows.]

 . . . That the error in believing in Inevitable Progress could be truthfully reduced to or described as a semantic error; that the word 'progress' when used in the ideological sense described above is simply being misused, and this misuse has aided and encouraged man to bow down to the childish notion of Inevitable Progress. And so what is this misuse of the word 'progress'? Well, progress is a very simple notion and process, that is, one begins from some point and progresses from there. The word simply relates to movement. And so within the whole process of Progress in the modern sense from, lets simplify, the Industrial Revolution onwards, a process of was set in motion along whose tracks mankind has deigned to progress, i.e. to move; or as Webster's Dictionary describes 'progress': forward movement in time or place . However so deeply ingrained has become the misuse of 'progress' that automatically once it is mentioned in this sense a kind of mental lever is switched in the mind, and instead of progress simply inferring to movement along a certain course it is universally implied that this movement includes inescapably an ever more unfolding utopia along the pathways of this movement. The word has been completely distorted to signify that rather than simply movement in a certain direction Progress also implies that this movement is to somewhere better than previously inhabited. 

This is all far more important a point than may superficially or at first appear. So to help practically illustrate the matter, someone might say “I am an ardent believer in Progress,” meaning that this person believes in the reality of the ever more unfolding Utopia as one continues along the path of progress. Or someone else, a little proud perhaps of their independent thought and scepticism, might say, “I do not believe in Progress,” again accepting that Progress implies Utopia, but in this case disbelieving in its attendant existence. But this is just as ridiculous and perhaps more so than the former believer in Progress. For progress in its true semantic sense of course exists; in the area of manipulation of matter in a myriad of ways we have progressed, we have gone along that path. This is indisputable. In some or many ways this has unfolded what we could say is  a better world, with manifestations such as  better hygiene, less disease, better means of transport. However just as easily we could say it has unleashed a worse world - Chernobyl, biological warfare, technologically induced or utilised forms of  mass-hypnotism, etc.

The error being made is to distort and falsify the word Progress from its true directional meaning to being inclusive of what we can broadly say is the ethical or idealistic dimension. That this error may be wholly unintentional or unconscious does not make it any less an error, and in the the relative recent history of man a very important one. The helpful manipulating of matter should obviously be a tool of great benefit to mankind but not some idea turned god to bow down to, and to which we should strangely surrender the burden of genuine inner freedom.

Buck 65 - Roses and Bluejays

From his fine 'Talkin Honky Blues' album.

KLF - What Time Is Love 1988 Original Mix

Social Media, Relevance, More So

An idea for a new social media site catering for the needs of today of those living in the times we live in now. The germ of the idea is that existing variants, such as Twitter, while culturally legitimate perhaps in relation to the time of their initial gestation, have become, in these accelerating times, obsolete due to the excessive verbosity within which they unashamedly wallow. My site, both more relevant and attuned, will be useful for keeping in touch with Celebrities and Friends but will also hope to foster and encourage debate and discussion of contemporary issues of relevance to the above as mentioned times we live in now.

The most relevant and revolutionary advancement on existing alluded to Social Media variants will be that User posts and responses to posts can be up to but no longer than one word in length. If what you have to say cannot be said in less than two words, then it isn't worth saying. Anything longer is pretentious.

In homage to Free Speech there will be no restrictions within the field of utilised language except that it will be vehemently and electronically moderated that, in the interests of democratic principles, the chosen employed single word be no longer than a single syllable. Users are asked to modify themselves accordingly.

Tommy, Awful Sad

The Scarecrow

Written by Lal Waterson, sung by Mike.

Subversive

'This is a very subersive piece.'
'Why? What is it subverting?'
'Everything.'
'Everything? And how is it doing that?'
'By ignoring it.'

Opened Closed

He opened his eyes, but almost as soon as he opened them he closed them again. Why is that? - he didn't like what he saw? Yes that might be it, he didn't like what he saw.

Proudhon, Property, Theft

There is a well known thought by the French 19th century thinker Proudhon that "Property is theft," and so to a quick look at this in a linguistic sense to see how much sense it makes. If someone makes a mathematical claim it has to of course be consistent with mathematical language, and similarly statements in this 'ordinary' language should be treated much more seriously as being exactly what they existentially are, ie language statements. Words possess meaning, and so what is the meaning of the relevant words?

"Property is theft." Though it might appear in jest I think this could and should be accurately seen as a very childish semantic error. Property and theft are two different words meaning two very different things. If Proudhon had said "Property is property," then, though this inane pronouncement would have surely had no future fame, it wouldn't have abandoned sense. And similarly if he had said that "Theft is theft." However Proudhon ventured into the more strange waters of declaring one word to in perfect truth imply a very different word, i.e. that 'theft' and 'property' are one.

Though as someone is sure to helpfully clarify that what Proudhon is trying to say is that property is itself immoral because of being the equivalent to the act of theft; that somebody owning something is by definition stealing from someone else.

However, stealing from someone can only exist where property exists in the first place, and so the idea that 'property is theft' is entirely unintelligible. To use the word theft is to necessarily accept the legitimacy of property - theft being the illegitimate taking of someone else's property. And so to try to say that property is theft is self-contradictory gibberish.

Characters

"There are no characters in your plays."
"I don't have any plays."
"Yes, but if you did there wouldn't be any characters in them."
"There might."

Soupy Norman

Soupy Norman, episodes 1 - Buttevant, 
7 - Straz,
8 - Prodigirl
Just 10 minutes each, Straz & Prodigirl probably the highlights of the series. Might need to be Irish to get much of it.

This Roof

"There was this roof - "
"Had it any leaks?"
"It was full of leaks . . . But the funny thing was that that was the best thing about it!"
"The best thing about it was it was full of leaks? It can't have been much of a roof."

Mind Body

"The mind-body problem? What problem?"

The Lonesome Boatman

The Lonesome Boatman original studio version.
Longer live version

reds

cross

sircles cquares

at sea

Qht

One of my music pieces which for some reason or other I'm unable to embed here:

Qht

Request

The much deserving Georgy Riecke  is in need of an enlarged audience. Afraid I've a small enough, perhaps to the point of non-existent, one myself, and, while I cannot vouch for any of their characters, real or imaginary, I don't begrudge any visitations they may confer on said Mr Riecke.

blacksmith