Ye Gods.
In my dotage I have taken it upon myself to attempt to become a more 'sociable', 'integrated' and 'valuable' member of my limited little society.
You have no idea the joy it gives me to get stabbed in the ankles by some polyester harridan drunkenly steering a sprog buggy, or being battered into insensibility by shopping trolleys and tinny muzak farting out of the public address system in the local supermarket.
Aaah, the joy of human society.
What is it with this dreadful music everywhere you go now? So bass heavy too, boom, boom, boom, and the lyrics, well the shouting - feck off! I'd like to buy a bag of tatties without hearing about the romantic vicissitudes of some 'mutha' and his 'bitch'. This is England you asshole punks have a bit of respect!
Of course I cycled down there, I haven't driven for years now, no, no I'd have to dodge the people carriers and 4 X 4's. All those tourist's and townie commuters clanking their ridiculous tanks through the narrow cobbled streets.
They all look such miserable bastards as well: full of spite, malignancy, suspicion and fear.
Hey! you're alive, cheer up, and you're at least 30 years younger than me. What's going on?
Who needs society anyway when you have a beautiful sea view.
Saturday, 24 April 2010
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Under the Volcano
This Icelandic Volcano story is fascinating.
Reminds me of the Viking saga's, all that fire and ice and mythological metaphor - Odin breathing fire and threatening to send us all to Valhalla.
Strange feeling not seeing contrails in the sky or hearing planes, I don't get that many here, and always at high altitude, but the subliminal engine sizzle was noticeable by its absence.
Incredible how nature can just spring these society stopping events on us 'out of the blue' so to speak. We take so many things for granted, the ease of travel, the hum drum convenience of everyday communication and social and economic exchange, then one morning we wake up and nature has belched and farted, and our fragile existence and freedom is slapped back into our collective mushes.
Hey you there, you're only short-term tenants remember!
But we never do really. We just shrug it off, things go back to 'normal' and we laugh about it. A nervous laugh though sometimes to be sure.
The flights are back on, everyone's reunited, commercial battle is rejoined and we push the volcano, the floods, the tsunami's, the tornado's, the meteors etc into the little psychic cupboard under the stairs and keep that door padlocked from the kids.
The more populated and technologically dependent the human world becomes the bigger and bigger those padlocks will have to be. That little door will get uglier and uglier until we can't ignore it anymore.
Reminds me of the Viking saga's, all that fire and ice and mythological metaphor - Odin breathing fire and threatening to send us all to Valhalla.
Strange feeling not seeing contrails in the sky or hearing planes, I don't get that many here, and always at high altitude, but the subliminal engine sizzle was noticeable by its absence.
Incredible how nature can just spring these society stopping events on us 'out of the blue' so to speak. We take so many things for granted, the ease of travel, the hum drum convenience of everyday communication and social and economic exchange, then one morning we wake up and nature has belched and farted, and our fragile existence and freedom is slapped back into our collective mushes.
Hey you there, you're only short-term tenants remember!
But we never do really. We just shrug it off, things go back to 'normal' and we laugh about it. A nervous laugh though sometimes to be sure.
The flights are back on, everyone's reunited, commercial battle is rejoined and we push the volcano, the floods, the tsunami's, the tornado's, the meteors etc into the little psychic cupboard under the stairs and keep that door padlocked from the kids.
The more populated and technologically dependent the human world becomes the bigger and bigger those padlocks will have to be. That little door will get uglier and uglier until we can't ignore it anymore.
Saturday, 10 April 2010
The White Goddess
Aaaah, the creature of fabled myth visited me last night.
Its becoming a regular occurrence.
The moon goddess crept barefoot into the great library, guitar in one hand a small gift in the other.
I was dozing in the chair as usual, floating in a half-sleep, lost to this world of hard objects and harder minds.
The goddess sat on my old desk, feet dangling, guitar on her lap, her raven black hair and porcelain skin so striking in this familiar place.
The port I'd been consuming all night had infiltrated every cell of my being like a gorgeous warm friendly army, invading and pillaging every nook and cranny of my little defenseless castle. Take me you beggars, my battle for sensibility is lost...at least for today.
The goddess tossed an exquisitely wrapped package onto my lap, I started, mumbled and half sat up. A gift as usual, one of many that now lay dotted about this shambling house.
She said nothing. Gazing at me she half smiled, an imperceptible nod to proceed tickled her green eyes.
The parcel was about the size of a bag of sugar and about the same weight(the thought did briefly flicker to awareness,'maybe she's got a practical side?') and wrapped in some kind of grey/brown vellum, bound with corded plant stem or grass.
'Beautiful my dear' I whispered while fiddling with the knot.
After much fannying - and I swear an audible 'tut' from the goddess - I found myself confronted by the implacable eyes of a roughly hewn and definitely brooding wooden owl.
'Splendid!' I squealed...before spluttering into a prolonged bout of coughing.
When I had finally calmed down, I turned the owl around in my hands, feeling every surface and plane, my fingernail tracing the grooves of plumage, the snaking ear line and the vicious beak.
It was an ancient thing. Terrifying in its endurance across the aeons of time. I looked up and smiled at the goddess, she held my gaze and I knew that this object had been stroked and fondled by Odin himself - to Valhalla and back. Wow, what a trip!
Slowly the goddess began to finger ethereal and baroque arpeggio's on her ancient guitar. I am unable to adequately convey the sublime and eerie beauty of this sound. Imagine an angel on acid emanating infinite love and goodness, vast connectivity and understanding, then you might, just might dig it!
I am still unaware as to whether these 'visitations' are real or merely acid flashbacks from my well spent youth.
I began to narrate my experience of jamming with Keith Richards in Marrakesh in '69 or was it '70 with the goddess.
'Extraordinary experience my dear, Keith had a beautiful solid topped Martin acoustic and we were both getting the evil eye off Anita, that dreadful German harridan. Anyway...blah blah blah..."
The last thing I remember is the Goddess' eyes rolling heavenwards, and then oblivion curtailed and finally engulfed my inane ramblings.
This morning, the owl sits atop my mantelpiece, noble and timeless...and just there.
Its becoming a regular occurrence.
The moon goddess crept barefoot into the great library, guitar in one hand a small gift in the other.
I was dozing in the chair as usual, floating in a half-sleep, lost to this world of hard objects and harder minds.
The goddess sat on my old desk, feet dangling, guitar on her lap, her raven black hair and porcelain skin so striking in this familiar place.
The port I'd been consuming all night had infiltrated every cell of my being like a gorgeous warm friendly army, invading and pillaging every nook and cranny of my little defenseless castle. Take me you beggars, my battle for sensibility is lost...at least for today.
The goddess tossed an exquisitely wrapped package onto my lap, I started, mumbled and half sat up. A gift as usual, one of many that now lay dotted about this shambling house.
She said nothing. Gazing at me she half smiled, an imperceptible nod to proceed tickled her green eyes.
The parcel was about the size of a bag of sugar and about the same weight(the thought did briefly flicker to awareness,'maybe she's got a practical side?') and wrapped in some kind of grey/brown vellum, bound with corded plant stem or grass.
'Beautiful my dear' I whispered while fiddling with the knot.
After much fannying - and I swear an audible 'tut' from the goddess - I found myself confronted by the implacable eyes of a roughly hewn and definitely brooding wooden owl.
'Splendid!' I squealed...before spluttering into a prolonged bout of coughing.
When I had finally calmed down, I turned the owl around in my hands, feeling every surface and plane, my fingernail tracing the grooves of plumage, the snaking ear line and the vicious beak.
It was an ancient thing. Terrifying in its endurance across the aeons of time. I looked up and smiled at the goddess, she held my gaze and I knew that this object had been stroked and fondled by Odin himself - to Valhalla and back. Wow, what a trip!
Slowly the goddess began to finger ethereal and baroque arpeggio's on her ancient guitar. I am unable to adequately convey the sublime and eerie beauty of this sound. Imagine an angel on acid emanating infinite love and goodness, vast connectivity and understanding, then you might, just might dig it!
I am still unaware as to whether these 'visitations' are real or merely acid flashbacks from my well spent youth.
I began to narrate my experience of jamming with Keith Richards in Marrakesh in '69 or was it '70 with the goddess.
'Extraordinary experience my dear, Keith had a beautiful solid topped Martin acoustic and we were both getting the evil eye off Anita, that dreadful German harridan. Anyway...blah blah blah..."
The last thing I remember is the Goddess' eyes rolling heavenwards, and then oblivion curtailed and finally engulfed my inane ramblings.
This morning, the owl sits atop my mantelpiece, noble and timeless...and just there.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
The House on the Borderland
As I dissolve into my decrepitude with each flashing, sudden passing day, I am more and more reminded of a favourite tale of mine.
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson was a favourite distraction for a number of years. I kept returning to that strange, eerie tale set in Ireland, of a house that was caught in the nexus point of space and time. It resonated with something deep inside me, like the chiming of a great bell in a cold, dark infinite landscape.
I increasingly feel as if I have created that house here, or rather this transcendent house on the borderland pulled me to to it by a form of dark energy, a gravitational force unknown to science that came into being at the moment I began reading that yellowed, dogeared paperback all those years ago.
When you're detached from the banal buzz of the workaday world, amputated from the impossibility of not speaking or communicating with another person, your body and mind inflate, you become god-like in your ability to observe and deconstruct the minutiae of your mind and physical environment.
EVERYTHING becomes significant.
I've always been rather fond of the philosopher Martin Heidegger.
He pointed out in (a rather roundabout way) that when philosophers talk about the nature of existence, the 'being of the table', their own supposed ability to hammer out the 'solidity' of their perceiving consciousness...they often forget, that first of all, they are absolutely embedded into a world of experience and sensation, so subtle and so vast, that it is difficult to understand how true, rational or empirical objectivity can ever be realized.
To be conscious, is to be conscious of 'something' at all times. Even if we are cogitating on something specific in our attention, there are a thousand and one other processes occurring simultaneously - nervous system, the unconscious machinations of the psyche, sounds, smells, tactility.
These things merely get displaced and filtered out of awareness momentarily. We never see things as they are, but as how we are at a particular moment in time.
Most of the time we are unaware of our selves as we are are perpetually pulled along and manufactured by our environment and perceptions in the great cultural feedback loop.
Being alone can act as one long existential burn,the awareness that you are a being imprisoned in your unstoppable awareness of things.But alas, even this experience will always be a trifle contaminated.
The Zen people would call Heidegger's existential trigger moments 'Attention'. Indeed, I used to own a very good book on Zen by some fellow called Suzuki; he cited the phenomenology of Husserl as a good starting point for Western minds to grasp the
tenets of Zen. As you well know, Husserl was Heidegger's most profound influence.
Time for tea. Toodle pip.
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson was a favourite distraction for a number of years. I kept returning to that strange, eerie tale set in Ireland, of a house that was caught in the nexus point of space and time. It resonated with something deep inside me, like the chiming of a great bell in a cold, dark infinite landscape.
I increasingly feel as if I have created that house here, or rather this transcendent house on the borderland pulled me to to it by a form of dark energy, a gravitational force unknown to science that came into being at the moment I began reading that yellowed, dogeared paperback all those years ago.
When you're detached from the banal buzz of the workaday world, amputated from the impossibility of not speaking or communicating with another person, your body and mind inflate, you become god-like in your ability to observe and deconstruct the minutiae of your mind and physical environment.
EVERYTHING becomes significant.
I've always been rather fond of the philosopher Martin Heidegger.
He pointed out in (a rather roundabout way) that when philosophers talk about the nature of existence, the 'being of the table', their own supposed ability to hammer out the 'solidity' of their perceiving consciousness...they often forget, that first of all, they are absolutely embedded into a world of experience and sensation, so subtle and so vast, that it is difficult to understand how true, rational or empirical objectivity can ever be realized.
To be conscious, is to be conscious of 'something' at all times. Even if we are cogitating on something specific in our attention, there are a thousand and one other processes occurring simultaneously - nervous system, the unconscious machinations of the psyche, sounds, smells, tactility.
These things merely get displaced and filtered out of awareness momentarily. We never see things as they are, but as how we are at a particular moment in time.
Most of the time we are unaware of our selves as we are are perpetually pulled along and manufactured by our environment and perceptions in the great cultural feedback loop.
Being alone can act as one long existential burn,the awareness that you are a being imprisoned in your unstoppable awareness of things.But alas, even this experience will always be a trifle contaminated.
The Zen people would call Heidegger's existential trigger moments 'Attention'. Indeed, I used to own a very good book on Zen by some fellow called Suzuki; he cited the phenomenology of Husserl as a good starting point for Western minds to grasp the
tenets of Zen. As you well know, Husserl was Heidegger's most profound influence.
Time for tea. Toodle pip.
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Want to be in my gang? Oh rather.
As I hobble around this rambling old shed of a house, I've become increasingly aware of the dereliction and unusual beauty of the objects that furnish it.
Since my retirement from 'public life' in the late 80's, the only object that I have purchased for over £50 new, has been this...'laptop' Urrrgh, what a dreadful phrase!
I do not possess a TV, washing machine, toaster, microwave or any of those other baubles and labour saving devices that so enchant and stupefy the lower orders.
I prefer to watch some other poor bastard performing the domestic necessities of life in a very labour intensive way.
I have a very efficient lady who pops in twice a week to cook me a decent meal, dust, clean and...bore me to tears. Its not her fault, poor thing.
My laundry is collected, washed and returned on a weekly basis by a small family run business in the village 5 miles distant. Such as it is, my relationship with the rest of the human race is a little distant, and somewhat strained at the time of writing.
To be honest, I've always rather enjoyed 'gangs'. Whether it be the edgy but cosy underworld cafe culture of 50's and 60's Paris, that gang of musicians that is more formally known as a 'rock band', or the little coven of aesthetes who loosely collectivize into the phenomena called an artistic school.
I adore these amorphous fertile wombs of creativity, these assemblages of parts - psychodynamic constructs of conflict and cohesion, blooming and dying like flowers at each moment.
I've never been one for small talk, I'm a bit all or nothing. I'd rather discuss the ontological reality and epistemological history of the vacuum cleaner than actually use one.
I am always too aware of my being in the world, my 'authenticity', my total and profound comprehension that most of this life is a game, but it is many other things also if you care to look a little deeper.
As that self educated polymath Colin Wilson once said, "The outsider [artist] see's too deeply and too much"
Indeed.
Once you have cleansed the doors, everything is indeed infinite.
Since my retirement from 'public life' in the late 80's, the only object that I have purchased for over £50 new, has been this...'laptop' Urrrgh, what a dreadful phrase!
I do not possess a TV, washing machine, toaster, microwave or any of those other baubles and labour saving devices that so enchant and stupefy the lower orders.
I prefer to watch some other poor bastard performing the domestic necessities of life in a very labour intensive way.
I have a very efficient lady who pops in twice a week to cook me a decent meal, dust, clean and...bore me to tears. Its not her fault, poor thing.
My laundry is collected, washed and returned on a weekly basis by a small family run business in the village 5 miles distant. Such as it is, my relationship with the rest of the human race is a little distant, and somewhat strained at the time of writing.
To be honest, I've always rather enjoyed 'gangs'. Whether it be the edgy but cosy underworld cafe culture of 50's and 60's Paris, that gang of musicians that is more formally known as a 'rock band', or the little coven of aesthetes who loosely collectivize into the phenomena called an artistic school.
I adore these amorphous fertile wombs of creativity, these assemblages of parts - psychodynamic constructs of conflict and cohesion, blooming and dying like flowers at each moment.
I've never been one for small talk, I'm a bit all or nothing. I'd rather discuss the ontological reality and epistemological history of the vacuum cleaner than actually use one.
I am always too aware of my being in the world, my 'authenticity', my total and profound comprehension that most of this life is a game, but it is many other things also if you care to look a little deeper.
As that self educated polymath Colin Wilson once said, "The outsider [artist] see's too deeply and too much"
Indeed.
Once you have cleansed the doors, everything is indeed infinite.
Saturday, 3 April 2010
John Cage's Dance to the Music of Time.
I’ve always found John Cage’s music project in a church in the town of Halberstadt in Northern Germany totally beguiling.
Cage (now deceased) initiated, what is proposed to be the longest and slowest musical recital in history in 2000. Its set to last 639 years!.
Apparently it was 639 years before 2000 (1361) when Halberstadt produced the first 'block single organ'. It has a keyboard arrangement that leads us to the modern piano, and all the greatest musical compositions that go with that.
Its the instrumental Daddy of western music.
Cage has paid homage to it by composing what appears to be (in normal time frames) a very slow, eerie, monotone organ music - there is about one chord change per year. But what the composition is really reflecting back to us is our human perception of time.
I think its a lovely idea: the births, lives and deaths of generations shall continue cyclically, and in this Church in Halberstadt, the organ will continue to play out its long lament, generations after you and I are merely eddies of dust spinning in the breeze.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible
Cage (now deceased) initiated, what is proposed to be the longest and slowest musical recital in history in 2000. Its set to last 639 years!.
Apparently it was 639 years before 2000 (1361) when Halberstadt produced the first 'block single organ'. It has a keyboard arrangement that leads us to the modern piano, and all the greatest musical compositions that go with that.
Its the instrumental Daddy of western music.
Cage has paid homage to it by composing what appears to be (in normal time frames) a very slow, eerie, monotone organ music - there is about one chord change per year. But what the composition is really reflecting back to us is our human perception of time.
I think its a lovely idea: the births, lives and deaths of generations shall continue cyclically, and in this Church in Halberstadt, the organ will continue to play out its long lament, generations after you and I are merely eddies of dust spinning in the breeze.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible
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