Culture - April

Films Watched -

'Heart of Glass' (Werner Herzog)
'Fata Morgana' (Werner Herzog)
'Five Easy Pieces' (Bob Rafelson)
'The Battle of Algiers' (Gillo Pontecorvo)
'Andrei Rublev' (Andrei Tarkovsky)
'The Seventh Seal' (Ingmar Bergman)
'Elephant' (Gus van Sant)
'Escape from Alcatraz' (Don Siegel)
'United 93' (Paul Greengrass)
'The Lives of Others' (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
'The French Connection' (William Freidkin)
'Rome, Open City' (Roberto Rossellini)
'Saturday Night Fever' (John Badham)
'Source Code' (Duncan Jones)
'Brassed Off' (Mark Herman)
'Paths of Glory' (Stanley Kubrick)
'Mirror' (Andrei Tarkovsky)
'Carrie' (Brian DePalma)
'Scanners' (David Cronenberg)
'Breathless' (Jean-Luc Godard)
'Barfly' (Barbet Schroeder)


Books Read -

Henry Miller - 'Tropic of Cancer'
Sigmund Freud - 'The Freud Reader' (edited by Peter Gay)
Franz Kafka - 'The Trial'
Ernesto 'Che' Guevara - 'The Motorcycle Diaries'
Charles Bukowski - 'You get so alone at times that it just makes sense' (poetry)
Vladimir Nabakov - 'Lolita'

Albums been playing -

Explosions in the Sky - 'Take Care, Take Care, Take Care'
Lykke Li - 'Wounded Rhymes'
Tame Impala - 'Innerspeaker'
Deerhunter - 'Halcyon Digest'
Friendly Fires - 'Friendly Fires'
Eluvium - 'Talk Amongst the Trees'
Can - 'Tago Mago'
Can - 'Landed'
Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band - 'Safe as Milk'
Igor Stravinsky - 'The Firebird Suite'
Goldie - 'Timeless'
Jon Hopkins - 'Contact Note'
Gyorgy Ligeti - Ligeti Project Vol. II'
Gram Parsons & The Flying Burrito Brothers - 'The Gilded Palace of Sin'

Culture - March

Films Watched -

'The Pianist' (Roman Polanski)
'Gangs of New York' (Martin Scorsese)
'Thelma & Louise' (Ridley Scott)
'Severance' (Christopher Smith)
'A Beautiful Mind' (Ron Howard)
'A Bronx Tale' (Robert De Niro)
'The Battleship Potemkin' (Sergei Eisenstein)
'An Inconvenient Truth' (Davis Guggenheim)
'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' (Robert Weine)

Books Read -

Charles Bukowski - 'The Most Beautiful Woman in Town (and other stories)'
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 'The Double'
William Golding - 'Lord of the Flies'
James Joyce - 'Dubliners'
Thomas Hardy - 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'

Albums been playing -

Radiohead - 'The King of Limbs'
Elbow - 'Build a Rocket Boys!'
Beady Eye - 'Different Gear, Still Speeding'
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - 'Tepid Peppermint Wonderland'
Can - 'Ege Bamyasi'
Can - 'Future Days'
David Bowie - 'Low'
Esben and the Witch - 'Violet Cries'
Jon Hopkins - 'Insides'
Kraftwerk - 'Electric Cafe'
Kraftwerk - 'Radio-Activity'
Mogwai - 'Hardcore will never die, but you will'
Skinny Puppy - 'Singles Collection'
Spacemen 3 - 'Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs to'

....

Life: I drink to it and because of it.

The Question of Insanity

Increasingly I catch myself ruminating on the nature of my own mind, my very presence in this waking reality. Sometimes my conscious will have so entirely detached itself from my surroundings that it takes an act of will to wrench it back into some kind of focus. Almost as if I have torn apart the flimsy fabric of reality upon which we all project our daily thoughts and lives.

The way I see it, this fabric is stretched too thin across all our perceptions, it can’t take an inconceivable amount of effort to be able to punch right through and into something entirely different, gazing through a diffracted lens that might throw out the colours to paint reality anew.

And so I ponder the question of insanity. How can the essence of madness be defined in any logical or reasonable way I often wonder. Surely to get close to a definition we have to be able to assume that society and civilization as we know it represents some kind of sanity, or human consciousness enshrined in normality. But this can also be cast into considerable doubt. I have slowly begun to realise that madness is all relative to perception, unique in each and every instance.

Is the man who all of a sudden snaps and takes a gun to shoot up the town any more insane than the man who just sits tight and lets the world play him for a fool day after day? Being able to gauge a true impression on mental instability is all a matter of reassessing existing impressions and prejudices; attempting to recapitulate madness into mundane routine. Real insanity is everywhere you look, a fresh salience of vision is all that’s required.

True insanity is waking up, rubbing the sleep from morning eyes and setting out to work at a job that chips away a little piece of your resilience with every hour that ticks by. Like ocean waves striking and retreating from the cliff face, there is no let up, no release. No release from the constant grief and jealousy and stress and humiliation. The only thing that gets you through it is the knowledge that someone somewhere has fallen victim to this ritual erosion whilst your mind has remained strong and untapped for the duration of another day.

Real insanity is placing our lives in the hands of men who went mad with their own influence and self-importance long ago. We conspire to the positioning of men into the status and high office from which they wield power over us day and night. Belief in a free society and the existence of real democracy is as good a sign of insanity as any – to honestly invest hope that the figureheads of our government would do all they can to enshrine justice and democratic transparency is a delusion of the gravest kind.

Grand madness is devoting your life to an almighty god, praying that you may enter his kingdom of heaven; a place god would have abandoned in disgust and disappointment long ago if only he could be trusted to exist.

Madness is eliciting the sympathies and confidences of others, in approaching strangers with smiles, in greeting relatives, in seeking refuge.

To covet material possessions and adorn oneself with exclusive branded plumage, these are surely the obsessions of lunatics.

Insanity is taking up arms in anger and revenge, in ignoring tragedy like a minor oversight, in doubting the bile and wretched potential of associates.

Insanity is auctioning off the state bit by bit like vital organs in a hospital jumble sale; to allow prisons, schools and forests to be melted down into franchises, swallowed up by conglomerations and drained of all noble intent.

Insanity is the oceans of blood and tsunami of pain from millennia teeming with man’s fight against man. Hate provoked by race, sex, religion blooms only in the minds of the deranged.

Madness is child-rearing on a planet of billions.

Madness is destruction in a world of beauty.

Madness is fanaticism and addiction, dreams of flight and unjustified wealth.

Madness is the highway divide between casino and slum.

Madness is giving yourself up for love, surrendering yourself to tradition, isolating yourself from passion.

Insanity is money. Money is the straitjacket by which all men are restrained. The very nature of society decrees that the jacket be bound tighter for some than others, and still tighter for others, until the jacket is too tight to give life real worth. For a minority the shackles of the straitjacket are loose enough to allow free movement, and in turn this allows the controlled suppression of the majority. A myriad of lives are spent in the futile endeavour of wriggling and squirming those shackles loose. But at the end of the day we are all just bound by the same lunacy of money, the ecstasy of gold.

Insanity is a life lived in strict order, followed to the letter of habit, grazing through fads and fashions, always glancing back over one shoulder, a slave to regret, a victim of discontent, a casualty of violent ennui. The monotony of routine and technology-induced apathy is the padded cell within which we are confined. Breaking through the parameters of these imposed walls requires a denial of needs, desires and responsibilities, heralding in the perfect revolt to liberate one’s own mind.

Insanity is not something we risk descending into; it’s what we need to ascend from.

The Day Breaks

Every morning I awake with the haze of
Promise hanging above my head
The morning dew is punctuated by the
Sharp light as the day yawns and offers so much
Anything can be filtered through the parameters of possibility.
That creative spark feels revitalised, feels fresh,
I feel like I have my little portion of genius
My own allotted quota of talent,
Held hostage somewhere in my gut
Or in my heart.
It’s in there and it’s never so ripe as in the
First breaths of the day, as though it plans
To sneak up on me and run amok through
All natural sensibilities.
I switch on my computer, lock into the internet
Immerse myself in rolling news, gossip blogs,
Status updates, online auctions and opinion pieces.
And the fog it slowly seems to lift
It clears and fades away, to leave a view
Of the horizon as far as the eye can see.
Only with this salience of vision
I can feel that little burning ember, that spark
Dying inside just a little bit.
But then I think –
Maybe it was never there at all,
And all I’d been trying to do
Was cling onto the fog
And chase away the harsh clarity of the day.

The Retirement Home for Deposed Middle Eastern Dictators

Into the evening air had crept a chill as the sun was busy unfurling its crimson wings over the horizon stretch. Scattered seabirds casually grazed on the sand of the shoreline, occasionally making a swooping pass over the benign waves of the azure sea.

On the sheltered balcony a calm respite had taken hold of the small group sat in pensive surveillance over the landscape before them. Ordinarily they bickered and argued about their respective politics and pasts, but often at this late-evening stage they were content to sit in languid introspection, smoking cigars and passing between them carafes of fine wine.

It was here on the secluded outskirts of the Red Sea coastal town Sharm-el-Sheikh that the deposed dictators of their respective homelands had been settled; a tranquil and isolated setting for their imposed retirement from the world stage. Having now fallen from their former glories each had become more refined and exuded a quiet wisdom, yet still managed to establish some semblance of influence, as though desperately clinging to some vestige of power.

By and large the retirement home staff were happy to indulge in these odd whims that arose from time to time, usually extending to little more than stating a preference for a vintage wine to be ordered in or a certain meat to be procured. Perhaps, in retirement each man envisaged his own individual role in the home as being still somehow significant to the outside world.

The former Egyptian president Mubarak was happiest challenging either Ben Ali of Tunisia or the ex-monarch of Jordan, Abdullah to an afternoon game of chess on the balcony whilst Bahrain’s Hamad Al Khalifa was more inclined to sit and read religious scriptures for hours on end.

The old eccentric Gaddafi was altogether a more lively presence. He would wile away hours watching the rolling news displayed on the TV and constantly refresh the social media feeds on his laptop computer, as though keeping a continual watch over the technological influences that had been utilised to bring about his downfall. Whilst the others had succumbed to a lethargic benevolence, Gaddafi still harboured bitterness for the “rebel dogs” who had sparked the uprising; his feelings towards the leaders of the West who had betrayed him matched only by the ire directed at Al-Qaeda, who he claimed were still chemically corrupting the minds of the Libyan youth. Often at times of quiet contemplation such as this evening, Gaddafi would still be less peaceful than the others; his eyes would fidget over the assembly of seabirds dotting the shoreline like his new society of minions to repress.

On an almost daily basis they sat together engrossed in the news bulletins as if faithfully awaiting a sudden call for their reinstatement to power. All of them were silently glad to see the reports of carnage and civil war plaguing the city streets of their countries, as the struggle for aggressive dominance continued amongst the people. They mumbled to themselves about this being the real liberty they deserved, as families became militant and attacked their neighbours, and rebel groups fiercely defended their own territorial strongholds.

The group would, in these moments of fleeting congeniality, exchange silent glances with an almost smug telepathy. Each of them was eagerly awaiting the day when those who in their violent greed had conspired against them, would repent their sins and travel from far and wide to kneel before them and beg for forgiveness.

Hold out your hands man, you’ll get kicked into line...

(This was written using the 'Cut-Up Technique' used to devasting effect throughout his career by William S. Burroughs)

We were getting ready to leave but the metallic din from my agitated housemates had started to drain down all my shoes and wallet, already ‘Metal Machine Music’ playing by L. Reed, glass of red wine and nearly enough pretensions for close to two days as
I really dunno what’s the matter with me now.

Been aurally violated, smashed and so in this way I spend the next 48 hours believing the different harmonic capabilities of a lethargic stupor as I mourn the subtle nuances of power tools and realise that money is tight but time is tighter.

Only impatient shouts permeate through before being spat out into the world moping and whining. Left eye still puffed up and sore from the time I had gotten so drunk that I’d stumbled around trying to beat the queue to the Union and feeling pretty fucked-off from that couple yet again. I’d been listening to a whole flask of gin whispers.

Sometimes other such avant-garde white noise sunk deep into a depressive malaise only shattered by a claw hammer. You wouldn’t flippantly waste precious time with this orchestra of pneumatic drills, 4 more months of student living, steel on steel. Check mirror reflection. Other night’s debauchery – characters and visions gestating.

Unable to take out my contact lens that refuses to freeze into settlement. I have been frantically clawing at my red raw half-baked lunacies based on some plastic film that had long since acquiesced to mass technologies and the alternative internet landscape.

I stagger down the stairs to a psychological destruction of humanity which is about to play out. There’s one of the great works, an example of who is supposedly out tonight but provides me with an escape route from this bad fucking idea to seek out career, a nice office job, taking on now without a fuck, and need to have started a pension plan, et cetera, et cetera, for future action looking quite promising just thinking about it all.

Predictable thing for me to go and do tonight is to get through, other than my head I will be curled up in foetal despair, with ideas and themes to get out, and for quite some time I stood there, my mind all flowing liquidity. Eye in search of that elusive piece of narrative or plot structure, fallen to the carpet just to spite me.

Virtual Coma Theory is about how to join the others, I’m unsure how tonight’s ‘cyber universe’ will precipitate this girl I’ve been making slow progress on. If tackled precisely it could be the state I’m in right now, it would be contemporary fiction in its finest chance meeting. Truth is, I’ve been months with the predictable horrors of forcing the groundwork here where the prospects and responsibilities for my own future would be frustrating and yet utterly fucking bored.

Ah well, in the meantime, distracted with ambitions of ‘writering’, a feeling that will come tomorrow, tugging my hair as the chaotic maelstrom of white noise coagulates with the hangover fog to batter and erode my senses and pride just like before.