L'ÉPOUVANTAIL

China's Environmnetal Challenges by Judith Shapiro

2012-12-06T16:14:00.001+00:00

This is a handy, accessible little book that is an illuminating collection of inter-connected essays that give a fascinating outline not just of the environmental challenges China faces this century [and by default the rest of the world], but the make-up culturally and politically of modern China.

The book is therefore surprisingly holistic in the way it tackles the many issues the Middle Kingdom faces in the coming decades. Shapiro deftly shows how the country has recovered from it's humiliations of the 19th century and its violent political upheavals of the 20th, to reach the 21st century confident and- crucially- politically and cultural distinct from the West. Considering how western influence and political structures are creaking at the moment, crippled by short-termism, identity crises and almost out of control levels of corruption, that of course may not be too bad a thing.

So this book is a very intriguing look through an opening window into a new superpower and is all the more powerful for the fact that the author has spent a long time there herself, and so we never lose sight of the very real, human side of Chinese society.

Subliminal by Daniel Mlodinow

2012-11-22T12:04:00.000+00:00

For those exploring for the first time the intricacies of our conscious and un-conscious selves this will undoubtedly be an exciting book, as a number of other reviews testify. Mlodinow writes clearly and with a lightness of touch that manages to get some pretty profound concepts across in an interesting and intriguing way.

There are of course a number of contemporary books charting the same territory at the moment- Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow comes to mind, which I actually think is a bit over-rated but that's another issue- but it has of course all been said many years before now, notably by P.D. Ouspensky early in the twentieth century in The Fourth Way, a book still in print and worth having a luxurious dive into if any one feels stimulated by the ideas sketched out in this book. Because it is an illusion that we have have only one 'I'- there a number of competing 'I's' in our brain, and our consciousness is far from what it seems...

So Mlodinow has made a fair stab at bring these ideas to a wider audience although it is more of a primer than anything else, though non the worse for that.

Dial M for Murder by Tom Watson

2012-10-26T10:48:00.000+01:00

Tom Watson has it seems developed his life's work into investigating, understanding and then facing down every aspect of the Murdoch empire and this book is an absorbing chronicle of that quest.

There can't be a soul in the nation that's not in nappies that isn't aware in some shape or form of the issues surrounding the Murdoch family, so completely have they been part of our national consciousness these past couple of years. A book like this can therefore appear perhaps as an unnecessary read- don't we know everything about it all already, courtesy of our rabid media?- but that woould be a mistake to make. This is a lucid and comprehensive account of the rise and fall of the Murdoch Empire from it familial heart to it's lieutenant's hanging-on's, written by one of the world's supreme experts on the whole circus. You get all the detail here, presented in a straightforward manner. I noticed another reviewer mention it is written like a thriller and that's a good analogy. This is not just the definitive work to date, but also the most entertaining one.

Bioethics [All That Matters Series]- Donna Dickenson

2012-10-11T09:04:00.000+01:00

This is shaping up to be a fine series of short but thought provoking books.

Donna Dickenson tackles the vast and complex topic of Bioethics in a passionate but not overtly partisan way. She nails her colours to mast straight away: we are going too far down the road of having blind faith in the 'medical improvements for all' motives of modern science and we are losing sight of important ethical issues, particularly as ever advancing technology is enabling us to do more and more in the area of bio-engineering and pharmaceutical development. She does balance this though with persuasive, progressive argument, strongly pointing out the dangers of modern bio-technology research and development in an overtly commercial environment, where the possibility of eugenic policies are realisable in an increasingly un-democratic, 'profit-regardless-of-all-other-considerations' political and economic culture.

In fact the power of Big Pharma in particular is frightening and at the end of this book, one cannot help feel we are sleepwalking into a divided world of genetic engineering and medical support for the rich, and a chaotic free-for-all for the rest...and that will be regardless of whether you live in the West or a developing nation.

So in a concise little book Dickenson covers areas such as stem-cell and embryonic research, third world surrogacy, body enhancement and drug development and availability as well as considering the moral and religious issues wrapped up in the whole, most fundamental issue of who should we trust to experiment and devise ways to treat- and improve- our bodies. The truly scary conclusion to it all, and what crops up repeatedly throughout this book, is that in the 21st century money and commercial profit alone is driving it all, and when it comes to making a profit in this world of neoliberal, free-market capitalism, ethics and more metaphysical questions regarding is what we are doing actually right and equitable in the long-term, hardly get a look-in.

This book is a great introduction to ways of thinking to put that right. Give it a read.

Mohammad [All That Matters series] by Ziauddin Sardar

2012-09-24T18:58:00.000+01:00

Islam is perhaps one of the most wantonly misunderstood religions and culture in the West, and few outside of the religion I am sure, would know anything about the life and times of its greatest prophet Mohammad. I for one before I read this book, was certainly one of that ignorant mass.

So I am so much more educated now for reading this concise but nonetheless highly illuminating outline of the prophet Mohammad. It's the nature of these short introductory books that a lot of stuff seems at times airbrushed, but having said that, Ziauddin Sardar has done an admirable job at making the subject matter both immediately interesting as well as setting out enough intriguing points to encourage further investigation.

Coming at the subject matter with few preconceptions as, to be perfectly honest, I knew next to nothing about the life of Mohammad, I must say how struck I was by the overall 'humanity' of the man. Yes he was a warrior, yes he did take multiple wives, but he was very much a product of his time [as is any historical figure] and at the end of the day, one cannot help but be struck by the drive of the man to create a fairer, more tolerant society in a fractious Arabia full of not just Arab tribes, but active Jewish and Christian ones too, something else I hadn't appreciated about this period in Middle Eastern history.

There has been much criticism of Islam the past couple of centuries amongst the western intelligentsia- some of it I must say warranted, as you can see some of the germs of the contradictions inherent in the religion even in this small book- but as the author quite rightly points out, Christendom is in no position to cast stones. At the end of the day, the West seems obsessed with studiously misunderstanding what is clearly a religion based squarely in tolerance, social justice and love, and that is very much our loss. I hope small, accessible books like this can keep up the good work needed to change those mis-conceptions.

Times They Are a'Changing...

2012-06-25T12:35:00.000+01:00

Well it's time for a big over haul of this blog. Gonna go magazine theme soon... I know you all can't contain your excitement but don't worry folks, it will happen before the end of the Mayan Calendar and we all dissapear in a state of nervous rapture.

The blog is going to shift to a heavier emphasis on the artwork produced by LÉpouvantail, along with the usual societal observational ramblings. Meanwhile here's a teasing link to some works on Society 6. Cruise and enjoy.

The Curious History of Love by Jean-Claude Kaufmann

2012-02-20T15:59:00.000+00:00

Well first post of the year... a L'Epouvantail website is close to being launched, watch this space as wonders await. in the meantime though, here's an interesting tome that's recently passed my way.

The Curious History of Loveis a fascinating, erudite book. That's not to say it is without its flaws- which I'll mull over later- but it is an intelligent and supremely human attempt to understand the origins of this thing we call Love, the various forms it takes and, very interestingly, how it has been the most important of metaphysical forces at work in shaping our society through the ages, and how it dictates the very form it takes today.

In fact it is in this latter area- how our current societal structure has developed since the Enlightenment through the historic prism of Love- that for me was the most fascinating. Before the Enlightenment, various forms of Love jostled with each other and were philosophically analysed and debated for centuries- the religious [primarily but not exclusively Judeo-Christian], all-encompassing Love for All [`agape']; the more individualistic, unpredictable passions; the medieval courtly love that put women centre-stage in the sexual power game and the revolutionary tendencies of Romanticism. Kaufmann explains how society however came to be centred on a certain model of the self-absorbed individual by a very clever establishment trick applied over quite a short period of time. As the rigidities [and certainties] of feudal times dissolved, the threat of Love in its various guises to the governing establishment - particularly in the area of the Passions- was conveniently neutered by elevating what was previously thought of as a grubby vice- namely self-interested greed- into a societal virtue. In the great scheme of the human timeline, this was achieved with an obscenely, speedy absolution.

As such the current dominant societal and economic model- namely that of free market capitalism, which until the enlightenment period had been a marginalised, localised aspect of society- came into its own and as Kaufmann says, it didn't need to be asked twice to take centre stage.

To my mind this is a really fascinating area of socio-economic investigation. It has led to Big Business now trying to impose its management principles into all areas of our lives and an economics based in mathematical calculations has now become the dominant social science. It has led to a society where our economics is now based on the total assumption that humans are cold, calculating animals living within a matrix of equations and one in which, as Kaufmann points out, a stock trader driven by no other urge than personal accumulation, is worth many thousands times more than say, a dedicated youth worker.

However, human beings are not as efficient and calculating as economic models would like; people are actually sentimental creatures continually looking for meaning in life. We cannot be reduced to an Excel cost-benefit analysis spread sheet.

As such Kaufmann goes on to show that economic models are actually themselves no more real than dreamy expressions of romantic passion. They are not based in any reality; mathematical models are, like romantic passion, ideals that flit around just out of reach.

And this is no more apparent than right now, today, as the markets plead that to get back to normal, all we need again is trust. That the economic meltdown was simply due to a failing of trust, and if we get that back, all will be well again.

But what is trust, if it is not a human feeling, perhaps one of the highest feelings humans enjoy? It is certainly not a cold economic equation; the whole economic system therefore runs on this dichotomy and so no wonder it is in a mess. To my mind, the part of the book that efficiently outlines these ideas- through the filter of the previous discussions of the form of love in our society both past and present- are the most powerful.

It would be a mistake though to make out the book is overly concerned with Big Issues and the wider, corporate world as viewed from the European Left. Kaufmann does gets intimate with his analysis of the love between couples and within families and how society at a number of junctures, has missed a trick by rejecting more `emotionally' based mechanisms into the day-to-day running of our world, and he does it deftly without straying into `relationship self-help' territory.

As I said above though, the book has its flaws. It meanders a little too self-indulgently towards the end, although I personally forgive the author for this as it is such a huge, challenging subject that he does immense justice too for much of the book, I think he deserves to be allowed a little slack in that area. I can't help feel though a bit of judicious editing, reducing the book by a third to an even more handy 100-125 page treatise would have been more effective. Kaufmann also airbrushes over a few complexities in places- the most glaring one is his assertion that the contemporary neoliberal economic system is exclusively ran by passionless mathematical models- true enough on one level, but one cannot say the vagaries, guesses and gambling instincts running rampant through our stock exchanges are not based in some good old fashioned, largely testosterone driven passion. But, on the whole, he has to be given credit for tackling such a huge, amorphous and let's face it plain scary subject, with a sound intellectual but also accessible approach.

But this is a book that although accessible, demands to be read carefully and given some thought. In fact some of its conclusions may well be uncomfortable to the 21st century, Western individualist, yearning for a return to business as usual. Maybe that's why it has received some patchy reviews around the place.

For me personally though, Kaufmann nearly pulls off the impossible: a neat assessment of Love in all its complexities, with an élan that, it has to be said, is achieved through an unashamed application of passion. Bravo.

Engagement is not Appeasement: why we should hang in there with the EU

2011-12-16T13:14:00.001+00:00

There’s a lot of fuss in various media about those who have dared to suggest the UK is a middling sized European power with little sway in the big, Real World, outside of it’s involvement in the EU and it’s [tenuous’ links to the US through the ‘special relationship’ are anti-patriotic defeatists. And by saying we should be fully involved in shaping the EU rather than standing on the ever barren, icy side-lines in our Union Jack waistcoats clutching an Airfix model of a Spitfire, makes us appeasers.
I don't see any appeasing going on here at all however. But I do see though- in a few isolated places of hope- a good dose of reality being swallowed.

The machinations of the EU may at times seen like the Mafia and it admittedly leans towards the autocratic rather than the democratic, but remember we have a press dominated by rabid anti-European hysteria [and that's putting it mildly] that permeates UK society so completely with it's unreasonableness- and often OUTRIGHT LIES- that it's difficult sometimes even for the most open-minded to develop informed judgements.

Whatever, hyperbole about the EU being ran like the Mafia doesn't help, nor is there the imminent threat of a new USSR on our doorstep etc etc etc. Even if you take that concept on board, this government and Cameron's actions at the summit DID NOT amount to us standing up to the EU. IT AMOUNTED TO US RUNNING AWAY.

There's lots of talk about Cameron using a veto last week to stop the EU in it's tracks. It was nothing of the sort. A veto stops things; he stopped nothing.

We have to be very careful not to get hysterical about the evils of the EU. Just bear this in mind: after centuries of slaughtering each other in Europe, the EU has delivered over sixty years of peace, where talking has replaced warfare. In an alternative universe, Cameron and the other leaders of Europe in all probability have left that summit last week, and returned to their capitals to ready their troops for warfare. REAL warfare, with 21st century weapons.

I think to have the threat of that reality being reduced to the almost completely implausible is a huge endorsement of the success- and need- for the EU, don't you? So lets be show our real bulldog spirit by getting stuck into the EU and working to shape it more in our image, rather than running away and daydreaming fantasies about returning to our [long lost] empire days.

How Sarkozy made the UK Billy-No Mates in one quick master class of political intelligence

2011-12-12T20:48:00.001+00:00

L’Épouvantail is unashamedly a pan-European enthusiastic; the EU may be imperfect and lacking often in basic, democratic instinct, but as the recent summit proved, sitting around a dinner table talking about problems, and then going home to face the politicians and press at home with sound bites, is preferable to them leaving the table and going home to ready the troops.

Well Cameron seems to be enjoying the adulation of his party at the moment, but after seeing his body language at and after the summit, I strongly suspect in ten years time when his memoirs are published he will pin-point that summit and this week when he realised he'd made a huge mis-calculation, and it spelt the beginning of the end of his political career.

Cameron made an horrendous mistake at that summit, and through his inexperience as both a domestic and international politician, has put the UK in a very, very disadvantaged position. When all the flag waving and jumping up and down singing Rule Britannia has stopped, more and more people will realise just that, as the true consequences of us effectively being booted out of the EU decision making process becomes all too clear.

As said above, L’Épouvantail is not a huge fan of the way the EU has developed in recent times; for years it’s been clear that it naturally inclines towards beings run by a technocratic elite from behind closed doors, and their European Project is hugely ambitious, massively bank-rolled, and very, very powerful. But the only way we can oppose the excesses of this behemoth and it's un-democratic instincts, is by being at the heart of the EU and making our voice heard, because believe it or not, we ARE listened to and supported an awful lot in EU affairs by other member states than our shameless, lying, rabidly beyond-all-sense-of-reason-and-proportion anti-European media care to report [an anti-European press incidentally ran almost exclusively by non-Europeans and tax exiles by the way, but that's another issue].

The EU's member states are not structured in a Them against Us way at all; in fact in it's day to day running, many of 'them' are on our side.

Although it’s appreciable how hard Cameron's job was, somehow he has managed to achieve the worst of all possible outcomes, and allowed Sarkozy in particular, to change that day-to-day face of the EU around, and make us the villainous, outcast, Billy No-Mates. Cameron has been totally outclassed on the world stage here, and we really, really should be careful about how much celebration we indulge in, because our country is about to enter a dark period where our politicians are not up to the job of protecting us adequately, and we are going to be very quickly dominated by a European super-state which, without us having a voice within it, will potentially become increasingly autocratic and that- in the long run- will make the world a much more dangerous place.

The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism by Colin Crouch

2011-08-24T14:38:00.004+01:00

Just as it appeared with the financial crisis of 2007-08 that Neo-Liberalism had taken a firm, apparently fatal knock-out blow and all us, as we saw it lying on the boxing ring floor, were about to wake up and finally able to see the odious ideology for all the sham and elitist self-serving twaddle that it is... well back it bounces all shiny and new, ready to fight another round as if secretly pumped with steroids to help it along the way.

Well not exactly secretly; the political elite makes no bones about it's love affair with Neo-Liberalism; in fact our political class on not just both sides of the Atlantic but now the Channel as well, are well and truly incorporated within the ideological clutches of the Neo-Liberal behemoth and, because of that, it's not difficult to feel as if the developed world in the 21st century is going to remain thoroughly fucked for the foreseeable future.

But let's not feel too pessimistic on this wonderful summer's day as the rain streams down outside and our wonderful government- the very same one that last year was telling us we were nearly bankrupt from ridiculous socialist policies, but can then find a billion quid to bomb civilians with in Libya- crows about a successful campaign of war in the ME. Let's turn to this rather excellent work in question.

Colin Crouch’s book takes it’s cue from George Dangerfield’s 1936 classic ‘The Strange Death of Liberal England,’ in which Dangerfield tried to explain the sudden collapse in the early 20th century, of the political ideas and a party that had dominated the late Victorian Age and pre-WW1 Britain. With Neo-Liberalism, he does however turn this analysis on it’s head; his aim is to explain why, following a huge economic and political crisis based fairly and squarely within the ideologies of Neo-Liberalism, it hasn’t collapsed and, indeed, hasn’t just survived but is getting back on it’s feet again determined to get back to business as usual.

This resilience of Neo-Liberalism is a fascinating phenomenon and a rich seam of socio-political analysis to mine, and Crouch does an admirable job of it. He charts the fundamental aspect of Neo-Liberalism that is simple but rarely acknowledged- either through myopia on the Left, or wilful masking and divertive myth-making on the Right, that actually existing- as opposed to ideologically pure- Neo-Liberalism is in no way as devoted to free markets as it relentlessly professes to be.

Crouch clearly explains how the trans global corporation is the true embodiment of Neo-Liberal economic theory, and that in reality has nothing to do with maintaining open, free markets in a democratic, ‘libertarian’ political structure free of overt influence from the state. It is more to do with transferring power from the state- which by definition is believed by Neo-Liberals to be at best inefficient, at worst corrupt and nothing but self-serving, as well as naturally erring towards the creation of monopolies at the expense of consumer choice- to the private sector. but the shape of this private sector is not one of a raft of competing small-medium size enterprises, but that of a small number of increasingly inter-related, planet-striding corporations. He also interestingly explains a key aspect of Neo-Liberalism that the ideology uses at the core of all it’s arguments to explain away this process: when cornered on such issues, they carefully describe the process of corporatism as one of enhancing consumer ‘welfare,’ not consumer 'choice.' So, as long as wealth is being created somewhere in the system- even if it is concentrated amongst only a select few- it enhances consumer welfare no matter what.

The irony of this anti-state rhetoric- that everything characteristically wrong with the state in Neo-Liberal analysis has in fact, been merely transferred to the private sector- is still strangely lost on many people, but Crouch successfully shows us how this is in fact the reality of the 21st Century. At the core of Neo-Liberalism is not the urge to free everyone from the shackles of a nanny state into a vibrant world of competing privately run firms, but the direct aim to privatise power into a small group of the global elite. And this privatisation process can be seen at work relentlessly around us day in day out. The turning of private, corporate debt into public debt in the aftermath of the 2008-09 crash; the switching of corporate failure and market inefficiencies into an issue of overtly expensive and un-necessary public services; the process of now moving that public state debt onto the ordinary citizen through forcing them further into debt; the eroding of their living standards by high inflation/low interest rates etc., and so it goes on…

Colin Crouch has therefore provided us with a timely, much needed and erudite analysis of how a political ideology that, in the ‘normal’ state of affairs would be on it’s knees gasping it’s last breath, has perversely emerged stronger from it's crisis primarily because unlike in previous crises, where the key players where toppled by world events- such as the Keynsians in the 70s- the key players and proponents of Neo-Liberalism, namely the corporations, were saved and maintained by the state to get back to what they do best: creating profit for themselves and themselves alone.

Not just the Left, but the moderate Right needs to understand this, and must get to grips with the neo-Liberal phenomenon and fully understand it before our social democracy and values are made even more difficult to repair, and this book is a good starting point from which to do just that.

The Tenderloin by John Butler

2011-06-22T11:31:00.001+01:00

Well how time flies and 2011 becomes subject to some sort of time dilation effect whereby months become weeks and the hours in a day become nothing but blinks and frowns…
The Tenderloinis a district in San Francisco don’t you know, and this book, just about to be published in the UK has passed by my jaded eyes recently.
Now then if I had a pound for every book cover that had the hyperbolic statement `a spectacular new Irish talent' splattered across it, I'd be a rich scarecrow. So it was with such a grumpy attitude I approached this book and unfortunately [again], my reservations were well founded. Someone like John Butler may have contributed to The Irish Times, San Francisco Chronicle and written/directed shorts for the Irish Film Board etc etc etc, but a good novelist and subsequent debut novel it does not necessarily make.....
The basic premise of The Tenderloin is promising; it charts the early dot.com years in California, as seen through the eyes of an Irish émigré, even if it is another case of the Irish apparently being able to drift effortlessly into and around the US penniless and without employment, when the rest of the western world has to queue for green cards.
The central character, Evan, arrives in San Francisco in 1995 as a 21 year old virgin. He at first bums around not doing very much feeling intensely lonely, gets a job in the lower reaches of a flash, start-up dot.com business where he develops a crush on his [male] boss. He then has to struggle [well a bit anyway], with his [perhaps] latent homosexuality, loses connection with his best friend who he'd travelled to California with and alienates Roisin, another close friend who had travelled out to team up with them, and then goes home.
And that's about it.
There are some hints at the absurdity of this huge, new business model as neoliberal ideology finally hit its stride in the early 90s, but no sense of any real insight into its true nature, and I think that is a massive missed opportunity, and there are plenty of others like that in this novel.
To be fair there are some truly touching moments of insight in the book though. For example Evan in his loneliness starts following families [at a distance] into Fisherman's Wharf some evenings, just to try and glean some innocent, familial warmth from them. He casually tells someone about this in a bar but ends up getting cold shouldered as some sort of pervert. This is a clever illustration of how you can feel deep disconnectedness in a foreign country and the insular, judgemental nature of our culture these days. There is also a genuinely funny scene where Evan has an encounter with an ice sculpture, and a nice set piece when Evan is out sailing with his boss and wife and things go awry, but these parts of the narrative where Butler hits his stride only added to my frustration with the book in its entirety, and the nagging feeling that it could all have been so much better.
The book really only takes off as an intriguing novel at the very end, where the perspective changes from Evan to his friend Roisin, which fascinatingly puts Evan into a wholly new perspective, with his proto-alcoholism laid bare and the hint of life and people going in circles-cycles. These final few pages are Butler really writing and are very, very good, and the sole reason I had to in the end give this book three rather than two stars. In fact if you do start reading the book, it is worth hanging in there for the final sequence alone.
To be honest, at the end of the day I think the book has been published too soon, with probably only 75% of the editing/writing process done properly. And I read the final advanced copy, so it is not work in progress. It is also telling that the publisher's blurb informs us proudly that there is a lot of movie interest in it, and that makes sense, because in the end, one can't help feeling it has been written with the focus firmly on a screenplay first, and as a rounded novel second.
One final thing: technicalities. Butler uses that technique so beloved of the Celtic fringe: the use of hyphens instead of speech marks. It takes great skill and attention to detail to pull this off, which writers like Roddy Doyle and Niall Griffiths on the whole manage to do, but this author doesn't. The whole flow of the narrative is broken as you keep having to work out who is saying what to who, and unfortunately it makes the whole book more laborious to read than it should be. It really is a technical trend in contemporary novel writing that should be put quietly to sleep.
So on the whole,
despite the publishers blurb, Butler isn't a new Brett Easton Ellis or Nick Hornby. He doesn't have the droll irony and cool detachment of BEE, nor has he the metrosexual `confused but well-meaning' gentle humour of Hornby. In the end he has produced a book more like something a committee might write and, ultimately, is as a result strangely soulless.
Now looking back over this review I feel as if maybe I have been a little harsh; there is the potential for a great book in here somewhere and I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it at all, because Butler can write emotively and with a fair degree of charm when he wants too. But it's been wasted in this book, and it may once again be down to the poor quality control [a.k.a. laziness] of some of our major publishers these days, who seem unprepared to push further the writers they have signed up, or even look for extraordinary writers to define the new century we are all hurtling through.

When I Fever Dream it is in Mathematics [of that you can be sure]

2011-01-25T21:18:00.001+00:00

cold sweat slapped on my body as if carelessly

but with

paradoxical studied abandon by a pastry brush

a pastry brush of

demented purpose and I have solved

issues of mathematical complexity

with the mental agility of a bat flying radar-down

cruising with eyes alone

for a laugh

then there is

my propensity for influenza-induced equational dexterity

a novel way to solving brain aching conundrums such as

inter-dimensional matter transference well well well

I know how now yes I do

of that you can be sure

I worked it out in my fever it’s all down to a certain number

all you’ve got to do is bracket it

and

do the good old

( )

and square it by a -3

wish though

I could remember the

number in the

brackets

she was right I should at all times keep my trusty

Blackpool Zoo Pen and Notebook handy on the bedside table

I have only myself to blame and now to the other

dream

I can see a house in the distance it’s a big bugger

a bit ramshackle but the equations hold together

the gutters are integers the chimney is a cosine

and the caretaker a fraction of the man I always wanted to be

there he is tending the garden of prime numbers but

the green house, the one

full of near-extinct logarithms has had most

of its glass panes broken but that is another issue

another story for another lifetime

and my ancestors are stood there in front of the house

they are beckoning me encouraging me

and all that stands between my good self and my ancestors are

a large number of topiary figures

some shaped like small birds ones a wren

defo [and a neat little wooden gate swings]

the rest the rest they are an assortment of jungle animals

an elephant laurel bush a lion hawthorn

a large alligator

privet

and I look and look and think it all looks like too much effort

and then

WAKE UP

Raise a flag of vengeful calculus

and

radiate.

2011-01-08T19:18:00.000+00:00

http://vimeo.com/9669156
WE HAVE BAND enjoy enjoy enjoy

Further Experimentations in Anarchic Funk

2010-11-09T20:51:00.000+00:00

The sonic adventure continues. Put on a head sweatband, thread your

All-Stars with your favourite day-glo laces and

keep your pecker up.

The Wonder

2010-10-25T19:16:00.001+01:00

I’ve lost the wonder.

No it’s true: once I had it,

now it’s gone.

The Wonder.

It’s gone. Gone and pissed off.

Vacated the premises. Put up

a nice clean fresh TO LET

sign. It’s moved in with a

younger crowd, hangs out now

with the renter students

across the street, even goes to

their bars now, you know the

ones, those ones along

Parke’s Passage, go along the

street, turn left then down

a bit.

So that’s it.

No more naturally induced

pleasure rushes for me. Oh no,

all gone now for selfish little old

me. I am purely reliant on

chemically induced turn ons

now. That, is my lot.

Nature has gone, took its leave.

You know those old unexpected

excitements induced through

clear, fresh neurons? You know

you know you know the ones

like a rush from something as

simple as a new view, or a building

at a different but affecting angle that

just made you imagine; or a

townscape or a landscape

anywhere in the world that is

not here or the smell of a city,

a new city that made you feel

moved, that made you feel alive.

Music for example used to make

me cry. Lots of it did once. But not

anymore. As a general rule only

films can make me cry these days

and this- as a general rule- only

when I am sat alone.

So there you go. Got the angle?

The only rushes I get these days

is from mooching around the

house and finding the gloopy

buzz that only a wonderful

bottle can supply. It’s the great

re-balancer you see: can you see

that? It equalises me, takes me

back to where I was before to what

I was before, before I became

‘You bastard.’ It’s a portal, a

transferor, a retro-filter. And

ohmigod it’s a cruel mistress

because it gives me glimpses of

what could be, of what I could have,

then she pushes me further away

from it, so much further away from

it so that I’m falling again, falling

all the way, away from The Wonder

and you see, therein is the catch,

the catch is being unable to forget

The Wonder but never to regain it.

The torture is to have the glimpse

and remember then know the

smack of denial.

I want to forget about The Wonder.

I want you to take it from me,

I want you to understand this:

The Wonder has fucked

off for good.

Skemster 19/02/97

Ginsberg Archives

2010-08-29T18:48:00.001+01:00

Filched this from the New Statesman last week. Allen Ginsberg snapped in 1953 by his old mate William Burroughs on the roof of his Lower East Side apartment.

It’s taken from ‘Beat Memories: the Photographs of Allen Ginsberg’ by Sara Greenough. It’s just out and haven’t managed to get a copy of it yet; security at the local Waterstones is currently tight so may have to buy it off Amazon…

Snapshot

2010-08-29T17:36:00.001+01:00

Alaska Unlimited

2010-08-27T20:28:00.001+01:00

The wonderful world of dofollow has now been embraced; Lepou is braced for the worldwide [incl. Alaska]aftershock. Come hither, cast down thine gauntlet, and doth bespoil me!!! Or something along those lines...never really been able to get the hang of Trad. Eng. grammar, all those thys thines thous and other ths. Whatever here's something pleasant:

Lisboa
[Mark Reed 2009]

Genovian Jetsam

2010-08-27T16:56:00.010+01:00

Genoa is one of those Italian cities that, steeped in history as it is, is generally off the tourist track and remains all the more wonderful for that. It is a working city; the bustle is characteristically Italian, but being a northern metropolis it has a distinct edge of more urgent, cooler Latin efficiency.

It was for over a millennia the archetypal city-state and it’s former wealth is apparent in the abundance of it’s renaissance set pieces and there is nothing more life-affirming, than strolling down the Via Garibaldi in the early evening luxuriating in the opera music drifting down that sedate, narrow street.

Yet it is still a city ‘in business;’ a frenetic expressway may separate the city centre from it’s port but there is always Corsa Italia beyond the Fiera de Genova, where you can sunbath on the rocks that cascade into the Mediterranean and promenade in the fashion of any traditional Italian seaside resort. Then there is the medieval warren of alleys and dead-ends to [quite literally] lose yourself in, in the old city. I have had a love of this city for over twenty years; it has more balls than Venice, more architecture than Milan and more culture than Rome [ancient, unused relics don’t count].

It was in the marina behind the Fiera that I saw a yacht moored called ‘The Mordant Choice,’ and in a shoe shop, was served by a young man who snapped out of a languid indifference into amazingly deft efficiency, as he expertly packed a pair of shoes and elaborately gift wrapped them by moving nothing more than his hands, whilst puffing on a cigarette hanging lazily from his mouth [remember those glorious days, when even shop assistants smoked?].

It was in a dangerously over-packed club along the Via Giacomo Buranello that I first saw Music Entablature. The Via GB is a scruffy street in a grimy part of town by the port, distinctive in that for most of it length, it’s north side is a large wall/viaduct punctuated by occasional road tunnels, along the top of which the metro lines run. The experience was electrifying; the euro-electronica clash with 70s glamstomp was original, utterly bonkers and complete genius. We left the club- where sweat was quite literally running down the walls- a few pound lighter in weight and exhilarated, strolling through the dark streets of Genoa’s seedier underside, filled with a lost innocence that had as its cornerstone the belief that Ziggy Stardust really could save the world, that European integration is a reality worth working for rather than a dream to ponder and dismiss, and that Genoa is perhaps one of the most under-rated of European cities, an urban gem in which we may just be transitory flotsam and jetsam in it’s timeline, but we are all the more enriched for being so no matter how inconsequential our own impact has been.

2010-08-27T16:55:00.002+01:00

A Message From The Front

2010-08-23T20:29:00.001+01:00

'The Pleurality'

from How to be A Spaceman

Zip Domingo

[2010]

Gallerific Touchdowns

2010-08-23T20:21:00.001+01:00

There Was A Time [when time] Was A Friend

2010-08-23T20:17:00.000+01:00

Pharos

2010-08-23T20:14:00.000+01:00

Junk Demon [2010]

The artifactus of Dissensus

2010-08-04T20:52:00.002+01:00

New format, new boots,and that shop The World of Leather as an experience in Lacanian confusion/dissent as you wander around it, looking at the sofas and easychairs with fold out drinks tables in the arms and wonder about this World of The New in which we live; have we really got into a contemporary situation not where we have gone too far, but have done everything there is to do, and there is no where else to go?

Red leather in particularly can have an arousing effect on me and within the premises of Commercial Retail Outlets this can be an exciting if potentially embarrassing experience. I had to leave the World of Leather under a cloud of taunt, unrequited lust. It had a certain delicious quality of denial and despicable restraint but I was too weak to face the possibility of police questioning, as intriguing as that may have been...

Jacques Rancière's idea of dissensus being at the core of true democratic practise is an alluring concept; it's diametrical opposite, consensus, is of course the default position for most western democratic establishments from the late 20th century onwards. We are led to belief that we are governed by consensus; focus groups, poll takers, survey administrators, blog pages, a million posts on thousands of ISP and other media message boards, all point to us as being able to Have Our Own Say. We live with this illusion, believing we truly are now part of the democratic process- we clearly are listened to, a majority is assessed and its wishes acted upon- when in fact it is just another establishment technique to do as it wishes, but with the added twist that it can make the population believe that it guided it's course of action, that the government is only undertaking the people's wishes. A focus group told us to do this; got nothing to do with us, guv.

In this way an illegal war in Iraq was executed; the folly of Afghanistan was embarked upon [although interestingly when public opinion reverses itself and opposes the position it once took, the Government/Establishment find it very easy to ignore this form of consensus]. Consensus is therefore a sham, a media Exploitor of National Socialist proportions. It is a meaningless political concept, which is no doubt why it is so popular with the now ubiquitous neoliberal elite which runs the world economy. Welcome to Super-Cannes.

Dissensus- the principle of conflict, argument and the pursuit of political self-determination, voice and action outside of [and therefore at times legitimately opposed to] the governance of a dominant elite is not only communally affirming, but vital for the development of harmony and equality in our society, without sacrificing diversity. At first laugh at anyone who says they wish to manage/govern through consensus, then undermine them. The aim is not to then have the last laugh, but to dismantle one more cog of neoliberal dogma in the edifice of global capitalism. You no longer need to burn party cards; shoplifting from Toys 'r Us and surreptitiously scratching the side of police cars with a carefully concealed key will suffice. For now.

Iain Banks in his latest novel 'Transitions' promotes the idea of a multiverse, through which a central body- The Concern- flits it's operatives in order to maintain order. He describes this particular world we live in, along with other materialist realities that exist parallel to it- as 'Greedist' societies. This is of course an accurate assessment.

This is Iain Bank's first book that attempts to fuse his 'mainstream' literature with the science fiction of his Iain M. Banks persona. It only partly succeeds; only his -at times obscenely- quite brilliant literary ease at painting environments and describing concepts through conversation, pulls one through to the end of the novel. This is not something I have ever experience with any other of Bank's work. It reads more like a manifesto of a couple of his political science ideas melded with a strain of speculative hard science,without any hint of a plot, and could be a third of its length. Of course few writers these days can pull this off and keep people reading and Banks is one of these, but this does not excuse him bouts of laziness and self-indulgence such as are apparent in this book. Yes, I am a hard taskmaster...the bitter sweet taunting denial of the World of Leather still fugs my senses...I need to pursue some further investigations into the strictures and idea-shifts of the hauntological movement...I'll get back to you on that one.