Questions?

 Posted by at 11:03 am  Atelier, Fundamental Perversions, OVER and BEYOND  Comments Off
Jul 272012
 

On board the Dreamboat there were puzzles to be examined. Such as, who is Massimo?  Such as, why would anybody think that I might be his friend? And if I was what would it mean? And more importantly, would it be dangerous?

Not that my potential interrogator hung around long enough for me to reply.

Out beyond the harbour walls the Dreamboat encountered a lazy swell; the combination of that gentle lurching and the ever-present smell of fish stirred my intestines into high alert, a state of readiness to evacuate should conditions deteriorate.

More questions flooded my mind, perhaps in an effort to distract attention away from the volatility of current peristaltic activity. Questions such as:
Continue reading »

Get Real

 Posted by at 10:57 am  Atelier, Fundamental Perversions, OUT in the WILDERNESS  Comments Off
Jul 262012
 

At the worst of times I’m an anti-poet atheist; at the best of times I don’t give a monkey’s; it is so irrelevant that my mind remains unblemished by such filth. And more importantly I’ve got to get out of this place – the lyrics of a song swirled briefly – if it’s the last thing I ever do. Did the words refer to the factory the singer, or at least the song’s writer, worked in, still living, squashed, in his parents terraced house; dreaming of a future with his girl friend? Poetry, of course, is simply smashed up prose. What some people do instead of getting to grips with the real world.

To be honest I have no idea how many ‘floors’ I have already descended. Didn’t she say two floors down? Continue reading »

On Slime – A DIALOGUE

 Posted by at 3:05 pm  Atelier  Comments Off
Jul 252012
 

On being slimy; a dialogue between the Daily Mail, an OUTLAW, and Jean Paul Sartre.

''We will not solve the economy's  problems by hanging bankers at the end of the street" Tony Blair said last night (as reported in yesterday's Daily Mail 24/07/2012). Note his use of "We": how strange that Mr Blair still claims some connection with us, as if he is one of us, and does not consider he might be among those who "WE" might be keen on stringing up on a lamp post: one of us, despite, according to the Daily Mail his annual income being thought to be in the region of £20 million a year, including being an advisor to the investment bank JP Morgan, and also having "a role" with Insurer Zurich.

What about hanging bankers at the end of the street? A la lanterne! The turn of phrase is strangely out of date, more appropriate to the gas-lit arcades of Paris in the 1890's, than the CCTV blanketed pre-olympics London city of today.

Let us have more moral imagination. Let there be a secret court in the land, presided over if you like by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and let the court have the power to appoint an OUTLAW, and have him or her issued with:

xl sniper's rifle with telescopic sites

x2 rounds of high velocity 'exploding' bullets

The instructions given to the outlaw are that he or she may shoot anybody whom or she considers has behaved, as we sometimes still say in south London, 'OUT OF ORDER': a single head shot, comme Voltaire, "pour encourager les autres"(the second round is held in reserve… just in case).

Being OUTLAW ('Homo Sacer':for the

purpose of dealing with the counterfeit, or, so to speak, the slimy – for more read Giorgio Agamben)

Simultaneously, I find out over lunch that an obliging young student of Philosophy, female as I presume, has left a copy of Jean Paul Sarte's  Being and Nothingness on the 'free distribution' book shelves of Bostons Café in Exeter, and I thrill to find it, what appears to be an entirely unopened copy – my copy; yes, it is mine now – with minimalist black front cover and grey back cover, 656 pages, the spine uncreased, the contents hitherto entirely unread, only the covers slightly scuffed from having travelled, as I think, from her student study bedroom to bedroom study each year, and a coffee stain at its top where an overfull mug overfull was once placed on a tightly packed row of books, all equally unread, and whose only function was to stand in relationship with each other.

She, who has not read the section III, entitled FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

…" of interest primarily to the moralist",

nor any other of the 656 pages, will be appointed our first OUTLAW. Having her sniper's rifle she will not shake, she will not flinch, and she will strike with unerring accuracy, her finger squeezing the trigger without the slightest tremor. She who has not read or indeed ever opened Being and Nothingness will bring the cross hairs of her telescopic site over some distinguished head, and deliver a head-shot with a high velocity bullet to the person who most offends her morality and without impunity against her (although her life is forfeit).

"There are no accidents (italics) in life," Sarte writes on Page 574, such as finding the book in the café and opening it again , as I considered it then randomly, or of her having taken up her sniper's position on the ninth floor of a building, and finding myself reading from Page 625 (On Doing and Having) an investigation of the slimy: "A handshake, a smile, a thought, a feeling can be slimy", continuing to the end of the chapter on page 636 – but especially on page 631:

"The being of the slimy is a soft clinging, there is a sly solidarity and complicity of all its leachlike parts, a vague, soft effort made by each to individualise  itself, followed by a falling back and flattening out that is emptied of the individual, subdued in on all sides by the individual."

As when Mr Blair is reported talking of" WE". But do not fear Mr Blair, yours is not the head upon which our OUTLAW angel has located the cross-hairs of her telescopic sites… at least not so far as I know. However, the Daily Mail has been informed.

A sandwich and a cup of coffee

 Posted by at 9:36 am  Echo Effects, Fundamental Perversions, OUT in the WILDERNESS  Comments Off
Jul 242012
 

I hesitated, she hesitated or at least she failed to withdraw. Was it politeness that drove me out, looking for stairs, a lift, looking for a way down. Two floors down. I had left without breakfast and was beginning to feel that tremble and light-headedness of low blood sugar. And there was an accompanying shock of a thought: what if this was the wrong building? What if I in the haste of being a few minutes late had inadvertently entered the wrong building? Why hadn’t I realised before? What had made me so sure that this was the place? But even worse was the nature of this building I was inside. I had fallen into a challenge that I had no way of understanding. All agency was being removed from me. Kafka’s tales were metaphors. Ways of telling a story. How real were they? What is the nature of our emotional life? What bit had Kafka made up? What bit am I making up? Here I was trapped inside a radically changed set of rules.

In the relentless gloom I found some stairs going down but saw no sign of the stairs that I had descended ten minutes before.

The fish wharf (or was it Fish Wharf?) she had said. Though we are a hundred miles from the sea. With unusual briskness, which I suppose was a version of impatience to get this whole thing over and done with; done and dusted and returned to something that promised familiarity, I skipped down the stairs. Yes, I would solve this like I had solved all the other problems that had ever confronted me. Reaching a landing I noticed a figure, an elderly woman, wearing a sun hat and a blue silk scarf, a pale cream linen jacket.

You’d like some coffee, I expect, and a sandwich if you’re hungry and I’m sure that you are hungry, aren’t you.

She stood next to a small circular table on which was a silver coffee pot, a cup and saucer, a silver jug that must contain the hot milk, I could see the thin curl of steam rising from it; and a large plate of sandwiches. Smoked salmon, she informed me.

You need to keep your strength up.

I slowed and crossed the landing towards her. I compared her to the memory of my grandmother; my mother’s mother, and the implied line of women leading back into the past. A line of kindness. And I wondered as to how and where the past exists. Does the past descend as into a grave and do we rise into the future?

I asked her about the Kazoo Dreamboat.

Poetry, she responded, must be honest. Poetry is a chance for us to redeem outselves.

 

Does it always have to be so difficult?

 Posted by at 10:54 am  Atelier, Fundamental Perversions, ON the STREET  Comments Off
Jul 202012
 

I zipped up, waited a few seconds, grabbed at some oxygen, sighed and shrugged, then turned to face my interrogator. Expecting something altogether more solid, more muscular I was surprised to see a girl, well, a young woman, who could have been no more than seventeen, overwhelmed inside an oversized uniform, dark, black or possible navy, her waif like face locked in uncertainty was a striking contradiction to the questioning, challenging voice I had been subdued by.

    Are you, by any chance, looking for the Kazoo Dreamboat, her voice had mysteriously become dream like, soft.

    Perhaps she had a colleague with her, somewhere in the shadows, a senior colleague who was supervising her on her first day in the job.

    Kazoo Dreamboat? I wondered about the strange name but decided to press on with my mission to reach the conference on the ninth floor.

    I’m trying to reach the ninth floor.

    A sheaf of papers had appeared in her left hand. She carefully examined them.

    Apparently you must go down to the fish wharf, three floors down.

    Erm, I rather was hoping to . . . I need to  . . . erm pee. I never did like the word pee, so prissy, so pathetic, but my vocal apparatus had got strangled in the effort to say piss.

    Sorry, was all she said and waited for me to leave.

 

I drew myself up to my full height

 Posted by at 11:59 am  Atelier, Old Men Travelling, ON the STREET  Comments Off
Jul 192012
 

As a committee member I had been invited to a specially conformed conference to discuss matters of the utmost international importance. Held as it was within the solid imperial splendour of Victorian limestone, the entrances watched over by uniformed staff, ex-military, ex-police or even ex-G4S, my expectations rose to dizzying heights as to not only the outcome of the conference but my own status which I had always thought to be of a rather doubtful nature, skirting as it did both  the gutter and the lower ranks of the aristocracy. Now this, I thought optimistically, now this is where I belong, and squared my shoulders as the commissionaire held out his hand so that he might examine any documentation I might have. My first attempt was a failure because he merely shook his head and moved as though he intended to send me marching back out the door that I had so recently entered through. From my voluminous pockets I was able to produce some other papers. I could see he was sorry that he didn’t have any latex gloves to handle such a doubtful offering but he was willing to take a chance and drew them towards his highly trained nostrils. After many dramatic contortions involving all his extensive facial musculature he cleared his throat. I had assumed he would then return my papers but his hands were now empty and he withdrew into an official indifference as to my existence and if I did indeed exist what actions I might take.

    There was no reception desk and no receptionist but fortunately I had been informed my text message that the conference would be held on the ninth floor so I cast about for the lifts. As you well know the public transport systems in that distant city do not include much in the way conveniences so it was imperative that I discover the whereabouts of the gentleman’s conveniences fairly hastily. But I now seemed to be alone so seeing some stairs descending off in the shadows to my left I decided on that course of action. Two flights down I had the notion that a Virgil was needed to guide my steps. Did I have to go down in order to eventually end up on the ninth floor? Had I once again made the wrong decision? But, no, there is a door, heavy dark wood, perhaps mahogany, and though there was no sign on the door my spirits were lifted at the prospect of relief of urinary pressure. And what a delight it was to see a long row of gleaming urinals arrayed along the length of one wall, with gleaming copper pipework and glass splash guards to protect my admittedly unpolished shoes. Unzipping, as one must, in such circumstances, I was surprised by a low cough behind me. And then a woman’s voice:

 

    ‘Are you Pring, the poet?’ Almost a purr, even a hint of growl.

 

    ‘N-n-no,’ I stammered.

 

    ‘Are you Peliot the poet?’

 

    ‘No,’ no longer a stammer, but in fact a hint of anger that I was being delayed in self-producing the wished for relief.

 

    ‘Are you a poet at all?’

 

    ‘No, no, no I’m not a poet but I have to get to the ninth floor.’

 

    That might just have been the wrong thing to say.

 

                    (To be continued)

 

DIALOGUE: Write Their Sin Soaks Like This.

 Posted by at 11:32 am  Atelier  Comments Off
Jul 182012
 

Kazoo Dreamboat (On What There Is)

2011 J H Prynn. Critical Documents Cambridge, P 21

        Rule One: people with top pay are rubbish, everyone knows this, it is a law of
nature, Rule Two: Diogenes offered himself as a master, in the market, to any slave who needed one. Rule Three: you do not see into the life of things, dimension-less or not, except by harvest of data plotted against uncertainty. Rule Four: justice is scarce ever the obverse of injustice, since the one is the top end and the other is the bottom. None of this it must be said is the power of harmony even in charge fluctuations or lifetimes except the desire integrate the variation of separation notice, that's what spirit mostly does who where she went bare in her forehead morning, only men write their socks off like this;

 (continues..)

–

THOT original version (Handwritten on 'Maxkiosk' 9/7/12, transcribed by the 'Loyal Friend' 16/7/ 12; uncorrected): 

On what There is
Kazoo Dreamboat 2011 The PYUM

Critical Documents Cambridge 1) 21

        Rule One: people with top pay are rubbish, argue knows this, it is a low of nature, Rule Two: Diogenes offered himself as a waste, in the market, to any slave who needed one, Rule Three: you do not see into the life of things, dimension-less
or not, except by harvest of data plotted against uncertainty, Rule Four.. Jer
justice ii scarce over the obverse of injustice, ince theme is elie top end and
the other in the bottom, None of this it must be Said in the power of harmony
even in charge fluctuations or lifetimes except the desire integrate the variation of separation notice, that's what spirit mostly does what

who where she went bare in her forehead moving, only men write
their sin soaks off like this;

Strange Cases (elements of AN ARCHIVE)

 Posted by at 11:24 am  Atelier  Comments Off
Jul 182012
 

'Just Past' Kase Notes:

Franz Josef -  The Long Retreat over 60 years… from
Galicia… or (HRH E II) Ukania 

There is a a strange smell on the dance floor.  Is It just a funny smell, or perhaps something more sinister? Either way it is impossible to ignore. Gas. A real party-pooper… That Most Terrible Pong!

– 

Fishy Tales – Like old herrings, gone off: the way the old have of stopping around too long, and the ‘lessons of history’, the recurrent narrative of the destruction of the young by the older generation. No longer red, resistance is articulated in a tragic voice.

 –
Hobgoblins

Red Republican (9 Nov 1950) – there, among the books in chains, and other printed objects on display behind locked glass cabinets, was the front page from Red Republican, 9 Nov 1850, which included the first translation into English of Marx's famous opening Sentence from Das Kapital, which begins, "Ein gespenst geht um in Europe…".

The translation into English in the Red Republican was made anonymously (a note by the exhibit explains that it was in fact by Helen Macfarlane). The first sentence is  given in English as follows:

"A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe, We are haunted by a ghost, the
ghost of communism.''

A hobgoblin also appears in Walter Benjamin's writing, and it was Susan Sontag's idea in her introduction to an English translation of Benjamin's writing in the 1960's (One Way Street etc) to use a hobgoblin to describe the malignant force which drove him from his homeland, and to his lonely death beneath the passes of the Pyrenees between France and Spain in 1940.

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