Marc Nash's Blog, page 47
May 15, 2013
Visual Literature
So, just what can the new digital technologies offer literature? Embedded links so that you can choose the precise path through a text, such as the collaboration behind Kafka's Wound, with archive photos, documentary, audio and an essay by Will Self. Or there's Nick Cave's vook "The Death Of Bunny Munro", a book with music videos and author readings embedded.
But these are really extras around the text, 'the making of' equivalent in movie DVDs. They do very little with the original text itself, other than frame it with these frills. The urge to click in "Kafka's Wound" kept talkin me out of what was a very sophisticated central essay by Self that demanded full concentration, so managed to work against the text.
I have always been interested in delving even further into a text, beyond that of the words and down to the very DNA of written language, the letters themselves.
I have commissioned visual literature that embed the words & letters in a visual representation. Examples can be found here , where coherent sentences emerge from the primordial soup of a jumble of letters, the play of image and words reinforcing one another.
But there is an art form that I believe offers even more to maximise the significance and contribution of the typography to the meaning of the text itself. And that art form is known as kinetic (or motion) typography. I'm not sure how well known it is, as the entry explaining it in Wikipedia is pretty skimpy. The best way to demonstrate it is simply to watch some of the videos. There's a dedicated part of the Vimeo video site to kinetic typography.
I studied them in my search for a designer to collaborate with. And I was disappointed. Not with the look of the videos, which are fantastic, but with the lack of imagination behind the choice of texts, which unfortunately in my opinion served only to widen the gap between text and representation through motion typography. The texts are often film dialogue snatches or song lyrics, and accordingly only serve to show off the art (Vimeo is after all a shop window for artists, so this is partly understandable). Then there is the other main use of kinetic typography, in advertising and marketing videos, where the text is often dry and target-led rather than artistic.
Finally there is the example of perhaps the most viewed of all kinetic typography films, Stephen Fry talking for 6 minutes about the wonders of language, all represented by the visual echo of his spoekn text made to move. I use the word echo, but directly parrot might be more accurate. I'm not sure in this case that the visuals add anything to Fry's rich vocal rendition. Apart from movement for movement's sake, I don't think the visuals advance the text in any meaningful way that bring out new or different shades of meaning to the oral.
Writers have to think what might be the case for animating their text. Rather than that dreaded term 'added value', the reason for it must exist within the text itself. And that means thinking about the words, what about them demands to be sparked up and shoot across a screen. But it also means thinking about the letters making up those words. For kinetic typography morphs, mutates, reverses, spins, rotates, severs, disappears, magics letters in its very being.
So I have this text about dementia. A gradual loss of language ability, where words mutate into close sounding but otherwise unrelated by meaning other words as letter blindness and problems of recall set in. The perfect medium for representation in kinetic type. The text informs the animation and the animation gives extra edge and depth to the text. I'll upload it in the next few days when it's completed.
So writers, please think about your texts and whether kinetic typography can serve to give depth, resonance and complexity to them. And graphic designers, please think about collaborating with writers for some interesting texts to bring alive. Texts that may even have been written with animated typography in mind.
But these are really extras around the text, 'the making of' equivalent in movie DVDs. They do very little with the original text itself, other than frame it with these frills. The urge to click in "Kafka's Wound" kept talkin me out of what was a very sophisticated central essay by Self that demanded full concentration, so managed to work against the text.
I have always been interested in delving even further into a text, beyond that of the words and down to the very DNA of written language, the letters themselves.
I have commissioned visual literature that embed the words & letters in a visual representation. Examples can be found here , where coherent sentences emerge from the primordial soup of a jumble of letters, the play of image and words reinforcing one another.
But there is an art form that I believe offers even more to maximise the significance and contribution of the typography to the meaning of the text itself. And that art form is known as kinetic (or motion) typography. I'm not sure how well known it is, as the entry explaining it in Wikipedia is pretty skimpy. The best way to demonstrate it is simply to watch some of the videos. There's a dedicated part of the Vimeo video site to kinetic typography.
I studied them in my search for a designer to collaborate with. And I was disappointed. Not with the look of the videos, which are fantastic, but with the lack of imagination behind the choice of texts, which unfortunately in my opinion served only to widen the gap between text and representation through motion typography. The texts are often film dialogue snatches or song lyrics, and accordingly only serve to show off the art (Vimeo is after all a shop window for artists, so this is partly understandable). Then there is the other main use of kinetic typography, in advertising and marketing videos, where the text is often dry and target-led rather than artistic.
Finally there is the example of perhaps the most viewed of all kinetic typography films, Stephen Fry talking for 6 minutes about the wonders of language, all represented by the visual echo of his spoekn text made to move. I use the word echo, but directly parrot might be more accurate. I'm not sure in this case that the visuals add anything to Fry's rich vocal rendition. Apart from movement for movement's sake, I don't think the visuals advance the text in any meaningful way that bring out new or different shades of meaning to the oral.
Writers have to think what might be the case for animating their text. Rather than that dreaded term 'added value', the reason for it must exist within the text itself. And that means thinking about the words, what about them demands to be sparked up and shoot across a screen. But it also means thinking about the letters making up those words. For kinetic typography morphs, mutates, reverses, spins, rotates, severs, disappears, magics letters in its very being.
So I have this text about dementia. A gradual loss of language ability, where words mutate into close sounding but otherwise unrelated by meaning other words as letter blindness and problems of recall set in. The perfect medium for representation in kinetic type. The text informs the animation and the animation gives extra edge and depth to the text. I'll upload it in the next few days when it's completed.
So writers, please think about your texts and whether kinetic typography can serve to give depth, resonance and complexity to them. And graphic designers, please think about collaborating with writers for some interesting texts to bring alive. Texts that may even have been written with animated typography in mind.
May 12, 2013
La La La London I Love you - 10 London songs
I posted a music video chart of songs about specific London locations, but there are plenty of songs that name London itself in the title. And as someone born, living and probably dying in this great capital city, I wanted to honour that. So here's 10 songs honouring (in most cases) my beloved city.
1) "London Calling" - The Clash
No surprises with this choice, THE London punk rock band from under the Westway, calling out London's first legitimate claim to lord it over Manchester and Liverpool as being the centre of a music force in the form of punk rock. It couldn't have happened without London's pub rock music venues, art colleges and certain clothes emporiums. Didn't last long mind, as power soon returned up North, to Manchester and even Sheffield for a while. Maybe Dubstep will reassert primacy for London music once again.
2) "London Girl" - The Jam
Imagine the provincials from satellite towns to London, travelling up to the capital every weekend to spend their pocket money in the boutiques, coffee shops and seeing their favourite bands for every post-war generation. The Jam were just such as they pilgrimaged to the capital of Mod "Carnaby Street" to stock up on Parkas and sharp It"In The City"alian suits. This early track of theirs is quite endearing two-dimensional Mod homage, nothing like the more sophisticated band they later went on to become (probably why no live footage of it on youTube). A B-Side of theirs went on to criticise the commercialisation of Carnaby Street in the same way punk bands sung about the standardization of punk through merchandising.
3) "Funky London Childhood" - T-Rex
If there ever was a better example of the rock star made by London than Marc Bolan, them I'm unsure as to who it was. Born, bred and died in London, Bolan was perfectly placed to tread the well worn path of London's Tin Pan Alley of agents, producers, record labels and itinerant musicians until he hit upon the right formula for success, in his case the Glam Rock of the 1970s. For a very good treatment of the history of London as administrative and commercial hub for modern music, read Paul du Noyer's excellent book "In The City". The irony being that most of the musicians who end up in London making their living, are not Londoners by birth. Bolan was unusual in that respect.
4) "LDN" - Lily Allen
Unless, you've reached the 21st century and by now qualify for the generations born to celebrity. Lily Allen, daughter of venerable punk comedian and now classic actor Keith, looks for her own way to make her name. So she's hooked up with some established session musicians, hits on a jaunty London-Caribbean sound and produces a feel good summer album. The start of this video was shot in my old workplace, with real staff members, at London's premier independent record shop Rough Trade Store. A couple of hit singles and promptly her music career takes a nose dive as she reverts to the celebrity persona and lives her entire life out in public via newspapers and social media.
5) "Londinium" - Catatonia
Well if you don't like it, you know what you can do Cerys don't you! You there with your baby voice. Can you tell I wasn't a fan? Personally I find London invigorating...
6) "Dark Streets Of London" - The Pogues
And still on the Celtic fringe, Shane Macgowan's Pogues duly honour their adoptive country while preserving the best of both their Irish and London roots. Macgowan truly is a rock poet of London similar to what John Cooper Clarke did for Manchester.
7) "Hold Tight London" - Chemical Brothers
The thing about capital cities, is that they have both the best and worst quality drugs. I will leave you to decide which are in evidence here. Some nice background shots of the city though.
8) "The Streets Of London" - Anti Nowhere League
See we can laugh at ourselves, as this beautiful folky song by Ralph McTell is given a right good duffing up by a band, the best thing about which could be said, was their name.
9) "City Of London" - The Mekons
The Mekons were from Leeds, but do a rather fine job here and reference Charles Dickens so can't be all bad!
10) "London Bridge" - Fergie
Hilarious and seemingly another American to confuse London with Tower Bridge: "going down like London Bridge. And no bad teeth on show anywhere in the entire video...
1) "London Calling" - The Clash
No surprises with this choice, THE London punk rock band from under the Westway, calling out London's first legitimate claim to lord it over Manchester and Liverpool as being the centre of a music force in the form of punk rock. It couldn't have happened without London's pub rock music venues, art colleges and certain clothes emporiums. Didn't last long mind, as power soon returned up North, to Manchester and even Sheffield for a while. Maybe Dubstep will reassert primacy for London music once again.
2) "London Girl" - The Jam
Imagine the provincials from satellite towns to London, travelling up to the capital every weekend to spend their pocket money in the boutiques, coffee shops and seeing their favourite bands for every post-war generation. The Jam were just such as they pilgrimaged to the capital of Mod "Carnaby Street" to stock up on Parkas and sharp It"In The City"alian suits. This early track of theirs is quite endearing two-dimensional Mod homage, nothing like the more sophisticated band they later went on to become (probably why no live footage of it on youTube). A B-Side of theirs went on to criticise the commercialisation of Carnaby Street in the same way punk bands sung about the standardization of punk through merchandising.
3) "Funky London Childhood" - T-Rex
If there ever was a better example of the rock star made by London than Marc Bolan, them I'm unsure as to who it was. Born, bred and died in London, Bolan was perfectly placed to tread the well worn path of London's Tin Pan Alley of agents, producers, record labels and itinerant musicians until he hit upon the right formula for success, in his case the Glam Rock of the 1970s. For a very good treatment of the history of London as administrative and commercial hub for modern music, read Paul du Noyer's excellent book "In The City". The irony being that most of the musicians who end up in London making their living, are not Londoners by birth. Bolan was unusual in that respect.
4) "LDN" - Lily Allen
Unless, you've reached the 21st century and by now qualify for the generations born to celebrity. Lily Allen, daughter of venerable punk comedian and now classic actor Keith, looks for her own way to make her name. So she's hooked up with some established session musicians, hits on a jaunty London-Caribbean sound and produces a feel good summer album. The start of this video was shot in my old workplace, with real staff members, at London's premier independent record shop Rough Trade Store. A couple of hit singles and promptly her music career takes a nose dive as she reverts to the celebrity persona and lives her entire life out in public via newspapers and social media.
5) "Londinium" - Catatonia
Well if you don't like it, you know what you can do Cerys don't you! You there with your baby voice. Can you tell I wasn't a fan? Personally I find London invigorating...
6) "Dark Streets Of London" - The Pogues
And still on the Celtic fringe, Shane Macgowan's Pogues duly honour their adoptive country while preserving the best of both their Irish and London roots. Macgowan truly is a rock poet of London similar to what John Cooper Clarke did for Manchester.
7) "Hold Tight London" - Chemical Brothers
The thing about capital cities, is that they have both the best and worst quality drugs. I will leave you to decide which are in evidence here. Some nice background shots of the city though.
8) "The Streets Of London" - Anti Nowhere League
See we can laugh at ourselves, as this beautiful folky song by Ralph McTell is given a right good duffing up by a band, the best thing about which could be said, was their name.
9) "City Of London" - The Mekons
The Mekons were from Leeds, but do a rather fine job here and reference Charles Dickens so can't be all bad!
10) "London Bridge" - Fergie
Hilarious and seemingly another American to confuse London with Tower Bridge: "going down like London Bridge. And no bad teeth on show anywhere in the entire video...
May 8, 2013
Friday Flash - Flash Video Bonanza!
For this week's Friday Flash, I've uploaded a home-recorded version of a flash reading I did in public, talking about the art of flash writing and reading 11 of my stories and talking about where they came from.
Hope you enjoy!
Hope you enjoy!
May 2, 2013
Tendering Her Resignation - Friday Flash
She gingerly lifted the soiled bandage from her shin, but still her mother winced with the discomfort. Even the faintest friction from the lint must have caused her pain, while the sting of fresh air inroading against the denuded skin could only ratchet up the agony further. She glanced at the bandage and saw the telltale red corona imprinting the white cotton. She averted her gaze and for a moment commuted it in her mind's eye as a white napkin bearing a fresh lipstick kiss before a date.
She refocused her vision and saw that her mother's ulcer was weeping again now that the compression bandage had been lifted. She started massaging her toes for her. It was the closest locus away from the wound she could caress without prompting further suffering in her mother. Tears were welling up behind her own eyes.
Gazing upon her leg it seemed as though the sore was boring through the layers of skin. But she knew the opposite dynamic was at work. Failings in the blood supply within, had starved the skin of oxygen and thereby corrupted the integrity of its tissue. A parochial suffocation.
She tore her gaze away from the suppurating wound and instead scrutinised the veins and arteries around her mother's ankles. The red and blue capillaries were raised right to the surface of her skin, like oxygen starved fish in a waterhole receding under a fierce orange sun. The reds and blues put her in mind of a road atlas, the major trunk routes and motorways out of the city. A spaghetti nexus of escape arteries that she had never taken. Held here in place by her mother's immobility and venous constriction. Her mother splayed out on her bed there, like a catafalque. Yet it might be she herself having her coffin drawn along by hearse to the cemetery at the city limits. Her body undertaking the longest journey of her life and breaching the confines of the city only once in death. As she disposed of the soiled bandage, she apprehended that it could never be lipstick, only ever blood and purulence.
It hadn't always been like this she was certain. She had seen the family portraits. Delicate colour photos sweated behind the dividing wax leaves of an old fashioned album, that suggested it was consonant with the days of sepia tints. But the evidence was still there in place. A porcelain skin so alabaster white, that the lens managed to pick out the filigree blue veins in all their delicacy. Her mother had assuredly been a beauty in her youth.
But that white skin was now bruised, burnished and livid out of all recognition. She wiped the moisture from the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand. She didn't want to get any germs on her fingers that would soon have to reapply the bandage shroud. But her good intentions were undone when she reflexively scratched her own lower leg, bringing her skin up in a chalky sheen, though there was no eruption of any efflorescence.
"Hold on Mama, I have to wash my hands clean."
As she squirted the antiseptic soap into her palms, she mused on whether the condition might be genetic. Her mother had been invalided for as long as she could remember. Certainly at an age younger than she was herself now, so that it seemed unlikely to be stalking her own vascular system. And yet her circulation had also furred up, since she rarely exercised save for errands after fresh food, clean bandages and repeat prescriptions.
Anti-septic was right. She had allowed herself to be contaminated by the stasis of her mother's plight. Caring and tending had made her utterly dependent on her mother's stagnant rhythms. She was actually the sore and her mother the lint pressing her down. She didn't mean to, but when she applied a new bandage, she pushed it with a bit more force than normal. Her mother cried out.
"I'm sorry Mama, so so sorry."
She refocused her vision and saw that her mother's ulcer was weeping again now that the compression bandage had been lifted. She started massaging her toes for her. It was the closest locus away from the wound she could caress without prompting further suffering in her mother. Tears were welling up behind her own eyes.
Gazing upon her leg it seemed as though the sore was boring through the layers of skin. But she knew the opposite dynamic was at work. Failings in the blood supply within, had starved the skin of oxygen and thereby corrupted the integrity of its tissue. A parochial suffocation.
She tore her gaze away from the suppurating wound and instead scrutinised the veins and arteries around her mother's ankles. The red and blue capillaries were raised right to the surface of her skin, like oxygen starved fish in a waterhole receding under a fierce orange sun. The reds and blues put her in mind of a road atlas, the major trunk routes and motorways out of the city. A spaghetti nexus of escape arteries that she had never taken. Held here in place by her mother's immobility and venous constriction. Her mother splayed out on her bed there, like a catafalque. Yet it might be she herself having her coffin drawn along by hearse to the cemetery at the city limits. Her body undertaking the longest journey of her life and breaching the confines of the city only once in death. As she disposed of the soiled bandage, she apprehended that it could never be lipstick, only ever blood and purulence.
It hadn't always been like this she was certain. She had seen the family portraits. Delicate colour photos sweated behind the dividing wax leaves of an old fashioned album, that suggested it was consonant with the days of sepia tints. But the evidence was still there in place. A porcelain skin so alabaster white, that the lens managed to pick out the filigree blue veins in all their delicacy. Her mother had assuredly been a beauty in her youth.
But that white skin was now bruised, burnished and livid out of all recognition. She wiped the moisture from the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand. She didn't want to get any germs on her fingers that would soon have to reapply the bandage shroud. But her good intentions were undone when she reflexively scratched her own lower leg, bringing her skin up in a chalky sheen, though there was no eruption of any efflorescence.
"Hold on Mama, I have to wash my hands clean."
As she squirted the antiseptic soap into her palms, she mused on whether the condition might be genetic. Her mother had been invalided for as long as she could remember. Certainly at an age younger than she was herself now, so that it seemed unlikely to be stalking her own vascular system. And yet her circulation had also furred up, since she rarely exercised save for errands after fresh food, clean bandages and repeat prescriptions.
Anti-septic was right. She had allowed herself to be contaminated by the stasis of her mother's plight. Caring and tending had made her utterly dependent on her mother's stagnant rhythms. She was actually the sore and her mother the lint pressing her down. She didn't mean to, but when she applied a new bandage, she pushed it with a bit more force than normal. Her mother cried out.
"I'm sorry Mama, so so sorry."
April 28, 2013
TV Comedy & "The Big Bang Theory"
Those of you who follow me on twitter may have seen my occasional expression of hostility to TV sitcoms that depend on the stupidity of characters to raise their laughs. Take a bow "Not Going Out" by Lee Mack where all the characters other than the wise-cracking Lee (basically doing his stand up act and wedging in one-liners where the script can't support them), are pig thick and much of the supposed comedy ensues from their misunderstanding, nay mangling of the English language. But Shakespeare also employed the same device of characters who were mastered by words, rather than mastering them, but they retained more dignity than Mack's characters.
But it's not limited to this particular show. Even the hugely popular "Only Fools And Horses" had a roster of ninnies and well yes fools, also overwhelmed by their ignorance. Only the scriptwriters and actor skills investing them with enough humanity and pathos I believe swayed us the audience to embrace them to our hearts.
So "The Big Bang Theory" has to be by definition, comedy at the other end of the spectrum. Four uber-nerds with brains the size of planets and a concomitant plethora of absent social skills is the heart of the comedy. So no comedy of the stupid on show here. And I want to like it, I really do. The writing is witty and clever, but not laugh out loud even though I get most of the clever science gags. The performances are also top notch, particular that of Jim Parsons as chief uber-brain Dr Sheldon Cooper. His physical performance of someone with a host of tics, neuroses and an inability to evidence most of the everyday things about relationships such as apologising, keeping a secret, compromising, is something rarely seen on mainstream TV. I am in awe of his performance week after week. Actually I am mesmerised by it, to the extent I keep coming back to the next episode. But I don't laugh all that much.
The monstrous character has a proud centrality in TV comedy. Consider Basil Fawlty for example, a man consumed by petty snobbery, delusions of grandeur, primness, sexual frustration within marriage and an inferiority, not to say fear, before his wife. Fawlty is a comedy creation of sheer genius.
Sheldon Cooper is equally monstrous, but not one I find funny. Fawlty always loses, he is a clown who falls flat on his face. Cooper rarely loses any situation, because his behavioural demands usually cause others top kowtow to him. Falwty is highly vulnerable, Cooper almost inviolable, because he doesn't understand most of the hurt he is causing and little can penetrate him in return. Fawlty keeps trying to realise his dreams; Cooper has no dreams because his vision is so narrow and he is 'successfully' living within its narrow parameters and rarely shaken from it.
Finally, I am a little uncomfortable being asked to laugh at the antics of a domineering and dominant character who is I believe, somewhere on the Autistic-Asperger's spectrum. He is so impaired in his social interactions, that one has to believe there is a neural cause behind it rather than a psychological one. So the comedy revolves around the monstrous behaviour of a character who in all likelihood has a neurological condition underlying it all. Hmmm...
Still searching for some intelligent TV comedy for the 21st century along the lines of Fawlty Towers (which is after all nearly 40 years old now). Any suggestions?
But it's not limited to this particular show. Even the hugely popular "Only Fools And Horses" had a roster of ninnies and well yes fools, also overwhelmed by their ignorance. Only the scriptwriters and actor skills investing them with enough humanity and pathos I believe swayed us the audience to embrace them to our hearts.
So "The Big Bang Theory" has to be by definition, comedy at the other end of the spectrum. Four uber-nerds with brains the size of planets and a concomitant plethora of absent social skills is the heart of the comedy. So no comedy of the stupid on show here. And I want to like it, I really do. The writing is witty and clever, but not laugh out loud even though I get most of the clever science gags. The performances are also top notch, particular that of Jim Parsons as chief uber-brain Dr Sheldon Cooper. His physical performance of someone with a host of tics, neuroses and an inability to evidence most of the everyday things about relationships such as apologising, keeping a secret, compromising, is something rarely seen on mainstream TV. I am in awe of his performance week after week. Actually I am mesmerised by it, to the extent I keep coming back to the next episode. But I don't laugh all that much.
The monstrous character has a proud centrality in TV comedy. Consider Basil Fawlty for example, a man consumed by petty snobbery, delusions of grandeur, primness, sexual frustration within marriage and an inferiority, not to say fear, before his wife. Fawlty is a comedy creation of sheer genius.
Sheldon Cooper is equally monstrous, but not one I find funny. Fawlty always loses, he is a clown who falls flat on his face. Cooper rarely loses any situation, because his behavioural demands usually cause others top kowtow to him. Falwty is highly vulnerable, Cooper almost inviolable, because he doesn't understand most of the hurt he is causing and little can penetrate him in return. Fawlty keeps trying to realise his dreams; Cooper has no dreams because his vision is so narrow and he is 'successfully' living within its narrow parameters and rarely shaken from it.
Finally, I am a little uncomfortable being asked to laugh at the antics of a domineering and dominant character who is I believe, somewhere on the Autistic-Asperger's spectrum. He is so impaired in his social interactions, that one has to believe there is a neural cause behind it rather than a psychological one. So the comedy revolves around the monstrous behaviour of a character who in all likelihood has a neurological condition underlying it all. Hmmm...
Still searching for some intelligent TV comedy for the 21st century along the lines of Fawlty Towers (which is after all nearly 40 years old now). Any suggestions?
April 25, 2013
The Last Poet - Friday Flash
'E' is for... extinction. It used to be for 'Elephant' but poachers killed them all off in their ironclad greed for ivory. It was said elephants never forgot, but now none remain left to remember. And mankind knows exactly where the elephants' graveyards are to be found. Wherever we dumped mounds of their tuskless carcasses.
'P' is- was, for 'Penguin'. Until their population melted away with the polar ice cap that sailed off into the sunset, leaving them sunk without trace.
'T' was for 'Tiger', harvested for the supposed medicinal powers of its organs. Mankind still got sicker and sicker all the same. Both in body and mind.
'D' was for 'Dolphin'. For all humans' supposed rapport with our favourite marine mammalian cousins, we couldn't invent tuna nets that didn't snag dolphins too. We used to regard them as therapeutic when we swam with them in their briny realm. But all the while we were toxifying their habitat, so that their fish diet perished and they starved to death in Davy Jones' empty food locker.
'S' was for 'Seal', the ones often depicted balancing a ball on their snouts. Delightfully entertaining us as kids in circuses, yet no playful rump persisted in us as adults, as we culled their infant pups with bludgeons, cudgels and clubs. Wiped from the face of the earth with nothing more than red blood smears on white snow.
This had the knock-on effect of thinning out the food supply for their natural predators the Killer 'W' that used to stand for 'Whales'. Their existence was further compromised by global warming's effects and noise pollution of desperate oil exploration both subverting their sonar direction, so that they kept beaching themselves. Expiring faster than they could be harpooned for their wealth of blubbery products, both practical and exclusive, beloved of us landlubbers.
'Z' was for 'Zebra', now permanently residing in the unhappy hunting grounds stripped of their prized skins. But also through the system of man-made dams which caused the soil of their homelands to dry up and took their natural predator Leo the Lion along with them into oblivion. Pride comes before a fall it is said and we committed regicide in the kingdom of the savannas.
'M' was for 'Monkey', our closest living relative and one which we systematically extirpated, through our epidemic fears of the species short hop for disease transmission. Our paranoia knew no limit since we pressed the same relentless logic to take wing, as we emptied the skies of avian life for good measure.
'F' was for 'Fox', quick and brown at the heart of our alphabet. Well they were boundlessly trespassing our cities bold as brass, so the outcome was inevitable really. And that was even after the English had legislated to prevent hunting them with dogs. The rampant poison employed for the task was far more efficient. And environmentally devastating.
'C' was for 'Cow', which along with pigs and sheep previously had formed our staple domestic stable of meat. But when we fed parts of the trinity to each other, turning these ruminants into carnivores, they became soft in the head, couldn't stand on their own four feet. So subsequently we the ultimate omnivore had to pass them up on the menu.
'B' the letter that actually sounded the name of its creature, well it now only stands for bafflement or befuddled, since they were the first fauna to foreshadow the fatal trend. We didn't even notice their disappearance until there was no more honey to be had for love nor money. The last time life was ever sweet.
The decline in human numbers caused by the diminution of our food supply and the impoverishment of the planet, both paled by comparison to the true devolution our species suffered. The degrading of our minds. For as these animals were expunged from life, what pictures could we fill our primer reading books with which to inculcate our children the building blocks of language? All the joyous associations of these animals, seared with visits to zoos to see them in the flesh, vanished from cultural memory. People had fought to save animals from the cruel incarceration of the zoo. Little did they know those animals were the lucky ones. Those folks were looking in the wrong direction for the threat. They should have just gazed down. 'G' was for 'Gazelle' -oh just forget it.
Cockroaches, hyenas, sharks and vultures, the perennial survivors of the animal kingdom, those best adapted to feast on the misery of the weaker beasts, are inappropriate for an infant's reading primer. It would yield them nightmarish associations, which while maybe more fitting to our current disposition, mothers deemed it better just to let learning slide in its entirety. Muteness was the sole maternal birthright to pass on.
The sun too no longer appears as a bright orange disc, lying obscured behind the eternal fumes of our belching chimneys, even though they have since been pensioned off into disuse. Likewise the sky no longer radiates its cerulean hue, filtered out of our spectrum by the omnipresent grey fug. Nor does the sea offer its inviting cobalt blue, muddied by the decomposing corpses of all the life that used to teem there.
So gradually our children's imaginations began to shrink and wither on the vine. They had no images to append to their words, to try and colour their thoughts in order to express themselves to others. Their alphabets broke down, unable even to construct words for them. Our language became as extinct as the animals which used to denizen its vibrant embrace.
I am the last poet to record all this. I composed all this centuries ago as I hung on to the vestige of my mind's creative ability and foretold what would follow in my wake. Now I too have become extinct, both in body and heritage, since not one of the meagre generations which succeed me possesses any ability to read and understand these words.
Music chart - 10 Animal songs
April 23, 2013
Homegrown Suicide Bomber- Sample
From my book "Not In My name" published 2011 - part 2, the new politics is being waged online where it is far more vicious and bloody...
"Blog: 17th May 2006 / 27th Rabia Awal 1427Another- the last- fitting for my nuptial dress. Has me more than a little nervous. Only natural of course. My fingers are trembling and I can’t do up a single clasp. The seamstress clicks her tongue in sharp disapproval and says such conduct would be unbecoming on the big day itself. The girdle feels tight, even though I have barely eaten this last week, despite cautioning from those around me to maintain my strength. I have even surrendered up my beloved gelatis. But today I feel I can treat myself to a bombe glacée. A last trifling indulgence, before the most profound change occurs in my life. And if I spread a couple of inches under its calorific assault, then I’ll just have to suck in my stomach, which with the likely state of my breathing tomorrow, shouldn’t be too hard a task. I force myself to think pure thoughts by envisioning my betrothed before me, as the seamstress gingerly packs up my raiment. And in conjuring such happy thoughts, a smile breaks out to envelop the worry lines around my pensive brow. Now my lips quiver only with joy. Such a remedy never fails. Tomorrow we shall be conjoined for ever. I leave the premises to search out my ice cream, once I have safely stored the vestments. Now it is just a question of killing time.*With all the trepidation, it’s been a very long and sleepless night. As the light faded, my thoughts flared around me, projected into the formless shadows moving on the wall. Car headlights seared their way through my shutters and churned and roiled my ceiling, making me dizzy and disoriented. Shutting my eyes did nothing, as they managed to prise through the membranes of my eyelids. How thin and insubstantial all of my body feels at this time. My flesh a flimsy curtain, partitioning the unknown chambers ahead.I rose from bed and am now carving this for the want of something to do. Of course they left me no means of communicating with the outside world. But they did leave me a knife for self-protection and when I had blunted that, I used the flints sheared off from the stone walls of the room itself. Had other brides and grooms to be, been put up here before me? Then the building will tell its tale as well as my own.My overriding thought right now, would to please be permitted some sleep, so I am not too befuddled for tomorr- or later today as it now is. I’m going back to bed, doubtless to joust some more with my ceiling-borne demons overhead. Whence death seemingly always comes, in our insignificant part of the world. Where the sky is forever falling in.*A pealing siren outside woke me, even though it was far away in the distance. A presentiment of ill-fortune? But again I just marinade my mind with thoughts of my beloved opening his arms in welcome and all such anxieties melt away and me with it back into my furtive dreams. Wherein my Mother soon intercedes. Bustling and barging the angelic bystanders as she cuts a direct path to me. Standing now right in my face, eclipsing even the joy of my light, for she would not approve of such an espousal. This is not exactly an elopement, yet still she cannot know till after the event. I have recorded her a message to explain the matter. But her forceful image has demanded an explanation of me before she is even in the know. A lingering last vestige of guilt.Mother, the sole message is I love you. Even as I seemingly repudiate you by this act. I am not propelling myself away from you. This you must understand. How I love you more than anything else on this earth and I am beaming this message to you, with greater force than all the generative force soon to adorn my belly, that will pull us apart merely on this plane. In my absence, you will receive only greater honour. Till we are ultimately reconciled in Paradise. My Mother and I hug, seemingly unconditionally as she did when I was a baby. And finally I fall into a dreamless sleep.18th May 2006 / 28th Rabia Awal 1427I imagine hearing another siren, but as I groggily come round, I realise it is my beeping alarm clock. An adhan summoning me to my calling. My salvation. I shut it off. I’ll be present at my union soon enough. Lying here, I try and evoke an image of the light of my life in the future, but nothing comes. It’s as if my thoughts are like birds, flying in confusion and without navigation during an eclipse, as my rapidly beating heart has blotted out the sun. So I do what I’ve been steeled to do and I use it to my advantage. I am to enter the core of this black sun, and ball it up in my hand. Driving the fingers till they seal my palm. Thereby readmitting the light to embrace me once again. Ha, already the quickened pulse recedes. Resumes its orderly place in the background. But do not be fooled. That faint tick, tick, ticking, is the sound of my seething heart, walled up behind the thorns and briars of my sin. How they dam up my heart from God. Now is the time to purge them like an infernal machine, back whence they came. Return my pure being back to the bosom of God. For He cannot be contained. My heart is fit to irrupt, its furious palpitations cannot be accommodated a moment longer.I swing my legs out of bed. My bare feet meet the cold stone of the flags. All the more felicitous then, since a grave will be yet colder. I wash myself from a bowl of water, letting the precious liquid trickle back down to its source. Our adversaries would deny us even this most basic of elements. As I bathe them, I devote each one of the two hundred bones in my body to you my Love. And by my actions, I imagine we will share them in turn with five times that amount of suitors, dispersed like passing out wedges of wedding cake. Spearing into their trespassing hearts, as we entwine and are yoked together into death. Then there is the added confetti of nails and ball bearings, only this time it will be the bride showering the congregation. Even my virginal veil of modesty shall be aflame and sail through the air combusting all it brushes against. My flying blood will baste their foreheads with the indelible sign of their guilt. The liquid in the bowl is still once again.I hope my laving is suitably thorough, but I am without any mirror for inspection. One isn’t to wake on the morn of one’s self-appointed expiration and glimpse dread in the eyes. No photos to kiss either, no earthly tugs at all to corrode the will. To blunt my whetted mind. Instead I picture weaving my own carpet. I who have nothing, can still donate this wedding gift. As they deny us the wool because we have no land to breed sheep and we have no looms to spin it within our flimsy, cramped houses, so then will I fashion mine from blood and bone. I aim to weave the largest rug that is humanly possible from my frame, to drape the entire tarmac between two bus stops. And my signature, will be my essence mingled in with theirs. They who are so precious about collecting and burying every last drop of their blood spilt, will not be able to determine if it is mine or theirs. Blotting me up with their paper as they do with their own. How they will waste such resources in taking precise, forensic care of my remains, it will almost be like they are forced to yield me the same worth as their own burnt offerings. But for all this, I will yield them no insights. Other than reinforcing that which they choose to remain wilfully blind to.I’m ready. This time I rig myself with barely a faltering in my fingers. The clasps all snap home. The girdle still feels tight, but now hangs heavy, arrayed with the wedding gifts lavished last night by my escort. What a most generous gift he has seen fit to bestow upon me. The needles to unstitch with. The pattern in my mind. At last, for the first time in our despoiled land, my belly feels fecund.19th May 200620th May 200621st May 2006 Gone The requested resource / is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource."
Available from Amazon UK US
"Blog: 17th May 2006 / 27th Rabia Awal 1427Another- the last- fitting for my nuptial dress. Has me more than a little nervous. Only natural of course. My fingers are trembling and I can’t do up a single clasp. The seamstress clicks her tongue in sharp disapproval and says such conduct would be unbecoming on the big day itself. The girdle feels tight, even though I have barely eaten this last week, despite cautioning from those around me to maintain my strength. I have even surrendered up my beloved gelatis. But today I feel I can treat myself to a bombe glacée. A last trifling indulgence, before the most profound change occurs in my life. And if I spread a couple of inches under its calorific assault, then I’ll just have to suck in my stomach, which with the likely state of my breathing tomorrow, shouldn’t be too hard a task. I force myself to think pure thoughts by envisioning my betrothed before me, as the seamstress gingerly packs up my raiment. And in conjuring such happy thoughts, a smile breaks out to envelop the worry lines around my pensive brow. Now my lips quiver only with joy. Such a remedy never fails. Tomorrow we shall be conjoined for ever. I leave the premises to search out my ice cream, once I have safely stored the vestments. Now it is just a question of killing time.*With all the trepidation, it’s been a very long and sleepless night. As the light faded, my thoughts flared around me, projected into the formless shadows moving on the wall. Car headlights seared their way through my shutters and churned and roiled my ceiling, making me dizzy and disoriented. Shutting my eyes did nothing, as they managed to prise through the membranes of my eyelids. How thin and insubstantial all of my body feels at this time. My flesh a flimsy curtain, partitioning the unknown chambers ahead.I rose from bed and am now carving this for the want of something to do. Of course they left me no means of communicating with the outside world. But they did leave me a knife for self-protection and when I had blunted that, I used the flints sheared off from the stone walls of the room itself. Had other brides and grooms to be, been put up here before me? Then the building will tell its tale as well as my own.My overriding thought right now, would to please be permitted some sleep, so I am not too befuddled for tomorr- or later today as it now is. I’m going back to bed, doubtless to joust some more with my ceiling-borne demons overhead. Whence death seemingly always comes, in our insignificant part of the world. Where the sky is forever falling in.*A pealing siren outside woke me, even though it was far away in the distance. A presentiment of ill-fortune? But again I just marinade my mind with thoughts of my beloved opening his arms in welcome and all such anxieties melt away and me with it back into my furtive dreams. Wherein my Mother soon intercedes. Bustling and barging the angelic bystanders as she cuts a direct path to me. Standing now right in my face, eclipsing even the joy of my light, for she would not approve of such an espousal. This is not exactly an elopement, yet still she cannot know till after the event. I have recorded her a message to explain the matter. But her forceful image has demanded an explanation of me before she is even in the know. A lingering last vestige of guilt.Mother, the sole message is I love you. Even as I seemingly repudiate you by this act. I am not propelling myself away from you. This you must understand. How I love you more than anything else on this earth and I am beaming this message to you, with greater force than all the generative force soon to adorn my belly, that will pull us apart merely on this plane. In my absence, you will receive only greater honour. Till we are ultimately reconciled in Paradise. My Mother and I hug, seemingly unconditionally as she did when I was a baby. And finally I fall into a dreamless sleep.18th May 2006 / 28th Rabia Awal 1427I imagine hearing another siren, but as I groggily come round, I realise it is my beeping alarm clock. An adhan summoning me to my calling. My salvation. I shut it off. I’ll be present at my union soon enough. Lying here, I try and evoke an image of the light of my life in the future, but nothing comes. It’s as if my thoughts are like birds, flying in confusion and without navigation during an eclipse, as my rapidly beating heart has blotted out the sun. So I do what I’ve been steeled to do and I use it to my advantage. I am to enter the core of this black sun, and ball it up in my hand. Driving the fingers till they seal my palm. Thereby readmitting the light to embrace me once again. Ha, already the quickened pulse recedes. Resumes its orderly place in the background. But do not be fooled. That faint tick, tick, ticking, is the sound of my seething heart, walled up behind the thorns and briars of my sin. How they dam up my heart from God. Now is the time to purge them like an infernal machine, back whence they came. Return my pure being back to the bosom of God. For He cannot be contained. My heart is fit to irrupt, its furious palpitations cannot be accommodated a moment longer.I swing my legs out of bed. My bare feet meet the cold stone of the flags. All the more felicitous then, since a grave will be yet colder. I wash myself from a bowl of water, letting the precious liquid trickle back down to its source. Our adversaries would deny us even this most basic of elements. As I bathe them, I devote each one of the two hundred bones in my body to you my Love. And by my actions, I imagine we will share them in turn with five times that amount of suitors, dispersed like passing out wedges of wedding cake. Spearing into their trespassing hearts, as we entwine and are yoked together into death. Then there is the added confetti of nails and ball bearings, only this time it will be the bride showering the congregation. Even my virginal veil of modesty shall be aflame and sail through the air combusting all it brushes against. My flying blood will baste their foreheads with the indelible sign of their guilt. The liquid in the bowl is still once again.I hope my laving is suitably thorough, but I am without any mirror for inspection. One isn’t to wake on the morn of one’s self-appointed expiration and glimpse dread in the eyes. No photos to kiss either, no earthly tugs at all to corrode the will. To blunt my whetted mind. Instead I picture weaving my own carpet. I who have nothing, can still donate this wedding gift. As they deny us the wool because we have no land to breed sheep and we have no looms to spin it within our flimsy, cramped houses, so then will I fashion mine from blood and bone. I aim to weave the largest rug that is humanly possible from my frame, to drape the entire tarmac between two bus stops. And my signature, will be my essence mingled in with theirs. They who are so precious about collecting and burying every last drop of their blood spilt, will not be able to determine if it is mine or theirs. Blotting me up with their paper as they do with their own. How they will waste such resources in taking precise, forensic care of my remains, it will almost be like they are forced to yield me the same worth as their own burnt offerings. But for all this, I will yield them no insights. Other than reinforcing that which they choose to remain wilfully blind to.I’m ready. This time I rig myself with barely a faltering in my fingers. The clasps all snap home. The girdle still feels tight, but now hangs heavy, arrayed with the wedding gifts lavished last night by my escort. What a most generous gift he has seen fit to bestow upon me. The needles to unstitch with. The pattern in my mind. At last, for the first time in our despoiled land, my belly feels fecund.19th May 200620th May 200621st May 2006 Gone The requested resource / is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource."
Available from Amazon UK US
April 22, 2013
Animal Songs
Animals, don't you just love them? Pop stars certainly seem to, "The Birdie Song", "Hungry Like The Wolf", "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", "Eye Of The Tiger", even "Ant Music" made it to the top of the charts. Then there are those throwaway songs such as The Who allowing bassist John Entwhistle to pen a song and he came up with the fairly execrable "Boris The Spider", or The Pogues doing their Tom Waits spoof "Worms" and tucking it away as the last track on the album. Pink Floyd did a whole concept album called "Animals" which in my opinion remains their best album despite the praise heaped on "Dark Side of The Moon" and "Wish You Were Here". But being a concept album, the tracks are too long to upload to the blog for your listening pleasure.
So here are ten animal songs for your delectation and petting.
1) Patti Smith - "Horses"
The queen of New York New Wave that brought a poetic and experimental sensibility to early US punk, here has an urgently driving and rumbling song that still holds up today in its power. The lyric "The boy looked at Johnny" was incidently the title of a short book on UK punk rock penned by teenage Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons in 1977 (their Johnny being Johnny Rotten). And to think what those two have become now... Punk rock RIP
2) Iggy And The Stooges - "I Wanna Be Your Dog"
And still on the subject of 'where did it all go awry?', that sallow faced man who sells you insurance on the TV used to be a bit of an all-out punk rocker who usually ended up bloodied on stage from the intensity of his performance. I used to know a music journalist who lived with Iggy in London.
3) The Cure - "Love Cats"
I have a love-hate relationship with this song. The love is that in my misguided belief that I would be a bassist in a band, when I bought my instrument and tried to teach myself, the bassline intro to this song was one of the few I managed to master. The con, was that this song seemed to signal the demise of The Cure as a cool low-fi post-punk/pop band and enter the world of Goth with bad make up and bombastic music arrangements. Robert Smith in his retreat from fame and adulation had sacrificed Camus' "L'Etranger" of the band's debut album and instead regressed into a child's world as represented by "Charlotte Sometimes" for his influence. "Love Cats" was of course a huge hit for the band.
4) The Birthday Party - "Release The Bats"
If you're going to do Goth properly, obviously you require bats, but you also need a bit of oomph in the music. And though they were never really a Goth band, Nick Cave's Birthday Party had twin drummers in their early incarnation and that gave this song oomph a plenty. "Sex vampire, horror bat bite": Quite.
5) The Beastie Boys - "Brass Monkey"
Hey it was this or "Funky Donkey". I think you all get off lightly! One of their more Frat Boy songs, even though I don't beleive they ever were...
6) Jefferson Airplane - "White Rabbit"
Far out man!
7) Genesis - "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway"
Double concept albums, twelve string guitars, costumes on stage, ah they don't make 'em like this any more. Phil Collins used to be in genesis you know!
8) The Cramps - "Human Fly"
The signature tune of the Cramps that announced their arrival as the swamp punk rock band supreme. Swaggeringly good. This music was grungy before anyone had heard of Kurt Cobain. The stage clothes however were not. Lux Interior RIP.
9) Jah Woosh - "Woodpecka Sound"
Dub heavy, reggae has lots of songs involving animals, not least the Lion of Judah.
10) Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven"
No idea what the song means but I do love it!
So here are ten animal songs for your delectation and petting.
1) Patti Smith - "Horses"
The queen of New York New Wave that brought a poetic and experimental sensibility to early US punk, here has an urgently driving and rumbling song that still holds up today in its power. The lyric "The boy looked at Johnny" was incidently the title of a short book on UK punk rock penned by teenage Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons in 1977 (their Johnny being Johnny Rotten). And to think what those two have become now... Punk rock RIP
2) Iggy And The Stooges - "I Wanna Be Your Dog"
And still on the subject of 'where did it all go awry?', that sallow faced man who sells you insurance on the TV used to be a bit of an all-out punk rocker who usually ended up bloodied on stage from the intensity of his performance. I used to know a music journalist who lived with Iggy in London.
3) The Cure - "Love Cats"
I have a love-hate relationship with this song. The love is that in my misguided belief that I would be a bassist in a band, when I bought my instrument and tried to teach myself, the bassline intro to this song was one of the few I managed to master. The con, was that this song seemed to signal the demise of The Cure as a cool low-fi post-punk/pop band and enter the world of Goth with bad make up and bombastic music arrangements. Robert Smith in his retreat from fame and adulation had sacrificed Camus' "L'Etranger" of the band's debut album and instead regressed into a child's world as represented by "Charlotte Sometimes" for his influence. "Love Cats" was of course a huge hit for the band.
4) The Birthday Party - "Release The Bats"
If you're going to do Goth properly, obviously you require bats, but you also need a bit of oomph in the music. And though they were never really a Goth band, Nick Cave's Birthday Party had twin drummers in their early incarnation and that gave this song oomph a plenty. "Sex vampire, horror bat bite": Quite.
5) The Beastie Boys - "Brass Monkey"
Hey it was this or "Funky Donkey". I think you all get off lightly! One of their more Frat Boy songs, even though I don't beleive they ever were...
6) Jefferson Airplane - "White Rabbit"
Far out man!
7) Genesis - "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway"
Double concept albums, twelve string guitars, costumes on stage, ah they don't make 'em like this any more. Phil Collins used to be in genesis you know!
8) The Cramps - "Human Fly"
The signature tune of the Cramps that announced their arrival as the swamp punk rock band supreme. Swaggeringly good. This music was grungy before anyone had heard of Kurt Cobain. The stage clothes however were not. Lux Interior RIP.
9) Jah Woosh - "Woodpecka Sound"
Dub heavy, reggae has lots of songs involving animals, not least the Lion of Judah.
10) Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven"
No idea what the song means but I do love it!
April 21, 2013
Homegrown Bombers - Sunday Sample
From my book "Not In My name" published 2011 - part 2, the new politics is being waged online where it is far more vicious and bloody...
"Joe Bloggs’ Blog, London, July 8th 2006The view from the top of the Clapham OmnibusA year to the day. Plus one. In order to honour the memorial ceremonies passing off with due dignity.But I can hold my peace no longer. Today I can ask the question, was that it??? A one-hit wonder? Is that the sum total, one atrocity?Admittedly well-planned and co-ordinated, but where’s the sustained follow-up campaign? Apart from the four stooges who couldn’t even make a chapati, much less a bomb. And didn’t one of them, possessed with the courage of a lion, make his bolt by draping himself head to foot in a burka? How double-edged does the veil seem now?It’s a bit of a well-worn tradition apparently. For I’m told as much as protecting female modesty, the veil can also help a vulpine lover secure access, to his off-limits but willing love in the harem.Still, how we were all gripped by the thrill of the chase for a couple of weeks. CCTV footage of them plastered everywhere, rivalling a bad taste Benetton campaign. Blanket media coverage, till they were being led away under blankets. Extradited, locked up and forgotten about. News blackout.About time they were coming to trial I’d say. How much more evidence do we need to gather? Caught red handed on camera. Up in the dock, so we can all see you for the pathetic specimens you really are! You’re nothing! We can’t even recall your names. Your prolix, unBritish sounding names, more verbose than any meaningful ideology you care to spout.And, undaunted we’re still using the Underground aren’t we? Our wheels of commerce grind on. The fear and anxiety have diminished, cos you haven’t been able to repeat your heinous deed. Of course not, your top boys took themselves out in their one act. Your second top boys...are just languishing in our prison cells. I think you're done don't you?So it showed that you could. Big deal. The Met Commissioner had been warning us for three years, with his mantra that it was a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’. Well, ‘when’ has come to pass. And past. In theory the threat must still persist. But London has shrugged its broad shoulders and got on with life. We’re battle hardened, first from the Blitz, then the spud-munchers throwing blazing fertilizer at us. Such outrages only firm up our sense of community and togetherness. A sense of belonging you can’t possibly penetrate.When all’s said and done, ultimately you were no more than a mosquito or a gnat bite. A knee-jerk into the groin. Enough to make our eyes water, but no need for an overreaction of the body politic.Since there’s been no lasting terror beyond the one-off incident, therefore it had to have been an act of vengeful spite. A token. A hate token to the country of your birth. Not even your adoptive or foster country, but where you were born, brought up and educated. A single act of bloody bloodymindedness.Rather than play out your destructive oedipal fantasies on our bodies, you would have been better off blubbering on a shrink’s couch, except that is rooted in the other bunch of Semite cousins you claim to abhor. Hatred is always non-negotiable. Like prejudice.One of you only ended up on that bus cos you neglected to charge the battery. Still, how redolent was that image, with its roof ripped off like a sardine tin? Powerfully symbolic, but symptomatic of not very much at all. Except your lack of understanding of our way of life, both marooned up there in Yorkshire and holed up in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan.Only a tired old strategy of economic dislocation, targets the transport system. But every Londoner knows any three Tube lines are out of commission on a daily basis. Signal trouble usually. The bus ought to have been your cue, seeing as it’s our culture you’re at war with anyway.For our part, we may not be able to win a war on a word called ‘terror’. But you can triumph even less through war against a culture. Does Grozny or Gaza feel any more liberated by your act of derring-do? No, thought not.So it remains a stifled howl. The yelp from kicking a three-legged dog. A petulant display from infantile minds. No matter how downright angry I may be after what you’ve done, I’m still civilised enough not to be coming after your kith and kin. An eye for an eye? My eye more like. And I’ve got it trained on you."
Comments: "I heartily concur with the sentiments expressed from the top of the Clapham Omnibus. Though I believe there is a little more behind the motivations of such men, other than petty vindictiveness. I would refer you to the dedicated network, small as it is but dispersed worldwide, as represented by a myriad of sites on the Web. Where exist hundreds of webpage bomb-making cookbooks and footage of IED (improvised explosive device) attacks from the Middle East, shot from the vantage of those pressing the remote control for the bomb. There was even, in English, a Powerpointstep-by-step presentation of how to construct a homemade device, till the URL was spiked.
So, in similar vein, I thought it about time the arsenal ranged against this network was laid out in turn. To wit, the eyes and ears of entire nations. If the requisite information can be got out, to you the public, then there stands more chance of thwarting the bombers. The Authorities want the populace to keep eyes and ears open to help in the fight against terrorism, but they don’t want you to open your mouths and question what lies behind such actions in the first place. So as with your Blog host, I can hold my peace no longer. I will furnish you with all the information you need to know. To hell with the Official Secrets Act. If they haul me over the coals for whistle blowing, so be it. At least what I have to offer will already be out in the public domain. This is what you truly call a civil service. Below are my credentials.
I am and have been for over thirty years, part of the Intelligence Services of this country. In the past, we have been all that lay between you and periodic bloody carnage throughout our sceptred isle. It started with tracking down the Angry Brigade in the 1970’s. Then outflanking both Irish Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries (in the interest of balance). Welsh Nationalist firebombers (remember them? I know, hard to credit Pembroke and Monmouth ever being more desirable for holiday homes than Tuscany and Provence). Animal liberationists, (never averse to serving up some slabs of well done human steak). Extortioners. Arsonists with delusions of grandeur and an accelerant career ladder. Those mail bombers and nail bombers, letter bombers bearing grudges and misanthrope purveyors of hate crimes. Oh and Libyans. Most were embarked on prolonged campaigns of repeated outrages, that it was our duty to stop dead in their tracks.
We operated from the painstaking reconstruction of each and every device, plus a consideration of the psychological cues contained in the targets, to catch our perpetrators. I could tell you about the fertilizer based bombs favoured by the Boys from the Bogside, prior to their roaring trade in Czech semtex. Or the respectable middle class Angry Brigades, who would only blow up property and institutional symbols rather than target people. Even as government scientists were simultaneously devising neutron bombs that killed people, but left buildings standing. However all of this has gone out the blast shattered window here and now. Our manuals have been ripped up and used for kindling.
For the current crop of antinomian bombers are radically different. They are not pursuing a prolonged campaign. Just the one abomination is ample for their purposes. Lighting the touchpaper but not standing back, seems sufficient to pass on a flaming baton to the next disciples. Now we have to interdict them before they ever carry out the dark deed. That is made especially hard, since my superiors have not seen fit over the years, to establish much in the way of a network of contacts within these communities. To my lords and masters, most of these beardy blokes are 'clean faces'.
Made tougher still by the annealing of the present antagonists. In the past, a bomber, no matter how adept, would normally only set a device after several practice runs. And an explosion is the type of ultramundane sound, that prompts people’s recall, once it has been suggested to them that it bears a greater magnitude than a car backfiring. However, this lot either have done their training abroad and out of sight, or they just go for it hell for leather, the first and only time of asking. I believe that’s what caught out the second quartet of would be Tube bombers. They’d read their Blue Peter bomb primers, but for the want of any stickyback plastique, hadn’t been able to put it into any practice. Thank God.
Nor is their psychology the same. Most bombers bear a signature hallmark in their make up, as to why they have particularly embraced the destructive power of explosives. Some may revel in the intricacies of their constructions, the timers, trip switches and detonators. They may even want their bombs to be discovered rather than detonate, so they can pit their fiendish wits with our expert disposalists. Others may get their charge, if you’ll excuse the pun, from enchaining the elemental force of the big bang itself. The red hot wind that for a brief moment, expels and purges the very air itself. Before the devastation comes cascading back to earth. Collapse of stout party. The bomber as Hephaestus at his forge. Perhaps Zeus himself hurling his thunderclaps and leaving huge craters in the earth. Though obviously such association is beyond the majority of most bomb throwers. For they remain forever, third spear chucker in a lame production of a modern-day revenge tragedy.
But this clump are not interested in the finesse of their design, nor the temporary divine power it may vest them. For they willingly sacrifice themselves immediately upon such divinity and are consumed by it. They are not around to relive their handiwork in their mind’s eye, or even congratulate themselves grimly on a job well done. Ergo no signature handiwork, because it is an act never to be recreated. For them, the bomb is a means to a singular, solitary end, pure and simple. Same difference ricin, anthrax or nuclear waste. Ordination by ordnance. Unlike most bombers who have long-since skedaddled from the proposed locus of their perniciousness, these men probably do look their victims in the eyes shortly before triggering their devices. Indiscriminate, but somehow intimate. This is coffin calculus, at its simplest, most stripped down algorithm.
Having said that, like I say there are underlying factors behind the atrocities. Though I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say they constitute a body of coherent ideology. You probably all know the mantras of incitement: Palestine/ Iraq. American/ Crusader imperialism. Other hotspots around the world and corrupt, unIslamic Arab regimes. There’s a critique of Western materialism and sexual mores, with which I have a modicum of sympathy, but their solution for which I find yet more repellent. What this hodgepodge of ideas actually means, is that the diffuse network that is Al Qaeda, can inspire any local sparkplug to tap into his own motives. Like a sort of pick and mix of malcontentment. In the 1960’s Buddhist monks protested American Foreign Policy by setting themselves on fire. Something about Islam insinuates they have to make sure we combust along with them. Again, Clapham Omnibus has it about right with his positing that as a one off, they did it because they could. It has a lot in common with the goalless death dealing of Russian Nihilism of the Nineteenth Century. Just witness the current bloody insurgency in Iraq. For Shi’a and Sunni, you could almost read Hutu and Tutsi.
However, don’t for one moment believe that it has subsided on our Isles with this one isolated act. Just as a poisoner ought to arouse suspicion with the chemicals he purchases, we should all be on the lookout for bulk purchases, whether we are pharmacies, garden centres, catering suppliers or even hair salons. I don’t think it’s faintly possible to prejudice the case against the second cohort of Tube bombers, the ones who lived to face up to justice, but I can tell you that the constituents of their bombs were humble household products; hair bleach, nail polish remover and chapati flour. All the more terrible for being so mundane in their genesis. Things we utilise in our lifestyles, repackaged and spat back poisonously in our faces."
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"Joe Bloggs’ Blog, London, July 8th 2006The view from the top of the Clapham OmnibusA year to the day. Plus one. In order to honour the memorial ceremonies passing off with due dignity.But I can hold my peace no longer. Today I can ask the question, was that it??? A one-hit wonder? Is that the sum total, one atrocity?Admittedly well-planned and co-ordinated, but where’s the sustained follow-up campaign? Apart from the four stooges who couldn’t even make a chapati, much less a bomb. And didn’t one of them, possessed with the courage of a lion, make his bolt by draping himself head to foot in a burka? How double-edged does the veil seem now?It’s a bit of a well-worn tradition apparently. For I’m told as much as protecting female modesty, the veil can also help a vulpine lover secure access, to his off-limits but willing love in the harem.Still, how we were all gripped by the thrill of the chase for a couple of weeks. CCTV footage of them plastered everywhere, rivalling a bad taste Benetton campaign. Blanket media coverage, till they were being led away under blankets. Extradited, locked up and forgotten about. News blackout.About time they were coming to trial I’d say. How much more evidence do we need to gather? Caught red handed on camera. Up in the dock, so we can all see you for the pathetic specimens you really are! You’re nothing! We can’t even recall your names. Your prolix, unBritish sounding names, more verbose than any meaningful ideology you care to spout.And, undaunted we’re still using the Underground aren’t we? Our wheels of commerce grind on. The fear and anxiety have diminished, cos you haven’t been able to repeat your heinous deed. Of course not, your top boys took themselves out in their one act. Your second top boys...are just languishing in our prison cells. I think you're done don't you?So it showed that you could. Big deal. The Met Commissioner had been warning us for three years, with his mantra that it was a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’. Well, ‘when’ has come to pass. And past. In theory the threat must still persist. But London has shrugged its broad shoulders and got on with life. We’re battle hardened, first from the Blitz, then the spud-munchers throwing blazing fertilizer at us. Such outrages only firm up our sense of community and togetherness. A sense of belonging you can’t possibly penetrate.When all’s said and done, ultimately you were no more than a mosquito or a gnat bite. A knee-jerk into the groin. Enough to make our eyes water, but no need for an overreaction of the body politic.Since there’s been no lasting terror beyond the one-off incident, therefore it had to have been an act of vengeful spite. A token. A hate token to the country of your birth. Not even your adoptive or foster country, but where you were born, brought up and educated. A single act of bloody bloodymindedness.Rather than play out your destructive oedipal fantasies on our bodies, you would have been better off blubbering on a shrink’s couch, except that is rooted in the other bunch of Semite cousins you claim to abhor. Hatred is always non-negotiable. Like prejudice.One of you only ended up on that bus cos you neglected to charge the battery. Still, how redolent was that image, with its roof ripped off like a sardine tin? Powerfully symbolic, but symptomatic of not very much at all. Except your lack of understanding of our way of life, both marooned up there in Yorkshire and holed up in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan.Only a tired old strategy of economic dislocation, targets the transport system. But every Londoner knows any three Tube lines are out of commission on a daily basis. Signal trouble usually. The bus ought to have been your cue, seeing as it’s our culture you’re at war with anyway.For our part, we may not be able to win a war on a word called ‘terror’. But you can triumph even less through war against a culture. Does Grozny or Gaza feel any more liberated by your act of derring-do? No, thought not.So it remains a stifled howl. The yelp from kicking a three-legged dog. A petulant display from infantile minds. No matter how downright angry I may be after what you’ve done, I’m still civilised enough not to be coming after your kith and kin. An eye for an eye? My eye more like. And I’ve got it trained on you."
Comments: "I heartily concur with the sentiments expressed from the top of the Clapham Omnibus. Though I believe there is a little more behind the motivations of such men, other than petty vindictiveness. I would refer you to the dedicated network, small as it is but dispersed worldwide, as represented by a myriad of sites on the Web. Where exist hundreds of webpage bomb-making cookbooks and footage of IED (improvised explosive device) attacks from the Middle East, shot from the vantage of those pressing the remote control for the bomb. There was even, in English, a Powerpointstep-by-step presentation of how to construct a homemade device, till the URL was spiked.
So, in similar vein, I thought it about time the arsenal ranged against this network was laid out in turn. To wit, the eyes and ears of entire nations. If the requisite information can be got out, to you the public, then there stands more chance of thwarting the bombers. The Authorities want the populace to keep eyes and ears open to help in the fight against terrorism, but they don’t want you to open your mouths and question what lies behind such actions in the first place. So as with your Blog host, I can hold my peace no longer. I will furnish you with all the information you need to know. To hell with the Official Secrets Act. If they haul me over the coals for whistle blowing, so be it. At least what I have to offer will already be out in the public domain. This is what you truly call a civil service. Below are my credentials.
I am and have been for over thirty years, part of the Intelligence Services of this country. In the past, we have been all that lay between you and periodic bloody carnage throughout our sceptred isle. It started with tracking down the Angry Brigade in the 1970’s. Then outflanking both Irish Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries (in the interest of balance). Welsh Nationalist firebombers (remember them? I know, hard to credit Pembroke and Monmouth ever being more desirable for holiday homes than Tuscany and Provence). Animal liberationists, (never averse to serving up some slabs of well done human steak). Extortioners. Arsonists with delusions of grandeur and an accelerant career ladder. Those mail bombers and nail bombers, letter bombers bearing grudges and misanthrope purveyors of hate crimes. Oh and Libyans. Most were embarked on prolonged campaigns of repeated outrages, that it was our duty to stop dead in their tracks.
We operated from the painstaking reconstruction of each and every device, plus a consideration of the psychological cues contained in the targets, to catch our perpetrators. I could tell you about the fertilizer based bombs favoured by the Boys from the Bogside, prior to their roaring trade in Czech semtex. Or the respectable middle class Angry Brigades, who would only blow up property and institutional symbols rather than target people. Even as government scientists were simultaneously devising neutron bombs that killed people, but left buildings standing. However all of this has gone out the blast shattered window here and now. Our manuals have been ripped up and used for kindling.
For the current crop of antinomian bombers are radically different. They are not pursuing a prolonged campaign. Just the one abomination is ample for their purposes. Lighting the touchpaper but not standing back, seems sufficient to pass on a flaming baton to the next disciples. Now we have to interdict them before they ever carry out the dark deed. That is made especially hard, since my superiors have not seen fit over the years, to establish much in the way of a network of contacts within these communities. To my lords and masters, most of these beardy blokes are 'clean faces'.
Made tougher still by the annealing of the present antagonists. In the past, a bomber, no matter how adept, would normally only set a device after several practice runs. And an explosion is the type of ultramundane sound, that prompts people’s recall, once it has been suggested to them that it bears a greater magnitude than a car backfiring. However, this lot either have done their training abroad and out of sight, or they just go for it hell for leather, the first and only time of asking. I believe that’s what caught out the second quartet of would be Tube bombers. They’d read their Blue Peter bomb primers, but for the want of any stickyback plastique, hadn’t been able to put it into any practice. Thank God.
Nor is their psychology the same. Most bombers bear a signature hallmark in their make up, as to why they have particularly embraced the destructive power of explosives. Some may revel in the intricacies of their constructions, the timers, trip switches and detonators. They may even want their bombs to be discovered rather than detonate, so they can pit their fiendish wits with our expert disposalists. Others may get their charge, if you’ll excuse the pun, from enchaining the elemental force of the big bang itself. The red hot wind that for a brief moment, expels and purges the very air itself. Before the devastation comes cascading back to earth. Collapse of stout party. The bomber as Hephaestus at his forge. Perhaps Zeus himself hurling his thunderclaps and leaving huge craters in the earth. Though obviously such association is beyond the majority of most bomb throwers. For they remain forever, third spear chucker in a lame production of a modern-day revenge tragedy.
But this clump are not interested in the finesse of their design, nor the temporary divine power it may vest them. For they willingly sacrifice themselves immediately upon such divinity and are consumed by it. They are not around to relive their handiwork in their mind’s eye, or even congratulate themselves grimly on a job well done. Ergo no signature handiwork, because it is an act never to be recreated. For them, the bomb is a means to a singular, solitary end, pure and simple. Same difference ricin, anthrax or nuclear waste. Ordination by ordnance. Unlike most bombers who have long-since skedaddled from the proposed locus of their perniciousness, these men probably do look their victims in the eyes shortly before triggering their devices. Indiscriminate, but somehow intimate. This is coffin calculus, at its simplest, most stripped down algorithm.
Having said that, like I say there are underlying factors behind the atrocities. Though I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say they constitute a body of coherent ideology. You probably all know the mantras of incitement: Palestine/ Iraq. American/ Crusader imperialism. Other hotspots around the world and corrupt, unIslamic Arab regimes. There’s a critique of Western materialism and sexual mores, with which I have a modicum of sympathy, but their solution for which I find yet more repellent. What this hodgepodge of ideas actually means, is that the diffuse network that is Al Qaeda, can inspire any local sparkplug to tap into his own motives. Like a sort of pick and mix of malcontentment. In the 1960’s Buddhist monks protested American Foreign Policy by setting themselves on fire. Something about Islam insinuates they have to make sure we combust along with them. Again, Clapham Omnibus has it about right with his positing that as a one off, they did it because they could. It has a lot in common with the goalless death dealing of Russian Nihilism of the Nineteenth Century. Just witness the current bloody insurgency in Iraq. For Shi’a and Sunni, you could almost read Hutu and Tutsi.
However, don’t for one moment believe that it has subsided on our Isles with this one isolated act. Just as a poisoner ought to arouse suspicion with the chemicals he purchases, we should all be on the lookout for bulk purchases, whether we are pharmacies, garden centres, catering suppliers or even hair salons. I don’t think it’s faintly possible to prejudice the case against the second cohort of Tube bombers, the ones who lived to face up to justice, but I can tell you that the constituents of their bombs were humble household products; hair bleach, nail polish remover and chapati flour. All the more terrible for being so mundane in their genesis. Things we utilise in our lifestyles, repackaged and spat back poisonously in our faces."
Available from Amazon UK US
April 17, 2013
The Idea Of A Man - Friday Flash
The mummified remains from the peat bog looked both like a man and yet very alien at the same time. The chemicals had preserved his body whole, but had tanned it like leather. It looked like one of Van Hagen's plasticised human art exhibits. His clothes were only preserved as shredded rags in places, but the bindings that shackled his hands behind his back were intact for all to see. Who was this man? Who had he been?
The detail of the fetters pricked people's imagination, as conclusions were drawn that the man had been executed as a prisoner. Or offered as a sacrifice. Science could analyse what the man's last supper had been. The remains of his clothes, or their accessories to be more accurate, suggested tantalising glimpses of his social status. His tattoos were felt to yield him a personal narrative depicted on his skin. The wear and erosion of his X-Rayed bones was interpreted for the way that he had walked and that he was left-handed. A profile of this man was built up and accordingly a name was conferred upon him so that everyone imagined they knew who he was. We conjured a full idea of who he had been. Had he known himself as much as we purported to know him? Had he looked inside himself as deeply as our forensic instruments?
There were queues snaking round the museum. A glass case, like a Damien Hirst bisected animal exhibit, contained the lithified remains of a man. A citizen of Pompeii, cured and petrified beneath volcanic ash. Who was this man? Who had he been?
No one of course, since his essence had long vaporised into the air. The ash had formed a perfect mould of his body, and the hollow mould had been cast with plaster of Paris to bring out his ghostly essence now on display behind glass. The idea and outline of a man. Slightly shrunken compared to our own contemporary well-nourished corpulence, his body bent into the unnatural angles of death. Hands protecting his featureless face, or perhaps clasped there in final prayer. Or maybe just blotting out the sight of impending oblivion. This sleeping man persecuted by unimaginably agonised dreams for eternity. Tourists travel to Herculaneum to see the lewd mosaics and graffiti, in order to transpose Pompeii's victims to the clues here about their lives. The wine coolers. The baths and water plumbing. They never saw it coming, but we have a pretty good picture. We fleshed him out, gave him a back story and inducted him into our collective history. This hollow man was now full of substance. Ornamentally displayed there under glass. Cast as an impure idea of a man who once might have been. Fired not in flesh but in gypsum. His body pockmarked with air bubbles and tiny gouges in the grain of his second skin. Turned inside out, like a death mask viewed from within. Glazed with our projections colouring him. Fusing him to our sensibilities rather than any he may have once held.
The TV channels had deemed that we couldn't view deep fried crispy human, but squashed flat as a pancake man was entirely palatable. Hence the cameras didn't zoom in on retreating armies burned in the cabins of their trucks and seared to the steering wheels by the heat of high explosive. However, the soldier who had presumably tried to flee from the troop carrier once the planes had been detected overhead, but ended up beneath the caterpillar tracks of his armoured vehicle, was fit for human goggle-box consumption. Who was this man? Who had he been?
He had been filleted, his vertebrae crushed beneath the multi-tonned vehicle, permitting the triumphant news crews of the victors to pun about his spinelessness. But his body had merged with the hardened banks of mud under the tracks, so that he was the same colour as the soil. It wasn't possible to determine if he was an unwilling conscript into this war, wrenched from his family, or a fervent defender of the motherland. Either way he was regarded as an implacable foe. Both sides could legitimately claim him as their kill. Whether he had perished underneath the tracks, a victim of friendly fire, or killed from above and his lifeless corpse tangled up in the desperately grinding caterpillar tracks, neither would be determined through any forensic autopsy, since this was reputedly not a crime scene. Despite the helpless turkey shoot it had turned out to be for the pilots and bombardiers.
He was scarce a man anymore, more of a caterpillar track. A skid mark. Fastened to mother earth, part of her topography, a contour of the local terrain. The war for the land, or more accurately the minerals and ores contained within it, had absorbed him into its maw. His bones pulverised, once again embosomed he could suckle toothlessly at the motherland's dried up-breast. An etiolated baby she offered up in her begging of favours from the victorious armies.
These men we never knew when they were alive. I'd say we only injected them with humanity posthumously, but posthumous etymologically speaking implies they were buried in soil, when of course two were merely shrouded by their murderous surroundings, while the third was blended into them. They were ashes to ashes, dust to dust on contact with their reaper. The only fleeting corporeality they evidenced was that they had died and ceased to be. That is the only pure idea of these men we were entitled to hold. Their quietus the sole element these mortal beings ever shared with us.
