"Hello Sir, what can I get you".
"I´d like a cup of tea".
"We only do Breakfast Tea mate, none of that green bollocks....."
Great to be back in Blighty!
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Saturday 4 December 2010
WikiLeaks & the Potential for New Histories
There are many collective questions being provoked by the WikiLeaks exposures.
How much do we really want to know?
Do we trust our leadership?
What cost for transparency?
The public seems to be buying into the call by government and mass media to stop
WikiLeaks and put Assange on trial.
When a system is under threat, it responds by attacking the assailant.
What is interesting is that it is not only the US government (one senator has
called for Assange´s assassination) who are after Assange.
Even friends of mine on the left, as well as political apathetics seem to have it in for
him.
People identify and believe in the system more than they care to admit at a dinner
party. They are happy to talk anarchical politics but when push comes to shove, and something threatens them - they get afraid. They protect. They yearn to uphold the status quo.
The justifiable problem most people have with the Leaks is with the potential human fall out.
This is without doubt a major concern. For most, the threat to an individual
life is too great a cost for information.. And it is an utterly humane stand point.
Let the state keep its secrets, that is why it is elected after all - to be the custodian of that which we don´t want to know.
But it is also philosophically bankrupt.
The notion that the machinery of the state is fundamentally sound, good or trustworthy is utter nonsense.
These machines have existed in secrecy and all too often without unaccountability for centuries, and you can find then at the heart of every war, assassination, deprivation and torture since time began.
Jesus, the last American administration sanctioned mass torture for crying out loud.
And still we would rather not know.
We rail against Assange because his revelations threaten innocents.
Yet we don´t want to look at our own complicity in the terrible deprivation of things,
upheld by our own votes.
And here is the point for me.
WikiLeaks is not about challenging (necessarily) government. It is about challenging the
the very systems that control government.
Governments come and go, but the state machine - business, the military sector,
the vested interests of the very rich & powerful - stay.
The government is essentially an illusion. It is the mask the devil wears, or the
puppet the puppet master wields.
Julian Assange is not a terrorist and he is not a freedom fighter. He is just a vessel.
The systems which have not been challenged or exposed, or held accountable for
centuries are now having to face up to a new phenomenon.
Our society is porous and the old static systems are under threat from the new
technologies.
Assange is a symptom of this, not the cause. He is just a consequence of evolution.
What he does or doesn´t do someone else will.
And if we believe that there are not misdeeds and manipulations happening behind
close doors, then we are just fools.
New frontiers are opening, and change necessarily means a degree of suffering.
That is not to justify any threat to any human life, how ever could you?
But you have to face the reality of what is happening sociologically.
And if you think that governments are best left to deal with things then you just have
to look at any page in your history manual.
There have been just wars. But so few.
The new world is unfolding before our eyes. It will not collapse under its own weight.
But it will be threatened. And there will be fall out. And there will be casualties.
But the history we come from is not the one that we have to live in. There is the
potential for new, richer histories. Do we have the courage to build them?
There needs to be more openness and accountability. It is the only way that
human greed, vanity, lust and desire for power can ever be held in check.
I am for Julian Assange.
How much do we really want to know?
Do we trust our leadership?
What cost for transparency?
The public seems to be buying into the call by government and mass media to stop
WikiLeaks and put Assange on trial.
When a system is under threat, it responds by attacking the assailant.
What is interesting is that it is not only the US government (one senator has
called for Assange´s assassination) who are after Assange.
Even friends of mine on the left, as well as political apathetics seem to have it in for
him.
People identify and believe in the system more than they care to admit at a dinner
party. They are happy to talk anarchical politics but when push comes to shove, and something threatens them - they get afraid. They protect. They yearn to uphold the status quo.
The justifiable problem most people have with the Leaks is with the potential human fall out.
This is without doubt a major concern. For most, the threat to an individual
life is too great a cost for information.. And it is an utterly humane stand point.
Let the state keep its secrets, that is why it is elected after all - to be the custodian of that which we don´t want to know.
But it is also philosophically bankrupt.
The notion that the machinery of the state is fundamentally sound, good or trustworthy is utter nonsense.
These machines have existed in secrecy and all too often without unaccountability for centuries, and you can find then at the heart of every war, assassination, deprivation and torture since time began.
Jesus, the last American administration sanctioned mass torture for crying out loud.
And still we would rather not know.
We rail against Assange because his revelations threaten innocents.
Yet we don´t want to look at our own complicity in the terrible deprivation of things,
upheld by our own votes.
And here is the point for me.
WikiLeaks is not about challenging (necessarily) government. It is about challenging the
the very systems that control government.
Governments come and go, but the state machine - business, the military sector,
the vested interests of the very rich & powerful - stay.
The government is essentially an illusion. It is the mask the devil wears, or the
puppet the puppet master wields.
Julian Assange is not a terrorist and he is not a freedom fighter. He is just a vessel.
The systems which have not been challenged or exposed, or held accountable for
centuries are now having to face up to a new phenomenon.
Our society is porous and the old static systems are under threat from the new
technologies.
Assange is a symptom of this, not the cause. He is just a consequence of evolution.
What he does or doesn´t do someone else will.
And if we believe that there are not misdeeds and manipulations happening behind
close doors, then we are just fools.
New frontiers are opening, and change necessarily means a degree of suffering.
That is not to justify any threat to any human life, how ever could you?
But you have to face the reality of what is happening sociologically.
And if you think that governments are best left to deal with things then you just have
to look at any page in your history manual.
There have been just wars. But so few.
The new world is unfolding before our eyes. It will not collapse under its own weight.
But it will be threatened. And there will be fall out. And there will be casualties.
But the history we come from is not the one that we have to live in. There is the
potential for new, richer histories. Do we have the courage to build them?
There needs to be more openness and accountability. It is the only way that
human greed, vanity, lust and desire for power can ever be held in check.
I am for Julian Assange.
Friday 3 December 2010
Other People´s Definition of it....
It is something about being okay about being outside love, okay about being inside
failure, or at least other people´s definition of it.
If you are always needing to be in the safe, in the warm, in the content I guess there
is always the threat of the worlds intent.
You get ripped apart by your longing, and your longing is what gives life its shape,
its romance, its character. You sacrafice your longing at your peril.
And I can´t be damn well be bothered to justify or compare whatever the hell I am going
through in this moment to the terrors & tyrannies of the world.
It is just what it is, for right or wrong, good or bad. And I feel that we have the right to live, sometimes at least, in our own moment.
Because each of us has our little sacrifices made. Each of us has our compromises. Each
of us has our little lies, our slightly bigger secrets, and our manifold imperfections.
Can you live with the imperfections? Can you thrive in the imperfection?
I don´t give a dam if our bodies are just a conspiracy of sub-atomical primates
plotting together to shape our actions. In fact I am all the better for it because there
is the dam mystery, and there my next dam justification and I will puff gladly on
this cigarette that I am not smoking, and I will look beseechingly at the stars that
I cannot see for a better tomorrow, and if you want to get in the way of these
longings, then dam you to hell with all my other damnations, someone will surely
come to rescue you anyway, but it won´t be me.
And what of forgiveness? Forgiveness for all of those fantasies of wrong doing that
just don´t matter a dam in the smaller or greater scheme of things.
But I heard wisdom once or twice in my life.
And one time it was given to me by an elderly lady, and it was about my relationship
with my father, with whom I managed to some how fall out with nearly 7 years ago
and....not say hardly a dam word since.
And it was just this - the greatest power lies in forgiveness.
And it just resonated.
And in that I knew that not only had I the power of forgiveness, but that I could forgive -
that I wanted to forgive.
Our liberations strike us like claps of holt out of nowhere.
Thank you that Empress. That lady whose so many of miles of journey arrived to help
me for that one moment.
And it just goes to show. When we allow ourselves to be blind to the good that is happening to us amongst the shit - it becomes our own choice to be miserable.
There is just good stuff everywhere, and we choose not to see it.
failure, or at least other people´s definition of it.
If you are always needing to be in the safe, in the warm, in the content I guess there
is always the threat of the worlds intent.
You get ripped apart by your longing, and your longing is what gives life its shape,
its romance, its character. You sacrafice your longing at your peril.
And I can´t be damn well be bothered to justify or compare whatever the hell I am going
through in this moment to the terrors & tyrannies of the world.
It is just what it is, for right or wrong, good or bad. And I feel that we have the right to live, sometimes at least, in our own moment.
Because each of us has our little sacrifices made. Each of us has our compromises. Each
of us has our little lies, our slightly bigger secrets, and our manifold imperfections.
Can you live with the imperfections? Can you thrive in the imperfection?
I don´t give a dam if our bodies are just a conspiracy of sub-atomical primates
plotting together to shape our actions. In fact I am all the better for it because there
is the dam mystery, and there my next dam justification and I will puff gladly on
this cigarette that I am not smoking, and I will look beseechingly at the stars that
I cannot see for a better tomorrow, and if you want to get in the way of these
longings, then dam you to hell with all my other damnations, someone will surely
come to rescue you anyway, but it won´t be me.
And what of forgiveness? Forgiveness for all of those fantasies of wrong doing that
just don´t matter a dam in the smaller or greater scheme of things.
But I heard wisdom once or twice in my life.
And one time it was given to me by an elderly lady, and it was about my relationship
with my father, with whom I managed to some how fall out with nearly 7 years ago
and....not say hardly a dam word since.
And it was just this - the greatest power lies in forgiveness.
And it just resonated.
And in that I knew that not only had I the power of forgiveness, but that I could forgive -
that I wanted to forgive.
Our liberations strike us like claps of holt out of nowhere.
Thank you that Empress. That lady whose so many of miles of journey arrived to help
me for that one moment.
And it just goes to show. When we allow ourselves to be blind to the good that is happening to us amongst the shit - it becomes our own choice to be miserable.
There is just good stuff everywhere, and we choose not to see it.
Monday 29 November 2010
She Loves Most Those Who Enslave Themselves To Her
Song is so endlessly fascinating. It is as if it will only show itself to you if you are willing
to live in the cracks, in the places that feels slightly uncomfortable. Only when your perception gets a little skewed, or your life a little upturned does it say, ah yes, here I am again, I have found you worthy.
She is like a siren you can never quite get to, or the mistress without Royal blood.
And when you start living wrong, when you upset her, she just vanishes. No mail or telephone call to check in. Just her presence felt by her absence.
She likes it when you renounce. When you kill distractions. If you chuck out television sets.
She is jealous of all media, but seems to make exception of newspapers. She is utterly fickle,
yet somehow exacting.
And there you have it. She loves most those who enslave themselves to her. And even in that context, if she finds you hollow she gives you nothing. Well, maybe Muzak. But there´s never a shortage of that. One resource that is not peaked.
Humans after all will never run out of shit.
to live in the cracks, in the places that feels slightly uncomfortable. Only when your perception gets a little skewed, or your life a little upturned does it say, ah yes, here I am again, I have found you worthy.
She is like a siren you can never quite get to, or the mistress without Royal blood.
And when you start living wrong, when you upset her, she just vanishes. No mail or telephone call to check in. Just her presence felt by her absence.
She likes it when you renounce. When you kill distractions. If you chuck out television sets.
She is jealous of all media, but seems to make exception of newspapers. She is utterly fickle,
yet somehow exacting.
And there you have it. She loves most those who enslave themselves to her. And even in that context, if she finds you hollow she gives you nothing. Well, maybe Muzak. But there´s never a shortage of that. One resource that is not peaked.
Humans after all will never run out of shit.
Sunday 28 November 2010
Rites of Passage
Those night sweats. Sometimes each night, and without warning, and without
reason, and worse in the cold where sheets are sodden & the bodies pimples
find themselves without friend in winter.
You´ve bought again into the wrong thing. And it didn´t come at a discounted price.
And there´s nothing going forward but austerity. And that is fine. That is how it
is. That is real life.
The exclusion of joy accepted in the name of going after it. Not fake but proper.
With the discipline and acceptance of what life is, or has named itself to be.
Food processed. Guzzled by the body in merciless hours where no one sees nothing
and for that reason has more value - but also more pathos. Those hours sweated by each
one of us in the name of dream. Always alone, and necessarily alone - it is a rite of
fucking passage.
And morning is relentless and doesn´t change its schedule for you. And winter might
wrestle with climate warming but it isn´t going with out a fight buster. And
if it does, it will be with the mother of all freezes - and you my friend, yes
you - you are not going to survive it.
I will of course. I am off to the Arctic Basin. I am going to mate with my austerity
and make new curses to the false names given to God by man.
I will breed relentlessly with the nothingness. And be enlightened in my futility. And I will
pay a glance back over my shoulder to my withering memories to make sure
they are truly dead, and have no longer cause to haunt me.
And loss? Yes loss always finds new ways to manifest. Innocence is measured
by the count-down to its ending. And for that reason it remains the most precious thing that ever existed on our little bit of rock.
I don´t care about the Sages, or the great books. That which throws a murderous
glance towards innocence will find nothing but obliteration from me. And that
makes the very nature of things my enemy. And in that I find my grievance with
God.
Not in my own fall - that is already fallen. But in that which is yet to fall, and
was given no fucking chance in the first place.
And it is not depressing or introverted. It is just the bare facts laid out cold, facts I am
okay with. Facts I will work with. There is something worth fighting for. And preserving it
is the greatest lost cause since time began. It is the most noble fight. And in that place,
and only that place, can we find holiness.
reason, and worse in the cold where sheets are sodden & the bodies pimples
find themselves without friend in winter.
You´ve bought again into the wrong thing. And it didn´t come at a discounted price.
And there´s nothing going forward but austerity. And that is fine. That is how it
is. That is real life.
The exclusion of joy accepted in the name of going after it. Not fake but proper.
With the discipline and acceptance of what life is, or has named itself to be.
Food processed. Guzzled by the body in merciless hours where no one sees nothing
and for that reason has more value - but also more pathos. Those hours sweated by each
one of us in the name of dream. Always alone, and necessarily alone - it is a rite of
fucking passage.
And morning is relentless and doesn´t change its schedule for you. And winter might
wrestle with climate warming but it isn´t going with out a fight buster. And
if it does, it will be with the mother of all freezes - and you my friend, yes
you - you are not going to survive it.
I will of course. I am off to the Arctic Basin. I am going to mate with my austerity
and make new curses to the false names given to God by man.
I will breed relentlessly with the nothingness. And be enlightened in my futility. And I will
pay a glance back over my shoulder to my withering memories to make sure
they are truly dead, and have no longer cause to haunt me.
And loss? Yes loss always finds new ways to manifest. Innocence is measured
by the count-down to its ending. And for that reason it remains the most precious thing that ever existed on our little bit of rock.
I don´t care about the Sages, or the great books. That which throws a murderous
glance towards innocence will find nothing but obliteration from me. And that
makes the very nature of things my enemy. And in that I find my grievance with
God.
Not in my own fall - that is already fallen. But in that which is yet to fall, and
was given no fucking chance in the first place.
And it is not depressing or introverted. It is just the bare facts laid out cold, facts I am
okay with. Facts I will work with. There is something worth fighting for. And preserving it
is the greatest lost cause since time began. It is the most noble fight. And in that place,
and only that place, can we find holiness.
Saturday 13 November 2010
For Whom The Bell Tolls?
The bell is tolling and there is nothing you can do, your time has been called.
Pat down the apocalypse ash. Empty the urns they are too heavy to take. A last glimpse at the
remnants by the alter of what you have held most dear.
What does the skyline look like?
It is brilliant in its savagery. Inimitable in its endlessness. Mocking towards the survivors.
Its light pervades the ground. Even the shadows are pregnant with it by its absence.
You have entertained the darkness one too many times and now it has set in to stay.
How much we resist the changeability of things. How much we yearn for what doesn´t exist. Our stability´s. Our bourgeoise longing for order.
Love seems to ask for attachment, to take hold truly and dearly and forever. Is that why we are so in love with love? That it consistently mounts the greatest, most dashing, most futile challenge to time´s irresistible march?
Do we love love because it necessarily must die, yet dies so beautifully? Love is the greatest martyr. When it dies it becomes more powerful, more transcendent than time itself.
When love becomes idea it becomes eternal. But it doesn´t stop the pain, that it necessarily and consistently dies. Its human form perishes. Its memory dwindles.
Yes still it finds new ways to be reborn, new ways to conquer, new ways to revitalize itself. The more it is crushed the greater it becomes. The more it is found scarce the greater its return.
Love. Love love love.
Forgive me if I am attached. Forgive me for my manifold delusions, for my pitiful insights.
Because before somethings we are naked. And even in the face of the most ineffable evil, love stands unbroken.
Pat down the apocalypse ash. Empty the urns they are too heavy to take. A last glimpse at the
remnants by the alter of what you have held most dear.
What does the skyline look like?
It is brilliant in its savagery. Inimitable in its endlessness. Mocking towards the survivors.
Its light pervades the ground. Even the shadows are pregnant with it by its absence.
You have entertained the darkness one too many times and now it has set in to stay.
How much we resist the changeability of things. How much we yearn for what doesn´t exist. Our stability´s. Our bourgeoise longing for order.
Love seems to ask for attachment, to take hold truly and dearly and forever. Is that why we are so in love with love? That it consistently mounts the greatest, most dashing, most futile challenge to time´s irresistible march?
Do we love love because it necessarily must die, yet dies so beautifully? Love is the greatest martyr. When it dies it becomes more powerful, more transcendent than time itself.
When love becomes idea it becomes eternal. But it doesn´t stop the pain, that it necessarily and consistently dies. Its human form perishes. Its memory dwindles.
Yes still it finds new ways to be reborn, new ways to conquer, new ways to revitalize itself. The more it is crushed the greater it becomes. The more it is found scarce the greater its return.
Love. Love love love.
Forgive me if I am attached. Forgive me for my manifold delusions, for my pitiful insights.
Because before somethings we are naked. And even in the face of the most ineffable evil, love stands unbroken.
Friday 12 November 2010
And What of Happiness?
And what of happiness?
What have I to add to that particular question?
Elusive?
Jesus, did you ever get close to even the potential for an original thought? And that is not the dear Messiah to whom I am asking that question...or his doubters for that reason.
I am just talking about skull crushing and complete and utter unhappiness. The one that kind be hidden from, except from the whole dam world, because that happens to be your very own twisted expertise.
The happy face the clown puts out in the hope that someone will recognize it smashable.
There is my heart. Rip it out. What? You failed? Well that is hardly surprising given the fact it is already expertly drawn out and dissected into all its deformed longings on this particular operating table.
Give me some champagne. I am crying my millionth uncried tear tonight.
Give me my rewards for the prizes I don´t deserve - they mean the most....that way i can laugh genuinely for the first time.
I need something to break.
So i chose the most beautiful, the most cherished. The weakest? The easiest? Relationships are always the easiest to break, because they are in the most private things. And we always reveal ourselves the contemptible scoundrels we are in the very places where we are most hidden.
Forgive me please because I cannot forgive you.
Life is too replete with its opposite to countenance any type of councelling.
It just intrinsically baffles itself because it plain and simply does not want to be understood at all. In any way what so ever.
There.
I am unhappy.
Can I say it any more plainly?
What have I to add to that particular question?
Elusive?
Jesus, did you ever get close to even the potential for an original thought? And that is not the dear Messiah to whom I am asking that question...or his doubters for that reason.
I am just talking about skull crushing and complete and utter unhappiness. The one that kind be hidden from, except from the whole dam world, because that happens to be your very own twisted expertise.
The happy face the clown puts out in the hope that someone will recognize it smashable.
There is my heart. Rip it out. What? You failed? Well that is hardly surprising given the fact it is already expertly drawn out and dissected into all its deformed longings on this particular operating table.
Give me some champagne. I am crying my millionth uncried tear tonight.
Give me my rewards for the prizes I don´t deserve - they mean the most....that way i can laugh genuinely for the first time.
I need something to break.
So i chose the most beautiful, the most cherished. The weakest? The easiest? Relationships are always the easiest to break, because they are in the most private things. And we always reveal ourselves the contemptible scoundrels we are in the very places where we are most hidden.
Forgive me please because I cannot forgive you.
Life is too replete with its opposite to countenance any type of councelling.
It just intrinsically baffles itself because it plain and simply does not want to be understood at all. In any way what so ever.
There.
I am unhappy.
Can I say it any more plainly?
Thursday 11 November 2010
Dust Filled With Sunbeams
Cauldron desires. First instinct is to clamp up, shut down.
See saw between what you give and what you take.
Sometimes the protagonist of selfishness.
Other times you give till there is not a drop of liquid left in your body.
You finally arrived. Not worldly. But in terms of reduction. In terms of an essence.
Killed everything that is beautiful in yourself. Traded it for an ugliness that was honest.
Felt that was a foundation you could build on.
No preening. No pouting. No good hair cuts, or tight trousers or hot dates. Warfare on everything that is to the outside acceptable. A completely futile attempt at something pure. Murderous focus.
Focus on killing the beautiful, the loved, the joyful, all that is worthwhile. The things they sit upon their laps to look good to the world. To cause a stir to be seen. To yawn fucking yawn fucking yawn, I yawned once, I yawn again, I yawn with beauty, I yawn with pride, I yawn with fuck you´s and I yawn with thank you´s, and I yawn at most stuff....but when I see something humble, something real something worthwhile.....I see it.
And when I don´t I am just a moth. And I ask forgiveness. And also to the moth that I use for the clumsy metaphor. It is unmeant.
Give me more void that I may rant into it. Your endlessness is the only place suitable for my contemptible complaints.
Have the fucking courage to put whatever it dam well is into words man. Shake it off. Damnation upon damnation, and a salutation to the monks.
I remember your vows of silence and I see them noble.
They are not forgotten. What you said is not forgotten because it was never said.
You liar, you cad, you speaker of nonsense. You tapper of buttons & fruitfilled technology, where is your pipe? Where your glorious hat, with its dust filled with sunbeams? The typewriter that you don´t know how to use. Mocks you. Makes you feel worthless.
Every photo of a type writer with an empty bottle of wine and ashtray full of cigarettes made you feel empty. Like there was a stolen moment in time that someone else robbed you of. Those fucking bastards. Those fucking contemptible bastards. How dare they?
You make your self anew. A warrior. A Criminal. A Nothing. A Something. A vessel full of love or neglect or capacity to bring something that would be a wonder in itself.
And curse these words too while I am cursing. They remind me of every moment unwritten. Every moment unlived. Every moment the courage was not taken to do what needed to be done. And in all those moments you wasted your potential and what you could have become.
But then you became what you are and you find yourself unable to regret anyway. You are completely acquiescent before the complete and utter ineffability of chance. You are a saboteur and constructor at the same time. You lost your way to find your way. You had to lose your way: it was the only chance you had of making a map of the unknown.
And there are place where what ever you do is stolen. Whatever you do will be stolen from. Ha ha ha ha ha ha fucking ha ha ha ha ha ha. ah ha ha haaha h haha.
Others names put where they don´t belong.
And the endless voice of the universe screaming out in its fantastical cackle about the absolute sheer and utter absurdity and entertainment of it all.
Because everything you care about in this particular moment is nonsense. NONSENSE.
And only with that realization can you start again anew. And get back to where it was that you should have begun from in the beginning.
See saw between what you give and what you take.
Sometimes the protagonist of selfishness.
Other times you give till there is not a drop of liquid left in your body.
You finally arrived. Not worldly. But in terms of reduction. In terms of an essence.
Killed everything that is beautiful in yourself. Traded it for an ugliness that was honest.
Felt that was a foundation you could build on.
No preening. No pouting. No good hair cuts, or tight trousers or hot dates. Warfare on everything that is to the outside acceptable. A completely futile attempt at something pure. Murderous focus.
Focus on killing the beautiful, the loved, the joyful, all that is worthwhile. The things they sit upon their laps to look good to the world. To cause a stir to be seen. To yawn fucking yawn fucking yawn, I yawned once, I yawn again, I yawn with beauty, I yawn with pride, I yawn with fuck you´s and I yawn with thank you´s, and I yawn at most stuff....but when I see something humble, something real something worthwhile.....I see it.
And when I don´t I am just a moth. And I ask forgiveness. And also to the moth that I use for the clumsy metaphor. It is unmeant.
Give me more void that I may rant into it. Your endlessness is the only place suitable for my contemptible complaints.
Have the fucking courage to put whatever it dam well is into words man. Shake it off. Damnation upon damnation, and a salutation to the monks.
I remember your vows of silence and I see them noble.
They are not forgotten. What you said is not forgotten because it was never said.
You liar, you cad, you speaker of nonsense. You tapper of buttons & fruitfilled technology, where is your pipe? Where your glorious hat, with its dust filled with sunbeams? The typewriter that you don´t know how to use. Mocks you. Makes you feel worthless.
Every photo of a type writer with an empty bottle of wine and ashtray full of cigarettes made you feel empty. Like there was a stolen moment in time that someone else robbed you of. Those fucking bastards. Those fucking contemptible bastards. How dare they?
You make your self anew. A warrior. A Criminal. A Nothing. A Something. A vessel full of love or neglect or capacity to bring something that would be a wonder in itself.
And curse these words too while I am cursing. They remind me of every moment unwritten. Every moment unlived. Every moment the courage was not taken to do what needed to be done. And in all those moments you wasted your potential and what you could have become.
But then you became what you are and you find yourself unable to regret anyway. You are completely acquiescent before the complete and utter ineffability of chance. You are a saboteur and constructor at the same time. You lost your way to find your way. You had to lose your way: it was the only chance you had of making a map of the unknown.
And there are place where what ever you do is stolen. Whatever you do will be stolen from. Ha ha ha ha ha ha fucking ha ha ha ha ha ha. ah ha ha haaha h haha.
Others names put where they don´t belong.
And the endless voice of the universe screaming out in its fantastical cackle about the absolute sheer and utter absurdity and entertainment of it all.
Because everything you care about in this particular moment is nonsense. NONSENSE.
And only with that realization can you start again anew. And get back to where it was that you should have begun from in the beginning.
Tuesday 9 November 2010
It Is All In the Contra
Sometimes the joy of it all is just knocked out of you. The work you do comes to nothing. Your efforts ceaselessly futile. Your new beginning are robbed of all glamour and fairytale & new life & reinvention & fuck you to the skies and everything else & you are just left there w/ cold brutal reality as your only lonely friend and companion. And he don´t go away. You hide under your blanket, or cycle your bike harder or maybe you just try to slow down a little, but that bastard is always there, and he´s always got your number & no matter how many times you move house or country or pet or girlfriend or bar or whatever f ´ing calamity it is next, he just has you.....locked down....in his sights.....and you are one finger trigger away from what he decides for you.
Yes there´s a clenched jaw, yes there are enough fuck you´s to go around. It is one of those evenings & you are unapologetically venomous and spiteful because there is no apotheosis, no eureka, there is just you & what you got, and what´s more there are too many of you, not just in your own skull, but on the streets, in the dam city. And that is fair enough. No whining is going to do f´all for the population or the president or anyone else. And yes you can keep man-ing up and doing your part and playing your bit but fucking damnation it has all gone to dam hell, and you with it.
So there it is. But it´s not the whole dam story because there is an important place for anger, there is an important place for pro & contra. You know, that Shaekey, he knew a thing or too when he talked about the black bile. You just gotta vent it. You gotta put it out. Because there is a joy in there none the less even when everything is in the shit, when it all is in the contra.
It is the law of path, and just sticking to it with dam gritty bloody minded determination, and if everything has gone down the pan & is for nothing, then fuck it, at least if you are in the cauldron w/ heart then that is something anyway.
So here is a toast to this wonderful and pathetic and unread and beautiful useless blog that serves its place in this personal destiny of things. Thank you for listening to this moan, this groan, this boring self-pitying, purposeless slimy little bit of drivel thrust out into the unknown. You have helped complete me and brought me back to the part that knows there is purpose and path - because even though I know there is not, I know there dam well is....and it doesn´t matter how to nothing you get, it ain´t about needing to believe or know something.....because it just bloody matters that it IS in the first place - yes - that it is.
So here´s to you. This one is on me x
Yes there´s a clenched jaw, yes there are enough fuck you´s to go around. It is one of those evenings & you are unapologetically venomous and spiteful because there is no apotheosis, no eureka, there is just you & what you got, and what´s more there are too many of you, not just in your own skull, but on the streets, in the dam city. And that is fair enough. No whining is going to do f´all for the population or the president or anyone else. And yes you can keep man-ing up and doing your part and playing your bit but fucking damnation it has all gone to dam hell, and you with it.
So there it is. But it´s not the whole dam story because there is an important place for anger, there is an important place for pro & contra. You know, that Shaekey, he knew a thing or too when he talked about the black bile. You just gotta vent it. You gotta put it out. Because there is a joy in there none the less even when everything is in the shit, when it all is in the contra.
It is the law of path, and just sticking to it with dam gritty bloody minded determination, and if everything has gone down the pan & is for nothing, then fuck it, at least if you are in the cauldron w/ heart then that is something anyway.
So here is a toast to this wonderful and pathetic and unread and beautiful useless blog that serves its place in this personal destiny of things. Thank you for listening to this moan, this groan, this boring self-pitying, purposeless slimy little bit of drivel thrust out into the unknown. You have helped complete me and brought me back to the part that knows there is purpose and path - because even though I know there is not, I know there dam well is....and it doesn´t matter how to nothing you get, it ain´t about needing to believe or know something.....because it just bloody matters that it IS in the first place - yes - that it is.
So here´s to you. This one is on me x
Wednesday 27 October 2010
In Support of President Obama
I´ve been following the American mid-term elections and with every day I feel a bit more enraged. As a European you get no chance to participate, little chance to vent your frustrations, and yet what wind blows from America effects the temperature world over.
This video blog by Michael Tomasky (The Guardian) really brings home how disturbing things have become:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/video/2009/sep/17/barack-obama-anti-christ-republicans
A recent poll showed that 18% of Republicans in New Jersey believe that Obama is the Anti-Christ, while 17% voted not sure.
Today partisan politics is in danger of tearing apart America. If ever there was a time
in American history when people across the political divide need to rally, to come
together, it is now. Instead the right wing press has created an us vs them culture.
It is a black hole which threatens to derail not only the American project - but has ramifications for the rest of the world.
Modern Republicans have sacrificed their own dignity, honor and even policy - in a desperate bid to return to power. At a time when modern politics needed to rally around the President - like Roosevelt in the 30´s - they have failed.
Perhaps the man who puts country above politics is a thing of the past?
It is just not acceptable. Our times require more spirit, more courage, not less.
To believe in hope requires courage. To effect change requires commitment. To stand up against the sweeping tide of things takes character.
It requires steadfastness when times are tough, something which goes back to the heart of the American project.
Personally, I am concerned that the landslide of propaganda, bullshit, racism, political double speak & hate will lead to Sarah Palin being voted into power. As far as I am concerned that is many times worse that a new Bush administration.
I believe that if Palin wins the presidency the dark age everyone is terrified of will sink its claws into our modern history.
We are too far down the line in terms of peak oil, environmental chaos, Iran, Israel, the dialogue with the Muslim community & the clash of civilization to step backwards a generation. There is too much at stake to take political sabbatical at this stage.
Remember the fervor that swept Obama into power? It was not based just on hope, but on the prescient need for action - for change. Action on the economy, action tackling the international banking system, action for the climate, action for dialogue with the Muslim community amongst many others...
How fickle is human memory. How easy our convictions take flight when challenged.
Is it a consequence of modern media & our inability to concentrate on any one thing that leads to a lack of substance, a lack of conviction - or the old fashioned fire which keeps a man standing by his cause because he dam well believes in it?
I think our whole culture needs a steady boot up its ass. Roll the sleeves up because there is work to be done brother. It is not good enough to be too distracted not to believe in anything anymore - the stakes are too dam high. We cannot hold back on action for the climate - politically and personally - and we cannot stand by and watch Sarah Palin or some other Bush clone come into power.
The question is, what am I willing to do? Am I willing to play my part? It is not about preaching, and it is not about righteousness, it is not about podium fist banging, arm-chair politics or scratching chins. It is about what we do in our own lives - how we are willing to effect the great debate. Are we playing our part? Are we doing our little to effect change? The problems are too deep set to need discussion. If you cannot feel the problems facing humanity - and our humanity - then you got to get out of your cotton wool brother.
This video blog by Michael Tomasky (The Guardian) really brings home how disturbing things have become:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/video/2009/sep/17/barack-obama-anti-christ-republicans
A recent poll showed that 18% of Republicans in New Jersey believe that Obama is the Anti-Christ, while 17% voted not sure.
Today partisan politics is in danger of tearing apart America. If ever there was a time
in American history when people across the political divide need to rally, to come
together, it is now. Instead the right wing press has created an us vs them culture.
It is a black hole which threatens to derail not only the American project - but has ramifications for the rest of the world.
Modern Republicans have sacrificed their own dignity, honor and even policy - in a desperate bid to return to power. At a time when modern politics needed to rally around the President - like Roosevelt in the 30´s - they have failed.
Perhaps the man who puts country above politics is a thing of the past?
It is just not acceptable. Our times require more spirit, more courage, not less.
To believe in hope requires courage. To effect change requires commitment. To stand up against the sweeping tide of things takes character.
It requires steadfastness when times are tough, something which goes back to the heart of the American project.
Personally, I am concerned that the landslide of propaganda, bullshit, racism, political double speak & hate will lead to Sarah Palin being voted into power. As far as I am concerned that is many times worse that a new Bush administration.
I believe that if Palin wins the presidency the dark age everyone is terrified of will sink its claws into our modern history.
We are too far down the line in terms of peak oil, environmental chaos, Iran, Israel, the dialogue with the Muslim community & the clash of civilization to step backwards a generation. There is too much at stake to take political sabbatical at this stage.
Remember the fervor that swept Obama into power? It was not based just on hope, but on the prescient need for action - for change. Action on the economy, action tackling the international banking system, action for the climate, action for dialogue with the Muslim community amongst many others...
How fickle is human memory. How easy our convictions take flight when challenged.
Is it a consequence of modern media & our inability to concentrate on any one thing that leads to a lack of substance, a lack of conviction - or the old fashioned fire which keeps a man standing by his cause because he dam well believes in it?
I think our whole culture needs a steady boot up its ass. Roll the sleeves up because there is work to be done brother. It is not good enough to be too distracted not to believe in anything anymore - the stakes are too dam high. We cannot hold back on action for the climate - politically and personally - and we cannot stand by and watch Sarah Palin or some other Bush clone come into power.
The question is, what am I willing to do? Am I willing to play my part? It is not about preaching, and it is not about righteousness, it is not about podium fist banging, arm-chair politics or scratching chins. It is about what we do in our own lives - how we are willing to effect the great debate. Are we playing our part? Are we doing our little to effect change? The problems are too deep set to need discussion. If you cannot feel the problems facing humanity - and our humanity - then you got to get out of your cotton wool brother.
Monday 25 October 2010
Song
I am devoted to song. I give my all to song and for song. It may make me rich, it will probably make me poor, but where ever it leads I go gladly. I believe in its power to heal, to help, to effect change. It has guided me and sometimes it has left me broken. But at every stage it has taught me and before it and its practitioners I stand humbled. Give me the grace to channel song. To be its vessel and its voice. Give me the strength to accept its burden. Let me be the catalyst through which it can find its audience, from where ever it came. Thank you song, for all you have given to me, and all you have taken away. I hope I can live up to you & prove myself worthy.
Wednesday 20 October 2010
Goodbye Myriad Creatures & thank you everyone x
I never got to say goodbye to two things. First, and most importantly all the most beautiful people who ever supported Myriad Creatures. There was never an official announcement that I left the band, so I never got to say goodbye properly. So here it is.
Second to the band itself.
Thank you so much everyone who gave me the best years, the most rocking gigs, the most surreal raging, craving, fire flashing extraordinary experiences of fulfillment and wonder I could ever expect to feel. If it ever gets half as good again, dam, then I give myself to God and to life and will never expect anything more. It was nothing without each and everyone one of you who from all your far out places & countries (most of which I have never known or experienced) gave the best dam atmosphere and sweat and God knows what else I could ever expect to experience.
To this heart, there is a past that will live forever on into my last days. Thank you.
For me tonight I ended up in a bar alone, and buying drinks, and cursing the barman, and with too much smoke in my jacket. And I drank a quiet whiskey and had one of the moments when things become clear. When you are happily anonymous, and you realize that life will continue without you, but may also continue with you.
I had just been to a great show. And it is important also for me to address the guys, and to say rock on brothers, good luck, and turn it all to light and fire. And I recommend all my friends and so on to roll on and go see the show when it next comes to town.
And for me that is the past. It ends and it begins with love, a smile and a willingness to go on.
This is my last dwelling on it. For me my future is about music. And doing everything in my spirit to make the dam best music I can. And supporting every friend and foe who has the guts to turn his life to do something that gives something that gives something to someone else.
Thank you everyone. And now a goodbye.
And here, a hello.
Turn it all to light and fire.
x
You can find me here:
www.facebook.com/jimkroft
Sunday 10 October 2010
Berlin Arts Week - Preview Exhibition at Tempelhof
This week is Berlin Arts week so I headed up to Tempelhof Airport where the Preview exhibition was exhibited and took some shots of my favorite pieces.
The airport is a work of art itself. Monumental, austere, foreboding.
During the 1930s, the architect Ernst Sagebiel expanded it for Adolf Hitler into what was then the largest building in Europe, a triumphal entryway into the new Germania, smack in the heart of Berlin. (NYTimes)
Where else but Berlin would you find one of the world´s oldest and greatest airports, shut down for flights, but opened up for the arts, music and even the runways for the public?
Love it or loathe it, it does fill you with wonder that there are places where things can be senseless. Then when you head into certain types of senselessness, you find deranged forms of perfection.
That said there is always some mindless pig on an exercise bike dreaming up schemes to fuck everything up for the rest of us. This year the bureaucrats tried to shut down the Tacheles (again) only to be aced by resident warlord Ludwig Eben. They are also trying to shut down Bar 25 (again). Why destroy the things that give a city its identity?
Ben Okri - The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.....But the dreams of the people are beyond them, and would trouble them.
Yes sir, the dreams of the people are bold and beautiful and filled with aching and wonder.....
as well as all the terrible things that we do to one another, and all the mysteries of the world are populated by their opposite, by both the filth & the fantasy, the goodness and the grime....
This little girl was the most high-brow art observer out of everyone - this exhibit was not a PG rating though! Here is a close up:
Now that was the most surreal thing I saw all day! The world invents ironies much more hard to imagine than
people can come up with intentionally....
It would have been John Lennon´s 70th Birthday yesterday. Happy Birthday John. Love, love, love:
At the end a Hefeweisen to right all the worlds wrongs - and a Bloody Mary for the girls...
tThank you all the amazing artists (and friends) who made it such a great day and event- and congratulations! x
Saturday 9 October 2010
While Playing Chess she said:
While playing chess maestro Janette at Zapata last night James Brown´s This is a Man´s World was playing.
I said: Woa that boy could sing...
She said: No he was just able to suffer....
I said: Woa that boy could sing...
She said: No he was just able to suffer....
Friday 8 October 2010
Papering The Walls With Song
There is a well known story about the hyperfinflation in Germany in the 1920´s. After mass
reproduction of money during WW1 the Mark became so inflated that people used
notes as wall paper - amazing to imagine Marks worth a million per note, lining the
walls where you sleep, breathe & love.
It is an analogy I think of sometimes as a modern musician - especially living in Berlin. Song has lost all its value, a strange irony, that something as precious as a song, has become a casualty of technological advance.
It is a brave new world for musicians. Everyone knows that the music business was in
free fall years before the financial crisis of 2008. My publisher groaned on the phone
to me recently - `its just not fun anymore ´. Well unlike him I never knew the careering
around in first class during the 1980´s (thank God).
But we are in a paradoxical time where music is easier to make (and that does not
mean the music is good), there are more bands and musicians than ever, and yet
to make a dime from a song is harder than it was, well, since pre-Beethoven.
So what do you do? You quit complaining and you get on with it, you roll, you man-up,
you find a way. Making music is a privilege, and if you need to make it enough you will
get it made, and if what you have to say has enough heart or just matters, then it will
find its own way.
There is a quote I love by Jonathan Coulton:
If art has an audience, and if that art is allowed to go wherever it wants to, it will eventually find its way to where it´s supposed to be.
It is the idea that once a song is written, it is set upon a journey, the destiny
of which is the receptive audience who awaits it.
Romantic notions aside, it can be quite overwhelming when starting out - the amount of noise on the net, the quantity of music put out. How do you get your head above water in a storm? But if a song is good it takes on its own life. That is what keeps me going anyway.
I look back on the last 3 years of Berlin, at all the fury & playing many gigs,
& lost nights, & yearning & and random beautiful meetings & encounters, friendships made & broken - and it is a full tapestry. And yet it still feels like just a beginning, and that is the
beauty - to be a part of the great debate, to be in search of the great idea, to embrace
the meaningless or sometimes purposeful days of our lives and feel humility as they
interchange, weave and wind, and somehow correct us, put us on our paths and lead us
somewhere. As Herman Hess puts it:
I look upon the gallery of my life and see that it turns not in trifles, but on the stars.
Anyway, for now I am just glad to be a part and to be living here. And to be
angry at the toxic red sludge & all our ineffable human folly...and to be joyful that for some
reason I live in a time where, for some reason, I am papering my walls with songs.
P.S If anyone is interested to read a great book about what it was like in Berlin
in the 1920´s during the hyper inflation, check out Hans Fallada: Little Man, What Now?
A beautiful book about genuine human hardship in impossible times.
Thursday 7 October 2010
From a Little Corner in Neukolln...
So welcome to this blog from a little corner in Neukolln, Berlin. I am a British songwriter living in Berlin, and this blog is going to document the adventure of being a musician in this wonderful city,
as well as various musings/rants & other apostasies!
A fitting place seemed to be from the bedroom & a quote from Goethe sums up where this blog begins:
Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world
So here is fittingly a little picture of a rehearsal with my band mates towards our next gig. We have an acoustic residency at Holz Kohlen on Weser Strasse in Neukolln beginning on the 5th of November. There are new band mates including Lucas who is a double-bass guru from Vienna, and Philip who is a local sticks-man who will be playing the Cojon.
The songs are usually played as electric rock n roll as anyone who knows the gigs will know, so it should be fun to re-interpret the material & with new people. Weser Strasse is my favourite street in Berlin, and this set is actually designed specifically with the street in mind. It is less a place for the electric guitar, and more a place for the old school - lungs bellowing, fingers bleeding, hips shaking, sweat pouring....dam its good to be alive in these times.
Here is the link for Holz Kohlen:
http://www.holz-kohlen.de/
It is the most wonderful intimate little bar, and you could actually miss it if you didn´t know it was there. It is run by Dirk & Shirin, who have made a wonderful unique atmosphere. Unlike some of the other bars in Neukolln, you can still chill and actually do some thinking / musing - although the secret is getting out and every time I go there there are more people there!
Anyway, the gig will happen in the tiny little room in the back. Come enjoy - here are the dates:
Friday 5th November
Friday 19 November
Friday 10 December
See ya then, and thanks for taking a peep here x
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