An Imaginary Review

Artist have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is
to change it.

I am not an artist, at least not a visual artist, so of course my
views do not count much more than a hill of beans, a bucket of warm
spit. Well maybe they count a little, as anyone can study - perhaps in
spare time between working and children and the invariable quest for
transcendence, and through patient study understand several of the
received wisdoms about art. One may understand and still be unable to
create art themselves. My concern is to review with having any actual
art works involved. I am not so much interested in 'attacking' an
artist or a single work, or group of works. My wish is to use this
essay as a skeleton. A skeleton that I can flesh out with my obscure,
unloved words. A skeleton I can use to conceptualise a review.

Driving in the car, damp, overcast, drizzle. I heard part of a static
interrupted interview on RN the other day. An artist, a photographer,
had created a series of black and white photos. The works were tidied
up with care, framed and put on the walls of the gallery with price
tags and a catalogue. The smoothness of modernity. The exhibit, as
they were by all accounts accomplished and beautiful works of art, was
a success.

I parked the car in front of the independent bookshop where I work,
and having moved from family car (a penis shrinking Tarago) to shop, I
switched on the radio to catch the end of the interview. I thought
about what I had heard long into the afternoon, as the blue skies of
spring wrestled with the early rising clouds of slow to leave winter.

More than any actual art works, which I had not seen, and most likely
will never see, it was his interview that I was interested in. Here I
am on sturdier ground in my ability to add anything to the
discussion. Specifically I was moved by one small sliver of the
interview. When the artist described her work as probing the
boundaries of art & photography.

The word probe was what caught my interest and prompted this
confessional. Our verb probe comes from the Latin probare, which has
several meanings. Which is understandable seeing how Latin was spoken
for many hundreds of years over the, at that time, largest empire in
the western world. These meanings can in the present context mean To try,
test, examine, inspect, judge of any thing in respect of its goodness,
fitness, etc.

I started to write this is the darkness of night, when windy sleet and
rain pelted down on the roof and windows of the wood fire heated
house. I can also see the word probe having a weaker connotation, in
the sense of an army probing the defences of the enemy. A section of
the army will move forward and test the enemy and gather
information. Usually they are ordered not to launch a full scale
attack. They just move into contact, find information out, and then
pull back into the relative comfort of their trench line.

Others will of course disagree with me, and that is to be expected. I
have a particular point of view, and a particular ideology and way of
seeing the world and our interactions with the world. Many will say
that probing and trying to describe and understand the world is
enough, some will go further and say that is all art can do. In this
they will argue against the idea of didactic art. That art should seek
what it wants and that it has no need to go further.

Again let me reiterate that I do not wish to be seen as attacking any
art works or any artist with this article. What I am saying, and am
happy to say, is that art needs to go past the probing of the
world. As the world moves into a dangerous new era. To paraphrase from
The Will to Power 'For some time now, our whole Western culture has
been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is
growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a
river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is
afraid to reflect.'

In short, in prosaic words, we are going to hell in a hand
basket. Never before have we had to ability to wreak global damage on
the planet. We have been able to destroy little bits here and there,
the over farming of Libya during the time of the Roman Empire, the
cataclysm that was Easter Island. Now we are able to create universal
catholic destruction. Gaia is seeking to shake off the poisonous
bacillus that is humanity.

Now is not the time for art to describe the world, not the time to
engage in art works. Now is time for art to stake a claim, to chose
sides and not look back. The goal is no longer to probe
boundaries. Art must become part of the dream factory, the imagining
of a new and better world. The borders are well understood, as are the
false dichotomies of male/female, black/white, right/wrong all of this
is understood. The boundaries are meant to be overstepped, erased. As
the chalk lines after a shouty and hard fought sweaty football match
fade and dissolve into the ground with the rain and dewy mornings, so
should the boundaries of art erode and wear away into the meaningless
dust from which they arose. 

Now the time has come for artists to gather their courage and storm
the gates of heaven.

Where are the snows of yesteryear?

Another year over, a new one just begun. A new year of blogging and poetry.
As one gets older one gets to indulge in rounds of 'I told you so', as if
any sane person needed to be told that, for example, invading Iraq was not a good idea. And this rapidly turns into schadenfreude, or to use the term that the Philosopher would have used, epichairekakia. Yes, I do confess to a feeling of delight watching politicians and sundry hob knobs twisting in the wind of historical necessity.

Long term historical movements bring the greatest amusement, for example the turmoil of the Catholic Church, as years of abuse come to the fore. The long term 'blow back' caused by the US supporting Muslim guerrillas in Afghanistan. And then years later to see these groups fight the Amis to a standstill. This is the type of schadenfreude I enjoy. The unrolling of history.

Petty? Maybe.

Cruel and unfeeling. Never! Any feelings are always coupled with a deep sadness for the terrible loss of life. Any feelings always burn with angry at the terrible lies and distortions, the steady loss of our freedoms and rights, and the stupid complicity of all of us.

So I write poetry and do this and that about my life, working, raising children and so it goes. When a young lad I wished to be a published author. This would be a good thing, or so I thought. Now I look upon the rows of shelves in the markets, and at all the books published, I am glad I have never carried through with this dream. I can blame no one but myself for any failings, indeed I do not blame anyone for my not being a successful author. One would think that the sheer volume of works produced each year would allow for one more book of poetry, or one more small novel, and if I really wanted to go down this road I could very easily.

A half assed internet search gave me a number of over 500 000 books published in the Anglosphere, which turned out to about 1440 books a day, or one a minute! And so much just overwhelms and drowns us in a sea of market based editorial self censorship. Corralled into a particular form, typecast and constricted suffocatingly tight of mind forged manacles. Even the authors who are interesting and thoughtful, are they serving a need for the elites, acting as a 'safety value' of dissent?



Of course leads me into this blog. I have a need to write. It is almost like a disease. Even though I may not be very talented, and often I am unable to properly express the ideas bumbling around my noodle, I am still going to write. In this I want to follow a line of ephemera, which is why my external contact is via this blog and more importantly poetry (open mic) readings. This generates feelings and thoughts of immediacy and inevitable transience. The poem is written, and maybe it is read aloud and maybe deposited onto this blog, and then is forgotten as I and all things around me move, which brings us to this effort...

And so this poem is a welter of pretence and derivation. The title and first line allude to Villion, Shakespeare and Hopkins. Two sections concerning my back yard, nauseous with a sense of place. The first is daytime the second section is night time. And the two sonnets hinge on an unwobbling pivot, a half emerged quote from the Phenomenology, included in it's entirety.

Sense-certainty itself has thus to be asked: What is the This? If we take it in the two-fold form of its existence, as the Now and as the Here, the dialectic it has in it will take a form as intelligible as the This itself. To the question, What is the Now? we reply, for example, the Now is night-time. To test the truth of this certainty of sense, a simple experiment is all we need: write that truth down. A truth cannot lose anything by being written down, and just as little by our preserving and keeping it. If we look again at the truth we have written down, look at it now, at this noon-time, we shall have to say it has turned stale and become out of date.

Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?

---

Eager morning, wide couple colored sky.
Matrix of cloud and pure sun massy blue.
Sparse white cloud tea rising morning, my eye
Scans and prowls damp landscape of dawn break dew.

Shadows of clouds and glittering sunlight
Compete and tumble across the distance.
Dull shadows of gray clouds, of middling height,
Obscure ridgeline farmland of shadow dance.

Garish sun reflects the water surface,
Bouncing, redoubling the burning glow.
Ninety two million miles of empty space
Birthing energy so that all needs grow.

Write what I see just beyond my window,
Recording can not be, to truth, a foe.

Into the dark, past split wood stacked three tonne,
High pressure clear night, bright Venus shining,
Pouring ash the turned earth garden begun.
Sea birds and lap wings calling combining

Far off single dogs bark and howl, I close
My eyes and listen to the songs of the trees.
Grand murmuring sonatas. Winds compose
Long slow songs of history and unease.

Epics written across a thousand years
Sung one thousand rustling chorus leaves.
I listen the songs my eyes fill with tears,
The outer space wind, my heart grieves.

Everything. The Earth, the Sun, the Moon moves,
As careful standing on the one spot proves.

Disappointment

Capital tends to corrupt and demean all things - in this we have sold our house to get away from the ownership society, which was nothing but a right wing con to take our money from us, and to make working people too fearful to revolt, and to try to make the concerns of the ruling class the concerns of the slaves.

---

Death comes when the tide is low.

Morning of disappointment and delay
Family sorrow and disappointment.

Mud babies made mawkish delays
And confusions of names 
Placed into the homeless
Busted penniless womb.
An embryonic effigy.

Child of placental error
Mother of freedom.

Always must one smooth away
Impressions left of sleep
And never musty messed up
Pick up that which has fallen 
Nor shall one ever eat any beans 
Or pulses or expose irrational numbers.

One must break from heartier costumes.

Disappointed at the flooding 
Of the tides 
    Pit of the stomach
    Homeless
    Helpless.

Living in spare rooms
Living on kindness.

Diptera.
A large black fly buzzes
Erratic kitchenware.

A wilderness of disappointment
With the present state of affairs.
Disappointment with the sexual act
Disappointment even with the ocean.

Tiny fish school 
A stream and flow
The tidal pale.

Washed up 
Vomited out
Ejected the sea
In her smooth white hand
This white smooth piece
Of pitted whale bone
Vertebrae elaborate 
Of design and texture.
Pouted sand pitted a silent
Terror of months years decades
Held cold dark pressure.

The tiny child hand
Reaches the wet sandy
Beach explores both
Nose and tongue.

Loud lout snore thing 
Shifting of gears
Top to bottom 
Snoring snares 
To catch unawares.

Fancy 
Dreads dance up on
My mind creek 
And crack dissipate.

Tinkling stars of spirits
Annotated parade of tourists
And their dogs.

The Grammar of the Lotus

Came across this book when i was in the local library, and i just loved the name. The Grammar of the Lotus: a New History of Classic Ornament as a Development of Sun Worship.

Written by William Henry Goodyear (1846 - 1923)

London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1891.

It was easy enough to find. http://www.archive.org/

Enjoy!

---

Et Tu

Starting with an unix command line invocation and tumbling through swinburne and various verses of non meaning, and ending in nothing more than vice. an experiment let out to hang and you can like it or not, myself i am ambivalent, but it does have some nice patches. and anything has to be better than the non stop wall of lies we get to read. (or the high level design documents i get to write day after soul destroying day)

---

find . -name "*txt" -exec grep -li nterfa {} \;

Metronomic:
Reading Byron is like programming in C

Biomorphic:
While Swinburne is like programming with lisp

Standing on the headland, the waves breaking,
The howling wind lonely. Vast entire heavens
Above, a new world unseen in front.

Entrancing dream chanting moral
(All busyness) meaty walk wall
Brick younguns and dumb oldest
Bolshie timber and the boldest
Plumpy rump stake rare of regal length
Seedy sperming foam of sailors strength
Ding dong dangling off the sharp punt
Auf herr faeces. Drip dropping hunt

Wile sly spiral frosting attends
Both of her chesty corf pop ends
(The friction rises; indeed falls.
A snerring of cataphobic calls
And expulsions). 
                 Flick! Flock! Fire!
Trunk grinding forth a series entyre.
Big bags of benders and scant fenders,
Grate damp triangulation senders,
Heartz mimic, heat radio waves,
Ipod, you pong. Now five dollars saves
The householster from starvation.

Pleasing piss around frustration.
Off weep sleep apnoea champers
Out, about grousing, high mugged pitchers.
Rugged jugs of milky white fright
Fair ran off to desert night fight.
Peeling sand off heat haze fliers
And he satayed burning fires.

They pair plumped the debts each notwake
Up and down the intersolar fake.
Fecal dragging bran strum malstorm
Storm broadcast each and every form
Mine and maul dub bub header listens
Up around storied building glistens
Raising bablewise to even stevens
Falling begin again white covens.

United techno choler raced.
Wild the river cistern braced.
Not unknown, for the sentries round
Her the radar, once was lost, found.
The missing aeroplane and crew.

This then here must assured true
Be stated that all wealth generation,
And not the fine dust substitution
With and obsession of death, to all
Who, of course, consume sub micron small
In seize seas size and deep into
His her lung fishing love of flashing loo,
Trimp shrimp and save trip dividing
And sub devising schemes rising
Fractional down a fraction of tubes
Tubal (like a hi ho spread danube)
Until terminate and stay resident
(Tetcork). 
            
            And hell took ill and ailment
She thrushed and slushed agreed fever
And her wife took ill and her child heir
And his her grund chill lil fill ill in turn
No pill about for to ill back death spurn
Well will into health - not the lamp
Of the smokeless fire that first clump
Nun clear never hospitality,
And duo beer crapped diamond stinky
Unto her bend lent out to knights
Tippelary 'twas her turn to clack
The rattle tattler of her back
Two pound day of groat sweet turtle
Tut tutting a groin of fysics battle
In great con fluemence - What is It?
    What is it?
    What can it be?
    Why? How? When?

And the injurt tugged up your bed
He croaked covering own owning head.
Bleed Blood
    Drips Dropping
    Cords Snapping
    Chips Chapping
    Flips Flapping

    Aryans okie doking to grown
Gown mushy zimmer
    Farasi - Nononono sososo bad banned rejerct
Floor ever the brown boomer
    Winstonian newtowns arrow panes
Buts and strife the fluxing pillagers
Look at them skitter scatter he boomps art
His lacateous treat mick in the booming
Kow tow boarded boy wanna be as bing
As all outdoorious vice.

Afternoon

I wrote this sometime. just over a year ago. looking over some stuff and i thought, i like this one. so here it is.

---

In the laughternoon
    The settling son sorrows
    The thousand and one 
    Bosoms of Artemis
Away walking
The slight blush our ladye's
Waye away lousy deer!
Away you Elders!

Sway away - false economics
From the lien of the loan
To the bust of the bank
The surface is beautiful 
Dazzling - but underfoot
Only corruption and death

The view from here
    Seem limitless
Far into space
Far across the future
But when one looks down
Everything stands on a motion
Of death - a motion to despair

Or the jenny sister would 
Mouth it - Windmer day
When all would speak
    And be taught shame.

His true Penelope was Flaubert

"What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to write, is a book
about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be
held together by the strength of its style, just as the earth,
suspended in the void, depends on nothing external for its support; a book which would have almost no subject, or at least in which the
subject would be almost invisible, if such a thing is possible."
Gustave Flaubert, Correspondence.

Substituting poem for book, I find this quote very liberating to how I write. However some may say this is a very bourgeois manner of
writing. Setting myself up a straw man for the sake of this
argument. Let me try to explain how I oppose this idea.

One of the definitions of the word bourgeois is one whose interest it is to support the status quo. It is this usage of the word that is of most interest to me in this exercise.

It seems fairly obvious that the ruling classes control language and
that they use this control to entrap and downpress the working
people. One of the uses of language is the relentless demand on the
narrative flow. This counterfeit river that flows from A to B, that
moves from rags to riches.

Life, however is a much stronger stranger than this simple narrative
arc will have us understand. Language creates consciousness, and it
follows that this bourgeois hegemonistic control of daily life and
culture controls and moulds language and art to suit their own ends
(indeed this can be seen as a definition of hegemony).

It is this bourgeois control of language, and therefore consciousness, that creates the mind-forg'd manacles of our oppression. It is these manacles that we must self consciously over come and over throw. For it is precisely this mental slavery that causes the great mass of working people to think that without God there is no morality, that without work they will have no identity, that without coercion there will be no happiness.

Language, a poem about nothing, a poem that hangs with no support in
the void. This is what I am striving towards, this is what John
Kinsella and Tracy Ryan refer to when they say "every poem we write
should be a form of resistance, an act of linguistic disobedience."
This is what will allow us to write "beyond good and evil", this is
what will allow us to move beyond imperialist ideas of ownership and
coercion.

Time, history, relationships are the matter of literature, and in some ways literature is greater than nonfiction or even philosophy, for only literature can talk about how life really is, how life should be. Time is not, history is not, the straight and narrow journey from breakfast to lunch to dinner, rather it is the dream distortions of Finnegan. History does not have as its horizon the simple Aristotelian unities of the television studio and of market based book publishers, but rather a deeper understanding of history and relationships can only be found in the convoluted signature of Shandy.

I write, as do all artists, mainly for myself, but also for self aware proletarians. I write in a way that is often called pretentious. (A label I am happy to wear, for to be pretentious is to pretend, to play, and if a poet can not play that what is a heaven for?) I write in a way that allows me to survey all of the history (natural and human) of language and appropriate for my art all 'that which being seen pleases me'. I write in a way that, in defiance of the petty academic poetry cliques, is not direct nor aimed for 'working people' (all of which is code for banal and trivial). I write understanding the unity to be more than a mere harmony, but rather a complete interpenetration. I write in a manner which says proudly, 'let the common reader be damned'. I write knowing that the artist is meant to be something more than an entertainer.

For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?

LeftClick: Gaza Rally Canberra


And this from the Canberra Times newspaper

On Saturday, acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard refused to criticise Israel's bombing campaign.