Lovelace & Byron

Ada Lovelace is honoured with a doodle.

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I went to see the 2014 MONA FOMA. A action-packed, fun-filled week of music, art and shenanigans. Like all public events, and many privates ones, foma brought forth some of our modern contradictions. And the source of this article being an apparent (let us be polite and say an inadvertent) sexism.

The recent festival included a performance of the Ada Project. The Ada of this project is Ada Lovelace, a Victorian era mathematician who worked with Charles Babbage to design a mechanical general-purpose computer, called the Analytical Engine. As Ada Lovelace died in 1852 this was an amazing intellectual achievement, even if was never realised.

Sadly there is a preoccupation with her famous father, Lord Byron. A father who was disappointed to sire a daughter, and who left Ada and her mother only one month after the child was born. Rushing off to fight for Greek independence, he like so many others soldiers over the generations, died of fever in camp. He never saw the enemy, let alone fire in anger. It is all rather pathetic, and more than a trifle appropriate.

But let us see some examples of this phenomenon:
It’s the first time I’ve seen an industrial robot dance to an opera about Lord Byron’s daughter, who was diagnosed with hysteria as she died of ovarian cancer (The ADA Project)

An industrial robot, inspired by the life and work of Ada Lovelace, gifted mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron. Lovelace predicted computer-generated music 100 years before it eventuated.

The Guardian, if only parenthetically
They are inspired by two things; first the movements of the machine, and secondly the life of Ada Lovelace, a Victorian mathematician (and daughter of Lord Byron) who Shawcross tells us developed a prototype computer called the Difference Engine.

Prepare to be mesmerised by The ADA Project: four musical commissions inspired by the life and work of Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), the gifted (yet troubled) mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron

There is no arguing that Ada Lovelace was in fact the child of Lord Byron. And I understand the use of this sort of short hand, allowing the reader to quickly orient themselves. There is no doubt that Lord Byron is a famous name, full of bad boy intrigue and eroticism. All this does work to quickly frame Ada Lovelace, but it does it seem to me, if not wrong, at least not right. As Byron abandoned the mother and child, he could not be called her father; as being a father is more than spreading one's seed. Indeed Byron was no more than a negative, a hole in the life of Ada Lovelace. Her mother, embittered by the rut and forget policy of the famous poet, gave Ada a rigorous education in mathematics and science. This was a vain attempt to keep her away from poetry, and all romantic ideas. Ada's mother felt poetry to be a source of insanity. Ada developed ideas of poetical science, ideas which allowed her to ask the right questions about the role of the Analytical Engine, and the relationship between the machine, the individual, and society.

Although some historians doubt her contributions and abilities Ada Lovelace is remembered as a great mathematician, one of the best of her generation. She devised, and again some reject these claims, the first computer program, an algorithm for calculating Bernoulli numbers. - - More importantly she was able to contemplate the idea of the general purpose computer. The idea of a Turing complete machine that can solve any equation. This seems like little when it is written down, but this idea is what allows us a computer to generate music, film and all teh other content that goes with it. Lady Lovelace, with Charles Babbage, also conceived of the idea of the stored program. A calculator is a computer, but one that can only do one thing, to get it to read email would require much effort, and modification. The modern computer allows me to write this with my typesetting software, while changing windows to view my email, or to further research Ada Lovelace.

If we were to compare Lord Byron to Lady Lovelace in their relative importance to our modern world, there is no comparison. One wrote a few good, and some very good poems that allow us to see the mindset of England after the Napoleonic Wars, one of them worked to develop ideas that are only now coming to fruition.

As an aside, and with perhaps some irony, the US Defense Department created a language called Ada This language was defined as ANSI/MIL-STD 1815A, but note the numbering -- 1815, the year Ada Lovelace was born.

To get some idea of the achievement of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, we can look at the contradiction that surrounds her unpleasant death. Aged 37 she died from ovarian cancer, her doctors had resorted to blood letting, and came up with theories that too much science her made her hysterical, causing this debilitating disease. Being an aristocrat, Lady Lovelace would have had access to the height of modern medical thought. These are some of the contradictions of a world, still in the infancy of industrialisation, where Ada Lovelace is imaging machines that can create music, while contemporary medical science is still resorting to sympathetic magic, and superstition for cures.

The final word I leave to Ada Lovelace, to allow the reader to get a feel for her visionary imagery and work: "The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."

to mix art with activism

In the distance is the city, hidden from view.

K9 moved back into the combat area – Standing now in the Chinese youth sent the resistance message jolting clicking tilting through the pinball machine – Enemy plans exploded in a burst of rapid calculations – Clicking in punch cards of redirected orders – Crackling shortwave static – Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeep – Sound of thinking metal – “Calling partisans of all nations – Word falling – Photo falling – Break through in Grey Room – Pinball led streets – Free doorways – Shift coordinate points –”

Nova Express. Burroughs

As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions – eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Estranged Labour. Marx.

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My four days of mona foma.

I was fortunate enough to get a festival pass to the 2014 mona foma. And so my thoughts.

Fishing boats high hot summer evening - wave upon wave fractal innumerable myriad. Ole timey working working places. The mystique of the proletariat. Sail boats sailing along the the setting sun wind.

So what did I like about the festival? The bands, the music. While I did not love everything I saw, and while I was not able to see every event, I have to say there was nothing I saw that was terrible; nothing I saw did not deserve to be there.

But the absolute highlights for me had to be Sun Ra Arkestra, The Julie Ruin, and the Ada Project. There were several acts that I was unfamiliar with and I was very glad to have had the exposure. I also greatly enjoyed The Ada Project. So much so that I saw it four times!

There was, as I said, very little I did not like. And the things I did not like, were more my perception as opposed to the music being made. For example I am not a great fan of the techno dance sort of sound. So I tried to understand the acts in what they were trying to do, more than what I would have liked them to do.

It is to the credit of the hundreds of staff that organise these events that very little went wrong. There was a slight hiccup on the first night, when the scanner had difficulties reading my ticket. But on subsequent days there was no issue. I am sure there where a few back stage dramas, but as a viewer I knew nothing of that, and things seemed to flow quite easily from one act to the next. Food and drinks were plentiful if a tad pricey, but not so much that one would think it was out of the ordinary. If one did not care about alcohol, and wanted to get a juice, there was no line and it was easy to purchase. I did notice some very long lines, but as it was not me waiting...

So at best only minor things went wrong, at least from an outsiders point of view, so any complaints are more in the category of quibbles and not complaints. Hats off the the many staff who worked on the stalls, and collected tickets and etc, as much as the musicians, this regiment of staff should be seen as integral to the smooth functioning of the festival. Or as Brecht said in his poem A Worker Reads History, “Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army?”

What would I change? I found the MAC Backstage room to be a stuffy, anxiety creating venue. This could have been just me, as the room was often filled with people, digging the music, bopping and having fun. Some people have complained about the ticketing and entry for the Faux Mo nightclub. I admit I did not attend this so I can not comment, but will note it as something I heard.

The smithies, working in the forecourt to create looped beats and a metal sculpture, were a great hit. As much as the work they were doing was interesting in itself, they also provided a focus for the gathering crowd. I was a bit surprised as to how little the forecourt was used by the event. To my mind there seems no reason why it could not be filled with local performers, buskers, fire eaters, spoke word artists and the like. This would provide an outlet for local artists, as well as giving them a bit of encouragement, and would also give spectators more fuel to allow them to speculate, and recharge.

And of course the main change I would make, would be to somehow make the event more woman friendly. I would like to see, in future festivals, something like one day of the four day festival be given over to only female artists. I know that some will say “ Do we have to have this discussion again?” While others can say the exact same thing, but with a slight change in emphasis and so “Do we have to have this discussion again?” But one only has to look at the program and see the overwhelming preponderance of male artists. Well over half were male, or male dominated performances. With only a few breaking this penile mold. The fact that The Julie Ruin was one of the few shows bent towards women proves in a rather ironic way this truth.

I know that such a suggestion would be controversial. But to me any back lash to the idea of creating a more gender balanced event would again prove the truth.

What did the festival make me think about? One thing that jumbled around my brainpan was the idea of the distinction between (for lack of better words) music driven and word driven music. Music driven seems to flow more organically and more freely, more like the proverbial river. With lyrics there seems to be more of an architectural feel, the music is built up around a scaffolding of words. Maybe a thing to do would be to investigate incorporating improvisational lyrics into songs.

I was to a certain extent disappointed with some of the electronic boyz and the sounds they were making. It seems to me, and I am happy to be proven wrong, that with all the computing power at hand, with the vast of array of electronics willing to due the maestro's bidding that something better than a constant pumping 1,2,3,4 beat could be found. It seems to me that we have the ability to make electric music that sounds like angels signing. There is no need for a beat, as the computer will never miss. I want something to dance to that is different. Of course the crowd went wild, so who the hell do I know. I did, for example, like the poly-rhythmic sounds of HIVE, their use of old and new ways to produce music.

In a similar vein the festival made me think and cower in wonder at the process. A puff of air, the vibration of a string or skin, the rush of electrons. More a way things happen, than a thing. Nothing but vibrations. Resonance. And I can not even find the words to describe the flow of images and thoughts that crowded my mind, like the crowded venue floor, surging and swaying. From almost nothing comes music, in the way that a monsoon is little more than warm moist air rising from the ocean, so to the music is simply the vibrations moving through the air. And both the storm and music emerge from the chaos become so much more.

Over the four days of the festival the temperature rose and fell here in Hobart. Dangerous climate conditions caused distress on the mainland. Bushfires burnt up the east coast of the big island.

Daily the news spoke of increasing confrontation in the northern seas. Shots were fired across the bow of ships filled with children.

Compassion is becoming a dirty word. The assault, the counter revolution, is gathering pace. Education and disability care, and education are all in the firing line. Same sex marriage is being brushed aside, howled down in a mocking chorus of convenient morality. The “be excellent to one another” idea of Jesus is being ignored, and in America anyway there is talk to rewriting the bible more in line with tea party politics.

We are trading our freedoms for the idea of an illusionary choice. Are we to control the machines, or are we to be controlled? Are we to simply be an adjunct to the machine, or the machines to liberate us. Computer technology in many ways starkly shows the Marxist idea of alienation, of working people building a productive capacity is which is then used against them. A vast network of control that can constantly monitor citizens. The greatest, never tiring, surveillance network every made. Is this to be our future? Should we not make the machines work for us? Maybe lower the hours of work to only 20 hours a week, allowing more time for creation of life, family, of art.

The PM is off skiing in France, while the media slumbers contently after a long and tiring campaign of social control.

We live in an age of urgencies. We are hurtling headlong into a crisis, into the abyss. I felt that foma missed the opportunity to highlight these urgencies. I did not see all the bands, so I may have missed some important things. Most of the acts I saw at best only hinted at, or spoke indirectly about what is to be done. From what I saw only The Julie Ruin seemed willing to discuss directly the problems we face, and to offer some sort of a solution.

The solution being to mix art with activism, to build community.

Plagiarism and Utopia

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The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. - Marx

The papers and the internet are buzzing with moral outrage. The ideologues of the present age seem to be encouraging a witch hunt against poets who plagiarise.

Now I would be a conspiracy theorist, if I was to put this witch hunt down to the recent change to a reactionary government. I will note that our current junta sees research as something to be mocked, and that the initial article was printed in that mouthpiece of the reactionaries, The Australian (note that on principle I will not link to this article, you can find it if you want.) I would be happy to put his down to coincidence. I would be equally happy to say, as have many over weight, alcoholic, cynical, television detectives have said, I do not believe in coincidence. I would venture to guess that the artless reactionaries will be happy to use these incidents to justify a cut in funding.

I, for one, will not join this conga line of moral condemnation of the so-called plagiarists. I do want to think about the chummy, vanilla custard culture that the present hierarchy of arts bureaucrats has created. Most importantly I wish to offer some simple (possibly simple-minded) solutions.

I find it surprising that -- if these plagiarisms are so egregious and so corrosive of the public good -- the errors were not noted earlier. Why for example did it take almost three years to notice the errors in the poem that won the Rosemary Dobson Prize in 2010? Why was this found out from a self titled poetry sleuth and not from someone within the prize giving community?

As I am not in this inner clique of the cool kids who make these decisions and award these prizes, I can not comment on their thinking. I am, however, able to make some comments, based on the actions they have taken, and the artifacts of their thoughts.

It seems to me, from my outsider point of view, that the main attribute for a prize winning poem is that the poem sounds like something the judges have heard before, something that has that pleasant overcoat of familiarity. Noting, as Jane Caro did (in noting a twitter post), that there were more ex-students from Riverview in the Abbott cabinet than women, we can also note that the bulk of poetry prize winners come from a similarly small (dare we say privileged) pool. Not only in numbers of actual poets but more importantly the winners are drawn from a similar pool, and are unified thematically and stylistically.

In my utopia, which would be happy and have many good laws, and which we will call Tomton, poetry and art would have a different position that they do in our society. Living in smaller, more sustainable cities and towns, hearing poetry, seeing art would be as easy as floating down to the local centre on a post-coital Sunday morning to get the newspapers, coffees, and cheese danish. For art would be all around. Music would be floating from the open windows of the many well maintained and charming communes. Artists would have decorated the walls, even the streets. No more would our eyes and minds be assaulted by crass advertising for things we have no need nor use for. Children would run and play and we would see and hear their unselfconscious, spontaneous art (the best art of all.) An orchestra would play in the local square, the concert would be never ending as musicians would come and go as they pleased. Poets would be declaiming their work, standing on tables in the cantten, while dancers flowed around the amused diners. A line of excited poets, bongo players, and dancers would snake out the door. All eager to speak, to play, to dance. All eager to contribute, all shouting for joy at this democracy of art. All encouraged.

Sadly all we have is capitalism. And with this way of life we gain competition, and hierarchy, and a constant chasing after.

But in the short term, some suggestions.

Maybe we can have an occasional Jubilee Year. Prizes and competitions would not be allowed to have any entrants from those that work or teach at university. One year moratorium on entries from those who have a degree in a creative writing. Maybe we can do this once every five or seven years, or the various prizes can take turns in seeking entries from outside the university axis.

With the continual “jobbing” of culture, from so-called plagiarists to cynical provocateurs, maybe the contests would do just as well to pick a random poem from out of the proverbial hat. The role of the judge could be no more than one of narrowing down the list of entires from the original (here I am making up numbers) 500 to a more manageable 50, and then rewarding one at random. Software can be quickly hacked up that would generate the appropriate random numbers, so there would be no need to even narrow down the entries.

The picking out of poems at random will ensure that there are no hurt feelings. New poets would not be discouraged, and so would not drop away.

On a more practical note I simply point the reader to any number of plagiarism detection applications. Like the bogus speed cameras that work to limit speeding, even a public announcement that such software may be used will go a long way to limiting such errors.

While on the subject of software I would promote the idea of free software. Anyone can use any poem and a poet even rewrite the original, but they would then have to print the original work alongside the new work. This would of course obviate the need for poetry sleuths and plagiarism detectors and would have the added benefit of introducing the audience to more poetry.

Getting back to Tomton, we should have poets on every street corner not only reading their works, but engaging a interested audience. An audience that is hungry for culture and art.

You may have noticed that I always used the word error to describe the plagiarisms. As plagiarism is not a crime, and is even a more or less modern idea, I wanted to use a word that did not have any moral overtones. Error seemed best to me, in that the poets erred in not noting the original lines and images. If the poet was to read his or her poems to an audience and that audience was able to speak with the poet in an honest, open, and back and forth way would this have happened?

A great deal of this scandal seems bound up in issues of IP. After a decade in the IT industry I never want to hear another word about intellectual property my life!

My beef is not with the individual poet, but rather with the poetry superstructure we have built. If we can change the way we reward poetry we can go a long way to seeing that these sorts of issues never arise again.

loquere ut videam te

...within his head many words, but disorderly; vain, and without decency, to quarrel with the princes. Iliad 2.213-4

I went into town last week. I went to the small hole in the wall smelling of thick rich coffee and of thicker and richer spices cafe -- Frankie's Empire. I ordered three well appreciated hot chocolates for the children, and a flat white for myself. Besides the well received drinks I was interested in see a new -- for Hobart anyway -- cafe poetry or to be more precise spoken word night. New to Hobart, but not a new idea. There are monthly readings (first Sunday of the month) at the Republic Hotel. I do not want to get into a debate over the merits of this event as against that event, nor do I want to get entangled with the even more ludicrous argument comparing the relative merits of the spoken word as against the written word. I do, however, want to offer a frail apologia for the will and representation of the spoken word, the open mic event.

So it seems that was the end of things, but then I thought over my past, about the many people who have been not supportive of open mics. The ones who have pronounced such nights to be awful, or even atrocious. And some seem to create a distinction the written and the spoken, and privilege the written. I have never thought that this was the right attitude. No sense getting into an argument here, but I will quote Swinburne and say that the first rule of the singer is to sing. Take this as you will.

Atrocious & awful, sure. But this is very nature of the open mic - poetry slam scene. But let us be generous in our criticism. Maybe not always possible, but in this case I think the thought of critical generosity should be kept in mind. My visit was only the third time this event (silverwords) was held. It is very much an amateur or DIY sort-of-event, in the sense of having no government or university grant money to support the organiser, but more importantly in the sense of being a labour of love.

Describing this sort of spoken word evening as awful shows the wrong attitude to have to open mic. Even if most of the poems were crap, the questions must be: did you have a bit of fun? did you get out of the house? did you hear even one line that was of interest? I have been wandering in and out of these sorts of poetry readings and slams and etc for a great many years, ever since I stumbled into the DC Space bar on a cold wintry night two generations ago. One of the things that I love about this open mic formula is the fact that all are welcome. How hard is it for the average person to jump up on stage and read a poem that they wrote?

Omar Musa, Brett Dionysius, Miranda Lello, Jared Louche, Rebbecca Edwards, are among the poets, musicians, artists that I have known, off the top of my head, who have toyed with the open reading format at various times in their careers. Together they have put out albums, books, blogs, journals and much more. While it would be foolish to say that spoken word was a main determinate in their work, it would be as equally foolish to deny the education of the open reading environment. Like Julia Gillard in her resignation speech, “it does not explain everything, nor does it explain nothing.” For open mic is primarily a way for people to quickly get feedback and encouragement for their work.

And here we have stumbled across the key word. Encouragement. Open readings offer the young, whether young in age or in spirit, player a chance to try out material, stances, vocal styling etc. as Adonis Storr, the event organiser said at the beginning of the evening we are here to encourage each other and love one another (or as Ted "Theodore" Logan would say, be excellent to one another)

Open mic nights show a type of democracy, a type of democracy that is messy, rowdy, uneven, but mostly participatory. In the second book of the Iliad after Zeus had sent a riddling dream to Agamemnon there is an spoken word, open discussion of what Acheans are to do. Even the lowliest can speak. Thersites -- whose name means the bold, the audacious -- was the only brawling belly-aching foot soldier, the only private mentioned by name in the poem, that spoke. Although he was howled down and beaten by Odysseus his speech is a turning point of the war; for after his speech the Acheans agreed to stay at Troy and not return home. But did he not speak the truth? Did he repeat what Achilles said, did he capture the soldiers demoralisation after having lost Achilles to the greed of Agamemnon? Did he not say what all were thinking, but were too fearful to utter? Did not this wretched, cold, wet, brutalised, foot soldier at once mirror Achilles' attack on Agamemnon and the established heroic order, and at the same time mock Achilles, being as wretched as the hero is glorious?

In this way we can see that the open mic, spoken word format is a type of democracy assembly; in the sense that all are equal, not in ability or experience, but in the ability to speak and take part. Indeed in the democracy of classic Athens one was expected to take part, and to speak well. To show a concrete example of this democratic spirit at least two people who had never read a poem in public before spoke on this night.

With no, or at best elastic, themes for these evenings the poets were free to investigate a wide range of spoken words; from dubstep rapping to Banjo Paterson.

And the hurrying people daunt me,and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

A young man sang to Jesus for setting him on the on the straight and narrow. Love songs hate songs tumbled some spoke political other declaimed apolitical still others in turn spoke fierce, calm, earnest, whimsical. If one wanted to quote Lenin one could use the idea of the joy of the festival of the oppressed

For who will make the poetical revolutions? The academics? The narrow professional literary journals? Any revolution, whether in art or politics, will be built by the broken, by the outsider (consider the 1961 Dylan unwashed phenomenon, or the filthy 1977 Sex Pistols or a world or two before the poverty stricken, rotten toothed 1921 James Joyce forced by need to accepting gifts of shoes by Ezra Pound.)

Looking back over years of poetry readings, it is these acts of self organisation that will advance poetry. Even if nothing comes maybe one or two people will develop a life long habit of writing poetry.

Some of the problems with the open mic include the problem of, at best, a patchy selection of poems. It is just the nature of the beast, as it is true for poetry journals and canonised collections. The idea is to allow new and unpublished poets the opportunity to gather and to share and read aloud. The benefit is to hear new voices, new ideas, ideas which are often not spoken, voices which often do not get heard. For example when I did a quick, non-scientific, survey of a noted on-line poetry magazine, I was impressed by the fact that the majority of artists in the journal were in the (mostly tertiary) education industry or entangled with the arts bureaucracy in one way or another. There were some poets, but not many, from outside these circles.

Spoken word nights may be insular, may be hit or miss affairs, may even be atrocious and awful, but they are also a cheap and fun night out, they offer that chance to hear some new poems, and they offer the chance to have some interesting conversations. But most importantly is the confidence that poetry slams can give to new players. For poetry in general, and performance poetry in particular is a ladder to be climbed. Spoken word offers much to be learned, as it is a skill and an art like others.

Do not take my word for it watch this video about the Canberra Poetry scene, built over over many years with a dedicated crew of young and enthusiastic poets. Or even better come along to Frankie's Empire on Thursday 4 July for a spoken word night, and then on Friday 19 of July come along as Frankie's Empire and Silver Words host the Hobart heats of the Australian Poetry Slam Contest.

Also the Republic Hotel in North Hobart was readings on the first Sunday of every month.

and the latin title means - speaks that i may see you.

FILEREMOS

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MONA FOMA 2013 or Why Theroy

Before we start I must say that I am a political person. I have a strong left wing bent to my politics, and this of course colours many of my opinions and much in my daily life. More than that I am of an old school of left wing politics. If someone held a gun to my child's head and I was forced to give myself a label, I guess it would be some sort of anarcho-communist, in that the end goal of all political activity would have to be the classless society. Many people throw up their hands in despair as to what is left and what is right, to me it is fairly simple. Each and every day we reproduce our daily life. This is done in the work place. If you think that the socially produced goods should be appropriated by the few, than you are what I like to call right wing, if on the other hand you think socially produced wealth should be shared socially than you are what we can call left wing. Much flows from where one stands on this issue. Art and culture have a special interest for me, as they are of vital importance in the formation of opinion and of ideology.

So moving along...

Had a busy weekend of art. Starting innocently enough on Saturday morning. The day was like most others. A morning I spent making breakfast and getting the children organised. After lunch I jumped into the car and drove...

Over cast with a whipping mirthless wind over hill and over dale whistling past overrun with wild thistle sheep paddocks faded golden and brown and wild dishevelled competing with mown grown fields of irrigation complex spray wasting water in every direction. A man made rain shower on a field of rising green shootings surrounded on all sides by the dry cracking brown blown on the wind broken grass and dirty dust. Cliche of a sugar loaf shaped mountain of childlike scrawling landscape and weirs roistering in the whippy cautioned wind along the cool coal river vineyard valley.

Cottages and old timey signs over butcher and baker and video and petrol shops.

Cold blow rode.

Everybody's talking about bagism.
Traffic jams.
Tennis games.

And fundraising Dunnalley skool lemon aid. Stately fowl march rowed tortured vines swelling bunches green and hard.

Headed up to the Museum of Old and New Art Saturday afternoon markets. In many ways the drive up to the MONA is a thrilling as the museum itself. As much as I love the artificial, even so do I love the natural. I effortlessly killed an hour or two as I strolled the grounds and stalls and spoke to some locals about this and that and a bit of the other thing. And the goal of standing on ones head. Far off, on the wind, I could hear the finger style playing of Richard Gillewitz. A guitarist from Florida. Sadly due to time constraining realities and the social blather I was not able to pay as close attention as I would have liked. Which is a shame as it is always pleasant to listen to someone who is able to skilfully finger play the guitar. This style seems to my untrained ear to bring out sounds and rhythms that are often overlooked in much guitar work, or used only sparingly. What I could hear blowing across the cloud chasing lawn wind was delicate and made me want to hear more. Which is the result that any artist wants, to leave the audience wanting more. And a man in a tent painted green and lounging and posing as a half man half amphibian beast. Between two worlds. Artifice and nature. Town and city. Male and Female.

So after whiling away some time at the markets I drove down to the Hobart waterfront. The clouds of the beach and the morning had been chased away, as if thousands of children sang sunny day rhymes all at the same time. And the warming sun was balanced by the cool damp wind off the river.  

I don't like driving at the best of times, it strikes me as terribly unnatural, and so with police cars about and roads changed and rerouted I took the cowards way out and rather than hunt for the perfect spot I retreated to where I knew there were ample car parks and waked the five minutes or so to Princes Wharf Plaza.

An apocalypse, an uncovering. Slogans on the pavement and on walls. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Forgetting the parallel and equal Nothing is permitted, everything is true. Natural disaster settings and seats made of sand bags and old tractor tyres. A giant theremin made by Melbourne artist Robin Fox. And children ran about and up to and behind and giggled and ran some more as the pyramid installation made it's many strange noises. This amusing piece which allowed, even forced, the audience to participate was a big hit with this reviewer as well as many members of the general public. A piece originally commissioned by City of Melbourne. Later in the evening as the drink and drugs took their grip it was amusing to watch the midnight creepers and staggerers wander past the theremin and be surprised by the songs created. And once they understood what the happening the drunks and druggies (or as I like to call them my people) took to flying airplanes around, onto, and into the machine.

So I took my place in the long conga entry line of music hungry punters hipsters and groovers. Sucking a vanilla thick shake through a straw I waited my turn to enter into the Princes Wharf. I was ushered into this empty vast temple to a distant industrial past, into this modern temple to a technological future still be created. Banks of computer screens controlled lights, sound, images and more. Wires and lights and speakers and all array of electronic gadgets and toys hung over exposed girders and crawled along the roof.

In the first instance I was there to see Ben Walsh's Orkestra of the Underground Scores Shaun Tan's The Arrival.

Shaun Tan is an Australian artist, from Perth originally. In 2006 he made an illustrated book titled The Arrival. This wordless story won the 2007 "Book of the Year" prize as part of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

It was by happy accident that Ben Walsh came across this evocative book. Urged on by the evocative images Ben Walsh created a score for The Arrival. The performance was a well produced production with all the various elements of sound, rhythm, image, light and motion working seamlessly. To the outsider who is not privy to the minor errors introduced in any live performance, the production seem to flow flawlessly.

One of the key aspects of this performance was the inclusion of a series of illustrations from the book projected onto screens behind the Orkestra. These dreamy, lovely drawings of half forgotten times was filled with strange amphibian like creatures and indecipherable swiggles and markings meant to be the foreign language refugees must learn. Amphi being a Greek word, and having at the root of the word the idea of 'on both sides.' (According to my (online) Liddell & Scott Greek–English Lexicon.) Whether by another happy accident or prior planning these strange creatures in a single simple image encapsulated the real life of the immigrant. That is the fact of being caught between two worlds, being on both sides of a cultural divide. Even the venue had echoes of this idea of being between two worlds. The old passing into nothingness Hobart and the new Hobart coming into being.

The crowd gathered and chatted and doodled with mobile phones and took photos and texted envious friends some sitting on recently installed bleacher seats some on giant hot pink bean bags some stood in the centre of the hall surrounded on both sides. The rising din echoed off the hard walls and was at the same time muffled by the soft humid crowd. Phones flashing children laughing. Out the open door the blue blue of the river. Warehouses along the waterfront and the low foothills retreating to infinity. And then the hushing anticipation as the musician took the stage and noddled here and there with their instruments warming up and calming nerves.

The lights fall and rise, eyes appear and fade away, rapid changes and snatches of folk music and others snippets of sound and sense swirl and build to a frenzy of faces and drums and horns and a take your breath away galloping flow. The music flows images fade and now we see fearful children under covers. A clatter of drums, wail of horns. Mystery and Threat. After the rapids a slow cool eddy.  It is easy enough to make a hash of electronic or found sounds into a piece such as this, but here I am happy to say that the various sounds added fit together fluidly. The gulls overhead and the waves splashing the immigrant ship only added to the soundscape, slowly fading away and I looked away to see the heaving river and could almost smell the salt air. Further into the maelstrom of emotions the hero of the book came into the city with a discordant resonating click clack series of sounds. And looking out the window of his railroad flat window, a fractal wall looking the same from any dimension, one could sense his isolation. A feeling of alienation and vulnerability. A longing for return and reuniting.

As well as the images projected on screen the lighting and effects for this piece were all very supportive and added to, rather than subtracted from or overwhelmed, the primacy. Which in this case was the music. Flashing red as things fell apart to wide spans of thin smoke glowing purple in the light, and the menace of blue as runaway children held hands amid the clatter of drums, the popping of hand slapping skins and wailing and crying of horns. All moved together as one relentless flow of music and art and technology and space and coincidence to tell a sparse tale which forced the individual observer to fill in gaps with their own life experience.

Any criticisms I could make would be only the quibbles of one with neither the talent nor the drive to make such an event happen. A few minutes knocked off here and there to make the piece shorter. A wider range of instruments could have allowed more texture and nuance of emotion to come through. As the number of makers in the Orkestra was only a cricket team the emotional range was limited by the tonal range of the instruments. I admit to feeling a bit churlish even typing these words as the piece worked so effectively, and opened another door of discussion in the topic of how we treat newcomers to our sun burnt land. So I will say that it is a shame that this piece is not performed more often. It would be a useful activity to film the concert for viewing on one of the sensible stations, either ABC or SBS, followed by discussion with various people involved in the immigration debate. For all the joyful, liberating power of music, speech is often required to fine tune the discussion. But again this is just my opinion, and opinions as well all know are like assholes, in that everyone has one.


If I had the power of Orpheus, O Father, to bewitch the rocks to dance with me by my song...
Iphigenia in Aulis 1212 - Euripides

After this show ended I waddled my self over to the Peacock theatre to see a chamber opera starchild by Tasmanian composer Dylan Sheridan. Knowing nothing of the composer, or of the piece, I had high hopes. In many ways it is best to know very little about the artist. Like the rest of us, artists are often selfish little jerks, and too know too much about them only opens a series of doors into rooms of doubt, fear and envy.

The Peacock Theatre was a very different venue from the Princes Wharf. The Peacock Theatre was small, Princes Wharf was huge. The Peacock is intimate, the Wharf is one of those spaces that makes one think of old 1950's tropes of the post Atomic Age, the lonely battlefield and the individual lost in the crowd. Coming into the cosy space from the late afternoon angle of natural street sunlight, it took a few moments for my vision to settle into the gloom of the theatre. As I adjusted to the light the stage and the many details came into view. This was a small simple piece, with only four musicians plus some electronics controlled by the composer. One singer and a child who sings a song at the end of the opera.

It was of interest to see how this could be done. The conceptual idea of the opera is in the idea of the 'far-off song' carried on the wind. The endless song of crying far off, unable to be touched or to even heard properly. Is this a better way to think about this thought, is there a better way to discuss the ephemeral and the ineffable, than by using the structure of the dream?

Three loud claps a drum beat, a woman's scream. And here recalling Finnegans Wake we fall; not however into shame and disgrace, but into a dream.

Like some dreams the scene was sparse, alien, with few objects and interactions. The small space of the theatre was used to maximum effect. The musicians were a part of the stage set. Obvious when one looked, but with a turned head the musicians seemed to fade away to became Satie's famous furniture, or like the Silence in recent episodes of Doctor Who.

Opera is in many ways the greatest of all art forms, in that it using all other art forms. Music, dance, gesture, speech, painting and more. This is not to rank types of art, but merely to point out the unifying aspect of opera.  In this production the scenery was sparse, but effective in all ways. A small table, a floor of artificial grass, the netted and muted coverts for the musicians to play. But all of this fitted into the dream state of the work. With a small, empty arena for performing the action it is important for the lighting to 'do more work.' In this case the lighting was able to texture the simplicity of the set design, revealing and concealing in turn, imparting a dream quality to the commonplace  A thin aerosol filled the stage so the lights could fell like solid cubist rays of pure fiery light onto the dancing place. This misty, obscuring light did much to reveal the mental state of the singer and to add a solidity to the nebulous world of the dream.

Like a dream the opera moved from a lighthearted confusion to moments of terror and panic. Internal questions unknowable seeped into the dream story. External stimuli imposed themselves on and were incorporated into the dream nature, be it the whistling wind in the background, the abrupt alarm clock, a far off laughing transforming into crying and back again into laughter, the branches tap tap tapping on the window.

And the 'heroine' sang of her and our confusion, like Gaugain, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?  Soprano Allison Farrow used her voice to tell the story to move along from one scene to the next. Her voice became another instrument, an extra layering onto the simple yet complex music created.

After a day of listening to male bands and male artists it was more than nice to hear a woman's voice being brought to the fore.

This was a lovely little piece and one I would happily recommend. I can understand some not enjoying the work, but to my mind it was a success. This simple short chamber opera was enjoyed so much that the audience seemed surprised and a little disappointed when it somewhat abruptly, ended. But this seems a good thing, surely it is much better to leave the audience wanting more rather than saying you have gone on too long.

Don't know if I should feel vindicated in my view of this opera, or should I think I am completely wrong. Seems the Mercury and I are on the same page, as it were.


Back to the Princes Wharf dark Satanic mill. A piece entitled No input by Scot Cotterell. This was pretty much what the title promised. The artist engineer created a no-input system. Or to quote the artist 'Outputs taken from an audio mixer are fed back into the inputs of the same mixer, creating a contained, semi-controllable feedback system,' he says. Like a snake eating its own tail. Sort of.

A flat out experiment in questioning music, an attempt to find new ways to make music. With the smallest amount of input Scott was able to create beats and sounds which filled the Princes Wharf and vibrated into the space between the diaphragm and lungs. With the limitations of the task Scot set himself it was difficult to create more in depth fields of emotion or discussion. What was apparent was the deep evocation of the memory of the industrial proletariat. The deep rumble and machine like rhythm brought me back into the many production line jobs were I spent many mind numbing, soul destroying days of my youth. Speaking to a random concert goer the image that she had was of being within the bowels of a great ocean going ship with the massive engine burning and churning through the water.

Unfortunately for me, hunger over came me and I had to sneak away to find myself some food and a cooling soda water.

Graveyard Train are self described as six men playing men's instruments just as men were born to do. They played a frantic, powerful sort of foot stomping, hand clapping, sing along music. Which the crowd enjoyed immensely. The use of the screen to project film of the band playing was a nice touch, but it made me think of Dylan's comment about how he should not be on MTV, because people make horrible faces when they sing. Passion and the power, as it were.

The projecting onto the screen allowed the audience to get close and to see how the band played and smashed the nine pound hammer all night long. In an age of mounting catastrophe, of ever rising tensions and threats, it does seem to me that Graveyard Train would be the perfect band to make a new protest music. With their relentless driving rhythm and ability to involve the crowd with their singable lyrics they have the perfect engine to play as men were born to do, that is to break the chains. Rather than singing of werewolves and ghosts why not change a bit and sing about hunting down the bosses and the landlords and bankers who work to keep us down. With the poor boy look and sound rather than whistling past the graveyard, why not attempt to storm the gates of heaven?

This type of music would fit nicely into a more political stance. Why sing about fanciful zombie apocalypse, when we have one facing us in the prospect of the Tony Abbott led LNP government?


And so being one of the ones who the state government likes to call the toxic dump opposing uneducated hillbilly mobs I wandered my way back to my home in the bush fire ravaged Southern Beaches district. High beamed driving tailgaters followed me from the airport roundabout to the roundabout at Midway Point, where I was able to make a discrete turn to free myself from the great white 4WD that turned the cabin of my car into a scene from Close Encounters. Dark roads and a half moon, car headlights flashing the shiny gold green eyes of feral and native animals. Possums and pademelons (Thylogale billardierii: the smallest of the macropods), feral or domestic cats attempting to cross the road, or attempting apparent suicide. Slaughtered animals on the verge.

After a fitful sleep I was able to spend a good part of the day at the local beach playing in the relentless, powerful mosh pit of the cranky waves of Frederick Henry Bay. This, while leaving me battered and bruised put me in good stead for the David Byrne & St Vincent mosh pit. Which was more a happy go lucky ball of humid bodies eager to dance and catch a glimpse of their heroes than the life threatening mosh pits of the mainland festival circuit.

The band made less use of the feast of visual tools and toys at their disposal. Rather than projecting onto the screen behind the band, they seemed more interested in using their bodies for visual excitement of the audience. After each song the lights would fade and the band would rearrange themselves and change instruments. The lights would come up and the band would waltz or square dance or quadrille themselves around the stage. This gave an odd feeling to the show and turned the band into a mixture of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, an old timey revival meeting all overlain with hyper-American marching band styles. The various influences and styles were all tied together in the slightly stand offish manner of the artistic professional observer.

With a very horn heavy sound the band played something that was not rock and roll and not quite jazz or funk either. Something old, something borrowed, something as usual in the career of David Byrne unique.

I do not have the album Love This Giant, but have heard several tracks on Radio National, so I was anticipating a good show, and I was not in the least disappointed. I greatly enjoyed the way that the band worked and moved on stage. I have always liked my art to be ritualised and this show fit into my conceptions of what art could be very nicely. David Byrne had always been an artist who relies on gesture and movement to both conceal and reveal what he is saying. This was true when I saw him way back in the late 70's with the Talking Heads, all the way to this most recent work. The band also seemed to bring to life the idea of Andre Breton that if you are going to do some strange things, it is best to wear a suit and tie. I assume on the theory that it would make it seem stranger.

So happily and with wort cunning I was lightly tripping, wrapped up in my own cocoon while the speakers pounded and every stomp on the bass drum threatened to lift me off the ground, while the each breath into the trumpet was amplified by electronics until it blew across the sweaty heaving mass like a crossfire hurricane. Shadows jumped and jived as the lights pulsed and the shadow of the trumpet player glowed golden yellow like the apparition of an angel on the wide white wall.

And then in this ever rising tide of bliss Annie Clark introduced the band members, 12 or so talented musicians. One of the horn players was a young woman. And as she was introduced some lads felt the need to wolf whistle.

And like the poet who notices a mote in his eye, notices the minor inconvenience which changes and deflates their mood; in a flash the two days of music and art crystallised in my mind. It was a big old sausage festival. Of the dozens or scores of artists I saw and heard in the two days only a handful were women. This may or may not be the fault of the festival organisers. To my mind it goes deeper than the tastes and desires of the organisers, it seems to be a deep seated problem across all the various forms of art these days. 

This is why Guerrilla Girls ran a bus advertisement noting that only 3% of the artists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC were women while some 83% of the nudes were of women.

This is why in England there was the need to set up the Orange Prize and here in Australia, after the 2011 Miles Franklin Award had no women short listed there was a need to set up the Stella Prize.

To my old fashioned mind this directly comes from the fact that the people who run the large museums, that run the publishing houses and recording studios are in the main men. Sexist or not I will leave it to you to judge, but we can at least say that like goes with like, and if men run things they will obviously see things from a male point of view and will agree with what their other male friends think.

Some may say that for music and art it does not matter, what matters is the art produced. But of course in this situation we are not only not getting women artists and musicians in the fore front, but we are not even able to understand what we are missing with so few women. For like all things art is political, as we must agree with the old feminist slogan that the personal is political, here we must agree that art while maybe not political on it's own, and much of what is art deals with issues not often found in the mainstream of political debate, we also have to see the importance of art in the creation of opinion and taste and the way that we look at and interact with the world.

While on the one hand we have to congratulate the organisers and staff and al involved in creating a rich and full program that ran over several days with few hiccups to upset the punter, we can on the other hand ask them to look a bit deeper and maybe even think about having another festival, maybe a MONA FEMA (Female Extravaganza of Music and Art) festival, or setting one day aside for only women musicians. For I am not one of those who think that a special festival for women artists would be a bad thing. While we live in an era of gender separation we must do all we can to overcome this divide.

Others may this is not needed, we have a female PM these issues are in the past. Other may say that a day set aside for women artists would be no more than a token effort. Some might even say that it goes against ideas of equality. I would say that we are already in a situation of inequality. This was highlighted by the annual Australian of the Year awards. The award has been awarded every year since 1960, meaning there have been 53 recipients, 11 of which have been women or some 20%. Including joint winners and the Seekers (who won in 1967) it is more like 60 winners of which 12 were women, or 48 have been men.

As women hold up half the sky it is rather glaring that only twenty percent have been so awarded.

To me this shows that gender issues are still important, and then the problems are systemic. This is not to specifically criticise the organisers of MONA FOMA, as they did a great job with the logistics and organising the event. There is much that happens away from the public eye, and the most important limiting factor would have to be availability of artists. But on the other hand it seemed to me a topic that had to be raised.

Many Pathed Gaia

---

From atop the shallow rise
The road black and lean rolls
Down and out vanishing point

Here, on my right, knee high grass
Browns the paddock many pathed.
Wanderings of sheep. Thin clouds
Chittering rise hidden the grass
Flutter and sing and settle.

Introduced. And I am left
Dreaming vague discontent,
This landscape of signposts
And fences and bare hills.

---

Why write a poem at all? And why this piece of crap, adding to the mountain of crap that is the modern poetry landscape. Boredom mostly, vanity - the foolish idea that I have something worth hearing, and of course compulsive thinking too much.

Euruaguia: wide street, or in this case many pathed. From the hymn to Demeter, describing the rape of Persephone by many named Aidas; the unseen, the all receiver, the host of many.

And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her...

One sunny afternoon driving home, I saw the paths made by the sheep across the paddock, and I thought of Kore being taken by Hades. And then looking out the window the starlings rose, hidden by the high grass, and the rest just sort of wrote itself.

Enjoy it or not, use it or not, but if you do please link back to original.

---

To understand Nature's hid causes

Happy, who had the skill to understand
Nature's hid causes, and beneath his feet
All terrors cast, and death's relentless doom,
And the loud roar of greedy Acheron.

I know that I am getting old by the fact that I listen to Radio National rather than JJJ. Apart from making me feel old I have to say the I do enjoy listening to RN. In contrast to television, radio seems to have more time thus allowing a broad wide ranging discussion of events and ideas. Unlike some sections of our society, I am also quite happy to listen to ideas that are different to my own regrettable and hackneyed notions. Indeed hearing the other voices often forces me to perform a revaluation of my thoughts, my values. Sometimes I feel I can quite happily ignore the other ideas, sometimes I am compelled to modify what I currently think, and on occasion I am forced to reconsider and to abruptly and firmly change course. Without doubt this is a good and mature position to take, and more importantly it shows that democracy, being synonymous with diversity, is something greater than the puerile shadowplay of media regurgitation, party politicking or mindless voting between Shem and Shaun.

So a few days ago I was listening to RN. Between cooking dinner, and responding to the endless chatter of three young children, I heard an interchange between an interviewer and his interviewee that gave me pause. As part of a broader conversation of some French intellectual (whose name to my sorrow, I did not catch, I plead in my defense that

I am getting old, and suffer in a minor but still inconvenient way from industrial deafness) calling for a 'temple' to be constructed by and for atheists. Whether this may or may not be a good idea, I am not in position to say. It did bring to mind images of the Culte de la Raison (Cult of Reason) during the French Revolution. What did get my attention was the general and rather casual agreement to the idea that Atheism is always a negation, is no more than negation. This is considered to be common sense, but is, in truth, a cliche, a triviality raised to heights of a profundity. This comment is what forced me to my keyboard.

At first glance it may seem that atheism is in fact a negation, and this my more pedantic readers will point out can be clearly shown by the use of the Greek prefix a-, which of course means no, or not, or even without. One does not have to dig too deep to grasp that this prefix connotes negation. And everyone agrees quite clearly that atheism means without God. It therefore then may seem obvious that Atheism is a negation. However to my mind Atheism is in reality not a negation, but rather an affirmation, and it is Theism that is the negation.

What does atheism affirm? In a word, humanity. All that is solid melts in the air and we are forced to confront the reality of the cold wind of outer space, and of our singposted world, and of uncaring nature. In such a universe we are alone, and naked and scared we must comprehend our smallness and our frailness in the face of almost infinite emptiness and disdain. To my thinking, and I this will not true for all atheists, it is this lack of an afterlife that has made me less, not more willing to support; for example, war, punishment, violence. Indeed atheism makes me cling more closely to my fellow, as Doctor Who would say, stupid apes. This lack of belief in an aftelife has made me less likely to join in the periodic frenzy of demagogic vengeance. I am not able to proudly wear the tee shirt with the lovely slogan 'Kill them all, let God sort 'em out.' While it is equally true that not all theists would endorse such a slogan, this is not the place to argue this point.

In a world where God does not intervene in history and human affairs we are left to our own devices. We are left to figure out for ourselves how the world works and what is the true history of the universe. In the days of the ancient Greek natural philosophers there were those who noted that Ethiopian gods had black skin and curly hair, and so asserted that if cows had a god it would look like a cow. Some of these thinkers were able to approximate the correct size of the Earth. Some of these thinkers could see that the fossilised shells found on the tops of mountains proved what we would later call evolution. How bold were these thinkers, who mocked the polytheism of their day, compared to some of our current fundamentalist thinkers who make a show of public piety, and who view fossils as tricks of God (or the Devil) to test our faith! What an absurd idea that God would plant false evedince in the ground as a joke, as a 'pop quiz', and how difficult to have a rational discussion with such thinkers.

To see professional athletes and entertainers publicly thanking God for their good fortune seems to me to show a remarkable lack of balance concerning the role of God. While millions of children die needlessly every year, it must be the height of arrogance to think that God, rather than saving these poor children, thought it best to make sure an over payed individual received even more accolades and success.

To stand on our own feet and to see the world as it truly is, is the affirmation that atheism stands for. To assume that there are no interventions in the natural world and human history by God, has allowed us to move from the medieval slumber that was the Age of Faith, has allowed the phenomenal growth in wealth and longevity that we enjoy today. Knowing that it is penicillin, which was investigated and discovered and produced by real living humans, rather than prayer that will cure illness is the affirmation that atheism gives us. Knowing, in broad strokes, the way in which life in it's dazzaling complexity developed is the affirmation of atheism. Knowing that there is no God to stop the sun and make it dance in the sky, but rather that all stars are formed from the gravitational forces within interstellar clouds of dust and organic compounds is the affirmation of atheism.

It would be pointless of me to try to prove that all scientists are without religious faith. But it would be equally foolish to try to prove that even the most religious of all scientists does not 'suspend belief' while working in their laboratories. That is to say a scientist can not, after testing various compounds on the stereotyped guinea pig, affirm that it was prayer that cured the cancer.

And it would be foolish of me to say that all atheists are lovely people who would never harm a fly, or that they are able to free themselves from superstition and generalised human stupidity and greed. I can however happily say that when I see the world around me, when I look down the microscope, or I look upwards through the telescope, I see not God (nor Gods) but rather a rational unfolding of physical laws. An unfolding of not only rational laws, but also the creation of a vast co-operative conversation across national borders and across time, which I can comprehend, and be swept up in, and hopefully extend. When there is posited a god who intervenes at random moments in history with unexplainable miracles this rationality falls apart, and I no longer have the ability to grasp the world as it truly stands. This falling down of rational understanding and co-operative enquiry is the negation that theism gives us.

Aristotle once described the good life, the life of virtue as being friendship and the desire for knowing. This is the affirmation of atheism that I affix to my banner. All we have is each other, are hands and our brains. The search for love, and the questing after knowledge are the only worthwhile goals of life. I can love my family and my friends, I can love the other, I can seek to extend creativity and my understanding of the world without having recourse to any sort of God.

I want the grandness of my world, of my universe to be teeming over with life, change, and constant contradiction. This is the affirmation of atheism. I can not, even with the strong religious upbringing that my parents gave me, see theism as being anything but an attempt to stultify and proscribe, to say that this is how it is and how it must be for all time. This to me is negation of the wonderful, terrifying, surging struggle and contention that is our universe.

I am (hopefully) not so blinded by my atheism to not understand that many great scientists and artists have been deeply religious. I only have to look at the work Mendel did with his pea plants that helped us understand genetics. But I think that most people would agree that both the original Miletian revolution in science, as well as our more recent scientific industrial revolutions sprang from an impulse to try to understand the world as it is, with no dependency on divine intervention, to see and grasp the world as the endless unfolding of rational, understandable physical laws. In his recent book 'The Swerve' Professor Greenblatt argues that the Renaissance begins with the finding of one of the greatest works not only of materialism and atheism, De rerum natura or 'On the Nature of Things' by Lucretius, but also a great work of art, full of passion and compassion. In this work Lucretius argues the classical atomist view of Democritus, Epicurus and others that the world is made up of matter in motion.

And it is this desire to understand the world, this fount of human genius that has created this world we now live in, this world of computers, and medicine, and space travel and more. I despair that this world is overrun with shallow moneyed interests who seek to make only profit. But I also hope that one day we can understand that humanity is on the cusp of a brave new world, if we can survive the next phase of history. A world where energy is seemingly taken from the air, where things can be brought into being as if by magic. A co-operativly built world of superabundance were we can move beyond the sordid quest for cash and reputation. For my childrens sake I wish to move into this world where, as Aristotle might have said, we are free to investigate the only things that matter, friendship and the love of knowledge.

The motto comes from Virgil The Georgics Book II and can be found here http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/georgics.2.ii.html

So Many Particulars

---

One part Lucian, one part Brecht, three parts Arrian. And as Oscar would say 'all garbage all the time.' However it tickled my fancy, so read it or ignore it as you wish, I have already moved on.

---

Euoi, Euoi, Saboi!
The ecstatic raging followers
Of the loud roaring, ivy wreathed
God chanted and danced, and the songs
Reverberated the forest glens
And quiet coverts of the wide flooding
High banked river Indus. Icy cold
Waters tumbled from glaciered vast
High mountains. Closer to the world
Encircling river than the laughing
Shouting drunken god the myriad
Companions did march. Strong Herakles
Cursed and kicked the barren ground before
The most steadfast Sogdian rock.
Macedonian soldiers grew wings,
Flew up the cliff face in the murky night,
And so conquered what stymied Herakles.

Nothing could stop, no one could stop
The conquering god-king Alexander.
Not the wide fast flowing rivers,
Not the lazy streams flowing to marshes,
Not the dizzying gorges, not the cloud
Gathering mountains, not the howling
Jangling deserts, not the walls of island
Proud Tyre, not the mysteries of sand
Blown trees of the oasis of Siwa,
Not the massed cedar built long boats
Of purple clad Phoenicia,
Not the fire worshiping magi,
Not the mud built bitumen mortared
Walls of Babylon, of Susa,
Of Persepolis, not the seven walled
City of stars Ekbatana, not the
Rabbis of Jerusalem, not the Gates
Of Persia, not the battle fleeing
King of Kings, not the tattooed
Boulder hurling liberty loving tribes,
Not the craggy walls of ancient Thebes
Where only darling Pindar's house remained,
Not the foot stamping naked Buddhists.
Nothing could stop, no one could stop
The god-king Achilles reborn.

Naught but the sorrow of the hosts, the ones
That marched and fought and explored and said
Finally this far and no further,
For we are tired and our dear ones
We miss, our wives, our children, our aged
Fathers and mothers. For we have been
From home for as long as Menelaus
Before the walls of windy Illius.
This far we go and no further.

Only thus was Alexander stopped.

Phoibos - the bright one

---

Number 21: Apollo

O bright one! 
The swan beats 
time with wide wings, 
And
Loudly sings 
of you 

and settles 
the river bank 
beside
The ever flowing
River 
           Peneios. 

Of Thou;
The sweet sounding singer 
carrying  a clear toned 
lyre

First and last, 
Always 
She sings. 

Hear my rejoicing 
In you,
             Master.
 
I appease you with song.

Straight away I liked the image of the swans flapping wings to bring about a successful landing on the river bank. Singing and keeping time with wing beasts. All in honour of Phoebes Apollo. Phoibos, the bright one. Who was, in revenge for a mocking Eros who was bragging how he was a better shot with the bow, was shot by an arrow of the butt of his humour. Apollo fell in love in Daphne, and like the equally cursed Kassandra, she scorned him.

Daphne, fleeing the lust of Apollo, prayed to her father, Peneios, one of the potamoi. The Potamoi were the 3000 river gods, sons of Oceanus (Okeanos) and Tethys (Tethus). In a short sighted attempt at protecting his daughter, Peneios turned her into a laurel tree. The laurel became sacred to Apollo.

I could not refuse myself the small echo of Heraclitus, in describing the Thessalian river bank where the swan settled.

Hear my rejoicing 
In you,
             Master.

This line caused me some pain. The word in Greek is Anax.

Anax is from an earlier word wanax, which is found on Mycenaean inscriptions, meaning Lord or Master. This word can be found in Homer, and is used to describe Agamemnon, anax andron, leader of men. (Iliad 1,442). Xerxes and Darius are called Lord King. In the tragedy Persians by Aeschylus line 5 we see anax Xerxes basileus. This word is also used in sense of master of the house (oikoio anax); and in a descriptive and telling Homeric simile from the Odyssey (10,216) 'As when the dogs fawn about the lords during a feast.' All of this seemed to me to show a hierarchal relationship. So, as I was forced by dictionaries to choose between lord and master, I chose master. Lord, while fitting, and being the more traditional translation, had a Christian connotation that, for various reasons, I was happy to avoid.



Master has a brutal simplicity, or if you prefer a simple brutality, and this simplicity is able to quickly describe the master/servant relationship of the Deathless Ones (athanatoi) with the Brotoi, the Clots of Gore.

Pleasant enough it is in our easy chair to, while glowing in opium dreams of Swinburne or the more austere Nietzschian tumult, to romanticise the relationship the Greeks had to their gods. To the Deathless humans are mere playthings. Zeus wanted to depopulate the Earth, he brought forth as a conspirator Momus, a scoffer, the personification of reproach, blame and disgrace, or spoke to Eris as the personification of strife. Or maybe it was Themis. It all depends on what you read and take to canonical. Themis being one of those untranslatable characters. She is a Goddess of Order, of 'Doing the Right Thing.' In the Cypria it is the pity that Zeus feels for Gaia that is the origin of the Trojan War. `There was a time when the countless tribes of men, though wide-dispersed, oppressed the surface of the deep-bosomed earth, and Zeus saw it and had pity and in his wise heart resolved to relieve the all-nurturing earth of men by causing the great struggle of the Ilian war, that the load of death might empty the world. And so the heroes were slain in Troy, and the plan of Zeus came to pass.' And Plato agrees `That it is Zeus who has done this, and brought all these things to pass, you do not like to say; for where fear is, there too is shame.' Regardless of how it was brought about we can clearly see that the Gods are only to happy to commit any number of crimes, murders, rapes, kidnappings etc using humans as toys. Leaving a trail of abused and broken mortals in their wake.

Like all good tyrants the Gods cheat when it suits. In a musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas, Marsyas had played Apollo to a standstill, with Apollo playing the lyre against the flute of Marsyas. Apollo fearful of losing to a mortal challenged the satyr to play his instrument upside down, and then again while singing along. The flute playing satyr of course could not do these things. Apollo celebrated his victory by flaying Marsyas alive.



So quickly we move from the epiphany of the wide winged swan to the ever present threat of instant death, for the Deathless Ones will brook no insolence. They know their power and are not afraid to use that power, depending on the whim that strikes. Leaving the author of this hymn to beg for the attention and pleasure of Apollo. Like the Homeric fawning dog at the banquet table hoping to appease the master, and so gain a crumb of affection or dinner. Much like the members of the 99%.

Or said much much better than I ever could - Rilke First Duino Elegy (coincidentally) Duino is just outside Trieste where Joyce was living at the time.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.

War and Anti War

---

I was reading an only moderately interesting book about the Trojan War. Among the cliches of a conflict of cultures and the battles of East and West, I came across some good quotes from out of Homer.

So like a good little geek, I had no choice to look up the original, and make a stab at translation. Mucking around a bit with what I ended up with, lead me to this two little pretend imagist works posted here.

These lines are Odysseus speaking to Agamemnon. Things are not going well for the Greeks. Odysseus lets his captain know that this is the lot of soldiers, and they will have to fight until they die. He seems to be pointing to the cruelty of the gods and their callous disregard for human life. Maybe we can see the gods as standing in for the historic and economic forces in our lives, and how it can seem to the unexplored mind that war is natural and a normal part of life.

When in fact we all know that it is possible to end war.

---

(Iliad Book 14.86)

This Zeus has assigned.

We are to endure,
From insolence
Into grey age,
Painful war,

Until we perish.
Everyone.


In this second quote, Odysseus is even more clear as to who should wear the blame for the war. It is clearly the work of the gods, and Zeus in particular. He seems to see the war as a toy of the gods, and the death of the many as being of no importance to the deathless ones.

---

(Odyssey 14.235)

Along this hateful path
Far sounding Zeus
Led many
Knee bent men
To their death.

---

The image depicts the battle about the body of Patroclus, and is from a greek vase. More can be found here
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Images/BattlePatroclus.jpg

A free and frank city

The Suppliants: lines 399 - 408



Herald:

Who is the ruler of this land?
To which one shall I announce
The proclamation of Creon?

He has mastery of the lands
Of Cadmus, since Eteocles
Died under the blows of his own
Brother Polynices, outside
Thebes of the seven towers.


Theseus:

You begin your tale
Falsely, stranger,
Seeking tyrants here.

Not for us the authority
Of one man, rather we are
A free and frank city.

The people rule and are ruled
In yearly turns. And what's more wealth
Will not grant you the most, for even
With the day labourer are they equal.

---

Theseus killed the Minotaur. He became one of heroes who brought the Greeks into the light, into the world of the city.

I was struggling my way through the final chapter of "Politics in the Ancient World" by M.I. Finley, when he quoted from the Euripides play "The Suppliants." Anything to have a break from the arid style of the former Master of Darwin College, Cambridge. And anything in these dreary days of apathy across the Angloshpere that speaks to progressive ideas is a boon.

Knowing that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and with more enthusiasm than fluency, I dove into an attempt at translation.

I used ruler as opposed to tyrant in the first line, as I wanted to see this brief exchange as a critique on our own democracy. Euripides himself was both a supporter and critic of democracy. This is as it should be, criticism and self criticism. I thought it was important to use the world frank to describe the free city of Theseus. The phrase in the original is eleuthera polis, which means free city. I thought I had to go deeper, as it seems as if free is a heavily loaded word, one which means many different things to different people, one that over the years has lost some of it's lustre. A few of the synonyms for eleuthera included free, liberal, open, unencumbered, open to all, as well as my final choice of frank. One of the positive features of Athenian democracy was the idea of frank speech, even if only in theory. A citizen who was to speak before the assembly was expected to speak truthfully, including being truthful with themselves. This what is meant by the motto "Know thyself." How much this was actually followed in daily life I dare not say. Australians only have to look at their own mythology of mateship and the fair go to make their own conclusions as to how moderate and self aware the Ancient Greeks really were.

Beyond the 'woolly' idea of being able to speak frankly in the assembly, this simple exchange allows us to sneak a peek between the curtains, into a window on Athenian democracy in action. The people rule and are ruled in yearly turn. The citizens are expected to rule, to take an active part in the actual running the government, as well as debating and voting on policy and strategy. Ruling and ruled in turn. Beyond what we learn from Euripides, we know that Athenian democracy included payment for work done for the state, as well as the use of lotteries to allocate positions. Citizens were questioned before they took up their appointed roles, and reviewed at the end of the yearly appointment. We also know, if only negatively from the constant complaints of the literate aristocrats, that democracy in Athens was for a time extended to the lower classes, the rowers and the day labourers. Side by side with the well born the day labourer was expected to speak, and his speech was expected to be heard. Again as to how equal the assembly really was, I dare not say. It does seem as if the sheer expense of the political contest, as well as the large size of some electorates, act as a ration card for political activity by the great majority of people. Lotteries also seem to have an advantage, in that it would be harder for positions to ossify, as they do in our current regime. Lotteries and fixed terms form all positions would end the idea of people being in parliament as a career.

With the current impasse in politics in the West, any idea that extends the ideas of democracy is worth thinking about and discussing.

---

Pic from: http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical/gallery/theseusminotaur.jpg

Tragedy

---

English teachers that speak of 'rashness' as being the tragic flaw of Oedipus are just plain silly. I have been thinking about things, as I shovel about this coyle. I have been thinking of questions around tragedy. What is tragedy and what is the tragic? I have been forced to use, as a starting point, the fragments I can remember from high school English class. Many thoughts and points are able to be brought to the fore, to be garnished and gnawed upon. Spat out or savoured in turn. All this thinking and all these thoughts have been aided by my special circumstances. Working in a used book store gives me access to a great many interesting books, and also allows enough slow times for me to be able to read some of these books. More importantly working in a book store allows me to amuse myself with the idea of being a 'cultural worker'. A role I am sad to say is the closest I can get to calling myself qualified to make any sort of comment about the nature of tragedy being not a flaw, not a character breach or defect, but rather a manifestation of the ignorance that forms the scaffolding of everyday life.

The high school English teacher voice in my memory requires me to understand the tragic flaw of the tragic hero. I find in my traffic light waiting time that this idea of the tragic flaw may be a stumbling block to understanding. Aristotle speaks about Hamartia - the tragic flaw. The Greek New Testament uses the word to mean, among other things, sin. The Philosopher speaks of Hamartia as errors made in ignorance, or by accident. When one combines the concept of Anagnorisis (recognition, particularly self recognition) we can see that tragedy is based on the solitary actors ignorance and smallness in the face of the uncaring immensity that is the external world. It is this ignorance that makes the actors in tragedies appear to be controlled by external forces.

It is the not being able to fully grasp the external world that causes tragic characters to make their all important fall. In this way we can see Oedipus does not have a flaw of rashness, but rather he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. When in his ignorance he thinks he is doing the right thing by fleeing, he is only hastening the inevitable. This lack of control which causes the actors to appear to be little more than playthings of fate is another expression of our ignorance.

The first idea that we should chase out of our heads is the idea of the tragic flaw as being a lack of moral fibre, as moral weakness, or sin. This seems to be mistaken, and is a typical of Christian readings. Hamartia is used in other works of Aristotle to mean an injury caused by accident or ignorance. This exposes one of the founding elements of tragedy, indeed of all of life, put bluntly - we do not know. In the case of Oedipus he is obviously ignorant of his true nature. This because his adoptive parents had lied to him from the start. How much of our lives are based on the small and large lies that our parents and our society tell us? Oedipus more than most, but very few of us can truly say that we know our own history. Even less can we say that we know what will be the outcome of our actions beforehand.

As they are meant to be performed on stage tragedies must deal with action with actors making decisions, allowing the plot to be a revealing of the consequences. To allow the ephemeral, when for a moment ignorance is pushed away. Ignorance and activity, the engine of both tragedy and real life. Agamemnon, cursed down generations for the crimes of an ancestor, ignorantly goes to embrace and is killed. Clytemnestra does not act in ignorance, in the sense that she does not have all the facts. She is trapped by a terrible set of circumstances, and is left with no alternative. Brutalised and raped by Agamemnon, forced into marriage, her first husband and infant son murdered, she must kill Agamemnon to avenge the sacrificial murder of their daughter. She must kill to allow herself to breath, to live, to put to an end to only the sharpest point of her anguish. In turn Orestes must kill his mother, who killed his father, who killed his sister. What a bloody household, all based on the crime of Tantalus, that of killing and cooking his own child to test the Gods. The gods use the House of Atreus as a warning to others not to doubt. The extravagant events control the actors, the actors do not control events. In a very real sense this is a type of ignorance, as events are moving around the actor, and the actor has no control. I think it was Heidegger who referred to time as the horizon of being, here we can amend this postulate and say that it is ignorance which is the horizon of being. As an aside I recall reading a report into work place conditions, and a conclusion was made, it not being overworked that leads to stress, it is the feeling of lack of control.

Many arguments can of course be put forward to refute my point, and I am sure that many of the arguments will be overwhelming. Including my clumsy style and inarticulate way of explaining my ideas. One can say I that cherry pick from the competing versions of the texts of the ancients, that I take parts of the story from one source and another part from a different source. This may be true, but it is not true of all human thought, even if only by accidentally mixing up of conversations or readings, indeed this blending of thoughts is one of the pathways of transmission. A solid and easy line of argument would have to wrapped in the idea that there is no simple way to describe all the stories that are called tragedy. There will always be exceptions and elements that do not fit correctly into any schema. I am happy to stand by my thought that ignorance of true events, and the lack of control of the unfolding world give rise to the tragic actor forced to make choices. Choices which are often between two compelling goods. When they make these choices they do so in an attitude of ignorance. Either they are ignorant of the true situation, or of the thoughts and plans of the other actors, or more abstractly they are ignorant of the external forces which shape and control everyday life. Marx described this buffeting by world historical forces as follows "[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

---

Tragedy

Late Afternoon approaching winter
Reddening chill slap across the face.
Low cold sunlight limp long thin shadows
Gray of pale trees swaying the wind.
Smoke rises from Yasnaya Polyana.
The cold hardens the mud and allows
Movement on the roads. And old man stands
One side of the rutted hardened track,
Watching the smoke rising, tears falling,
Anger impotent. Manuscripts torn and burnt,
Tables, chairs, beds, chopped and splintered
All burnt for warmth and contempt. The old
Man stands the side of the road, silent
Tears his hungry hut. Bodies of soldiers
Buried the clear glade desecration.
A feeling of superiority nurtured
By command. Up jumped the troopers.
In a battered ad-hoc armoured car,
Embellished death head cross.
The soldiers laughed and knocked down,
Knees down the frozen ground, the old man.
Shouting orders the old man and his wife
Could not understand. The old man
And his wife implored the invaders,
Who did not want to understand.
Only laughed and pawed the old woman.
Broke the door, chair, all the windows,
All the plates and cups in the house.
The old man cried and begged mercy
Leave us be, we are old. Pawing
The ground and he grabbed one soldier's
Knees. Think of your own gray father,
Your old grandfather, we have nothing,
We care nothing of Stalin, leave us be.
His wife was bleeding from the mouth.
And he wailed all the louder shaking
And impotent. A laughing rifle butt
Ended his talking, started blood flowing.
She flew to his side and the soldiers
Took bottles of home made wine, and two
Chickens throttled and stuffed into
A bag as dinner. Pots and pans
For cooking. The armoured car drove
Rattling and menacing away.

Down the road children huddled,
Wounded soldiers suffered,
An ancient monastery. Look here,
We shall not attack the old and pathetic
They shall soon pass, but here we find
The future, the ones who shall mature
And cut our throats while we sleep. Let us
Free ourselves of this vengeance. With cans
Of petrol and hand grenades the soldiers
Laughed and toasted the fearsome
Cries of screaming choking agony.