Sunday, January 29, 2017

Morality Plays.




"I intended that when the curtain went up the scene should confront the public like the exaggerating mirror in the stories of Madame Leprince de Beaumont, in which the depraved saw themselves with dragons' bodies or bulls' horns, or whatever corresponded to their particular vice. It is not surprising that the public should have been aghast at the sight of its other self, which it had never been shown completely. This ignoble other self, as Monsieur Catulle Mendes has excellently said, is composed "of eternal human imbecility, eternal lust, eternal gluttony, the vileness of instinct magnified into tyranny; of the sense of decency, the virtues, the patriotism and the ideals peculiar to those who have just eaten to their fill." Really, these are hardly constituents for an amusing play, and the masks demonstrate that the comedy must at the most be the macabre comedy of an English clown, or of a Dance of Death." 

Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi.


God save the King!

How we should celebrate the crowning of the great toupéed gargoyle!

Trump and his assembled company of ghastly ghouls has succeeded in reviving moral clarity.

These people give us a chance to revisit simple ideals and progressive dreams for a better world.

Thank God!

God bless President Donald J Trump!

Heil Trump!

Heil Trump!

We are confronted by a simplistic battle between right and wrong, good and evil.

The supporting cast of appeasers, corrupt capitalist cronies and neo-nazis are cut-price gremlins.

Hollywood must be rubbing its hands at the thought of cutting costs on the cuddly to ugly transformations.

Fuck cuddly let's just have ugly!!

Bored with filling our homes, pockets and minds with all the capitalistic crap money can buy we are now playing out fictional dystopian nightmares for real.

So what is this "great American" dream that people have bought into?



These are the last days of a morally bankrupt system.

“Those who are against fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.”

Bertolt Brecht


Here we are now post war (are you kidding me?), post Brexit, post truth (nope), (un)willing participants in a globalised real world morality play.

We have a chance to rediscover what the term "moral compass" might entail.



We have a chance to remind ourselves what the term "common humanity" might mean.

Meanwhile, the grizzly, greedy hypocrisy of the christian right shows itself for what it is:

pro-life fascism

Meanwhile, the grizzly, gruesome nihilism of the radical islamic jihadists shows itself for what it is:

death-cult fascism





Does this bozo aspire to moral superiority?

Nope!

He whines that his guys should be allowed to have a level fucking playing field!!

Public crucifixion in Time Square!

Great!

Now we're talking!

What brand of fascism do you prefer?

Take your pick...I mean axe.

Morality plays...

There are those self-seeking creeps who are unwilling to stand up and call out evil.




Shall we have peace in our time?

I fear not.

Morality Tales

Perhaps we need to reread some passages of those all American morality tales?

"1 Corinthians 13New International Version (NIV)

13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
Perhaps we need to heed our leaders?



Perhaps we need to heed our forebears?



Trump is a God send!

Post Script

"This is one of those clarifying moments in American history, and like most such, it came upon us unawares, although historians in later years will be able to trace the deep and the contingent causes that brought us to this day. There is nothing to fear in this fact; rather, patriots should embrace it. The story of the United States is, as Lincoln put it, a perpetual story of “a rebirth of freedom” and not just its inheritance from the founding generation."


























Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Dumb Chorus.

No one spoke.

Faces, kodachrome faded, once recognisable, had become nameless.

 






I scrutinise the rows of uniform.

Who was the boy on the left?

Who was the boy on the right?

They do not speak.

They stare.

Dumb Chorus.

Sitting and thinking, I furrow my brow.

I make a list.

Of the few faces that I retain:
  • an inspiring English teacher
  • the art teacher, 
  • the violently abusive headmaster, 
  • the housemaster, 
  • a chain-smoking French teacher.
  • a paedophile science teacher
  • a sadistic German teacher
  • a history teacher or two
  • a geography teacher.  
I can remember three or four names.

Hour upon hour of study... how many moments remain?

Hour upon hour of study... how many marks did I receive?

Two vivid bruises.

A dumb chorus.

Two or three people marked me for life.

Others left no apparent mark.

Image credit:

The Chorus (1876) by Edgar Degas, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay

Friday, January 13, 2017

Blear and loathing.


"Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant." 

Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.


"I find myself here."

There is no question about it.

"I find myself here."

It suddenly occurred to me the other day.

That that hadn't been me.

It was a relief. 

"I'm sorry, you don't follow?"

Well, I am telling you...

Now...

I was...a relief.

I had been hidden, dissimulated, drowned out in drear.

It was tiresome.

Then I was there, bleary eyed, somewhere near.

"I find myself here."

It was an unfamiliar sound.

Breath as plague.
Breath as swarm.

Breath as resistance.






"I find myself here."

I scrolled.
I scrolled.
I scrolled.

Nothing seemed to connect.

Nothing seemed to connect.

I fall prey to blear and loathing.

"I lose myself there."

I can't go on.

I am lost.

I am nothing.

I am carrion.

Rotting.



It wasn't me.

No, I am telling you.

That wasn't me.

I recognise myself in this distance.

"I find myself here."



Footnotes.

I find myself here on flitting through a post of Terry Elliot.

"Self loathing is a subset of resistance: all honour to Laura Ritchie and Steven Pressfield."

I find it difficult to delve deeply.

He links to an article of Steven Pressfield.

I find it difficult to delve deeply.

I walk with Pressfield an instant.

I get as far as "One."

"So the next time you hear that self-loathing voice in your head, remember two things: One, that voice is not you."

I nod my head in agreement.

Getting to "Two" is a step too far.

"remember two things."

I don't take too kindly to imperatives...

Fuck that Mr Pressfield.

I find something about "original dreams" and "good signs."

Oh what bollocks.

I may be hasty in my judgement.

I find myself here.
















Monday, January 2, 2017

Tales of drear.

The leaves are rotting on the ground.

A mountain of firewood blocks the street.

A group of sepia men carry logs into a house.




Time itself, it appears, has slipped backwards.

Voices are muffled, pitch is lowered, meaning is mangled.

These are tales of drear.

I feel each word like a step in a bog.

I am, wading, arms flailing, getting nowhere.

I sink deeper.

The dog is barking at imaginary intruders.



What the hell are these bloody photos?

The phone is taking them without my knowledge.

They become my memory.




I slept badly, my mind polluted by Donald fucking Trump.

Gonad Skunk: Make America Hate Again

Facts became a wearisome wordplay at two in the morning.

Fact
Fuck.
Fake
Facile.
Facetious.
Flunky.
Fraction
Fact
Faction
Fart.

And so on.

Ad infinitum.

Then I slept.