Prologue. Young man arguing with his dad about effectiveness marriage. Makes bitter comments about his parents’ relationship. Dad agrees but says he should go see great Aunt Kitty before he decides permanently. Does so. Finds ageing couple still very much in love living in big house Lewisham. They nice to him. Private joke about the bug man. He curious. Kitty tells him following story.
Pre First World War London. Kitty's parents conventional well to do. She is morbidly shy. Intelligent and sensitive. Parents afraid she never leaves home. All the suitors they get for her are weird and boring. At last give her ultimatum. Choice between living with awful stentorian aunt, or.....in desperation she marries Fenwick Reames. Bacteriologist He is ugly man. Very blunt and difficult. They go Cape Town because that where he can study special bug. The five legged African laughing bug. She finds him sexually repulsive. Wedding night psychodrama. After wedding night has dream of him covered in bugs, eating bugs and having sex with a giant bug! She goes crazy in Cape Town. No friends. No prospect making any. Takes up hobby but he belittles it. In disgusted rage she smashes matchstick house. She has minor kind of breakdown. In a church she starts weeping. Man next to her says, “ I know Jesus is very sexy in his loin cloth my dear, but this is overdoing it.” Gives her hanky. It Ambrose De Coverly. The ambiguous diamond broker. He introduces her to his debauched circle of friends. She finds sexual freedom. Sexual relations husband stop. He notices change in her. She calmer. This carries on for an eighteen months. Bug work going well, then!!!!!!!!! Fenwick hears rumors. Attends a party. The cabaret turns out to be his wife performing a sex act. He scandalized! He overcomes shame. Next day. Feels he can no longer go on in Cape Town because of shame. So he takes post in the interior. Small tribe. Mysterious disease killing them. She horrified. She won't go. Contacts parents. But he got there first. Because of scandal, they disown her! She forced go with him. But when there she overcome by pity at terrible state of village. They work together building hut hospital and disinfecting area. Tribe witch doctor educated man. Went to Eaton. Tribe has weird version of rugby game. At first Fenwick hated but when he excels at tribe rugby they learn respect him. Tribe has religion. Worship Lahcutoh. Their god. A giant praying mantis that lives under termite hill. Fenwick skeptical. But kitty has dream. Lacutoh speaking to her. It is about cure for sickness. They must go into savannah and meet him at waterhole. Fenwick rejects idea. But his experiments failing. Only matter of time before they get sick. Out of desperation he agrees to try it. Fenwick, Kitty and Witch Doctor set off. Must pass thru dangerous areas to get to where Lahcutoh is. Man-eating jaguar. Tribe of pygmy headhunters. The evil swampland. At last get there. It is desolate area of small stunted bushes and gray looking earth. Build fire. Wait for night. Long conversation about meaning of life. Then strange dust storm. When it stops kitty vanished! Nothing they can do but wait. Fenwick goes into rage. Witch doc tries calm him down. 2 days pass. Then storm comes again. When it stops, kitty sitting there! She tells story. In storm uncontrollable urge possessed her to walk off. Walked for hours. Came to dried up waterhole. Roaring noise then Lahcutoh appeared. It very awesome!
Kitty afraid. Feels ground dissolve. Falling thru space. Lands softly next to a small bush with a single flower on it. Bush talks to her. Says pick my flower. She does so. Lahcutoh appears. She gets on his back. They fly into dust storm. End.
Witch doctor wants to discuss story from an anthropological perspective. Fenwick tells him to shut it! They go back tribe.
Fenwick analyses flower. Collects more. Extract serum from it. Gives tribe injections. It works! That night Fenwick and kitty make love!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Coda. Fenwick and Kitty set up clinic in London using serum help people with many different ailments. Medical establishment pooh pooh it. But they don’t care. Have family.
Kitty writes book. AWESOME LAHCUTOH! which does moderately well. They have big house in Lewisham, which is constantly bursting with people. In a book kitty has pressed the flower that the god showed her in the gray land.
The young man leaves the house holding the book. She has given it to him. Sits down on bench in tube. Thinking deeply about strange story. A girl sits next to him. He looks at her. He looks at the book in his hands.
End
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
WHAT ART IS, AND ISN'T
People often say that advertising is art, and on face value it certainly looks artistic but really, here it's just a failure to discriminate. Advertising is creative, but it isn't art, for true art, is always trying to change your perception of the world. In order to do that it has to have behind it a thought process. This thought process informs the work of art with a depth of meaning. True art is the end product that thought process.
In advertising there is no thought process, only ideas themselves manipulated in a clever way to give you the impression of art without it’s actual content. An advert does not want to change your perception of the world. Only perhaps your perception of your need for a certain product or what that product does. Advertising then does not have and ‘inner life’. There is no movement within it. It isn’t going anywhere, in the sense that it will lead you forwards into a new and better understanding of what it means to be alive.
Now. There’s nothing wrong with advertising. If you have a product you need to make people aware of that product. However. It is business, not art. We need to see clearly, ironically, the fog of confusion that envelops things like this and how all of us end up living in this fog, continually mistaking one thing for another, the result of which is we fail to reap that much valued crop of true knowledge, which is the product of discriminating clearly between things.
Put another way this is saying that advertising falsifies the world it presents us with by removing all the pain form that world and then encouraging us to identify with it! Which can do, and it is a fine and ‘jim-dandy’ world to live in, for it is wonderful to live in a pain-free world and have a blissful time; until of course something negative does surface, and we are forced to acknowledge through illness, boredom, whatever, a deeper level, but by then of course it will be too late, and we will experience this negative thing in a very unproductive and unenlightening way. Our lack of consciousness will trip us up quite indefatigably.
Now. This isn’t rocket science. Artists as individuals have always preferred reality over illusion, and have struggled to express that. This is something extremely obvious and simple and it’s this simplicity which defeats us. People will protest ‘but it can’t be that simple’!!!! Or they will say, ‘but that’s not new’! Which is true. It isn’t. But some things are unfortunately universal. Some things you will have to come to terms with. You cannot have them how you want them. They will also say that things must be mindless because we need mindless fun. It is a release without which we would die, or something. But this again is just more advertising in sense that advertising is always excluding something, like pain, or reality, and this attitude excludes the possibility that life could ever be different or that we could other things uplifting and fun, heaven forbid!
So what is art? Ultimately, real art, true art, is anything which does not pander to our wish fulfillment weakness in order to exploit that in some way to gain ‘power over’, status, financial reward. It is anything which does not lie to us. True art accepts responsibility by telling us the truth of pain and darkness in order that we may be equipped with it, in order to deal with it, when it does surface in our lives. So in some ways true art will strike us as wrong in some way. Paradoxically it will strike us as the opposite of what it is. It will seem false when it actually is true. Weird.
We live at a point in time when, as we well know, ‘art’ has been assimilated into the business community. Consequently artists must now become ‘brands’ that you market in much the same way you would market any other product. Like say baked beans. A quick, easy to consume, sweet product, but remember, a mass- produced rather soulless product. So that what as artist is saying now, the ‘meaning’ of what they do, is now of much much less importance that how well it can be branded and sold. Now the artist is created by the ‘art world’, not the art world existing to serve the individual vision of the artist. Now for an artist it is now about materializing your inner truth or a truth of life but about about materializing some kind of marketable mass truth or ‘concept’, as in ‘conceptual’, that will be what galleries are looking for and be in tune with ‘groupthink’. It is all very Orwellian. Now you could say something radical but that would be because people want to hear something radical, that is chic, and it would simply have no radical effect. It would be just playing the art game. Remember. The art world is an institution and like all institutions it is self-serving and self-interested. As long as it can go on believing in it’s own myth, all is fine. Nevermind the toxix stink of death, stagnation and decay. The ant-noise of mindless crowds troughing down on the next ‘batman’ extravaganza! Nevermind the grey sterile boredom leaking out of every fast food funfair and infecting gay life with a morbid virus of truth and inertia. THINK!
Granny’s in the coal house with a government man
In shades talkin’ turkey to an ole buzzard with the blues
Who sold your trainers to pay his dues
& you YOUS!!!
You’re in the alley trying to drum up interest
In your next world war, the one with extra horrors
Narrated by Jane Horrocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In advertising there is no thought process, only ideas themselves manipulated in a clever way to give you the impression of art without it’s actual content. An advert does not want to change your perception of the world. Only perhaps your perception of your need for a certain product or what that product does. Advertising then does not have and ‘inner life’. There is no movement within it. It isn’t going anywhere, in the sense that it will lead you forwards into a new and better understanding of what it means to be alive.
Now. There’s nothing wrong with advertising. If you have a product you need to make people aware of that product. However. It is business, not art. We need to see clearly, ironically, the fog of confusion that envelops things like this and how all of us end up living in this fog, continually mistaking one thing for another, the result of which is we fail to reap that much valued crop of true knowledge, which is the product of discriminating clearly between things.
Put another way this is saying that advertising falsifies the world it presents us with by removing all the pain form that world and then encouraging us to identify with it! Which can do, and it is a fine and ‘jim-dandy’ world to live in, for it is wonderful to live in a pain-free world and have a blissful time; until of course something negative does surface, and we are forced to acknowledge through illness, boredom, whatever, a deeper level, but by then of course it will be too late, and we will experience this negative thing in a very unproductive and unenlightening way. Our lack of consciousness will trip us up quite indefatigably.
Now. This isn’t rocket science. Artists as individuals have always preferred reality over illusion, and have struggled to express that. This is something extremely obvious and simple and it’s this simplicity which defeats us. People will protest ‘but it can’t be that simple’!!!! Or they will say, ‘but that’s not new’! Which is true. It isn’t. But some things are unfortunately universal. Some things you will have to come to terms with. You cannot have them how you want them. They will also say that things must be mindless because we need mindless fun. It is a release without which we would die, or something. But this again is just more advertising in sense that advertising is always excluding something, like pain, or reality, and this attitude excludes the possibility that life could ever be different or that we could other things uplifting and fun, heaven forbid!
So what is art? Ultimately, real art, true art, is anything which does not pander to our wish fulfillment weakness in order to exploit that in some way to gain ‘power over’, status, financial reward. It is anything which does not lie to us. True art accepts responsibility by telling us the truth of pain and darkness in order that we may be equipped with it, in order to deal with it, when it does surface in our lives. So in some ways true art will strike us as wrong in some way. Paradoxically it will strike us as the opposite of what it is. It will seem false when it actually is true. Weird.
We live at a point in time when, as we well know, ‘art’ has been assimilated into the business community. Consequently artists must now become ‘brands’ that you market in much the same way you would market any other product. Like say baked beans. A quick, easy to consume, sweet product, but remember, a mass- produced rather soulless product. So that what as artist is saying now, the ‘meaning’ of what they do, is now of much much less importance that how well it can be branded and sold. Now the artist is created by the ‘art world’, not the art world existing to serve the individual vision of the artist. Now for an artist it is now about materializing your inner truth or a truth of life but about about materializing some kind of marketable mass truth or ‘concept’, as in ‘conceptual’, that will be what galleries are looking for and be in tune with ‘groupthink’. It is all very Orwellian. Now you could say something radical but that would be because people want to hear something radical, that is chic, and it would simply have no radical effect. It would be just playing the art game. Remember. The art world is an institution and like all institutions it is self-serving and self-interested. As long as it can go on believing in it’s own myth, all is fine. Nevermind the toxix stink of death, stagnation and decay. The ant-noise of mindless crowds troughing down on the next ‘batman’ extravaganza! Nevermind the grey sterile boredom leaking out of every fast food funfair and infecting gay life with a morbid virus of truth and inertia. THINK!
Granny’s in the coal house with a government man
In shades talkin’ turkey to an ole buzzard with the blues
Who sold your trainers to pay his dues
& you YOUS!!!
You’re in the alley trying to drum up interest
In your next world war, the one with extra horrors
Narrated by Jane Horrocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HONOURING YOURSELF
If we do want to start to honour ourselves, to take back our power and
to begin to live more purposefully, then we need to understand some
fundamental things.
From beginning we are taught to conform. Identify. Be sympathetic of or mindful of what others think and feel and feel. And of course this right and good. But in terms of your inner journey, this a big block. The inner journey being a completely new departure, which does not really conform to, or fit with your old world. But what usually happens is that people carry on in old mode, by applying a value system where it no longer appropriate. A good example is our adult value system. Or what we believe to be true as adults. We often apply this to our perception of our childhood world, completely forgetting that a child does not have an adult value system, obvious as this may seem. How this translates is simply that a child will feel things which the adult will find unacceptable. An adult will say truly, that I do not feel any hatred towards family members. This is true for the adult. And yet as a child it may have been very well the case that the child did feel this hatred. In this way we falsely apply a set of conditions to an inappropriate location. If we say I can’t jump 20 feet in air. That true. But if we were on the moon, it would be patently untrue.
Thus, honouring yourself, is to put yourself first for a change. To allow yourself to be honest about what you may have felt as a child and to do this without prejudice. Also it means in everyday life, not to take such an adult view of what we say we are feeling. Truth is, and one most people would prefer to ignore is, that we need to go thru dysfunctional in order to become functional. Mostly, people just want to embrace a more positive healthy option straight away. And this often encouraged or seconded by self-help literature which, in order to be successful or effective will stress the positive, the wholesome, the beneficial, over the evil ‘negative’. It will always encourage you to think there are formulas, answers, solutions to things and not, sometimes long and difficult processes that may last for years. This is not to say, and I repeat NOT, that positive wrong or bad. No. Positive good. What I’m saying is you can be positively negative. Think. I’m saying we can put our dysfunctionality to good use and that is kinda cool, and what artists have always done. What I’m saying is you should build your church on a rock and not on a shifting sand . And that rock is truth. Think. Truth may not be P.C., but it is truth. And here truth is that if we feel something, that thing must exist. Be in us. Have an origin. To ignore it because it’s bad, not productive, negative, is the height of stupidity.
In the Magician, a novel by Somerset Maugham, the hero meets a magician in Paris. Hero finds magician a disreputable, repulsive character. He makes point of showing his contempt and disgust of him. This result is bad consequences. Read the book. It cool! Here though we can see how very aware Maugam was of the view we take of the dysfunctional, here seen in shape of repulsive magician, and how we shun what we consider unwholesome, negative and bad. And how this results in us having problematicos!!! Think. We could just as easily be non-judgmental and open, for will our condemnation of something, change anything? Answer of course is no. The ‘evil’ magician remains evil wether we condemn or shun him or not. As Osho points out in ‘yoga:the science of the soul’, the world runs on prejudice. We develop beliefs, inflexible opinions and dogmas. We learn to shun, to label, to judge, to be against, often purely on reflex, with no personal experience or knowledge to back it up.
To honour yourself, start by recognising the true nature of what we term society. Culture. Civilisation. These slippery terms we have for that strange sea we swim in. For wether we like it or not , people simply do not create social structures which encourage or enable us to uplift ourselves. Social structures are self serving and exist simply to keep on existing. That is all. Our world may well help us to achieve, live, succeed, make art, be poor, whatever, but it does not encourage or help us to transcend. In truth, it probably does the exact opposite. It suppresses, it indoctrinates, it censors; people become asleep, and this sleeping sickness can take many forms, be it clever, stupid, religious, new-age, scientific, you name it. So truth is, awareness eclipsed at birth and then ruthlessly suppressed until death. Think. This is our world. It’s not a political theory it’s a fact. If you say there are no facts, no truths, then understand this. The person who is saying that has had their awareness eclipsed at birth and then ruthlessly suppressed, meaning…that person is asleep!
Now this is a radical truth. By you need a radical truth to deal with a radical situation. This does not mean however, that people are intrinsically evil or that society bad, or we need to be political extremists carrying bombs and stuff. That would be stupid. On the one hand is our understanding. On the other hand is the action which results from that understanding. We needn’t ‘act it out’ if we realise, understanding the nature of society, is to understand what has happened to ourselves, and therefore it is we who have to change, and not society. To say we should change society is to take the symptom for the disease, as we are the creators of society ultimately, and it’s as Shakespeare says, ‘the fault is in us, Horatio, in that we are underlings’. Like Caliban, we see the ills of society and raging at our mirror scream, “No. It’s wrong! It can’t be allowed!” The very first step in honouring yourself is to know, it must be allowed, yet we must still know it shouldn’t be. For as long as we continue to deny the essential rottenness of social systems there will be no progress. Whilst at the same time recognising the need for social systems! It is of course an anomalous situation. A contradiction. A logical impossibility. An impasse. The way forward is the way back. This is radical thinking. It is honouring yourself, a thing you haven’t done until now.
Having written this I then watched Simpson’s episode where Ned Flanders loses his home in a hurricane and undergoes a ‘Job’ like crisis of faith. He ends up in the nut house and undergoes therapy. Turns out Ned’s problem is, yes! You guessed! He has never honoured himself. Having all his life suppressed his anger because his hippy parents couldn’t discipline him, it resulted in his bonkers episode. So you see. When a thing is so obvious it has become a joke in the Simpsons, isn’t it time we gave it careful consideration?
Wha da ya mean?! You don’t like the Simpsons! Really. Bah, humbug!
to begin to live more purposefully, then we need to understand some
fundamental things.
From beginning we are taught to conform. Identify. Be sympathetic of or mindful of what others think and feel and feel. And of course this right and good. But in terms of your inner journey, this a big block. The inner journey being a completely new departure, which does not really conform to, or fit with your old world. But what usually happens is that people carry on in old mode, by applying a value system where it no longer appropriate. A good example is our adult value system. Or what we believe to be true as adults. We often apply this to our perception of our childhood world, completely forgetting that a child does not have an adult value system, obvious as this may seem. How this translates is simply that a child will feel things which the adult will find unacceptable. An adult will say truly, that I do not feel any hatred towards family members. This is true for the adult. And yet as a child it may have been very well the case that the child did feel this hatred. In this way we falsely apply a set of conditions to an inappropriate location. If we say I can’t jump 20 feet in air. That true. But if we were on the moon, it would be patently untrue.
Thus, honouring yourself, is to put yourself first for a change. To allow yourself to be honest about what you may have felt as a child and to do this without prejudice. Also it means in everyday life, not to take such an adult view of what we say we are feeling. Truth is, and one most people would prefer to ignore is, that we need to go thru dysfunctional in order to become functional. Mostly, people just want to embrace a more positive healthy option straight away. And this often encouraged or seconded by self-help literature which, in order to be successful or effective will stress the positive, the wholesome, the beneficial, over the evil ‘negative’. It will always encourage you to think there are formulas, answers, solutions to things and not, sometimes long and difficult processes that may last for years. This is not to say, and I repeat NOT, that positive wrong or bad. No. Positive good. What I’m saying is you can be positively negative. Think. I’m saying we can put our dysfunctionality to good use and that is kinda cool, and what artists have always done. What I’m saying is you should build your church on a rock and not on a shifting sand . And that rock is truth. Think. Truth may not be P.C., but it is truth. And here truth is that if we feel something, that thing must exist. Be in us. Have an origin. To ignore it because it’s bad, not productive, negative, is the height of stupidity.
In the Magician, a novel by Somerset Maugham, the hero meets a magician in Paris. Hero finds magician a disreputable, repulsive character. He makes point of showing his contempt and disgust of him. This result is bad consequences. Read the book. It cool! Here though we can see how very aware Maugam was of the view we take of the dysfunctional, here seen in shape of repulsive magician, and how we shun what we consider unwholesome, negative and bad. And how this results in us having problematicos!!! Think. We could just as easily be non-judgmental and open, for will our condemnation of something, change anything? Answer of course is no. The ‘evil’ magician remains evil wether we condemn or shun him or not. As Osho points out in ‘yoga:the science of the soul’, the world runs on prejudice. We develop beliefs, inflexible opinions and dogmas. We learn to shun, to label, to judge, to be against, often purely on reflex, with no personal experience or knowledge to back it up.
To honour yourself, start by recognising the true nature of what we term society. Culture. Civilisation. These slippery terms we have for that strange sea we swim in. For wether we like it or not , people simply do not create social structures which encourage or enable us to uplift ourselves. Social structures are self serving and exist simply to keep on existing. That is all. Our world may well help us to achieve, live, succeed, make art, be poor, whatever, but it does not encourage or help us to transcend. In truth, it probably does the exact opposite. It suppresses, it indoctrinates, it censors; people become asleep, and this sleeping sickness can take many forms, be it clever, stupid, religious, new-age, scientific, you name it. So truth is, awareness eclipsed at birth and then ruthlessly suppressed until death. Think. This is our world. It’s not a political theory it’s a fact. If you say there are no facts, no truths, then understand this. The person who is saying that has had their awareness eclipsed at birth and then ruthlessly suppressed, meaning…that person is asleep!
Now this is a radical truth. By you need a radical truth to deal with a radical situation. This does not mean however, that people are intrinsically evil or that society bad, or we need to be political extremists carrying bombs and stuff. That would be stupid. On the one hand is our understanding. On the other hand is the action which results from that understanding. We needn’t ‘act it out’ if we realise, understanding the nature of society, is to understand what has happened to ourselves, and therefore it is we who have to change, and not society. To say we should change society is to take the symptom for the disease, as we are the creators of society ultimately, and it’s as Shakespeare says, ‘the fault is in us, Horatio, in that we are underlings’. Like Caliban, we see the ills of society and raging at our mirror scream, “No. It’s wrong! It can’t be allowed!” The very first step in honouring yourself is to know, it must be allowed, yet we must still know it shouldn’t be. For as long as we continue to deny the essential rottenness of social systems there will be no progress. Whilst at the same time recognising the need for social systems! It is of course an anomalous situation. A contradiction. A logical impossibility. An impasse. The way forward is the way back. This is radical thinking. It is honouring yourself, a thing you haven’t done until now.
Having written this I then watched Simpson’s episode where Ned Flanders loses his home in a hurricane and undergoes a ‘Job’ like crisis of faith. He ends up in the nut house and undergoes therapy. Turns out Ned’s problem is, yes! You guessed! He has never honoured himself. Having all his life suppressed his anger because his hippy parents couldn’t discipline him, it resulted in his bonkers episode. So you see. When a thing is so obvious it has become a joke in the Simpsons, isn’t it time we gave it careful consideration?
Wha da ya mean?! You don’t like the Simpsons! Really. Bah, humbug!
CRASHED ANGEL
I found a crashed angel
At the side of the road.
His face grey.
His wings all tangled up.
I took out my hanky
And mopped his brow.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Maybe you could help me up?”
I did so.
He stood unsteady
Leaning on my shoulder.
“How did it happen?”
“Oh. The usual story.
I was so full of the love of God
I flew up and up and up.
But I lost control,
And came crashing down.
Stupid really.”
“Not really,” I said.
“A mistake we all could make.”
And I gave him a big hug.
He smiled wanly. “Yes.”
We walked on.
At last he said,
“Well. Time to get back to H.Q.
Work to do.”
“Yes,” I said.
And off he flew.
Have you ever seen an angel fly?
No. Neither have I.
At the side of the road.
His face grey.
His wings all tangled up.
I took out my hanky
And mopped his brow.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Maybe you could help me up?”
I did so.
He stood unsteady
Leaning on my shoulder.
“How did it happen?”
“Oh. The usual story.
I was so full of the love of God
I flew up and up and up.
But I lost control,
And came crashing down.
Stupid really.”
“Not really,” I said.
“A mistake we all could make.”
And I gave him a big hug.
He smiled wanly. “Yes.”
We walked on.
At last he said,
“Well. Time to get back to H.Q.
Work to do.”
“Yes,” I said.
And off he flew.
Have you ever seen an angel fly?
No. Neither have I.
Adam Everyman
COMING SOON! From
W O M B A T C L A S S I C S
W O M B A T C L A S S I C S
ADAM EVERYMAN
(A picaresque English Novel!)
by
HENRY PICARESQUE
Chapter One
In which our hero goes to the Jobcentre but it is shut, and
he has to come home again.
Chapter Two
In which our hero spends all day considering buying a washing
machine, but then remembers he can’t afford one.
Chapter Three
In which our hero takes back his library book.
Chapter Four
In which our hero has a bad back form sitting down too
much.
Chapter Five
In which our hero, combs his hair, quite a bit.
Chapter Six
In which our hero, (Yes! You guessed!) has a quiet wank.
Chapter Seven
Due to an industrial dispute at Wombat, chapter seven,
has been cancelled!
Chapter Eight
In which our hero, in his usual inconsequential manner, whilst
watching the alien invasion on t.v., is visited by her Majesty the
Queen! who whisks him off in her Lear jet to visit the seven
wonders of the world! (which the aliens are dissembling to
transport back to planet Zircon, where Lady Di has a love-nest
with her chauffeur, Ron!) all the while paying homage to our hero
for being so picaresque, in a picaresque sort of way!
Chapter Nine
In which our hero has a fag and contemplates infinity, for at
least ten minutes!
(A picaresque English Novel!)
by
HENRY PICARESQUE
Chapter One
In which our hero goes to the Jobcentre but it is shut, and
he has to come home again.
Chapter Two
In which our hero spends all day considering buying a washing
machine, but then remembers he can’t afford one.
Chapter Three
In which our hero takes back his library book.
Chapter Four
In which our hero has a bad back form sitting down too
much.
Chapter Five
In which our hero, combs his hair, quite a bit.
Chapter Six
In which our hero, (Yes! You guessed!) has a quiet wank.
Chapter Seven
Due to an industrial dispute at Wombat, chapter seven,
has been cancelled!
Chapter Eight
In which our hero, in his usual inconsequential manner, whilst
watching the alien invasion on t.v., is visited by her Majesty the
Queen! who whisks him off in her Lear jet to visit the seven
wonders of the world! (which the aliens are dissembling to
transport back to planet Zircon, where Lady Di has a love-nest
with her chauffeur, Ron!) all the while paying homage to our hero
for being so picaresque, in a picaresque sort of way!
Chapter Nine
In which our hero has a fag and contemplates infinity, for at
least ten minutes!
Thursday, 17 July 2008
dumbing down those quirky corners!
a gay friend of mine, a successful writer has been moaning in print about the demise of the small gay press. in order to survive he has been forced to take up the gentle art of porn. yes! porn!
"Have you ever thought of writing porn?" he asked. "It's easy to get published, and you sell a lot of books." As these are the only words that a writer ever really wants to hear, I rushed home and embarked without much thought on a filthy homosexual rewrite of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, entitled The Low Road.
"As these are the only words that a writer ever really wants to hear!"
This of course strikes us as funny. why? because it is very clever. the writer in saying this is acknowledging that there is a choice. he could retain his integrity in remaining a 'serious' writer, but that's it's a choice no intelligent person would make, in a world, culture, that does not encourage, honor or value integrity, and we laugh at the casual effrontery of admitting this, our craven nature, without a blush or the slightest guilt. we also laugh as it's a release of tension for we ourselves feel guilty that we do not make this choice to have more integrity and so our tension is released when someone brazenly admits it with no guilt at all! yes. the thing is deuced clever, what-ho.
but hang on a mo. where did we begin? oh yes. the demise of the small gay press. which our writer never explains he merely laments. but i can offer a tentative explanation. the current trend or direction is to dumb down. this in effect means everything becomes more mainstream. life has less quirky corners. and what quirkier corner could there be but the gay world?! so this issue of the gay press really just shows that dumbing down has spread even here! a place you really wouldn't expect to fall prey to this as the gay world is, god bless them, anti intellectual, anti heavy stuff, is an antidote to the serious stuff the dumbers down would dumb down! incredible. but it seems dumbing down knows no limit. it is unprejudiced. across the board.
which means what? well think. it ain't rocket science. it means our gay writer is responsible for the thing he bewails. if we accept dumbing down to be about a lack of integrity and our writer shows a lack of integrity in turning so quickly to mindless porn, then then, he is responsible for the thing he bemoans. he is hoist on his own petunias, as bill would say. it's this self helpy thing of creating your world with your own thoughts. we are responsible. no one else is.
but why? i know this chap. he ain't a bad person. he is intelligent. why does he automatically make this kind of choice? well. what i'd say is, it a product of the seductive nature of cleverness!!! cleverness or being sharp is the ulimate siren intoxicating our senses with her beautiful charms! it is seductive because it appeals to, or flatters our vanity. it says look how wonderful we are. how clever and superior. look at us! sophisticated clever beings who have a clever answer for everything. is this the Faust story, or isn't it? but in reality our cleverness is self defeating, for now our gay writer no longer has outlet for what he really wants to write. i.e. 'serious' gay fiction, and not, mindless porn AND AND AND! so the quality of his life has diminished, for, that thing we really want to do, express, be; that thing which is 'us' and we want to scream from the rooftops; makes us feel good.
FEEL GOOOD!
it is our soul urge. our passion. our reason de atra!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
let's face it. we can be clever, or we can be honest. if we were honest we'd admit cleverness ain't never helped us. 'if'. but between those two small insignificant letters lies a vast unbridgeable gulf, and, for the vast vast majority, that is a bridge too far; so let us go on bemoaning things we have no control over. let's.
amen.
"Have you ever thought of writing porn?" he asked. "It's easy to get published, and you sell a lot of books." As these are the only words that a writer ever really wants to hear, I rushed home and embarked without much thought on a filthy homosexual rewrite of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, entitled The Low Road.
"As these are the only words that a writer ever really wants to hear!"
This of course strikes us as funny. why? because it is very clever. the writer in saying this is acknowledging that there is a choice. he could retain his integrity in remaining a 'serious' writer, but that's it's a choice no intelligent person would make, in a world, culture, that does not encourage, honor or value integrity, and we laugh at the casual effrontery of admitting this, our craven nature, without a blush or the slightest guilt. we also laugh as it's a release of tension for we ourselves feel guilty that we do not make this choice to have more integrity and so our tension is released when someone brazenly admits it with no guilt at all! yes. the thing is deuced clever, what-ho.
but hang on a mo. where did we begin? oh yes. the demise of the small gay press. which our writer never explains he merely laments. but i can offer a tentative explanation. the current trend or direction is to dumb down. this in effect means everything becomes more mainstream. life has less quirky corners. and what quirkier corner could there be but the gay world?! so this issue of the gay press really just shows that dumbing down has spread even here! a place you really wouldn't expect to fall prey to this as the gay world is, god bless them, anti intellectual, anti heavy stuff, is an antidote to the serious stuff the dumbers down would dumb down! incredible. but it seems dumbing down knows no limit. it is unprejudiced. across the board.
which means what? well think. it ain't rocket science. it means our gay writer is responsible for the thing he bewails. if we accept dumbing down to be about a lack of integrity and our writer shows a lack of integrity in turning so quickly to mindless porn, then then, he is responsible for the thing he bemoans. he is hoist on his own petunias, as bill would say. it's this self helpy thing of creating your world with your own thoughts. we are responsible. no one else is.
but why? i know this chap. he ain't a bad person. he is intelligent. why does he automatically make this kind of choice? well. what i'd say is, it a product of the seductive nature of cleverness!!! cleverness or being sharp is the ulimate siren intoxicating our senses with her beautiful charms! it is seductive because it appeals to, or flatters our vanity. it says look how wonderful we are. how clever and superior. look at us! sophisticated clever beings who have a clever answer for everything. is this the Faust story, or isn't it? but in reality our cleverness is self defeating, for now our gay writer no longer has outlet for what he really wants to write. i.e. 'serious' gay fiction, and not, mindless porn AND AND AND! so the quality of his life has diminished, for, that thing we really want to do, express, be; that thing which is 'us' and we want to scream from the rooftops; makes us feel good.
FEEL GOOOD!
it is our soul urge. our passion. our reason de atra!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
let's face it. we can be clever, or we can be honest. if we were honest we'd admit cleverness ain't never helped us. 'if'. but between those two small insignificant letters lies a vast unbridgeable gulf, and, for the vast vast majority, that is a bridge too far; so let us go on bemoaning things we have no control over. let's.
amen.
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