Falling In Public

NUC: Wild and Wood, Holborn

2012-02-05T05:55:00.000-08:00

On the day Saint Paul's became under siege by marauding disgruntled taxpayers (99% of the country, so I hear), Dave and I stopped here, at Wild and Wood, for a coffee, before heading into the battlefield and making unruly remarks about bankers, politics and the ambiguous City of London Corporation. We all know a little more about this secretive institution now, right? No, not really. "A coffee before the protest?" I advanced. — "Yes," replied Dave, "I know a place up here." — "Ah, but there's a place up here that I'd like to check out, looks pretty good." — "Trust me, the one I'm thinking of is really nice." — "Where is it?" — "Somewhere round here, not quite sure..."

Neither of us could find the cafés we were thinking of, which were both, incidentally, Wild and Wood. Until, voilà, here it was. The micro-network of roads round there still throws me. Our coffee was swell and gave us a much needed fuel injection for the chilly day of polemics which awaited us.

Today I am back here with Chris. We nestle in in what could be described as an alcove. The seats are carved into the walls, and the tables protrude from them. Pictures of old movie stars dot the wall, and a candle sits between us, giving Chris' beard an enigmatic shine. The unusual layout is a novelty in itself, and invites you to clumsily share the space with other coffee comrades. As the name of the place would suggest, its prettty woody and pretty goddam wild.

It's another one of those places which opts out of the conventional 'bar' system, instead simply plopping a cash register on the side and relying on shelves and worktops which spill into the room. The woman with the coffee (European but I didn't catch enough to guess where) is to-the-point but friendly. The small 'polite' reminders that those who sit here must purchase something, not water, sums up her character, at least in my head. Three suited men squeeze around a tiny table, sipping coffee delicately and talking about 'fiscal years' and 'strategic incentive strategies (SIS)'. We enjoy our coffee, it's good and is complimented nicely by a fine sugar. Buzzing slightly, we wonder whether we will ever set foot in an office; we expect not.

NUC: Blossoming Together, Deptford

2012-01-27T06:56:00.000-08:00

The award for cutest name goes too Blossoming Together. They've only been open a handful of months, so I am told, and they're still getting going. But this lack of refinement makes the whole thing better, possesing a reality that most places don't have. They hail from Italy, and slot comfortably into this quiet pedestrianised road opposite Deptford High Street.

When I walked past and took a look in it felt like I was peering into someone's front room. A woman appeared, somewhat expectantly, somewhat suspiciously, with a cautious smile on her face. I went in and asked for a coffee. She seemed slightly thrown, as if I had asked for something unusual, like a rabbit or something. But, quickly she seemed to accept that this was indeed a café and coffees were a fairly ordinary request. First, she fumbles around finding me an suitable place to sit. It's not busy, so this shouldn't be too challenging. But, also, there's only a few tables. There's one woman reading at one table, and a young girl with toys at another. I join the woman, she with Kindle, me with paperback. The three of us briefly discuss the merits of each device and the prospects for the rainforest.

There's also a space downstairs. From the amount of noise I deduce that downstairs is bigger than up here. Apparently it's a sewing and colouring and braiding workshop, and it sounds like it's going well. This community-oriented project seems to be a principle theme for the café, and I think that's good. Although, I might add, I'm fairly indifferent to sewing.

There's no 'bar' as such in here. A sort of small table/cupboard loosely demarcates the bit of the room where coffees are made and cakes are sliced. The sides and walls are lined with ingredients. It's like when you go to someone's house and you see how much better their kitchen is than yours. But this is a comfortable kitchen to be in, easy on the eyes and bursting with culinary potential.

Our Italian hostess, after marveling at the brilliance of Deptford market for things such as prawns, soon runs out the door leaving her one available employee, only just recruited, to keep things in order. This was fine until the Kindle Woman wanted to pay for her drink. The till loomed like an unfathomable corrupted robot, teasing her with booby-trapped buttons that do who-knows-what. I came to the rescue with my paltry knowledge of rudimentary cash registers and between the three of us we managed to get £2 into it. Soon after, the hostess returns showing off a bag of prawns. I pay for my drink, promise to return to tell her about my studies, and head home.

NUC: Petitou, Peckham Rye

2012-01-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

Once, en route to the estate agents. I walked past this place and thought, 'hmmm . . . ' Yes, useful vocabulary was replaced by general sentiments funneled into even more general sounds. Another time, I walked past and thought, 'well, I wonder . . .' and the generality of my thoughts had taken a slight, almost imperceptible, shift towards substance.

Something was happening, that much I was certain of. Days passed, they became weeks, then we moved house. With myself in Deptford and Dave in Peckham, a suitable middle-ground became Petitou. I walked here (from Deptford, I kid you not), to find Dave, dressed in yellow, with his bike, which is also yellow. He sits in the front garden complimenting the green foliage.

Petitou's a charm. Set back from the high street, in a surprisingly quaint street. We sit in the garden, by an oak tree. Inside is good-looking. A menu on the wall has the usual list of drinks. Other original goods are on offer, teas and jams and such. I have an above average coffee, served to me by an above average woman. No music as far as I can tell, but a suburban soundtrack of bikes, cars and wind. Hold on, we're upgrading to the pub . . .

NUC: Browns, Brockley

2012-01-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

Some say that Browns do the best coffee in London. Dave and I set off at the crack of noon to check this out. It's busier in here than usual. We sit by the window, parallel to the elongated table central to the room where the majority sit. To serve us, the girl has to leave the café, walk down the road about six paces, and come back in the next door. This route avoids the small crowd of customers filling up the space. I feel a pang of guilt as I ask her for milk, sending her back out for another journey. Thankfully, she's very nice, and it's not raining.

I have an Americano; Dave an espresso. Not cheap, £2 for mine. But indeed, it's a good'un. I already sense that I'll be buzzing all day. Best in London? Thus far, on this trip, I concur. We're across from Brockley Station, and Browns has a monitor with the Live Departures. Nice touch, Browns, I'm liking that. Although I have no train to get today, one day, perhaps I'll find that damn useful. Once, I recall, I had a sandwich here which was quite fancy and quite nice.

Brains buzzing with coffee bean-induced enthusiasm, Dave and I get down to sorting out the world and all it's problems. Starting with the Torys . . .

NUC: Ray's Jazz Café

2012-01-15T14:45:00.000-08:00

Foyles, the ole bookstore, and it's phantom limb, Ray's Jazz Café. I've been here numerous times. Haven't we all? Chattery, is what it is. Curiously chattery for a place half full with solitary people. And me, solitary amongst my own kind. It's a miniature cultural economy. John Coltrane parps away; people stare into laptops, luminous apples assuring brand credibility; unidentifiable sandwiches arrive beside me with a gent, a Financial Times and a 'do you mind if I . . . '

'Go ahead,' is always the answer. Yet it's never expressed without the misgivings which embed themselves into my tone of voice. Those misgivings, I might add, are not there. Do so please sit there, Sandwich-Wielding Financial Times Man, let us discuss the economy.

But today is not the day for discussions. The wilted economy is a cold dry plank of wood that I am not willing to get walloped by. Even Eddie Mair's soothing tone won't change this, come five o'clock. This day is concerned with matters which would be best described with metaphors about the heart.

I sit with a coffee - Americano, pretty decent, dash of milk, £1.80. One applies milk, sugar, cinnamon (no less) after the initial coffee handover has been completed. Is this to speed up the process? Or does Ray know of the notorious problem of giving somebody too much milk? It's awfully hard to get that milk back out once it's gone in. Either way, if you want milk, get it yourself.

Rustic is the furniture, barren but warm. Long benches have strangers dotted along them - like at a bus stop, only here they're waiting for caffeinated mental stimulation, not busses - an entirely different kind of transport. Foyles café people are like a big family who rarely talk to each other, but when they do, they wonder why they don't do it more often. Some spark arises and two people converse, just like that. It happened to me once and it was very nice. Until that moment, some kind of British stereotype gets embodied in everybody and they stay politely reclusive. But less so here, it must be said. That's one of the charms of this place.

The jazz covers the room with an atmospheric consistency which is hardly noticeable but absolutely necessary. My wooden stirrer sits to one side, in a tiny brown puddle. I sit with Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones and a pink poetry book, soon to be posted off to a person. This person occupies my mind today. I sit amongst those with an eye in a novel and a fork suspended in anticipation, carrying a precarious mouthful; and those having conversations of Waking Life proportions. I feign smiles at people struggling to get past my chair, and read the gruelling synopses of the books I bought.

NUC: Broca, Brockley

2012-01-13T05:55:00.000-08:00

A huge blown up photo of the Broca staff hangs on the wall. What larks they have. My CV goes in... Could I be on that wall next season? (No, apparently). Well, there's a few too many kids anyway. But still, it's a tasty place; I like it here. I'm keen on the array of dissimilar furniture, all second hand, mostly quite hard, cushionless. There is a sofa or two, too, if you're so inclined. Pleasant tunes drift through on clouds of caffeine, jangly guitars made for places like this.

People come and go. The Brockley pram society arrive with their new wares, tested with new tiny humans. A room out the back caters for the kids, who spill over into the main bit where I am. Fortunately, I have the patience of a saint. A huge noticeboard serves the community. I saw a very reasonably priced room going for rent, which I forgot to pursue. Such is the nature of the noticeboard. There's a nicely ethical undertone here, ensuring everyone's place in heaven. Organic things coupled with not extortionate prices. If you take a leap over the train station you come across the Broca's sister, the Broca Food Market. Once upon a time I bought dutch waffles from that place. How things change...

TV highlights for 2012

2011-12-31T03:34:00.000-08:00

TV promises great things in 2012. These are some highlights that might be worth watching out for....

January - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? - ITV

Reality TV show about some charity workers working with starving Africans. Tensions rise as the crew struggle to get aid in on time, and run into conflict with the local politicians. But politics is a problem on the camp too, as Daryl and Victoria can't decide who should run things. Elsewhere, there's a sparkle of romance for Jenny and a local boy.

February - Panorama: Jurassic Pork - BBC1

Examining the link between developments in the swine flu (H1N1) virus and pigs in blankets leftover at Christmas.

March - Jeremy Clarkson's How About That? - BBC1

More tomfoolery from our favourite blokey bloke as he visits council estates to ask them what they spend their (more like our!) money on.

April onwards- Face Swap - Channel 4

Reality show in which couples see what it's like to have someone else's face surgically transplanted onto the one they love. The first episode sees Jill come home to find that husband Tony now looks like the local newsagent.

April - The Only Made in Swindon - E4

Following the success of the Essex and Chelsea shows, Swindon bands together to prove to the world that they too have dislikable people in their town.

May - Guess Who's Escaped Poverty? - ITV

Follow up documentary about one African family that journeyed across the Mediterranean to Italy, narrowly missing the border police, only to win the Euromillions jackpot on their first attempt. With dramatised re-enactments.

May onwards - Freeloader in an Off-Roader - BBC1

A spin-off of Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car in which people on benefits tackle the newly opened Top Gear mud ring.

June - Dry Planet - BBC1

Attenborough does deserts.

July/August - Olympic Shames - BBC1

New cop show following police and security personnel as they rustle up unsavoury characters at London's Olympics. With terrorists, athlete druggies and the communities of East London, the takings are sure to be high.

August - Newsnight: The Riots, One Year On - BBC2

Theresa May and Diane Abbott argue about whether punitive measures were the right tactic to curtail the rise of the underclass, as the cuts began to bite and more riots threatened.

August onwards - BBC R1OT - New Channel

The BBC invents a special channel alongside the News channel for BBC R1OT, a temporary channel, presumably, as the country once again finds itself gripped by riot fever. Join Jon Sopel for 24 hour coverage on the front line in London, and other reporters dotted around the country in dozens of besieged cities.

September - Natural World - BBC2

With incredible new technology BBC camera-people are on location documenting the rapid spread of mould over an opened yoghurt. Micro-Cameratic Technology (MCT) shows in never-before-seen detail some of the most fundamental procedures of life.

September - Jeremy Clarkson's Mao About That? - BBC1

Clarkson gets special permission to drive to China and explore the pros and cons of a communist, capitalist state.

October - An Arm and a Clegg - Channel 4

Looking back at the first half of Nick Clegg's role as deputy Prime Minister, with leading analysts and commentators addressing the gulf between promises and policies.

October - Occupy This! - Channel 4

One year since tents were pitched outside Saint Paul's, Will Self takes a wry look at where all the camping and shouting has got us. With surveys suggesting that the country hates bankers but hates hippies even more, what chance has the newly established Occupy Party got in the next local elections?

October - Euro: A Tough Act to Follow - BBC4

With the drama finally over, and the countries on the continent resuming their former currencies, Paul Mason asks what's next for the once powerful economic force that is Europe.

November - Maya 2012 - Sky1

Three-part drama series spinning-off from The Mummy franchise following Brendan Fraser as he's accosted by Mayans back from the dead with a stark warning for the fate of humanity. Guest stars Sam Neill.

December - What Will You Do Before We Die? - Channel 4

Audience interactive special presented by Jimmy Carr and Davina McCall charting the nations favourite dying wishes. From massive orgies to a ride in a BMW Q60, nothing is unreasonable when the end is nigh. Contribute online or phone in. 10% of proceeds go to charity.

December 20 - Countdown to Doomsday - BBC1

With David Dimbleby.

(Similar program showing on Sky with Adam Boulton and ITV with Alastair Stewart)

The Filter.

2011-12-17T03:12:00.000-08:00

'Eight months of vineyards, swimming, and parties with hippies,' she says. I reply,

- What more could you want?

- Indeed. Well, actually I don't like wine too much. It's OK. I know a bad wine, but can't tell a good one. And hippies . . .

- Hippies.

- The hippie stereotype pales in comparison to the dudes I met.

- An inadequate stereotype?

- I'd say so. The stereotype provides the model, blind enthusiasm does the rest. And despite what they might say, it's not cool.

- Not cool.

- Not cool at all. Regular people wind me up, just think what an exaggerated stereotype does.

- Happy to be home then?

- I'm not home now, I'm away again.

- London's your adopted home.

- I suppose. Yes, happy to be home.

A chocolate sprinkle from her cappuccino, one grain of sawdust chocolate, has found its way to the corner of her mouth. She's looking down at the table, through the table, as if remembering something. Something table-related? I can't be sure. Something from those eight lost months spent with the hippies, swimming? I will never know. Our time apart had not been a time apart, as such. We are not people who could maintain the notion of a distance between us, because we were never together. There is no us. We were an I and a she (from my perspective), in bubbles. In the same city, same room, or merely same language, we had always been apart, unremarkably apart. Our new-found togetherness is strange, as if we are starting again from where things left off, even though nothing ever existed to leave off from. Why were we here? Probably because I asked if she wanted a coffee. People do that in London, right? Meet people who are tragically no more than acquaintances? It's just a sequence of coffees with acquaintances, nothing more. That's what we're doing. It's so banal and yet so breathtakingly significant.

And I say,

- I suppose God gave us a filter so that people don't say things like this but, you were my favourite.

The guy reading The Guardian twitches. He must be crying with laughter inside. Pity me, friend, or jump in and save me. I'm doing that thing that we always regret not doing - seizing, leaping, falling. And why do we not do it? Because it's awful. It feels awful; it sounds awful. No collection of words can get around the glaring ridiculousness of this very moment. No sequence of words can arise like a magical formula to make it better. It's like choosing between a handgun, shotgun or cannon: if you're standing in the wrong place, you're going down.

She peers though the table some more. Lips parted. A tiny smile . . . is this a smile? Perhaps. But her cheeks have something of a smile-adorning quality; she is always somewhat smiling.

- Do you believe in God?

Her eye on mine now. not staring. A soft eye. Not darting between left eye and right eye like people do when they're incredibly intrigued by what you're saying. Just her eyes, doing their thing. If her gaze were a car, it would be going at about twenty.

- No (I say this without much of the conviction I'd hoped to express.)

- So where does the filter come from?

- I don't know. Where does life come from?

- Don't get too profound on me now, explain the filter.

- My filter's evidently faulty.

- That doesn't bode well for the credibility of the things you say.

- Thanks.

- Who knows what might come out. (She tilts her head slightly.)

- I realise the danger.

- Maybe that's enough to disprove God.

- People ignoring the filter?

- People sensing the filter and then blasting straight though it.

- You're not going to let me get away with this are you.

- But God gave you free will, huh?

- Worst mistake he ever made.

- So is it you or God that filters your words?

- What do you think?

- It's not God.

- I think, therefore there is a God?

- That's a circle.

- I say the wrong things, therefore i am?

- That's stupid.

- Lacan?

- That's a God complex.

- Society?

- No such thing.

- Socially acceptable labour time?

- Completely irrelevant.

- Historical materialism?

- You can take your syllables some place else.

- My syllables will be my undoing.

She paused, then said,

- Once when I escaped the hippies and walked out to the vineyard near my cousin's, I managed to convince myself that I was in Italy. Have you been to Italy? Me neither. But I'm sure it was just like Italy. Rows of grapes, all parallel snaking across the hills, paths occasionally splitting them up. The sun was setting and I sat there long enough for the shadow, cast by a wooden trailer, to run from the path I had come from, past the tree where I was sat, narrowly missing my legs, to the barn where my Aunt was making dinner. Pizza of course.

- Of course.

- I became totally convinced that it was Italy: the Mafia were circling the town demanding protection money; Salvatore the fugitive is hiding in the hills, waiting for revenge; the young boys were trying to enlist in the army (it's the olden days and there's a war on). And my sister, who is older and luckier than I am, is fretting because she hasn't heard from Alfonso -

- Alfonso?

- Alfonso - in over a week. He's only twenty, the same as my sister. He rushed off with his machine gun with such excitement. At the end of the first week she received seven letters, all at once. He had written every day, but the post was only delivering once a week around these parts, where only the wine and Mafia operated. The second week she received five letters. Apparently Alfonso was in the trenches, in the cold mountainous regions at the French border. After a month the postman came with nothing but rations for the family, and my sister is heartbroken. She's been crying into his clothes for three days. She's stopped eating pizza. But spring has come to Italy and it's one of those curiously over-hot spring days that reminds you how drastically the heights of the seasons differ, and I'm sitting watching the trailer's shadow, waiting for pizza, thinking of my sister and the whereabouts of her quiet boyfriend. I wonder if someday I will have a boyfriend who I can cry over, who can nearly destroy me with his lack of presence, or uncertainty of life. Whether he will break my heart by finding something special in another girl which for some reason isn't in me, and I can commit myself to finding out what that thing is, mimicking it and winning him back. Because, for me, Italy is beautiful and empty. The shadow would sweep along the track, narrowly missing my leg, and depart as the day cooled.

The small grain of chocolate is still at the corner of her mouth. I almost use this moment to draw her attention to it, but refrain from doing so.

Some people are advocates of the working filter. Some people are not. Some encourage a rupture and then are appalled at the result. Some mirror it with a simultaneous breakdown in their own filter mechanism. Some laugh. Some change the subject. Some embrace the subject. Some are lost for words. Some forget that words need not mean anything. Some forget that words can mean something. Some talk of wine, war, and pizza, and dedicate their afternoon to keeping you wondering. I suppose that's why God gave us cappuccinos.

NUC: Daylesford Farm Shop, Pimlico

2011-12-07T03:33:00.000-08:00

London is gripped by a heatwave (Uh, this entry dates back a few months...). The Crofton Park to Blackfriars line is experiencing signalling failures. Chris and I arrived in Central too late for the dérive we had planned. (Somewhat ironic - Situationist tactics thwarted by an over-reliance on public transport.) We end up in Victoria, in this café/farmshop. It's in the somewhat Parisian square here in Pimlico, where T-shirted Londoners happily bump into their neighbours in the street. It's like WestEnders, the antithesis to the East: the sun shines, everyone's smiling, peering into local independent furniture shops with their loved ones, or sipping ginger beer in a farmshop.

They sell organic food and drink. We have ginger beers - extra potent. The sandwiches look great. £1.75 a ginger beer, £3.50 a sandwich - not unusually expensive, too much for me though. The shop is bright and spacious, with organic aromas grappling with baked bread for nose-attention. This is a place for attractive people, and Chris and I wonder how soon til we're chucked out. We keep our heads down and discuss trivial things. No music accompanies us, out front of the café, but a rich soundtrack of cutlery and nearby traffic. Daylesford negotiates the country into the city with some skill.

(No Title)

2011-12-04T09:55:00.000-08:00

it was on a hungover sunday stroll when i realised that i had stopped thinking. i noticed the effort that was needed to project something into my head, to feign interest in it and develop it into something that could keep my attention. inevitably, everything slipped away. too much concentration was required.

this was back when i was at university. the requirement for thought had become sickly, now associated with the gradual alienation of myself from my peers. a memory dipped in a bitter ointment. i seemed to lack the will to go there, to engages whatever bits of brain that made me compute things. perhaps the incessant questioning of just about everything that i was once so intrigued by, so energised by, had taken its toll. perhaps i was unwilling to think, to value, judge or enjoy, because to consider it only slightly more would involve it fragmenting into some kind of paradox, and well i just don't have the time for that.

looking back now, i recall the need to juice myself up on coffee before engaging with my brain for some purpose, say, like reading, or writing an essay, or applying for a job, even responding to an email from a bygone friend. some kind of preparatory act was required, and this ended up being coffee. coffee signalled positive engagement with the task at hand. like clearing the house before a party, knowing the mess that the party would bring. but i couldn't be bothered to party any more, the clean-up beforehand wasn't worth the trouble.

the coffee became tasteless and unaffordable. it was left to me to do things, to find some criteria with which to value things, and to subsequently decide to do them. from whence this curse of inertia? i asked the small collection of ducks below me. why this relentless indifference? any clues? i tried to trick myself with emotional triggers, something to jump-start some form of emotion. a past romance; a late grandmother; rising energy prices; world poverty... what am i to make of these things?

and rounding the corner of a frosted park walkway, that hungover sunday, i caught myself with nothing fuzzing around in this mind of mine. no daydreaming about years past, no musings on the weekend ahead, no opinions on the books i was reading. just space. space doomed to be gradually comsumed with a fairly indifferent reflection on this very predicament. to a passing dog-walker i may look deep in thought, unreachable, lost in my own problems, dwelling on deep feelings, longing, wishing, hurting... not i. this preoccupied face holds no secrets.

Spam: a respond

2011-11-25T09:24:00.000-08:00

In reply to / collaboration with http://rememberhuman.blogspot.com/2011/10/violence-or-necessity-of-spam-filter.html

Hello Dearest One, your urgent respond needed immediately.

The robot wants the human's energy, the battery, a la The Matrix. Energy is needed so the robot can fulfil it's purpose, to be a servant. Servant for... humans, we are to assume. But, the human has been reduced to an economic indifference, a node in a network of capital, 'the used'. Used for? Well, to sustain the robot. But the robot is currently not satisfied with the dehumanising tendencies of the system. The robot promotes humanity. Human batteries.

This robot has landed upon a very appropriate paradox. That which acknowledges that capital depends on the tension between economically defined categorisable people, easily marketed towards, benign; and, the gradual becoming of them into something perpetually new - unpredictable, new markets, new growth, the expansion of capital. The robot, i propose, unbeknownst to itself, has to be precisely the hungry holistic hegemonic global economic system, with a complex of self-hatred.

This leads us to the robot's critique of the spam filter. In other words, the extent to which capital itself appreciates the spam filter. Here, the internet itself is considered the filter, and spam is considered as the eclectic multitude of content, all somewhat rooted in propagandised ideology. The filter, as an arbitrator of content, henchman of capital, provides us with the most appropriate material. This is somewhat necessary, and somewhat violent. Necessary because of the mess of the internet, through which progressive thought is obscured. But violent because the process reaffirms the user (used) as an economic node, by filtering out that which could lead elsewhere.

The robot is sceptical. This tension is what it requires, yet it seems critical of the process that does it. It's proposal seems to favour new, human, values, which detract from pure profit. But the rupture required to open the space is left out. Can this moment be found in the nature of spam itself, its relationship to capital? Presently this is unclear. And does the robot see this obstacle as one which is hindering the free flow of capital, as the libertarian sees regulation; or hindering the progress of man?

Can we think spam for the high street, with Virgin Megastore and Pret a Manger and the like occupying the top 50,000 results, independent stores doing the rest, obscured by one another and unable to make an impression and thus compete, and a few homeless people asking for change, who are quickly filtered out into the spam box? Is the spam box growing as a result, as more things fall into its judgement of uselessness? Do its rules change and its tentacles pick up new supposedly unwanted stragglers? Finally, is capitalism's 'idea' of human progress the one we want to adopt? Human progress in aid of the sustenance of capital... Remember, human, plug yourself in.

NUC: Oscar's, Ladywell.

2011-11-14T08:20:00.001-08:00

Ladywell is a bit of a contradiction. Too close to Catford to be really nice, but with a great organic shop, El's Kitchen, and this café, Oscar's, nestled amongst the kebab shops and newsagents with broken shop signs. I like Oscars. It's tidy and cute, like a well-behaved kitten, but playful too, also like a kitten. Yes, the kitten metaphor has an extensive and varied utility, perfect for characterising certain cafés. There's a lot of colour, and art on the walls, some of which is OK. Kind of pleasant local things that people unassumingly produce and hang in places like this. It's the antithesis to First Thursday posturing, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's a huge Klimt covering a wall, but for some reason here I'm willing to tolerate it. Maybe that's because you feel quite calm here.

The food looks good, not too expensive. (Well, too expensive for me, but still.) They also have ice cream. Coffee at £1.90 per Americano. Today I got a Latte and it's pretty good. Today there is a new member of staff, who evidently snapped this job up before I got the chance. 'Excuse me, fellow, but I could deliver this Latte even better than yourself, so says I.' I sit in the garden prising open a Derrida book for the first time. Ah, unemployed in the UK - so conveniently excusable in the current climate - just enjoy it.

Far away a young lady prepares to visit the opera: Wagner, I am informed through the modern telegram we know as SMS. In isolation, jealous, I am outside, under the clouds, under an umbrella.

NUC: Yumchaa, Soho

2011-11-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

An aimless stroll towards Trafalgar Square took us through Soho, the place where things go wrong, and straight past Yumchaa. "Quaint," said Chris. "Quite," I replied. "Shall we?" "After you." And in we went for tea. Never have we sounded such like an aging couple on holiday.

It's busy in here, and we queue. The queue is necessary in order to take in the vast menu, and make well-informed decisions. The range of teas on offer here would even make General Yen reconsider. Chris goes for a Chilli Chilli Bang Bang. Yes, inventive names come with the teas. Tea is really what's going on here. Loose tea enthusiasts, Yumchaa sell their own teas and have a few Teapigs knocking around for plurality. No PG Tips, though. They also have a good-looking selection of sandwiches and cakes which, of course, I can't afford. The prices are pretty standard for a central London café which makes an effort and has young culturally-inclined professionals as its market. So, fairly reasonable all things considered.

So, what did I get? One of there adventurous tea blends perhaps? Or stick with the coffee? No, something in me compelled me to get a Bottlegreen - ginger with a hint of lemon. So, yes, disappointing. However, tea samples were thrust before me in quick succession and I got pretty high knocking back shots of various blends of which I have since forgotten. For a true cup, I will have to return.

It's airy here, in this pale wooden room. We're in the basement, upstairs was full. If I could move into this basement, I would. It's homey. There are enough different tables and chairs to match the extensive range of teas. For every visit you could sit on a different chair with a different tea - Armchair and Mango Sunrise one week; wooden stool and Lemon Sherbert the next...

The staff care about the tea, and they care about whether you care about the tea. And I care about whether they care about me and the tea, so top marks for the staff. They brew a coffee with the same enthusiasm so coffee drinkers don't be wary.

And what's this? French music. C'est un bel après-midi, chantons!

NUC: Hop Scotch, Honor Oak Park

2011-10-30T05:32:00.001-07:00

A regular, this one. Or, at least, once upon a time, a snaking trip from my door through Brockley into the gentrified pleasantries of Honor Oak. At the time of writing I am in the garden, for the first time. Colourful walls and benches are the images to picture, in an area 3 metres squared, with a ground made of stones. Pub-esque benches, no less - not to detract from the café-ness though. No gawping Heineken umbrellas protruding from the woodwork, which we can be thankful for.

And today, we give thanks with Green tea and the company of James and Chris. The prices have clawed their way up faster that the shrubbery that scales the fence in this garden, and justifying the frequent visits here has become trickier. It must be the friendly staff, because, for me, it's not the best coffee in town. But the staff are indeed friendly, if plucked from the local workforce rather selectively. Early twenties, female, and smiley, appears to be the criteria. (That's me on weekends).

Hop Scotch has tapped in to a fairly specific local market, that of the army of middle-class mums who group together for extended lunchtime panini-parties every single day, with kids crying and falling over and other such delights. Come 12:15 you can hear them in droves coming over the horizon from Telegraph Hill and other local semi-detached areas. 12:20 and the doors fling open, and mums reverse themselves into the café, hoisting their prams up the little step at the entrance. Animated movies play in silence on the TV, so as not to impede the pleasure of those like myself, reading Virilio or Calvino, and listening to Air or Portishead or one of those slow melancholic groups that fit so well in cafés.

At weekends, come the evenings, they have small civilised musical performances, with candles on the tables, hot chocolates and good-looking meals that I can't afford. The alcohol is pricey, which is usually the way for cafés, isn't it? It must be all about licences and bulk-purchasing and other business factors.

So long, Hop Scotch, you served us well, but now we are not in walking distance and we might not see you again.

The Word House, Gallery Café, 15th October.

2011-10-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

The Word House has returned for its second night of eclectic rhymes and melodic lines, organic beers and hearty cheers. Having launched in the summer to much acclaim, the Gallery Café's spoken word night had set its own standard, and expectations were high. Predictably enough, these expectations translated into another full house of eager Londoners, ready for pizza and poetry. And this is good news, as the event was part of Oxjam, and all proceeds go to charity.

So, having ensured I wouldn't get kettled at St. Paul's, I strolled in as the clock struck 19:34 and bartered with a member of staff for a bottle of beer. Without hesitation, the lights lowered, the music lowered, the audience lowered themselves onto seats, and the Word House began.

We were treated to a tickler of an opener by our host, Dan Simpson, with his sympathetic portrayal of the Orange Ghost - the most inexplicably unfortunate ghost in all of Pacman. I don't think many of us had previously considered the difficulties of the Orange Ghost. But now we know, and we won't forget.

On to the first act, one Christian Watson. Don't be fooled by the dishevelled attire and facial hair, for his words are as sharp as tuxedos. He shifted from fast-paced rapping rhymes to slow, considered reflections; his hands like weapons cutting the air. He shared thoughts on pessimistic projections for love and growing up and becoming a person, expressing an equal wonder at both the highs and lows of life, and balancing sincerity with self-effacement.

Then came the Open Mic slots. A real treat, these, where anyone has the opportunity to share their thoughts and words, providing you've got the guts. The audience have no need to be forgiving - no token applause here - as the open mic poets prove themselves to be more than capable amateur wordsmiths. We had south London caricatures, friendships and family, consumerism, jobs, and an array of views on contemporary sex. Sex and capitalism, sex and myths, post-sex emotion, sex and language metaphors. All very tasteful - mostly.

A short break and we're back on for John Berkavitch, the recently-returned-from-Cambodia poet with wry sense of humour and a political conscience. His act was punctuated with audience banter and one-line poems, and jokes at once clever and ironically obvious. His finest moment, a witty and thoughtful argument for difference; a good-natured and optimistic polemic against some of the political ills of recent years.

The final act was an exercise in exploring the natural melodies contained within words and sentences, a process of combining sentiments with syntax, and floating them on some kind of the calm aural ocean. This was Inua Ellams, with his diverse vocabulary managing to convey tragedy and mockery in ways rarely done so elegantly. He showed us that perhaps a three hour midnight walk south from the Thames need not be a cold, tired chore, but a stimulating social and architectural experiment - an appealing advert for nocturnal psychogeography, and about time too. Like those before him, he won the audience through the character that fused each poem together.

The mood is one more akin to a house party than a bar: chatting in the toilet queue; bumming cigarettes off friends of friends. The audience here have a character of their own, both mischievous and courteous. Many idiosyncrasies on display on this night of spoken word, and much for us to consider as we erupt into Bethnal Green after the show. The range of content and style is at once impressive and inspiring, encouraging us all to tap poems into our phones on the night bus home.

"Occupy!" The Broadway show comes to the UK.

2011-10-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

Summer comes to an end, pitifully hanging on in that first week of October, and with it, all my theatre dates. But no, one show remains. Only recently announced, with free tickets and no need to book, the much talked about, - infamous, even - Occupy! has come to London.

With big names on the bill at Occupy Wall Street, such as Slavoj Zizek, Naomi Klein, and Joseph Stiglitz - and Michael Moore giving an early review of the show - hopes for further successes are high as Occupy! goes global. Indeed, sharing credit with the ongoing Indignants, which debuted in Spain in May, the influence has now spread to 951 cities in 82 countries. It's a sell-out show, with plenty more tickets. On Saturday 15th October, the curtain at London was raised...

I came in during act 1, and the cast were caught in a solemn moment of hesitance. The police had blocked all entry to Paternoster Square, where the London Stock Exchange is based - a tellingly private piece of London land, owned by Mitsubishi. A disappointment clung to the air, I sensed, as those turned away from the Stock Exchange found refuge on the steps of St. Paul's, and police predictably surrounded them, intimidating those outside who might like to go in.

As we circled the epicenter, drifting down the various streets nearby until coming up against another police blockade, we were treated to a few musical numbers. "Who's street? Our Street!" is a sing-along classic, and was beautifully choreographed under the St. Paul's backdrop. A curious juxtaposition was exercised between the cast's harmonies and the cold "MOVE BACK!" authoritatively commanded by those with batons and pale blue hats.

Back at the front, where the mood had lulled, emotionless characters stood side by side, looking over the police line to the central cast, looking in hope for some kind of sign. Act one was taking an unusual route - anger had subsided, territories had been established, no one really knew what to do. Would the media take notice if the day lacks violence? What will have the bigger legacy - the London riots or Occupy London? Occasionally, a slow spiraling bellow would circulate amongst the crowd, expanding and then dying out. Something was needed to keep the audience's attention - if not a media frenzy, then perhaps understanding, solidarity and optimism.

Another curious contradiction was explored through the inside/outside opposition that ran along the police line. Those outside, as I was, were free, whereas those inside were trapped. Not simply because of the police - at this time people could go in an out from either side, providing they go through the correct checkpoints. No, what I mean is, those outside were freer agents of expression and choice. Take the two photos above, for example. The one on top, from outside the central zone, a fabric hung on an HSBC bank. No police surrounding this bank, they're all surrounding the Stock Exchange and those in front of St. Paul's. Whereas, in the photo underneath, from inside the zone, a queue outside Starbucks of post-Soviet Union proportions. This is more than just a clever use of irony. Here we at once exploring the cliché of those who attend such events - middle-class Foucault-reading coffee-drinkers, whilst highlighting the increasing practical dependency we have on the capitalist institution, combined with a growing sense of capitalist realism, as Mark Fisher would put it. Are we saying, "Capitalism's here to stay, so let's tolerate Starbucks (and with that, McDonald's, Coke, Nike, Philip Green, Vodafone, etc.) and only focus on finance"...?

It's not an easy one to call, that one. But this seemingly lack of political coherence is perhaps one of the strong points of the show. Answers are not simple. Only politicians think they are: raise university fees = more money, so goes government logic. Ideas, demands, projections, alternatives, all are complex. A coherent non-capitalist alternative is not likely to be presented by the end of this day. Just because Occupy! doesn't have an "...ism" doesn't mean it is to be ignored. That which unites is simply growing inequality and unfairness, and that which it revolves around is an economy which relies on, is indeed blackmailed by, a global financial discourse which sustains said inequality and unfairness.

Act 2 began, we passed through the checkpoint, into the zone. I had not realised that this was not only immersive but participatory theatre. The sun beat down and people relaxed, erected tents, meditated, read books, yelled slogans. Time for another song - "This is what democracy looks like!" I'm less keen on that one. Good tune, but I'm uncomfortable with the message. Where's our target? Have we moved on now from capitalism, through finance, to democracy? Indeed, this is what Western democracy looks like - to protest under specific constraints, and then pop off to Starbucks for a FrappaZappa and to use their crapper. Occasionally one character will be centre stage, lost in a rambling soliloquy, maintaining that the camp is an example of how to live outside capitalism; that this, dear friends, is the model for our new economic order. It's hardly a Badiouian event. Hold on, the Zeitgeist movement are prowling, recruiting, with their conspiracy theories and 'resource economy' alternatives. This is a place of many voices, I see, some more idiotic than others, but all important ingredients. It's like fish sauce - terrible on its own, but brilliant when almost completely drowned out by other things.

Indeed, globally, the power of this outcry lies in that rhizomatic lack of centre, whilst attacking a very specific centre, ultimately - Wall Street - the financial centre of the world; from which another sinister web takes leave - the global exchange of capital. All the Occupy!s, wherever in the world, also occupy Wall Street, with those who are physically there. Not just 'in solidarity', but through the airwaves in which capital flows, through that which connects all financial centres in all capitalist countries. It is no more than a node in a global network that is growing, and applying pressure to a gradually crippling system. We need not be disheartened if the show lacks coherence at the moment, or if it lacks an answer to the problem, for it is still in the making - you don't throw a pie before it's baked.

After an intermission we returned. The lights had gone down and it was cooler. A wheelbarrow of sorts appeared behind me, pushed by a girl. She bore gifts of ciabattas and fruit for the hungry characters within. It was a struggle to get them past the bemused police officers. "Why do you want to go in there," came the question. Rhetorical, of course. The first night of a projected many was at hand, and those on the front line need more stuff - tables, blankets, food, but mostly, people. At present, Occupy! is a performance that shows promise, that could become something special if it continues to run. But it could equally wane as the winter deepens and people stay indoors instead of going to the theatre. For now, what's needed is some more dynamism - not too much so to as exclude the nice people, but enough to draw in the audience. Carefully choreographed scenes of strategic intervention: bank sit-ins, rowdy day-trips around the city, reputable speakers, street parties, general civil disobedience.

http://occupylondon.org.uk/

NUC: The Poetry Place - Covent Garden

2011-10-20T04:36:00.000-07:00

Went straight past the door of this café, Chris clawed me back. It's a fine place to be on a warm afternoon. Other people are scarce here: a woman peers into a laptop, scribbling notes occasionally; a balding gent reads a book; the barista is planted by a table to one side, reading, pained to arise to serve us. Poetry books line the shelves; poets in picture frames line the walls. Something tells me this particular café leans towards the poetic. Indeed, The Poetry Society are behind this outlet, I'm dutifully informed. A couple of voices resonate from below, the basement, where performances take place. Someone is planning, planning poetry.

What a quiet place. Chris and I, low tones and civilised conversation, puncturing the calm with our witty remarks. A stereo plays from somewhere, songs which sound like sentimental advert songs. You know the type - life is good, I have a ukulele, let's all sing and dance and start a mobile phone contract... It's not bad though, musicwise - I rushed to cynical judgement. The lampshades are like translucent pieces of paper hanging from wires, with scrawled writing across them. The Poetry Place plays with the rustic look, wooden tables, wooden floor boards, but selectively modern. It's not cheap. And I've had better mochas. But mochas are a tricky beast, everyone knows this.

Real nice. Good for afternoon reading / working / composing poems. Just need to become a poet.

Notes from Underground Cafés

2011-10-09T07:03:00.000-07:00

What is a coffee shop? What is a café? It's a problem that many have grappled with. In The Republic, Thrasymachus demands that a café is simply a place to have a coffee. Socrates replies, "But Thrasymachus, you are a sensible man, are you not? Why do you not have coffee in your home?" Thrasymachus says that indeed he does have coffee, but sometimes he prefers to go out for one instead. "So you go out simply for a coffee, as you would put it, instead of staying at home, where you already have coffee and a slave to make it for you. We all know that the coffee in the café is vastly more expensive. Is this a good way to spend your money, Thrasymachus?"

"It is worth the extra," says Thrasymachus.

"And what would you say makes the extra worth that is being added to the value of the simple coffee?" says Socrates.

"To be out of one's home, to be amongst the people of the city as they come and go and stop and read and talk, to smell the coffee brewing, and the baguettes, paninis and bagels."

"But, my dear man, did you not say that the café is a place to simply have a coffee, and nothing more?"

"Or a panini, or a bagel,"

"It sounds like there is yet more to it than that, am I wrong?"

"No, perhaps you are not wrong, Socrates," conceded Thrasymachus.

And Socrates went forth to try to further understand what it is that makes a coffee in a coffee establishment different from a coffee at home.

But let's leave the room where the Greeks do their chatter, and find out for ourselves, yes? In London's many coffee shops we will go, with notes aplenty to recount. What of the staff, the furniture, the music, the lighting, the pictures that line the walls, the quality if the coffee, the garden, the clientele? What makes this place what it is? And is it any good?

Note: despite the illusory sensation that Starbucks, Costa, Pret a Manger, Nero, etc., are indeed coffee shops, they will not be included here. There are various reasons. 1. Due to the corporate structure, the staff are the same as staff in supermarkets or Macdonalds, which makes the labour experience in one of these shops one of undifferentiated corporate submission, rendering the staff little more than smiling robots, and empties the coffee itself from its coffeeness, making it somewhat a burger or a loaf of bread. 2. 'Experience' is handed down as a necessary business strategy, a gimmick, thereby precluding reality in this particular space. I'm not talking about authenticity here, but formulas. 3. The formula means that the same thing will be found in Idaho, Brighton, and Moscow, and has a fundamentally detrimental effect on local idiosyncrasies, whilst simultaneously promoting an ideology of prescribed sameness. 4. The economic factors that go with that previous point, as well as the labour problems that come with having a global work force, including union rights and coffee farmers. 5. The 'save a coffee farmer's child by buying a coffee' rubbish that makes you think you're saving the world by shopping at Starbucks instead of making it worse. 6. The idea is to experience the diversity, not the uniformity, of London's cafes, and to do so before they have all become franchised replicas of one another.

To the coffee!

from the street - a week with freddie

2011-09-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

this week it was my turn to look after freddie. freddie is our frog. sometimes he jumps out of my hand but he never goes far because i think he likes me because i give him food. he has big eyes. today we went to the park. i put freddie on a log and i think it was like home for him. but there was less water. frogs like water. sometimes when i watch tv freddie makes a noise. i dont think he likes the adverts. i say i dont like them too but the actors need to rest. freddie does not like chocolate. even kit kats. but that is ok because im only allowed one kit kat so i dont like sharing it. the other day me and freddie played soldiers. i was England and freddie was Germany. freddie also had the micro machines but England still won because i have better aim. i wish freddie was bigger so we could play football. he could go in goal and i could practice penalties. tomorrow freddie goes home. i have had a nice week with freddie and i think he liked me more than the others because sometimes i put him in the sink and fill it up a bit.

3rd Week on the Fringe

2011-08-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

The riots subsided, and banality came back to the lives of us all. Phew, we thought. Back to the nine to fives, the weekly shops, the Libya conflict and the Murdoch affair. And back to Camden for more shows. On Monday I went to a play, or two plays in one, which was at 4:30 in the afternoon. Are you serious? Who's going to go to the theatre at 4:30 in the afternoon? Well actually a great many people, thanks to rising unemployment, perhaps.

So begins Frozen Moment, KU MA Showcase of New Work. That's a title that gets straight to the point, right. We had two plays, a lightly humorous school-based play and a heavy and dramatic domestic play. Review here. I left the theatre a bit dazed and went to Sainsbury's, as you do. "We apologise for delays at the checkout due to a high volume of customers. Thank you for shopping at Sainsbury's." Great. Didn't matter, I was still trying to work out what had happened in that play.

I had two days off, which I mostly spent reading Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Cenci and Derrida's essay on Artaud, and watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. All research for Thursday's show, Beings, a butoh dance. Hands down, most outrageously different show on the Fringe. The five audience members sat there gawping at this curious performance, review here. Nice people too, this butoh company. They talked to us for as long as they could. Went to a metal bar with Bella after that, and just about caught the last tube home.

The last show show of the week was more geek-comedy. Met Alex en route to the Theatre by chance, and happily abandoned her in the pub when the time came for the show. Needless to say, geeks are not for everyone. Rob Deb was an excellent geek though, review here. A pretty funny guy, self-deprecating as one must be when your past-times involve staring at a screen updating your collection of potions, and preparing to battle some wizard.

Got out of Camden early that night, back to the Marquis for Cinthya's leaving party. Before long though, Dave was puking in a bush and they both had to go. We weren't far behind. Went home, intended to go to a party but the enthusiasm slowly wained as the sofas became more confortable. Plenty of music though, and Adventure Time. In case you're wondering, Albert never showed up.

One more Fringe week remains.

Bel Ami: The Musical. White Bear theatre, Kennington. 28-July

2011-08-20T02:33:00.000-07:00

The Nineteenth century's Parisian Belle Époque seen through the eyes of Guy de Maupassant, the author of the novel Bel Ami, has a dark side. Political scandals, debauchery, back-stabbing, and the odd token accordion. 'Blessed are the crafty,' as they say.

Appropriately enough, the theatre in the White Bear is the back room of the pub, so a certain inherent seediness is already present. We're led to our seats through a Parisian café-bar, our opening scene, the cast frozen as still as the furniture holding cigarettes and small French beers.

Into this world steps poor Georges Duroy, a man struggling to find his place in an intimidating Paris. With encouragement from a growing number of friends, all he can do is embrace this malicious bourgeoisie, and ride this wave of decadence to the top of society.

This tale of assent is carried with song, an array of compositions to meet every mood expressed, and a moustachioed waiter looking on with a wry grin, occasionally compelled to contribute the odd saxophone solo. From burlesque and back-room romps, to heartbreak and fear of death, the songs convey more than the dialogue, upon which the narrative merely floats. At each turn, Georges exploits the situation for his own ends, befriending powerful women whilst remaining childishly innocent and, without the story really forcing him, he nevertheless becomes more wicked as time goes on.

As a result, our hero can be slightly hard to understand, as are our seductive selection of Parisian beauties who all fall for him but remain equally scheming. It is the elderly characters, despairing over heartbreak and getting old, putting the trivialities of life into perspective, that relate to the audience the most.

Above all, however, this is an opportunity to indulge in the romantic past of a city bursting with character, to embrace a particular mood conveyed with elegant songs and absorbing choreography. Bel Ami - The Musical leaves aside more serious reflections into a society preoccupied with power, gossip and success, in favour of an overall atmosphere and an abundance of style.

Reflections on a 2nd week reviewing the Camden Fringe

2011-08-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

There's not been much to talk about this week that hasn't involved 'wanton thuggish violence', the disorder of a feckless sick portion of our otherwise squeaky clean society. Yup, war reigns, bankers bank, Murdoch's still alive, Cameron's at the helm, energy prices rise, so do train fares. The bloody unemployed! They cause us such trouble.

Which reminds, I'm working for free, no income whatsoever, reviewing theatre. I'm am also a sponger, planning on pushing out a kid to double my benefits. Playin' the system, yeah that's me.

All that aside though, to be away from the 24hr rolling news, watching inflammatory rhetoric spill into my room, was needed this past week. The theatre, ladies and gentlemen, was the place to be. Of course I couldn't go if I didn't get free tickets.

Alas, I only had shows on Monday and Sunday. Monday, last Monday, the 8th: I got housemate-James on board and we went Central way. James had a mocha for the first time, 'twas a day packed with adventures like that. Walked from Oxford Street up up through Regents Park, big park, to Chalk Farm. Had some great chips in Chalk Farm and went to the Roundhouse to watch Stand-Up Comics. Review here. Marianne and, eventually, Alex, joined us. Pretty enjoyable show - sitcom through and through.

Went to the pub afterwards, where the news was on. And shit, things had kicked off. If you recall Monday night was the night of London's youth terrorise the communities aaaahh. Watched that over a couple of beers, excellent TV. Then headed home and watched it for most of the night on TV. Compelling television, these guys must have been behind it... They're so good at television. The aforementioned Chalk Farm soon enough had become a bomb-site war-zone. Pretty quiet in Brockley, all in all. Only the foxes roamed the streets, and the locals were reading Dickens by candlelight.

So uh, didn't do much theatre-wise until the next Sunday. On, I think it was, Thursday I worked out how to get my laptop to 'wake up' and automatically start playing Radio 4. This was one of many life-changing experiences of the past week. That and the home-cooked chips I made.

Oh, Thursday night. Pub crawl with the housedwellers. Fine times in Brockley, half a pint in each pub bound towards New Cross. Painted the town red, although it was already pretty red after the riots anyway. An extra coat is all we contributed.

On the way home I bust into a Sports Direct and nicked a ping-pong ball.

On Sunday Chris and I saw two plays. Princess, review here; and the First Supper, review .... .... .. here. Both were pretty good. Princess, heavy, intriguing, true story about a girl waiting for her husband-to-be to return after jilting her. Good use of sound. And The First Supper, really funny. Silly sketches, frozen peas.

And that was it. Two more weeks to go. Or as they say in French - deux more weeks to go.

Allons-y.

Small collection of riot-related material

2011-08-13T03:22:00.000-07:00

NEEEENAAAAAWWWWW!!

examples of good writing about riot things sprouted up in the last week.

Right what have we got here? Everyone know what you're going to get in the mainstream press: empty condemnation, populist rhetoric etc. You might get a whiff of discussion in the Independent or Guardian about what could be some causes, but that's just the same shtick as usual, now being proven correct. Politicians and the majority of mainstream media depoliticise things like this or politicise it into rhetorical corners. Likewise the kids involved don't politicise it, they embody it, as James said. Social media, hailed as the lubricant of the Arab Spring, condemned as the lubricant of the "England Riots," contains not only impetus for collective action, but is also the most important opinions. People on the ground or at least closer to it than the stratospheric Conservatives or the media elite. Individuals and small collectives, a mess of eccentric discussion. Here's some tingz I've come across.

East London poet Raymond Antrobus has had a pretty creative blast with the riots, mediating sentiments and pictures. I found this articulate short essay by Anthony Anaxagorou on Raymond's blog. He fears not only the Right's response to the riots, but also the Left's. (As the Right wait earnestly to slam the Left's sympathetic mothering of looters, 'Britain's ethnic citizens' get caught in a sort of possessed middle-ground - "They're our vehicle for change!" "No, they're ours!"...)

And a poem by the guy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqusuhaPeDQ

Someone commented on Anaxagorou's essay saying that the 'Black leadership' and thus community should not seek vengeance for the 'righteous kill' that was the shooting of Mark Duggan, a 'parasite and a blight to the Black community.' This reactionary mentality is prominent right now, and the appetite for looking beyond simple punishment/deterrent is low. Strangely enough, its George Osborne who says today that this is about more than police numbers, they're 'deep-seated issues'. What's more scary, the usual Tory lack of understanding with punitive moralising, or the usual Tory lack of understanding with a social rehabilitation programme?

One thing can stuck from Anaxagorou's message and the response was an exhaustion with the educated armchair lefties, who are always harping on about revolution but maybe found themselves asking where the police is on Monday night. A few days go by and the intellectuals come out of hiding and start writing articles to enforce a political agenda, or so the caricature goes. I may be in this group, may be not. I do like a mocha, it's true.

But: we also cant find jobs, we know how our 'overseas student' friends are treated, we've had the police squaring up to us at protests, we get treated like shit by the Jobcentre, the benefits people, with their ineptitude and scorn, we care when our libraries close and we notice when milk goes up 3p, even through we don't have milk in honey and ginger tea. It's been a monumental time to be a student, as the political laboratory has revolved around the university, the distinction between labour and learning. So, with a highly relevant position, after all, the University for Strategic Optimism's Dr. Sofia Himmelblau writes a very popular and much debated article, lambasting the divisive tactics of the post-riot self-righteous, which mark line between citizens and non-citizens and opportunistically exploit it while the media are onside.

Dan Taylor, on it before most, wrote a typically insightful commentary on the politics of riots, after standing by an increasingly battered Currys in New Cross. Poverty, discrimination, police violence and boredom on the one side, contempt on the other:

White middle-class pundits pass judgement. I want a fuckin satnav: young and old, men and women, a community comes together in looting. Big society? We’re all in it together, so hand me that toaster.

Keeping with white middle-class pundits for a moment, William Wall, Irish writer, came up with a small article linking the riots directly to neoliberal theory. This day has been coming. The state functions to '[facilitate] the accumulation of wealth.' Cue privatisation, the 'looting of the public sphere,' and increasing wealth divides. Here we don't have citizens and non-citizens, a la Dr. Himmelblau but consumers and, I'd add, non-consumers.

Meanwhile, back to the street. One man conveys some very apt sentiments. 'This is not a movement, this is a cry for help,' says he. And one frustrated woman laments the kids inability to understand what they're doing and act in a more appropriate way. "If we're fighting for a cause let's fight for a fucking cause!"

Sorry I don't know how to embed videos.

Darcus Howe, not shocked, calls it an insurrection, talking to a pretty bewildered and patronising BBC Newswoman. Which beings us to the media's gesturing, and the 'neutral' BBC, who's own particular social position has been exposed, speaking as they have for the appalled middle-classes.

Also on the BBC, a report about one man, a pharmacist, who, like many other unfortunate people, have had their shops looted. In that pity voice the reporter adopts for stories you are meant to feel bad for (picked from from voice-cupboard for such occasions as: plight in Africa, Japan explosion, Haiti earthquake, Thailand tsunami, New Orleans hurricane, and now = hapless shopkeeper) we are told that his 'livelihood' has been wrecked. All his stock is gone, his windows are smashed. His family business, over. Hold on, it's fucking Boots!

Stories of the Reeves furniture store are few and far between, which we can be grateful for. But at the same time, family businesses are also few and far between. And the banks aren't lending so we can't expect much more. Most places are wealth-accumulator-factories run by fat-cat capitalists, as John Hutnyk would put it.

John has had an ongoing commentary on the riots, particularly in sections of 11 notes. He covers a lot of stuff. Political agendas, wealth divides, police behaviour, media reportage, and more about insurrections:

Cut through this phantasmal comedy and it’s illusions of civic responsibility, morality and myths of political representation – contemporary Capital is nothing less than theft and plunder and should be hounded into the annals of history.

So I'll refrain from having my own rant, there are plenty out there put far more forcefully, cleverly and poetically than I could.

But, briefly: our society rewards greed. Success = financial success. To 'achieve' is to have money. To have money is to be able to 'get what you want'. Lots of kids went out and did just that. And they've been rewarded with world-wide fame. Where social mobility is inhibited and opportunities are low, this is some achievement. To try to understand what brought about these riots is not to excuse it. The myopic reaction that simply condemns is a sign that those in power are scared about what we might find if we do try to understand. It's far simpler to make it all about kids in tracksuits. It's recognisable, it's safe. Kids in tracksuits have given us grief since we were kids, now they're world famous, and we hate them.

So out come the racist jokes, the ill-thought-out petitions, the political empty gesturing, the reactionary righteousness of a country which has learnt to think about things with Murdoch and the Daily Mail as tutors.

-------

Update: A bunch more links of stuff from Yu-Mei's pleasant little blog

http://blog.toomanythoughts.org/2011/08/linkdump-perspectives-on-london-riots.html

------------

key words of the week, from all sides of a debate which everyone apart from looters is allowed to have.

looting

wanton

orgy of violence

sick

pockets

insurrection

lack of identity

lack of respect

opportunism

copycat

bad parenting

cuts

youth centres

community

society

education

police brutality

not enough police brutality

politicians return from holiday

excuses

reasons

game-changer

mindless thuggery

victims

perpetrators

benefits

black people

fire!

water cannon

martial law

copycat

moralising

causes

normal life.

Reviewing reviewing

2011-08-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

Reflections on a week of Camden Fringe.

It's fringe month! The world amass in one place: the media flock, industry collides with culture, the whole city is a stage. Well, yeah that's Edinburgh Fringe. How about Camden?

A couple of weeks ago I managed to steal the opportunity to review the Camden fringe. Four shows a week, or thereabouts, all free. Offbeat theatre, tiny stages in pub backrooms, curious comedy, one man shows, and my routine of arbitrarily selected performances to get myself to and comment upon. And no payment, such is the climate.

Bring it on, I thought. The summer is a hole in existence. Everyone has their head in books, or staring at walls making logical constructs, or working (some people do that too). I am condemned to a cruel freedom. Cafe-hopping, reading philosophy with no academic purpose, like in the olden days. And not even a rejection for the jobs I suck-up to. No mail for you today sir, says the postman as I peer into my mailbox.

So to be at Camden by Six p.m. on the Monday, I could just walk from home, which is down Brockley way. Make a day of it. But do you remember the weather that day? Monday to Wednesday: heatwave. So I went to Charing Cross, walked from there. Still a hefty, heated walk.

First show, stand-up comedy. Now I haven't been to much stand-up, especially of the club/pub variety. Ricky Gervais in a massive theatre, it's another world. Even so, somewhere in the depths of my being is a sense of humour, deep deep down. It was James W. Smith, exploring the comic potential of language. Review here.

I sat there alone, amongst giggling groups with pints of beer. Going to a comedy show alone has a certain feel to it. I felt thoroughly professional. Afterwards I got another drink and made some notes on a bench outside. 'Twas a pleasant eve, weather-wise, and Camden was a-buzzin'. And this is where it differs from Edinburgh: the small smattering of people who had been in the audience were gone, somewhere else; I sat on the bench as was joined by a builder, from North somewhere, here on building business, a traveller by heart, tried marriage - can't do it. Camden, full of life, but same as usual - this is not "Fringe Town". The Camden Fringe is a subtler affair, almost subcultural.

The next day I was free, apart from a Nyx meeting. Nyx 6, the Monster edition is coming along nicely, keep your eyes peeled. And this may just rear it's monstrous head.

Wednesday, back to Camden. Another long walk, another theatre above a pub. Ah, but a delightful show - The Shoemaker's Wonderful Wife, highlight of my fringe thus far. Review here. I happily descended the stairs afterwards, following, not stalking, a girl who was also alone. Was she a reviewer like me?

"What did you think?" I asked when we got to the bar.

"Oh, no thanks, I'm fine," she replied.

"Uh, no I mean, er, what did you think . . . of the show?"

"Oh yeah, really good. I know someone in it."

I case you hadn't guessed, she must have thought I'd said "Do you want a drink?" Great, rejected when I wasn't even trying.

We chatted a bit and I missioned on, that reviews not gonna right itself.

Then no plays till Saturday, I relaxed. My dad visited. Cue Chinese restaurant, Holiday Inn, quite bad breakfast and free Independent newspaper, another meal out, and I'm back in Camden for Saturday's shows. Two this time.

At Mornington Crescent I waited for Chris, "Be there in 5," says the message. What am I to make of this? 20 Minutes till the show starts, five minutes to get there, and Chris' notorious punctuality. I waited 15 minutes, sent directions on a text, and bounded round to the Sheephaven Bay, just in time to grab a beer.

All these shows start a bit late, so Chris squeezed in having only missed a couple of minutes. It was poetry. And it was OK. Review here.

Not a long show, but maybe that's OK. We went out and got a beer. Chris and his Wind-up pal Billy moved on and I went and got some chicken wings. It rained. There was a rainbow. Came back and got a whiskey for the next show. This theatre is literally a conservatory. And not exactly soundproof either. So, under difficult circumstances we had a pretty mediocre show. Review here.

Afterwards I chatted for a couple of hours to a girl from Singapore, student of York Uni and periodical Londoner, and had more whiskeys. With the chairs on the tables throughout the pub, like some barren forest, we were finally chucked out. So it wasn't the best night, performance-wise, but was saved by the good company.

Another week on the fringe awaits. With London's suburbs erupting, this could get messy.

Bad wisdom - aphorism 21

2011-08-02T04:40:00.000-07:00

"The moment is a black hole, towards which the whole of history collapses."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 20

2011-07-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

"If you ride the Rich Tea of life, be prepared to be dunked."

Murdoch Mayhem: Media, Markets and Morals.

2011-07-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

Or, On the market as an arbitrator of ethical practice.

An empire crumbles. A week or two of headline news, trumping other seemingly more disastrous and immediate problems - famine, debt crises, NHS privatisation carried out with an invisible cloaking device. No time for that, with a scandal that deepens every day. The police, the free press, the Government - who in their right might could believe that these humble institutions, with only our interests at heart, could be corrupt??

Murdoch and his worldwide organisation have taken a blow. Many hope

it is the start of a complete downfall of News Corp. Others hope it will herald a shift in journalistic practice in the UK; toward a better, cleaner, free press. A free press which has no questionable links to police or politicians. A new start for all!

But before we invent a new calendar, counting year Zero from now - the year democracy became clean - perhaps we should look at some of the reasons as to why these curious relationships developed in the first place, and what it is that has caused us all to finally become awakened to it.

Rightly so, it has been describes as a scandal which cuts through the entirety of the UK's power bloc. The esteemed Professor Effra from the University for Strategic Optimism has outlined a selection of reasons as to why this scandal highlights the inadequacy of the 'political-social-economic-juridical' structure, in the hope that taken with the crisis of the Eurozone, the collapse of consent in parliament, and crises in the Crown Prosecution Service and the Met, the News Corp scandal may open a gap into which the recent momentum of dissent may gain an extra, crucially more widespread, burst. Effra's polemic is ultimately directed at David Cameron; this collapse of consent will see his head roll next, perhaps. But it's a bittersweet optimism, for as Effra knows, some new crony would take his place pretty quick.

On Newsnight a few days ago Carl Bernstein, a big player in the exposure of the Watergate scandal (Dustin Hoffman in All the President's Men), remarked on how appalling it is that we, the British public, had allowed the institution to get like this. Erm, as opposed to the righteous 'free press', and economic elite in the US? Obviously not: Bernstein himself reported in 1977 that over 400 journalists were employed at the CIA. Thirty years later, who's surprised to learn that the Met is no different?

So we call for transparency in Government, we call for a police service with a clean conscience. And lastly, a press that regulates itself responsibly. Because the notion of free press is fundamental to our way of life. But can we really equate corporate agendas and political populism with free speech? I am less sure. Laura Charlotte, on her blog, writes about the abandonment of News Corp's BSkyB bid, noting that it seems that Murdoch jumped before being pushed and that the concentration of power became too much and burst. She concludes that public outcry was too great for News Corp to plough on with the BSkyB takeover, and that the British public will not accept this concentration of power. But what is this public? What was this outcry? Has there not been campaigns against Murdoch since he moved to Wapping? Was there not controversy after the Sun's reporting on the Hillsborough disaster and the sinking of the Belgrano? Were we unaware of the political campaigns and the cosy relationships with the governments from Thatcher onwards? We knew what News Corp was all about, but a bigger player was at hand, sustaining their crusade: it was the belief that this unstoppable force was an unstoppable force. And then one day, a couple of weeks ago, this belief just stopped. Suddenly everyone just realised.

Charlie Brooker was on to something with his bumbling metaphor. Murdoch was God, he owned the sun. He wanted the sky too. Cue the 'tornado ripping through an orphanage' of the hacking scandal and "What kind of a God would allow such a thing?" But who are these followers who suddenly doubt this media God?

We all know in what terms Žižek would explain this: the (Lacanian) big Other's belief in the power of Murdoch could no longer be sustained. It wasn't that some revelation had changed our mind about Murdoch, but that the fragile illusion surrounding Murdoch had finally collapsed. Somewhere, Žižek recounts the useful tale of an executive of a jewellery company: everyone new the jewellery was crap, but it wasn't until the executive made a joke about the shoddiness of his own jewels at a company party that the whole lot became worthless. Until that moment everyone could go along with the charade, as if no one really knew. But once the truth was out there, bam! This newly found knowledge by the big Other needs to be accounted for, so in step the financial markets, the ethereal life of capital, to consider how best to respond.

So are we to thereby conclude that the virtuous market is an arbitrator of ethical behaviour? For here we have Murdoch put in his place, 'humbled', if you will, by the market, right? Ultimately it was not the appalled public who acted to stop Murdoch's continuing expansion of power, nor the withdrawal of customers who buy the News of the World. I bet a whole heap of people in this country just don't care about Murdoch's goons and their unethical antics. No, it was the media attention, endowing an evermore glistening gleam of controversy around the issue; the politicians seeing the opportunity to point out all the things that are wrong with media, in hope that they will deflect some of the controversy away from themselves; and the advertisers who pulled out of the News of the World, in an attempt to prove that their business ethics are superior to that of News Corp's. In short, it was the impression generated by an industry of representation that seemed to suggest that the News Corp brand was toxic. The actual level of toxicity is irrelevant. These occurrences, playing out on news bulletins and continuous updates induced a reaction by the market that forced News Corp to focus all their energy on the only card they had left to play: PR. Cue apologies in the newspapers and a few hours of theatre before a committee. Sure enough, the company's shares rose after the hearing.

Thus the direction of change seems to link directly to the West's dependence and infatuation with representation and public relations - the committed assurance that everything will appear to be doing OK. For is this not the same logic which ensures the prosperity and continuing of global dominance of the Western Powers, specifically the USA? Blind belief in the system will ensure the system's survival; and the system works for those who believe, i.e., those with the capital. This logic, with its heart in Wall Street, has been intensified and trotted out around the world since the 70's. With Thatcher lapping it up then, and with no one since having enough power and/or balls to make drastic changes, it is no wonder that the Government is in cahoots with big business, and moreover with big business which has the power to widely influence public opinion. It is also no wonder that such a large proportion of the Met's press office staff are ex-News of the World journalists. For, as the logic beholds, the appearance of a smooth running police force is half way to ensuring the smooth running of it. But we shouldn't be asking ourselves where these press office workers used to work, but why the police invest so heavily in public relation.

Because it's the same story in Government. Why do we question Cameron's 'judgement' in hiring a probably-corrupt ex-News of the World editor as his advisor without questioning why it is OK to have the Prime Minister, so frequently harping on about his Government's transparency, hiring someone who's expertise revolve around bull-shitting? To convince the public that bad ideas are good, that ideas designed to benefit the few will benefit the many - that was the job of Andy Coulson, as it was for Alastair Campbell before him. Does not the very existence of such a position highlight the absolutely scheming and menacing nature of the political class, their complete commitment to a very narrow and particular vision of the shape of our democracy? This commitment relies on a massive ubiquitous industry of media and public relation, for while this relationship works in favour of the elite, things can just contintue as normal. It reminds one of the Gaddafi situation. Until hell broke loose in Libya, Gaddafi was our pal. He was a business partner. Cameron went on an arms selling binge in spring just as the Arabs were rising. Saddam Hussein was our ally in the Middle-East not long before. In both situations, a bubble of belief was burst and our friends became our enemies, with those back home who are complicit in the problem take the moral highground in an environment devoid of morals, dependent only on business, opportunities, contracts and trade.

So what it all comes back to, it seems to me, is market logic and its pervasive spread beyond the realm of business and finance into the structures of power which run the country, and the alienation that this gloss posits between the ruling and the ruled. This spread has occurred in line with what David Harvey refers to as the 'financialization of everything', whereby the financial condition of an institution is increasingly more economically important that production. Shares supersede sales. This is one aspect of Neoliberal economics, in which all areas of social life can be effectively maintained by the market: the drive towards profits will ensure prosperity, the trickle-down effect will allow a dribble of cash for those at the bottom, and the best things on offer will be naturally selected by the market to prosper. As a result, we have Starbucks, Wall-Mart, Tesco and News Corp. We have monopolies, and goods made cheap by outsourcing (exploiting foreign labour), streamlining (redundancies) and unfair payments to suppliers. We have Corporate Social Responsibility - a pay-off for an unequally weighted distribution of wealth; sponsored good-will gestures. We have a global energy industry where companies (and recipients of tax revenues back home) enjoy the returns of natural resources, instead of those who live alongside those resources. We have Western healthcare increasingly privatised, competition-driven, with sickening results in the US and a hope in the UK to follow in those footsteps. We have McDonalds as an official Olympic restaurant. Irony, anyone? Meanwhile, global trade mechanisms don't make it financially viable to supply medicine and resources to the poorest countries, where people die from diseases which are solved in an afternoon in the 'developed' world. Investment in these places is not deemed viable, as the infrastructure does not bode well for good returns to investors. Back home, government subsidies and tax incentives ensure that poorer countries can't compete with richer ones, so their exports become all but worthless. We have the ties between capital and government becoming increasingly blurred. We have a plutocracy, who in turn take orders from the unelected IMF, the biggest

threat to the democratic principle in the West. Neoliberal logic is pushed, enforced, by the IMF who hold countries to ransom - take Greece, for example - so their interest rates and opportunities to borrow capital are only preferable if it appears to foreign investors that there are opportunities to make good returns on their investment. In other words, Greece's only hope is that others can culturally and economically acquire their country. Only then, will the market act as a friend to Greece. The present UK Government's economic policy is often greatly encouraged as being the correct plan because it has appeased the markets. This means that wealthy organisations around the world see opportunities to make money at our expense. No longer will we fund our own services with our own wealth, instead we will pay wealthy people to employ people with low wages to do the same thing, no better, with great profits for them, and tax incentives to stop them moving away. The recent care-home controversies, privatised prisons, and the money spent on PFI's in healthcare are good examples of companies creaming profits from tax payers without doing a better job. And increasingly so, prosperity is contingent on the ability for companies to appear to have stock worth buying, and wealth remains suspended, always in potential, never quite cashed-in because it's mostly abstract. Even so, policies enacted to drive this abstract wealth has real social implications.

So basically, the market's treatment of Murdoch and his company is analogous to severing an arm infected beyond repair, when all along that arm belonged too a braindead zombie. The zombie is amoral, it is only incidental that this time, in the wake of hacking revelations, the market sought to sever a toxic limb. Chances are, however, that this limb will grow back. The market has become the one thing that can cripple an organisation, and it's the same thing that allows it to thrive should the perception of the organisation remain positive. It is because the Government play the same game that they followed suit in condemning News Corp. That's damage limitation. One casualty, News Corp, to ensure the survival of hegemonic economic discourse, the sweeping financialization of everything, the growth and withering of wealth being dependent on speculations, speculations being dependent on the mediation of fabricated mass opinion, an endemic preoccupation with public relations. Turns out, after all, that these other seemingly more pressing issues - famine, healthcare, EU bail-outs, US arguments on defaults and taxes - they're all hidden somewhere in this Murdoch scandal, all products of a strategy of abstract global wealth.

---

interesting things to read...

Richard Peet - Geography of Power for an insight into the economic mechanisms, theories and policies which are becoming more prevalent around the world, and the institutions which act to maintain the dominance of such ideas. Also, a few alternatives.

The work of David Harvey, for effects of neoliberalism in the UK, US and japan, and a look at the restructuring and redefinition of classes since WW2.

Slavoj Žižek's Lacanian twist on Marxist theory, always entertaining. Big Others and symbolic orders - a social psychoanalysis for our contemporary cultural landscape.

Bad wisdom - aphorism 19

2011-07-27T04:32:00.000-07:00

"School is merely the crumbling corner which falls from the biscuit of education."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 18

2011-07-26T10:47:00.000-07:00

"The bubbles in beer may contain hope or despair,

but they will always rise towards the surface."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 17

2011-07-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

"Who is the greater fool? The man who wears odd socks, or the man who spends twenty minutes searching for two that match?"

(http://banalmuffins.wordpress.com/)

Bad wisdom - aphorism 16

2011-07-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

"In the tunnel of love, even the rats flee."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 15

2011-07-19T03:36:00.000-07:00

"On darkened ponds, still leaves."

Review: The Word House - Gallery Café, Bethnal Green. !6th July.

2011-07-18T05:18:00.000-07:00

Spoken word night. It's a clear winner, right? You go up to your manager, 'you know what this place needs - poetry. Everyone will come, they'll love it, we'll cram the place with high culture and fat wallets.' Back where I come from, where it's unclear whether the skeletal diners will first fall down the eroding cliffs or collapse in on themselves, an evening of poetry would entice two old ladies and a bunch of kids who'd come as a joke, drink vodka from the bottle and swear throughout the show.

Not in Bethnal Green though. Not in the Gallery Café. No old women here, save one with a risqué tongue and an open mic slot.

I arrived as Dave Florez was reading Shoreditch Boy, delighting the crowd with landmark name-dropping, renowned beigels, the 48 bus. East London stuff, you know the sort; and the myth which ties all this together. I got a beer, slightly disappointed that I had not got there earlier (cheers, Chris).

It was hot in here. Chairs lined the floor, leaving a small passage for those walking through - a 'come on down!' grand entrance for the open micers, called up one by one for 3 minute slots. Some variety was expressed here by the 6 or so participants. Identity, inclusion, chat-up lines, acceptance, escape, sex, long words and short snappy words, a veritable 'house of words' no less, singing and laughter.

With my beer replaced with a cider, Raymond Antrobus took to the stage. With a personable presence, he spoke wittily of the gulf between sobriety and drunkenness, the intractable difficulties that haunt this space. Followed by a new poem on the tricky relationship between red light and cyclist, and glimpse into the life of a hearing aid user in a superficial world. Nestled within his set was the toughest moment of the evening which virtually came with a warning, like a pack of cigarettes: an older poem recounting the grim tale of an overheated exchange between a young couple. This one got to Raymond, and it got to us too. In silence we sat before this confessional outpour.

You know what struck me, having never been to a poetry night before? How, with the drinks a-flowing and spirits high, such respect was shown by the audience; reacting perfectly to the situation, be it quiet and reflective during the heavier stuff, and happily engaging during the fun stuff. Of course it helped that the poets straddled this tricky line with great skill. Great whooping followed all performances.

Zena Edwards came on last, and began to sing. She drifted seamlessly between rhythmic chatter and full-on song, such was the melody contained within her everyday voice. She told of virginity lost and the local weirdo, amongst other insightful comments about love and life, and got the crowd singing too, all with a dash of self-reflexive humour and great optimism.

And she played a Kalimba, which was just wicked.

I'm told the Word House will return in the autumn. No reason why they can't pack the place out again.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Word-House/246272548734322

http://thegallerycafe.wordpress.com/

Bad wisdom - aphorism 14

2011-07-17T04:39:00.000-07:00

"Hope and faith are like the frog and the toad - they're different, but nobody knows why."

Bad wisdom - Aphorism 13 - Guest aphorism, Dr. Ian Malcolm.

2011-07-16T04:49:00.000-07:00

"Life . . . uh . . . finds a way."

Review: Wind-Up Collective - Box Junction (scratch) 30th June.

2011-07-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

It's Scratch Night at Battersea Arts Centre, a weekly occurrence during Scratch season, which spans the summer. Scratch Nights give the opportunity for works-in-progress to be performed in front of a live audience, to see what works, what doesn't, what could be improved.

Box Junction worked.

Immersive theatre's a tricky old game. How boldly do you immerse your audience? How uncomfortable do you want to make them? For me, nervous wreck by profession, immersive theatre comes with a wealth of problems. But with a trusty beer in tow, I prepared myself for this theme park ride.

Waiting outside the room, waiting to be let in, the pre-Scratch chatter slowly faded. It was dark, an atmosphere was brewing. The man by the door, a look of panic on his face began to talk. Sparse, stunted words, words of regret and anxiety. An anxiety he shared with his audience, for he was leading us into the performance, and little did we know, it had long since begun.

This was no theatre, more like a classroom, and sat on the floor were six inanimate characters, motionless, staring right at us. After a bout of physical theatre, triggered by an audience member punching numbers in a calculator, we found ourselves on a train platform, then on the tube, sat amongst the performers, each of us playing the game of the commuter. Controlled, repressed chaos was juxtaposed with the absurd banality of a tube ride we are all so familiar with.

Upon arrival at Box Junction, our final stop, the audience took a more traditional role, while the seven characters mutated and mingled amongst one another in front of us. One wonders whether this retreat into a more traditional realm compromises the interactive quality so impressive in the first half. But the content of the show continued to engage. Sometimes animals, sometimes machines, miscommunications and aggressive behaviour, playing out in some kind of unruly circus environment, which itself finally evolved into a music box.

This story was ambiguous, that much is certain, leading one to speculate that this display of unconnected shenanigans were simply plucked from the air. But there was the occasional hint at some continuity, something deeper that conventional story-telling could not quite articulate. It all left one wondering, staring into space with a whiskey in the bar after the show.

Perhaps that's what it was about...

The modern fairy tale needs not rhymes, princes and witches, but boxes, flirting, tube rides and calculators. And this is what you can expect to get at a Wind-Up Collective show. Box Junction was the first display of a project destined to grow, refine, implode and explode. The result, whenever it surfaces, is sure to be another compelling ride.

http://wind-upcollective.tumblr.com/

Bad wisdom - aphorism 12

2011-07-14T03:32:00.001-07:00

"Life is like an elevator, there's a terrible soundtrack."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 11

2011-07-12T15:35:00.000-07:00

"To the black bag, the leftovers; but to the clear bag, the carboard and plastic."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 10

2011-07-11T05:27:00.000-07:00

"Amidst the cloudy lemonade of the past, one always finds a slice of lemon."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 9

2011-07-07T04:05:00.000-07:00

"Waves are but leaping waters."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 8

2011-07-06T10:41:00.000-07:00

"Beware the greasy noodle, for far below resides the dusty chicken of disappointment."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 7

2011-07-05T08:44:00.000-07:00

"Life is like an elevator - at the end of the day, you're going down."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 6

2011-07-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

"In the desert of sleep, dreams are like lizards."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 5

2011-07-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

"If the lion does not feed, does the lion not roar?"

Bad wisdom - aphorism 4

2011-07-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

"The sad old woman does not reflect, she expects her children to do so for her."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 3

2011-07-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

"There is but infinite variety in the mighty sock drawer of life, but don't rush the choices you have, for the hinges are strong."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 2

2011-06-30T05:12:00.000-07:00

"The past is a broken escalator, it's apparent stability makes it all the more hazardous."

Bad wisdom - aphorism 1

2011-06-29T05:47:00.000-07:00

...that night I went to sleep with a multitude of thoughts, all of them nonsense. A random assortment of verbs and nouns, a pick n mix of quasi-wisdom, just waiting to be scooped into the paper bag of tomorrow, only to be carelessly ripped open by mid-morning; a sugary snack for elevenses...

"Leave to the cupboard, the custard, the butter, the mayonnaise; for only water, smooth and pure, has the viscocity of life."

More words on waking

2011-06-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

morning broke like a vase

like a crème brûlée

like a deleuzian egg

an exclusive story

like a window wrapped round a body

like a small clay pot made in primary school

a chalked blackbored stressed teacher

a heart, a glass, a high e string

a tradition, a perdition, a peircing ring

morning broken:

a pellucid canvas dripping moisture.

Sunday

2011-06-21T05:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday struck with impertinence, an overzealous neighbour with a chainsaw. The toils of last night roused a plenitude of demons to torment my nightly rest, and i could not have wished it to be over sooner. But though dawn broke and plastered my pale walls with a strip of orange, my eyes remained fastened. As the morning began it was no longer the demons of sleep that would prolong my discomfort, but the prospects of the waking hours of Sunday. No longer would my eyes stay glued to the back of my head, peering into the chaotic darkness of the unconscious, the strangely welcoming and comforting landscape of nonsensical narratives, people i recognise occupying places i do not.

The day had to be dealt with. My stomach turned at the sight of breakfast, A coffee was all that could be managed. My bedroom seemed most inhabitable, as if all potential sitting spots were occupied by unwelcome visitors, the rancid memories that pinned themselves to the furniture. I turned in disgust, left the house. I had no plans, and instead left the decision to the objects upon my person. No wallet, no phone. Four pound sixteen in change and a travelcard.

It was one of those stubborn self-satisfied days. One unchanging character for the duration: overcast, take it or leave it. Today the sun only existed as a point of fact, in earlier times we would have thought it dead or angry. At the same time, prospects for rain looked slim, the sky seemed to lack the energy to make the effort. I cared not for rain today, it would not matter. I would not be cold, i had a jacket. Rain on me if you dare, i will dry given time.

I wondered if my travelcard bore me any financial recompense. Had i funds? Begone, travelcard, i said as i walked, you offend me. A wonderful realisation had horizoned, that truth that defined the line 'twixt Catford and Waterloo East. No barriers, free journey. and i vowed to seize this fortune, for it might be my last. to the station!

The park i crossed has been refurbished. young trees stand helped up with sticks and wire, slides and swings sit on protective rubber surfaces. the river has been artificially realigned in an attempt to bring it back from the previous artificial straightening which just looked too manmade. the manmade of now has to be disguised, the hyperreality of landscape redevelopment. a new park for the community, to offset the anger felt at government spending and deepening insecurity and inequality.

And into the backside of Catford, as if there is a part of it which does not merit the term 'backside'. At the station the touch-in plinth where my money would be inhaled taunted me as i approached, but i refused to be drawn into a confrontation, and passed indignantly. no violence or bad language was expended, just disregard. The train was bleak, empty except for a few Sunday travellers, all looking aimless, occupying this strange respite from two sandwiched weeks of labour.

This route takes us scenically north to London Bridge, rising above ground level to peer into the contemporary flats which overlook Greenwich. They watch lunchtime Sunday tv as the roast bubbles in the oven, at least that's what i expect. I wondered, as the gent opposite peered into the financial times and cleared his throat, when, if ever, a roast might be presented to me on some distant future wholesome Sunday.

But today was not that day. Waterloo's sky was no less bleak than Catford's, but i strode past the barriers with a sunny satisfaction. Free travel encourages travel, i realised today, for i had no purpose in Waterloo, no purpose whatsoever. Central London greeted me with traffic, litter, and glances of indifference; a antidote to quell all ails that confounded me this Sunday morn. I banished them to the peripheries of my mind, to only be apprehended in the proper circumstances: an untidy bedroom as the light fades.

Time's haste found new fuel this afternoon. Every time i glanced at one of the glowing clocks fastened to Nineteenth century buildings the best part of an hour had passed. Space seemed to turn as i willed it, the whim of my ambling reconstituting the landscape around me. I refrained from making decisions, instead allowing directions to present themselves. I never turned around, never looked both ways before crossing.

The sky was darkening like a flat panel light with struggling batteries. i hastened back to Waterloo. Back onto the train, back amongst the same aimless travellers, everyone going in reverse.

I sit here recalling Sunday, the holiday from the walls i am captive to, the walls at which i stare, rethinking my vocabulary. Is vocabulary the most appropriate word, i have the luxury to question. Rethinking is one thing, the deferral of the inevitable pastime of thinking. The holiday is over now, until the demons of wake are overwhelmed by those of sleep.

Nyx 5 - Myth

2011-05-20T06:30:00.001-07:00

Issue 5 of the renowned cultural magazine Nyx is to be launched on the 27th May. Centered around the sprawling topic of myth, you can expect to find thoughts relating to Pepsi, revolutionaries, Rage Against the Machine, the Big Society, Happiness and post-simian becomings.

http://www.nyxnoctournal.com/home.htm

There will be those who's eyes dodge the lens of their glasses, who peer over the frame with the stern eyes of critique and dismiss the whole affair without uttering a word. And those who put the printed word to death long ago and have long since ceased their lament. And still those who put 2 fingers up and say go away your argument is flawed and you're an obscurantist.

But to you I say I may put ice cream in my coffee! I may have African rooibos and red thyme shower gel! And dammit when the time comes to address the problem of the nature of myths which are in turn products of the myths that constitute our understanding of the world, you better believe I'll give you an an answer. Now fetch my pipe!

Sketch for a theory of invisibility

2011-04-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

As hopeless prisoners of ourselves, cruelly predisposed to a sensory faith, we are never able to not hear the tree crash but know of its sound. Aliens to the event, it ceases to matter. The question of the acoustic residue of a crashing tree becomes replaced by another: did the tree ever fall?

As cohabitants in the house of ego, that merciless housewife of apparent unity, we only care for the status of the tree insofar as it effects the immediacy of our being. The question is once more supplanted: does the tree exist?

To some, it may; to I, it does not - other issues are at hand. But I do not question the realist; I am prepared to concede that it exists, but is invisible.

To be visible is:

1. to influence the nature of the field of vision.

2. to register upon the perceptive apparatus of the observer.

3. to be mediated.

The degree of visibility/invisibility is correlative to the degree of obse

rvation.

This is the ontological condition of being visible.

The tree in question, its existence and its acoustic qualities, bear no significance, for these questions only come into being once the tree has been deemed visible. Until then, it is invisible and immaterial.

Thus, to be invisible is:

1. to not influence the nature of the field of vision.

2. to fail to register upon the perceptive apparatus of the observer.

3. to be isolated.

Invisibility is a matter of negation.

On attaining invisibility

One cannot decide to be invisible, it can only occur through the co-operation with perceptive beings, and their ability to not perceive.

The insignificance of the object leads to its failure to be observed, thus to be insignificant is to increase chance of invisibility.

Insignificance is the inability to affect the environment, it is stasis manifest in suspension; a perimeter that connects to nothing.

Invisibility is the visual non-manifestation of the force of neglect.

The invisible lacks substance; it lacks the impetus with which to become visible. The invisible thus secures its own sustained invisibility.

To be invisible is to not be: to not be is to not be invisible: the condition of double negation.

The invisible non-being's sustained non-being is assured. This is the one and only attribute of the invisible - endlessness.

End.

On this day . . .

2011-03-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

Police Numbers to be Cut.

Government crack down on gang culture.

Home secretary Theresa May is committed to new measures to prevent 'known hooligans' (pictured) from attending future demonstrations. Said May on the gang's violence during recent protests, 'The message to those who carry out violence is "You will be caught and you will be punished."'

But the Police, a gang based in London but with a network spanning the nation, have been notoriously difficult to indict, having frequently eluded continued efforts to bring them to justice. Attempts to resolve high profile cases such as the deaths of Ian Tomlinson and Jean Charles de Menezes end up being thwarted by the bureaucracy of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and the problems of violence at protests and institutionalised racism continue to thrive.

Without the ability to completely crush the Police, the hope is that cutting numbers may combat some problems.

2011-03-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

All I know is that I know nothing.

Apart from one eternal truth . . . you can't shave when you're in exile.

Post-postbox experiences

2011-03-16T06:09:00.000-07:00

The great red phallus has gone too far this time.

Look out for documented accounts of one man's struggle searching for humanity in the crippled postal service . . . to be put up here soon.

Worth Noting: the really free school.

2011-02-26T12:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to the Really Free School, a space invented by a collection of proactive individuals in the wake of an education increasingly becoming threatened by supermarket aisle logic. The Really Free School indeed professes to be free - and it is. 'You will not spend one penny inside these doors...' they say. It is also free in the sense that it is transient, unanchored and manoeuvrable, both in the sense that the schedule and topics covered are in constant flux, dependent simply on what sessions people want to propose, announced a couple of days before they are due; and that hired thugs turn up to eject them from their premises, and court proceedings linger threateningly. Happily though, no one seems too troubled but these somewhat empty threats.

Having previously been based in a house in Bloomsbury Square and Guy Ritchie's house in Fitzrovia, in obviously fun but unstable circumstances, the Really Free School seems to have settled for now in a pub, The Black Horse, near Oxford Street. That's where I went yesterday, having been intrigued by a lecture on the Middle-East.

On one of those pub-sign-balckboard-things you get outside pubs was scrawled a few of the events that were taking place. Another sign just inside the door had the schedule of classes happening that day. Such delights included Indonesian Lessons, ethnomusicology, a workshop by the Paper and the Middle-East history lesson I had gone for.

I chatted to a couple of chaps manning the door for a while, who are effectively living in this pub. They told of the ups and downs of their precarious existence spreading the good word of education. A bashed up piano was there. I sipped my coffee and gormed at things. An anti-capitalist banner spread across the inner wall, and I new I was in the right place.

I was directed upstairs to where the Middle-East class was due to be held, and I wandered into a room containing what can only be described as a 'circle group'. I've been in the vicinity of many of these recently. This one was slightly different as someone was sitting in the middle, presumably a kind of focal point of the discussion, a target of interrogation. The content had a revolutionary spirit, an analysis of the protests in Egypt and Libya and their analogous qualities to things happening back in happily democratic Britain.

I assumed the Middle-East class was next, so I slunk into a corner, found a chair a positioned myself upon it. No one questioned me, included me, or noticed me - it was business as usual. Then someone else came in and asked 'is this the Middle-East?' 'I think it's upstairs,' someone replied.

There was another upstairs. Stupidly I had remained in mere id territory, I still had another flight of stairs before reaching the ego. I went up too far, found come bedrooms, mattresses on the floor, sleeping bags, and went down again. I found a small collective preparing for the talk. A blackboard lay horizontally on a table with a map of the Middle-East on it, all in an unassuming beige room, where the windows failed to keep out the busyness of Oxford Street down below. As I enjoyed the juxtaposition, the talk started.

For one and a half hours this young guy, a student from SOAS, traced the history of the Middle-East from Muhammad to now, pointing out the misconceptions along the way; illuminating the complexities and ambiguities of territorial and religious stand-offs; the golden cultural ages, the inventions of writing and the wheel in the Persia/Iraq areas; the merits of Islam and the impact of Orientalism.

Sitting on benches and on the floor, our teacher found an attentive audience, peering over the map, making suitable noises when something clicked. The class came to an end and a more casual type of general chit-chat continued - the current turbulence in the middle east; what was going on later in the free school; how cool this whole thing is. I peered across the room, watching these intrepid conversationalists and keen learners, all so encouraged by the advance of the School, and slipped out the door. Down the superego-staircase, passing the continuing circle group, down down down back towards the cruel reality that was Central London outside, it's gates open and beckoning.

On the ground floor another class was underway: a discussion on disability activism was in full swing, impassioned and good-natured exchanges zig-zagging across a crumbling table, shiny with the beer stains of its previous life. I eased past and went outside.

Their radical anti-establishment ideology maybe a bit naive, as some have said, but it has a kind of from-the-rubble-build-something-great optimism. It also importantly contributes to the continuing debate that is surrounding education now, manages to avoid being a Big Society bastard, is fun and makes a mess. For a pleasant, learned experience in a place that welcomes all, you could do far worse, and someone who lacks my social ineptitude could really flourish here, provide their own lectures, man the door with the other revolutionaries, penetrate the circle group of dissent.

Go forth, intrepid rogue - heed the call of the Really Free School!

Between Pretension and Vulgarity: A question of deliverance

2011-02-24T09:28:00.000-08:00

Well the rifles are still loaded and the crosshairs are faithfully positioned. No, I'm not referring to the arms bought by Libya from the West so they could shoot their own people, and then be told off by the West. I refer to the struggles back home, where despite the government mooning the public in a 'kiss my arse' moment of defiance and continuing to push through damaging cuts like they were going for a world record, the resistance continues now in the desolate no-man's land between the previous London and Manchester protests and the big one that's to come in March. Disparate groups are uniting, and much discourse is circulating, although I think it's amongst people who are already well convinced of the impending damage. The media have all but given up commenting on public dissatisfaction, as no windows are being smashed, preferring instead to focus on the Middle East and Cameron's apology. A politician apologising is a headline story - what toss. Only the Socialist Worker seems to make the connection between the demonstrations in Egypt and the unrest in Britain, but is this a good thing? The type of mediation, from the 'grass roots' to whoever is listening, is something that was discussed at the Goldsmiths teach-in last week, and maybe came up implicitly at the protest at Goldsmiths on Wednesday - an expression of disgust at having the New Academic Building opened by ex-Tory MP, ASDA-sell-off visionary, and all round embodiment of what Goldsmiths' students and many others question in our society, Archie Norman.

This protest was deemed a success, and it was - it was fun, and we ruined the corporate event that was planned for that evening, in the newest building of our 'radical' university. But did it lack something? A message? We had no big speech, just a few banners and some cross words with Archie Norman towards the end of the evening.

As Mr. Dan Taylor has noted here in a gripping account of the evening, the invitees seemed largely unimpressed and bemused by our demo, failing to understand it's relevance. An education editor from Channel 4 thought we were stupid, and Archie Norman was condescending and feigned perplexity. The talks outside with Archie Norman showed the polarity of approaches we protesters use to mediate our concerns, shown also in the two pictures up there. One is with the cold, brazen use of impressionable angry language, and one which provides some idea into the ethics behind the anger. As people struggled to get Archie Norman's attention, some we of the 'You rich piece of shit, fuck off out of our Uni, you don't belong here!' kind of persuasion; other's were more like, 'we are here because of the arrogance of those like yourself, who push for unfair free markets and the marketisation of education, and come to stamp your imprint on our university, which is already threatened by measures that you and your friends endorse, while all along your position in the wealthy elite renders you incapable of ever understanding the concerns of the struggling hopeless youth.' It is this negotiation of these approaches that we are struggling with. What is accomplished with either?

To those who we feel are causing irreparable damage - those in power, governmental power; and those who influence power, corporate power - we can probably give up reasoned arguments on the streets. No one is listening. This may be why my friend was chanting 'Go away, Tony Blair' during the first march in the Autumn. In recognition that our words fall on deaf ears, his voice assumed one emptied of content, it merely existed to add to the sounds of dissent. And to those in the general public, currently working out where they stand on the issues, chants about neoliberalism and capitalism come across as a bit pretentious and cliquey. Protests become things that 'other people' do - other people who think they know all the answers, just because they've heard some stuff at uni about how terrible capitalism is. This, too, is how the Socialist Worker comes across. Isms are exclusive, people don't want to be told they're stupid, or asleep, and they don't want to be indoctrinated. Also, 'socialism' has a lot of baggage, it scares people, and 'anti-capitalist' has cleverly become code for 'naive hippie'.

Do we crave media attention? Is this the way to get the message across? It is often assumed so - media attention seems to point to a legitimacy of action, it suggests that those in power are noticing what's going on. But it means that we have to play a certain game: smashed windows - great; 'bad' language - won't get shown; academic opinion - scarcely a mention, and presented as too highbrow to be realistic; student's opinions - it's hit and miss and usually a let down. I've never heard the word neoliberalism on BBC News 24. Playing along to these media guidelines is not and should not be the way that disgruntled citizens play out their grumbling objections, for it reveals a compromise. A story told through the media lens is never the true story, it is spun to satisfy particular ideas of what makes something newsworthy. Villains, heroes, shocks, blame and fear - all needed to work together in an audience-friendly narrative.

So one can understand those who say, like the girl standing next to me as Archie Norman was being berated, 'he's not worth it, I'd be happy just to smash his face in with this party hat.' It's because words of reason are no match for the intrepid capitalist, with a snake-like tongue of silver, after inevitably weaselling his or her way to the 'top'.

But anger is just as alienating, inseparable as it has become from violence- most people who you ask will not condone the smashed window at Millbank, a mixture of a refusal to admit that these moments of transgression have the biggest impact, are in themselves liberating, and a response to scenes depicted by the media as feral, dangerous and condemnable. People are also put off by swear words, as they are by more highfalutin language. In both instances, language is seen as belonging to a particular group that they are not in. They are hesitant to encourage the activities of a group that seems to exclude them.

I don't know how to engage with those who are sceptical of the sceptics, or those who wield the axes, but it might be a question to address. Should we make our message clearer? It certainly doesn't work when you have bodies like the NUS taking that role. Do we get lairy and wreck shit? It's certainly noticeable, but our integrity gets questioned, our anger is said to have no foundation. Is there political force in the use of irony - in the appropriation of political campaigns and corporate events; in the theatrics of the UfSO? Maybe next time, all fifty thousand of us should be chanting 'Go away, Tony Blair.' In the words of Superhans, 'It'll freak 'em out.'

Your head will collapse.

2011-02-19T14:51:00.000-08:00

somone once told me, a someone who doesnt exist, that if you start writing then sooner or later you will become coherent. i dont know if thats true. i sometimes wak down the street with an intermineable chatter going through my head, virtually unnoticed by myself, and i thin that maybe i could convert this to words it would be ok bu then when i write something it tends to resemble something that you're upset you stepped in. anyway, this is an attempt to do that. it is free of revision, and correction, although only i am here to verify that. but which thats ok, because, what does it matter what you say wheny you are the only one to hear it? words become someting so important dont they? but only when they are recieved. this is something i need not be concerned about. well i was wondering wwhether the human so called race is a sociable one, and i was thinking that its not. what is it, do we think, do i think, that binds us together. language? no language separates us. we have languages that reaffirm our state lines, that reaffirm our sense of continental space. the dialects we have inherited from age old languages. we have infinitesimal variations between the same language. you say tap i say fawcett, but we both mean the thing you turn and hope for water. there is a language for the rude boy, a language for the aristocrat, a language for te man who sells you a hot dog, a language for the man who sells you a mpobile phone. theres binary language and texting language and the bad language you hear on the 171. when i walk downt eh road and come across a someone who i dont know, i at first trouble over whether i can or should or want to make eye contact. then what this eye contact means. do i now facy this individua;, do i hate them? am i startin'? do i want change? or, the least likely of all the options that confront my foe, am i nice? aM i worth knowing? what is it. why do we have people. an ant, whom i am not unlike in all but character, will just test everyone out. we don't. do we scrutinise, is that what iit is? without friends we lack connections, and without connections we lack opportunities, and without opportunities we lack hope. we are in stasis, time is a lie, so waht is hope anyhow. hey let's meet up in 100 years and have a party, what would hold us back? and there and i'll still be in a toilet cubicle because its the only safe place to finish my drink.

theres something offensive about looking up pixies lyrics- to get these moments reduced to banal symbols. where do we go from here, to deciphering them, sure, sure theres no going back to the days when you wondered what that was all about.

A coming myth tale

2011-02-19T07:18:00.000-08:00

One tenth of a new century passes, a world warming now in

the sweeping cloth of democracy, its unequivocal legitim

acy, a mantra for capital on the airwaves, seeping into

the crevices, hiding under the tables in countries

we band together and name ‘developing’. 20

years ago, Francis Fukuyama hailed ‘the en

d of history’, the end of competing ideo

logies in the wake of a victorious libe

ral democracy, as the Berlin Wall fe

ll. Paul Virilio, come the year 200

0, contributes the end of geogr

aphy, as our hypermediated

world shrinks to the size of

a computer monitor. And

in 2010 David Cameron

comes to power and ta

kes it all to literally . . .

‘Fuck it,’ he says, ‘to hell with all the humanities.’

Myth: This time it's personal

***** 'OUTSTANDING!' - Total Theory Magazine

***** 'You'll never laugh so much!' - the Sun

Coming to a journal near you . . . (in the summer or something, maybe)

Yes, Yes, The Informal Formalities That Play Out in the Coffee House.

2011-02-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

i enter the café, encouraged by its atmosphere that i might be able to work. within this space, this posited lounge of some other whom i will never quite know, i am a guest. i have not the instruments of procrastination that haunt me in my home. here i am freed from distraction, yet never alone—continually threatened by disturbance. why is it here, where i know not those who sit nearby, those who pass through with their awkward gestures, where i am curiously at ease? why not in my home, which i have been able to sculpt as i see fit?

upon entering i am confronted with a smile, a token or maybe not. i smile in return, and tentatively—for is one ever 100 per cent positive that their decision is the right one for that day?—order a coffee. the ballooning menu of hot beverages creates choices where really there are none; i make one and state it with a lingering doubt.

but, i am thrown! now is not the time, it's simply not the time!

'please take a seat and we'll have someone come over and take your order.'

you could not mistake the good will. the sincerity with which she spoke, the casual stretch of her arm towards the seating area. in here, so the story goes, you are to do nothing but relax—leave it to us, we'll take care of you.

an internal battle commences—it's against the nature of the humble western café dweller to drive such warm gestures into the corner of your mind which deals with doubt. here, once through the door, the contract has already begun: with the generous assumption that i have money, and will pay upon my departure, my contract includes not only coffee, but a service—i have an attendant. yet this gesture which apparently is for my benefit, constricts my ability to preside as is implied by my being posited aloft of the attendant, as the logic would suggest. am i really the one being waited on in this relationship? in my attempts to repress it, i find myself formulating a suspicion:

this café is teeming with bureaucrats.

having made the decision, my attempt to actualise the coffee had failed. i had wrongly attempted to subvert the order of things; i was put in my place, hurried through the door, towards the faces cast down examining salads, faces extracting narratives from words printed and bound, faces interlocked with more faces, smiles reflecting smiles, two dozen worlds hostile to invasion.

i weave. I sneak. i eschew eye contact. I try to ignore the perplexity arising like a mushroom cloud from the collective judgement of my audience. my sight becomes an instrument of dissection, cutting into available corners of space, measuring suitability, never hesitating in its mission, feeding information to my decision-making equipment which rejects, denounces, ridicules the offers to the bemusement of my audience, unable to continue until i have settled—'I NEED A POWER SOURCE!'

I did not scream these words out loud.

despondent, i resort to the guidance of the waiter, my attendant and friend, who tells me that 'there is a power source along the wall here. we oblige you to spend at least five pounds if you are to use it.'

the illusion of agency is threatened once again. the jovial way he slipped this new condition into the contract. my laptop has an nauseous battery, to which i sympathise; electricity is imperative. the waiter casually lists a few things on the menu, assuring me that this five pound lower limit will be surpassed naturally, in the general course of my stay. i need not even give it a thought.

yet, it was evidently necessary to bring this new stipulation to the fore.

there is something contradictory in the manner of the young gentleman. it seems, that is, it is assumed, that he is a person. he certainly looks like one. he claims to be my friend, in actions alone, defending me against the constraints imposed on my bill, whilst reinstating the need to conform to it. he is casual, yet formal; a man whom i can command, but to whom i am accountable.

i sit, amongst a medley of others, each here to achieve something, to appropriate this environment which is controlled spatially and temporally from above, where the coffee beans pile up and the cash register beeps; and, aware of the poised pencil and curious eyes, i am finally in a position to order.

le mythe de la mythe

2011-01-13T15:38:00.000-08:00

what is the myth, if it itself is a myth?

this is a question that I hope to sponge out for the next issue of Nyx: a noctournal.

"Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact." says Roland Barthes

for barthes, myth is depoliticised speech, and as we can see here in his remarks, it amounts to a simplification of life through immediately part-prescribed messages beheld within signs. the post-ideological age is not upon us, but to what extent do we figure our ideologies to be products dependent on myth? the 60s hippie is a great example of a myth of a myth, for it is he through whom we visualise the hippie movement; it is he whom's very survival depends on the great myth of the 60s. is it not the hippie, as opposed to the anti-corporate anti-war rationale, that cartman despises so? with this in mind - to the quill!

...and other stories.

TFT-LCD, validation is in your hands.

2011-01-04T16:55:00.000-08:00

i'm writing on the blog now.

i'm writing on the blog because other people write on their blogs and it makes me think that i should write on my blog. they are productive, so should i be.

i'm writing on the blog so that it is ok that i got up at midday and watched two movies, each lasting more than three hours, and went to bed. for breakfast i managed three items from a chocolate selection pack. i had one sandwich an hour after. later i had another sandwich. it was exactly the same sandwich. it had the same amount of pepper on it. the second time, a slice of ham was added. during these periods, the movies remained on pause. waiting.

i made a coffee once and re-read chantal mouffe for a bit with the pencil i had lost the first time round. reading without carefully applying asterisks in the margins has become unthinkable. rationalist-universalist or contextualist? mouffe wonders, and so do i. then i realised that i have work to do. real work, almost, maybe. for nyx and reallyopenuniversity, if i'm lucky and get myself thinking for more than a short selection of minutes. to this end, i made a to do list, which included 'do's' geared up to some job-related endeavours. i won't mention them for fear that you'll get them first.

then i split the to do lists in to different lists - one's related to writing, one's related to other stuff. then i highlighted some entries in red to garnish them with importance even though i selected them for this treatment randomly. the next step, if i were to be sensible, would be to further organise the to do lists.

to do:

further organise the to do lists under the following newly established categories...

-writings

-readings

-jobs

-moneys

-houses

-others

i then continued the movie at hand.

i have documented this, and have achieved a post for my blog. now i am productive.

On this day

2010-12-15T10:19:00.000-08:00

New unemployment figures come out - at 7.9% it shows an increase by 35,000 in the 3 months leading up to October. No panic, says the government, its cool because starting next year they'll start stopping people's benefits if you don't 'take part', as employment minister Chris Grayling puts it, and get a job. And, pray, where are these jobs?

Oh yes, the private sector!

Oh come ye brethren into the ether of employment incorporated.

The hope that the private sector will one day pick up the stragglers, which they only will if they have confidence that the economy. Is a continuing and growing private investment in individuals really what we want? And if so, what kind of jobs are likely to be available from companies which are continually downsizing? In a letter in the Telegraph, 18th Oct 2010, signed by an absolute army of company executives, promises were made that “the private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector.” To name a few of these CEO signatory's companies and their respective recent layoffs we have...

BT (35,000 cut since 2008)

Boots (900 over the next 3 years)

Marks&Spencer (1,000 in Jan2009)

Carphone Warehourse (450 in 2009)

GlaxoSmithKline (4,000 in Jan2010)

Arup (20% of workforce over the past year, more to come)

Kingfisher, owner of B&Q, (3,000 since 2008, another 1,000 to come)

Whitbread, owner of Premier Inn and Costa Coffee, amongst others (600 in the past year - but not Lenny Henry, curiously enough)

Yell (1,300 since 2008)

Stats taken from CorporateWatch.org - read more here

Meanwhile, clashes in Greece. Former conservative minister Kostis Hatzidakis took a beating and much fire spread was sparked around Athens. Measures have been taken to protect businesses, at the peril of the workers, who say -

"We need to send the government a message that we will not accept measures that lead us only to poverty and unemployment," Ilias Iliopoulos, general secretary at the civil servants' union Adedy.

Curiously, overlooking views of tear gas and molotov cocktails, the chap reporting from the incident itself for BBC news stressed the anger of the Greek citizens, not the 'violent minority' who are responsible for violence in this country. Why do we have 'irresponsible violent minorities' who 'ruin peaceful protests', while the Greeks' have concerns about reforms when their anger spills into violence? Anyway, as self-appointed spokesperson for the concerned British, I extend the hand of support and solidarity to all our Greek friends in their time of struggle.

Elsewhere, I didn't do much at all.

Letter from Joan Ruddock, Lewisham MP

2010-12-15T03:54:00.000-08:00

Thank you for your email. I was very sorry to learn of the scenes at the Council meeting. I was in parliament that evening, as usual, so I have no direct experience of what happened.

The Mayor has issued a statement which indicates that some people had planned – through social media – to use violent tactics to prevent the meeting taking place. As people were encouraged to ‘bring paint, flour and shoes to throw from the public gallery’ the Council had no option but to ask the police to maintain order.

As one of the leaders of the 1980s anti nuclear weapons movement I am a strong supporter of people’s right to demonstrate – but it must always be non-violent. People who set out to cause violence must take responsibility for it.

I am absolutely appalled at the Coalition’s cuts – both those already made and those that are planned. I make every attempt to speak out against them in parliament. I will also make my views known about how I think the cuts should be made locally (I have supported the Save the Libraries campaign).

The enemy is the Coalition not Labour – people should be venting their anger on Tories and Lib Dems not Labour politicians. Coalition plans will transfer resources to the rich – Lewisham is the 39^th most deprived borough in England. The Prime Minister’s Council West Oxfordshire is in the top 5 least deprived. London Borough of Lewisham is expecting to lose around £70million of its funding while West Oxfordshire is expecting an increase. However, there is no option for the Council of not making cuts. They have a legal duty not to spend outside their budget.

Those who condemn Labour politicians are doing exactly what the Coalition wants. The burden of decision-making is being shifted from central to local government.

With regard to higher education funding. I am shocked that the Coalition should be proposing 80% cuts to university funding and putting the burden of making up the shortfall onto students.

I know that many students from higher education institutes across London live in my constituency and I also have Goldsmiths College and part of the Trinity Laban estate in Lewisham Deptford. I am in constant contact with the institutions and students and their representatives. You may like to see the contribution I made to the debate on the 30th of November http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm101130/debtext/101130-0004.htm#10113070000100.

I couldn’t get called to make another speech and Vince Cable wouldn’t take many interventions. However I voted against the government’s proposals and will continue to oppose.

Yours sincerely

Rt Hon Joan Ruddock MP

A couple of fine things to note - UfSO / brutalpoliceblog

2010-12-11T06:39:00.000-08:00

The recent work of the University for Strategic Optimism included ....

...following an encouraging talk by the university on what they are all about. This was at the Anthropology teach-in last monday at Goldsmiths University and was pretty productive, not least in getting more involved in the UfSO. Watch the mini-lectures here, or on Yootooob

Following that they embarked on a course of optimism par excellence, inviting the public to join in the protest on thursday, with roses and hearts and other such nice things. Video here.

But the one that impressed me most was the action on the day itself, the 9th of December, by all those who protested, I might add. We all know the bill passed but it isn't about that; the coalition have been shaken, and will continue to be shaken as the students and the unions unite, and those not represented by unions too. In short, everyone who is being effected, and its a fair chunk of the populace. On this day, the Uni was holding a conference on violence on the front line, where they conversed with public and police alike, attempting to fuse the respective discourses so often at odds with one another. Alas, the police don't contribute too much, preferring to stick with the more hands-on approach - maybe this is wise, for who knows what could happen if they started to speak? Gotta remain responsible, these boys and girls in blue, and yellow. Stick with brute unthoughtout force, it's not like they could ever be made accountable for that. I'm rambling. Watch the video, and note the cheeky dubstep.

http://universityforstrategicoptimism.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/ufso-first-conference-on-violence-9-10-12/

Nina Power's illuminating blog led me to another illuminating blog, which follows nicely from the UfSO's most recent post. It is http://www.brutalpoliceblog.com/ and it compiles thoughts and documentation on the behaviour of the police not only at the student protests in London recently, where Alfie Meadows' encounter with a truncheon left him needing brain surgery, but at the TopShop protest, Dublin protest, way back to the Ian Tomlinson incident. The videos are downright shocking and deserve a good peruse.

"Why, 'scuse me officer, could you point me to the nearest post office?"

Thoughts on Neoliberalism, and the Wisdom of Whitehall

2010-12-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

'Our technocists and technocrats have their hearts in the right place, even if it is what they have in their minds which is given priority' Henri Lefebvre, Notes on the New Town.

In Notes on the New Town Lefebvre explains how a new boredom has arisen in the social communities he sees. Not the boredom of yesterday that had 'something soft and cosy about it', but 'the pure essence of boredom.' The concern of Lefebvre, his associates and followers, including the Situationists, went beyond simply being bored, for they were analysing and documenting what they saw as modernity imprinting itself on social products, its own fears replacing history itself. The products of capitalism were obscuring the harsh realities of capitalism. These concerns have not diminished, but a new key word has replaced that of capitalism — neoliberalism — as the ideological force responsible for exploiting to their full effect what many see as the problems inherent in capitalism. In Britain we have a prominent culture of educated fellows learning about how the world works, we have a system which allows the free dissemination of knowledge and ideas (the internet), we have a politicised intelligent youth and a coalition government who are attempting to reason with them, and push through their measures of fairness and progress. Why don't the people buy it? Do the politicians themselves buy it? Why do we continue to characterise politicians as sinister fiends who care for power and power alone?

Cameron and Clegg

The above Lefebvre quote resonates in world in which the responsible collectives which run the show—the economic gurus, the banker-gamblers, the politicians—come across as so reasonable. You may laugh but it's true! They speak with such conviction and look you right in the eye on Question Time; they explain their questionable use of MP's expenses and why they voted for the war in Iraq; they explain why they should be given, or should be giving, huge bonuses. And in response we say they are liars or stupid or power hungry. In short, we simplify their behaviour in the act of castigating them, by goading and teasing them in the press, by occasionally dismissing them. But they are not stupid, or evil, or completely self serving, or only concerned with the defence of power. So we are asking the wrong questions, and we are letting them off the proverbial hook.

Politicians are responsible, and as such they forget their hearts and follow their minds. Minds are accountable in a different way than hearts, they are said to abide by logic and reason, and thus are dependable. They work within models, they refer to statistics. In 1981, Northern Irish prisoners followed their hearts, Thatcher, her head. According to Lefebvre, it is the bourgeoisie's use of analysis and analytic reasoning which allows for a dismantling of things previously united — nature and man, being and thought, etc. We can see this dissemination in the way the market works — exploiting gaps, creating middle men. But simultaneously everything is unifying — relationships have become money relationships, everyday life is reduced to its functions, capitalism subsumes everything, power spreads and unifies. And all this occurs under various ideological motifs and gestures, deployed in accordance with what is considered to be the common good. Could this be the technological essence of being that Heidegger warned of? A type of being characterised by standing-reserve, by optimisation and calculus? Heidegger's mind led him to these complex ideas, did his heart lead him to Nazism? Anyway, we follow our minds, and remain responsible, accountable to the right persons, and thus, when considering politicians, it fails to matter whether they have their hearts in the right place, for all that matters is their actions, and the results of those actions. We can condemn them justly, for they followed their minds and look what happened.

But should our hearts be so disregarded? Policy makers have come to a point where everything is decided on the basis of its economic merit. The education system is the most recent example. The government has become, collectively, one mind disregarding its heart. For arts and humanities can be justifiably undermined for their supposed lack of economic contribution (a point contestable in itself). They come to this conclusion using all their inherited logic and reason, handed down to them as they climb the political ladders of Whitehall. It is this handing down which contributes to the method of reasoning that they endorse, this type of reasoning which first surfaced during their school years. Models are applied to society, predictions are made, rational argument decides the outcome. (It is ironic that the government are undertaking such extreme political economic measures while they bring out this happiness index, which works on the premise that GDP is not the be all end all of a society's quality of life.)

Economics is a projection, it deals with the future. Yet the unsustainablilty of the capitalist drive always leads the way. Our responsibility for future generations has become a much used catchphrase, excusing austerity and bolstering public image of reckless companies. Moreover society exists in the present and the people who inhabit that present are as relevant as the ones who will come to inhabit it. For all those whom have gone before us, and all those to come, we will readily accept the importance of the output of the arts and humanities. We figure the past, and note the great works of art and literature. We build upon the ideas that they had; we learn about them from their artifacts. And to the future, which remains perpetually abstract and yet we continue to manoeuvre so as to create it in its perfected utopian state, quality of life remains a key phrase, characterised by flourishing arts and humanities, enlightenment and other such silly hopes. So, is it for us, those feckless occupiers of the insignificant present who have to forfeit this privilege? For the good of the future, the agents of the present must be sacrificial? Need one mention the chances we can expect for a resurgence of the damaged arts and humanities for this imagined future?

But it is not, in reality, that we do not care for those in the present. We are just selective. We project great things for the future; we build it in all its glory, but we must, for us, forget about what will make it glorious. In the meantime, we must work. We must work for those whom we have selected for care — those in positions of power. For this is what filters down through the discourses of time to meet us now in the logical, reasonable minds of those who represent us. It is a pattern far too rigid to be undermined, says the voice in the head. Far too complicated — only chaos would remain if these delicate structures were left un-oiled. The Platonic hypothesis that wisdom and reason should rule, with these abilities beholden by definition by those who are in power who decide what it is to be wise and reasonable, simultaneously excludes the masses who are not only ignorant, in Plato's sense, but ignorant by definition, as those without power and the ability to define ignorance. So he who wields the budget, in that battered old red suitcase, goes forth toward the public, a barrier separating them, and announces his plans without a qualm, for reason has informed them and no one can question that.

At a time when certain educational paths are being discouraged, certain social divisions being widened, and when cross-party political consensus is rife, should we not be turning the tables? Questioning the education of the politicians? Naturally, everyone knows that a disproportionate amount of cabinet members were privately educated and went to Oxford or Cambridge, but we usually highlight this when talking about class and opportunity. What about the type of education they are receiving, the nature of the degrees politicians have done, the messages, the ideology, the logic, the reason? Is it constitutive to a broad reasoned debate of the type we hope to find in Parliament? Is it constitutive to the sort of agonist pluralist democracy that political thinkers such as Chantal Mouffe endorse? Maybe the positive discrimination which is always rearing its questionable head to get ethnic minorities and women into politics should instead be used to include people from a variety of educational backgrounds.

Recently, as they were handed half, or a third, of the blazing torch of power, the Liberal Democrats have unfortunately been unmasked as the neoLiberal Democrats and are, as such, perfectly at home in this coalition. For it is the principles which encourage the bloating of the private sector and the treatment of individuals as firms, ready to be invested in which are thriving now. We should not be surprised, if we follow Foucault's genealogy of Liberalism to its opportunistic roots embedded in Political Economy, as opposed to the much nicer idea of universal human rights and the like. Moreover, as Mouffe has shown, following various thinkers, liberal democracy is a paradox, if one considers them in their respective popular logics. And so is the Liberal Democrats, too, a paradox, for they tell us all the time — they're in power, yet they're not in power; they are progressive and fair, yet the policies they endorse say otherwise; they disagree with the rise in fees, so they abstain because they know it will pass anyway. The newly politicised youth will learn, with a fine example, the woes of neoliberalism, and maybe that is what the government is trying to curb, by attacking the humanities, for it is here where critique happens, and critique is a dangerous thing.

More like Simon Poohes

2010-12-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

A moment of (pointless) direct action.

Dear Mr. Hughes,

As a student from Goldsmiths College you are my most local Liberal Democrat MP. I, along with all those my age who I know - mostly students - voted for the Liberal Democrats in the previous election. Most of those had been voting Liberal Democrat since they were eligible to vote. It was not merely the pledge to refuse to accept rising tuition fees (which, as we now know, was a farce) or the promise of new, more trustworthy era of politics (again, another farce) which secured the vote of the younger generation for the Lib Dems. It was the growing number of people in this country who believe in equality, fairness and progress - all those things churned out with the liberal rhetoric now shown to be hollow - that secured the limited but important slice of power that your party now hold. These people still hold these convictions but are now understandably disillusioned. I now know of no one who will vote Liberal Democrats either in my generation, where they all previously did, or older generations, which didn't vote Lib Dem anyway.

If nothing else, however, the actions of your party have politicised a generation at an unprecedented level - firstly with the televised debates and the subsequent frenzy, and then with the u-turns and Tory policies which now lurk in your shadows. This politicised generation, for good or bad, will send the Lib Dems to their grave, both for their failure to hold true to the liberal ideology which encouraged such support, and their lack of political conviction. This has been brought to the fore in the wake of the abstaining voters. Surely there is no place in politics for those who can't make up their mind? Not that that's the case, for we all know that abstaining is a purely tactical move designed to maintain a fragile coalition. This has to be condemned (no pun intended) as spineless. Opposition to a proposal should be expressed in a way which actually opposes it, not actively allows it to pass. In your Evening Standard article today you claim to have opposed the measures, by abstaining as agreed, yet you also seem to think Vince Cable's education package is pretty great. The other oversight in this article I will point out is your assertion that 'the next six months will be easier'. I can't see this being the case.

Yours Sincerely,

F.I.P

for Simon Hughes' apologetic, read http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23905910-simon-hughes-why-i-abstained-in-tuition-fees-vote.do

What Big Teeth You Have - the myth of apolitical youth; the myth of the post-ideological age

2010-12-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

There's a big presence of a kind of cynical 'what do you expect of politicians?' that seems to run through the blood of a chunk of British public. They have seen people dismayed with the actions of their politicians, they have seen people fight back, and they have seen not a difference ever made. But positive change, like negative change, is a subtle affair. Who knows what the world would be like had no one protested Vietnam, or even the Iraq War - I choose examples here where the protest itself did not stop the thing happening at all, where protest could be said to have been a waste of time by the cynics - and environmental protests which, as of the time of writing, have not yet saved the world. The importance of people expressing themselves in these ways can not be underestimated, and those who attempt to curtail it need a serious telling off (ahem, kettling). This is not to mention the efforts of the suffragettes, and so forth, whom's efforts directly effected policy. We should question the way the protest as a 'right' is defended and encouraged by those in power, and contextualise this with their response when it gets out of hand. What is at stake for power and thus the efficacy of the protest in these respective moments?

The voice of many an angry folk is used when the people get the sense that they are not being represented, and this is why they are angry. They are angry not only at the politicians, but the union-based puppet-show which casually represents their respective groups - for the students, the NUS are like a group of self-satisfied elders, making assumptions as to what their village-folk actually want, against the blatant disapproval of said folk. The NUS become effectively a political group concerned with mediation, with all the inconsistencies and spin of the mainstream media.

I often hear a criticism levelled at 'today's youth', that they're apolitical, self- centred, they all want to be celebrities. So on and so forth. So when 130,000 of them, and people who are not 'the youth', it must be said, march against rising university fees and cuts to education and beyond, are they said to be not apolitical? Not quite - they are now 'naive', ('what do you expect of politicians,' again) naive to the political real. 'We've done it all before', says the lady from the Times, 'but then at least we were fighting for something.' The something in question being the Vietnam War. Apologies for not being born at the time, but governments don't only wage unjust wars against other countries, they target their own citizens (thank god we don't have oil or we'd really be in the shit.) If not naive, the 'students' who, according to much of the media are the sole perpetrators in the protest movements we currently are seeing, are only concerned about how much spare change they have to spend in the SU bar. Because that's what students do - get bloody drunk.

Of course, the students now will not be paying the new fee rise, for they are already in university paying a smaller, but still outrageous, fee which is binding. Why could they be marching then? They're OK, surely, with only 18,000 debt? Maybe it is the fact that they are struggling to find work, and have noticed from time to time a large Osborne swipe of the axe at various jobs in their local communities. Maybe they, since leaving university with whatever degree, have been dependent on their parents, or benefits, as they struggle to find a footing in the job market which offers them endless internships and so-called experience which is apparently great for your CV. Maybe, finally, they are not so self-centred and they are out in the freezing cold marching due to some principle they've conjured up, that education should be a right; that an educated society is a privileged society; and the whole range of interests and university programmes should be treated as having the same merit, validity, social relevance, etc. (I'm referring to the targeting of the arts and humanities here).

Education should, thus, be distinct from training, which is what it's fast becoming (become?), for there is merit in pursuing one's interests, and their should be, and is, a place in society for all of those respective interests to have total relevance. Education should not be changeable on the whims of the markets, wherein economic factors alone decide what courses are viable; where a workforce is created in an academic institution tailor made for the narrow consensus which informs the free-market ideal, and the companies who abide by this idea. What would happen to the opinion? Education is rewarding and influential. One of the benefits, no necessities, of it is that it provides a massive group in society with the experiences and apparatus to think for themselves about a whole wealth of issues, and the fact that some come out with marketing degrees and some come out with philosophy degrees is a good thing, for it allows difference of opinion, and that is vital in a productive society, and moreover is vital especially for a society which hopes to one day be 'fair', with all the little things that can be included under that big word.

In terms of the post-ideological, listen to this gent from the coalition of resistance, from John Hutnyk's fine blog..

http://hutnyk.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/the-future-is-going-to-come-true-buy-this-bloke-a-beer-said-my-friend-vij-future-presidential-candidate-for-the-united-socialist-federation-of-europe-i-reckon/

hear hear.

(more theory next time)

and then, right before my eyes, he exploded into a thousand pieces of glass.

2010-12-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

The following occured during the summer, when I was still waiting to embark on the MA I have now started. It looks ahead to a time which I have finally reached, from where, in turn, I now look back to what I was once expecting. I put it up now partly because I havn't been bothered to do so thus far, and because I now have a slightly clearer idea about what cultural studies is. And that question, dear reader, is of troubling concern to this me of yesterday. Not that it matters, i now realise, for half the time my associates concern themselves with discussing what cultural studies is and is going to be. No one really knows, you see.

I am soon going to London to study. This summer is mostly spent in the westcounty, somewhere between a state of preperation and anxious academic malnutrition. A heavy dose of procrastinaiton accompanies me, even though I have nothing to do. I was asked by the man, as he peeked up at me from his position on the floor, So why are you going to london?

To do a Masters.

Oh right, he said. Is that in a subject?

It is - Cultural Studies.

'Oh right. And eh. So eh, what does that involve?' He was protecting his eyes from falling dust. His rounded glasses were on the floor beside him. He had blue overalls, and a head shaped like the Isle of Wight.

It was a question frequently asked of me by people enquiring about the future. They would invariably not actually care, but still felt obliged to be clear on the matter. An ambiguity shrouded the name, Cultural Studies. Understandably so, I guess, for what is culture? Only, like, everything.

So I said: well, things like the philosophy of art, political theory, literary theory, media studies -

'Oh yeah,' he said wiping his brow. 'My sister's in media. She's a caterer, works on set. Does walk on parts from time to time, yeah. Not easy getting into media. She was lucky, met a weatherman, bought a dog off him. Though, a Masters has got to help ey.'

'Yeah, well, I mean, it's not media per se. It would be more . . . studying the media from the peripheries, and -'

'Lots of opportunities as a weatherman. Or woman, I might add. High turnover, you see. The only keepers are the ones with the right names, you know? Like Jon Snow, David Frost, and there's eh, Dan Snow. Yep, they've been reporting the weather for years, for years.'

He continued: ' . . . but not many stay on, 'specially with regular names. There was that one, that woman, a real looker she was. Sarah, eh. Sarah something. You know the one?'

Alas I didn't.

'Where is she now?' he mused. 'See, they dont hang about for long. They get into the meteorological department, away from the public. The public hates them, you see, always have done. The British and the weather. There's some magical connection, there is. The English await the weather like the lonely old woman awaiting her visiting grandchildren.' He sat up, as if suddenly happening upon something unmissable in the corner of his mind. 'And the weather report is like a card, or phonecall saying - "we're on our way". Nothing worse than the wrath of disappointed grandparents, we all know it. So the weathermen are the bringers of good, but misleading, news, Cos they're always wrong, right? The grandchildren always have better plans.'

'How's it coming on?' I asked. He stood up and looked at me. He held a blackened tissue.

'See, not many people know it,' he said, 'but the first day of summer, traditionally the 3rd wednesday of May, is national "taunt the weatherman" day. It came about because news anchors were getting bitter about the attention the weatherman was getting, back in the sixties, this was. So they started changing the script, or putting up messages on the screen behind them. You could get away with anything on TV then. Yeah, they'd have a report of a fine day ahead, a fine day, and you'd have sun plastered all over the country, with bits of blue tak. But he'd be saying, "so get out yer raincoats, if your heading out today, because this weather is set to stay." The chap on the newsdeck would be creasing up. These days, on the third wednesday of May, they do things like that. April fools for weathermen, and women, I might add. Well, won't be long now mate. Just got to check the eh -

'But now,' he said turning back to me, 'It's a bit sinister. If you're a weatherman you better get used to abuse on the streets, that's right, on the streets. "You said it would be sunny," they screech. "My washing's on the line!" Oh dear. They throw fruit, they throw pasties. Depends where you are - what shops are nearby I suppose. I think I'd throw a spanner. Although that might hurt. No, I have no issue with the weatherman. So, do you come at it from the media, or the meteorological, angle then, you prospective weathermen?'

'Well I don't want to be a weatherman, I'm studying Cultural Studies.

'Right, well we're almost done here. You're semi-converter plasma conducter was shot, so I replaced that. And the old jig ramp could do with a greasy make-over. But that's your perogative, son. Last thing I want to do is sell you a greasy make-over - '

I nodded.

' - but in all honesty, without a make-over your ramp will fail and your jig flap could fall off on the way home.'

'OK, well. Do what you need to do.'

He shuffled off, continued in silence. No more did we speak. I looked down the road, pretending something interesting was down there. Tomorrow, I'll have the same thing with the boiler man.

Day X and the University for Srategic Optimism

2010-11-25T04:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, November 24th, thousands of students, teachers, academics and generally disillusioned persons - totally maybe 130,000 nationwide, according to a Guardian estimate - staged a walk-out from their places of schooling and places of work and spent hours upon hours adding their opinion in this education cuts / general cuts debate. The fact that it has come to this, where the anger has grown to an extent that the media latch on to pinpointed moments of aggression and exploit it in an attempt to undermine 'students' (the Daily Mail's curious attack on female students is the most perplexing spin I have yet to see), only makes apparent the hopeless process of debate through which fair decisions are supposed to be made.

". . . the way thatmore heads and hearts will be won in this country is by reasoned argument." says Michael Gove. But alas, that approach doesn't actually have much effect does it now. One may note the current lack of agreement in the LibDem corner of the coalition on these issues, and the shouting down of MPs who appear to have a view which runs contrary to the consensus.

Thus,

Millbank - 10th November

and,

Whitehall - 24th November

On this day, during the march police used their notorious kettling techniques to box in thousands of protesters until well into the evening, effectively removing their right to protest. But the story continued nonetheless . . .

As fifty or so policement made a bright yellow line at the Trafalgar end of Whitehall, pushing around young girls who are trying to get out the way and not allowing any access to the pub there, seemingly preparing a full-speed-ahead charge at the marauding (or subdued, freezing, boxed-in) protesters.

But they were out-flanked by an extremely well co-ordinated march heading west at pace. Chaos in the square ensued as excitement grew, amplified by a few dozen fiends on mopeds donning Guy Fawkes masks. The rapidity of this march, the elusiveness of their stategy forbade the police from getting a grasp on the situation, and, as far as I know, it came to a head next to Charing Cross station, with a tiny kettle - an evening tea-for-one, almost - and many a "LET THEM OUT" and "SHAME ON YOU" being directed at police from bystanders.

------------

Elsewhere, a few hours earlier, and with extremely good behaviour, the University for Strategic Optimism held their inaugural lecture in a LloydsTSB near Tower Bridge. Thirty-ish individuals joined the few customers already in the bank and witnessed the esteemed Dr. Etienne Lantier give the course outline for Higher Education, Neo-liberalism and the State. Only the bank manager didn't like it - too challenged by the set reading, one might assume. Within 7 minutes they were gone, off towards the growing tensions in central London.

The video is heeeeere! as is lecture notes and future plans and a healthy buzz.

http://universityforstrategicoptimism.wordpress.com/

And keep out a curious eye for future lectures in locations yet to be disclosed.

do grills dream of electric toasters?

2010-08-06T16:01:00.000-07:00

i recently tried to put music on here. suffice to say that that that that didn't work.

am i strolling a little too close to the the sandy shore of jounalville?

each time i restart the play i give up for i deem the play rubbish. why is that? am i apathetic towards it? have i lost my ability to write? (did it ever exist?) is the concept too vague, leaving me little to latch on to, like a paperclip used to spread butter on a slice of bread on a warm day? my inability to write at the moment concerns me. it makes me question my future; my rather presumptuous and totally undefined future, somewhere within the vast spreading and diluting world of writingness. its not just the quality, but the ability to produce. just anything. the grasp of inertia doth indeed have some sway over me. lord, doesn't it take a while to get going.

i was standing on some uneven rocks on the sea front. i wanted a place to sit and write, to mull over this ever deepening problem. two potentialities arose - sit upon the rocky ledge of despair, against the wall. Or aim for the ledge edge, as it were; legs a-dangling, nothing but sea for many a mile. by the time these options made themselves apparent, however, they had presented their inadequacies. the rocky ground was far too bumpy to ever be comfortable, and, legs a-dangling, in this wind, i would risk a dangerous danger - i would be ill advise to jump in after the inevitably wind-swept notebook, which i would soon lose beneath the waves. what i wanted was a quieter spot than i had found all day, let me escape this day wherein the summer beach goers alone had descended upon the town. i saw ice creams, sea gulls, scooters, dogs and leads. an indiscernible babble, the summer soundtrack. i needed to get away from this world i seem to find so uninspiring, where my writing remains so stale. here i was, stood against a wall on a bumpy rocky sea front ledge thing, failing to do this.

i was just about to go when two boys arrived. now i couldn't go, for it would seem like i couldn't stand them, or they intimidated me, or some such reason. i now had to stay for a short while. they peered off the ledge down towards the sea. down there was another ledge, over which the tide was just about pushing the waves. a subdued wave would curiously venture onto the concrete ledge, half-heartedly spread over it, like an upper-class woman in a dressing gown mounting a leather sofa in a provocative way to impress an indifferent dinner guest; before trickling into the sea. this ledge ran all the round the sea wall to the beach. i think i knew what was going on - these intrepid explorers, kid A and kid B, were going to scale this ledge, challenge the threatening rising tides, and make it round to the other side; to victory on the beach.

'the water's a bit high,' said the taller kid.

'how are we gonna get round?' said the shorter kid.

'we can't, that's how.'

that's how?

tears at the party

2010-07-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

A quick scan of the party assured me that I knew absolutely no one, except, of course, the lovely Amy Knight, everybody's friend, our honourable hostess. But this was little consolation, for Amy Knight was certain to be preoccupied for the duration, taking up her rightful position of centre of attention.

I, on the other hand, had resigned to a familier role; the detached mass of inconsequentiality to be found lingering in a corner, in an inpenetrable circle reaching a metre in all directions. But, experienced as I have become in this regard, the role greeted me with a strange comfort. With a beer in my hand, my reliable friend, I gauged how long it would be before I could realistically leave.

But I was not alone, as I had thought. There were two of us. Another member of my species hoverred above the buffet, unreacheable to all apart from one reliable friend, a can of beer. As the party continued, Amy Knight at its epicentre, we two stood alone, clinging to separate corners of the room, listening to the music.

As he prodded a pork pie, the Sinead O'Connor version of the song Nothing Compares 2 U came on the stereo. The man's head rose slightly in appreciation, as if acknowledging the god of music, and standing there by the buffet, he hesitated to eat his pork pie, and simply closed his eyes.

He was a squashed accordian of a man, a stomach disproportional to his height, and I struggled between states of bewilderment, awkwardness and sheer laughter as he stood there, eyes closed, head raised, holding a pork pie out in front of him. After a short while, before the song had finished, he roused himself from this trance and approached the dizzy circle of friends as they attentively listened to the humorous tales of Amy Knight.

'—and the irony was that he was a doctor too! ' she exclaimed, and roared with laughter. The ensemble around her roared in equal measure, and showed no signs of stopping. In the chaos of uncontrollable laughter, a gap in the circle provided a way in and was casually occupied by the approaching man.

'Nothing compares to you,' he said matter-of-factly towards Amy Knight, in a northern accent which I was too ignorant to place. The laughter was cut, and promptly spluttered out.

'Oh, erm, this is Lenny Carmichael,' said Amy Knight, attempting to regain her composure.

'Call me Darwin,' replied Lenny Carmichael, addressing the perplexed audience.

'Oh, yes, ...Darwin,' said Amy Knight. And then with some effort, 'Darwin is from the office.'

Darwin seemed to enjoy the attention, but unbeknownst to him a serious lull had replaced the jovial atmosphere. An awkward silence of inconceivable magnitude ensued, and Sinead O'Connor shone though with newfound clarity, crooning to her incomparable Other. A cross-fire of glances darted across the circle as Darwin stood there rocking on his heels.

With professional aptitude, Amy Knight flung into action, hoping to reclaim the party and get it under control. The reactions of the onlookers seemed to encourage this.

'So the doctor—'

'Those tears,' Darwin intercepted. He was not done yet.

'Those tears?' inquired one of the women, unaware of what she could be getting herself into.

'Those tears were real,' Darwin said.

'Sinead O'Connor's tears?' asked another woman.

'Oh yes,' he said, closing his eyes and biting his lip. 'Those tears were real.'

Another set of glances were exchanged, and Amy Knight's attempt had failed. From the comfort of my refuge I saw Darwin socially free-falling. I had a desire to run away on his behalf.

But Amy Knight was right on the button, soaring back into action from what looked to be a sorry defeat.

'The doctor had no idea, so...'

And she continued as the circle closed and slowly pushed Darwin out. He calmly pivoted on the spot, and headed back to the buffet, his beer firmly in his grasp.

You and me, we're the same, I said to Darwin Carmichael in silence, except that I am aware of the condition. We are the party no-hopers, forever cast to the sidelines, unable to penetrate the collective. Our purpose, to set the bench mark for the in-crowd, to remind them of their luxuries. I could have been the man attempting to integrate as Darwin had done, I realised with a shudder. I made a mental note to never utter a word to a person at a party.

And I knew, somewhere in the vast world of music television, Sinead O'Connor was weeping for the both of us.