treats of the eye

brilliant interview with gil scott heron as he defends himself against a hardboiled power suit inquisition:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=925627437

eloquent smackheads in swansea have a 'dig' in close up

Andre tarkovsky's masterpiece starring the singer from these new puritans

Straight Outta Pecknarm

At a party some time last year, M. and I met a policeman working in Peckham. I said that when I’d first moved there from East London I’d bought an album by a local rapper because I’d heard it was good, and I was curious about musicians in the area. Lyrics were along the lines of “if you’ve been in a gun battle in Peckham, you know me.” (I haven’t, as it goes…). The policeman said “Ah, you mean Giggs.” Giggs is well known to the local force – although this particular member of British law enforcement seemed more keen to see him succeed than some representatives of Operation Trident (according to this article, anyway), as it would mean his not having to fall back on other “businesses” (quote from this Paul Morley interview). The picture the policeman painted was of detectives spending a lot of time on YouTube watching clips of local rappers to glean names, faces, details of incidents, in a bid to build up knowledge of the area’s gang members. (SN1, the name of Gigg’s shop, is also known to be a clique of local gang The Peckham Boys.)

I like about half of ‘Walk in Da Park’, beats-wise and for Giggs himself. Giggs is not a rapper you admire for his acrobatics – he’s a ‘grain’ or ‘presence’ rapper, one you love for the sound of their voice more than for their speed and rhyming dexterity. I’m not sure in what way he could be seen to be “fighting free of clichés” while at the same time “thickly eulogising vengeance and violence”, though, unless it’s just through the very fact of him having a voice at all, or being charismatic and articulate. Which clichés are we talking about, exactly? Judging by an episode of Silent Witness I watched recently (a repeat I think), the white, middle-class Other can countenance a black yooth from a 'bad area' being self-aware and blessed with wisdom beyond his years, as long as the character explains that gang violence is caused by rappers and computer games.

What is certainly interesting is that, despite the apparent obstacles, Giggs has got this far without tempering the music or his ‘real’, which is (and also addresses) the intertwining of “thug” fantasies (capitalist fantasies in the raw) with social and specific local concerns. So it seems strange, then, to worry about Giggs “dissolving into posture” when a lot of ‘Walk in Da Park’ is simultaneously about a posture that needs to be maintained, and a posture being maintained. Concerning Giggs’s further success, the question – which is hardly unique to him – is more: will he have to adopt new postures and, if so, will it be possible for him, for others, to reconcile them with the earlier ones?

"And always I am hungry..voraciously hungry."

Watch Henry Miller conduct a tour of his bathroom.



"Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible. In an intelligently ordered world there would be no need to make the unreasonable attempt of putting such miraculous happenings down. Indeed, it would make no sense, for if men only stopped to realize it, who would be content with the counterfeit when the real is at everyone's beck and call? Who would want to switch in and listen to Beethoven, for example, when he might himself experience the ecstatic harmonies which Beethoven so desperately strove to register? A great work of art, if it accomplishes anything, serves to remind us, or let us say to set us dreaming, of all that is fluid and intangible. Which is to say, the universe."
Henry Miller, Sexus

Sunshine Cheesy Cybernetics

So while the Brit Awards Brit Award for Best Brit Award was being presented last night, the band said “down with that sort of thing” and went on an outing to see Steve Reich’s ‘Drumming’ performed at the South Bank Centre. Swimming somewhere around my consciousness are some received ideas that Reich gets dissed in certain circles – quite possibly by some Classic FM-y types who might talk about melodic naivety (more below on that) or the lack of ‘emotional depth’ - ‘Classical music’ being freighted with Romantic notions of how music ‘expresses’ something, or that music be ‘representative’ as Tom put it, whereas ‘Drumming’ expresses things through being what it is rather than something else. But I guess he might not be thought of favourably elsewhere for things like the following (said last night during the after-performance discussion): “For some people percussion was a way into electronic music, but I thought ‘what if percussion is a way out of electronic music?’.” Another objection is further down in this post, from Professor Eno.

The what it is of ‘Drumming’ is, firstly, an exploration of timbre, acoustics and phasing. One interesting feature of the performance mentioned in the talk last night was that the players are not only encouraged to listen to the magic effects, the ‘ghost’ sounds that can reach a pulsing intensity, but also to use only what they hear (particularly in the case of the singers), amplifying what’s already, accidentally, there.

It’s also definitely a visual experience, one that lives through being performed. I thought back to the Brian Eno ‘Arena’ documentary, with its talk of cybernetics and feedback (also, hadn’t realised Cornelius Cardew was in Reich’s band)… and I found Eno here knocking ‘Drumming’: “He uses orchestral drums stiffly played and badly recorded. He’s learnt nothing from the history of recorded music. Why not look at what the pop world is doing with recording, which is making incredible sounds with great musicians who really feel what they play.” Last night both confirmed and dispelled that opinion; it was clear that these musicians were ‘really feeling’ what they played, and that feedback was essential to the unfolding of the music (as per ‘listening to the magic effects’ above - band leader Colin Currie confirmed this), with ‘aberrations’, that in some cases might be specific to the room, being emphasised, developed and integrated into the whole; it’s musical evolution, literally. But Reich himself made the point that he’d never really heard ‘Drumming’ the way he heard it last night, with all the musicians being professional percussionists. He admitted to being only a so-so drummer, and the impression he gave was that the same went for others that he played with back then – that might account for the ‘stiffness’. Also, it’s perfectly possible to accept that Reich isn’t any sort of visionary when it comes to possibilities of recorded sound – nothing he said last night indicated that this was his focus (even if the ‘kaleidescopic’ – Currie’s words – musical changes in ‘Drumming’ have a lot in common with dub and techno sound manipulation).

‘Drumming’ also lives through performance because it’s a utopian spectacle – it was remarked upon how each player (all from different walks and stages of life, Currie stressed) developed their own ‘ready stance’ when preparing to start or rejoin the performance, and then subordinated themselves to the larger programme before taking a rest and allowing others to continue the work. Another instruction to the drummers was that they shouldn’t rush and feel obliged to change anything, but if an individual felt the pattern was getting boring and wanted to emphasise something new they should feel free to do so. It’s a process which, for the performers, appeared to be its own reward. And for the audience too, I think. You’re not having your emotions manipulated by the music so much as thinking with and through it.

Also interesting, though, was to see Reich embracing what, for want of a better word, you might describe as the slight cheesiness the actual music (the notes) expresses– I’m paraphrasing here, but it was along the lines of “When I listen, I hear some sheets on a line in the California sun, corny stuff like that. It’s sunshine music.” Simon Reynolds, on the subject of dance music, though, makes the point that for electronic producers, it’s not the notes in a musical figure/riff that count so much as the fact that they are a vehicle for displaying texture, treated sound. For Reich, they’re the vehicle for exploring the acoustic qualities of instruments interacting with each other and the sound of a room. The ‘corny stuff’ is accidental, he seemed to be saying – which does back up Eno in a way when he says that Reich was more interested in process than results. (Where’s the line between Reich and some of Eno’s music in that respect, though – ‘Discreet Music’, say? Just that Eno gets better recorded sound from his processes? The non-musical concepts that feed into Eno’s stuff? That Eno’s music doesn’t have a sunshine cheesy vibe? These are not rhetorical questions, btw…)

Meanwhile, hostess of the after-show discussion Gillian Moore wanted to pin Steve down on a very important matter – just where was the ‘one’? She could well have been on the pipe throughout the show for how lethargic she appeared, but it was fun to envisage an alternate scenario where she pinned him to the wall, screaming “Where’s the ‘one’, Steve? WHERE’S THE FUCKING ‘ONE’!”)

Some additional points/study from Tom:

Steve Reich’s manifesto

The book on African music that was a major influence on Reich:

A comparison between Reich and William Carlos Williams (who Reich got into because of the symmetry of his name apparently).

Williams’s poetry has phasing-esque techniques in it:

“They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her”

And a quote:

"I wanted to compose music that I loved intensely, that was completely personal...but that was arrived at by impersonal means.”

(“completely personal” – so I suppose that could include embracing your sunshine cheesy side rather than dismissing it as an accidental effect?).

Choice in the Workplace

Either say 'yes' to worse redundancy conditions (but better than the statutory miniumum first tabled by the management, thanks to the unions) and therefore accept becoming more expendable, and that you are being made to pay for the parent company having taken out loans to buy your company in the first place and for the need to make it more saleable now they probably don't want it anymore

or

vote to strike and risk the unions being derecognised and the imposition of even worse redundancy conditions. But at least you have a choice!

The Power of Mattel Compels Thee!

Mill Road Methodist Church, Cambridge (nr. James's house)

TV OD

From K-Punk's latest post:

“the kind of "entrepreneurs" that dominate our culture - whether they be Bill Gates, Simon Cowell or Duncan Bannatyne - have not invented new products or forms, they have just invented new ways of making money”

“and for all the bluster about entrepreneurialism, it is remarkable how risk-averse late capitalism's culture is”

And makes particular reference to TV. A few points then:

“Risk averse” – British Capitalism has always been risk averse, in fact this has been one of its defining features from the start. Whereas other countries have traditions of banks having closing ties to industry, and even specific banks for specific industries, our banks’ (and company shareholders’, and all gentleman capitalists’…) fear of long-term commitment, and desire for quick returns without soiling one’s hands in the actual production of something new, is intimately linked to our cultural, social and industrial stagnation. And the City of London was world leader as far as inventing “new ways of making money” goes. The ‘funny’ thing now, though, is how ridiculous the ‘risk averse’ attitude looks now in the light of the economic crisis – the risk was only perceived in terms of long-term investment in the UK but not in, say, the international trading of debt.

As for TV… I have some experience of the world of cable/satellite broadcasting through my day job. TV companies are constantly jittery, fiddling and fussing with schedules to improve the ratings (and therefore retain/increase advertising revenue) while mostly just shifting the same old effluent around the schedules, or exchanging it amongst themselves (“You’ve seen every episode of ‘Friends’ over a hundred times – but have you seen it on our channel?”); re-branding channels without making any significant changes to the actual content, coming up with diminishing-returns format ideas that are always X (a series that rated well) meets Y (another series that rated well) or X with a twist; wasting money and energy in months of work for half-baked celebreality series that might be canned after two episodes if they don’t rate well. Ask people involved what their idea of good TV is, though, the paragon, and they’ll say ‘Mad Men’ or something along those lines. (But they’ll respect the makers of awful programmes that get high ratings). It’s not that they don’t know what good TV is (as opposed to ‘good TV’ –ie populist, gets the ratings), it’s just that “bless them, it’s what the Freeview viewers (or whoever) go for.” And all of this useless activity is largely colluded with by TV journalists and celeb mags.

It’s clear the BBC, or the idea of the BBC, needs to be defended – otherwise we wouldn’t even have BBC4 and the occasional other decent programmes it can produce. But does that mean protecting the license fee in its current form? Part of the BBC’s problem is that it is isolated, a lone public service broadcaster that is perversely expected to compete against the commercial standards of other broadcasters ie get the ratings. So perhaps the idea of opening up the TV tax to other broadcasters is not a bad idea, but this would need to come with a public service remit – and obviously, that would have to be preceded by a very serious conversation about what public service means. But while TV companies are prey to stats and the whims of advertisers, nothing will change and TV will keep spiralling down the plug-hole. (Also antithetical, at least it appears to be at the moment, to TV’s potential social function is non-linear TV: Video On Demand, series linking etc – all the methods for offering customers ‘more choice’ not just about what they watch but when they watch it).

Another model is HBO, which established a direct relationship with its viewers, has demonstrated that people will pay for quality, raised money without advertising, and built up loyalty through not patronising its viewers, Could the two options be used together? Either broadcasters accept a ‘public service’ remit, receive public money and are free to air, or their revenue has to come solely from charging customers directly. For this to work, Sky-type ‘packages’ would need to be prohibited as well as advertising – a customer would have to choose to pay for each channel individually, and the channel would have to be funded solely from that revenue, HBO-style. Those channels would obviously have to charge more than Sky/Virgin etc currently do – and then we might see what people are really prepared to pay for.

And finally…Newswipe. One of the strangest things about the segments of the show where real clips from the news are shown (like Channel 4 News’s mock interrogation of Tony Blair) is the impression that news broadcasters, far from being shamed by the way the fictional new stories on The Day Today were presented, watched them and thought “Brilliant, let’s do that!”

Mad For It

As with Mark Lawson’s baffling conclusion that The Sopranos’ great legacy was linguistic (can’t find the link but it was basically: “more swearing on the box – yay!”), so this verdict on the appeal of Mad Men from a little while back also missed the mark entirely in its Last Man-ish smugness – the very idea that ‘we’, at the end of history, ‘know better’, that what Mad Men details is the work in progress that culminated in our totally liberated selves, divested of all illusions, free of all prejudice*… MM does demonstrates the foundations being laid for the age to come, but in quite a different way - not just the manner in which our desires were being shaped and exploited by capitalism, but the way in which mass media invaded our unconscious.

How much does Peggy look like a marionette here, as though Ann Margaret is performing through her?

Watching Mad Men with M. after The Wire, M didn’t like it at first – her complaint being “you don’t really know anyone.” Of course, you don’t know anyone in The Wire better than you do any of Mad Men’s characters, but the nature of The Wire’s wide-ranging, systemic analysis meant that a certain, rapid thumbnail sketching of character traits was necessary. The ‘self’ – or rather the lack of an authentic self – is Mad Men’s major subject. (Ok, The Wire’s too, in a sense, where individuals believe they’re masters of their own destiny but are prey to a larger force – Capital – working around them, through them). Don Draper’s rather Ripley-like assuming of a new identity, escaping his poor, ‘shameful’ background, has been painted as a metaphor for America, but is obviously also a dramatic representation of the ‘self’ as a construction, and one that we have far less control over than we believe.

Like Ripley, even though Don has accessed the class he aspired to belong to (not exactly through murder… although he does ‘accidentally’ send the ‘real’ Don Draper up in flames after experiencing a moment of humiliation), it hasn’t relieved him of the pressures of being, just given him new ones (like boredom). Nor has it given him as sense of wholeness (how could it?). How many Don Drapers are there? Not just the ‘real’ Don (who died) and the fake ‘Don’ who assumed his identity, but Don the husband, Don the father, Don the ad genius, Don the romantic etc which all co-exist but don’t form a coherent ‘reality’.

Mad Men is Laingian in a way (double-binds, the family nexus and so on)…

Laing on Wikipedia:

“In The Divided Self (1960), Laing contrasted the experience of the "ontologically secure" person with that of a person who "cannot take the realness, aliveness, autonomy and identity of himself and others for granted" and who consequently contrives strategies to avoid "losing his self".

It’s arguable, though, that as much as Don strives to avoid losing himself, he equally puts himself into situations where he risks losing himself, where the conflict between different ‘Dons’ can no longer be smoothed over. He craves the void as much as he tries to avoid it.

Don, in a moment of ontological insecurity:


The recurring motif in Mad Men – the shot from behind an actor, usually seated – is one view of ourselves that, even with an elaborate mirror set-up, we can never have: the ‘thing’ in repose before the performance of language/self recommences. In that moment, we are Don/Betty… we know them as well as we can know ourselves. Sometimes what happens next surprises or shocks us, at others we feel as though we might know what they’re thinking…

* The point is, surely, not to just laugh or be aghast at the prejudices and conventions of the era. Mad Men functions in the way that some sci-fi does, by showing us ourselves, or people very much like us, but at a remove that allows us to see the bigger picture - it's just several years into the past rather than the future. One of the questions it poses is: what are the attitudes which seem normal to us now that, if we had just a little perspective on them, would appear naive or even horrifying?

Race to the bottom

From an essay written in 1996 by Nicholas Hildyard, this paragraph is about the effect of the globalized labour market on British jobs:

In the UK, it is national economic policy to offer the country as a low wage, deregulated "enterprise zone" with relatively pliant workforces. In a brochure aimed at attracting foreign investment, the government's Invest in Britain Bureau (IBB) highlights Britain's "pro-business environment" and its "liberal and undemanding labour regulations". In addition, the IBB advertises "labour costs significantly below other European countries", a "commitment to reduce the burdens on business", "no exchange on repatriated profits". The brochure continues:"The UK has the least onerous labour regulations in Europe, with few restrictions on working hours, overtime and holidays ... There is no legal requirement to recognize a trade union. Many industries operate shift work, and 24-hour, seven days-a-week production for both men and women."The IBB assures potential investors that "no new laws or regulations may be introduced without ascertaining and minimizing the costs to business." The UK government is also committed to cutting back regulations that it deems to restrict enterprise. Since 1993, 605 regulations have been identified for the axe; these include measures covering health and safety, biotechnology, advertising in sensitive areas, hedgerow preservation, food standards and energy efficiency.

The conclusion of the essay is perhaps even more relevant now than it was back then:

Indeed, the time has come to question the very notion of export-led growth and enhanced corporate competitiveness as the routes to jobs and to find new ways of pressing for a different economy, one that seeks to move from specialization to diversification; that prioritizes self-reliance over trade; that adequately safeguards the environment; that produces for use rather than profit; that protects the economy of the commons rather than the economy of the corporation; and that insists on the right to protect itself precisely because it does not seek to infringe on the rights of others to protect themselves.

This paragraph from "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", Max Weber (1904) seems appropriate:

The people filled with the spirit of capitalism today tend to be indifferent, if not hostile, to the Church. The thought of the pious boredom of paradise has little attraction for their active natures; religion appears to them as a means of drawing people away from labour in this world. If you ask them what is the meaning of their restless activity, why they are never satisfied with what they have, thus appearing so senseless to any purely worldly view of life, they would perhaps give the answer, if they know any at all: "to provide for my children and grand-children". But more often and, since that motive is not peculiar to them, but was just as effective for the traditionalist [an entrepreneur acting according to tradition rather than a progressive growth-based capitalism], more correctly, simply: that business with its continuous work has become a necessary part of their lives. That is in fact the only possible motivation, but it at the same time expresses what is, seen from the view-point of personal happiness, so irrational about this sort of life, where a man exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse.

Memory Palaces

A Memory Palace built in the mind is a way of remembering something complex.

Four Nights of a Dreamer

This film is by robert bresson and is full of the sound of footsteps.. and the sound of film. . it is shot in a way that means it doesn't seem unnatural if you accidentally watch the same few seconds twice in a row.

Carnaby Street Isn't Carnaby Street

This isn't the red Carnaby brand/street logo I was looking at last night, but it works in the same way.

"The allure of the commodity arises from the non-coincidence of the object with itself." (from K-Punk)

6 songs

here are some songs i've been listening to which I can recommend:

Al Bowlly - Lazy Day
Bernard Herrmann - Taxi Driver Theme
The Rayographs - Francis
Ben Frost - Killshot
Peverelist - Clunk Click Every Trip (the whole album's amazing and it's on youtube)
Sibelius - Tapiola

Tom

My Father's Suitcase

Not long before he died, Orhan Pamuk's father gave him a suitcase full of his own notebooks with the idea that perhaps some of it might be publishable after his death. There's a very beautiful essay / lecture about it here:

My Father's Suitcase

Archaic Torso of Apollo - Rilke

"Rodin told Rilke to stop writing about his childhood and to stop writing about love.. He said, Pay attention to everyday objects."


We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.