Run Away to Mars - Talk

Neruda...

Ren - Power

Cone of Shame

Leon of Athens

Yorgos Lanthimos

Grissini Project

Excerpts from George Orwell's "Inside the Whale"

Excerpts from Orwell's Inside the Whale":

But quite Suddenly, in the years 1930-5, something happens. The literary climate changes. A new group of writers, Auden and Spender and the rest of them, has made its appearance, and although technically these writers owe something to their predecessors, their 'tendency' is entirely different. Suddenly we have got out of the twilight of the gods into a sort of Boy Scout atmosphere of bare knees and community singing. The typical literary man ceases to be a cultured expatriate with a leaning towards the Church, and becomes an eager-minded schoolboy with a leaning towards Communism. If the keynote of the writers of the twenties is 'tragic sense of life', the keynote of the new writers is 'serious purpose'. 

The differences between the two schools are discussed at some length in Mr Louis MacNeice's book MODERN POETRY. This book is, of course, written entirely from the angle of the younger group and takes the superiority of their standards for granted. According to Mr MacNeice: 

The poets of NEW SIGNATURES, [Note: Published in 1932.(Author's footnote)] unlike Yeats and Eliot, are emotionally partisan. Yeats proposed to turn his back on desire and hatred; Eliot sat back and watched other people's emotions with ennui and an ironical self-pity. . . . The whole poetry, on the other hand, of Auden, Spender, and Day Lewis implies that they have desires and hatreds of their own and, further, that they think some things OUGHT to be desired and others hated. 

And again: 

The poets of NEW SIGNATURES have swung back. . . to the Greek preference for information or statement. Then first requirement is to have something to say, and after that you must say it as well as you can. 

In other words, 'purpose' has come back, the younger writers have 'gone into politics'. As I have pointed out already, Eliot & Co. are not really so non-partisan as Mr MacNeice seems to suggest. Still, it is broadly true that in the twenties the literary emphasis was more on technique and less on subject matter than it is now..... 

......The idea had begun to gain ground (VIDE Edward Upward and others) that a writer must either be actively 'left' or write badly. Between 1935 and 1939 the Communist Party had an almost irresistible fascination for any writer under forty. It became as normal to hear that so-and-so had 'joined' as it had been a few years earlier, when Roman Catholicism was fashionable, to hear that So-and-so had 'been received'. For about three years, in fact, the central stream of English literature was more or less directly under Communist control. How was it possible for such a thing to happen? And at the same time, what is meant by 'Communism'? ..... 

.....The Fascism-democracy dogfight was no doubt an attraction in itself, but in any case their conversion was due at about that date. It was obvious that LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism was finished and that there had got to be some kind of reconstruction; in the world of 1935 it was hardly possible to remain politically indifferent. But why did these young men turn towards anything so alien as Russian Communism? Why should WRITERS be attracted by a form of socialism that makes mental honesty impossible? The explanation really lies in something that had already made itself felt before the slump and before Hitler: middle-class unemployment...... 

...With all its injustices, England is still the land of habeas corpus, and the over-whelming majority of English people have no experience of violence or illegality. If you have grown up in that sort of atmosphere it is not at all easy to imagine what a despotic r�gime is like. Nearly all the dominant writers of the thirties belonged to the soft-boiled emancipated middle class and were too young to have effective memories of the Great War. To people of that kind such things as purges, secret police, summary executions, imprisonment without trial etc., etc., are too remote to be terrifying. They can swallow totalitarianism BECAUSE they have no experience of anything except liberalism..... 

...While I have been writing this essay another European war has broken out. It will either last several years and tear Western civilization to pieces, or it will end inconclusively and prepare the way for yet another war which will do the job once and for all. But war is only ‘peace intensified’. What is quite obviously happening, war or no war, is the break-up of laissez-faire capitalism and of the liberal-Christian culture. Until recently the full implications of this were not foreseen, because it was generally imagined that socialism could preserve and even enlarge the atmosphere of liberalism. It is now beginning to be realized how false this idea was. Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships — an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction. The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence. But this means that literature, in the form in which we know it, must suffer at least a temporary death. The literature of liberalism is coming to an end and the literature of totalitarianism has not yet appeared and is barely imaginable. As for the writer, he is sitting on a melting iceberg; he is merely an anachronism, a hangover from the bourgeois age, as surely doomed as the hippopotamus. Miller seems to me a man out of the common because he saw and proclaimed this fact a long while before most of his contemporaries — at a time, indeed, when many of them were actually burbling about a renaissance of literature. Wyndham Lewis had said years earlier that the major history of the English language was finished, but he was basing this on different and rather trivial reasons. But from now onwards the all-important fact for the creative writer is going to be that this is not a writer’s world. That does not mean that he cannot help to bring the new society into being, but he can take no part in the process as a writer. For as a writer he is a liberal, and what is happening is the destruction of liberalism. It seems likely, therefore, that in the remaining years of free speech any novel worth reading will follow more or less along the lines that Miller has followed — I do not mean in technique or subject matter, but in implied outlook. The passive attitude will come back, and it will be more consciously passive than before. Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly there is nothing left but quietism — robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it. Get inside the whale — or rather, admit you are inside the whale (for you are, of course). Give yourself over to the world-process, stop fighting against it or pretending that you control it; simply accept it, endure it, record it. That seems to be the formula, that any sensitive novelist is now likely to adopt. A novel on more positive, ‘constructive’ lines, and not emotionally spurious, is at present very difficult to imagine.

This is Why... the Virtual Heterotopia Exists

Trojans

A Smile

Te Amo

Sinatra

Me LIKE u!

Space-Time Fairy Tales...

I woke up with you in my head Like a melody to sing in bed I should get up but I instead Make a face you used to make I know there’s no such thing as time I know there’s no such thing as mine I know there’s no such thing as turning back The fairy tale’s begun So listen up, my son The pages may have burned But words can just return All of time spans All of space spans All of light spans All our life spans My mind is full of melodies They search for homes inside of me Like begging, pleading refugees But I can’t find the time I know there’s no such thing as time I know there’s no such thing as mine I try to calm and still the rising tide Keep listening, my son Cause the story just goes on Each time a theory proves The mystery just moves Time moves slower Round your feet Find slow time Breathe and feel the beat of Time moves slower Round your feet Find slow time Breathe and feel the beat of Time... This world began outside of time Some days its yours, some days it’s mine Some days it’s cruel, some days it’s kind It just can’t stay the same I know there’s no such thing as time I know there’s no such thing as mine I try to sing a melody your way The story must go on So keep listening, my son And if you get too tired Just build a little fire The pages they may burn But words can just return Pages burn but words return Just watch the flames and you will learn Pages burn but words return Just watch the flames and you will learn You will learn You will learn You will learn You... will... learn...

Coins

Frames - Eric Kinny

Dead Butterfly

 

New enemies revealed on earth

Torn by beasts & beat to dirt

All I feel, pervert alone

The mantle weeps

Such wicked drone

And did you find more debt for the guilt?

Evil eyes stare in, gun burst, man dies

Frame her in gold, dead butterfly

Relent for me & bring rebirth

Condemn but feel

The weak cloud burst

Tainted roses in her lungs

And it’s murder here

No I can’t curse you more

And did you find more debt for the guilt?

Evil eyes stare in, gun burst, man dies

Frame her in gold, dead butterfly

Hold, it burns

You’re out of control, dead hearts, no emotion

You’re bent & cold, just flesh & bone

And I fear the make-believe’s dead, when the wound stops bleeding

You’re bent & cold, just flesh & bone

Come vital love

Come link the vein

Don’t mean to harm, just het up evil

Don’t need your calm

Don’t need your rage

I pull your scar & prey on evil

Engage!

I can’t work out your tongue or turn this round

And there’s panic

Here come the crusaders

Burning!

Cut the right tone

Radical when you’re numb & naked

Come here my dead beautiful

Bend in tight, wrap in nude

Thunder & light fill the womb

Take me on a trip to your world in battle lands

Don’t lose it

Don’t move lips

Come cruel tears

Take me on a trip to your world in battle lands

Don’t lose it

Don’t move lips

Come cruel kiss

Take me on a trip to your world in battle lands

Cruel tales

Do you See G_d?

Kiss Me...

h/t Woodsterman

Free in the Knowledge

...Not Really

Nursery Crymes

Lambs in Genesis

Five O'Clock Shadows

Artemis - Invincible

Giving up the gun Vampire Weekend

PB&J

La Bruja - Una Para los Muertos

Cultural Capitalism and other Decaffeinated Consumerisms

Cowboys and Dreamers...

Robot Love Songs