Christmas is considered by many as a time for coming together; families re-convene around the triumvirate extravagances of tree, gift and fayre, friends return home to renew old acquaintance and in general we are encouraged to relax into the soporific of the familiar. Or so goes the shiny and dare I suggest, lightly sparkling veneer.
Not to say that any of the above is not true or worthy of celebration but I would like us all to take a moment this Christmas to think about what 'coming together' could mean for us and for others, beyond a surface that intends to cleverly emulate, for the purposes of stimulating seasonal hysteria and light hypnosis, both frost and opulence simultaneously.
At this part of the service other commentators would no doubt ask us to stretch ourselves (but only a little, please, it is Christmas and you deserve a 'break') and cast our minds outside of the turkey shoot, beyond the frivels and dribbles, to those less fortunate than ourselves this Christmas time. Of course it is in the nature of things, just as poverty and famine is dragged behind the cart of wealth and gluttony, that those who instruct us so tenderly to spare a thought for the welfare of others near (and far by george! because most Christmas goods now come from 'far' and we have brave boys wherever 'far' may be to make sure they jolly well keep on coming) are themselves far (but in this case noticeably and away) more wealthy than the masses who have so callously forgotten those 'other' masses who often, especially in densely populous areas, live right next door.
So as part of my Christmas message of Love! and Yes! I would like us all this year to join together and spare absolutely no thought at all whatsoever for those less fortunate than ourselves. After all in many cases we will spare the thought and then find, through our own moral or fiscal decrepitude, that there is in fact no-one less fortunate than ourselves and that thought will then be wasted, contributing to global emissions of vapid, disposable pre-packaged thoughts busily consuming the skin of organic, re-usable thoughts, permeating the atmosphere, that protect us from cosmic evisceration and complete self-annihilation.
I would also like to remind the belligerent Scrooge-like do-gooders who do spare a thought for others that sparing a thought is not the same as sparing any expense or even spending any of that spared expense upon the welfare of others not fortunate enough to have any expense to spare. Of course if such unfortunates had spared a thought, or had any thoughts to spare in the first place, then they wouldn't be in such an ill-conceived situation of their own un-making. Christmas is a time to bear that in mind.
It is of no less a surprise that our monarch, The Queen, traditionally along with the Son of the King, Cliff Richard, our nation's key purveyor of timely Christmas reminders, also reminds us at Christmas that any attempt to spare thoughts when actual fiscal expenditure is expected, for example when purchasing goods, services or Cliff Richard merchandise, may result in you being invited to spend Christmas in Her Majesty's own seemingly inexhaustable (if they let off rapists and the rich with community service) hospitality. becuase you know what when you look more than skin deep we're all rich really and we're all rapists and after all it is Christmas. And Christmas is a time of peace and goodwill to all men, and as any Iraqi or Allied soldier will tell you peace comes at a price, and we all know too well ourselves goodwill is at the bosses'/landlords'/coppers'/magistrates'/_______s' discretion, so anybody getting anything for nothing, other than me, this Christmas would frankly be an insult to God, Queen and Country!
Picture this. A Christmas postcard of my own childhood. It's Christmas dinner and the knives are out...for the prodigal son hath returned to the fold, and after the elders have miraculously turned their upteenth carafe of Christmas spirit into a rich, golden stream of unflushable rennet, they decide with telepathic unanimosity that the true meaning of family togetherness at Christmas is that all members of the family, tribe, hamlet... in fact all of God's Creation, should agree with their own hastily assembled Christmas gift of missionary positioned zeal and compassion, an unconditional (well maybe on the condition of tougher border controls, ID cards and the threat of ASBOs) acceptance of the world's less fortunate as less fortunate. And in doing so they are doing the poor unfortunates a favour. And in a Christmas miracle of sorts the spirit of togetherness ensures my Christmas companions are simultaneously being done the same favour by Wise men and Women the world over.
So in the spirit of the LoveYes! distribution don't waste a second upon woolly dreams of a closely-knitted Christmas, rather meditate solely upon yourself and gaze deeply into your own annus horribilis. Somewhere deep inside you will find yourself, entangled amongst everybody else, all the unfortunates writhing as one rippling, quivering mass of lubed-up pathos. As soon as you cease to think of these characters holed up inside you as 'other' (and therefore as less) there is suddenly a breaking of the waters and a fluid 'coming together' of petroleum-based explosions, a worldwide chain of orgiastic couplings and de-couplings rather than the isolated farts, snores, fatuous hurrahs and forced guffaws belched out this Day of Our Lord by those incestuous conjoined twin colossi; alliance and filiation.
So please join with us the NymphoYo this Yuletide in discovering the true meaning of x-mas in pledging yourself to do the right thing and in good grace fall out with each other for Christs' sake! Of course to fall out in this manner is not an equivalent to falling out of a house or a taxi (or even metaphorically), bruised and cold, into an ice-hardened vomit-slaked rut. Rather it is the essential expression of the LoveYes! axiomatic; an acceptance of each other's good fortune to be no more than one self and the acclesia of all creation.
Tuesday 25 December 2007
Monday 10 December 2007
NoXRave
(This is an entr'acte plucked from the between degenerative genetic tissue of malformed cultural deposits...)
"While starving myself with tiny, underwater kisses, miniscule bubbles filled with gaseous reminders excitedly began to cuddle up upon the rubbery back-annals of my exposed lobes. From within this watery tension seemingly meaningless trifles, that would have usually seemed a million lights from home, cracked the muddy channels, lined as they were with the sciatic tendrils of fibre optics, their endings be-knighting the river water with an output of rock steady plasma."
Via satellite, retrospectively, with time differences perfunctoraily abridged and only a sanitary delay, images were comfortably delivered of Brasilian avant-retro-pop group CSS live at Glastonbury, claiming to be the only ‘Third World band’ on the bill. Sadly this self-affirmation was no victorious cry of defiance, no revolution of the industry. This was no more than ‘Knebworth?! Are you ready?!" rock-toric. The band played off and on but seemed to know not what they said or rather what they had signed.
Through this statement from the mud they sucked up the ghosts of this tourist shanty town’s ‘disappeared’ ( the roundabout radicals, the tie-dyed in the woolly mind hippies and even the gangs of thieving scallies) and processed their ideas into a finished plastic novelty. The band’s kitsch bric-a-brac reference-image library was a crash course in lazy laser surgery, a tour de force in how to shambolically, and with only half-realising, carve up the cash cow but keep the heart beating (to extend my analogy: a stadium rock group like U2 would have no such ethics, they just mince the fucker and sell the hamburgers). From the LoveYes! perspective Lovefoxx’s passionate scream was simply making sure that we were aware that, despite the popularity of off-the-shelf Third World full of artificial sun , fruit acid and Epoverty, there was a new organic product on the market, dreamed up by indigenous modern culturalists and full of natural ingredients. look around you for Sao Paulo, Brasil and the entire Third World actually has a burgeoning ‘middle class’ too!
The essence of ‘development’ (‘overseas’ or internalised to the nth degree) is the technological construction of a layer or layers that control and obscure the unequal distribution of opportunities. Our view of this ‘diversity’ is thus prescribed and homogenised so as to most effectively circumvent an orgiastic explosion of difference that might threaten to overwhelm these health surfaces that separate us from each other and each other's experiences.
(An important aside: This is why it is necessary to hold up another lens or mirror (media) to this view; in order to grasp something of a world the that appears somewhat at least the wrong way round).
I believe this to have been the case when Marx and Engels waxed lyrical about the forces unleashed by capital and industry and well before, right back to Kubrick’s projected Ulyssean vision of ape-like humanoids out clubbing. This technological stratification of the social throughout history is the ideological parallel of Descartes’ rudimentary anthro-pologising when discussing physical human extension beyond ‘the self’ on his mission to grasp the motor of being.
We are made a propos of ‘development’ in the sense described more readily in terms of demographics and marketing; both the study and the practice of increasing the ‘middle’ (i.e. consuming) classes (and reducing the numbers of 'producing' i.e. working classes). The growth in the global middle class can therefore be understood not as the erosion of poverty but its de-politicisation. technology may re-engineer certain forms of production but this conceals rather than eradicates poverty. Thus our impoverishment is consolidated as quickly as we become more crippled in trying to grasp it.
When the next World Party tells us we are all children of the same mother make a closer inspection of the sensational Damien Hirst-designed bridge umbillicisng us between continents. Funny how it’s shaped like a syringe and appears to be pushing in poison and sucking up money. But you shouldn’t feel bad about it. No sir! as the only real difference between 'us' and 'them' is the bang from the crack we on!
“Nothing had changed, the monster was still breathing and, to tell you the truth, since the operation takes a better photograph. But off screen the nights here are still illuminated only by desperation and made sticky with longing and ignorance…”
“In Other news: Once exiled Gilberto Gil named Brasil’s Minister of Culture and closer to home (is it? where am I exactly?) Peter Garratt joins the Cabinet of Kevin Rudd”
The examples of ‘virgin’ ethnic territory being coated in make-up and sprayed with the spot light are too numerous to detail as they occur with every human reflex whether on the other side of the world or amongst the interstellar chaos of your diminishing responsibility.
As usual and as intended what this extended public thought-wank (of course due to the above described extension and stratification of ‘public access’ everyone is waxily onanising, yet understandably no-one is listening and we are alone again) condenses into (?) in my navel as a question of how to make a ‘political’ culture in an 'economy of survival', whether actual or spiritual. Should CSS not exploit markets in their own or other continents and become fantastically successful? Do they not deserve it? Should they not share their music? Such questions seem fairly ridiculous.
Rather what we are saying is that we are still bored of being instructed to have fun and our emotions harvested and processed, our native lands re-developed. We are old and tired of it! (our teeth are too long for it, our eyes too big and hairy to hear of it!). I believe the pulse of a band like CSS is fun-oving ,iving and sharing and we want this and not all the other shit that we are told must come with it along with the army of mimiks who vacantly rape every moment of all its magic.
"In the steam of the bathrooms of the chateau bleu, the shadow of the negress dances, stimulating a longing for more resistant, persistent dreams with less empty gestures and more intense intimidating meanings.
Yet even now through my TV eyes they have captured the image of my obsidian charge and are crystallising her movements ready for the next dawn's mock-up street markets".
We don’t need a Nu Rave. We need Love!Yes?
"While starving myself with tiny, underwater kisses, miniscule bubbles filled with gaseous reminders excitedly began to cuddle up upon the rubbery back-annals of my exposed lobes. From within this watery tension seemingly meaningless trifles, that would have usually seemed a million lights from home, cracked the muddy channels, lined as they were with the sciatic tendrils of fibre optics, their endings be-knighting the river water with an output of rock steady plasma."
Via satellite, retrospectively, with time differences perfunctoraily abridged and only a sanitary delay, images were comfortably delivered of Brasilian avant-retro-pop group CSS live at Glastonbury, claiming to be the only ‘Third World band’ on the bill. Sadly this self-affirmation was no victorious cry of defiance, no revolution of the industry. This was no more than ‘Knebworth?! Are you ready?!" rock-toric. The band played off and on but seemed to know not what they said or rather what they had signed.
Through this statement from the mud they sucked up the ghosts of this tourist shanty town’s ‘disappeared’ ( the roundabout radicals, the tie-dyed in the woolly mind hippies and even the gangs of thieving scallies) and processed their ideas into a finished plastic novelty. The band’s kitsch bric-a-brac reference-image library was a crash course in lazy laser surgery, a tour de force in how to shambolically, and with only half-realising, carve up the cash cow but keep the heart beating (to extend my analogy: a stadium rock group like U2 would have no such ethics, they just mince the fucker and sell the hamburgers). From the LoveYes! perspective Lovefoxx’s passionate scream was simply making sure that we were aware that, despite the popularity of off-the-shelf Third World full of artificial sun , fruit acid and Epoverty, there was a new organic product on the market, dreamed up by indigenous modern culturalists and full of natural ingredients. look around you for Sao Paulo, Brasil and the entire Third World actually has a burgeoning ‘middle class’ too!
The essence of ‘development’ (‘overseas’ or internalised to the nth degree) is the technological construction of a layer or layers that control and obscure the unequal distribution of opportunities. Our view of this ‘diversity’ is thus prescribed and homogenised so as to most effectively circumvent an orgiastic explosion of difference that might threaten to overwhelm these health surfaces that separate us from each other and each other's experiences.
(An important aside: This is why it is necessary to hold up another lens or mirror (media) to this view; in order to grasp something of a world the that appears somewhat at least the wrong way round).
I believe this to have been the case when Marx and Engels waxed lyrical about the forces unleashed by capital and industry and well before, right back to Kubrick’s projected Ulyssean vision of ape-like humanoids out clubbing. This technological stratification of the social throughout history is the ideological parallel of Descartes’ rudimentary anthro-pologising when discussing physical human extension beyond ‘the self’ on his mission to grasp the motor of being.
We are made a propos of ‘development’ in the sense described more readily in terms of demographics and marketing; both the study and the practice of increasing the ‘middle’ (i.e. consuming) classes (and reducing the numbers of 'producing' i.e. working classes). The growth in the global middle class can therefore be understood not as the erosion of poverty but its de-politicisation. technology may re-engineer certain forms of production but this conceals rather than eradicates poverty. Thus our impoverishment is consolidated as quickly as we become more crippled in trying to grasp it.
When the next World Party tells us we are all children of the same mother make a closer inspection of the sensational Damien Hirst-designed bridge umbillicisng us between continents. Funny how it’s shaped like a syringe and appears to be pushing in poison and sucking up money. But you shouldn’t feel bad about it. No sir! as the only real difference between 'us' and 'them' is the bang from the crack we on!
“Nothing had changed, the monster was still breathing and, to tell you the truth, since the operation takes a better photograph. But off screen the nights here are still illuminated only by desperation and made sticky with longing and ignorance…”
“In Other news: Once exiled Gilberto Gil named Brasil’s Minister of Culture and closer to home (is it? where am I exactly?) Peter Garratt joins the Cabinet of Kevin Rudd”
The examples of ‘virgin’ ethnic territory being coated in make-up and sprayed with the spot light are too numerous to detail as they occur with every human reflex whether on the other side of the world or amongst the interstellar chaos of your diminishing responsibility.
As usual and as intended what this extended public thought-wank (of course due to the above described extension and stratification of ‘public access’ everyone is waxily onanising, yet understandably no-one is listening and we are alone again) condenses into (?) in my navel as a question of how to make a ‘political’ culture in an 'economy of survival', whether actual or spiritual. Should CSS not exploit markets in their own or other continents and become fantastically successful? Do they not deserve it? Should they not share their music? Such questions seem fairly ridiculous.
Rather what we are saying is that we are still bored of being instructed to have fun and our emotions harvested and processed, our native lands re-developed. We are old and tired of it! (our teeth are too long for it, our eyes too big and hairy to hear of it!). I believe the pulse of a band like CSS is fun-oving ,iving and sharing and we want this and not all the other shit that we are told must come with it along with the army of mimiks who vacantly rape every moment of all its magic.
"In the steam of the bathrooms of the chateau bleu, the shadow of the negress dances, stimulating a longing for more resistant, persistent dreams with less empty gestures and more intense intimidating meanings.
Yet even now through my TV eyes they have captured the image of my obsidian charge and are crystallising her movements ready for the next dawn's mock-up street markets".
We don’t need a Nu Rave. We need Love!Yes?
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