Diogenes the Cynic

Ideology

2011-10-05T00:27:00.000-07:00

Revisited as history repeats itself:

Stop everything
I think I hear the President
The Pied Piper of the TV screen
Is gonna make it simple
And he's got it all mapped out
And illustrated with cartoons
Too hard for clever folks to understand
They're more used to words like:
Ideology . . .
They're not talkin' 'bout right and left
They're talkin' 'bout

Right and wrong - do you know the difference
Right and wrong - do you know the difference
'Tween the right and the left and the east and the west
What you know and the things that you'll never see

So what ya think
You like the Yankees or the Mets this year
And what about this latest war of words
And what about the Commies
I saw the news last night
All illustrated with cartoons
So when they come with that opinion poll
They better not use words like
Ideology . . .
Or try to tell me 'bout the issues
Ideology . . .
Whose side are you on
We're talkin' 'bout

Right and wrong - do you know the difference
Right and wrong - do you know the difference
'Tween the right and the left and the east and the west
What you know and the things that you'll never see

Where are we?

Right and wrong - do you know the difference
Right and wrong - do you know the difference
'Tween the right and the left and the east and the west
What you know and the things that you'll never see

Pure Reality

2011-06-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

Nothing – Bill Laswell – one of many versions.

There was nothing.
There was nothing at all.
Either moving or non-moving
It was dark everywhere.
There was no sun
There were no planets
No stars, no moon
There was no day, no night
There was no sound, no touch, no smell,
There was no form, no taste
There were no directions
There was only pure reality.

There was nothing at all

Not graspable by mind or senses or speech.

There were no planets

No stars, no moon.
There was no day or night
There was no sound, no touch, no smell,
No form. Without change
Only pure reality

Battles: Rainbow

2011-06-19T03:57:00.000-07:00

ONCE
ONE TIME
I WAS AMAZED
NATURAL DELAY
AND YOUR WIDE VOICE
GOT OUT OF PHASE
I COULDN'T EXPLAIN

WHY
WOULD SOME
ECHO OUT RACE
A STATEMENT AS VAGUE AS
"ONCE
ONE TIME
I WAS AMAZED"
I WAS AMAZED

Atlas Lyrics

2011-06-19T03:37:00.000-07:00

HIT the Link and watech the performance!

Songwriters: Braxton, Tyondai; Konopka, David; Stanier, John; Williams, Ian;

People won't be people
When they hear this sound
That's been glowing in the dark at the edge of town

People won't be people
No, the people won't be people when they hear this sound
Won't you show me what begins at the edge of town

People won't be people
When they hear this sound
That's been glowing in the dark at the edge of town

People won't be people
No, the people won't be people when they hear this sound
Won't you show me what begins at the edge of town

Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh
Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh
Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh
Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh

Kitchen is the cook, whoa, ey, oh
Scissors are the barbers, whoa, ey, oh
Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh
The chorus full of actors

People won't be people
When they hear this sound
That's been glowing in the dark at the edge of town

People won't be people
No, the people won't be people when they hear this sound
Won't you show me what begins at the edge of town
[ From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/b/battles-lyrics/atlas-lyrics.html ]

People won't be people
When they hear this sound
That's been glowing in the dark at the edge of town

People won't be people
No, the people won't be people when they hear this sound
Won't you show me what begins at the edge of town

Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh
Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh
Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh
Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh

Kitchen is the cook, whoa, ey, oh
Scissors are the barbers, whoa, ey, oh
Singer is a crook, whoa, ey, oh
The chorus full of actors

People won't be people
When they hear this sound
That's been glowing in the dark at the edge of town

People won't be people
No, the people won't be people when they hear this sound
Won't you show me what begins at the edge of town

People won't be people
When they hear this sound
That's been glowing in the dark at the edge of town

People won't be people
No, the people won't be people when they hear this sound
Won't you show me what begins at the edge of town

Battles - ddiamondd lyrics

2011-06-19T03:27:00.000-07:00

BATTLES DDIAMONDD LYRICS

The diamond that was stolen held the code that melted
water into letters spelling where it had been taken to.
In fact, I had a vision of the numbers corresponding with
the letters T-H-E-D-I-A-M-O-N-D.

They're suspended like a prism splitting floodlight to
poles of primary colours clawing the veil of the vacuum.
There's a picture of this given to authorities, the
sentence,"I'm an architect and here's my prison" written
on it.

With schematics so meticulous the measurements of
superimpositions of a room within the window make a
dream that ends up being such an entity in your
reflection, you are the dream to it, you are the prism.

The mirrors in the corner throwing images against the
other mirrors made counting corners impossible the
breaking news had counted one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven corners of the
mirrored corners.

Why have you done what you have done something is so
sinister when staring at the diamond something you
have done sinister why have you done this am I in the
mirror am I what you have been staring at am I a
diamond?

Just like a reflection of a friend of mine, I am a
reflection of an enemy, am I a reflection of an enemy,
just like a reflection of a friend of mine?

2011-05-31T00:30:00.001-07:00

GailGGrant on 500px

Billy Bragg's Jerusalem.

2011-05-01T02:38:00.001-07:00

Find it here.

National Anthem

2011-05-01T02:37:00.000-07:00

I am delighted the Britsh Royal Family have opened a new chapter to their recently clouded epic. Frankly their domestic affairs are none of our business. However I am delighted for the reassertion of the majesty and grandeur of the 'British-at-thei- Best' for it bespeaks a long and frequently glorious past.

I am delighted, too, for the happy couple and their family, BUT I cannot stomach the 'hype' that goes along with it. I studiously avoided all contact with the last Royal wedding for the same reason.

However, on the way from one place to another at about lunch time on the day, I was passing a room where the television was blaring the proceedings of the sacrament and, by chance the hymn long known to and loved by me, was being performed. These are its lyrics:

JERUSALEM (from 'Milton')
by: William Blake (1757-1827)

ND did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

If there is a song that constitutes ,my' national anthem, it is this. For it embodied all that I lived and loved while growing up in the UK and it entails all that my 'socialism' -- not yours, or Marx's or that anyone you know -- represents to me; my political ideology insofar as it can be aid to have one. For Blake's 'England' read 'the world.'

One can buy choral versions by of choirs international renown, such as the King's College or John's College Choir (both of Cambridge) or the equally brilliant choir of New College, Oxford. These are fabulous renditions. Another that I admire is that by Billy Bragg:

Let America be America Again

2011-05-01T02:12:00.000-07:00

I found this one recently - the last idiot on the block to smell the coffee -- and found it to be a precise expression of what it was that lead me to leave the US three decades ago.

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!

Hoagy Carmichael, Washboard Blues - Lyrics

2010-06-05T00:53:00.000-07:00

The following version is transcribed from the 1927 Carmichael recording with Paul Whiteman's Orchestra and the Rhythm Boys

Mornin’ comes with cloudy skies and rain

Ma po back is broke with pain

My man’s sleepin’, I’se ascrubbin’, chillin’, weepin’

I’se arubbin’, Pains acreepin’, clothes atubbin’

All day long.

Up to dat washin’ soap

And down to dat wattah onct mo’

Head down low—head low—

Up to dat washin’ soap

And down to dat wattah wance mo’

Po’ hans go—oh Lordy.

So weary of scrubbin’, days dreary—

So weary of tubbin’ dem clothes,

Up to de washin soap—

Down to dat wattah wance mo’.

Wash Board Blues.

Never git me gon from heah—

Srubbin’ dirty clothes all yeah—

Dem clothes, dem muckety clothes

Dem raggedy clothes, dem grimey clothes, that's all I know

Up and down, back and forth, all year long

Oh Lordy, won’t you hear my song, hear my song.

Washin’ in a shanty on de shore

The river swingin on by de door

Heah dat river—lowly callin’

I’se ashivah—nights afallin’

Heah dat river lowly moanin’—moanin’ low.

I agoin’ to dat river

Goin’ down to dat river some day

Hurry day—hurry day—hurry day—hurry

I agoin’ to dat river—

Goin’ down to dat river someday—

Thro mahself—ma po self—self away—

Oh Lordy

Mus’ akeep scrubbin’—mus’ akeep tubbin’—mus’ akeep drubbin’--mus' akeep tubbin

Them ole dirty clothes—

But I’m goin’ to dat river—

Goin’ down to dat river some day

Hurry day—hurry day—hurry day—hurry.

Open etter to President Obama

2008-11-04T22:51:00.000-08:00

To President Obama onthe Morning of His Election

Don't Let Me Down

Don't let me down, don't let me down
Don't let me down, don't let me down

Nobody ever loved me like she does
Oh, she does, yeah, she does
And if somebody loved me like she do me
Oh, she do me, yes, she does

Don't let me down, don't let me down
Don't let me down, don't let me down

I'm in love for the first time
Don't you know it's gonna last
It's a love that lasts forever
It's a love that had no past (Seeking past)

Don't let me down, don't let me down
Don't let me down, don't let me down

And from the first time that she really done me
Oh, she done me, she done me good
I guess nobody ever really done me
Oh, she done me, she done me good

Don't let me down, hey don't let me down
Heeeee, don't let me down

Don't let me down
Don't let me down, don't let me let down
Can you dig it? Don't let me down

Foucault's -- Michel not Léon --Pendulous Appendage: the Great History of Sexuality.

2008-09-09T01:57:00.000-07:00

Michel Foucault has written:

" The society the emerged in the 19th century ... did not confront sex with a fundamental refusal of recognition. On the contrary, it put into operation an entire machinery for producing true discourses concerning it. Not only did it speak of sex and compel everyone to do so; it also set out to formulate the uniform truth of sex. As if it needed this production of truth. As if it was essential that sex be inscribed not only in an economy of pleasure, but in an ordered system of knowledge. Thus sex gradually became an object of great suspicion; the general and disquieting meaning that pervades out conduct and out existence, in spite of ourselves; the point of weakness that we each carry within us; a general signification, a universal secret, an omnipresent cause, a fear that never ends."

Nothing to be Done

2008-02-21T23:13:00.000-08:00

The anonymous 'She' of A Woman in Berlin' wrote:

"I nibbled on some cake the widow baked using a sinful amount of wood, and took account of my life. Here is the balance.

On the one hand things are looking pretty good for me. I'm healthy and refreshed. Nothing has harmed me physically. I am extremely well armed for life, as if I had webbed feet for the mud, as if my fibre were especially supple and strong." (This after 7 weeks of being serially raped while living on air in a wreck of a half-bombed building.) "I'm well equipped for the world. I'm not delicate -- my grandmother hauled manure. On the other hand , there are multiple minuses. I don't know what in the world I should do. No one really needs me. I'm simply floating, waiting, with neither goal nor task in sight. I can't help thinking of a debate I once had with a very smart Swiss woman, in which I countered every scheme for improving the world by insisting 'that the sum total of tears always stays the same' -- i.e. that in every nation of the world, no matter what flag or system of government, no matter which gods are worshipped or what the average income is, the sum total of tears, pain and fear the every person must pay for his existence is a constant. And so the balance is maintained: well-fed nations wallow in neurosis and excesses, whil people plagued with suffering, as we are now, may rely on numbness and apathy to help see them through -- if not for that I'd be weeping morning, noon and night. But I'm not crying and neither is anyone else, and the fact that we aren't is all a part of a natural law. Of course, if you believe that the earthly sum of tears is fixed and immutable, then you're not very well cut out to improve the world or to act on any grand scale."

This could be a synopsis of Beckett's 'en attendant godot'. For example:

POZZO:
Make haste, before he stops. (Estragon approaches Lucky and makes to wipe his eyes. Lucky kicks him violently in the shins. Estragon drops the handkerchief, recoils, staggers about the stage howling with pain.) Hanky!
Lucky puts down bag and basket, picks up handkerchief and gives it to Pozzo, goes back to his place, picks up bag and basket.
ESTRAGON:
Oh the swine! (He pulls up the leg of his trousers.) He's crippled me!
POZZO:
I told you he didn't like strangers.
VLADIMIR:
(to Estragon). Show me. (Estragon shows his leg. To Pozzo, angrily.) He's bleeding!
POZZO:
It's a good sign.
ESTRAGON:
(on one leg). I'll never walk again!
VLADIMIR:
(tenderly). I'll carry you. (Pause.) If necessary.
POZZO:
He's stopped crying. (To Estragon.) You have replaced him as it were. (Lyrically.) The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. (He laughs.) Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. (Pause.) Let us not speak well of it either. (Pause.) Let us not speak of it at all. (Pause. Judiciously.) It is true the population has increased.
VLADIMIR:
Try and walk.
Estragon takes a few limping steps, stops before Lucky and spits on him, then goes and sits down on the mound.
POZZO:
Guess who taught me all these beautiful things. (Pause. Pointing to Lucky.) My Lucky!
VLADIMIR:
(looking at the sky.) Will night never come?
POZZO:
But for him all my thoughts, all my feelings, would have been of common things. (Pause. With extraordinary vehemence.) Professional worries! (Calmer.) Beauty, grace, truth of the first water, I knew they were all beyond me. So I took a knook.

This one is dedicated to Lucy.
POZZO:: Make haste, before he stops. (Estragon approaches Lucky and makes to wipe his eyes. Lucky kicks him violently in the shins. Estragon drops the handkerchief, recoils, staggers about the stage howling with pain.) Hanky!; Lucky puts down bag and basket, picks up handkerchief and gives it to Pozzo, goes back to his place, picks up bag and basket.
ESTRAGON:: Oh the swine! (He pulls up the leg of his trousers.) He's crippled me!
POZZO:: I told you he didn't like strangers.
VLADIMIR:: (to Estragon). Show me. (Estragon shows his leg. To Pozzo, angrily.) He's bleeding!
POZZO:: It's a good sign.
ESTRAGON:: (on one leg). I'll never walk again!
VLADIMIR:: (tenderly). I'll carry you. (Pause.) If necessary.
POZZO:: He's stopped crying. (To Estragon.) You have replaced him as it were. (Lyrically.) The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. (He laughs.) Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. (Pause.) Let us not speak well of it either. (Pause.) Let us not speak of it at all. (Pause. Judiciously.) It is true the population has increased.
VLADIMIR:: Try and walk.; Estragon takes a few limping steps, stops before Lucky and spits on him, then goes and sits down on the mound.
POZZO:: Guess who taught me all these beautiful things. (Pause. Pointing to Lucky.) My Lucky!
VLADIMIR:: (looking at the sky.) Will night never come?
POZZO:: But for him all my thoughts, all my feelings, would have been of common things. (Pause. With extraordinary vehemence.) Professional worries! (Calmer.) Beauty, grace, truth of the first water, I knew they were all beyond me. So I took a knook.

The Definition Of Love and other undefinables.

2007-06-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

"You cannot practice too rigid a fast from the charms of worldly talk." Fénelon.

The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered at All - A Lyric of a Different Colour

2007-03-18T17:40:00.000-07:00

Old Noah was mucking the Ark out one day
when he heard a great shriek from the neighboring stall.
Said he to poor Ham, who was hugging his loins,
"Ah, the hedgehog, my boy, can't be buggered at all."

Roll them all over and turn them around,
The hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

The sheep is a classic, as well you may find,
the llama's all right if he isn't too tall,
the donkey's a danger for standing behind,
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

You may pounce on the cat as he walks by his lone,
the mole has a hole into which you can crawl,
you must blindfold the basilisk or turn into stone,
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

The sow is a darling, so slick and so tight,
to cuddle and kiss as you lie next the wall,
but she don't chew the cud, so you'd better not bite,
and the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

The squirrel requires the climbing of trees,
which puts you at risk of a slip and a fall.
The dog's man's best friend if you don't mind the fleas,
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

You can do it with a frog in a puddle or pool,
though you might catch a cold in your whatchamacall-
it, or with a giraffe you can stand on a stool
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

The rhino is often... reluctant... to flirt;
the termite's a challenge because he's so small
you might wash him away with your very first squirt;
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.<><>
The bonobo monkey is willing to hump:
he'll do all his friends, both the large and the small,
and he'll do it to you if you show him your rump,
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

The humans are out, if you value your life:
it's incest, my son, since we're relatives all...
unless you'd make love to your very own wife!
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

I don't recommend that you tackle the skunk.
I did once myself, I'm ashamed to recall;
I must have been extra ordinarily drunk!
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

The kangaroo's pocket can carry your tool
though her kick may propel you clean over the wall.
The platypus lurks in the muck of his pool
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

The camel is likely to spit in your face,
but don't take it bad, for it ain't a person:
he simply detests the entire human race
and the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

As a friend to the children, commend me the Yak;
he's perfect to start them on when they are small,
for they cannot slip off of his very broad back,
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

You can take a wild ride on a wild catamount
if your ears can stand up to his wild caterwaul.
You can poke your own fist, but that really don't count,
and the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

Take care when you lift up the elephant's tail
or beware of the fate that else may befall:
if you pick the wrong end you could wind up impaled!
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.
To futter the bat you must take to the air.
She'll flutter her wings and go into a stall
and pitch you off into God-only-knows-where,
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

The billygoat's habits, though pungent and weird,
you've got to accept if it's him that you'd ball:
he don't use cologne, he just cums in his beard,
and the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

The guinea pig's timid, and brainless to boot,
he's worse than no use in a ruckus or brawl,
but you can't pass him up 'cause he's so bloody cute!
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.

[deliberately]
You can bugger a whale if you're willing to swim
or an orangutan if you hang from a limb;
or make time with a snail if you..slow...to ..a crawl,
but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all!

Final Chorus

Dedicated to All Misguided & Romantic Fools Who Have
Not learned Not to Fall in Love,
as it Always Sticks, like fecal matter, to the Face.

Click Here for the Link to" Love-Sublime": The CD that contains a truely sublime rendering of the Rilke text below.

2007-03-18T04:34:00.000-07:00

I Love the Dark Hours of My Being.

2007-03-18T04:14:00.000-07:00

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Click Here for the link to Love-Sublime: The CD that contains a truely sublime rendering of the Rilke text above.

2007-03-18T02:34:00.000-07:00

The Putrescent Parent.

2007-01-19T06:19:00.000-08:00

"There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers -- one's as bad as the others. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized asperations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they've never had the courage to live by -- they'd like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it! Even the most neglectful fathers (...) are no different. Their consciences hurt them because they've never paid any attention to their children and they want kids to understand just how bad the pain is -- to sympathize!
---
"Fathers are the flies of the world. they hover round our heads waiting for a chance, and, when they see something rotten, they buzz in and root in it. Filthy, lecherous flies broadcasting to the whole world that they have screwed our mothers. And there is nothing they won't do to contaminate the filthy cities they've built for themselves."

From 'The Man who Fell Out of Grace with the Sea, " by Yukiro Mishima. (trans. John Nathan)

What's Good? The answer hangs from a bough we cannort reach.

2006-09-13T00:26:00.000-07:00

Life's like a mayonnaise soda
And life's like space without room
And life's like bacon and ice cream
That's what life's like without you

Life's like forever becoming
But life's forever dealing in hurt
Now life's like death without living
That's what life's like without you

Life's like Sanskrit read to a pony
I see you in my mind's eye strangling on your tongue
What good is knowing such devotion
I've been around - I know what makes things run

What good is seeing eye chocolate
What good's a computerized nose
And what good was cancer in April
Why no good - no good at all
What good's a war without killing
What good is rain that falls up
What good's a disease that won't hurt you
Why no good, I guess, no good at all

What good are these thoughts that I'm thinking
It must be better not to be thinking at all
A styrofoam lover with emotions of concrete
No not much, not much at all

What's good is life without living
What good's this lion that barks
You loved a life others throw away nightly
It's not fair, not fair at all

What's good ?
Not much at all
What's good ?
Life's good -
But not fair at all.

Lou Reed (From 'Magic & Loss.' Click title above for link)

Taking Leave of the Censors.

2006-09-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

2+2=5

Are you such a dreamer?
To put the world to rights?
I'll stay home forever
Where two & two always
makes up five

I'll lay down the tracks
Sandbag & hide
January has April's showers
And two & two always
makes up five

It's the devil's way now
There is no way out
You can scream & you
can shout
It is too late now
Because

You have not been
paying attention

I try to sing along
I get it all wrong
Ezeepeezeeeezeepeeezee
NOT
I swat em like flies but
Like flies the burgers
Keep coming back
NOT
Maybe not
"All hail to the thief"
"But I am not!"
"Don't question my authority
or put me in the dock"
Cozimnot!
Go & tell the king that
The sky is falling in
When it's not
Maybe not.

(ahh diddums.)

talking heads, er, no radiohead.

God's Song

2006-06-28T20:03:00.000-07:00

Cain slew Abel. Seth knew not why
For if the children of Israel were to multiply
Why must any of the children die?

So he asked the Lord And the Lord said:

"Man means nothing he means less to me
than the lowiliest cactus flower or the humblest yucca tree
he chases round this desert cause he thinks that's where I'll be
that's why I love mankind .

I recoil in horror from the foulness of thee
from the squalor and the filth and the misery
How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me
That's why I love mankind"

The Christians and the Jews were having a jamboree
The Buddhists and the Hindus joined on satellite TV
They picked their four greatest priests
And they began to speak
They said "Lord the plague is on the world Lord no man is free
The temples that we built to you
Have tumbled into the sea
Lord, if you won't take care of us
Won't you please please let us be?"
And the Lord said And the Lord said
"I burn down your cities--how blind you must be
I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we
You must all be crazy to put your faith in me
That's why I love mankind

You really need me!

That's why I love mankind"

Randy Newman

2006-06-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

Erinys

(4 AS)

1. Erinys was a chthonic goddess of wrath, who according to legend was a consort of Poseidon by whom she bore the famous horse Areon. Some speculate that by implication, she may also have been a grim material figure who engendered all horses. She may be equated with a wrathful Demeter who is occasionally given the epithet of Erinys. Erinys appears in the collective form of three Erinys; snake-locks cover their heads, signifying the underworld. In the Iliad they are described as those "who beneath the earth punish dead men, whoever has sworn a false oath." They are the Furies in Roman mythology. A.G.H.

2. Erinyes or Furies (’ErinueV) Role | spirits who exacted vengeance against those who committed specific crimes. Erinyes in Greek Mythology

"The Furies, in Greek Erinyes, or euphemistically Eumenides, were avenging spirits of retributive justice. Their names, when in course of time their number had come to be fixed as three, were Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. Their task was to punish crimes not within the reach of human justice.

Through Aeschylus the tradition developed that after the time when they had intervened in the case of Orestes, their functions no longer covered cases of "guiltiness" free from moral guilt. In spite of their inexorable sternness, they wept when they heard Orpheus implore the deities of the underworld to restore Eurydice to life."

- from Bulfinch's Mythology

The Erinyes were called Furiae in Roman mythology.

2006-06-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.": Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Magrite

2006-06-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

magrite
Originally uploaded by pillowbooker3.

Ze Zing Kalled Luv.
The First Thought.

" Better than mortal flowers,
Thy moon-kissed roses seem: better than love or sleep,
The star-crowned solitude of thine oblivious hours!"

Dowson, Ernest Christopher

Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage,
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

Shakespeare, William

In the still of the night
As I gaze from my window
At the moon in its flight
My thoughts all stray to you

In the still of the night
All the world is in slumber
All the times without number
Darling when I say to you

Do you love me, as I love you
Are you my life to be, my dream come true
Or will this dream of mine fade out of sight
Like the moon growing dim, on the rim of the hill
In the chill, still, of the night

Like the moon growing dim, on the rim of the hill
In the chill, still, of the night

Porter, Cole

2006-06-16T03:22:00.000-07:00

"I've got you under my skin.
I've got you deep in the heart of me.
So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me.
I've got you under my skin.
I'd tried so not to give in.
I said to myself: this affair never will go so well.
But why should I try to resist when, baby, I know so well
I've got you under my skin?

I'd sacrifice anything come what might
For the sake of havin' you near
In spite of a warnin' voice that comes in the night
And repeats, repeats in my ear:
Don't you know, little fool, you never can win?
Use your mentality, wake up to reality.
But each time that I do just the thought of you
Makes me stop before I begin
'Cause I've got you under my skin.

I would sacrifice anything come what might
For the sake of havin' you near
In spite of the warning voice that comes in the night
And repeats - how it yells in my ear:
Don't you know, little fool, you never can win?
Why not use your mentality - step up, wake up to reality?
But each time I do just the thought of you
Makes me stop just before I begin
'Cause I've got you under my skin.
Yes, I've got you under my skin. "

4AS but she knows and JW who does not.

2006-06-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

To/For those who know who they are.

Sine qua non.

Desire’s a funny thing –
Yo! Ho! Ho! Jolly and Green –
Spring fever -
Strangeness and laughter -
Makes of One a Haunter House -
Mad Cap, Bats in the Belfry -
Ramshakled, Manicled. A Poe –
etry of of creaking, old beams and
Rattlin’ ‘n snappin’ bones.
An acre of ache, knock-need is Desire.

Skeleton in no wise -
Key to a door that leads to a void -
In adequate to the need -
The greed -
Desire.

Put meat on everything once bare –
Swells the chest fifteen men heavy –
Yoo! Ho! Ho! Lungs fillng sluggish –
SloMo – moved deeply –
Deep as Davy Jones’ Lock-Her –
A blessing, blessure – wound –
Desire.

Dis Ease – Pleuracy of Passion –
Yearning anticipation of he or she
Without whom?

Nothing –

But desire.

2006-06-12T08:46:00.000-07:00

Things said by Gaston Blanchard, and others, that are worth repeating:

1. A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.

2. A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

3. Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event.

4. Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

5. Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

6. If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

7. Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

8. Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

9. One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.

10. Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.

10a. "We should remember that even speculative thought is less rigidly disciplined than any other from. Speculation -- as the etymology of the word of the word shows -- is an intuitive, an almost visionary, mode of apprehension. This does not mean, of course, that is is mere irresponsible meandering of the mind, which ignores reality or seeks to escape from its problems. Speculative thought transcends experience, but only because it attempts to explain, to unify, to order experience. It achieves its ends by means of hypotheses. If we use the word in its original sense, then we may say that speculative thought attempts to underpin the chaos of experience so that it may reveal the feature of a structure -- order, coherence and meaning." H. Frankfort and H.A. Frankfort.

11. The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.

12. The words of the world want to make sentences.

13. There is no original truth, only original error.

14. To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.

----------

"La lune, qui est le caprice, même, regarda par le fenêtre pendant que tu dormais dans ton berceau, et se dit:"Cette enfant me plaît."

..."Tu subiras éternellement l'influence de mon baiser. Tu seras belle à ma maniére. Tu aimeras ce que j'aime et ce qui m'aime: l'eau, les nuages, le silence et la nuit; la mer immense et verte, l'eau informe et multiforme; le lieu où ils ne sont pas, la femme qu'ils ne connaissent pas, les fleurs sinistres qui resemblent aux encensiors d'une religion inconnue, les parfums qui troublent la volonté, et les aninaux sauvages et voluptueux qui sont les emblèmes de leur folie."

C'est pour cela, maudite chère enfant gâtèe, que je suis maintenant couché à tes pieds, cherchant dans toute ta personne le reflet de la redoutable Divinité, de fatadique maraine, de la nourrice empoisonneuse de tous les 'lunatiques.'

C. Baudelaire. Le Spleen de Paris.

2006-06-06T01:24:00.000-07:00

What do you think Ovid might say?

"I can't give you anything but love, baby

That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby

Dream a while scheme a while

We're sure to find

Happiness and I guess

All those things you've always pined for

Gee, I'd like to see you looking swell, baby

Diamond bracelets Woolworth doesn't sell, baby

Till that lucky dayYou know darned well, baby

I can't give you anything but love."

2&4AS

2006-05-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

Yellow bird,Up high in banana tree,
Yellow bird,You sit all alone like me
Did your lady frien',
Leave de nest again?
Dat is very sad,
Make me feel so bad,
You can fly away,
In the sky away,
You're more lucky dan me.

Yellow bird,
Up high in banana tree,
Yellow bird,
You sit all alone like me
I also have a pretty gal,
She not with me today,
Dey all de same
De pretty gal,
Make dem de nest,
Den dey fly away.
Yellow bird,
Up high in banana tree,
Yellow bird,
You sit all alone like me
Wish dat I were a yellow bird,
I fly away wid you,
But I am not a yellow bird,
So here I sit,Nothin' else to do.

Yellow bird,
Up high in banana tree,
Yellow bird,
You sit all alone like me
Let her fly away,
On de sky away,
Picker coming soon,
Pick from night to noon,
Black and yellow you,
Like banana too,
He might pick you someday.

Yellow bird,
Up high in banana tree,
Yellow bird,
You sit all alone like me.

2006-03-08T01:54:00.000-08:00

Hunger & Trade:

"One can endure everything except hunger. If I were a man, maybe I would have committed murder to fill my stomach. But as a woman, I became a prostitute."

Author:“Manju” (b. c. 1973), Nepalese prostitute; relocated to India. As quoted in Time magazine, p. 51 (June 21, 1993). She had been forced into prostitution at age thirteen.

2006-02-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900): a philosopher whose ideas I cannot always accept, but whose beautiful prose I can rarely resist.

"What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins."

or

"Almost everything we call 'higher culture' is based on the spiritualization of cruelty, on its becoming more profound: this is my proposition. That 'savage animal' has not really been “mortified”; it lives and flourishes, it has merely become—divine. What constitutes the painful voluptuousness of tragedy is cruelty; what seems agreeable in so-called tragic pity, and at bottom in everything sublime, up to the highest and most delicate shudders of metaphysics, receives its sweetness solely from the admixture of cruelty. What the Roman in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of the cross, the Spaniard at an auto-da-fe or bullfight, the Japanese of today when he flocks to tragedies, the laborer in a Parisian suburb who feels a nostalgia for bloody revolutions, the Wagnerienne who “submits to” Tristan and Isolde, her will suspended—what all of them enjoy and seek to drink in with mysterious ardor are the spicy potions of the great Circe, 'cruelty.' "

Corset

2006-02-16T04:31:00.000-08:00

corst214
Originally uploaded by pillowbooker3.

Ze Zing Kalled Luv:
The Second Thought:

My breast waited
shy as a clam
until you came,
Mr. Firecracker,
Mr. Panzer-man.
You with your pogo stick ...

Sexton, Anne

"Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well."

from 'Lady Lazarus,' by Sylvia Plath

2006-02-16T03:26:00.000-08:00

Three Texts.

Two from pjharvey -- for me the most vibrant and switched in and switched on (woman) musicians on the planet -- that have to do with/reflect our ambivalence and fragmentation, at this moment in out journey, about one another. About 'What iz zis zing kalled luv?'

(The emphasis in various colours is my own, not that of the authors.)

The first Rid of Me (pjharvey)

Tie yourself
To me
No-one else
You're not rid of me
Night and day
I breathe
Ha ha hey
You're not rid of me

I beg you
My darling
Don't leave me
I'm hurting

Lick my legs I'm on fire
Lick my lips I'm desire
I'll tie your legs
Keep you against my chest
No you're not rid of me
I'll make you lick my injuries
I'll twist your head off, say

'Till you say don't you wish you never met her

I beg you
My darling
Don't leave me
I'm hurting
Big lonely
Above everything
Above everyday
I'm hurting

Lick my legs and I'm on fire
Lick my lips and I'm desire

No you're not rid of me
I'll make you lick my injuries
Twist you head off-say

'Till you say don't you wish you never met her

I had the honour of hearing pjh perform this song with others some years ago in Montreux. It was one of the most stunning and moving musical momants of a life rich with such moments. To my mind, this song evokes an entire novel. One I've lived.

The second song is Harvey's more recent 'Shame.'

I don't need no rising moon
I don't need no ball and chain
I don't need anything with you
Such a shame, shame, shame

Shame, shame, shame - shame is the shadow of love

You changed my life
We were as green as grass
And I was hypnotized
From the first 'til the last, kiss of

Shame, shame, shame - shame is the shadow of love

I'd jump for you into the fire
I'd jump for you into the flame
Tried to go forward with my life
I just feel shame, shame, shame

Shame, shame, shame - shame is the shadow of love

And if you tell a lie
I still would take the blame
If you pass me by
It's such a shame, shame, shame.

Here, again is a novel in minamalist miniature. The accompanying video, available at itunes,
is a great work of, dare I say it, genius.

Finally, a song, entitled 'Woman,' by another woman artist for whom I have enormous respect, Susheela Raman:

Woman, where's your dignity?
How can you lie there while the lover destroys you?
He dosen't know your worth
But you bear your burden and make it yours
Why do you cry?
Woman, don't be tortured by a madman
You've got to get out?
The prison door is open
Woman, why do you rest here?
Is your love an ignorant sacrifice?
Roles you learned to play
Consspire against you and hold you down
Why don't you fight?
Um Krim Kali e Nema, Um Krim Kali e Nema,
Um Krim Kali e Nema, Um Krim Kali e Nema, ...

ps. Don't mess with Kali whatever you do!