Howl - Allen Ginsberg and The Job William S Burroughs

 Apologies, this blog is a bit out of sync with the lectures but will get the previous one up tomorrow.

……bit worried this is going to be a hard entry to write, but let’s give it a go.

Howl. Now that was intense, and the flowery language caused the elderly lady sitting next to me on the tube nosing at what I was reading to raise an eyebrow!

Written in 1955, Ginsberg wrote the poem amidst a culture of the ‘Beat Generation’ involving experimental sex, mind altering drugs and all manners of alternative means of expression.

Howl really fucked with my head on first reading, but that came as no massive surprise, as I come from more liberal but still fairly conservative generation and after being heavily involved with the piece at the start I found myself wandering away toward the end (I suspect a heavy dose of whatever Ginsberg was taking may just have cured that).

By no means subtle, ‘Howl’ shouts in the face of the commercialised and industrialised ‘machine’ and Ginsberg doesn’t pull any punches. Despite being shocked by the poem, a lot of the references such as homosexuality are embraced far more today than in 1955. At the time this must have hit the listeners like an atomic bomb and in fact, the sellers of the book were charged with ‘disseminating obscene literature’ in 1957.

The poem is a clear and blatant dismissal of the status quo and a direct challenge on the ‘corporate machine’ in the fifties. As I touched on earlier, our generation, despite seemingly giving off a façade of being more liberal is in fact one that has been or is being consumed by the machine that Ginsberg is addressing. In the fifties and sixties, the experimentation of mind expanding drugs was there to help free ourselves but now anyone willing to take the step up to protest has to do so in a clear state of being. Whilst I’m not encouraging the use of LSD, maybe we should engage in the more endearing aspects found in the ‘Beat Generation’ and use it to form an ‘LSD mentality.

This brings me neatly onto William S. Burroughs and the Job. Addicted to drugs, Burroughs was another prominent figure of the ‘Beat Generation’ who spoke out against the ‘machine’ through his work.

‘My basic theory is that the written word was actually a virus that made the spoken word possible.’

The focus point that I took from the job was Burroughs’ referral to the ‘machine’ and the control it has particularly through the use of the written word. At that time advertising was blossoming, with the use of media such as radio and more importantly billboards and television. It is an involuntary action to consume whatever we see, especially as we drive past the ten metre high billboard proclaiming that we buy a particular product. Everywhere we look we are not asked or encouraged but TOLD to do things. Eventually, corporate giants and governments have systematically spoon fed us enough that we find ourselves following this mass existence. 

You’re born, you must go to school, you must go to University, you must work a 9-5 job, you will get married, you will have 2.4 children, watch the X Factor on a Saturday night, retire when we say and die.

Okay, so I’ve been a little bleak here, but I feel this is what Burroughs is getting at, and it’s a view I share. Although, I can’t help feel that his views come across as a little too intense and reading it conjured up the image of Bart Simpson sitting in his bedroom in a tin foil hat so Major League Baseball are unable to track his habits.

I think the crisis we are suffering at the moment, could perhaps be a start of a new era of revolutionary thinkers. In the eighties and nineties we fell into the machine but after being lied to for twenty years I think people have finally had enough. The majority generally conform because it’s easy, but let’s hope that in this generation there is a Ginsberg or a group like Archigram among us who can help get us thinking again.

Marshall Berman – All that is Solid Melts into Air

Good, Evil and the Tragedy of Development

Part of Berman’s text explores the story of Goethe’s Faust and the ‘Tragedy of Development’ and its links to modern society and culture. Reading it ignited thoughts and feelings that I didn’t realise were even bloody there!

Although I was familiar with the story of Faust and its underlying plotline I didn’t necessarily have a tremendous understanding of it. I think it’s important that I give a brief synopsis before continuing with this entry.

Taking almost his entire life to write (the completion year being the year of his death) Goethe’s Faust tells story of a young Doctor (Faust) who strives to know and experience everything that one possibly can. Considered one of ‘God’s favourites,’ the devil (Mephistopheles) makes a wager that he can turn Faust to lay down his righteous pursuits and make a pact with the devil in return for everything he has ever desired. Faust makes the deal, under a condition that as soon as he declares that he is ultimately happy and contented with everything he has and has achieved, Mephistopheles will carry his soul down to hell. Despite grand visions and warnings from Mephistopheles that in creating these visions people may be dragged down along the way, Faust achieves virtually nothing and is ultimately forever damned.

There is a Faust in me and a Faust in you. Now, of course I’m not saying that we’d all be so easily corrupted by the devil, but Faust’s visionary desire to succeed and achieve something in life is one that we all nurture somewhere inside. After all, if we didn’t, our very reason for living would only be to exist (and with the gift of conscious thought, this, in my view is almost criminal). 

In this chapter, Berman dives into this desire and shows us how we all have this perceived want or need for something and yet, when we finally get hold of it we lose interest, and go in search of yet more. In the story of Faust this is reflected in Faust’s pursuit of Gretchen. Once together, Gretchen attempts to better herself and changes her life to narrow what she believes to be an ever widening gap between the two of them. Fairly soon, Faust tires of Gretchen and she is cast aside into a social wilderness, (ultimately being saved by God) while Faust moves on in pursuit of a new dream and a ‘vision for humanity.’

The ‘tragedy of development’ that Faust experiences, is one that starts off with a vision. In modern society, visions fly about all over the place, while most have good intentions and are often admirable ideas, once they begin to get rolling they can become victims of their own success.

Berman refers to desperate development and the way we strive to be better in capitalist society, citing the rapid development across California asking ‘just how many orange groves are still left in Orange County.’ Just as when Faust orders Mephistopheles to ‘get rid’ of the elderly couple (the very essence of the old ways) so his vision for humanity can continue to grow. Only after, when he looks back and finally sees that he has been blinded by his own vision does he realise the extent of what he has done.

We are all guilty of it. Even on the smallest scale. The perceived need for what somebody else has or what you could possibly have often blinds us from seeing the damage that is left in our very pursuit. Is this not what got us into the financial situation we are in today. Corporations and multi nationals respond to our wants and our needs and in turn the banks (Mephistopheles/the devil) fund them.

Often we cast off the old, and it is only when our grand vision of the world is collapsing around our ears that we stand back, take off our visionary blindfold and realise just what we’ve done.

Terry Eagleton - After Theory

‘Capitalism needs a person who has never yet existed – one who is prudently restrained in the office and wildly anarchic in the shopping mall.’

I’ll be honest, I didn’t finish the whole book and the words above were the last I read up until this point. I felt it was an interesting sentence to leave it on due to its seeming link to my last blog where we discussed cities of excess where the constrained capitalist world go to escape. Maybe these people do exist, and maybe capitalism creates its own consumer?

Anyway, from the first quarter of the book I read, ‘After Theory’ reflects on the state of cultural theory today after the days of the great theorists of our time.  Eagleton talks about how the very subject matter on all levels has been ‘trivialised’ and today all it boils down to is sex, drugs, rock n roll and pop culture.

The great cultural theorists and theories of our time were perhaps so truly ground breaking and influential that they have been re-hashed over and over again to the point of no return.  Some would say that Eagleton is just an ‘old fart’ and not open to any of these new ideas in modern western culture but it seems to me that originality and creativity in a lot of work now comes down to the theological reasoning behind why Lady Gaga wearing a dress made of raw meat is so fundamentally ground breaking in modern society (Seriously, I’ve read this!) I mean, give me a break.

I think we’ve certainly lost site of the importance of theory today and I think it’s largely down to our dependence on celebrity culture (just look and the ratings figures for X Factor and Newsnight for a start).  I was asked (actually, told) to turn the news over once so an unnamed individual could watch the X Factor. When I kindly replied, ‘no’ I was greeted with ‘But who cares what’s happening somewhere halfway across the world?!’ I digress slightly here, but my point is that the general ‘masses’ nowadays don’t seem to give a shit about things that are ‘really’ going on, they need an escape and will go to any lengths to get it. Even if this means twisting theory so that it becomes the ‘unreal’ or the ‘escape,’ and their social life can become the very subject of study.

I’ll certainly continue to read this book. Eagleton’s style of writing is one that I can fall into easily, and his use of simile to allow the reader to grasp a fairly intense subject area is a good one.  

Looking back perhaps Eagleton is slightly hypocritical? He talks and preaches about the re use and distortion of the old theories, but has managed to write an entire book about theories of old and how good they really were. He introduces nothing that new to the area.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe new theorists can only be spawned out of the age they  live in. The great theorists of old came from the back drop of revolutionary times of communism, Marxism, socialism etc.  Maybe the back drop now is ‘gagarism.’

God I hope not….

Vegas & Dubai: Lets take a look through the lens...

‘A Home in the Neon’ from Air Guitar by Dave Hickey &

‘Sand, Fear and Money in Dubai’ from Dreamworlds of Neo-Liberalism – Evil Paradises by Mike    Davis

I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting Dubai or Vegas, and I don’t have any immediate intention of visiting either. Las Vegas just isn’t my thing really, and seems relatively honest about its misgivings and everything Dubai seems to stand for and represent I can’t stand, honestly the audacity of the place makes me want to scream in the face of anyone who openly tangles themselves up in its web of deceit…sorry, I should stop there, the place really does make my blood boil.

Both these pieces of text voice very differing views of the respective city they write about.

Dave Hickey’s warm and jovial piece about the Vegas he has come to know as home portrays a misunderstood world that, despite its flaws has a beauty in its honesty. Mike Davis’ piece on Dubai paints a brutal truth about a city born without constraints that seems to be growing out of control (the Hunter S. Thompson reference in the title made me chuckle, although the style of writing bears little resemblance).

The important thing to point out here is that these are all just the writers views…they have their own agendas…I have mine…but let’s see what we can get out of this?

The way money is treated in the two cities is really quite different. Dave Hickey talks about money in Vegas all being the same, I like the analogy that when the chips are down everyone has the same odds. He highlights that this makes the city fundamentally more ‘fair’ than the rest of the country and even life. A card game has a guaranteed chance of a win.

On the flipside, money and status in Dubai is EVERYTHING. The gap between rich and poor is obscene, and despite all efforts to sweep it under the carpet it’s obvious. This dis-honesty is in a stark contrast to the way Hickey describes Vegas. Sure it is the city of sin, but we know that, they know that and they don’t hide it for a second. Perhaps there is merit in this?

Hickey describes Vegas as a lens to view the rest of America. This is what we are like when we are taken out of the constraints of everyday life, ‘what is hidden elsewhere exists here.’ Unfortunately, I fear that Dubai is a lens of rather more large proportions giving us an insight into the capitalistic nature of the world we live in today, and that scares me more than anything.

Just one last point, which I’m ashamed to say, has almost slipped my mind. That question of sustainability (I can see you reading this and yawning already).

A SKI SLOPE IN THE DESERT FOR GODSAKE?!

It’s as ludicrous as it sounds. Vegas is a city of an age of ignorance so I suppose it can somewhat be forgiven, but Dubai seems to be the future (unfortunately), it’s unusual that Davis has missed a topic which blows the city built on oil out of the water every time? (and no, Masdar DOESN’T count!)

Maybe I should visit these cities enjoy them a bit and judge for myself.

Vegas? Yeah maybe (post student debt years!)

Dubai, well, the odds just don’t look that good to me …

Alain Badiou – ‘The Communist Hypothesis’ This crisis is the spectacle where is the real?

‘The earth is dying and we do not notice it’

Sounds like a climate change quote, but it was scrawled across the download of the ‘Communist Hypothesis’ extract I was reading.

To summarise it, this engaging text is about the financial crisis we are currently experiencing and the detachment that ‘the masses’ have with it. Alain Badiou (a writer born very much in a revolutionary time) puts forward to us a new approach and ideology on the matter, that perhaps we should not sit back and watch as the world crumbles around our ears, but instead do anything but nothing!

Badiou describes the ‘crisis’ like a film, where the politicians are the stars and we watch on, completely removed. In the same way that I couldn’t imagine what it would be like being chased by zombies in a horror movie, we are unable to fathom the debt figures: ‘just what does  400 billion euros look like?’

Usually we go to the movies as an escape from reality, there is a crisis in the movies and we often see a happy ending or know that we can get up and resume normality at the end. However, Badiou highlights that we may not want to, but we are heavily involved and despite the protests against the system, it is after all a system we are inadvertently operating within.

‘The collapse of capitalism? You must be joking. And who wants it to collapse anyway?’

Badiou somewhat hypocritically uses the same fear he protests against to sell us his ideals, but I don’t think this is something that I hold against him. After all, he is not threatening us, and whilst it can be easy to protest something, it is admirable to be able to voice a solution. I am certainly in agreement with his view that the problem can also be shelved with us as well for spending over our means. The real issue is that the ‘characters in the disaster movie’ that have been sent, are not directly affected by the crisis.