Tuesday 30 April 2013
Monday 29 April 2013
Saturday 27 April 2013
Aphrodite Betrayed
A lover's wish
Is deafened in the siren song
between those rusting pillars
and through that burning door
lie contours of a former frame
the blithely innocent
and the lame.
Sedimental ripples
that wash the wading few
calm like an ancient welcome
on cold oblivious sands
'experience comes with age'
sighs the disillusioned sage.
One heirroglyphic handshake
and a time honoured pact is sealed
gentle aphrodite, bathes in bitter streams,
and marble shoulders strain on lovers reins
your avuncular call
a virtous cliche
no longer reposed
in the alcove
in the hall.
Stephen O'Toole
1985
Is deafened in the siren song
between those rusting pillars
and through that burning door
lie contours of a former frame
the blithely innocent
and the lame.
Sedimental ripples
that wash the wading few
calm like an ancient welcome
on cold oblivious sands
'experience comes with age'
sighs the disillusioned sage.
One heirroglyphic handshake
and a time honoured pact is sealed
gentle aphrodite, bathes in bitter streams,
and marble shoulders strain on lovers reins
your avuncular call
a virtous cliche
no longer reposed
in the alcove
in the hall.
Stephen O'Toole
1985
She walked arm in arm with the peacock
She was eccentirc, erudite, eloquent and completely her own person. She also wrote beautiful
haunting poetry. There is an honest integrity and a pensiveness that I love about her too.A great woman.
Wednesday 24 April 2013
Autophobia
I am a freak. In so many ways. Let me choose one.
One of the most striking to me is the fact that I have ever, not even for a second wanted..
...to own a car..!!
That automatically makes me a freak in the eyes of most people in this Society.
I half heartedly took some driving lessons. I probably will again. Its good to know how to drive isnt it? Apparently. Though I feel this is someone else's logic and not really mine, at work.
The whole culture of cars repels me to be honest. I love the aesthetics of the vintage cars (anyhting pre 1980 really) but it is really just that. An aesthetic appreciation, the way I would look at a sculpture or a tree or an antique chair.
The entire 'rite of passage' distortion..sorry..period in our teens, with learning to drive passed me by. I was oblivious.
Where was I? What the hell could I have been thinking?
As I recall I was writing and painting and living with great intensity at the time, this just seemed a lot more important to me. life was full of things, Important things I urgently needed to do.
Having sex. Taking drugs. Travelling round Europe. writing. painting. Talking to interesting people.
Hours spent tediously fusing myself to machine. For what?
I think it was just another one of those collective conventions that I thought about and just rejected as mindless.
Driving just seemed so damn boring and nullifying to me. Stepping into some commodfied zone of sterile onanistic gratification.The pleasure derived is purely selfish but viscerally powerful because cars connect with the Id.
Therefore the pleasure has nothing to do with sharing.
The other profanity is that iam just not impressed in any way by cars and the apparent kudos they bestow. I find it infantile and absurd that some obscenely overpriced machine apparently symbolises some aspect of your character. It bores me to tears and I just feel a real melancholy at the way humans struggle to use commodities to reinforce their identities.
Are they so fragile? so lacking in any real meaning in their lives?
I know that sounds condescending but I really do mean it.
It horrifies me the way the world is slowly becoming tarmacked and colonised with cars. All this four wheeled poisonous ugly junk cluttering up the streets, which now seemingly belong to the automobile and not the human. And we seem to blindly accept that it is just 'the way it is'
On the radio today I hear annoyed presenters talking about 'bolshy' pedestrians trying to 'front it out'with cars and being vilified for their 'reckless behaviour'..
Isnt this a horrible perverse warping of the truth..? human beings own the streets not cars and the andromobiles that drive them. So excuse me if we bipeds seem belligerent but yes..you will have to slow down when Im crossing the road because its my ground and my space and no im not going to run across the road because you are in a big (usually ugly and tacky) car..
I seriously think motorists, not all, but many, develop a nasty insular arrogance that frankly makes me sick. When people start talking about cars as if they are extensions of themselves, in phallic term s or otherwise, I switch off, my eyes glaze over, I start looking for the door. or someone who has something to actually say..
Being a car owner, for me is acceptable, but being a car lover is a signifier that you and I are from different tribes. Perhaps different worlds.
And the wold I live in is seriously under growing ecological, social and psychological threat from the people who just have to own three cars and drive them to the local shops and back.
I know that some people need to have a car. But for most it is a choice, a choice that has not really been examined, and the social and ecological ramifications not thought through.
We are constantly bombared with the image of The Car. It is almost inescapable. It colonises our consciousness. And it seems in the developing countries the same advertising indoctrination has begun in earnest.
Motorists, I hope we can find common ground. I know cars are not going to go away, not whilst there is enormous money to be made out of them and the petrol they consume, and the people that buy them.
I do hope we can talk. Hopefully about the world beyond your wing mirror.
I am hopeful that you have not all been brain washed.
One of the most striking to me is the fact that I have ever, not even for a second wanted..
...to own a car..!!
That automatically makes me a freak in the eyes of most people in this Society.
I half heartedly took some driving lessons. I probably will again. Its good to know how to drive isnt it? Apparently. Though I feel this is someone else's logic and not really mine, at work.
The whole culture of cars repels me to be honest. I love the aesthetics of the vintage cars (anyhting pre 1980 really) but it is really just that. An aesthetic appreciation, the way I would look at a sculpture or a tree or an antique chair.
The entire 'rite of passage' distortion..sorry..period in our teens, with learning to drive passed me by. I was oblivious.
Where was I? What the hell could I have been thinking?
As I recall I was writing and painting and living with great intensity at the time, this just seemed a lot more important to me. life was full of things, Important things I urgently needed to do.
Having sex. Taking drugs. Travelling round Europe. writing. painting. Talking to interesting people.
Hours spent tediously fusing myself to machine. For what?
I think it was just another one of those collective conventions that I thought about and just rejected as mindless.
Driving just seemed so damn boring and nullifying to me. Stepping into some commodfied zone of sterile onanistic gratification.The pleasure derived is purely selfish but viscerally powerful because cars connect with the Id.
Therefore the pleasure has nothing to do with sharing.
The other profanity is that iam just not impressed in any way by cars and the apparent kudos they bestow. I find it infantile and absurd that some obscenely overpriced machine apparently symbolises some aspect of your character. It bores me to tears and I just feel a real melancholy at the way humans struggle to use commodities to reinforce their identities.
Are they so fragile? so lacking in any real meaning in their lives?
I know that sounds condescending but I really do mean it.
It horrifies me the way the world is slowly becoming tarmacked and colonised with cars. All this four wheeled poisonous ugly junk cluttering up the streets, which now seemingly belong to the automobile and not the human. And we seem to blindly accept that it is just 'the way it is'
On the radio today I hear annoyed presenters talking about 'bolshy' pedestrians trying to 'front it out'with cars and being vilified for their 'reckless behaviour'..
Isnt this a horrible perverse warping of the truth..? human beings own the streets not cars and the andromobiles that drive them. So excuse me if we bipeds seem belligerent but yes..you will have to slow down when Im crossing the road because its my ground and my space and no im not going to run across the road because you are in a big (usually ugly and tacky) car..
I seriously think motorists, not all, but many, develop a nasty insular arrogance that frankly makes me sick. When people start talking about cars as if they are extensions of themselves, in phallic term s or otherwise, I switch off, my eyes glaze over, I start looking for the door. or someone who has something to actually say..
Being a car owner, for me is acceptable, but being a car lover is a signifier that you and I are from different tribes. Perhaps different worlds.
And the wold I live in is seriously under growing ecological, social and psychological threat from the people who just have to own three cars and drive them to the local shops and back.
I know that some people need to have a car. But for most it is a choice, a choice that has not really been examined, and the social and ecological ramifications not thought through.
We are constantly bombared with the image of The Car. It is almost inescapable. It colonises our consciousness. And it seems in the developing countries the same advertising indoctrination has begun in earnest.
Motorists, I hope we can find common ground. I know cars are not going to go away, not whilst there is enormous money to be made out of them and the petrol they consume, and the people that buy them.
I do hope we can talk. Hopefully about the world beyond your wing mirror.
I am hopeful that you have not all been brain washed.
Monday 22 April 2013
Glass Vessels
In the kingdom of the fading apparition
"The Ghost's Leavetaking", By Sylvia Plath
Enter the chilly no-man's land of precisely
Five o'clock in the morning, the no-color void
Where the waking head rubbishes out the draggled lot
Of sulfurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums
Which seemed, when dreamed, to mean so profoundly much,
Gets ready to face the ready-made creation
Of chairs and bureaus and sleep-twisted sheets.
This is the kingdom of the fading apparition,
The oracular ghost who dwindles on pin-legs
To a knot of laundry, with a classic bunch of sheets
Upraised, as a hand, emblematic of farewell.
At this joint between two worlds and two entirely
Incompatible modes of time, the raw material
Of our meat-and-potato thoughts assumes the nimbus
Of ambrosial revelation. And so departs.
But as chair and bureau are the hieroglyphs
Of some godly utterance wakened heads ignore:
So these posed sheets, before they thin to nothing,
Speak in sign language of a lost otherworld,
A world we lose by merely waking up into sanity.
Trailing its telltale tatters only at the outermost
Fringe of mundane vision, but this ghost goes
Hand aloft, goodbye, goodbye, not down
Into the rocky gizzard of the earth,
But toward the region where our thick atmosphere
Diminishes, and God knows what is there.
A point of exclamation marks that sky
In ringing orange like a stellar carrot.
Its round period, displaced and green,
Suspends beside it the first point, the starting
Point of Eden, next the new moon's curve.
Go, ghost of our mother and father, ghost of us,
And ghost of our dreams' children, in those sheets
Which signify our origin and end,
To the cloud-cuckoo land of color wheels
And pristine alphabets and cows that moo
And moo as they jump over moons as new
As that crisp cusp towards which you voyage now.
Hail and farewell. Hello, goodbye. O keeper
Of the profane grail, the dreaming skull.
Homocelt
Celteroticism: Male-to-Male Relationships Believed A Norm Amongst The Celts ~
Historical accounts state the ancient Celts are believed to have fought their battles naked, a notion that holds a certain erotic allure for many. What may not be widely known, mostly because of editing and revisionist history, is that it many historians have concluded that it was not uncommon in Celtic culture for the men to have sex with each other, even preferentially so. Some speculation suggests that life for Celtic warriors could have been a veritable hot-bed of male to male sex for pleasure - and to think people of the modern times have been worried about gays in the military! The Celts were known as some of the fiercest fighters in history strongly suggesting that there was nothing compromised about them.
Some critics say that the modern Irish as descendents of the Celts, had Christianity and its traditionally homophobic ethos forced upon them. Behind all the seemingly cultural anti-gay context that gets talked about around St. Patrick’s Day because some organizers haven’t allowed GLBT groups to march in the day’s celebratory parades (in the USA), is a history of a people who seem to have had a very active natural pleasure ethic and libido. They seem to have seen no problem with same-sex pleasure, affection or love.
The relationship between gender-variance, homeroticism, magic and mystery traditions has been, until fairly recently, a taboo subject for occultists, religionists and academics all. Over the last decade or so, interest in Celtic traditions has grown and has been romanticised to the point that it has spurred some to investigate the aspects of the culture which have been omitted by revisionists.
One offering of information is from Diodorus Siculus in 1 BCE who wrote “Although they have good-looking women, they pay very little attention to them, but are really crazy about having sex with men. They are accustomed to sleeping on the ground on animal skins and roll around naked with male bed-mates on both sides. Heedless of their own dignity, they abandon without qualm the bloom of their bodies to others. And the most incredible thing is that they do not find this shameful. When they proposition someone, they consider it dishonourable if he doesn’t accept the offer!”
From this piece and other information about gender variance amongst the Celts that is available, it seems same-sex relations between warriors were not unknown or for that matter, at all uncommon. There is evidence of homosexuality in Celtic warrior bands which were known as ‘Bleiden’ or ‘Wolf’. What is significant is that, despite similarities (such as shape-shifting & wilderness initiation rituals) there was a marked difference between Greek and Celtic homoeroticism in that unlike the Greeks, the Celts did not consider it shameful that males elected to take the so-called ‘passive’ role.
Three areas where evidence is found for gender-variance and homoeroticism include; hints on same-sex relationships in the life of Cuchullain, the story of the Men of Ulster and the myth of Gwydion and Gilvaethy.
While there are no sweeping statements promoting what today is termed homosexuality in ancient Celtic lore, there are multiple accounts from external observers who commented on the widespread practice of same gender sexuality among the Gaulish Celts. The Greek philosopher Posidonius, who traveled into Gaul to investigate the truth of the stories told about the Celtic tribes, put it rather bluntly: “The Gaulish men prefer to have sex with each other.” This is supported by some Aristotelian commentaries as well.
As far as we know, the ancient Celts had no laws or known prohibitions against homosexual behavior. To the contrary, there are tales and histories in which homosexuality is mentioned in a rather matter-of-fact way, as well as many other accounts which, while containing no explicit mention of any character’s sexual orientation, celebrate deep affectionate and even physical bonds between persons of the same gender. As Diodorus Siculus noted, often Roman and Greek accounts mention Celtic warriors who were deeply insulted if their offers of male-to-male sex were refused.
Celtic mythology is riddled with deities who do not fit neatly into rigid, stereotypical gender roles. There are Goddesses of war and battle and Gods of love and poetry. There is also a tradition of male praise-poets who wrote about the kings they served as a lover writes of their beloved. Many historical commentaries on warriors and monastics speak of devoted companions who shared a bed and often the love between these companions is celebrated in poetry and songs.
While some scholars believe that “gay identity” is a modern construct and may only exist in reaction to oppression or contemporary social aspects, there is indeed evidence that homosexuality and bisexuality have always existed and appeared most certainly a part of Celtic culture…
Historical accounts state the ancient Celts are believed to have fought their battles naked, a notion that holds a certain erotic allure for many. What may not be widely known, mostly because of editing and revisionist history, is that it many historians have concluded that it was not uncommon in Celtic culture for the men to have sex with each other, even preferentially so. Some speculation suggests that life for Celtic warriors could have been a veritable hot-bed of male to male sex for pleasure - and to think people of the modern times have been worried about gays in the military! The Celts were known as some of the fiercest fighters in history strongly suggesting that there was nothing compromised about them.
Some critics say that the modern Irish as descendents of the Celts, had Christianity and its traditionally homophobic ethos forced upon them. Behind all the seemingly cultural anti-gay context that gets talked about around St. Patrick’s Day because some organizers haven’t allowed GLBT groups to march in the day’s celebratory parades (in the USA), is a history of a people who seem to have had a very active natural pleasure ethic and libido. They seem to have seen no problem with same-sex pleasure, affection or love.
The relationship between gender-variance, homeroticism, magic and mystery traditions has been, until fairly recently, a taboo subject for occultists, religionists and academics all. Over the last decade or so, interest in Celtic traditions has grown and has been romanticised to the point that it has spurred some to investigate the aspects of the culture which have been omitted by revisionists.
One offering of information is from Diodorus Siculus in 1 BCE who wrote “Although they have good-looking women, they pay very little attention to them, but are really crazy about having sex with men. They are accustomed to sleeping on the ground on animal skins and roll around naked with male bed-mates on both sides. Heedless of their own dignity, they abandon without qualm the bloom of their bodies to others. And the most incredible thing is that they do not find this shameful. When they proposition someone, they consider it dishonourable if he doesn’t accept the offer!”
From this piece and other information about gender variance amongst the Celts that is available, it seems same-sex relations between warriors were not unknown or for that matter, at all uncommon. There is evidence of homosexuality in Celtic warrior bands which were known as ‘Bleiden’ or ‘Wolf’. What is significant is that, despite similarities (such as shape-shifting & wilderness initiation rituals) there was a marked difference between Greek and Celtic homoeroticism in that unlike the Greeks, the Celts did not consider it shameful that males elected to take the so-called ‘passive’ role.
Three areas where evidence is found for gender-variance and homoeroticism include; hints on same-sex relationships in the life of Cuchullain, the story of the Men of Ulster and the myth of Gwydion and Gilvaethy.
While there are no sweeping statements promoting what today is termed homosexuality in ancient Celtic lore, there are multiple accounts from external observers who commented on the widespread practice of same gender sexuality among the Gaulish Celts. The Greek philosopher Posidonius, who traveled into Gaul to investigate the truth of the stories told about the Celtic tribes, put it rather bluntly: “The Gaulish men prefer to have sex with each other.” This is supported by some Aristotelian commentaries as well.
As far as we know, the ancient Celts had no laws or known prohibitions against homosexual behavior. To the contrary, there are tales and histories in which homosexuality is mentioned in a rather matter-of-fact way, as well as many other accounts which, while containing no explicit mention of any character’s sexual orientation, celebrate deep affectionate and even physical bonds between persons of the same gender. As Diodorus Siculus noted, often Roman and Greek accounts mention Celtic warriors who were deeply insulted if their offers of male-to-male sex were refused.
Celtic mythology is riddled with deities who do not fit neatly into rigid, stereotypical gender roles. There are Goddesses of war and battle and Gods of love and poetry. There is also a tradition of male praise-poets who wrote about the kings they served as a lover writes of their beloved. Many historical commentaries on warriors and monastics speak of devoted companions who shared a bed and often the love between these companions is celebrated in poetry and songs.
While some scholars believe that “gay identity” is a modern construct and may only exist in reaction to oppression or contemporary social aspects, there is indeed evidence that homosexuality and bisexuality have always existed and appeared most certainly a part of Celtic culture…
Sunday 21 April 2013
Saturday 20 April 2013
Friday 19 April 2013
Satie Nocturne No.2
A french drawing room at the turn of the century, perhaps 1910
Heavy rain is falling. lamps are being lit. A woman sits, lost in a deep chair
gazing out through the window at a silent garden
slowly fading, darkening, in the rain soaked Twilight.
Thursday 18 April 2013
Tuesday 16 April 2013
Resonance 104.4fm
Possibly the best indepndent radio station in London maybe even the uk. I am a regular listener.
Fantastic place for hearing voices and music and minds outside of the commercial circus.
http://resonancefm.com/
Fantastic place for hearing voices and music and minds outside of the commercial circus.
http://resonancefm.com/
The book of barely imagined beings
I heard an extensive interview with this guy today and he was fascinating. This is a review of his book.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/25/book-barely-imagined-beings-caspar-henderson-review
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/25/book-barely-imagined-beings-caspar-henderson-review
Monday 15 April 2013
.JPG)
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