Xtra Xtra Lost

Against my better judgement and because I was at a loose end I went last night to 'XXL', a large gay club near London bridge: as I headed there on my bike down the medieval street plan of The City of London I began to wonder what I was doing. My need or desire to go to a club has long since evaporated, since around year 2000 all gay clubs seemd overnight to uniformly cease to play decent music of any kind. But I still get the occasional twinge of curiosity. I think its a hangover from my youth.

I tried  hard to dispel this unease from my mind.
I cant say I was horrified by the club, because I knew partially what to expect, but as i wondered around, I felt incrementally dehumanised by it.

Everything now about gay clubs seems designed to maximise a feeling of alienation. The music was so generic I couldnt even define what it was, so totally neutered was it, so utterly diluted and devoid of any kind of originality or imagination. Music by numbers. I smiled, poe-like in the House of Usher, at the sight of so many bare (bear?) chested men strivng hard to project an image of impervious masculiniity, whilst at the same time dancing unthinkingly to music a 12 year old girl would probably be listening to.

I thought back 15 years to clubs like SHOOM and the FF. wild places for sure, with their own brand of decadence and dysfunction. No doubt. But despite that shadow, you were always guaranteed great music..wild sexy tribal beats, heavy bass laden rhythmns that you could not fight..that held you in a psychdelic state all night long. The music had balls. it was potent. you could go there and lose yourself in music that at least tried to elevate you form the mundane, and into a 'very fine state of mind'. Sure drugs were a part of that world, but it was essentially the music that created the high. One would not have worked wihtout the other.

This kind of music has disappeared form gay clubs now. Great music is the lifeblood of any nightlcub. Drain away that life blood and you ve got a cadaver. And as I dont do drugs anymore, Im slightly oiled with alcohol, but on enetering i realise that I will potentially need a lot more to endure this experience. Either that or leave very early.

Everywhere  I noticed men were just milling around, almost aimlessly, incessantly moving ,as if they needed to be constantly soemehere else. I stood outside of all this watching and mentally making notes.

The truth as I see it is that the mainstream gay scene now, has reached a total nadir.

Where once (70's 80's 90's) it was exciting and dangerous and musically adventurous, even cutting edge, the mainstream gay scene is now, at least here in London in a stagnant dysfunctional limbo, preserved in self regarding aspic; you could begin to see this world as a meth-haze hall of mirrors where the neuroses of individual gay men gets reflected back at them a hundred fold in the frightened eyes of every other male around them.There is scant community, and little comraderie. But there is something else alive and well. Competition.

This manifests as the body display. The male body must be on display in a gay club. To hell with dignity and mystique. the goods must be on show at all times. If you want to score and you are clothed.. forget it. This is the competition and you must enter. To stand outside it is to risk oblivion. But to enter the contest also risks rejection. Mosy gay men take the risk, anyhting is better than oblviion isnt it? and its just so much easier to follow what everyone else does isnt it?

The gay scene has been boiled down, stripped of all its finery, reduced to its whitened bones.Theatricality, camp, colour, exoticism are all rejected. Beefed up masculinity is parading around convincingly enough, but look closer: for the most part it seems to be an exagerrated and insecure parody of masculinity.

Im not being homophobic. I dont mean that you cant be gay and be real man. far from it.

Its just that I dont think a real man ( ie: one who is really intelligent and sorted and stable) would be in a place like this. He would see the hollowness of it and walk away, realising that these places offer nothing of value to anyone. Because at heart they are nihilistic.

The dark unsayable truth is that the gay scene which has always had a nihilistic element, peering from under the bright mask of heddonsim, now seems far more dysfunctional than in previous decades, which given the greater freedoms we have, seems strangely ironic. The club reminded me of a factory full of machine men, in different stages of assembly, and disrepair.

A factory devoid of fun, devoid of laughter, devoid of love and welcome. Devoid of a soul.

This has got nothing to do with nostalgia for a better time. Im trying to be as unsentimental as I can. Having said that I do feel a keen sense of loss. The loss of a sense of identity and community, a loss of political and social consiousness, so prevalent it seems, in the sixties and seventies and even early 80s seems at elast standing there in that club, to have vanished entirely...It seemed back then, the gay world could really grow into something great and even possibly revolutionary.

But that promise has not been realised. Blind materialism has infected every part of the gay world, as it has the rest of society. We are a society in crisis,  economically and financially and gay clubs are an interesting sociological microcosm of that shift. perhaps its the global recession. A brutalism that reduces and curtails individuals and their communication seems to prevail. poeple treat themsleves and others like machines, as there appears to be no time or purpose for extraneous activities, such as stopping to think, or to meditate or to dream. These are unproductive pastimes and as such, essentially subversive.

I feel and observe a huge sense of conformity to venal attitudes and simplistic ideas, not just in the gay world but generally; As the world becomes more uncertain and volatile, so people seem to cling ever tighter to a world bulit on material values, frightened by anything that questions or undermines their belief in this way of life.

If i could I would dismantle every gay club in London. I would say 'Lets start again' lets start over entirely, a new way of relating. lets be men and stop being boys. Lets grow up and out of this pernicous arrested development that I see everywhere in the gay world. Boys with mens bodies, desperately looking for affirmation, for approval, for acceptance. Looking everywhere except inside themselves, into the eye of all that pain and shame, and not realising that they can get past all that damage. But that they have to do the work; self examination, therapy, meditiation: and perhaps it just easier to project it outwards rather than to do that painful work.

lets stop perpeptuating all that damage and venting it on each other. is that ever going to be possible?

I hope I am not being idealistic when I say that I feel sure there are many gay men out there living amazing stmulating lives of integrity and dignity and intellect and that these places do not feature in their lives at all . Perhaps we should band together and burn them down. Thyve outlived their use. They are not fun anymore. Not if you are a thinking sentient being anyway. They promote nothing and stand for nothing, Gay clubs like XXL have become vacuums.

But the irony is these are the venues that attract the biggest gay crowds. Hundreds, possibly thousands of gay men attend these clubs every week. Think what could be done with that much input in terms of social change or political lobbying or spritual development?

However perhaps I am in the minority here. perhaps most do not see these clubs this way at all, but merely as places to hook up and chat and dance, and of course take drugs.. but I would challenge them. I would say "Do you really believe  these are places that promote community and comraderie or even fun?"

I studied semiotics and I think it is dangerous not to read the signs that are all around us, to not look at our own lives as an anthropologist would and to draw conclsuions from that data.

Are gay clubs merely places of fun and freedom of expression? or are thay dangerous and nihilistic places where boundaris are lost and a void of community or mutual respect and love , creates a blank space filled only with intoxication, with a contest of bodies and  faces, a shallow world that perpeptuates lonliness and need, but does nothing to help.
I cant apologise for the downbeat tone of this piece. Its just my truth and how I see it. Im hoping that in time things will change and that not only the gay 'world'  but society as a whole slows its seemingly inexorable trajectory into a base and unthinking complacency and rank materialism.

Ice and Snow

All photos Stephen O'Toole 2008

The Power of Slow

Yes speed is great too, of course. I love occasional bursts of speed, for excitement, for exhiliration.

Im not against speed in certain contexts: speed of thought for example,  mercurial minds are often inspirational.

But I feel that speed too often comes from anxiety and is borne of panic or nervousness. Speed in our actions and in our thoughts is like hard unripened fruit and does not satisfy.

I feel that in the 21st century in the west we are being forced to live our lives at a faster rate than ever before. I feel that many people are unhappy with this., but unable to fight it, or even name it.

we are kept 'busy' all the time, or perhaps it might be truer to say, we make oursleves busy to fit the fast rhythmn that we feel all around us.

I have been victim / enactor of this speed myself, expecially in my youth. I used to go out and dance with furioius speed all night long, to exorcise my demons and all the intense nervous energy I had.

I would break things and leave things unfinished, as I was unable to slow myself down.

Slowing ourselves down, in our bodies and our minds is extremely beneficial. finding our own innate rhythmn is what is really important, 'marching to our own tune' . This may not be easy as we may then be going against the rhythmns imposed from outisde.

perhaps this slowing down is the result of my age but I also feel that it is a mindset that can be applied at any age.

If we slow down we become more attentive, to oursleves and others. we become more observant, we see what others miss. we become more patient and better listeners, because we have made space in our minds.

If you are on a fast train, its a wonderful feeling, to speed across the land. But what you see is a constantly changing vista, with no time to really digest what you are looking at. you have no sensual interaction with the world.

If you are on foot or on a bicycle, you interact with the world around you. you can stop and look and smell and touch.

This is a good analogy for the power of slow and how it can really change you life.

 It has for me, in a very deep way.

Beauty in Decay

beausitful photos by urban explorers of abandoned factories, palaces, mansions, industrial plants.

there is apowerufl mournful beauty in thee decaying structures 

that speaks of the transience of all things, the impermanent nature of the material world. 

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

City Road Caeser    2006

The Pleasure of Paradox

Wydow Digital Artwork May 2013

The Wise Owl Woman Digital Artwork May 2013

My Digital Artwork

miscellaneous Untitled Photos (2)

Genius Groucho

William Burrough's Thanksgiving Prayer

His voice is Hypnotic and his mind is a Laser beam

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

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.

Nina casts a spell

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.

Glass Vessels

Iam constantly finding new performanaces of glass on the Net. I love so much of his music that I xouldnt choose one piece,  but this defintely ranks as one of my very favourites..the beautiful kaleidoscopic quality of the voices..the rich tonality..and the fast calliope rhythm that joins in and carris the voices in an ever faster cyclonic acceleration. exhilirating.. PS. this version is so much better than the re recorded one in the 90's which apparently Glass prefers but this just has a rich depth that the newer reording lacks for me...

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…

Roly Poly Fish Heads

Thanks for this one Adam

gallows

let's get lost

I fell in love with a swan

Scream of Love

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.

A post marxist critique of 21st century Capitalism



I Follow Rivers

Nico The falconer

La Mort à Ceux Qui Ne Donnent Rien

Leader? Zealot? Destroyer? Lliberator?



Who was she ?



Artists I love: Austin Osman Spare

Artist  Occultist  Seer   A O S

A work of dark genius

Stereolab: The most underrated band in the known world

Matthew Dear Her Fantasy

Javier

A beautful man came into my life
and gave me back my faith in love

Thursday's child has far to go

Something about me stood apart

Maybe im born right out of my time

The nuclear bunker of embryonic contentment

Comus: memory of a great gig.

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/

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

Artists I love: Daniel Hillier

Artists I love: Neo Rauch

Welcome to the enigmatic and unsettling world of Neo Rauch

My miscellaneous untitled photographs 2000 - 2010 (click on image to enlarge)