Comments on: The London Perambulator http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149 Better Living Thru Chemistry Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:38:12 +0000 hourly 1 By: The Man in the Iron Mask http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2534 The Man in the Iron Mask Tue, 05 May 2009 11:11:23 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2534 Do Nick and Will have Parkinson's? And just because they're shakey walkers, doesn't mean you have to use a shakey camera. This is the mimetic fallacy, the idea that you've got to write a mad novel because you set it in a madhouse etc. Yeah, great to have a drink: £5.75p for a glass of indifferent red - bled white by the Whitechapel.... Do Nick and Will have Parkinson’s?

And just because they’re shakey walkers, doesn’t mean you have to use a shakey camera. This is the mimetic fallacy, the idea that you’ve got to write a mad novel because you set it in a madhouse etc.

Yeah, great to have a drink: £5.75p for a glass of indifferent red – bled white by the Whitechapel….

]]> By: Samantha Haworth http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2506 Samantha Haworth Mon, 04 May 2009 00:08:22 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2506 as i was there i had to say i LOVED the film i think it was a lovely look in the world seen through Nicks eyes! john is a talented director and i think the shakey camera worked as it made u feel like u was walking with nick and will loved the discussion afterwards and was great to have a drink with everyone afterwards and discuse the film :) xxx as i was there i had to say i LOVED the film i think it was a lovely look in the world seen through Nicks eyes!
john is a talented director and i think the shakey camera worked as it made u feel like u was walking with nick and will

loved the discussion afterwards and was great to have a drink with everyone afterwards and discuse the film :)

xxx

]]> By: ITALO CALVINO http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2483 ITALO CALVINO Sat, 02 May 2009 13:35:13 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2483 Mr K decides that from now on he will act as if he were dead, to see how the world gets along without him. For some while he has realised that things between him and the world are no longer proceeding as they did before; before they seemed to expect something, one of the other, he and the world, now he no longer recalls what there was too expect, good or bad, or why this expectation kept him in a perpetually agitated, anxious state. So now Mr K should feel a sensation of relief, no longer having to worry about what the world has in store for him; and there should be relief also for the world, which no longer has to bother about him. But it is the very expectation of enjoying this calm that makes Mr K anxious. In other words, being dead is less easy than it may seem. First of all you must not confuse being dead with not being, a condition that occupies the vast expanse of time before birth, apparently symmetrical with the other, equally vast expanse that follows death. In fact, before birth we are part of the infinite possibilities that may or may not be fulfilled; whereas, once dead, we cannot fulfil ourselves either in the past (to which we now belong entirely but on which we can no longer have any influence) or in the future (which, even if influenced to us, remains forbidden to us). Mr K's case is really more simple, since his capacity for having an influence on anybody or anything has always been negligible; the world can very well do without him, and he can consider himself dead quite serenely, without even altering his habits. The problem is not the change in what he does but in what he is, or more specifically in what he is as far as the world is concerned. Before, by "world" he meant the world plus himself; now it is a question of himself plus the world minus him. Does the world minus him mean an end to anxiety? A world in which things happen independently of his presence and his reactions, following a law of their own or necessity or rationale that does not involve him? The wave strikes the cliff and hollows out the rock, another wave strikes, another; whether hhe is or is not, everything is always happening. The relief in being dead should be this; having eliminated that patch of uneasiness that is our presence, the only thing that matters is the extension and succession of things under the sun, in their impassive serenity. All is calm or tends toward calm, even hurricanes, earthquakes, the eruption of volcanoes. But was this not the earlier world, when he was in it? When every storm bore the within itself the peace of afterwards, prepared the moment when all the waves would have struck the shore, and the wind would have spent its force? Perhaps being dead is passing into the ocean of the waves that remain waves forever, so it is futile for the sea to become calm. Mr K decides that from now on he will act as if he were dead, to see how the world gets along without him. For some while he has realised that things between him and the world are no longer proceeding as they did before; before they seemed to expect something, one of the other, he and the world, now he no longer recalls what there was too expect, good or bad, or why this expectation kept him in a perpetually agitated, anxious state.
So now Mr K should feel a sensation of relief, no longer having to worry about what the world has in store for him; and there should be relief also for the world, which no longer has to bother about him. But it is the very expectation of enjoying this calm that makes Mr K anxious.
In other words, being dead is less easy than it may seem. First of all you must not confuse being dead with not being, a condition that occupies the vast expanse of time before birth, apparently symmetrical with the other, equally vast expanse that follows death. In fact, before birth we are part of the infinite possibilities that may or may not be fulfilled; whereas, once dead, we cannot fulfil ourselves either in the past (to which we now belong entirely but on which we can no longer have any influence) or in the future (which, even if influenced to us, remains forbidden to us). Mr K’s case is really more simple, since his capacity for having an influence on anybody or anything has always been negligible; the world can very well do without him, and he can consider himself dead quite serenely, without even altering his habits. The problem is not the change in what he does but in what he is, or more specifically in what he is as far as the world is concerned. Before, by “world” he meant the world plus himself; now it is a question of himself plus the world minus him.
Does the world minus him mean an end to anxiety?
A world in which things happen independently of his presence and his reactions, following a law of their own or necessity or rationale that does not involve him?
The wave strikes the cliff and hollows out the rock, another wave strikes, another; whether hhe is or is not, everything is always happening. The relief in being dead should be this; having eliminated that patch of uneasiness that is our presence, the only thing that matters is the extension and succession of things under the sun, in their impassive serenity. All is calm or tends toward calm, even hurricanes, earthquakes, the eruption of volcanoes. But was this not the earlier world, when he was in it? When every storm bore the within itself the peace of afterwards, prepared the moment when all the waves would have struck the shore, and the wind would have spent its force? Perhaps being dead is passing into the ocean of the waves that remain waves forever, so it is futile for the sea to become calm.

]]> By: Howling Wizard, Shrieking Toad http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2480 Howling Wizard, Shrieking Toad Sat, 02 May 2009 05:37:20 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2480 At that time I also got hold of the Nuggets double compilation album put together by her guitarist Lenny Kaye, and that was a revelation, all those groovy garage punk classics from the sixties by The Electric Prunes and The Seeds, I loved that stuff when I was teenage. As soon as The Pebbles albums started coming out, I got those too, from Pebbles 1 onwards. The sixties seemed so long ago to me then, like it was the stone-age, although those garage punk recordings were only a decade old. Back then, those recordings felt to me to be a lot older than stuff that came out in the late-seventies sounds to my ears now. Even the sixties sounds like yesterday now, whereas when I was fourteen or fifteen I thought stuff from 1966 sounded positively antediluvian. At that time I also got hold of the Nuggets double compilation album put together by her guitarist Lenny Kaye, and that was a revelation, all those groovy garage punk classics from the sixties by The Electric Prunes and The Seeds, I loved that stuff when I was teenage. As soon as The Pebbles albums started coming out, I got those too, from Pebbles 1 onwards. The sixties seemed so long ago to me then, like it was the stone-age, although those garage punk recordings were only a decade old. Back then, those recordings felt to me to be a lot older than stuff that came out in the late-seventies sounds to my ears now. Even the sixties sounds like yesterday now, whereas when I was fourteen or fifteen I thought stuff from 1966 sounded positively antediluvian.

]]> By: Howling Wizard, Shrieking Toad http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2479 Howling Wizard, Shrieking Toad Sat, 02 May 2009 05:23:28 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2479 Q: As far as your book, The Assault On Culture, your art writings and manifestos: how did you get interested in this stuff? SH: What happened was when I was in school all I wanted to do was to be involved in music, but I wasn't so good a guitar player. I did a punk fanzine and I was in a band. By 1980, there wasn't that much happening that I was interested in, musically. By 1982, I got bored of doing fanzines, and I had quit the band I was in. I was bored in the music scene. So I was looking to do something interesting. What I learned from punk rock was I could play an instrument without knowing anything about it. I went to many art exhibits, and I remember one at the ICA in London. I looked at it and thought "This is really lousy. I could do better than this." Q: What was it? SH: It was an exhibition of fake advertising stuff. It was parodies of advertising posters. I thought that it wasn't a very interesting insight because you can look at Modernist paintings and say "A three year old can do it." That might be true. That's banal. What I was interested in was not the fact that I could do it, but how could I get something on a wall in a gallery. I wondered "How does one become an artist?" I have the opposite position of Baudrillard, who says what's real becomes simulated. My position is what's simulated becomes real. That's my Hegelianism: I just want to reverse everything. Or is that Satanism? I became a musician of sorts, or a non-musician, without knowing anything beforehand; maybe I could become an artist? I started advertising myself as an artist. I started taking out classified ads. Doing leaflets saying "Now, I'm an artist." Q: Were you writing stories at this time too? SH: At the same time I started writing this basically banal poetry. All these people in rock bands were getting into poetry and experimental music, which was really awful. At the same time, there was a poetry revival. All these terrible poets get up on stage and reading. People that you had never heard of to people like Ann Clark. They would read about how depressed they were living on the 29th floor of a towerblock and had been burglarized sixty times. I thought that it was dull. So I'd go up there and do these really banal poems about fruit and vegetables, and they'd all be three lines long. I was really into banality for a few years. I had this notion to do plagiarism, not coming through post-modernism because I didn't know anything about it. It had to do with all these horrible poets talking about being original. My attitude was "Fuck you, if you're going to be original, I'm going to be unoriginal." I got into plagiarism, and that was reinforced by reading Lautreamont. Q: As far as your book, The Assault On Culture, your art writings and manifestos: how did you get interested in this stuff?

SH: What happened was when I was in school all I wanted to do was to be involved in music, but I wasn’t so good a guitar player. I did a punk fanzine and I was in a band. By 1980, there wasn’t that much happening that I was interested in, musically. By 1982, I got bored of doing fanzines, and I had quit the band I was in. I was bored in the music scene. So I was looking to do something interesting. What I learned from punk rock was I could play an instrument without knowing anything about it. I went to many art exhibits, and I remember one at the ICA in London. I looked at it and thought “This is really lousy. I could do better than this.”

Q: What was it?

SH: It was an exhibition of fake advertising stuff. It was parodies of advertising posters. I thought that it wasn’t a very interesting insight because you can look at Modernist paintings and say “A three year old can do it.” That might be true. That’s banal. What I was interested in was not the fact that I could do it, but how could I get something on a wall in a gallery. I wondered “How does one become an artist?” I have the opposite position of Baudrillard, who says what’s real becomes simulated. My position is what’s simulated becomes real. That’s my Hegelianism: I just want to reverse everything. Or is that Satanism? I became a musician of sorts, or a non-musician, without knowing anything beforehand; maybe I could become an artist? I started advertising myself as an artist. I started taking out classified ads. Doing leaflets saying “Now, I’m an artist.”

Q: Were you writing stories at this time too?

SH: At the same time I started writing this basically banal poetry. All these people in rock bands were getting into poetry and experimental music, which was really awful. At the same time, there was a poetry revival. All these terrible poets get up on stage and reading. People that you had never heard of to people like Ann Clark. They would read about how depressed they were living on the 29th floor of a towerblock and had been burglarized sixty times. I thought that it was dull. So I’d go up there and do these really banal poems about fruit and vegetables, and they’d all be three lines long. I was really into banality for a few years. I had this notion to do plagiarism, not coming through post-modernism because I didn’t know anything about it. It had to do with all these horrible poets talking about being original. My attitude was “Fuck you, if you’re going to be original, I’m going to be unoriginal.” I got into plagiarism, and that was reinforced by reading Lautreamont.

]]> By: Michael Roth http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2478 Michael Roth Sat, 02 May 2009 04:52:02 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2478 Howling Wizard, I thought you were talking about Michael K. there for a minute ... Howling Wizard, I thought you were talking about Michael K. there for a minute …

]]> By: Ricardo Terrori http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2477 Ricardo Terrori Sat, 02 May 2009 02:17:24 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2477 You londoners are so excesively cool and intelligent that make me feel very un-cool and ignorant and very far away from Whitechapel. Notwithstanding, I have heard of that Hegel guy and I am aware of Will Self brief passage by Santiago and that this paragraph *, "There ain't no God," someone said. "God is dead." Then whoever itwas laughed, and Dick's insides cringed from the laughter. It was a woman in the middle of the platform, and she was standing as still as a rock—her mouth didn't move, and the eyes behind the hair that was down all over her face saw nothing at all. "The End of the World is come and it is too late to repent. We are doomed, doomed—" is presumably out of copyright. (*)from Tomorrow by Zagat, Arthur Leo You londoners are so excesively cool and intelligent that make me feel very un-cool and ignorant and very far away from Whitechapel. Notwithstanding, I have heard of that Hegel guy and I am aware of Will Self brief passage by Santiago and that this paragraph *, “There ain’t no God,” someone said. “God is dead.” Then whoever itwas laughed, and Dick’s insides cringed from the laughter. It was a woman in the middle of the platform, and she was standing as still as a rock—her mouth didn’t move, and the eyes behind the hair that was down all over her face saw nothing at all. “The End of the World is come and it is too late to repent. We are doomed, doomed—” is presumably out of copyright.

(*)from Tomorrow by Zagat, Arthur Leo

]]> By: Howling Wizard, Shrieking Toad http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2476 Howling Wizard, Shrieking Toad Sat, 02 May 2009 00:33:15 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2476 “Truth is not like some finished product in which one can no longer find any trace of the tool that made it” (Hegel). “Truth is not like some finished product in which one can no longer find any trace of the tool that made it” (Hegel).

]]> By: Reviews from East End Festival screening « The London Perambulator http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2471 Reviews from East End Festival screening « The London Perambulator Fri, 01 May 2009 09:55:26 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2471 [...] Stewart Home [...] [...] Stewart Home [...]

]]> By: Dan Boleyn http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/1149/comment-page-1#comment-2468 Dan Boleyn Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:58:29 +0000 http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1149#comment-2468 Hey Will! I want my royalties! Hey Will!

I want my royalties!

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