Archive for the ‘counterculture’ Category
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Copies of Terry Taylor’s 1961 novel Baron’s Court, All Change don’t come up for sale at all often but until now when they did they’ve never been particularly expensive. I have a paperback that came from an exchange stall and it cost 20p. I was looking for a hardback for about 4 years until I finally acquired one via eBay – and no one else even bid on that copy of the book. I’ve been checking the obvious online places for further copies since then (eBay, Amazon, Abe Books), and I’ve not come across a single instance of Baron’s Court being offered for sale over the past few years until now. As I write, Repton Readers are offering a copy of Barons Court on Amazon UK Marketplace for a whopping £238 plus postage.
So how does a hard-to-obtain title go from being offered for sale for a few quid to an asking price of hundreds of pounds? Obviously, it is a combination of buzz and a bookseller chancing it with a high price. Baron’s Court is a far-out drugs novel that fell through the cracks and disappeared for forty odd years – the main problem being that it was at least five years ahead of its time. That said, it only needed a handful of relatively ‘young’ hipsters to realise that the book described mod and the counterculture in very early stages of their evolution, that it was the first British novel to mention LSD, and that the author Terry Taylor had a quite incredible life story, for interest in it to rocket. Since my mother (Julia Callan-Thompson) was a friend of the author, when I started researching her life at the turn of the millennium, I came across Baron’s Court and once I’d obtained copies for myself I started talking the book up. I not only wrote about Baron’s Court, I was so knocked-out by this novel, I mailed photocopies of it to key contacts – and after receiving a Xerox from me, Andy Roberts even bigged it up in his recent history of British acid culture Albion Dreaming.
If you want to know why Baron’s Court is so hard to find, you have to understand both publishing and the used book trade. It is the difficulty of obtaining a title like this that leads dealers to asking an exorbitant price for it. I don’t know the print run of the hardback edition of Baron’s Court, but I’d guess it would have been between two and five thousand. It seems to have generated some coverage, but not massive interest – after it was published Terry Taylor was invited to do some reviewing, but the paperback rights didn’t immediately sell. Taylor’s follow-up, which drew more explicitly on the literary experimentalism of figures like William Burroughs, was rejected by his publisher. So Taylor has been to date a one-shot novelist, and was thus unable to draw readers to his earlier book through the publication of further tomes.
The publication of a Baron’s Court paperback four long years after the appearance of the MacGibbon & Kee hardcover edition is probably best explained by the burgeoning drug culture. By 1965 ‘with-it’ publishers were aware of a growing interest in drugs and casting about for books dealing with the subject. The Baron’s Court paperback was published by Four Square (later New English Library) who by the late sixties/early seventies did first printings of their books in runs of 20,000 and they only reprinted if this first run sold quickly (see my interview with NEL editor Laurence James as an example of background research I’ve done in this ares). If we assume the company worked in the same way in the mid-sixties, then 20,000 seems a reasonable guess for the print run of Baron’s Court in paperback. We can conclude that in its two editions to date possibly as many as 25,000 copies of Baron’s Court were printed. Most of them will now be destroyed. I don’t know exactly how the book sold, but since it clearly wasn’t like ‘hot cakes’ (if it had there would have been more reprints), it is possible some copies were pulped by one or both of the publishers. I have yet to properly determine the initial reception of the book, and if anyone can point me in the direction of contemporary reviews I would be grateful.
Mass market paperbacks put out by companies like Four Square are cheaply made – perfect bound rather than sewn and printed on pulp papers that deteriorate quickly – after being read a few times this type of book tends to fall apart and get thrown away. Although the paperback will have been printed in a far bigger run than the hardback, my guess would be that far fewer copies of it survive than of the first edition. That said, I wouldn’t be particularly optimistic about many copies of the first edition surviving either! It is likely the majority of hardbacks sales would have been to libraries, and library books are often roughly handled and suffer damage – before being either sold off or thrown away at the end of their lending life.
But what about those copies of Baron’s Court that were offered to secondhand dealers over the years? Since the book had no buzz about it until recently, few dealers would have wanted to buy copies even if they had recognised the title or author (and very few would have done so); and if they did acquire copies in job lots of books, they may have simply thrown them away or used them for fuel. Owners of copies of Baron’s Court who were unable to sell them to dealers may have treated this once hard-to-sell tome in an equally caviler fashion. Precisely because until recently there has been little to no market for Baron’s Court as a novel, the overwhelming majority of copies will have been destroyed.
Now there is some buzz about Terry Taylor and Baron’s Court, the remaining copies of the book have a greater potential value than many other out-of-print titles precisely because its earlier lack of popularity makes it rare. Baron’s Court is also, without a shadow of a doubt, not only a cracking good read but of considerable historical significance. So fingers-crossed that some clued-up publisher puts it back in print, and rather than having to shell out hundreds of pounds for a used copy, you can buy it new for roughly the same price as any other mass market tome. And if there are any interested publishers out there, I’d be happy to put them in touch with the author who still controls the rights….
Terry Taylor’s story is one with a relatively happy ending for those who like to believe fairy tales about ‘literary immortality’, but don’t let it blind you to the fact that the vast bulk of books published every year are very quickly forgotten!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Abe Books, Albion Dreaming, Amazon, Andy Roberts, Baron's Court All Change, counterculture, eBay, Four Square, Julia Callan-Thompson, Laurence James, MacGibbon & Kee, mod, NEL, New English Library, Repton Readers, secondhand books, Terry Taylor, used books
Posted in books, counterculture | 24 Comments »
Monday, December 7th, 2009
The oldest of suppressed traditions
In a world dominated by illusion, it comes as no surprise that censorship should be popularly misperceived as a form of social repression. The contradictions which support such an inversion are manifest in every area of daily life; they constitute the apparent “reality” of our “time”. Despite the fact that it has been demonstrated time and again that consciousness is an effect of a closed system of exclusive focus, of censorship, “literate” consensus maintains that censorship and silence are the negation of consciousness. It is clear that Power has a vested interest in maintaining a monopoly on censorship. The “concept of freedom” is an unreachable, collapsing, absolute. All experience becomes equal when exchanged via Capital; with class “privilege” determining how much of this worthless “equality” each person is entitled to.
The negative and its use
Anything can be censored for any reason; start by censoring this text. The censors of the “left”, “right” and “centre”, all do their collective part; despite the fact that they imagine themselves to be motivated by the very beliefs we will ultimately negate.
From originality to ontology: the decline of the text
The possibilities for communal transformation of this world lie in disconnection from imposed notions of progress and democracy. Plagiarism is the “beginning”, the negative point of a culture which finds its justification in the “unique”. Censorship supersedes plagiarism as an “intelligent” negation of “originality” because it suppresses not only (“original”) production, but also reproduction (plagiarism, appropriation &c.) which revalue the “original” and maintain its circulation in “reality”. Censorship is to the present what plagiarism was to history.
The healing power of doubt
Revolutionary propaganda sets itself the task of discrediting all received ideas without offering a single “alternative” thought with which they might be replaced. Kill your desires and live! Erase, destroy and make useless all recorded information. Physically and otherwise attempt to suppress all expression in art, politics, history &c. Resist culture and all other forms of institutional identity. Suppress, by refusing to participate in, interpersonal and mass social relationships. As you see fit, smash the “imagination”, “schizophrenia”, “death”, “sexuality”, “values”, “time” and all other forms of seduction and abstraction. Experimentally break down the frames of reference by which you organise non-valued perceptions into valued entities: i.e. objects, ideas, means of self-perception &c.
An end to social relations
“Self-destruction” is a semantic swindle. The moralism against suicide is reactionary resistance to change. Only total opposition, both theoretical and practical (i.e. silence), is irrecuperable. Anything else must necessarily appear absolutist and contradictory.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1960s, 557087 Seattle, 60s, Alex Trocchi, Alexander Trocchi, APG, Art and Culture, Artists Placement Group, Arts Journal, Barry Flanagan, beat generation, Better Books, black beauties, black bombers, Bluecoat Gallery, Bow Street Magistrates Court, cannabis, central London, charge, Clement Greenberg, conceptual art, Destruction In Art Symposium, Destruction in Art: Destroy to Create, Diamond & Co., drug smuggling, Durophet, Finch College, Finch College Museum of Art, Fluxus, forgery, Francis Morland, heroin, Jeff Sawtell, Jeffrey Sawtell, John Latham, John Lennon, John Perreault, junkies, Liverpool, London, LSD, Lucy Lippard, MOMA, Morning Star, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York City, New York Museum of Modern Art, Norwich, Norwich School of Art, Number 7, NYC, Paula Cooper Gallery, pot, purple hearts, Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, Sheila Malcham, Simon Ford, sixties, Soho, St. Martin's School of Art, Still and Chew, The Art Forum, UK, USA, weed, Yoko Ono
Posted in art criticism, counterculture, True crime | 26 Comments »
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
You have to love Alejandro ‘Chuckles’ Jodorowsky… he’s such a great conman that he’s able to fool most of his fans most of the time (fooling all the people at any one time is rather more difficult). His first feature film Fando y Lis (1968) was fabulous, but his output went gradually downhill from there…. as I’ve already said in different words elsewhere on this site. Nonetheless, I’ve enjoyed watching Chuckles’ almost overnight transformation from an obscure cult figure whose films were very difficult to see, to his re-emergence as a maverick who merits regular name-checking by the ‘mainstream’. The tipping point for Chuckles was 2007, when Tartan in the UK and Blue Anchor in the US issued a box set of his three key movies (Fando y Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain), and since then I haven’t been able to move without stumbling over press coverage for Jodorowsky; a couple of weeks ago he was even featured on the front cover of the print version of The Guardian’s weekly Guide. The Guardian piece was hung on a Season of Jodorowsky in London organised by Guerrilla Zoo, comprising an ‘art’ exhibition, three performances of a play and some film screenings.
A few months ago I saw the Drawing Room’s Jodorowsky show, based on this director’s preparations for his aborted Dune film project. I went on a Saturday and the ‘wow factor’ was the dense and completely mixed art and cult film/sci-fi crowd, the place was heaving. The work displayed at The Drawing Room – production sketches by Moebius, H.R Giger and Chris Foss, plus recent art pieces inspired by the unrealised movie – did nothing for me. As a result of that Drawing Room experience, I decided to catch Jodorowsky’s current London exhibition at The Horse Hospital on a Friday afternoon right at the end of its run (today is the last day), hoping it would be a little emptier than the Dune show. I was surprised that no one else was there when I was looking at the work, but my expectation that I would find it dull proved well founded. The ‘wow factor’ this time turned out to be the price tags (in the £12,000 to £15,00 bracket) for work that looked like it had been made by a teenage outsider artist born in the early part of the 20th-century and just after he or she had discovered surrealism and the occult (Jodorowsky turned 80 this year, so perhaps this can be attributed to him starting off a little old-fashioned and then never growing up). I can’t imagine the trade in these items, or even those pictures that are available in limited edition prints at £80, being particularly brisk. Still, the sheer front Chuckles possesses continues to impress me; and as I hope is clear, I value his happenings and film work of the 1960s. The current show features 32 mediocre (they aren’t even bad) watercolours, all of them collaborations between Chuckles and Pascale Montandon.
After a Friday afternoon looking at Alejandro Jodorowsky and Pascale Montandon’s incredibly dull watercolours, there was only one thing I wanted to do that evening, and that was see a movie with no pretensions to being anything very special at all. I hadn’t watched Joel Silberg’s Breakin’ (1984) for at least two years, so it seemed like a good candidate as a piece of mindless entertainment. Two street dancers Ozone (Adolfo Quinones) and Turbo (Michael Chambers) meet up with a middle-class white girl called Kelly AKA Special K (Lucinda Dickey) and like each other’s style. Kelly is a trained dancer but she realises the street kids have talent, and after a few set backs they all gain the recognition they deserve. The film is set in LA, so there is plenty of sunshine alongside the endless breakin’!
The street lingo and threads of the ‘real’ kids are a groove sensation, but even better are the eighties outfits worn by the trained dancers! Looking at the Dickey’s crazy leotard outfit with purple pants worn over it, made me want to dig out my copy of Lucio Fulci’s Murder Rock – The Dancing Death (1984), which like Breakin’ is a Flashdance (1983, Adrian Lyne) rip-off that is not only much better than its ‘inspiration’ but also has plenty of gore and nudity! My main problem with Breakin’ is that while there is some semi-romantic interest between Ozone and Kelly, they fail to get off, let alone get it on in a steamy tripple X-rated all nude sex scene.
The rapper at the street events in Breakin’ is Ice-T and he’s described the film as ‘whack’; but actually it’s Ice-T who is whack, the film itself is so stupid it is really far out! The formulaic nature of Breakin’ represents a complete break with realism, and it is this that makes it a prime example of post-modern kitsch, in other words it is so bad it is good! In dissin’ the film to cover up his own poor performance, Ice-T merely demonstrates that he don’t know jack shit about the way in which ‘the masses’ absorb all meaning; I’d expect a bit more savvy from a motormouthed entertainer like Ice-T, who claims to have been a pimp before he started rapping and acting – but maybe he’s just the ‘original’ Sunset Boulevard ‘flake’! I watch a film like this mainly to check the dance moves, and there are plenty of those, I don’t really care about the ‘plot’, which is after all merely a vehicle to display plenty of lockin’, poppin’ and breakin’!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Adolfo Quinones, Adrian Lyne, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Blue Anchor, Breakin', Chris Foss, Drawing Room, Dune, El Topo, Fando y Lis, Flashdance, Guardian Guide, Guerrilla Zoo, H.R Giger, Horse Hospital, Ice-T, Joel Silberg, London, Los Angeles, Lucinda Dickey, Lucio Fulci, Michael Chambers, Moebius, Murder Rock, Murder Rock - The Dancing Death, occult, Pascale Montandon, post-modernism, Season of Jodorowsky, Sunset Boulevard, surrealism, Tartan, The Guardian, The Holy Mountain
Posted in counterculture, exhibitions, film, occulture | 18 Comments »
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Yesterday night I was at the ICA doing an event with Wu Ming 1 and Wu Ming 4, who were presenting their latest book Manituana. After a very brief intro from me, Wu Ming 1 opened things up with a short explanation of the collective writing activities he’s been embroiled in for many years as one part of the Wu Ming collective (and before that the Luther Blissett Project). Then there was an introduction to the new Wu Ming novel, after which I read a passage from the book that required a strong London accent. Having read live many times, yesterday I decided to record the passage in question, and it was played back while I lip-synced very badly. This was something new for me – and to make it even more pointless I’d waited until just a couple of hours before the event to make this recording – I enjoyed the absurdity of it so much that I may well repeat the trick! After my intervention, Wu Ming 4 gave an in-depth account of the genesis of Manituana. Wu Ming 1 spoke in English, Wu Ming 4 spoke in Italian with Shaun Whiteside translating.
For the last hour of the presentation, the Wu Mings took questions from the audience; and these quickly progressed from queries about how the four members of the Wu Ming group (originally five) wrote collectively, to their thoughts on left-communists such as Jacques Camatte and Amadeo Bordiga. I was impressed with both the depth and breadth of the answers, as well as with how relaxed the Wu Mings were on stage. Although I’ve been in contact with the Wu Mings for about 15 years now, I’d not seen them do a public presentation before, and it was quite a revelation! So if they’re ever somewhere near you – and I understand McKenzie Wark is hosting a Wu Ming event in New York in November – make sure you catch them! There’s no point in me summarising what the Wu Mings said yesterday here, you should check their website, and if possible catch them live!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Amadeo Bordiga, ICA, Jacques Camatte, London, Luther Blissett, Luther Blissett Project, Manituana, McKenzie Wark, New York, Shaun Whiteside, Stewart Home, Wu Ming, Wu Ming 1, Wu Ming 4
Posted in books, counterculture, talks | 18 Comments »
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
My mother Julia Callan-Thompson didn’t publish very much during her lifetime, but anyone who has read her diary and letters will know she was a natural when it came to putting pen to paper. What follow are a couple of pieces by my mother that appeared in issue one of an underground publication called Shoestring put together by Sonya Perry in Harlech, north Wales, crica 1974. Cutting to the quick, here’s my mother’s humorous essay from that Roneoed journal:
STILL IN THE SAME KICK
Hippies usually come from families which suffer from ‘status mal-integration’ – inter-ethnic or mobile families, or families whose economic and cultural status are not on a par. In such families, the children have difficulty in knowing what is to be their social role, and often have difficulty in adapting ‘normal’ sexual roles. Jewish people, girls for example, have an upbringing which prepares them for a world no longer in existence.
Hippie Society is attractive to such young people because:
1. It emphasises tolerance and practices ‘mutual appreciation’ (!)
2. Boys can enjoy quasi-homosexual relationships with impunity, e.g., ‘potheads’ – or affect an exaggerated ‘virility’.
3. Boys are not required to seduce. They can treat a girl as a mother, while she can treat them as a child. Often the girls support the boys, while the boys cultivate the ‘feminine’ attributes of affectivity, self-expression, proneness to moods and… being ‘beautiful’.
4. Mentally ‘abnormal’ phenomena are tolerated and even constitute a status symbol. Secondary anxiety is avoided, because these experiences can always be attributed to the drugs.
One should not dismiss immediately this subculture, as Hippie Society can serve as a kind of civil hospital, and may save disturbed people from psychosis and homosexuality.
I really like point 4, but I’m not sure about all the others… especially as point 2 and the final statement render the entire piece extremely ambiguous. My own position is, of course, that homosexuality and all other forms of consensual sexual expression are a groove sensation!
Moving on, the poem my mother contributes to Shoestring 1 mirrors my own fascination with silence and the aporetic – and prefigures my recent blog strike by about 35 years!
THE WORDLESS
I shall proclaim
a Wordless Day,
Placing a
loaf on my lips.
There will be
a festival of the wordless -
songs without words will be sung,
plays without words will be performed.
Some new clouds will be proposed,
filling up the skyline,
Critics will be sworn to silence.
All day we shall go
In and out through each other’s eyes,
In and out, in and out.
Towards evening will come
an easing of the mind.
The singing of the mad
will fall to a whisper.
One wordless day a week -
that should do it.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Posted in counterculture, humour, Julia Callan-Thompson | 17 Comments »
Monday, September 14th, 2009
1. A situationist skinhead is a skinhead who engages in the construction of situations. This means the construction of concrete momentary ambiances of life and their transformation into a passionate and superior quality based on the principle of a permanent revolution of every day existence, from which, several of the principles below evoke a number of observations linked to the study of the situationist skinhead in his/her natural environment. If s/he realizes it by reading this, all skinheads can become situationists. All situationists can become skinheads for the same reasons, but not from one day to the next. As we know, even if all roads lead out of Babylon, the situationist hacienda will not be built in a single day but will in fact be a project of ongoing transformation. An intense cultural curiosity is necessary and must be accompanied by the sensation of a quasi-orgasmic osmosis, an effect well appreciated by situationist skinheads due to their enjoyment of skinhead reggae. Let’s state with candour that an authentic situationist skinhead, regardless of the way s/he first became involved in beating down Babylon, will recognize him/herself in what follows. In fact, a true situationist skinhead won’t care much for this manifesto because it is something they will want to move on from. A dyed-in-the-wool situationist skinhead is suspicious of manifestos, of anythings fixed, and thus this text is is 100% dispersible but nonetheless necessary. This manifesto does not prescribe; it dissects the situationist skinhead so that s/he might renew his/her attack on the Babylon, and finally destroy the false idols of capitalism.
2. The situationist skinhead is above all else working class by filiation or affiliation. Whether s/he is employed, working or not, whether his/her work is artistic, salaried, illegal or not, the situationist skinhead identifies with all attempts of his/her class to create a new, emancipatory and revolutionary situation. The situationist skinhead loves strikes and knows of nothing better than a good factory occupation.
3. The situationist skinhead absolutely rejects all isms –and for that reason all definitions of so-called “situationism” or “skinheadism”- which are nothing more than revisionist and reductive transformations of his/her culture into sterile stereotypes, and thus another reactionary set of doctrines. Therefore, s/he escapes all reifications and refuses to become invisible in the manner profit and bureaucracy demand. The situationist skinhead rejects authoritarian so-called “communism”, since all Bolshevik and Maoist regimes were in reality capitalist states. Isms are the instruments by which the dominant society transforms the proletariat’s endless reforging of the passage between theory and practice into doctrines. Thus certain “thinkers” define “anarchism” and thereby reduce its possibilities to the reproduction of individualist and western consumerist patterns of behaviour and thought. The situationist skinhead does not wish to replace one reductive system with another. S/he will destroy false representations or will be destroyed by them.
4 . The situationist skinhead has no leaders (not even Joe Hawkins); he is not a Marxist – indeed, Marx himself was the first person to deny he was a Marxist. The situationist skinhead is not a Leninist, Trotskyst, Guevarist or Buddhist either; and most emphatically not a Castrist or Maoist. S/he does not raise statues, temples or churches and does not put corpses in mausoleums. S/he says let the dead bury their dead while we blaze a trail to new modes of being. In brief, s/he does not idolize, does not pray, does not implore and does not even ask but takes what is his/hers as a member of the class that will abolish all classes.
5. The situationist skinhead stresses that the fundamental characteristic of this society is its division into classes. Therefore s/he is skeptical of the perfidious attempts of the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) to recuperate her uncontrolled rebellion. The situationist skinhead rejects the trajectory of petty bourgeois mods, or worse, that of those former revolutionaries who landed jobs in academies, whose writings are now studied by postgraduate students and recuperated by his/her enemy the bobo (aka “bohemian bourgeois”). For the contemporary situationist skinhead, this rank breed of socialite recyclers is far worse enemy than its ancestor, the baba cool (hippie). The bobo recuperation of elements of skinhead culture (shaved head and Dr. Martens), an attempt to “hipsterfy” a sterile vision of the world, has a far more deleterious effect than the baba who merely took drugs and attempted to withdraw from the material realities of capitalist exploitation.
6. The situationist skinhead rejects cults such as the “spirit of 69″ because, aside from rejecting all nostalgia, s/he knows that the skinhead movement, as a youth rebellion against the ruling order, is demographically much older today than during those years (but then we follow Isidore Isou in seeing youth as essentially a function of social position rather than age). Nevertheless, the situationist skinhead still refers to “the spirit of 69″ since it expresses the triolectical nature of his/her movement. To that effect, and leaving aside the delights of this egalitarian sexual position, the number 69 expresses the contradictions and semantic inversions that characterise the situationist skinhead. Let’s note that Sham 69 are and remain one of the seminal bands of situationist skinheads, since they helped purge punk rock of its socialite hangers-on. Furthermore, 1969 was marked by some of the most enthralling rhythms of skinhead reggae, including the mighty Liquidator. Likewise, in 69 the last issue of the Internationale Situationsite review appeared.
Communiqué of the International Situationist Skinhead, Combative Cell Yul Brynner In Sta-Prest
As far as I can tell this first appeared as a printed text around 2002 and can now also be found as a comment to a post on the L’En Dehors blog (scroll down to find it). Translated and adapted into English, there were a couple of points I wasn’t in complete agreement with in this section, so I modified them (I still don’t agree with everything here). This represents roughly 25% of the French language manifesto, I may or may not run more of it on future blogs. You can always go read the whole thing in French! I’m not in complete agreement with everything in the rest of this either, but it is amusing and curious, so I thought it more than worth running an adapted part of it here.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Internationale Situationiste, Joe Hawkings, Karl Marx, L'En Dehors, Liquidator, reggae, Sham 69, situationist, skinhead, skinhead reggae, Yul Brynner
Posted in counterculture, humour, politics | 31 Comments »
Saturday, September 12th, 2009
Going to my post box the other week, I found within my haul of letters a small collection of stories entitled Chomsky And The Kultigator by Graham Nowland (Clear City Press). The title piece about a man who is mistaken for the linguist Noam Chomsky is very good, but another story called Some Of The Times I Have Died is even better: “How can I be writing this if I am dead? Well, I can think of at least three novels with dead narrators and I’m not even trying. Take it from me, you can write when you are dead..”
Graham Nowland is a name that will be instantly recognised by those familiar with London’s beatnik hipsters of yesteryear. He turns up alongside the likes of Grainger “Don’t Call Me Malcolm” Drake in newspaper pieces on ‘longhairs’ dating back as far as 1962! Nowland has been living in Australia for some years, and this is where much of his recent fiction is set, but he knows the hippest and most hidden aspects of the London counterculture of yesteryear the way only an insider can.
Clear City Press is not only the publisher of Nowland’s collection of short stories, it is also this hipster’s latest venture: and he plans to publish more of his own work as well as that of associates including R. Frederick Finlayson, anail nathrach and Liz Elliot. The latter’s as yet untitled book is being promoted with the following blurb: “A London poetry and prose writer, she is also writing an autobiography. She has long been active in London underground networks and her associates have included LSD guru Timothy Leary, novelist and king junkie Alex Trocchi, neurologician Brian Barritt, and archetypal London hipster ‘Grainger’ aka Malcolm Drake.” All of which makes Elliot sound like Liz Cooke’s double to me!
Moving on, one poem that has entered into oral legend from this particular circle of people, runs as follows:
I am a pot plant
That instead of being watered
Has been pissed on by a cat.
My impression is that Clear City Press are concentrating on quality writing, but I wonder if Nowland would consider doing an anthology of lesser unpublished pieces by people from within the circles Grainger frequented. The above poem is often quoted by those familiar with this milieu precisely because it is funny, memorable, and thus ‘so bad it is good’!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Alex Trocchi, anail nathrach, Australia, Brian Barritt, Chomsky And The Kultigator, Clear City Press, Graham Nowland, Grainger, Grainger Drake, Liz Cooke, Liz Elliot, London, Malcolm Drake, Noam Chomsky, R. Frederick Finlayson, Some Of The Times I Have Died, Timothy Leary
Posted in books, counterculture | 23 Comments »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
The author of The Acid (Vision, London 2009) uses the pen name Sam, but is probably better known to most readers of this blog as Chris Gray. For me, and probably for many of you, The Acid reads like a continuation of where Chris left off in the essays he contributed to his English language Situationist anthology Leaving The 20th Century (1974). There he wrote: “What needs understanding is the state of paralysis everyone is in. Certainly all conditioning comes from society but it is anchored in the body and mind of each individual, and this is where it must be dissolved. Ultimately the problem is an emotional, not an intellectual one. All the analyses of reification in the world won’t cause a neurosis to budge an inch…”
In The Acid, Chris says of the counterculture: “Looking back on that time, what seems so incomprehensible is that we never took LSD more seriously. How was it we failed to grasp its importance? For the concept of de-conditioning was at the heart of the New Left of the time. If any single feature set 60s and 70s radicalism apart from previous insurrectionary politics, it was insistence that individual subjectivity had to be transformed. The political was the personal. Politics were psychopolitics. Our own hearts and minds were precisely where the old order was ingrained – and if we couldn’t change ourselves, then what hope was there we could ever change the world?”
Many of those around Gray, including my mother Julia Callan-Thompson, took acid far more seriously than he did – but this was precisely because in the 1960s they were heads (whose attempts at personal transformation were doomed to failure because there was no accompanying social revolution) and he was a radical.
The Acid begins with a lucid overview of psychedelic literature and an account of Gray’s previous experiences with mind expanding substances. Chris also provides a potted autobiography, so that his readers can understand the material that comes up in the trips he describes. These vary from being joyous to total bummers. He was tripping every two to three weeks for three years as a self-prescribed acid therapy; an attempt to break down personal blockages. He tried different approaches to tripping: initially putting on a blindfold and listening to music in his flat, before moving on to outdoor excursions on Hampstead Heath. These accounts are very informative about ways of understanding and structuring trips, and will provide most readers with new approaches to the subject.
The back cover of the The Acid stresses that the breakthrough insight from these sessions is that the visions are serial. Drawing heavily on Stanislav Grof”s Realms of the Human Unconscious, Chris underlines the need to work through bad trips in order to transform oneself and achieve a sense of wholeness. The thrust of this argument I can run with, although I’m not sympathetic to all the psychoanalytic and religious elements drawn into the narrative. This is partly a generational difference, with the materials Gray used to structure his understanding of his ‘inner experiences’ very much mirroring those adopted by my mother and many of her friends in the 60s and 70s (that said, the psychedelic hermeticism my mother was involved in with Terry Taylor was quite different – and as far as I can tell, superior – to such deployments of Hinduism).
My view is that the varieties of Hinduism drawn upon by both my mother and Chris, and much of their ‘turned on’ generation, are too hierarchical to enable us to rediscover the forms of consciousness that characterised primitive communist societies. By way of contrast, shamanism (particularly in its voodoo and candomblé manifestations) does provide us with pathways to disalienation. LSD is, of course, a fantastic tool for inducing shamanistic experiences.
Mirroring Gray’s activities with King Mob in the 1960s, he draws on Keats and the English romantics as sources for understanding his experiences, whereas when it comes to LSD I would opt more for figures such as William Hope Hodgson (and others whose books currently exist outside the literary canon). This is not a matter of huge importance, and obviously reflects personal tastes and reading experiences. I went through Keats as a teenager and concluded I disliked his poetry.
The Acid is an engaging and thought provoking book, and while it is one man’s trip, it is also intended as a map that will assist any interested party in their own exploration of ‘inner space’. The text works on many levels, most obviously as a piece of writing that is a joy to read. If you have any interest in acid at all, then get your hands on this book!
But let’s give more or less the last word to Chris. He writes the following about his attendance at a San Francisco psychedelic conference in the early part of this millennium: “A well established, even well-heeled, cult I had been expecting; but not one thriving like this. The hall was so packed you could barely move. Of all the revolutionary groups of my youth – the Hippies, the New Left, the students, the blacks, the feminists – it was, however improbably, the druggies and the druggies alone who had made it through in one piece. And not just survived, but boomed.”
Well, throw in some voodoo or candomblé and I think we have a revolutionary situation!
This book has been republished by Park Street Press as The Acid Diaries by Christopher Gray and is currently fairly easy to obtain. (Note added 15 December 2010).
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: candomblé, Chistopher Gray, Chris Gray, Hampstead Heath, Julia Callan-Thompson, Leaving The 20th Century: The incomplete works of the Situationist International, London, LSD, north London, Realms of the Human Unconscious, Sam, shamanism, Stanislav Grof, Terry Taylor, The Acid, The Acid Diaries, The Acid: On Sustained Experiment with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide or LSD, voodoo
Posted in books, counterculture, psychedelia | 24 Comments »
Monday, August 31st, 2009
The central HQ of the 2009 Art Strike Biennial switched constantly between Alytus Art School, Hotel Dzukija about five minutes walk away, and a bar-cum-restaurant located between these two venues in downtown Alytus. At the art school a lot of coffee was consumed, at the hotel innumerable bottles of wine, and in the bar industrial quantities of beer and cold beetroot soup. The Dzukija was an old school Soviet hotel, a concrete shell with stained glass in some of the public areas and cantilevered stairs between the floors. The building was absolutely crammed full of original oil paintings by official Soviet artists of yesteryear. In keeping with the Dzukija’s theme of Soviet nostalgia, the maids would leave overflowing bins in the bathrooms and failed to replenish toilet paper; all of which created a very relaxed bohemian atmosphere.
Perhaps the most interesting innovation art strikers brought to the Dzukija Hotel was the introduction of an ‘anarchist orgy suite’ on the second floor. This was a bedroom that had been assigned to a visiting anarchist from Vilnius (much of the Vilniaus Anarchistai group was present), that was put to collective use. The keys to this room were left permanently in the lock on the outside of the door, and according to unsubstantiated rumour anyone could go inside for ‘fun’, but in doing so risked being locked-in. As far as I’m aware the only person to end up trapped in the ‘orgy suite’ was the Italian autonomist Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, and when he was finally freed he announced casually in English: “I’ve just had an adventure’. He was locked in on his own, so this incident provides no evidence to back-up the endlessly whispered rumours about ‘orgies’ taking place in the room.
Aside from the Vilnius anarchists, Saulius Užpelkis was perhaps the individual most involved in engaging Bifo in ongoing political debate over beers. Although originally from Vilnius, Saulius has been living in London for the past year and he numbers among those recently denounced in The Sun for holding orgies on the roof of their squat in Poplar. I had a long discussion with Saulius about this and came away with the unsurprising view that the tabloid coverage I’d seen was not very accurate.
Bifo gave a couple of public talks during the Art Strike Biennial, but I found his bar room conversation even more enthralling than his lecture style. The first of Bifo’s official talks dealt with the development of radical media strategies from the seventies to the present: he stressed the difference between the serving up of information by the mass media, and his own desire for real communication. The second talk was based around precarity ‘theory’, and since I’ve argued against Alex Foti’s version of this ridiculous notion elsewhere (with regard to the Copenhagen riots a couple of years ago), I won’t go into it here. That said, while Bifo has taken up precarity ‘theory’, I nonetheless see his thinking as being way superior to Foti’s overall; and he is also a charming, delightful and very likable guy.
The key figure in leading discussion at the art school was Redas Diržys, and he worked hard at integrating the out-of-town strikers with the local teenagers also in attendance. What finally united the various factions was not so much theoretical debate, as practical activities. On Wednesday afternoon there was supposed to be a propaganda workshop. However when I turned up for it with my old friend Lloyd Dunn, the anarchists ‘running’ it had disappeared. I hauled Redas Diržys out of an office and we had a discussion about whether or not there should be an approved set of slogans for demonstration banners. In the end we agreed that those making the banners could use any slogan they wanted, but that all slogans would be translated into Spanish. Among the slogans I contributed was ‘Fly LSD’.
The Spanish banners were used on both a demonstration and a monstration, with around 50 art strikers marching around Alytus to the sound of banging drums and chanting in Lithuanian. The demonstration stopped in the town square for political speeches and a song in Estonian from Reiu Tüür. On the monstration art strike balloons were handed out to passers-by, and the march stopped in the town square for a game of Simon Says orchestrated by Charlie Citron. The demonstration and monstration were organised on consecutive afternoons and at both events marchers wore special art strike picket line clothes designed by Stephanie Benzaquen and Rotem Balva; these had been run up by local tailors. Meanwhile local sensibilities were simultaneously flummoxed by street paintings that had been executed by Nathan Crothers and Reiu Tüür.
After the demonstration on Thursday, there was an unofficial boating trip at a local lake that had lost most of its water, resulting in rowers frequently running aground. Martin Zet and Stefan Bohnenberger played leading roles in these almost water-borne activities. Following the monstration on Friday, a scratch orchestra came together to play improvised music outside Alytus Art School. This was followed by an after dark film screening on the outside wall of a derelict cinema.
On Saturday morning there was a game of three-sided football, with three teams and three goals. The triolectical anti-sport was followed by Mantas Kazakevicius demonstrating how to use a Reichian cloud buster, then the strike wound down with a wine tasting organised by Kurt Ryslavy and Natalie Yalon. Naturally Saturday night concluded with an over-the-top party in the Hotel Dzukija, which is a good way of reminding ourselves that while we’re demolishing serious culture we should have a smile on our lips and a song in our heart.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Alex Foti, Alytus, Alytus Art School, Art Strike Biennial, Bifo, Charlie Citron, Copenhagen, Franco 'Bifo' Berardi, Franco Berardi, Hotel Dzukija, Kurt Ryslavy, Lithuania, Lloyd Dunn, London, LSD, Mantas Kazakevicius, Martin Zet, Natalie Yalon, Nathan Crothers, Poplar, precarity theory, Redas Diržys, Reichian cloud buster, Reiu Tüür, Rotem Balva, Saulius Užpelkis, Stefan Bohnenberger, Stephanie Benzaquen, Vilniaus Anarchistai
Posted in counterculture, humour, performance | 36 Comments »
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Yoko Ono keeps popping into my life. Last week I was reading and commenting about her on the Old Rope blog. The piece in question particularly grooved me because it featured an embed of Ono’s Bottoms (AKA Four) from YouTube. Here’s a short extract from that blog followed by some of my comments:
“…Ono has taken more than her fair share of shit over the years. Richard Di Lello’s The Longest Cocktail Party, whilst being an illuminating and entertaining insight into the world of Apple, also offers glimpses of the derision leveled at Ono - even from within the Beatles inner circle.
“Though far from perfect, it must be remembered that Ono’s art was challenging and (at times) part of a wider fluxus tradition. As a woman, as an artist and being, gasp, Japanese, Yoko took flak on all fronts…
“Mister Trippy says: I always thought Cut was the best thing Yoko did, the piece where she sits still and the audience cut off her clothes with a pair of scissors. Very powerful. But her work is variable and nothing else is as truly brilliant as Cut. I remember taking in her Whitney Museum show in New York in 1989 and she’d redone these fragile 1960s pieces in bronze, mind-bogglingly terrible. But great to see the Bottoms film again… I love that one too! Didn’t realise it was on YouTube… BTW Yoko is great fun too in her only ‘roughie’ softcore porn film Satan’s Bed from before she met Lennon.
“oldrope says: Agreed, Trip. Cut certainly makes the cut. I believe it was repeated in some form many years later, but that seems a trifle unnecessary in my book.
“I was also a little disappointed with Skyladders inside St Lukes in Liverpool (aka The Bombed Out Church – you actually have to sign a form on the way in saying they are not responsible if it falls in on your head) last year. Though I quite liked the ‘instruments’ for people to play with.
“At the risk of sounding cliched, I groove on her earlier work most.
“I’ve not seen Satan’s Bed, but it sounds like a good Saturday night in.
“Mister Trippy says: I agree with you about the ladders, about the only things I liked in that Liverpool Biennial were the moving trees, but that was coz I could watch local kids being naughty by repeatedly pressing the emergency stop button once they worked out where it was. And it was conveniently close to A Foundation where I was doing a performance. Still Yoko’s work in that Biennial was no worse than say Tracey Emin.
“If you like trashy films then Satan’s Bed is a real treat – out on DVD in the UK so not at all hard to find…. BTW: Did you know that both Yoko and me appear on the recent Intermedium Records double CD compilation Tribute To Gustav Metzger. But that’s the closest I’ve ever got to her….”
The Tribute To Gustav Metzger is also an example of an item missing from my Discogs discography (and indeed Yoko’s too), as discussed on my last blog. The Metzger tribute also features Melissa Logan from Chicks On Speed and was originally done for broadcast on Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bayern 2) in Germany on 12 December 2008. It was curated by Justin Hoffmann. So that’s two things from last year in which I shared a billing with Yoko (the Metzger tribute and the Liverpool Biennial). And right now both Yoko and me are two of more than 100 ‘artists’ from around the world featured in International Fluxhibition #3: Thinking Inside The Box at The Gallery in the E.H. Hereford University Center at the University of Texas at Arlington (on until 31 July). The show is made up mainly of contemporary takes on Flux boxes, and my contribution was accepted despite not meeting the brief. It is Score for Fluxhibition #3 – 2009:
“Don’t send a work to the Fluxshow.
Tell the curator it got lost in the post.
Do it again for the next one.
No art is the best art!”
Returning to Yoko, regardless of whether you do or don’t like the stuff she does now, what you can’t knock is her sincerity. She clearly likes to make and show art, and is as happy doing so in a small gallery as a prestigious Biennial. And while Yoko’s musical output over the years has been variable too, I even find it hard to knock her on this score when you consider that she and Lennon had the good taste to employ Elephant’s Memory as their backing band shortly after arriving in New York City. Let’s do the Power Boogie….
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: A Foundation, Apple Records, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Bayern 2, Bottoms, Chicks On Speed, Cut, E.H. Hereford University Center, Elephant's Memory, Fluxus, Four, Gustav Metzger, International Fluxhibition #3, John Lennon, Justin Hoffmann, Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial, Melissa Logan, New York, Old Rope, Power Boogie, Richard Di Lello, Satan's Bed, Score for Fluxhibition #3, Skyladders, St Lukes, Stewart Home, The Gallery, The Longest Cocktail Party, Tracey Emin, Tribute To Gustav Metzger, University of Texas at Arlington, Whitney Museum, Yoko Ono, YouTube
Posted in counterculture, exhibitions, music | 25 Comments »