Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Artmadeflesh

I've just noticed that the cover of Shrike has now been completed. This is good.



I know people have pre-ordered copies, too. Well, it's coming. You know, there's more in the pipeline, after Shrike, too. Much, much more, even if I have to jolly-well publish it myself, or even if someone lifts the memory stick of all my work off my corpse after I've been beaten to death outside the offices of Penguin Books for looking a bit like Doctor Who.

Well, the artist, Vincent Chong, has done a nice job. I like his work.

But now, I'm very tired. I think that Mr. Newton has had enough. Yes, I rather think he has.

Labels: PS Publishing, Quentin S. Crisp, Shrike, Vincent Chong

David Blunkett's Hands

I wonder just how manipulated I am. For instance, I find Heather Mills's face quite offensive, but I'm sure this response has been carefully engineered by the media, in the photographs chosen and so on. But why are they doing this? Or is this a silly question?

I've heard people say how brilliant Brasseye was at deconstructing supposedly objective television, such as news and current affairs programmes, and I would agree.



I'm pondering this partly because I'm reading Grotesque by Kirino Natsuo, which I hope to review once I've finished.

No worse fate can befall a man, says Burroughs, than to be surrounded by traitor souls. Indeed. Which soul do you trust?

I remember a conversation about Brasseye and the way the media creates images. He had watched, my interlocutor told me, a current affairs programme in which David Blunkett was being interviewed. And, at the conclusion of the interview, there was a moment where the camera focused on David Blunkett's hands. Why?

Labels: David Blunkett, media manipulation

A Tale of Two Teapots

I want to talk to you about teapots.

When I went to London last weekend I bought a new teapot. When I came back, I took some photographs of it. You will see the photographs below. I call them, 'My New Teapot 1', 'My New Teapot 2' and 'My New Teapot 3'.

Teapots are good things to take photographs of.



In fact, I have a whole new album of six pictures, all of them of teapots. I call this new album, 'Teapots'.

My new teapot was bought in the place where I lived just before moving to Wales, on the outskirts of London, in Zone 5, I believe. I was walking along the highstreet, looking in the windows of the shops, when there, in one of the gloomier, grimier windows, I saw something that made me stop in my tracks. It was a teapot.



You will probably notice from the photographs that this was not a common-or-garden teapot, or, at least, not a common-or-garden British teapot. Oh no. It was a common-or-garden Japanese teapot. Although my interest extends to embrace teapots in general, I especially like ones that come from Japan and ones that come from China. The latter are usually a little more delicate and showy and the former more rustic and 'minimalist'. That is, of course, a generalisation. You may also notice that the handle is not where it would be on a British teapot. No. This is positioned much more sensibly, so as not to break your wrist, above the lid of the teapot. Also, it is made of wicker.



As much as anything, it was this handle that attracted me. There's a story behind this. I shall tell it to you. My favourite teapot even is one that I bought in Japan. I will post a picture of it below. I bought it when I moved into my room in Ohbaku, part of Uji, near Kyoto. The city of Uji is the tea capital of Japan. Although I did not have much to do with human beings while I was resident in and around Kyoto, because of Uji, I had a lot to do with tea and all its appurtenances.

My favourite teapot was not expensive. It was cheap and mass-produced, but it was just right, in my eyes, and very kawaii. I also like, perhaps erroneously, to think of it as fuuryuu. For me, drinking tea is very much an aesthetic experience. I don't believe, either, that 'aesthetic' has to mean 'expensive'. No, no. On the contrary, it is very often (perhaps most often) the other way round. This is why the Japanese tea masters of old spurned the ostentatious Chinese tea utensils for use in the tea ceremony, preferring those that were plainer and more rustic.

During my time in Japan, I looked at enough ceramics closely enough to get a general idea of what is better craftsmanship, what is more expensive and so on. But good taste is not dictated by market value. Everything depends on context.



Last year, the wicker handle of my favourite teapot broke. There is not only misfortune in my life. If you look at the photograph of my favourite teapot carefully, you will see sellotape about the bottom parts of the handle. This was before it broke completely. I knew the day would come, and I dreaded it. However, the day it broke, it was just after I had filled it with hot water to brew some tea and was about to set it on the floor in my room. Perhaps half a centimeter before it touched the floor, the handle broke. If it had been seconds earlier, the entire teapot would have shattered, spilling boiling tea everywhere.

The teapot was saved. I only needed a new handle. This, however, was not so easy to come by. I could not find one anywhere in London. Even last weekend, looking at the Japan Centre along Piccadilly, I could not find any.

I have been using a stand-in for my favourite ever since the handle broke.

When I saw this new teapot in the shop window, not only did I like the simple black-and-cream design, I also noted the handle! If I did not want to use the teapot itself, I could remove the handle and transfer it to my favourite teapot. The shop was closed. I determined to come back early the next day.

I came back early the next day. The shop in question was a charity shop. I think it was Roumanian Relief Fund or something. I can't quite remember. To be honest, I was more interested in that teapot! It cost three pounds and fifty pence. The lady at the counter wrapped it in newspaper for me and put it in an estate agent's bag.

At last I brought it back to Wales. I noted, again, the layer of gunge that had collected on its upper surface from long neglect. I decided to try and wash this off, but it was thicker than I had thought. Eventually, I tried nail varnish remover and a cotton wad on the glazed black area. This seemed to work. Then I rinsed this off with boiling water. As I did so I remembered fondly a teapot I had once bought in America from a Chinese lady. She had instructed me in a particular ritual to perform with all new teapots to make them unbreakable. However, I couldn't remember whether or not that ritual only related to unglazed pots. I won't say what that ritual is. Apparently it's something done traditionally in China, so there must be only a few hundred million people in the world who know what it is, and I'd like to keep the knowledge exclusive and esoteric. I lost that particular teapot. Well, when I say I lost it, what I mean is that, very sadly, we parted ways.

There have been and still are many teapots in my life. I won't tell you all their stories now, if I ever do.

My new teapot is still sitting by the fireplace. It's not of genuine Japanese origin. I can tell that much. Despite the attractiveness of the design, I can also tell it's very cheap. The end of the spout is not formed well, and it doesn't pour as smoothly as it should. I'm wondering whether to decide if this means that it is beautiful in its imperfection, or whether it just means it's a dud; if it is the latter then I can transfer the handle to my old, favourite teapot. I have not brewed tea with the new one yet. After I've given it another good wash, I shall do so. And after I have done so, perhaps I shall make my decision.

Labels: Furyu, Teapots, Uji

In middle life I grew to love the Way

In the recent storms the rain was heavy and the wind strong. I took a walk down the muddy track above the river one afternoon, and, just before I had reached the place where the pigsty is, I came to a tree that had been blown over and had fallen across the path.

When Gerard Manley Hopkins encountered the sight of an ash tree being chopped down, some time before composing a poem on a similar theme, he wrote of the event:

...looking out and seeing it maimed there came at the moment a great pang and I wished to die and not see the inscapes of the world destroyed any more

Although the tree before me had been felled by natural causes (perhaps one could argue that the freak weather of those days, bringing floods to Wales and the South West, was not natural), I felt something like the pang that Hopkins described. It was as if the future itself were felled and blocked my way forward. I sighed. There was nothing I could do. I contemplated the scene and looked around, not wanting merely to dismiss it from my thoughts. Of course, it occurred to me, the tree itself probably doesn't mind. Then again, I can't be sure of that. But as I looked to the side of the path, I envied those trees that were still standing, and, by extension, even that which had fallen.



Their roots delve straight into the good earth. They spring directly from it, and die directly into it.

I've long felt an almost erotic attraction to the soil. Perhaps 'erotic' is a wilfully inaccurate word, or perhaps not, but, anyway, rather than 'eros', the word 'thanatos' might have more bearing here. The thought of burying myself in rich, wet soil, there to decay, fills me with joy. This is by no means a recent attraction. One of the earliest poets in whom I took an interest, in my early teens, was Baudelaire, and of his poems, one of my favourites was 'The Happy Corpse', which starts with the lines:

Wherever the soil is rich and full of snails
I want to dig myself a nice deep grave -
Deep enough to stretch out these old bones

Thinking about my own return to the soil is more and more what sustains me. I just wonder why I have had to have the bit in between birth and earth.

Another of life's depressing little frustrations - I've looked all around and can't find the book containing the poem from which I took the title of this entry. It is, anyway, a poem from 300 Tang Poems as translated by Innes Herdan, one of my most cherished volumes. 'The Way', of course, is 'the Dao'. When I think of Daoism, I think of roots and earth, roots taking me down, down, into the earth.

Let me die before I die.

Labels: Baudelaire, Gerard Manley Hopkins, soil, Taoism, trees

Speciesism

I subscribe to an e-mail group called A.Word.A.Day. The idea is simple. Each day you are sent a new item of vocabulary from the English language, with quotes and background. I recommend it. And, Sesame Street was brought to you today, by the word 'speciesism'. I reproduce the e-mail here:

speciesism (SPEE-shee-ziz-uhm, -see-ziz-uhm) noun

The assumption of superiority of humans over other animal species, especially to justify their exploitation.

[Coined by psychologist Richard D. Ryder (born 1940) in 1973. From Latin species (appearance, kind, form), from specere (to look). Ultimately from the Indo-European root spek- (to observe) which is also the ancestor of such words as suspect, spectrum, bishop (literally, overseer), espionage,despise, telescope, spectator, and spectacles.]

"At one point in Darwin's voyage to South America, James Moore told me, the naturalist stopped in Brazil, where his blood ran cold to see slaves in manacles being tortured by Catholic traders. Darwin was enraged as a Christian, but also as a scientist, because he recognized that the slave trade relied on the false notion that slaves were a different, inferior and exploitable species.

"Upon his return to England, Darwin extended the idea to the way people treated animals, an early precursor to Richard Dawkins's argument about speciesism. 'To say man is the pinnacle of creation and all things were created for him ... Darwin says that is the same arrogance we see in the slave master,' said Moore."

Shankar Vedantam; Eden and Evolution; Washington Post; Feb 5, 2006.

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Labels: a word a day

My Copyright Policy

By the way, it's worth mentioning here, but I've briefly discussed copyrighting issues with a friend this weekend. Well, it was only casual, but it makes me want to restate my policy here. All the images I use are hotlinked, which I take as a reference to their source. If you want to know where they come from, you should be able to just right-click over them and go to 'properties'. I think that's how it's done. So, in other words, I'm just borrowing these images in the same way you do when you inset a youtube clip.

In terms of text, I almost always give the source, unless it's a casual, conversational allusion.

If anyone wishes me to remove any content or images on copyright grounds, just let me know.

Labels: My copyright policy

This is materialism

Vivisectionists have always had excuses for their hobby, but I have long thought the picture below sums up their true attitude:



This is also the basic attitude of materialism, a worldview whose architects include Rene Descartes, who believed that the world was a machine created by God (he was a religious man, and here we see precisely how science is shaped by Western religion) and that animals have no souls. He was in this way giving a license to all the vivisectionists that were to come.

Look at the picture again. That is what materialism, as formulated by Western religion and science, does to all of us.

Labels: materialism, Rene Descartes, Science, vivisection

An Interview with Nagai Kafu

It seems to be a kind of a cliche for people to put up their old essays from university on the Internet. "Who wants to read that?!" says my hypothetical representative of the general attitude about this sort of thing, whom I shall name Gerald, even though I'll probably never refer to him again. However, I am going to act according to the cliche now and post here part of my final dissertation that I wrote for my BA in Japanese Studies. I graduated in the year 2000, so this was written from, if I remember correctly, mid 1999 onwards. Perhaps I started earlier, I can't remember now.

Anyway, I hope that people (including Gerald) will actually want to read this, and that they won't find it boring. Let me explain a little about it. The title of the disseration was 'Decay - The Life and Works of Nagai Kafu.' Nagai Kafu (1879-1959) is one of my favourite writers, and numbers among the handful of things on this planet that have kept me alive and relatively sane. The word 'decay' in the title of the dissertation refers to the fact that much of his work dealt with decline of traditional Japanese culture. More than that, however, there is a definite strain in his work of finding beauty in decay, in squalor, in all that is hopeless, all that is fleeting, all that thrives like weeds in the shadowy places of the world.

I look back on some of what I have written with acute embarrassment now. I was very pleased to be told that the dissertation had received the highest mark of any dissertation in the history of the department (as you can perhaps imagine), but the lecturers surely knew I was also being self-indulgent in many ways, and told me so. And yet they indulged me. Perhaps it was because they could tell I loved my subject matter. Having been a teacher myself, I know that it's always very refreshing to find someone interesting enough to be interested in something, and not so boring that they are always bored.

I certainly don't intend to reproduce the entire dissertation on the Internet. Not ever. Because of the abovementioned embarrassment, you see. What I intend to reproduce here is one of the appendices. I was so enthusiatic about my subject that I far exceeded the word limit. The only way I could get around this was by putting some of the material I had to cut back in as appendices. The appendix in question is in the form of an interview I conducted with Nagai Kafu. Now, if you look at the birth and death dates for Kafu above, and happen to know my birth (and possibly death) dates, you'll probably be scratching your head at this point. Ah, but I didn't interview the living Kafu, you see. I interviewed his ghost.

I have a hard copy of the dissertation here with me. It is spiral bound, and, considering I'm not much one for presentation (have you noticed?), beautifully presented. The cover, in particular, is very beautiful, but I don't think I'll be able to find that image on the Internet. Maybe I'll try and scan it in later, if someone is actually interested. And now, the interview:



The Long Awaited Interview

‘Tis the day of the festival O-Bon and your reporter awaits the presence of the illustrious author Nagai Kafu in a corner of Kamiya Bar, apparently a favourite haunt of the great man when he was alive. I have ordered something called an ‘electric brandy,’ the speciality of the house and a curious concoction indeed. Drinking it is not dissimilar to licking a battery. The place is very busy and I hope that no one will recognise the great man when he arrives. I want this to be a pleasant, relaxed interview.

Kafu, as he is generally known, does not give me the opportunity to let my excitement become strained or anxious by making me wait. He arrives with commendable punctuality at the appointed time. It is rather a tall man who strides through the door, and there is about him the general impression of sturdiness, somewhat belying what I have heard of his ill health. To my surprise, however, he is dressed rather informally, dare I say, shabbily, in an old striped shirt, open at the neck, a pair of exceedingly ragged trousers with rolled up bottoms, and sandals worn down at the heel. As he takes a seat he plucks a leaf from his tousled hair.

NK: I hope I’m not late.

YR: No, not at all.

NK: You must excuse my attire. I’ve just come from the garden and haven’t had time to dress. Let me just change into something a little more appropriate.

Before I can protest Kafu turns misty and unfocused. When his outline sharpens once more he presents an entirely different figure. Now he is dressed in an immaculate, dark Western suit and tie with polished black shoes. He removes his hat and relinquishes it to a passing waiter. He reminds me of someone. After a few moments I decide that he looks like a rather large-featured, Japanese version of Harold Lloyd. Maybe it’s the glasses.

YR: It’s very good of you to agree to this interview.

NK: Yes. It runs entirely contrary to my usual habits, of course. I’m somewhat distrustful of those who ply the pen, and I can see you’re one of them.

YR: Then, if it’s not too impertinent, might I ask why you did agree?

NK: To be quite frank I was surprised that anyone was interested. I’ve been laid to rest for forty years this very year, and I was quite out of fashion even towards the end of my own lifetime.

YR: Nonetheless, you are remembered. Your work has been translated into English as recently as five years ago. Works like Sumidagawa and Bokuto Kidan have even been translated into your beloved French. You say that you are distrustful of writers, but it is as a writer you are remembered.

NK: Yes. A disgraceful set of circumstances.

YR: Yet you yourself specified that you wanted your epitaph to read, “The Grave of Nagai Kafu the Scribbler.” [1]

NK: That would be the English translation, I suppose? I also stated I should like to be buried among the courtesans of Yoshiwara, but it seems that particular wish was not to be granted. [2]



YR: What I’m trying to get at is that you seem excessively self-deprecating, to the extent of being paradoxical. For instance, your proclamation that you should be taken no more seriously than an Edo gesakusha, what was behind that?

NK: Well, I believe I largely covered that question in a little essay called, ‘Hanabi,’ but since you ask, and it would be very tedious of me to refer you constantly to my writings, quite simply, I never considered myself that talented. I’m not sure that today’s people will understand the distinction, but I see myself more as a Saikaku than a Chikamatsu. [3] Besides, I actually have a boundless admiration for the Edo gesakusha. Should I have the fortune to be considered a genuine gesakusha I would esteem it a great accolade. Let’s put it another way. I believe it was in the fifth year of Taisho – that’s 1916 to you – that I renounced the literature of affirmation for the literature of ‘shumi.’ [4] Which is to say, I was writing more for my own sake, as an amateur – and you know the French word designates someone with a real love for their work - rather than trying to set any examples or fight any literary battles. That way one feels a greater freedom. It does not matter so much if one’s works are a little irregular, or not in step with the issues of the day. In short, one does not have to be the slave of others’ expectations. It’s an enviable position. No matter what authorities may be in power, they cannot stop you from thinking and dreaming what you wish. And similarly, they cannot stop you from writing what you wish, even if they make sure it is not published.

YR: You say you lack talent, and yet according to the Japanese I have spoken to, some in this very bar, your works are considered classics. They tell me your style is difficult, lyrical, finely polished. Of course, it seems all those things to me too, but in their comments I find my own views vindicated. I must say that I’m fascinated by the whole ambiguity of your position, as a latter-day gesakusha, as someone whose works are considered flawed by the likes of Edward Seidensticker, and yet as someone who, in the very fact of attracting such criticism, is evidently considered worthy of the attention.

NK: That’s not really a question.

YR: No, I suppose not. In which case let us proceed to another ambiguity. You seem distinctly individualist in philosophical bent and general temperament, and yet you appear to hanker after the Edo period, which was probably even more authoritarian than the Meiji period and all that it ushered in.

NK: Well, this is true. But perhaps that is the fault of my fatalistic nature. I do not admire authoritarianism, by any means. But the problem is one of aesthetics. The arts of Edo, not to mention the architecture and the manners, were far superior to the arts of our ill-considered 20th century. [5] The thing about the tyranny of the past, I suppose, is that it has been an oppressive cloud casting a great shadow, and I’m sure you are aware how fond I am of shadows and what is to be found among them. The ukiyo-e, for instance, for which I harbour almost religious feeling, is just such a product of this tyrannical shadow, the art of the oppressed plebeian, expressing in part resignation and in part defiance. Please note it is not the tyranny, but the resistance to that tyranny with which I am in especial sympathy.

YR: I’d like to extend this theme a little further in a slightly different direction. I put it to you that your attitudes are essentially conservative, and present as further evidence your attitude towards women. Your works evince a notable sympathy towards your female characters, who usually occupy low or disreputable social positions. However, your sympathy seems to cease should they rise from their positions of subjugation. For instance, in Bokuto Kidan, when talking about redeeming women from ‘the quarters of the thickly painted,’ [6] and giving them a domestic role, you state: “Every time such a woman changed her circumstances and ceased to consider herself humble, she would undergo a complete change and either end up a hopeless slattern or an ungovernable shrew.” [7] In short, your aesthetics seem actually to demand a certain cruelty for your hikage no hana to flourish.

NK: The extract you have quoted is from a work of fiction and not necessarily autobiographical. Nonetheless, I will stick by the remark. It is simple personal observation. I have nothing against women making good in the world. But I too have my own way to make in the world and my own interests to pursue. As to being conservative, that is a matter of interpretation. If being conservative means wishing to preserve all that is good in our traditions and our arts, and having a modicum of manners and decency in one’s dealings, then I admit to it unreservedly. By the way, if you read a little further in Bokuto Kidan you will find that Oe Tadasu muses that someone other than him might be able to make such a marriage a happy one.

YR: But you don’t believe in sexual equality?

NK: I don’t believe it is a very desirable position for men. Fully emancipated women are not very attractive. [8] But that is simply a matter of taste.

YR: Seidensticker quotes your second wife as explaining why she left you by saying, “He was very fickle.” [9] I feel sure that “fickle,” is Seidensticker’s way of translating, “Uwaki shite ita,” or, “Unfaithful.”

NK: This is the kind of scandal mongering I had feared. I would be obliged if you would mind your own business and limit your questions to my work.

YR: Yes, you’re quite right. Perhaps it is irrelevant. Speaking of which, do you think your work, backward looking even at the time of writing, has any relevance for readers today? Is it even healthy to be reading something that dwells so much on a past irrecoverably lost?

NK: My immediate response is to say that I do not care whether it is relevant to ‘the reader of today,’ or not. I have had occasion to wander the streets of Asakusa, Mukojima, where I set Bokuto Kidan, Fukagawa, Nihombashi – I could go on – and I find that as the city approaches the 21st century, there remains not a shadow of the city I knew and wrote about. I cannot hope to describe the overwhelming sadness that the sight of the modern streets induces in me. There is the sense of a world lost as in the blinking of an eye, and I come to feel the true meaning of what it is to be a ghost. ‘As I witness the extinction of the city’s spirit I feel in all my being nothing but a desire to be gone with it.’ [10] You ask if my works are relevant today, but that is not for me to answer. Why trouble my ghost with these questions? Perhaps it is best to be forgotten, to be perfected by obsolescence, to rest, rather than be called back and called back like this to a present where one does not belong. Let the past be the past and the present be the present. Only one thing – perhaps you should ask yourself why you wished to ask me such a question. I have passed on and such matters do not concern me, but the living are necessarily more restless than the dead. It is the living, perhaps, who are more haunted by the past.

YR: Have you anything to say before you slip once more through the ghostly turnstile to the other side?

NK: Yes. Your last question has set me to thinking. If I might be allowed to quote myself, and whether you act on it or not it is a truth, “I say it unconditionally: Our future has no road to proceed from save that of our past.” [11]

YR: Nagai Kafu, thank you very much for your time.

NK: Thank you.

And somewhat like a Cheshire Cat, Kafu fades away, leaving behind his spectacles and his gap-toothed grin for a moment.

*************************************************************************************************

Bibliography

[1] Seidensticker, Edward. Kafu the Scribbler (The Life and Writings of Nagai Kafu 1879-1959). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965. p.176.

[2] Ibid. p.152.

[3] Ibid. p.132.

[4] Ibid. p.82.

[5] Ibid. p.27.

[6] Nagai, Kafu. Bokuto Kidan. [A Strange Tale from East of the River]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1997. (A). p.126.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Seidensticker, 1965, p.22.

[9] Ibid. p.57/58.

[10] Nagai, Kafu. Danchotei Nichijo (ge). [Dyspepsia House Days (vol.II)]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996. (C). p.228.

[11] Seidensticker, 1965, p.49.

Labels: Nagai Kafu

If you can't see my mirrors, I can't see you

I've been tagged again, by Mark McGuinness. I've decided to accept this challenge, despite a feeling that I've rather exhausted the mine of random factoids about myself (of which I have to provide eight this time). I was actually sitting in the cafe in Asda just now (that's not an advert), eating apple and rhubarb crumble and drinking a cup of tea and trying to think of things about myself that I haven't already divulged. It was very difficult. I still haven't thought of eight. Anyway, I decided that anything that happened to me under the age of sixteen was off limits, and similarly, that anything pertaining to such parts of my person normally concealed by layers of fabric was also out of bounds. I hope that this will help me focus on what irrelevant parts of my life I really want to whore out to the reader here.



1) I have a shockingly poor educational background

Specifically, my primary and secondary education is so abominably poor that all those involved (myself included) should be slaughtered like pigs. I actually feel incurably bitter about this, since it's such a waste of my formative years - cruelty without culture or creativity. The educational system in Britain creeps somewhere beneath despicably useless in terms of quality, and apparently other countries look up to our education. So I am told. Let's put this straight, education should immediately give us an idea of who we are as human beings, and where we have come from, so that we can decide in an informed way where we are going. As it stands, it does the absolute opposite. It obscures who we are and confuses us. There really needs to be people getting their skulls cracked over this, because if there were decent education all else would follow. After kids have learnt to read and play with numbers a bit (or even during), they should immediately move on to the origins of the universe and the human race and move forward from there, taking in all the major developments in evolution and history. Also, nothing should be taught as fact, but only as 'the story so far'. It's taken me years just to realise how badly educated I am, and now, because of the schools I was forced to attend, where my delicate brain was left in the hands of criminally moronic pedagogues, I feel that I'll never really catch up with the absolute basics of education such as the history of Western thought from Ancient Greece to present day. Kids should have this stuff pat before they're twelve. These are the absolute basics, with which I am still fumbling. I'm a very slow reader, you see. When I read, you can see my lips move. (I've already broken my own rules, haven't I? This is under-sixteen stuff.)

2) I've never voted Labour.

3) In the CD player downstairs at the moment are five CDs...

... which are on rotation, if that's the correct phrase. I can't mention who the first one is by, because I promised not to mention him for at least a week, but it's his 2006 album. Then there's Caribou. Then there's The Books. Then there's Arvo Part. Then there's a selection of modern American music. As I write I am listening to Great Lake Swimmers.

4) I have a mouth ulcer at the moment.

I get mouth ulcers quite a lot.

5) I wish I could think of something to say that was actually interesting.

I noticed that Mark's 'eight' were really neat little moebius strips. And now I'm being pathetic. But maybe here's one, not particularly interesting. I hate lying. I wish now that I'd never told a single lie in my life. I wish that people would tell kids that it's not 'wrong' to tell lies, but warn them that if they hide these things deep inside, it will rot the very infrastructure of their being, like an infestation of termites. Which is sometimes how I feel about often very trivial lies that I told as a child (broken my own rule again), and which are now too painful, even though they are trivial, for me ever to probe the hollow areas they have rotted out inside me ever again. So, I hate lying, and I hope that I can get through this life without ever telling a lie again, but it might be difficult.

6) I'll probably blog him soon...

... (if ever I say I'll blog something later, you can guarantee I won't), but Ernst Haeckel is one of my favourite artists ever. I smothered my wall with prints of his work in the last place I lived. I wish I could have a mangina just so I could have his bizarre invertebrate babies.



7) I keep thinking now that...

... the first time I get an opportunity (which will no doubt be this coming Tuesday) I want to dress up as Britney Spears and sing 'Piece of Me' provocatively at a karaoke bar. And give birth to Haeckel's bizarre babies at the climax of the song.

8) I'm currently writing a story with Justin Isis...

which will probably be about novella length. I'm excited about it. It seems to be very good so far. I hope we can find a publisher for it. I think it probably falls into the category of 'awesome'.

So, now, are you sure you want a piece of me?



Anyway, I'm also obliged to tag eight people. I will make them people I've never tagged before, if I can. Hmmm. Poor creatures might actually have to read all this if I tag them. Oh well, let's see if I can find some people.

Okay, I tag Sarah, Fluffy Bunny, Gareth Hughes, Lokutus Prime, Kunst og andre slike ting, Violeta, Esther Sugar Winx and Allan.

Please, if you are one of those here, do ignore this tag if you're feeling tired or anything like that. This might well be the last time I ever respond to a tag myself, just so you know. I really feel like I've run out of random facts.

Labels: Britney Spears, Haeckel, mangina

The Year of Fucking Angry Writers

Just went downstairs to go to the toilet and noticed that the spring copy of ALCS News had arrived. I picked it up and casually flipped through it. Wendy Cope making a fairly reasonable point about copyright etcetera. And right at the back... Joan Smith invites writers to get angry. Invitation gladly accepted.

On the 17th of February, I posted a clip from the film Scum to illustrate what I'd like to do to the publishing industry. Sometimes I can barely contain my seething fury.

Because I think Wendy Cope has a point, I do try to credit any writing sources that I use on the blog, though I'm afraid I haven't actually paid anyone. The thing is, I really want people to read what Joan Smith has written, but doubt they'll go out and buy a specialist magazine like ALCS News that's not generally on the shelves in shops. So, I hope she will forgive me if I extract a little of that article below, because I'm behind what she's saying one hundred percent. And here it is:

What do I want for authors in 2008? That this should be the year we get angry and stop beating ourselves up. No one likes us much: the general public imagines we're all earning as much as Dan Brown, and if we aren't it's our own fault for not being popular enough. Publishers don't like us because we're not Dan Brown, and they don't know how to sell books by writers who aren't already bestselling authors. Bloggers loathe us because they desperately want to be writers themselves and envy the small success we've acheived by managing to get published at all.

Envy of authors is a widespread and corrosive phenomenon, which means that genuine greivances - and we have plenty of these - are dismissed as whining. No one wants to hear about all the things that have become standard, from barely civil rejections of manuscripts by editors who've loved previous books to incessant demands that books should be easier to read and make fewer demands on readers.

Damn right. Preach it, sister, if I may be so bold thus to address you. If I can get in touch with Ms. Smith and gain permission to reproduce the whole thing, or post a link to it if it exists online in some form (can't find it), then I shall. I love this woman.

Labels: angry writers, Joan Smith

Not playing the piano is my hobby

I forget who it was - Grayling or Dawkins or one of those clones - came up with what he thought was a very clever and witty comeback to the accusation that atheism is just another religion. "If atheism is a religion," he said, "then not playing the piano is a hobby."

Obviously he didn't realise that he was not only failing to be clever and refute the charge, but he was showing exactly what a ridiculous religion atheism is.

Let's run through this shall we?

'atheism' is to 'belief' as 'not playing the piano' is to 'hobby'. Therefore this:

A: "What do you believe in?"

B: "I'm an atheist."

Is the same as this:

A: "What are your hobbies?"

B: "My hobby is that I don't play the piano."

To put it simply, calling yourself an atheist is the same as considering not playing the piano to be your hobby.

Labels: atheism, pianos

And who can bear to be forgotten?

I've just received an e-mail containing some astrological news regarding a 'webinar' given by Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle. (A 'webinar'? Is that a new Doctor Who monster?) Apparently, because more than half a million people tried to tune in (or whatever the computer term is) at the same time, the site crashed.

Once again at the innovative edge, multi-Aquarian Oprah is using technology to share enlightening ideas. She broke out of her own book club "box" of memoirs and novels with her choice of Eckhart Tolle's The New Earth, a book about humanity's turningpoint -- in his words, to "evolve or die." Oprah is lending her star power to this surge of consciousness by teaming up with Tolle for a 10-week webinar, with so many taking part that it zapped her site's server on Monday night.

I got to the phrase "evolve or die", and suddenly found myself experiencing turbulence. I think at that point, or soon after, I recalled that I had today, in another e-mail, quoted a phrase from Bowie's song Ricochet: "Who can bear to be forgotten?" In the e-mail I suggested it might be a relief to me.



Anyway, I had a sinking feeling, reading that phrase, that, well, if it comes to that, actually, I'm going to take the latter option. Not by choice, just by destiny or something like that. It's not the first time I've encountered the 'evolve or die' ultimatum, and not the first time I've had a sinking feeling about it as I look around my room, full of urgently scribbled manuscripts that perhaps no one will ever read. For all the fact that I mumble about turning points, awakenings and enlightenment with cyclical frequency on this blog, I tend to feel that, when it comes right down to it, I'm really more in the chaff category than the wheat. I am, indeed, a lost cause, in all that I think, feel, do, see, hope, remember, fear, recontextualise, worship, abominate and sniff. I am on the losing side - you know, the one that doesn't write history, or make it. I am not one of those whom Noah the Second will be ushering onto the Ark. I am a solo unicorn, tossing my horn in a resigned sort of manner as the flood waters rise higher and, after shutting the Ark-door thing behind the two loved-up silverfish, Noah II slaps his forehead and says, "Hang on, I think I've forgotten something. Oh well, I suppose it wasn't important."

That's me, that is.

By the way, I have noticed that a lot of the people coming to my blog via a Google search are doing the search 'Eckhart Tolle skeptic/sceptic'. Maybe I should explain that I'm not a skeptic as such. I'm someone who's pretty interested in Tolle in a profoundly uncomitted sort of way. But I am not, and never have been 'a skeptic' - probably not about anything, if it comes to that. I mean, I've been skeptical, but not 'a skeptic', which sounds like another Doctor Who monster. Doctor Who and the Invasion of the Skeptics, or something. There's even a Skeptic's Dictionary online. You're probably best off going there if you're looking for full-on skeptic stuff, where you can be guaranteed that whatever the entry is, the definition of it will be a supercilious declaration of disbelief. I mean, who are these people who spend their whole lives going around looking for things not to believe in, and then putting them in alphabetical order? So, I'm not really a skeptic. If Tolle is sincere in what he says then he doesn't want to be treated as a guru anyway, and if he's not sincere in what he says then... Please finish that sentence on your own.

So, to get back to what I was saying, I have encountered this 'evolve or die' thing before, largely in the work of one of my favourite writers, housewives' favourite, Mr William Burroughs. I quote:

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

Again, the sinking feeling. A very big sinking feeling. A sinking feeling, in fact, the size of the Titanic.



Oh well.

I don't think I can leave behind everything I've ever believed in. I have tried. I tried last Wednesday. It didn't work. Pathetic, isn't it?

And then, I think, maybe it's not so bad dying with all these beliefs I have, which also have to die. Maybe it's not so bad standing on the deck of the ship which is my soul, and of which I am captain, and saluting to no one at all as I go down with it.

That's the way I shall die. I shall die with the wind in my heart and dust in my hair.

I shall die and be forgotten.

Labels: David Bowie, Eckhart Tolle, my death, Oprah Winfrey, William Burroughs

Lauren Ambrose

I don't have a television at the moment (I have no plans ever to get one, either), and any televisual needs I might have are being met by the computer. I've actually never owned a television in my life, though I have lived in houses where a television was present. Anyway, there is some television that I really appreciate, such as the now ended Six Feet Under. In particular, I'm a big fan of Lauren Ambrose. I don't know if I've ever seen someone in a television series who was so obviously and breathingly an actual person, which is wonderful. Anyway, some clips:







Hmm, during the compilation of this blog entry I briefly saw some item (maybe even old) about Ms Ambrose being pregnant, which reminded me of Thomas Ligotti's response on learnng that "there might exist some form of organic life below the glacial surface of one of the moons of Jupiter", to wit, "There goes another perfectly good wasteland".

Labels: Lauren Ambrose, Six Feet Under

Our Batrachian Friends

I've known about this for a while - the crisis in amphibian populations - but was reminded by the Internet news item this morning.

I very much like amphibians, but even if I didn't I would be deeply saddened by this. I just don't know how much more of this I can bear to witness.



I believe it was in his diary that Nagai Kafu wrote the following, referring to his native city of Tokyo:

As I witness the extinction of the city’s spirit I feel in all my being nothing but a desire to be gone with it.

That's pretty much how I feel about all the good things of Earth currently being destroyed by the vulgar, despicable, gormless, brutish, boorish and brainless scum that we call humanity.

I'd rather not survive in a world in which they are the winners and the architects of all that is. I anticipate my disappearance eagerly.

Labels: amphibians, extinction, Nagai Kafu

Morrissey's Blog



I often feel that the comments section is the best part of this blog, which is why I also feel it's a shame that I don't get that many comments, in a way. I'm not complaining, actually, as if I got too many, I probably wouldn't be able to respond to them all, anyway. However, this preamble is my way of leading up to the fact that Abbass very kindly posted a link to a Morrissey song recently in the comments section of this entry. I responded by talking about what the song title (The Lazy Sunbathers) referred to, and by posting some links of my own (though I neglected to point out the Noel Coward reference in the lyrics of The Lazy Sunbathers). One of the links I posted was to the Moz song above. However, it has occurred to me that this song is just too good for me to let the link to it remain hidden in a corner of the comments section, so here it is on the main page, at the top of this entry, the wonderfully titled, Mama Lay Softly On the Riverbed.



I'll come to some of the reasons I think this is an excellent song in a minute. Hmmm, first of all, to address Abbass's observation that I do post rather a lot of Morrissey. He was kind enough to say that there was nothing wrong with this, but this does seem to be a point of contention. So, I'd like to look a little at this contentious bone and then I promise I won't mention Morrissey for at least a week. The David Quantick 'review' to which one of those links should lead, really sums up just about everything that anyone seems to hate about Morrissey. I don't actually want to go through this point by point, because I want to have my lunch soon. What it seems to boil down to is two things: The accusation that Morrissey is racist and the opinion that his latest work is a let-down after the genius of The Smiths. Oh, there's a third thing - that Morrissey is a "vanity-stricken egoist with a persecution complex", but I just don't care about that third thing enough even to analyse it, probably because I'm one too and know how it feels. So, the first point - racism. Until recently I suppose I've thought that the question is a matter of no one being entirely free of racism or the potential for racism. Therefore, those who demand that Morrissey should prove he is not racist should first prove they are not. They can't. I suppose they are trying to prove they aren't by tediously throwing accusations at others, but I've had enough of this kind of prick. So, I have just tended to think that, within the qualification that no one is entirely either racist or un-racist, that I don't really know what Morrissey is, but don't find it, anyway, to impinge on his artistic output. However, having recently re-listened to Irish Blood, English Heart I found myself really struck by it for the first time. (It's never really struck a chord with me before.) I found it suddenly to be a very honest and intelligent response to accusations of racism - a response that is not 'drawn in' in the way his accusers would wish him to be drawn in.

Irish blood, English heart, this I'm made of,
There is no one on Earth I'm afraid of.

I think the word 'afraid' is key here. Inter-racial and inter-cultural relations should be conducted without fear, should they not? I felt this was exactly the right choice of word. Not to be afraid of who anyone else is, and not to be ashamed of who you are - that is what I felt the song to be about.

So, on this score, the mud of the muddied waters is settling for me now. Controversy continues, but I am more inclined to see this as instigated by those who want to make themselves look good.

To continue to the second point: Morrissey is not as good as he used to be/as good as The Smiths. Well, this is, in my opinion, true. I mean, I'm not sure how to be anything else but subjective here. However, I would make the qualification that Morrissey is not consistently as good as he used to be. Sometimes Morrissey the solo artist is as good as The Smiths, and that is something that is rare enough in pop music to be remarkable. In particular, I think he came up to Smiths standard with some of the material on Viva Hate and Vauxhall and I. In fact, You Are the Quarry, his 'comeback album' is pretty much in the same league as those two, in my opinion, particularly if you take some of the B-sides into account.

I think that Morrissey has certainly lapsed into artistic redundancy at points. I didn't hate Kill Uncle as much as many people seemed to, but I didn't rave over Your Arsenal the way some did. Southpaw Grammar and Maladjusted I find to be patchy, but pretty good, with some underrated gems on them.

This brings us to the last album, Ringleader of the Tormentors (dodgy commentary in that link), which came out in 2006, and which I have therefore lived with now for almost two years. To review it in brief, I'd say I really like some of the songs, but overall find it a little stodgy and a little bombastic. It was produced by legendary producer Tony Visconti, but, the truth is, I don't think I actually like the production, well, particularly not on I Will See You in Far-off Places and Life is a Pigsty. Some, such as writer Doulgas Coupland, have really rated this album. But I suppose I felt that if this had been Morrissey's school project and I had been a teacher, I would have been writing something like, "Could do better" on his report.



Unfortunately there then followed All You Need is me and That's How People Grow Up, which were 'not bad'. But I should not be describing a Morrissey song as 'not bad'. This is not a good state of affairs. The release of the Greatest Hits album compounded this sense of redundancy. People were beginning to mutter the words 'Las Vegas period'. I think some of them still are. I'm not.

And the reasons I'm not are largely due to some of the newest songs leaked in live form on Youtube, songs such as I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris, and, of course, Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed. These songs don't seem to feature quite the attention to detail lyrically as Morrissey has made his trademark in the past. I do remember one reviewer sayinf that Sheila, Take a Bow did not display Morrissey's usual ability to surprise us with words, and, compared to much of Morrissey's recent output, that song seems to feature surprising words in abundance. However, Throwing My Arms Around Paris does feature a lovely melody, and the incredible line: "Only stone and steel accept my love". And Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed?

At first I found the words disappointing, reminding me of Elvis Costello's claim that Morrissey writes brilliant titles and then forgets to write a song for them. Some of it even seemed awkwardly phrased to me: "Life is nothing much to lose". And there was some laziness going on, too: "Was it the pigs in grey suits persecuting you?" The triteness of the word 'pigs' is slightly mitigated by the combination with the also trite 'grey suits' to make something that, together, is not as trite as the sum of its parts, but still.

However, I have been listening to/watching this clip a great deal, and even my doubts about the lyrics have evapourated. The tale seems to be one of a mother who is driven to suicide by drowning, Opelia-like, in a river. What I like about this is that, although the words themselves don't feature much of Morrissey's well-known invention and wit, the lyrics start from an unusual premise, and present the story with an unusual angle.

Mama, why did you do it?
Mama, who drove you to it?

There are many things to focus on in this world of ours, but Morrissey has asked us to focus not on sailors fighting on the dancehall, but on mother. Who drove you to it? Yes, indeed, what nefarious machinations are taking place here? The persecution of the mother brings into sharp focus the evils of an impersonal society. We can feel it. When asked about Morrissey in an interview once, I responded thus:

I recently had a conversation with a Morrissey fan. I hope she won’t mind me alluding to the conversation here, as it’s possible she’ll read this. She described Morrissey as ‘sacred’. In other words, she wasn’t prepared to accept criticism of him. And I understand the sentiment. I suppose I am slightly more prepared to accept criticism of him now than when I was younger, but the point is, whatever he may be like as a person (and I don’t know) he has managed to express something that to many people is sacred. I think this is to do with people’s innermost feelings about themselves, to which Morrissey has found his way. In Reel Around the Fountain, there’s the line, “It’s time the tale were told/Of how you took a child and you made him old.” It’s really the child that is the sacred thing – that innocence that is destroyed by a corrupt world. I think that’s what people identify with. It’s like when people say, “You can say anything you like about me, but don’t you dare say anything about my mother.” It’s a kind of displacement. The mother is really their innermost self. Or should that be, the Mozzer is really their innermost self?

And here is the Mozzer, in this song, after all, saying, do what you like, but if you touch my mother, I'll kill you:

Bailiffs with bad breath
I will slit their throats for you.

And in the clip you can see that he makes a slitting motion as with an old-fashioned cut-throat razor as he sings this. And who amongst us has not felt this at some time, that nothing mattered, as long as they could storm the offices of the Inland Revenue, or wherever the appropriate place might happen to be, and in the name of vengeance, slits the throats of every fucker there?

And then, that line that at first I thought was awkward:

Life is nothing much to lose.

It's so true, especially in a world that is full of 'un-civil servants', 'bailiffs with bad breath' and all the rest. It also reminds me of a Japanese death poem (jisei) I once read that was translated as something like: "Seen from outside, this world is not worth a box of matches." When there is nothing worth dying for, there is also nothing worth living for, and this line, which is not only true, but is also sung with feeling, brings us a little closer to whatever that very private thing is that is worth dying for, after you have spat out your venom on this putrid and despicable world.

I don't believe Morrissey is a celebrity for this reason - when I listen to his music, I don't want to be him, I feel okay about just being me.

And then, at the end

We're going to run to you
We're going to come to you
We're going to lie down beside you, Mama.
We're going to be with you
We're going to join you
We're going to lie down beside you, Mama.

This reminds me somehow of the bit in Blackadder where Doctor Johnson is trying to explain the plot of the dictionary to Kind George. "There is no hero, unless it be our Mother Tongue." "The mother's the hero? Nice twist."

It feels very right to me that Morrissey should very explicitly place himself on the losing side, on the side of the mother, here, at the end.

Well, I didn't call this entry 'Morrissey's blog' because that's what this blog is becoming, despite what some might think. No, I called it that, because that's pretty much how I'm coming to look at Morrissey's musical output. I don't think he's in a hurry to produce a masterpiece anymore. He's putting out whatever comes to him. He doesn't need more ammunition. Some of the shots he fires off will miss the target, but when they hit, well, you get something like this, something that reminds you, after all, that

Life is nothing much to lose.

Labels: Morrissey

Weltschmerz

So many things in life piss me off. I don't have the energy to shoot them down here and now.

In a recent post I stated that, because of the discovery that I actually have readers, "I feel a little bit shaken up and that maybe I should be slightly more responsible, and less of an arsehole." I've kind of changed my mind about that, partly because I'm just so pissed off with the world that I don't know if I can manage those things anyway, and partly because of this. It's an article about how boring celebrity blogs are. I quote therefrom:

Take a look at David Beckham’s post just after moving to America. He says, “Well, it’s been a very busy 10 days since we arrived in LA, but we’re settling in nicely and you’ll be glad to know that my first few training sessions went well.” Of course they went well David, news flash – you’re a football god. What about your new home? Is there a spare bedroom for us? And what about your new best friends Tom and Katie? Come on Becks, give us something! If you have the will to keep reading, you’ll find one-sentence accounts of football matches and practices. After a while, the brevity of each post becomes a blessing.

I'm fairly confident that I know the reason why celebrities blogs are so boring. They don't want to offend anyone. When you're a celebrity, and you have a vast audience, the chances that someone in that audience will be offended by something that you have to say are multiplied accordingly. And for celebrities, the size of the audience counts. And, after all, they're only there to play football/make entirely redundant music/star in entirely redundant films and make money, anyway. Why the hell would they actually want to risk alienating their audience by opening their mouths and showing what arseholes they are?

For those of you who have only just tuned in, I am a writer and consider my blog to be secondary to my real writing. For that reason, I do actually try not to be an arsehole here on my blog. There's a bit in the film Amadeus where Mozart defends himself saying, "I'm a vulgar man, but I assure you, my music is not." I suppose I've long felt that my blog is not really me writing at all; it's me in conversation mode, opening my big mouth in a way that celebrities never do. That's fine, because I'm not a celebrity (I don't think there's any argument on that score). But it has caused me some anxiety because

a) I don't particularly want to be an arsehole
b) I don't want the fact that I am one to prejudice anyone against my real writing

However, for the moment, at least, reading that article on celebrities blogs reassures me that there are some benefits to being an arsehole, or rather, to not hiding it (not that I could really hide it if I tried, which I have). Because at least it goes some way towards stopping me being the entirely crashing bore that I would be if I were Victoria Beckham. So, well, even if I do make a limp attempt to be more responsible with this blog, I probably won't try much harder than I already have tried not to be an arsehole. I hope I've made myself clear.

Just to make it clearer, because apparently there can be language problems about these things, when I say 'arsehole', I don't mean 'asshole'. Using the language of the speech from Team America, I would no doubt be a 'pussy', which is different to a cunt. So, to recap, a cunt is like an asshole, though the former is probably a bit worse. A pussy, such as myself, may also be an arsehole, but is unlikely to be an asshole. Although there may indeed be some pussy/asshole crossover via the perineum, and this may even be more common than generally imagined.

I understand that this use of the word 'cunt' may be offensive to some people, but then some people are offensive to me. Besides, I'll probably go into the linguistic and cultural implications of this in a separate entry.

Examples of this particular usage of 'cunt': Jack Straw, just for being Jack Straw, but also for being a cunt with regard to voting for the closure of post offices in private whilst publicly campaigning to keep them open. Jack Shit, man of straw. And complete cunt.

William Hughes. Complete cunt.

I'm not going to give a long list here, actually, tempting as it is. I'm sure that I've illustrated my point.

Now, I hope I'm not one of the above, though it can't be ruled out. However, if I'm an arsehole then who would I give as examples? I don't know. I suppose someone like Jim Morrisson. I'm not saying that I'm as cool as he was or anything (I'm more the pussy version of an arsehole), but, you probably get the idea if I say that. No? Er... Also Dazai Osamu, Morrissey, Peter Cook... these are all people I like, by the way, although, of course, there are some arseholes I don't. Anyway...



All of this reminds me of a chap I knew at university who would always introduce himself by extending his hand to be shaked and saying, "Hello, I'm the Arsehole." This caused confusion and bewilderment in some, although there was a friend of mine who was 'like "Yeah, whatever"'. Personally, I couldn't help thinking, "Why didn't I think of that?" So, I'm afraid that if I introduce myself to you today, it must simply be as 'an arsehole', not as the definite article. Mind you, I suppose he may have abdicated from his position as 'the Arsehole'. I could fill that space. I wonder where he is now? Still with us, I hope.

Ah, happy days!

Some more cunts: David Beckham, Nestle, Sir Alan Sugar, Jeremy Clarkson, oh it's so boring, all the same old people.

Oh, one last thing:

We’re in no doubt that celebrities believe their blogs to be successful, but in our minds, they’re failures. Rather than giving us an insight into the real person behind the celebrity, they are simply another outlet through which to promote a current project – but we’re still left wondering about the part of the star that doesn’t get covered in the media. We wanted to know more about David, Victoria and Jamie as everyday people, not as footballer, diva and chef.

I don't want a fucking 'insight into the real person behind the celebrity'. I don't want any part of 'the star' that isn't covered by the media. I don't want them at all. What I'd really like is for Vlad the Impaler (not Vlad the Impala) to invite them to a really hot party where 'anybody who is anybody simply has to be there'.

Labels: arseholes, assholes, Blogs, celebrities, pussies

The Triumph of Human Judgement over Computer Error

The following is, to me, one more reason why humans merging with computers, as Ray Kurzweil would like us to, is a really, really bad idea. That is, anyway, one message that I take from this story. There are, of course, others. Please read:

http://www.skysurfer.ndo.co.uk/spetrov.htm

http://www.brightstarsound.com/

Labels: Stanislav Petrov

The wind sings of the old future to any who are listening

Labels: Burnley, The singing ringing tree