Vispo: Change Your Mind

RTomens, 2023

 

Books: The Best Opening Line To A Novel According To Amazon Readers...and Me / The Shock of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer

A poll commissioned by Amazon Books U.K. asked 2,000 Amazon readers to vote for the 'most memorable opening lines from the world of literature,'. Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities won, unsurprisingly, with 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' Orwell came second with 'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' from 1984.  J.K. Rowling made the Top Five, surely due to her popularity rather than the literary genius of 'Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.' from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

But why didn't they ask me? Perhaps I wasn't considered to be an 'Amazon reader'? To make up for that I asked myself and had a rummage through my collection. Here are some of my favourites:

'May it please heaven that the reader, emboldened and having for the time being become as fierce as what he is reading, should, without being lead astray, find his rugged and treacherous way across the desolate swamps of these sombre and poison-filled pages; for, unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic and a tautness of mind equal at least to his wariness, the deadly emanations of this book will dissolve his soul as water does sugar.' - Maldoror, Lautréamont.

How about that!

'Listen to my last words anywhere.' - Nova Express, William Burroughs.

That's cheating. Nova Express isn't a proper 'novel'!!! Ha-ha.

'PFFFRRRUMMMP.' - Inside Mr Enderby, Anthony Burgess.

You can't top that. No-one ever has.

My favourite opening paragraph has always been this one from Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller:

'I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.'

I mean, that's sensational. 

George Orwell was a great admirer of Tropic of Cancer. He wrote about it in his 1940 essay, Inside The Whale, describing Miller as 'the only imaginative prose writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.' Orwell must have got hold of an Obelisk Press copy since it wasn't published in the UK until 1963. This, then, being the 60th anniversary of that date, you might expect a media outlet to be discussing it but...no. I can't find one. Why? It's as toxic as hell!

'Misogyny' and 'sexism' being current buzz words, by which I mean everyone is on the look out for both, no-one is going to sing the praises of this filthy book. Should they dare to do so whilst being remotely popular on X they would no doubt be mobbed within seconds, banned themselves (like the book), lose their job etc. 

We live in censorious times, whilst professing to be mercifully free of the kind of censorship that plagued countries run by a dictatorship or those that tried to ban risque novels because the Establishment were shocked by them. Miller's brazen amorality would shock young readers today, certainly. To them it would be as unacceptable as it was to bowler-hatted prudes 60 years ago. It is one thing to masquerade as a social justice warrior, a 'radical' activist, but quite another to find any redeeming qualities in a free-thinking novelist who dared to say what the hell he liked.

Henry Miller has never been fashionable. When I featured him in my fanzine, Ego, in the early-90s, it was, in retrospect, an anomaly even then. I mean, the kinds of writers zine-makers featured were the 'hip' ones, such as Burroughs, Kerouac, Bukowski etc. My ex-girlfriend, upon seeing him in the zine, even chastised me for featuring that 'sexist' swine. She, by the way, was probably a lesbian by then. She converted after a three-year affair with me, which is understandable since no man could be good enough afterwards! Ha-ha. That is neither here nor there, except to say that she was quite the French-lover, by which I mean adoring Sartre and Simone and Gide, not a filthy American in Paris like Miller. It was, in the 80s, acceptable for my ex to applaud Sartre, since he was a Marxist.

Orwell often wrote about the left-wingers who excused the Russian leadership for their sins. As with many things, he was prescient regarding matters of blinkered ideological thought and censorship. His appraisal of Miller in the 40s no doubt raised many eyebrows amongst his socialist friends. Such books as Tropic of Cancer (there was nothing like it, though) were, after all, mere 'bourgeois individualist indulgence'! No doubt all novels which lacked the correct political ideology were condemned as criminal when there was a revolution to maintain.

Reading just a few lines of Tropic of Cancer now feels as daring as it must have done in all those years ago. It still has the power to shock. It does so because we live in what feels like an increasingly sanitised age, when anything may be deemed 'incorrect'. It is very easy to offend, even when no offence is intended. Miller did not write to offend intentionally. He wrote freely and to hell with what people thought. That, today, may in itself constitute a 'thoughtcrime' and as in Orwell's 1984, we would do well to consider the implications of punishing freedom of thought and expression.

The NID Tapes: Electronic Music from India 1969​-​1972

 

You knew electronic music was being made in Ahmedabad, Western India, at the National Institute of Design, didn't you? Of course...

You didn't imagine it...or even dream it.

Here's the proof. A compilation from state51 Conspiracy. 

This is sound archaeology of the highest order. Yes, the past IS another country. India. Unless you come from India where, sometime between 1969 and 1972, S.C. Sharma made Dance Music I, predicting Minimalist Techno. That's one track. There are 18 others. Two of them are Jinraj Joshipura's Space Liner 2001 1&2, fantastic spatial odysseys reminiscent of earlier electronic/visual dreams of a future in which space flight was not only easily imaginable but clean, precise, romantically optimistic? That said, the second is more brooding, even ominous.

I.S. Mathur's Once I Played a Tanpura stands out, not because it's 'better' than other tracks, but because it sounds like the birth of Glenn Branca. A progressive statement from Mathur? Dismissing the traditional instrument and heralding the era of the electric guitar's potential as a futuristic feedback machine.

Atul Desai's Recordings for Osaka Expo is the only track which does acknowledge traditional Indian music, therefore placing, geographically, the source of all this music. The tradition is fused with (consumed by?) technology, naturally, but done so in a way that both respects and usurps it.

A highly recommended compilation. You can read more about electronic music in India here. And buy the album or download here.  

The Past Is Another Country - A Year In The Country: Lost Transmissions by Stephen Prince / Collage: Specimen 61

 

'I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.' - J. G. Ballard

Forget the future. Not that you can remember it.

Optimistic futures are a thing of the past. They are also social, political and science fictions. The past is, at least, a reliable source of actual material from which some satisfaction can be gained. It contains wonders...and horrors. It is even mythological. It can be anything we choose in order to compose a collage of preferences.

Stephen Prince has, for years, been exploiting the past to create a present world of sound and vision through music reconstructed from visionary tape and electronic ideas. The releases on his label feature meticulous images designed to evoke the 'wyrd'. His latest book, Lost Transmissions, explores many strands of what used to be called 'hauntology', along with dystopian visions in film, hence the inclusion of  the films, Rollerball and 1984. 

There is much more in this book than meets the rolling eyes of cynics who think that investigations into the retro-strange are old hat. It is proof that thoughtful examination of past and (relatively) present culture offers new perspectives and as such, is highly recommended.

*

Here's a collage I made today. Title: Specimen 61

RTomens, 2023

Print/collage: Limit / Art limitations

 

RTomens, 2023

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” - Orson Welles

Whilst there's some dispute as to whether that's exactly what Welles said it's a statement I can relate to and ultimately support through experience, always having tight limitations on such things as working space (i.e., no studio), technical and material means. I've no doubt that limitations inspire work that might otherwise not exist if anything and everything was available. Being forced to work with what you have rather than having a limitless choice means you focus on what's available. 

The simplest comparison is a vast library of collage material compared to just a few books and magazines. The former, although desirable sometimes, would offer too much choice. A studio would get cluttered with junk, most of which would never be used. Being able to buy any books you want, anytime, doesn't make you 'better read'. 

The quote also pinpoints the one of the problems with AI art. 'Look, it can do anything!'. So anything it produces comes easily and means nothing.

Limit was made by first collaging paper, cut from 60s advertising, then printing a street photo I took onto it. 

TTFN

Music: Phantom Band - Freedom of Speech / Brain Police

From their 1981 album, Freedom of Speech. Even more relevant today? There's no release from the brain police...
 

Essential Art Books - Part 2

 

Yes, inevitably, books on typewriter art/concrete poetry. 

Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology - Barrie Tullett (2014)

This one's creeping up in price so it's best to buy one as soon as you can. It's the best contemporary coverage of typewriter art, not just because it's well designed and written but because it contains interviews with exponents old and new. 

Concerning Concrete Poetry - Bob Cobbing and Peter Mayer (1978/2014) 

Probably the most interesting book on concrete poetry, consisting as it does of statements, manifestos and musings on both concrete and sound poetry, their meaning(s) and evolution. This facsimile edition naturally has that vintage/raw appearance/appeal. Unfortunately, it's now rather pricey but I got mine before it neared it's current values. You can see a few pages here.

The Art of Typewriting - Marvin and Ruth Sackner (2015)

The best book, visually, on typewriter art. Large format and a good, selective biographical section in the back with further examples of the artists' work. This one is very affordable and essential if you're interested in what has been done by hitting keys (and yes, applying other media too). 

Collage/painting: A Poet / Art appreciation: ignorance is not bliss

RTomens, 2023

This piece comprises of torn and cut old newspaper with added acrylic paint, then collaged. It was pure chance that the words 'A poet' appeared.

Are you a poet? 

No.

A concrete poet?

Maybe.

A visual poet?

Maybe.

I don't really like attaching the word 'poet' to any of my typed work although I'm fully aware of what can pass for 'vispo' these days (a leaf with, um, a letter on it). 

Here's me being stubbornly old-fashioned by insisting (to myself) that any 'visual' poetry should prominently feature either letters or text. 

I blame the avant-garde...for everything...daring to suggest, nay, insist, that Art can be 'anything' - huh! 

I know some people for whom even paintings which dare to smudge figuration (Mr Bacon, yes you!) aren't 'proper' Art. 

Some say you shouldn't need 'educating' when it comes to appreciating Art - you just like it or you don't. Oh the old explaining conundrum! In one sense, that's true, but in another, it's nonsense, obviously, because it's apparent that those who don't 'get' certain types of Art have no historical understanding of it, no context, no sense of historical development. And they don't want any. Then there's a matter who simply 'seeing' and 'getting it', just because you do. Perhaps that comes naturally. Either way, ignorance is not bliss.